The Lace Tablecloth Read online

  Summer was coming to an end. The threshing had finished some time earlier, the corn plants had got tall and full of cobs, and heavy bunches of grapes were maturing in the vineyards. Dried tobacco leaves formed into bales and stored in sheds were awaiting the valuer and the buyer. Golden wheat had once again filled up people’s storerooms and big wooden boxes. In the melon patch the last watermelons and cantaloupes were bringing their seeds to maturation, ready for next year’s sowing. The hectic farm work of summer was somewhat easing, and farmers were enjoying the luxury of lounging a bit longer in bed in the morning.

  This morning though, the people were alarmed by the persistent and menacing barking of dogs on the outskirts of the village. Men and women jumped out of bed and ran to windows or doors to find out what the matter was. Tasia’s parents also rushed up to her bedroom window, the only window that had a direct view of the village square. They observed several armed strangers around a mounted horseman who seemed to be giving orders to them. Soon the armed men formed into smaller groups and started to move carefully and cautiously towards the side streets, checking before entering them, the leader waving the group to proceed. They were a scruffy lot, with long hair and clothes in tatters, unshaven and unwashed. Most had bands of ammunition strapped across their chests, and guns hanging from their shoulders.

  ‘The guerrillas, the guerrillas!’ Tasia’s parents said, looking at each other with fear, and ran down to get dressed as quickly as possible.

  It was just in time, because four men were already knocking at the front door, forcing it open. They stood temporarily at the entrance till their eyes adjusted to the dark interior, and without taking any notice of Tasia’s parents who stood there bewildered and pale as ghosts, they entered the house. Very soon they started carrying things out into the yard: sacks of wheat (enough for the family’s bread till next year’s harvest, her father had said), a big sealed can of feta cheese and many other foodstuffs. They also took a pile of rugs Tasia’s mother had just completed weaving on commission — meant for the dowry of a wealthy girl.

  ‘That’s how you can contribute to our resistance strife without depriving yourselves of your homes and your comfort,’ said a young man who seemed to supervise his comrades as they moved the goods onto the street.

  Standing in a corner, Tasia stared at the strange men and at her distraught and silent parents. Her initial fear was now replaced by anger, hate. She could see the desperation written all over her parents’ faces and wished she was big and strong enough to attack these bad men, to kick and bite them and punch them so they wouldn’t have the courage to ever come back.

  The whole episode lasted less than an hour. The guerrillas loaded the loot onto mules they’d taken from the village, and disappeared. Soon, the entire population was out on the streets to share their experiences. So strong was their need to talk that some forgot they hadn’t been on speaking terms with some of their neighbours for years. They were all talking over the top of each other, shouting, gesticulating, repeating the same things, as if each was the sole witness to this unimaginable happening.

  Old women dressed in black rushed out of their homes, repeatedly making the sign of the cross and turning their eyes towards the sky, whispering ‘God have mercy on us; God protect us; God have mercy on us’.

  Silent and overburdened, Tasia’s father followed the other men to the cafenion. This was extraordinary because men only went there in the evenings after work and on Sundays after church — never in the mornings. The cafenion was the place where men could be exclusively in the company of other men, to discuss world affairs and politics, to find out what was going on and to relax with a game of cards or tavli. But today was different. They had to talk about what had happened, they had to clarify their thoughts, to understand and take responsible action in order to protect themselves and their families.

  Her father returned about lunch time, careworn and sullen.

  ‘Is there anything to eat?’ he asked shyly, as if ashamed that hunger took precedence over other more important and urgent things.

  He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the low, round table and started munching the stale bread and feta cheese his worried wife placed in front of him.

  ‘What are people saying?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘Chris and Manolis said they’ll go to join the guerillas up the mountains. We all tried to persuade them not to because, if the Germans were to find out about it, that’d be the end of our village. No man will get out of here alive and no house will remain standing.’

  ‘Well, I hope sense will prevail. They can’t do things that will jeopardise the whole village,’ she said and remained silent and in deep thought.

  ‘I wish I knew what to do,’ Tasia’s father muttered as if talking to himself.

  ‘What do you mean what to do? Are you mad? You’re not contemplating becoming a guerilla!’ her mother shouted, her face pale with fear.

  ‘Good God, no! What I meant is, I don’t know if I should go to work in the vineyard. It’s hard to know where the guerillas are hiding and what their plans —’

  He was left with his sentence unfinished as a horrific explosion shook their house to its foundation, together with the whole village. The terrified people scrambled out of their doors once more, and onto the streets.

  ‘For God’s sake, what was that?’ they were asking each other, rushing at the same time to give their own explanations.

  When Alekos arrived, they all ran to him because they knew he was the only expert on matters concerning guns and ammunition.

  ‘I’m sure a mine exploded on the road to Ptolemais: the work of the guerillas, I presume. Let’s see now how we’ll fare with the Germans.’

  His words fell like lightning in a cloudless sky. Tasos, the grocer, staggered as if his knees had given in. Eleni, his wife, wiped the sweat from her forehead with the corner of her apron. Tasia’s mother, her face ashen, brought her hands to her heart as if in severe pain. The men looked around them, alarmed. What were they supposed to do? Where could they hide? If there were German casualties, they knew the reprisals would be horrendous. Messovouno, a village not very far from their own, was burnt to the ground by the Germans who first collected all the men of fifteen years of age and over and executed them, their reason being that the corpse of a German soldier had been found close to the village.

  ‘Let’s hope things are not as you’re telling us, Mr Alekos,’ said Tasia’s father.

  ‘Hmm. Well, what do you think? I hope I’m wrong!’ he responded.

  ‘Woe, woe to us and our children! God help us! God have pity on us! Show us what to do: how to protect ourselves and our families and prevent things from getting worse,’ said Maria, a young mother from across the road, holding her tiny baby tight to her bosom, face pale, lips dry, eyes turned towards the sky.

  In her confusion, Old Babou Yanna was tying and untying her kerchief, fingers moving automatically and purposefully, her eyes full of fear. Some fathers were holding the hands of their young children tightly in their sweaty palms as they searched the horizon with restless eyes, like haunted beasts looking for a hole to hide in, for a passage through which to escape. They were faced with a very precarious situation indeed, akin to the saying ‘between a rock and a hard place’ with the guerrillas up in the mountains, the Germans down on the plains — travelling by jeep — only ten minutes away from the village. Where should they go? How could they save themselves and their families? The war and the German occupation had filled the village streets with orphans and black-clad widows. How could they prevent such a calamity befalling their village?

  As if paralysed, people remained immobile, unable to think and decide what to do next. The frantic ringing of the church bell put an end to their inertia, drawing them like automatons to the churchyard. The old priest had taken the initiative of calling the faithful in prayer, so that the good Lord would make this horrid day pass without further problems.

  The pious voice of the cantor was alread
y spilling out through the church’s open windows into the yard and, the priest’s silhouette, clouded by the thick smoke of incense, broke free from the open doorway. With a sprig of fresh sweet basil dipped in holy water in his right hand the priest began to bless the crowd, so huge they couldn’t fit inside the church.

  ‘Holy God, Holy Almighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us,’ he chanted with his staccato voice. ‘Holy God, Holy Almighty, Holy Immortal, have —’

  Suddenly his voice turned to a whisper and his hand froze in mid-air. Four army trucks, engines roaring, arrived at the square and stopped.

  ‘The Germans! The Germans!’ the crowd uttered in whispers as they watched the uniformed men alight.

  The soldiers surrounded the square, guns pointed towards the crowd.

  Tiny and short, Tasia was lost within a forest of legs that prevented her from seeing what was happening. Her father was holding her by the hand and she felt his fear like an electric current passing through her. At one point a German officer stood close to her. She noticed him only when a corner of his jacket touched her skin. His head was turned to the side and she could not see his face at first so she looked at his shiny boots as he tapped them gently and casually with the leather baton he was holding in his right hand. When he turned around and their eyes met for a split second, she felt a metallic taste in her mouth and her heart missed a beat.

  Taking his time, the German officer lifted his arm and touched Tasia’s neighbour, George, on the shoulder with his baton indicating for him to move forward. A few steps further on, he made the same gesture towards Antonis. Pale and silent, the crowd waited to see who would be next. Tasia could see some trying to hide behind others. People moved backwards, creating a narrow corridor for the small group to pass through on their way to one of the trucks. The German officer took the passenger seat while George and Antonis got up at the back with some German soldiers. With great precision the rest of the German soldiers were back in their cars and in no time at all they took off and disappeared, leaving behind a cloud of dust.

  Numbed, the crowd began to stir and look anxiously around, unable to comprehend what had happened. Some people ran to take care of Chrisoula, George’s wife, who had fainted and fallen senseless to the ground.

  ‘Woe, woe to the young men!’

  The voice of Barba Vagelis could be heard above the noise.

  ‘Why didn’t they take me, a brainless and slothful old man?’ lamented old Barba Petros.

  ‘And me: the coward who hid behind my wife’s back. Where can I hide my face now? How can I keep on living?’ wailed Manolis, truly regretful.

  ‘Listen to me,’ interjected old Mrs. Despina, who had the reputation of knowing everything and having the last word. ‘We will never see those two alive again!’

  It was too hard for Tasia to understand what was going on. She was totally confused and terrified as she could read the general feeling of gloom and apprehension in people’s faces. Her breathing became laboured as an unbearable load compressed her chest.

  The sun, tired from its long journey, had leant for a moment on the mountaintop to take its breath. The shadows of the trees had become thin and elongated. Many people in small groups stood in the village square close to the church, as if they were waiting for something special to bring this strange day to a close. Just then two men from a nearby village arrived, each pulling a mule loaded with one of the bodies of the two men taken earlier by the Germans, head and arms dangling on one side of the mule and legs on the other. A golden cloud of dust floated a few centimetres above the ground as people moved, hesitantly at first, and then more speedily, towards the mules.

  A group of old, black-clad women surrounded the mules, cutting off Tasia’s view. They immediately started a wearisome dirge that made Tasia’s blood freeze in her veins. Some of them began to beat their chests with their fists and to pull furiously at their hair.

  A few steps further on, the last sunrays fell on Chrisoula, George’s wife, giving her an other-worldly appearance. She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the square, moving her body back and forth as if rocking a baby. She sang softly to herself, filling her hands with dry soil and emptying it on her head and her loose hair as the tears ran down her cheeks leaving grey smudges down her face.

  The sun had rolled behind the mountain now, taking with it all the bright colours and covering everything with a dull grey. A warm breeze touched Tasia’s skin and made her shiver. Her lips burned and her throat felt dry. Dead tired, she made an enormous effort to keep her eyes open. That’s when her mother found her.

  ‘So, here you are! I turned the place upside down looking for you. You have no business here. This is no place for small children. Home! Quickly!’

  She saw her mother’s tired, pale face and her red eyes, and knew she had better keep quiet to avoid a hiding. She ate what was put in front of her, and ran up the stairs two at a time to her bedroom. She let her mother undress her and cover her with the bedclothes. Then she heard the bedroom door close. She was left alone and scared. All she could hear at first was the wild beating of her heart and the rustling of her mattress as her body trembled.

  A full moon shed its silvery rays on her pillow, leaving the room in a haunting light. There, hiding in the semi-dark corners of her room, Tasia could sense the demons, the ghosts and the evil spirits that scramble people’s brains and suck their blood. Tasia knew the moment she shut her eyes, they would pounce on her like wild dogs and tear her to bits. The strange sounds and whispers she could hear were their guffaws and laughter. She had to stay awake, keep her eyes open and be ready to fight them off.

  But her eyes were unwittingly closing and pulling her into a deep, black, unstoppable fall. She would wake startled, her own screaming still echoing in her ears. Eyes bulging with fear, she would try to see through the semi-darkness. She was too scared to allow herself sleep again, troubled by a feeling that down in that pit would be all those who were no longer alive — like George and Antonis, who, according to Mrs. Despina, were dead and whose lifeless bodies Tasia herself had seen for a fleeting moment on the mules in the square.

  What was it, really, not to be alive? What is death? Some time ago when she was very young she had heard her mother ask her father ‘For whom does the bell toll?’ and he had answered ‘Barba Dimitris died’. As she didn’t know what he meant, Tasia had left the house and run over to Barba Dimitri’s house to find out for herself what had happened. She didn’t find him sitting at his usual place on the lowest step of his house next to the street rolling up his cigarette, smoking and talking to passers-by. A strange-looking, long piece of wood, painted black with a white cross in the middle, was leaning against the wall next to his door. Many people, some known to her, dressed in their Sunday best, were entering and leaving the house. Some women brought flowers and others brought trays covered with embroidered tablecloths. She too ran to enter the house but was stopped.

  ‘What do you want? You have no business here. Go! Go to your mother,’ a strange old woman snapped at her.

  As she wasn’t allowed to enter the house she had gone to the house opposite Barba Dimitri’s and sat on the steps where she had a good view of everything. Her mother had found her there, got hold of her arm and dragged her back home.

  ‘What am I to do with you? Can you tell me? Do I have to keep running after you all the time? Do I always have to keep on searching for you?’ she scolded her.

  That’s why she didn’t ever find out what happened to old Dimitri except that from that day onwards, she never saw him again. So, that was what it was like to be dead. Those who died were gone, were never to be seen again. They disappeared forever. Forever … forever … But how long was forever?

  Quite unexpectedly, she had the same abhorrent metallic taste in her mouth she’d had when her eyes had met those of the German officer. Petrified, she now saw the same officer leave the dark corner and move towards her, looking straight at her with a mocking smile. In the darkness she couldn’t s
ee his uniform or his boots and in fact he didn’t look different from the people she knew. Maybe the uniform, or the boots, or the name ‘German’ made him different. But if he had wanted to deceive her and was dressed like all the others, how was she to single him out so she could protect herself? How was she to separate the good from the bad, since Germans were also people? How was she to know who to fear and who to trust? Maybe the only people she could trust were her parents. Her parents were taking care of her and the only thing they expected her to do was to be a good and obedient child. And that was for her own good, they always stressed.

  She must have drifted off to sleep because when she opened her eyes the room was pitch-black. In the stillness of the night, the monotonous dirge got stronger and it seemed now like the agonising groans of the pig when it was slain by her father and their neighbour, George, before last Christmas. She had run, full of concern, to find out why the pig was shrieking that way.

  And when she had seen it making desperate attempts to free itself from the strong grip of her father who held it fixed to the ground while George, splattered with blood, had thrashed a sharp knife into its neck, she had almost fainted. Her stomach had churned and a putrid taste had filled her mouth. With her eyes cloudy from tears, she had plugged her ears with her hands and started running away madly as far as she could so as not to hear the shrieking. But the piercing cry had followed her for a long time and, when it had suddenly stopped, she had found the silence even more depressing and unbearable. For several months after that, every time she saw meat, Tasia had felt like vomiting.

  Maybe she had fallen asleep again and had woken from her own frightened cry. She found herself alone in her room with the dream still fresh in her memory. She was running; she was running like the wind on strange narrow pathways unknown to her, trying to get away from men — holding axes and knives — chasing her, all the time getting closer and closer till she found herself in a dead-end alley. Fortunately, her terror had woken her up.