Frank Georgalis – Writer

Tales of the Unexpected: Part V

The Big Event

By

Frank Elias Georgalis

Part V

One summer night in the year of 1943, I heard church-clock striking eleven, which hour was late for the little village of Astakos, my father was walking around in the bedroom.

Out of curiosity, I slid the door open and planted one eye and one ear close to the opening I saw my father half dressed as if he didn’t know whether he was going or staying, taking a few turns from the door to the window and from the window to the door.

He then set on the bed, where my mother was laying awake, pulled a small table closer to the bed, increased the lamp light, took a small piece of paper from his shirt pocket and composed to read it. From where I was spying I saw the paper was handwritten and looked as if it were folded and unfolded several times before.

“They demand that I join them to fight along side with them in the mountains. If I stay here the Germans will pick me up and execute me. If I will go with the Zervas party the communists will get to you and the kids, if I join the Rallis party I will be fighting for the Germans. This note came from the communist guerillas, Aris’ fighters. I am not a communist. So here you are,” said my father, looking at my mother and then at the note.

“Elias,” cried my mother, striving to lay her head upon the pillow with a stream of tears coming down her face.

“Shh!” said my father, “Don’t alarm the children. I don’t want them to be upset,” said my father, getting up and coming to the door and I sped back to my room where I lay there for a long time before I fell asleep.

The following morning as the darkness sneaked away slowly, as if not wishing to see the sun rising from behind the mountain. I woke up at that precise hour of change.

I heard voices in soft conversation and sounds of slow footsteps, endless they seemed in numbers. Gradually another series of footsteps came on more thickly and noisily. Then came a loud knocking at the door and then a rough blare of an angry voice.

Strokes thick and heavy rattled upon the door as the voice ceased to speak, and a loud grumbling burst, giving me for the first time some adequate idea of its immense extent. I ran out of my room and saw my father and my mother standing by the bolted door quite helpless and bewildered. While I was standing there watching my father and mother I heard my sister and brother wakening from their sleep and my sister came near me and she drowsily growled forth an inquiry what time of night it was. Having my eyes nailed on the door I made no response to my sister who gradually recovered her senses and staggering to a chair by the bedside hid her face upon the pillow and she too listened to the pounding of the door. After a great deal of haggling and squabbling with himself, my father, unbolted and opened the door and I saw three armed German soldiers hurriedly emerged into the house. My mother screamed and my father told her to stop and the Germans gestured for all of us to go with them. After putting something on more presentable we all traversed slowly on the street, while the Germans walked along with us holding their rifles at our direction with a remarkable care, looking nervously about them.

We walked on in the middle of the street, meeting many of the townspeople who were too accompanied by German soldiers heavily armed, holding their rifles pointing at the people they were escorting. Finally our escorted journey was terminated in the large open space, the town square twice as big as a foot ball field, which was nearly filled with people standing and facing the big white church on the west side of the square. Between the church and the crowd was a single line of more than two dozen, machine guns aiming at the people with two men behind every machine gun on a prone position who looked ready to fire at a moment’s order from the commander who was standing in the balcony of the German headquarters which was a big and wide building. I remember seeing three other German officers standing by the commander’s side, and they all were monitoring the activities below and in front of them.

I remember I was holding my father’s hand and we reached the square we were separated from my mother sister and brother and we were guided to the north side of the square away from the women and children and I was still holding my father’s hand which felt wet and warm and as I understood later, I was the youngest person in that crowed.

The crowed was hushed, watching the German’s motions and having no idea of their purpose the people looked on struggling with their thoughts and containing their fears within themselves standing near each other, as if they were looking for a crutch to lean on.

I looked to my right as I stood in the front of those ranks, saw more people being escorted in, pressing upon each other in one unbroken stream. Some panic-stricken women began to scream seeing the people gathered, but other women who had more courage and strength immediately hushed them.

There were talks in low voices circulating around me and one of the talks I heard while I was in the middle of the crowed, some one of the civilians telling the rest that we all were going to be killed, as it had happened in other towns. I was hearing, they were executed by machine guns. I heard that in one town out almost two thousand inhabitants, only eleven men survived the execution and most of them were wounded. That information didn’t affect me very much because I was holding my father’s hand and I knew he wasn’t about to allow something like that to happen to us.

We stayed in that stance in the hot sun for many hours and no one was allowed to sit down.

I remember some politically connected women and a few men were taken in the church. The rest waited. I remember how I tried to read my father’s thoughts, but I couldn’t because I couldn’t see his face although he never let my hand go.

Another part of talk I heard which made me feel scared was a suggestion in whispering tone and directed at my father saying that the best thing to do at that time was to charge against the Germans. Doing that, he concluded, some would be saved the other way no one will.  My father said nothing he only bent his head down towards me and looked at me for a little time.

“Can you see where your mother is?” asked my father bending down a few more inches.

“No,” I said with a trembling voice, “Why?” I asked.

My father never gave me an answer but he turned to the man who had made the suggestion and nodded negatively to him.

Suddenly I saw three German soldiers coming to the end of the front line and from there one began to motion our way to start moving his way. As one by one approached the soldier would glance at a truck with a covered up windshield and then he would turn and point to which way the man should go. I suddenly realized that some men were set free and some were escorted rudely by more soldiers and taken in the broken down building across the way and when they reached there were ordered to stand still and face the wall.

My father’s and my turn came. My father moved forward, still holding onto my hand, stood and looked at the German soldier. The soldier looked at us with the kind of glance, as if every evil thought and blackest purpose shot through his brain and laid working at his heart. He then looked at the truck and immediately jerked my hand away from my father and pushed my father towards the broken building and pushed me away in the opposite direction. I charged at him screaming and cursing him but another soldier came and pushed me away while I was still screaming. Pouring out those screams and accompanying them with a violent motion I threw myself single-handed upon the man who pushed me. The intensity of my energy and the suddenness my attack caught him by a surprise and brought him down heavily on the ground. Three other soldiers who stood near our little and private battlefield, seemed quite transfixed and stupefied and offered no interference and I and the soldier rolled upon the ground together I showered him with blows and he only hit me gently on the face and body.

The contest was too unequal to last long, I slid away from his grasp and got to my feet and when they thought that they had gotten rid of me, I grabbed some rocks and began to throw at all of them. all. They ducked to miss and when the rest of the crowd saw my struggle began to scream insults at the soldiers. The nearest voices took up the cry and hundreds echoed it.

Of all the terrific yells that ever fell upon mortal ears none could exceed the cry of that infuriated throng. Some spent their breath in impotent curses; some cried shaking their clenched fists, becoming more and more excited as they yelled. I was picked up by two soldiers, thrown in the back of army like-jeep and taken away from there and turned loose down by the harbor. There I roamed with a wilted heart. While I was pacing around the harbor meditating and casting dark evil looks towards the square and figuring my possibilities and methods of invading them, I felt torn by my fears on one hand and my hatred on the other. I saw a number of men, familiar fishermen, coming down from the square and heading for their boats in the harbor.  I then realized that the Germans had let everybody go.  I darted and headed straight for the square hoping to catch up with my father before he went home with the rest of the family thinking how wonderful it would be for all of us to gather around the fireplace and listened to my father telling stories of the bygone days while my mother would be making delights for all of us. I reached the square with throbbing bosoms, but much to my disappointment I found the square almost empty.

Without any further thought or pause or moment’s consideration, without once turning my head to the right or left, raising my eyes to the sky or lowering them to the ground, but straight ahead of me with a strange desire I rushed towards my house as fast as if a dozen demons were at my heels. I held on my headlong course, not slowing down nor relaxing a muscle until I reached the front door. I opened it softly and entering it I found my mother sitting by the dining room table with her head buried in her hands crying and my sister and brother standing next to her looking helpless and sad.

“Where is father?” I asked.

The soldiers took him to jail and they are going to kill him,’ cried my little sister, Poppy, with tears coming down from one only one eye because the other was dark an swollen.

“What happened to your eye?”

“One German soldier hit me when I went to see my Papa,” cried Poppy, rushing to me.

Even though, I was sometimes unkind to my sister and brother, she always found comfort in standing next to me in her moments of distress; my little brother on the other hand would keep away from me for days.

“Shh! They are not going to kill him. Don’t cry!” I said, caressing her hair, looking at my little brother Nassos who was standing by the table close to my mother gazing at me with quivering lower lip.

“Taki,” said my mother raising her head looking at me with a stream of tears coming down her face.  “Your father is gone. You must now be the man of the house.”

That and many nights after, I found it very difficult to sleep.  I used to toss first on one side and then on the other; and then I perseveringly used to close my eyes as if to coax myself to sleep. It was no use.  My thoughts kept on reverting very painfully to grim pictures where my father was jerked out my hand and pushed away, where my mother ‘s eyes were never dry, where the scar faced bully went up against an unarmed, weak and hungry weather beaten fisherman and father of six. I could see the wriggling of his body with convolutions then shaking to its core as if his soul was caught and trapped by some super and invisible bad spirit, all those events and visions made my nights long. None knew my suffering. I was the oldest of the three, urged by my mother to be the man of the house and remembering the punishment I had received  by my father to be the good example to my sister and brother, I couldn’t show them that I was afraid; so on the nights that I could not sleep I went to hide in some lonely corner and spent the weary hours feeling the progress of the fever that was consuming my brain.

Eventually my father and seventy-seven other men, including my mother’s brother Mitso, were shipped to Germany and I inherited the caring of Tsika the goat.

One of the most important chores was to find a good ground for the goat to graze, but the Germans shortly after my taking over the duties of caring for the goat, planted mines all over the land in unmarked cavities, taking up a lot of grazing ground. The rest of the land was privately owned and planted with oats, wheat and tobacco.

Unfortunately, the owners of that land would become furious and violent at the sight of any goat. Therefore, alternative grazing grounds existed one hour from home but because of the poor production of grass even there I found it necessary, and later on, it was developed into an art similar to that of fisherman and hunter, to walk Tsika through the privately owned fields along the edge and allow her to steal a bite or two from the oats and wheat when the fields were unattended, or to find a place where the green grass grew untouched, at least for a while, including along the river bank near the meandering water where less courageous animals found it too risky to graze. I took advantage of bombings, alerts and any other war happenings that the Germans caused which sent people to a hiding place or a prone position, by setting Tsika free and unguarded through the fields of pleasant feeding including and not depriving her of Mr. Kanaris’ tomato fields where the tomatoes were big and glossy and red and what he could not eat or sell, he left to rot on the vine.

Mr. Kanaries never liked me and he told me one day, “Generally speaking I don’t like smart boys, but how are you anyway?”

Under those encouraging remarks, I replied that I was very well and I hoped that he was the same.