Thanassis Valtinos - Orthokostá

We had stayed there, two families. The Makrís and the Koutsoyiánnis families. Yeorghía had left for Kastrí. Yiánnis Koutsoyiánnis went there. Who was the village police sergeant at that time. Now he’s retired. He went to get the sprayer from Vanghélis Farazís. On his way there he finds Themistoklís Anagnostákos. Where are you going, Yiánnis? I’m going to get the sprayer, going to spray. Don’t go get the sprayer, go and tell your family and the Makríses to clear out. Because tonight they’re coming to take us all away. Who said so? Mihális Siouroúnis. Mihális was involved in the Organization back then. Oh, come on, says Yiánnis, and he keeps going to get the sprayer. You stubborn fool, Themistoklís shouts. Turn back. You haven’t got time. They’re coming any minute to arrest us. I’m locking up and leaving. But there wasn’t time for him to lock up. He was tying his shoes when the rebels arrived, and they arrested him. The rest of the story goes like this. We hid ourselves anywhere we could find. I mean the men, our men, went and hid. Koutsoyiánnis came from Ayiórghis. He says, Get ready to leave because Themistoklís said such-and-such. There’s two of you, three of us, and the Aryírises are another two. We had just baked some bread. It was Saturday. Nikólas tells him, Who told Themistoklís that? And he says, Mihális, little Mihális. Siouroúnis. He told him, They’re going to arrest you tonight, they’re going to execute you. That’s their plan. They sent a notice from Kastrí. Now who sent the notice, I don’t know. Nikólas says to our mother, Give us a loaf of bread. We’re leaving. They started whispering. And don’t you go talking, no matter who comes here. Of course not, who would we be talking to? Our parents were protecting themselves too. Out here in the wilderness, who would be talking to us? The men left, they went down along the riverbed. They find Máïnas there. Where are you men going? To catch us some crabs. They came out at the fenced monastery in Mesorráhi, they went and hid in some haystacks. From there they sent word, they arrived outside of Másklina, our relatives came and got them. Máïnas goes back to Ayiórghis. Liás, he says to Anagnostákos. Liás was in charge of Ayiórghis. Liás, those sons of bitches got away. Weren’t you on guard? he says to him. And they went up to Kastrí to give them a report. They got away? they asked them in Kastrí. They got away, they said. What do we do now? Burn them down, said Haroúlis. In any case, we knew nothing at all. We were just waiting. They had burned down Ayiasofiá. And as we’re there waiting, the next day Máïnas arrives. He had come back from Kastrí. He comes over to us. Do you live down here? We say yes. Yeorghía too? What about Yeorghía? says our mother. Nothing, nothing, Ma’am. They had captured Yeorghía in Kastrí and he knew about that. He says, What are you going to do now? What are we going to do, we’ll stay put. He says, If your men don’t report to us they’ll take you away and burn down your house. They may even kill you. We started shaking. They had burned down Ayiasofiá. Then the Battalions came to Ayiórghis. That’s when Kyriákos hit the old lady. He banged the door with the butt of his gun. Trýfonas arrives at that moment. As soon as they saw the old lady, they said, Where’s your old man? And Kyriákos gave her a good smack. He pushed her. Why are you hitting the old lady, our brother Nikólas says to him. What has she done? Quiet, he answers. And he smashes in the door with the butt of his gun. The barrel was turned toward him now, it went off, and he fell and died on the spot. In front of Nikólas. Right there in front of him. The others came running, the officer went over, What’s going on, Well, it’s like this. Did someone else kill him? No, he did it himself. He still had his finger on the trigger. They picked him up, and they stole things off him. They took his watch and his ring. And Nikólas said, He had a watch and a ring on his hand, who took them? They had taken those things themselves. In the end they found them. When we heard that someone had been killed in Ayiórghis we were half crazy. Meantime, two men appear down below. We’re sitting on the threshing floor, down near the mulberry tree. How are you, Auntie, how are you, Tseví? They say to my sister-in-law. And we don’t even recognize them, we’re so confused. It’s me Auntie, it’s me Tseví, Spýros Yiatrídis. And I’m Nikólas Petrákos. Did anyone bother you? No, we say, no one. We didn’t say anything about Máïnas. They say, Get ready, your men are coming now, they’re in Ayiórghis. Soon as they said that Nikólas appeared. I’d hidden the rifle, and I’d hidden the shot and the shells. Yiánnis suddenly shows up. The rifle, he says to me, where is it? I say, Over there. And the cartridges are there, he lifts up a floorboard, You’ll find them under there. They tell us, Get ready, we’re leaving. And we left everything behind. We got out of there. They brought Kyriákos, we all went to Másklina. They’d put him up on the mule. On the mule, like a slaughtered pig. Nikólas put two boards together, they wrapped him in a sheet. And they tied him. We went to Másklina. Then they say, There’s a fire in Koubíla. You could see smoke, we could see it rising. They’re saying, They burned down the Makríses’ houses, they burned down the olive press. And they destroyed the mill. What could we do? We went there, we found everything in shambles. We picked up the broken things and threw them away. They had burned down both houses. They had emptied the winepress. They’d taken the oil, as much as they could. They’d taken the cheese. We found one head of white cheese still hanging, that’s what they left. And one earthen jar, it held fifteen okás 1of oil. They’d taken it to another house. Those things were saved. The rest were useless except maybe to bathe in. The wine all spilled. We found a puddle of oil up in the olive press. And the barrels up above, with holes in them, the oil spilled on the ground. Whatever they couldn’t carry off. A complete disaster. They took clothes, they took everything. We had some other things, not ours, from the laundering trough. 2Things from Ayiasofiá and Tservási. Brand-new blankets and linens for dowries. We’d taken them out, we had them in the lower part of the house. We had a laundering trough at the mill. They told us they’d left them piled up outside on a rock. We didn’t find anything. A woman from Mesorráhi told us. Yiannákis Galioúris’s mother. Yiannakákis’s 3mother. She told us they were going up and down with lights, all night long. They saw them inside, they saw Yeorghía, Asímos’s daughter, coming out all loaded up. Then Kóstas Diamantákos fired a shot. He says, Klaría, I saw the devastation, I saw what was going on then in there and I fired my rifle. I fired a shot and I said, Germans. With the word Germans they ran off every which way. They left. We found out who burned down our houses, we found out years later. They went to Kastrí. Our cousins were hiding in the vineyard. Down below, in Ayía Paraskeví. They were hiding from the rebels. Maria and Olga. Sotíris’s girls. And a group of them comes out of Kambýlis’s place, with Pótis Lenghéris at their head. The villagers from Karátoula ran into them. They were coming from down below. Where are you going, you men? We’re going to burn down Koubíla. And they went and burned it down. That’s what they heard, our cousins. A group of them came out of Kambýlis’s place, and Kambýlis was with them, Yiórgos himself. He admitted it, he didn’t hide it. They took me with them, he said. I did whatever they told me to. He was the one who broke the storage jars. And Kambýlis’s wife Evanthía, many years afterward, says to my mother, Konstantína, I’m going to tell you something but you mustn’t say another word about it. They had brought some heads of cheese from Koubíla and left them in Tsoúmas’s basement. And Rigoúla would go there every so often and cut some, and the whole place smelled so good. But why mention their names now? All they left us was that head of white cheese hanging there.