— To the village of Prastós?
— To the village of Prastós.
— They took Themistoklís there?
— And then they took us up to the mountains. They made Panayótis, Iraklís’s brother, play the clarinet. And they danced. Well, anyway. It’s all a muddle.
— And when the Germans came they took you.
— When the Germans came we went and gave ourselves up. But we had got some water earlier. There was a drinking fountain. Look, girls, down there down by the wild pears, one of them said. We got water. Someone, a tall man, says, Who’s that girl, and Vasílis Tóyias said, She and her whole family are in deep with the Security Battalions.8 About me. We took the water, and on the road the man who had asked about me stopped us. He tells us, I’m Alímonos, and he turns to me, he tells me, I killed Ioannítzis from your village over there. Right there, he says to me. He showed me a hillside. A beautiful hillside. His head is planted under a pear tree. That’s what he said. Then I was really frightened. They took us farther up. It was hot. We tell Panayótis, Play a song. I told him that. To cheer us up. I will, he says. But first I’ll play a funeral dirge. We all gave a shudder. No, no, Panayótis, don’t do that. I don’t remember if he played anything. And that night, at twelve o’clock, they killed him. They kept them behind, they sent us away. The men took us there, the rebels, along the way they began to talk. What are you saying, what’s going on? Nothing, stay close to us. It was pitch dark. They took us to those shepherds. I couldn’t reap grain. I didn’t know how. They wouldn’t give me anything to eat. Chrysanthe went and reaped the grain for me. Later we saw the Germans. They were swimming in the stream. We gave ourselves up; they took us back to Orthokostá. Kalabakóyiannis comes in, he tells us, Tonight they killed Braílas’s mother, and Maraskés, and Themistoklís. And Panayótis Polítis. They were killing them all night, and that woman from Trípolis, they smashed in her head with the butt of a gun, left her dead on the spot. I got out safe. From Orthokostá they took us to Leonídio. I went to the school, the Boínis sisters were in there. Prisoners. Alexandra and the other one. They were crying. I ask, What’s wrong with them, someone tells me, They found out their brothers were killed. I felt sorry for them, I went over to them, I say, Don’t cry, girls. I said that like a good Christian, they didn’t answer me. I go outside, I run into Iraklís Polítis. Yeorghía, are the Boínis girls in there? No, I tell him, and he didn’t go in. He believed me. We went to the seafront. There were people in line waiting to get into the caïques. Lots of people. From the Orthokostá detention camp, people the rebels had taken to Xerokámpi. I found Tasía Kambýlis there and Matína Lymbéris, Chía’s sister, I found Tasía’s brother Stamátis. Iraklís comes in angry as can be, I could kill you now, Yeorghía, in front of your brother, who cares? Just because I hadn’t given away the Boínis sisters. Go away, I tell him, get away from me, leave me alone. And then I see those very women, they’re escorting them somewhere. They took them away, and they disappeared among the vegetable plots. They took them. Much later I learned they had executed one of them. From Leonídio we went to Náfplion. And from Náfplion up to Eleohóri. To Másklina. They come and tell me, They want you. They had taken someone in. My aunt tells me, You’d better go in case it’s someone innocent and they kill him for no reason. I go out into the street, Chrysanthe tells me, It’s that man. The one who told me at the detention camp I should be crying those tears for my brothers. Well, there he was again, right there in front of me. Lígdas says to me, We’re counting on you. Lígdas from the Security Battalions. As we’re talking I hear a voice coming from downstairs at the school. They were holding him in the basement. Hey, Yeorghía, it’s me. Who’s that? Yiórgos, don’t you remember me? Oh, Yiórgos, it’s you. You’re holding him prisoner, I say. In the end, they let the man go free. The next day we get on the train to go to Trípolis. Our parents stay up in Eleohóri. They stayed with our uncles. Kákos Barbitsiótis was on the train. So was the man they’d let go. He says to him, You should light a candle for this woman as long as you live. Because now you’d be hanging from a plane tree, at the hands of those Germans. We went to Trípolis. The Germans left, the Security Battalions left, they went to Spétses. Then the rebels came in. One day there’s a knock on our door. Someone says, I want Yeorghía. It was him. He says, If they harm you, if they bother you in any way, you let me know immediately. I’ll be at the jail. I’m a guard. He was grateful for my kindness to him. But nothing happened to us. No one bothered us. Except for that man who wanted to marry me.
— Was he in the detention camp?
— He passed through once. A kapetánios.9 Kapetán Farmákis. And he saw me, and he came to Trípolis looking for me. He found out where I was, got directions, and he came looking for me. To marry me. And he was so insistent. He’d come in one door and I’d be out the other. I’d go to Aryíris’s place. To Yiórgos’s, and hide. I can’t, I’d tell them, I just can’t. And there he’d be again. Asking for my hand. He finally gave up.
Chapter 3
They burned down Ayiasofiá around harvest time. We were still in Koubíla. We didn’t go up there, how could we go there, but all night long we heard the crackling of the fire. And the smell of the smoke kept coming down to us, making us choke. We found out later that Anghelís Lambíris’s mother had stayed behind. The man with the blacksmith shop. The others had gotten out and gone across from there. The kapetanaíoi1 show up. Where is your son, where’s your son? She says, What do you want with him, dear man, an invalid with six children. He was missing an eye. Lost it in Albania.2 He knows how to hide, they say. They pressed her to say where he was but she wouldn’t tell. With the villagers watching from the distance. And as she stood there leaning up against the wall they shot her, and that’s how they found her. Standing, just as she’d been. She didn’t fall down. She was propped up on her cane, she was thin, she didn’t fall down. And they found her there dead.
Chapter 4
His brother Kyriákos was killed that day. They had gone down to Stólos to look around. The Stólos villages. Most likely his own fault. He had an Italian rifle. He tried to do something, and the rifle went off and killed him. Well, Mihális took that loss very personally. On that same day they had brought Tsígris to Trípolis. He was a commissioned major, from the Reserves I think. He belonged to ELAS.