Orthokostá by Thanassis Valtinos Read Free Book Online Page A

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 knowimmediately. 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.
    â€”Was he in the detention camp?
    â€”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 6
    They arrested us in 1944. At first it was just Chrístos Kaprános, myself, and Stavróyiannis. It was in June. I don’t remember the date. It was during the big blockade. We were ordered to leave. Word had got out that the Germans were coming, and we had to leave. We went up to Malevós. Lots of people there. When we got there Dr. Karavítis ordered us to go fetch a lamb from a certain shepherd. Chrístos was superstitious. He believed he was going to die. The thought had gotten into his head. He had dreamt that his sister-in-law was getting married. His brother Charálambos’s wife. He saw her as a bride. 1 We went to the shepherd’s as the doctor ordered us to. You fellows from Kastrí? he asked. From Kastrí, we answered. And he began apologizing. Saying he’d done us wrong. It was back in 1922. He had killed Menélaos Méngos. Menélaos Méngos was an authorized Singer service dealer, Chrístos’s first cousin. He used to travel around the villages on Mount Malevós and repair sewing machines. Spare parts and money in his briefcase. When Chrístos heard this he tells us, I told you, something’s not right with me. Imagine coming face-to-face with my cousin’s murderer. He slaughtered the lamb, and we took it. Suddenly there was an alarm. The Germans, the Germans. We were at Megáli Lákka. We went someplace else, we hid the lamb. We piled tree branches on top of it in case we got back in time to recover it. We just took out its liver. We wrapped it up in a kerchief. Megáli Lákka was all in bloom, the sage plants in bloom. We split up. Our thirst was getting to us. In the evening we went down to the wells at the village of Sítaina. We spent the night in a ravine. At daybreak we lit afire, singed the liver, and ate it. Then we reached the wells. We threw a rock inside. The water level was low, and we had no way of