Free Orthokostá by Thanassis Valtinos Page A

Kaloútsis’s place he went to. They were using it as a jail. Today it’s a bank. And Eléni and I were sent to the county jail. By the Germans. Untilthe beginning of August. Alexandra Boínis was there, she tells me, Let’s go peel potatoes. Over here, at the barracks. Go do chores. The barracks were just behind there. They’ll give us chocolate, she says. They’ll give us cigarettes. We didn’t smoke. We’ll give them to the men. At least we’ll see a few people. Poor woman. We went. I was thin, they had me setting the tables. There were two German women there, worked like machines. While they were cleaning they had on linen aprons and caps. Then they took those off and wore a solid-color cotton dress, spanking clean. And when they were serving they wore white. Bright white uniforms. And they moved so fast. We went back. I tell Alexandra, I’m not going back there. There was a boy in with us, a prisoner. He took a liking to me. He’d come and sweet-talk me. Come on, now, Bábis, cut it out. His name was Bábis. He was from Trípolis, that Bábis. He’d become friends with the guards, and sometimes they would let him go to his house. They’d take him there. Imagine what he was giving them. He’d call me, Come on let’s go to my mom’s house, so she can see you. I think they executed him later on. I went there once. I went outside and the world looked different. His mother had cooked a meal for me. And what a meal it was. She saw me as a bride, or something, for her son. Then the time came and we were separated. To take us to Germany. About that time they killed ten Germans somewhere in an ambush. They made a list of people to be killed, I was on it. Kóstas Dránias came and erased my name. They took Alexandra. She was also on the list. We were all on the list. And they took the whole bunch of them to Ayios Nikólaos and they executed them. That happened first. Then they put us on the train. I think it was August 2 when they took us. We were wearing these canvas shoes. We’d made them ourselves. We’d made a sole and wound some rags around it and that’s what we were wearing. So they took us away. They put us in boxcars, all of us. And Eléni was swearing at them. And off we went. We arrive at some station, and they let us out. As we start walking the rags come off our shoes. We were left in our bare feet. They took us to Haïdári. With the sun beating down on us, on the day of the Feast of the Virgin. Eléni quickly scribbled a message with the address of our relatives in Kifisiá. Saying where theywere taking us. They took us from the station on foot and some women were following us, they kept telling us, Write a message, throw us a message, a note. So Eléni wrote one and threw it to them. All that about a month after they’d let her out, from Orthokostá. From the detention camp. She was accused of carrying a rifle, of being a rebel in the mountains. That’s what they said. They slandered her falsely. Not all of them. I don’t mean all of them. The Galaxýdis brothers and Iraklís. The others, Dránias and Chrístos Haloúlos, they helped us. Chrístos was in love with Steryianí Papaloukás. He was killed because of her. He went to see her and he was killed. In Athens. During the December Uprising. So they took us to Haïdári. Eléni threw them the note, and word got out we were there. They started preparing to send us to Germany. They started sending us to doctors to be examined. I was haggard looking and very thin. Some woman says to me, It’s a pity for both you girls to go to Germany. You, you look so bad, tell them you’re an epileptic. But I’m not an epileptic. Say you are, because the doctors are allowed to disqualify seventeen patients out of every hundred. And that excuse works, seizures. But another woman from our group had to verify it. Someone did, I