Orthokostá (20 page)

that man from Bernorí told us is true, then our curse be upon you. The old man got angry because it was all lies. The product of the other man's unforgivingness. Because I think that during their argument the old man had given him a good slap. Still quite excitable over in America, he had slapped him. And humiliated, he had come to sow the seeds of doubt. To destroy the family harmony. His wrongdoing was enormous. That man from Bernorí. He could have said, I didn't see him, I don't know. And he was deliberately deceitful because he knew that my father had made money and was doing quite well. My mother had written to him. They had told him not to send money here. Because they had more than enough. They had the mill and they made a good living. There was also the shop in Kastrí. Which later became a taverna. They gave it out for rent. When the old man came back he found the rent in the bank. He also learned that my mother had loaned five or six thousand drachmas with interest, at that time, to Polýdoros Mántis. The father of Mántis, the monk. Money from wheat and various other products she would sell. They had vineyards that were more than five strémmata
⁹
in size. They sold six or seven thousand okás of walnuts every single year. They had huge walnut trees at the mill. And their own needs were minimal. So she had told him not to send any money. Well, at any rate. When the old man received her letter he immediately thought of murder. Of going back and killing that slanderer. But he couldn't get away from his work. So he goes and sends a large sum of money. Without writing a word. A huge amount of money for that particular time. Through the National Bank of Greece. As evidence of the truth. Five or six thousand dollars. Were we to convert that money, the amount would be equal to at least one hundred thousand today. We're talking dollars. I'm quite conversant with numbers. The money arrived in Trípolis. The postman received the notice from the bank. He went to Karátoula. There was no one at home. He goes down to the mill. He finds my mother up near the woods. She had climbed a birch tree and was pruning it. He gave her the notice. Of course neither she nor my grandmother knew how to read. The postman left, they went back to their house in the evening. Yiánnis Bakoúris was away. They took the
notice and went to Papa Dimítris Siahámos. Who was a schoolteacher and a priest. The father of Vasílis who later became a priest. They showed it to him, and he was literally dumbfounded. According to my mother. All he said was, That's a lot of money, Konstantína. The next day they went to Trípolis. With Polýdoros Mántis the muleteer. Because Papa Dimítris was a priest, but mainly because of the large sum of money, the director of the bank received them in his office. Some coffee, Ma'am? Coffee, old man? To gain their favor and all that. And then he says to my mother, Do you want to take the money with you? They might steal it from you there. There was no bank in Kastrí then. A bank was opened later on. In 1929 or '30. At the behest of the Kanglís brothers. Upon their request from Canada to open a branch in Kastrí. And to make their brother-in-law the director. Manolákis Horaítis. In 1929 or '30. And the bank director advised her to leave her money there on deposit as foreign currency. Which she did. Five years later, when the old man came back, he found the money untouched. In other words, a gold mine. But of course that money went out the window in the end. With Protopapadákis's notorious law.
¹⁰
It had all been changed into drachmas in the interim. So all the old man's hard work went to waste. His hard work in America. He didn't have time to fix so much as a keyhole in the house. They had Aryíris and he left. He was three months old when the old man left. Four months. He came back in 1920, and he had me. For ten consecutive years he stayed away from Greece. From 1910 until December 1920. Well, at any rate. In that way, with that check the family cohesion was restored. After that they exchanged letters, explanations were given. And of course they understood that that fellow from Bernorí had told them lies. I think he had died when the old man came back. It doesn't much matter. The old man came back in December 1920. With nine trunks in tow. From America: shoes, coats, underwear. Five double-barreled rifles. Nine trunks in all. Some were ours, some were not. Because other people gave him some too. Folks from Karátoula who wanted him to bring them here to their families. He arrived with twelve or thirteen mules from Másklina. Because the train came to Másklina in those days. He had telephoned
the muleteers and they were waiting for them. Muleteers from Másklina. They hauled the cargo from Eleohóri to Laconía. There was no road. There were no cars either. And that's why Vozíkis came out against opening a public road. That old Harálambos. President of the Parliament, from the Populist Party. Because dozens of muleteers would lose their livelihoods. From Kastrí and from Másklina. Who received large fees for transporting cargo from the train between Másklina and Laconía. And they meant votes. In any case the road was built later on. There was already one as far as Koúvli. Trípolis to Koúvli. From Koúvli up, the road was mapped out in 1929. But the payment for it was approved under Metaxás's coalition government. With Metaxás himself the minister of transportation. So the old man arrived in Másklina. With two or three others from Kastrí. People heard about it, the children came out to meet them. The “Brooklyds”
¹¹
are coming. That was told to us by Aryíris but mainly by Yiórghis Mantíkos's father-in-law. Who as a letter carrier would transport the mail from Másklina to Kastrí–Ayios Pétros. Aryíris arrived in Mesorráhi. At Ayioi Theodóroi he met Mantíkos's father-in-law. Riding on a mule. Old man, have you seen the Brooklyds? Keep going, they're on their way. Aryíris kept walking. There were other boys with him. They walked about two hundred meters more. There across from him was my old man. Also riding a mule. With the trunks following behind. He saw Aryíris, he didn't recognize him. Who are you? Yiánnis Kékeris's son. Have you seen my father, Old Man? The old man jumped down, he hugged him, he kissed him. He had left him as an infant a few months old, and now he found a grown boy eleven years old. I'm your father. And he immediately took out a gift for him: either a watch or a fountain pen. I don't know if the mules with the baggage came through the marketplace or turned off at Koútselas's water mill. I mean if they took the old cobblestone road below Andrianákos the schoolteacher's house that comes out at Kápsalos. In any event my father wanted to go through Kastrí. To the shop that was the reason for his going abroad. It had been bought with money from my mother's dowry, but it wasn't enough, and it went into debt, and he was obliged to go abroad to pay off the debt. So he
and Aryíris were walking toward the main square. But a policeman arrested him there. Before he left for America he had hit a man named Siouroúnis. He had been giving Old Man Kirkís, my old man's father-in-law, some trouble, down along the borders in Ayiórghis. They were both dual residents. So he asked to have a word with him, they exchanged views, and in the middle of all this he trounced him with his cane. Whacked old Siouroúnis. The father of Apostólis Siouroúnis. He whacked him one, and he fell headfirst down thirty steps to the basement of Dimitrákis Kasímos. At any rate he wasn't killed. By the time the trial was held the old man had left town. But he was condemned in absentia. I don't know how many years he got. So the policeman arrested him. Oh, come now, dear fellow, come my good man. Nothing. The policeman was adamant. He locked him in the cellar. Vanghelió Koutoúzou took him a roast chicken, and he ate. The next day they escorted him to the state prosecutor. Of course the sentence had been struck from the records. It had been five years since it was pronounced—that is to say, since it was imposed. The judge ordered that he be released immediately. He also reprimanded the policeman for his oversight and the serious abuse of his authority. And so the old man went back to the village. Just days before Christmas. And from that time on he was a slave to the marketplace. He had no other sons, only Aryíris. I arrived one year later. I was born on October 20, 1920. Therefore I was conceived in January. Right after my father returned from America. He had left my mother when she was sixteen or seventeen and he found her when she was twenty-six or twenty-seven. At the height of her maturity and her sexual prowess. During the campaign in Asia Minor. And so as not to join the army, the old man managed to get himself appointed as a grammar-school Greek teacher. In Tservási. As a junior high school graduate. On the first of November elections were held. The elections Venizélos
¹²
lost. The old man supported Venizélos, so of course they transferred him. To the island of Ithaca along with Yiorghoulís, another schoolteacher. But the old man didn't accept that transfer. He didn't have many children, he had brought his money from America, it was enough for him. He didn't accept the transfer. At which time his military reprieve
came through. And he had to present himself to the regiments at the Náfplion Army Headquarters. He was now a soldier. Then came the devaluation of our money, with Protopapadákis's internal loan. The British and the French had refused to reinforce Greece because of the restoration of the throne. Because of the behavior of Constantine, who was considered an enemy of the Entente Cordiale. Because of his sympathy for the Kaiser's brothers and sisters, Kaiser Wilhelm II. So all the money was lost. Then the old man opened the taverna, in the marketplace. The Asia Minor campaign came to an end. At the same time he was also appointed a justice of the peace court clerk. He slowly got back to his routine. With his koumbároi, with those drinks on the house, with meager earnings from here and from there. With the mill, which his mother was running. He made money again. Which he lost once again in 1936 with the Agrarian Reform Law
¹³
under Metaxás. But the final blow came with the law enacted by Svólos
¹⁴
during the Occupation. Or rather after the Occupation.

I went back to Trípolis and I reported to Lýras. A verbal report on what I saw during my one and only leave of absence. All that sordidness. In Ayios Pétros the men from Máni and the men from Corinth almost killed each other. We had a battalion of men from Corinth. They'd swiped someone's watch, and he went and asked for it. He was the uncle or the grandfather of an officer. And he asked for the watch, and the watch was found. In the meantime they began fighting in the main square of Ayios Pétros. With the ELAS rebels right there above us. Right above us. Just looking for a chance to cut us up. I went and explained everything to Lýras. He tells me, All this can you please report it in writing, everything, from the time you went to Astros, whatever you saw? I went and wrote up a report. What the general picture was, the unruliness and the corruption. The sordidness. A situation you couldn't control. Because of course various other forces were coming into play. A strange group of people, the down-and-out. Some of them embittered, others on the run, others, like the men from Máni, who have it in their blood, for example. At any rate. The Allied landing came soon afterward, and Kanellópoulos disembarked in the Peloponnese.

How many were we? We hadn't been issued any arms yet. We were in Trípolis. And they told us, There are rebels in Voúrvoura. Well they gave us arms, since we were from Kastrí. Just the basics, to get ourselves to Voúrvoura. A whole lot of us, I can't remember. Vasílis Papayiorghíou, me, Petrákos, Antónis Biniáris, Miltiádis Mantás, Arapóyiannis.

—Arapóyiannis?

—Stávros. From Koútrifa. A machine-gun operator. We went to Voúrvoura. First we went to Koútrifa. We had information that the rebels had taken Arapóyiannis's wife. But she had gone into hiding, they didn't find her. And they burned down his house. From there we went to Voúrvoura. We spent the night there. We found the rebels inside a small church. I think in Ayía Paraskeví, across from the village. Some of our men got into position once they went up there. We had some men from Ayios Pétros with us, in our platoon. Someone named Fourtoúnis, another man named Lykoúras.

—Who was your leader?

—Our leader was Nikólas Petrákos. I think Liás Vémos was too. As second lieutenant. I don't remember. But I do remember that I was the machine-gun ammo-belt loader. Stávros Arapóyiannis was the operator.

—How old were you then?

—Eighteen. We got them out of there. Out of the church, but they got away from us. We didn't get close enough in time to surround them. They heard us coming. Someone fired a shot inside the village, they realized what was up. And they cleared out.

—Were there many of them?

—About eight of them. Ten. But they got away. Then we regrouped, and we went back, back to the village. We left from there. On our way to Kosána, on the road to Kosána. Just before Prophítis Ilías, they were waiting to ambush us. It was at Koúbas's Rocks. That's what they call the place. In Kosána, way down low. On the border between Voúrvoura and Kastrí. That's where they set up their first ambush. They fired at us from high up, they didn't harm us at all.

—Was it the same men who got away, or were there others?

—We don't know. In any event, from what became clear later on, there were many rebels in the area. Because on our way to Kastrí, at the mill by the church, they had set up another ambush.

—All the way down there?

—At the church's mill. But we were moving cautiously. And we pushed them back. Then we went down to the village. That's when the villagers left Kastrí. Most of them for the Security Battalions. That's when Papayiánnis left, that's when all the men left.

—Which Papayiánnis?

—The father of Vanghélis the priest.

—Was he still alive then?

—He was.

—When did
you
leave?

—Before that. As soon as the German blockade was over. They were after me, I couldn't stay put.