Matoula's Echo

4

4By now it was the end of October and the sky had been clear for several days.

The sun had turned the snow in the village to gray-white slush which would freeze later in the day, making the forty-five degree climb up and down the narrow foot-polished stone streets all the more difficult. The autumn harvest had been stored. Children had already gathered the walnuts, men had sorted white and red grapes for the wine-making before taking their flocks to the warmer valleys below. Gardens were rich with squashes and pomegranates. Women were stringing garlands of dried beans, peppers, onions, and garlic which they would hang from the rafters. Everyone who remained in the village found time to take a long stroll in the sun, among the butter yellow crocuses and the huge golden sycamores.

With each passing day Matoula reported more and more Greek soldiers from as far away as Crete passing through Metsovo on their way to Ioannina or to the mountains in the east. Overlooking the main square, two older carpenters and a woodcutter, men whose work was seasonal, were sitting drinking tsipouro inside Costas Stahoulis’ pantopolio, and listening intently to his wireless radio as the newscaster assessed the state of Greece’s chances in the coming war:

“Poland, Holland and Belgium, all better armed than Greece, were crushed in but a few weeks. France, a nation of forty-five million, collapsed in only seventeen days. The British are suffering great losses.”

In the small Triantafyllou garden the air was crisp and clean and refreshing. Even on a clear day the sun would only shine for about an hour on their tiny plot of rich black earth, creeping over the roof of the house behind theirs and lighting the arched gate, then passing over the old hand-turned food grinder and the outdoor shower made of barrels, then quickly lighting the animals’ entrance, which was then the first to fall back into shadow as the sun retreated until it disappeared behind the roof of Lena’s house below.

Dressed in their black dresses, crocheted wool shawls, and wool aprons, Maria Christina and Matoula were on their knees sweeping slush with their hands, then placing leeks on the earth and covering them with ferns. This would keep them fresh until late spring. Zoitsa was secured inside Matoula’s shawl, peeking out, watching, learning, occasionally shouting something into her mother’s ear and then laughing, and so the hour was spent with a renewed sense of life.

Yiannis had written from Ioannina. He had reunited with some medical school friends who had also been conscripted, and for them it was as if time had stood still. But he longed for his girls and he missed Metsovo and promised to come home in six weeks for a few days. Matoula carried the letter with her and read it over and over, which vexed Maria Christina, for she longed to read his words, know his thoughts. But Matoula didn’t share the contents except that he might be coming home, which so elated Maria Christina that she had to pretend to do some chore so her sister wouldn’t notice.

Zoitsa, who spoke before she could walk, was now beginning to speak in full sentences and had become a little chatterbox.

“Why?” was her favorite word. And if she didn’t like the answer she would try to change your mind. She had discovered that with a small flirtatious glance, a smile and a kiss, she could have her way with everyone but Panorea, who wasn’t so easily cajoled. She missed her Babá and insisted Maria Christina tell the story about the first time he milked Afendoula and squirted himself in the eye, and then she would laugh and hold herself and parrot her mother:

“Stop! I can’t breathe!”

And no matter how many times she told the story, Zoitsa would have the same reaction. Several times since the funeral, with no apparent connection to anything they were doing, Zoitsa would stop and look up:

“Pappou is with God. We are happy.” Then she would smile and continue as if nothing had changed, as if by knowing death at this early age she now considered it simply another interesting part of life.

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Since the road stopped at Metsovo, so did the Greek army vehicles loaded with supplies, which meant that resupplying the equipment centers high in the mountains had to be left to those in the area who were available and who knew the donkey paths which, of course, meant the young village women. Realizing the army would be utterly dependent on these young women for their survival, in early August the Minister of Defence had instructed the mayor of Metsovo to call a meeting of these women in the beech forest above the village. Both Matoula and Maria Christina attended and the speaker gave a rousing speech which invoked the women of Souli, a village three days walk to the south. Now a legend in Greek history, in 1821, twenty-two women, their ammunition exhausted, starving and having gone days without water, realizing they could no longer fight off the Turks, hurled their children over the high cliff at Zalongo and, as the Turks below watched in disbelief, held hands, sang and danced, stepping and bending, until one by one, they stepped off the cliff and fell to the rocks at their enemy’s feet, choosing death over slavery.

So it was in early October under the leaves of the beech trees now turned yellow that the women once again met and schedules were given out to everyone except Maria Christina and one other girl, an asthmatic. They would remain “on call”. Maria Christina was so deeply humiliated she avoided looking at anyone for the next week, even Matoula. More than ever she was feeling bitter and angry and helpless and hopeless. She bore it silently, of course, and no one but Matoula seemed to notice what had become a permanent frown.

Matoula understood her humiliation, but the resupply was certain to be difficult and extremely dangerous. The women would have to travel on foot high into the mountains in the deep snow by night, packed like human mules with food, woollens, arms and ammunition. The resupply route would be under constant surveillance during the day by the Italian Air Force, so the women would have to go to the depot and return home in the same night. Matoula was part of the first group to make the trek. Throughout that night, although they all pretended, no one in the house but Zoitsa slept. Just before dawn, the door opened and Matoula slipped into bed just when it was time for everyone to rise.

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Agios Demetrius’ name day came and went. In preparation for the celebration, Papa Yiorgos went about his duties without showing much enthusiasm. It was his job. He knew what was required. During the long winters less was needed since so many of his parishioners were away. In the last few years, his church’s name day had become less a celebration for him than a marking of time.

At night, with both Pappou and Yiannis gone, Papa Yiorgos sat up alone in the winter room, slowly sipping tsipouro by the fire. He missed having men in the house, the two different generations, older and younger, each with different views of the world. Politics was not a subject for women. He especially missed his father-in-law. The old man’s passing was a great loss to him. Over the years he had grown to love the old wood carver. He had come to consider him a model for all men. He admired his courage in the face of his every misfortune, and again as he quietly suffered his long agonizing stomach cancer. More and more he had sought his advice, leaning on it more than on scripture. The priest was supposed to be the wise one in his parish, the one with the direct line to the Almighty. And yet he felt weak and deserted by his God. And knowing the calamity that was approaching, he was beginning to question the very existence of a God.

His mind would also wander to different loved ones spanning four generations with whom he had lived in this room. He would have imaginary conversations with them about how much the world had changed. How so many had passed on and so few brought into the family. Thinking of his father, he decided that it must have been the same for him and his mother and everyone through the ages. You started as the youngest, then watched yourself become the next generation, until finally you were the old man sitting in the chair your grandfather sat in all day or where your dear mother lay in her sick bed, her essentials within her grasp. And everyone knew what was coming and it was all right because they had tried to live according to the laws of God and Christ and the Virgin, and soon they would cross over to their promised reward, thoughts which always seemed to comfort the priest.

Two days after Agios Demetrius’ name day, while returning from a visit to a sick cousin, Papa Yiorgos passed a large company of soldiers and army trucks amassing at the main square, usually a sleepy place. At the pantopolio, the crowd was much larger than when he had passed it earlier. Everyone was huddled around the wireless listening to the news, so Papa Yiorgos stopped in for a tsipouro. According to reports, Greece was being unjustly accused of allowing British warships to enter its territorial waters and of instigating attacks against Albania. For those reasons Mussolini had given the Greek prime minister, Yiannis Metaxas, an ultimatum in the middle of the night, demanding that the Italian troops be allowed to occupy the islands of Crete and Corfu, the country’s largest port, Piraeus, and the part of Epirus that bordered the Albanian frontier which, of course, included Metsovo.

The men listening spat on the floor and cursed the Italians. The prime minister had rejected Mussolini’s demand and rudely dismissed his ambassador. Even before the three-hour ultimatum had expired, heavily armed divisions of Italian troops, one with tanks, were crossing from Albania into Greece.

Papa Yiorgos never finished his tsipouro. Instead he hurried directly to his church to try and calm himself, but he found the door ajar and Aristotle Tritos sweeping the floor. The small square widower, known affectionately by everyone in the village as Tatamare, had also heard the news and had retreated to the one place and activity that quieted him when he was upset. A retired shepherd in his sixties, Tatamare had three married daughters who, having seen so little of him for so many years, waited on him hand and foot. He had become the Candle Lighter, or caretaker, of Agios Demetrius Church as an offering of gratitude for all his good fortune. It was Tatamare who, twenty years ago, first pointed out Pappou’s excellent qualities to Papa Yiorgos when the priest had been resentful that he had inherited another dependent.

Papa Yiorgos watched the small, square Candle Lighter disappear behind the altar and listened to the sounds of his sweeping a moment longer, then quietly closed the door and hurried up the wide stone steps towards his house, reporting the news to everyone he encountered along the way, and encouraging them to have faith in God.