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The Great Lie – Chapter 7 - Part 1
By Petre Nakovski
Translated and edited by Risto Stefov
[email protected]
December 4, 2011
In a semi-dark, cold, damp underground hangar, covered with three rows of oak logs and stones, resting on a moldy bed of dried ferns were two units of the 103 brigade. The units were formed the day before, immediately after the fighters returned from a battle they had lost.
“If the fog had not lifted Yana, Socrates and Panaiotis would not have been left hanging on the barbed wire,” sobbed Tsilka to Mita in a whisper. “I saw how they threw the crosses with dynamite. But a machine gun burst tied them to the wire and nailed us to the ground. Yana was yelling, begging for help - but who was going to raise their head? It was raining bullets…”
“And Kire smashed as he was, we carried him in his overcoat, still alive… I feel so sorry for him…” cried Mita in a choked voice and then tapping on her chest said, “I feel a lump of pain…right here.”
“Yesterday he sat there, where you are sitting now. Quiet, almost invisible, his shadow on the wall was more visible than he was. He was curled up with his chin resting on his knees, staring into the fire and warming his stiff fingers. Nobody noticed him. When his number was called during roll call he responded in a quiet voice. I think it was tuberculosis or some other ailment that exhausted his voice. He wasted away like the dwindling flame in the fire… The man sat opposite to me and all I could see was his shadow. The flame went out, the place became dark and all I could see was the glow of the coals on his face. Then he completely disappeared, like he went underground and vanished deep into the earth. I felt a cold chill all through my body when I heard someone yell out during the next roll call that he was ‘dead’ … His body was lying over there…
The Commander unbuttoned his handbag, pulled out a notepad, spit on the tip of his dry ink pencil and wrote something. Then he drew a line from one side of the page to the other. The man who was now absent from roll call was also absent from the Commander’s note book, which he put back into his handbag, as if it was nothing, and in a cold tone of voice said: ‘Bury him.’
We did not dig a grave by measured depth. We dug to bury him as soon as possible. Two of us grabbed his legs and one grabbed his underarms and we dropped him in the hole. We only covered his face with a half-burned overcoat which we found thrown in the thorn bushes before we covered him with soil. We did not put a marker on his grave. He, like many others, will now remain unknown… If we are still alive, sometime in the future we will ask to return here, back to this cemetery, to visit our friends, friends we made in the battlefields, trenches and in hospital beds, so that we can have our proper goodbyes…” concluded Mita.
Tsilka then quietly said: “Talk… talk, say something… Talk… there will be less darkness in our souls and thoughts if you talk. Continue talking.”
“The Commissar,” continued Mita “gave a good speech. He spoke well and while I listened I asked myself why not tell the person what they are like and how important they are while they are alive? Does one need to die to be acknowledged by friends and elders to have their good attributes uncovered? Nobody talks about their sins and weaknesses when someone dies... just toss on them two or three handfuls of soil and let the earth cover up their sins. I guess a person needs to be gone in order to be cleansed from all their evils and vices. Only then can they be clean. So I thought to myself - one needs to stay around the grave, it is necessary for them, while a person is being buried, to find out who they were and what they were like. Would it be that difficult, while the person was still alive, to say to them – you are so and so and you are like this and like that…? Not doing this shows us that, while we are still alive, we do not respect one another and we avoid showing compassion. And now, here, sitting beside the fire in this damp underground hangar, it seems to me like he is sitting over there in the corner and, even though he was always cold and the first to sit down and warm up, warmth radiated from him. One time when I told him his hands were the warmest, he smiled with a sad smile, feeling a bit shy and said to me, ‘I am always, I am always cold…’ I took his hands into mine and as much as I could, I warmed them for a long time. For a moment there I thought he was asleep… I placed my lips to his ear and quietly asked, ‘Are you asleep?’ ‘No,’ he said ‘I am looking at the fire…’ ‘And what do you see?’ I asked. ‘I see bread, I see a lot of bread…’ he replied” moaned Mita in a sad, crying voice.
“Calm down, calm down,” begged Tsilka, while covering Mita’s bare shoulder with half of her overcoat. Then while offering to hold Mita’s cold hands Tsilka said, “Only seven remain alive from my platoon… two were wounded, the rest I am sure are stone cold…”
Mita and Tsilka would be together for ten days. Tsilka returned to her platoon from the hospital in Elbasan two weeks ago and Mita returned from the hospital in Korcha eight days ago and was immediately sent to fight a battle. Tsilka has severe pain in her back and right hip. She also has pain from her severed fingers. They told her in the hospital that she would experience pain when the weather was bad. Now she tolerates both the pain and the bad weather.
Mita has a hollowed out cut on her face, covered by a brown scab extending from her left eyebrow to the bottom of her chin. She has reddish spots on both sides of her cut. They are marks from the stitches.
The two women and all the others in the hanger are lying crammed together side by side. Next to Mita is Mare. Mare is shaking and her teeth are chattering. She has been in her unit for only two months now. For a year from last autumn she, with hundreds of older men and women and teenaged girls and boys (those twenty years or over were fighting in the front lines), worked transporting ammunition and food. Every morning they loaded horses and mules in Prespa and then traveled all day and night in a long column to take the cargo to Aliabitsa. Give or take a month or two, Mare was only sixteen years old when the fighting ended in Aliabitsa. She was tall and physically developed, mature for her age, so those in NOF (Peoples’ Liberation Front) and AFZH (Women’s Anti-Fascist Front) decided it was time for her to do something more. They sent her to the Partisan hospital in Grazhdeno where, for three months, she patched up wounds, transported the wounded and learned how to stop the bleeding and change dressings.
With her purse over her shoulder, marked with a red cross, they deployed her in a combat unit. Now Mare, with her teeth chattering, is lying in the hanger leaning on Mita’s shoulder and rubbing her swollen legs and bleeding heels from the chafing of her heavy military boots. Beside Mare is Traianka and beside her are Ilia, Mite, Krste, Kolio, seven young men and three young women from Kostur, Lerin, Epirus and Thessaly Region villages. Among them is Yannakis, a talkative, cheerful thirty year old man, who talks about himself non-stop, repeatedly saying that he is a confident civilian sailor working on a ship in the harbour; a proletariat and a good communist. He wants to talk all the time but he is frequently interrupted by a long, wild, dry and suffocating cough. Accompanying Yannakis’s conversation are incessant drops of muddy water, dripping from the oak logs above and forming little puddles of water on the ground.
Yannakis was the last of the thirty or so dock workers and sailors who were brought into the brigade after the end of the great battles for Gramos. They were specially trained emissaries, hunted down to work in the cheap French and Italian restaurants and hotels in the ports in Odessa, Gdansk, Constanta, Varna, Rieka and Split, promised that they would be sent to the Soviet Union and to the People’s democratic countries for military and naval training in various academies. They were promised that in the new democratic and socialist Greece there would be no place for capitalist captains and admirals and for the children of the rich. Those positions would be given to them, the children of the docks and the poor from the dirty suburbs.
The dock workers and sailors were brought to Prespa through channels unknown to them and after two weeks of military training they were allocated to units in the Macedonian mountains. They brought them to Macedonia and told them that they would be fighting against imperialism and domestic service exploitation. They were also told that they were much too valuable to be fighting in Rumely, the Peloponnesus, Crete and other parts of Greece where the opponent was much too weak and it would be a shame for such capable men to fight a weak opponent. They brought the dock workers and sailors to Macedonia to show the unworthy, local village boys and crybaby “chupres” how to fight. They called the armed Macedonian young women “chupres”. But these young women who were in the first line, especially those brought from Bulkesh, were former sergeants, second lieutenants and first lieutenants of the Royal Army and later they were the so-called “kapetanios” of ELAS (National Liberation Army of Greece). Now the same women, with minor exceptions, are the commanders and commissars of DAG (Democratic Army of Greece) and there is nothing that they don’t know.
So they dragged the sailors and dock workers from unit to unit telling the units “Avrio sto tmima sas tha erthun i naftergates” (Sailors and dock workers will be coming to your units tomorrow).
They made the sailors and dock workers famous before they even entered the war. They turned them into heroes just by going from unit to unit and from command to command. They made a great name for them so that every unit wanted to have them and was waiting for their arrival with great anticipation. They were all waiting to see, meet and admire the seasoned fighters, the brave men and heroes of the working class who had spent such an exhausting time to reach the mountains of Macedonia.
The thirty or so men, who were deployed in Brigade 103, were expected to smell like sea salt and have the aroma of distant lands; but they smelled more like the sea, like salted cod, soap and cheap perfume; the kind found in brothels. They were everything, except fighters. They were out of breath even on the gentlest of marches and would quit half way through a march. They were afraid of the dark and of dark forests. During the short rest periods they rubbed their swollen feet and blew air on their chafed to the bone heels. They also swore profusely and cursed in many languages. They were number one in story telling and boasting. The seas, bars, taverns and brothels were all theirs. The trenches, bunkers and minefields, on the other hand, belonged to the “village children” from Kostur, Lerin, Voden, Kozhani, Grevena, Thessaly, Epirus and other regions... Their mouths were full of flattering words, always trying to get a look and a smile from the ladies, not like the rude, unworthy young villagers whose character was their strength and courage in battle, endurance on marches, the cold, rain and hunger.
The ones who boasted the most about the dock workers and sailors being good fighters were the people in high command, the high commissars. Here is an example of what one of their leaders said about them: “…protopori ston agona, protopori tis ergatikis ke tis proleteriakis epenastasis” (… champions in battle, champions of the working class and of the proletarian revolution), which they have yet to initiate after these “village children” [Macedonians] conquer Anglo-American imperialism and Monarcho-fascism.
That is what the commissars preached because that is what their leader commanded. The dock workers and sailors brought mandolins, guitars and bouzoukis and during short rest periods they played their instruments in the name of the leader. They had orders to play, sing and dance until exhaustion. Everyone was joyfully distracted by the song and dance, leaving no time to think. While attached to the units, these working class champions played their instruments well; it was their duty as fighters.
With the greatest of pleasure they played the rebetiko and sirtaki but most of all they played sad songs about the painful fate of sailors stranded at sea. They played their instruments well and sometimes quietly sang sad songs and cried about their troubles. However this type of behaviour tended to affect the morale of the fighters, so someone from the top ordered the commissars to ban these types of songs and only allowed them to play revolutionary songs about the struggle.
“Ma then ta xerume!” (We don’t know them!) They complained.
A local commissar, a twenty year old man from Prespa who barely knew how to speak Greek, with his bad pronunciation and Prespa accent yelled at them with a threatening tone of voice “keratades ta ta matete” (scoundrels you will learn them). It did not matter to the young commissar where the emphasis fell on the Greek words; he did things his way, the way things were done in Prespa.
They felt insulted. When they heard conversation spoken in the Macedonian language they made remarks to one another: “ma edo then ine Eladha” (this is not Greece). When they listened to Macedonian songs they lightly hit the strings and said: “Omorfa, poli omorpha tragudia” (Beautiful, very beautiful songs).
The unit commissar, trained in Bulkesh and before that a horse groom of some Capetanios, staring at the Prespan sarcastically asked: “Where did those strings come from? Bitola or Skopje?”
The Prespan commissar, looking serious, replied: “From your mother’s fleece…” and after a short pause he added: “understandably, comrade, unit commissar, they came from Russia…”
They played “Eleno mome” (Eleno girl), “Mlada Partizanka” (Young Partisan girl), “Na Vicho planina” (on Vicho mountain), “Vo borba, vo borba” (In battle, in battle) and again began playing those sad sailor songs. They sailed the high seas and met thousands of individuals, learning to make no distinction between people. So they had no problem befriending the young Macedonian men and women and they found it easy to learn a few Macedonian words from them.
They were indifferent until the commissars started pushing them to join the Party. The commissars worked on them day after day and it seemed to the sailors and dock workers that someone was out to darken their serenity, which they had brought with them from the seas and from foreign environments. It seemed to them that someone wanted to stifle their laughter and remove the old smell of the sea and the warmth of the women they knew everywhere. They felt like eagles in a cage.
The barracks where they were kept, to which they were not accustomed, seemed like the cages they had in the ships. They knew how to cook, wash cauldrons, wash and mend clothing, repair clocks, tell all kinds of jokes, sing and swear in many languages but when it came to fighting battles, they lost their perkiness, became sad and their smiles wilted. They looked like abandoned wet cats without their sailor courage. They completely lost themselves. They hated the war.
They appreciated hard work, honesty, laughter, singing and sincerity. They did everything and worked on everything that they had learned on the ships, at the docks and around the world. They came to love the mountain air, the dew on the grass, the mountain flowers, the mountain sunrise and sunset, but still they felt like they were caged; the mountains had shrunk their world. Here they were afraid of the dark forests and craved the wideness of the sea, the city hustle and bustle, the cafés and taverns and the women who would be waiting for them in the various seaports that they visited around the world.
During the cold nights and mornings they missed their rum and whiskey and the salty sea breeze. They spoke of bananas, pineapples, dates, oranges, avocados and about life on boats and at sea; a bitter life full of torture, sorrow and loneliness. Yet they wanted everything from life, a sailor’s kind of life, the kind of life they were used to living in the ports, a life that had nothing to do with war. They did not want to go to battle. They were accustomed to duty, responsibility, diligence and freedom but were not ready to die on the mountains. They knew how much to work and for how much and wanted to have some free time for themselves to visit the big wide world, but without orders and away from the barracks.
Here everything was different. Get up, line up, lie down, forward, march, clean, sing, dance, finish, listen and don’t think. And as the others dreamed of bread, warm clothes and a sound sleep, they dreamed of the sea, ports, docks, boats, bars and brothels. From the great sadness, which for them was life, now only a daydream remained and a sickness for home. They now said, “On the ship there was much to mourn, but here in the mountains there is even more, and that’s what hurts the most, especially during the nights...”
They complained it was cold and uncomfortable during the night and one by one they would abandon their posts. They acted like civilians, the way the sea had taught them, the way they acted in city ports, coffee shops, taverns and in life ashore with all its vices.
In the beginning they went after the young ladies and forced themselves upon them. But when the law caught up with them some were sent before a military court and were executed. Then even the higher ups in the leadership discovered what kind of people these highly praised sailors and dock workers were. To quickly cover up the shame and put it in the background, they pretended that it was necessary for these people to be there because they were educated and experienced cadres.
Finally when they removed them, the talkative non-stop chatterers and flatterers quickly succeeded in pushing their way into the supply corps, kitchens and storerooms. And there, clean and well fed, they stayed in warm rooms with different commissars who smelled more of cologne and less of gunpowder. They trained these highly praised dock workers and sailors in the arts of leading a proletarian dictatorship.
Away from the damp bunkers and underground hangars these people were happy chatting the nights away. They slept like the crickets in the dry grass and woke at daybreak to the song of the nightingales. They forgot their own pains when they saw stretchers with wounded young men passing by but were most hurt when they saw wounded young ladies. They sobbed in secret and cursed loudly. There was no comparison to equal their swearing and cursing in the groups with whom they congregated.
Only Yannakis now remains in the Cheta (Unit). He is quiet, collected, distracted and often withdrawn. There is always a playful, cheerful, gentle, timid and good hearted smile on his face, which is barely visible and fully blooms and warmly spreads along his cheeks at the ends of his mouth, and with his trembling lips hanging down he provokes trust in everyone. But in his eyes there is a sinking and disturbing sadness hinting of pain and sorrow which grows more intense when it is quiet, not so much for himself but he hums for his mother and for the woman he loves. In this ugly and dirty world he has only his mother and it seems to him that he can stop his pain and unrelenting grief with a song. He believes that those now lying beside him in the underground hanger and in other hangers like it love him. But not once have they given him a piece of their bread or allowed him to get closer to the fire, or have substituted for him on guard duty or even carried his backpack full of ammunition. His stories about distant lands and people are filled with gaps and his knowledge of the world is scanty at best.
“Has any one of you seen the sea?” Yannakis went on to say “Ah, the sea, the sea… It is endless and all encompassing and it seems like a person is nothing next to it but it needs people to rule over it. When the sky is covered by clouds it is black, when the sky is clear, it is azure blue, it has the colour of steel, of sapphire. When a cloud appears, it is reflected in the water and its reflection travels in the water. But when winds blow the water gets angry, nasty, unrestrained, enraged, infuriated… Just then you know you are at sea. Exactly then you prove to yourself that you are in a fight with it, that you defy it, you laugh in its face and you hold it in the grip of its own will. Oh, the sea, the sea, it knows how to be wild, how to roar like a wounded beast and how to rumble, and when it slowly subsides, it becomes tame and you think it is whispering to you. But then when the wind starts to blow again, it knows how to whip a wave clear and blue, silver, white like wool, roaring and thundering, long and tall… Ah, the sea, the sea… When the wind subsides the waves calm down, they pile up, roll out and burn one another out, calmly unwinding on the shore. The froth returns to the bosom of the wave and calmly rolls to shore, telling something untold, whispering and rustling softly…”
Yannakis paused for a moment and while holding his chest with his hands, coughed for a long time. He wiped the sweat from his temple. Someone came out from the hanger and did not lower the blanket acting as a door. Through the narrow opening a foggy arch of the moon could be seen in the distance. Far away, a red rocket flared up in the sky and as its brightness slowly diminished, the darkness returned. But those inside could only see the flame from the fireplace flare up and diminish again, creating shadows on the wall. Yannakis leaned on the damp wall, took a deep breath and continued:
“At night when the sky is clear, the sea is embroidered with pearls created by the reflection of the stars. They move around, pile up, flash and disappear but only for a moment before they return in the calm and after that they quiver in the gentle sea waves… If you look up you will see the stars in the sky, if you look down you will see the stars so close you can catch them with your hand… Above there are stars, below there are stars and you stand between them… They twinkle and quiver. Sometimes one comes loose and as you look at it in the water it seems to be coming out of the sea and flying towards the sky… The fishing boat, floating, cuts the sky, cuts the stars, and cuts the full moon in half. When gilded by the moon if you touch the water it will look like it is kissing your hand. Listen… someone is playing the mandolin on the shore…”
Yannakis paused again for a long and enduring cough. This time he lost his voice. In the dark he could not see the staring eyes of his comrades gazing at him. He spit out what he had coughed up and reached for his mandolin, leaning on the wall beside his automatic machine gun. He lightly and gently placed it in his arms and braced it on his left knee. His trembling fingers caressingly stroked the strings, gently pushing on them. Silence filled the hanger as Yannakis played a sad song without words, touching even the strongest of hearts, in some softly and deeply squeezing out a sigh and in others squeezing tears of pain down their cheeks and bitterness, sadness and grief…
Yannakis again gently squeezed the strings and paused. The sound of the mandolin lingered on in the hanger. Someone sighed aloud, and leaned their head on his shoulder. It was a woman’s touch. He felt something warm drip on his hand and slowly cool down. He raised his right hand and ran his fingers through the mandolin strings. Stretching and with a torn up long vocal tremble, which for a moment broke up and died out, he shook and roared; his roar slowly diminishing out there somewhere. It seemed to him that everyone had felt the storm in the sea, which they had never seen, and the storm in their own souls… He paused for a moment and when he began to play again his voice choked. His mandolin suddenly went quiet, as if the strings were cut with a sharp knife and in place of melody Yannakis’s voice came back on:
“When you stroll along the shore, the sand rustles under your feet, little well-washed white stones crackle and the water is peaceful; so peaceful and tame that it makes you want to caress it… And when you do touch it, it feels like a hand gently caresses you back… Yes…” said Yannakis quietly.
His voice was now completely gone, there was only silence…
By Petre Nakovski
Translated and edited by Risto Stefov
[email protected]
December 4, 2011
In a semi-dark, cold, damp underground hangar, covered with three rows of oak logs and stones, resting on a moldy bed of dried ferns were two units of the 103 brigade. The units were formed the day before, immediately after the fighters returned from a battle they had lost.
“If the fog had not lifted Yana, Socrates and Panaiotis would not have been left hanging on the barbed wire,” sobbed Tsilka to Mita in a whisper. “I saw how they threw the crosses with dynamite. But a machine gun burst tied them to the wire and nailed us to the ground. Yana was yelling, begging for help - but who was going to raise their head? It was raining bullets…”
“And Kire smashed as he was, we carried him in his overcoat, still alive… I feel so sorry for him…” cried Mita in a choked voice and then tapping on her chest said, “I feel a lump of pain…right here.”
“Yesterday he sat there, where you are sitting now. Quiet, almost invisible, his shadow on the wall was more visible than he was. He was curled up with his chin resting on his knees, staring into the fire and warming his stiff fingers. Nobody noticed him. When his number was called during roll call he responded in a quiet voice. I think it was tuberculosis or some other ailment that exhausted his voice. He wasted away like the dwindling flame in the fire… The man sat opposite to me and all I could see was his shadow. The flame went out, the place became dark and all I could see was the glow of the coals on his face. Then he completely disappeared, like he went underground and vanished deep into the earth. I felt a cold chill all through my body when I heard someone yell out during the next roll call that he was ‘dead’ … His body was lying over there…
The Commander unbuttoned his handbag, pulled out a notepad, spit on the tip of his dry ink pencil and wrote something. Then he drew a line from one side of the page to the other. The man who was now absent from roll call was also absent from the Commander’s note book, which he put back into his handbag, as if it was nothing, and in a cold tone of voice said: ‘Bury him.’
We did not dig a grave by measured depth. We dug to bury him as soon as possible. Two of us grabbed his legs and one grabbed his underarms and we dropped him in the hole. We only covered his face with a half-burned overcoat which we found thrown in the thorn bushes before we covered him with soil. We did not put a marker on his grave. He, like many others, will now remain unknown… If we are still alive, sometime in the future we will ask to return here, back to this cemetery, to visit our friends, friends we made in the battlefields, trenches and in hospital beds, so that we can have our proper goodbyes…” concluded Mita.
Tsilka then quietly said: “Talk… talk, say something… Talk… there will be less darkness in our souls and thoughts if you talk. Continue talking.”
“The Commissar,” continued Mita “gave a good speech. He spoke well and while I listened I asked myself why not tell the person what they are like and how important they are while they are alive? Does one need to die to be acknowledged by friends and elders to have their good attributes uncovered? Nobody talks about their sins and weaknesses when someone dies... just toss on them two or three handfuls of soil and let the earth cover up their sins. I guess a person needs to be gone in order to be cleansed from all their evils and vices. Only then can they be clean. So I thought to myself - one needs to stay around the grave, it is necessary for them, while a person is being buried, to find out who they were and what they were like. Would it be that difficult, while the person was still alive, to say to them – you are so and so and you are like this and like that…? Not doing this shows us that, while we are still alive, we do not respect one another and we avoid showing compassion. And now, here, sitting beside the fire in this damp underground hangar, it seems to me like he is sitting over there in the corner and, even though he was always cold and the first to sit down and warm up, warmth radiated from him. One time when I told him his hands were the warmest, he smiled with a sad smile, feeling a bit shy and said to me, ‘I am always, I am always cold…’ I took his hands into mine and as much as I could, I warmed them for a long time. For a moment there I thought he was asleep… I placed my lips to his ear and quietly asked, ‘Are you asleep?’ ‘No,’ he said ‘I am looking at the fire…’ ‘And what do you see?’ I asked. ‘I see bread, I see a lot of bread…’ he replied” moaned Mita in a sad, crying voice.
“Calm down, calm down,” begged Tsilka, while covering Mita’s bare shoulder with half of her overcoat. Then while offering to hold Mita’s cold hands Tsilka said, “Only seven remain alive from my platoon… two were wounded, the rest I am sure are stone cold…”
Mita and Tsilka would be together for ten days. Tsilka returned to her platoon from the hospital in Elbasan two weeks ago and Mita returned from the hospital in Korcha eight days ago and was immediately sent to fight a battle. Tsilka has severe pain in her back and right hip. She also has pain from her severed fingers. They told her in the hospital that she would experience pain when the weather was bad. Now she tolerates both the pain and the bad weather.
Mita has a hollowed out cut on her face, covered by a brown scab extending from her left eyebrow to the bottom of her chin. She has reddish spots on both sides of her cut. They are marks from the stitches.
The two women and all the others in the hanger are lying crammed together side by side. Next to Mita is Mare. Mare is shaking and her teeth are chattering. She has been in her unit for only two months now. For a year from last autumn she, with hundreds of older men and women and teenaged girls and boys (those twenty years or over were fighting in the front lines), worked transporting ammunition and food. Every morning they loaded horses and mules in Prespa and then traveled all day and night in a long column to take the cargo to Aliabitsa. Give or take a month or two, Mare was only sixteen years old when the fighting ended in Aliabitsa. She was tall and physically developed, mature for her age, so those in NOF (Peoples’ Liberation Front) and AFZH (Women’s Anti-Fascist Front) decided it was time for her to do something more. They sent her to the Partisan hospital in Grazhdeno where, for three months, she patched up wounds, transported the wounded and learned how to stop the bleeding and change dressings.
With her purse over her shoulder, marked with a red cross, they deployed her in a combat unit. Now Mare, with her teeth chattering, is lying in the hanger leaning on Mita’s shoulder and rubbing her swollen legs and bleeding heels from the chafing of her heavy military boots. Beside Mare is Traianka and beside her are Ilia, Mite, Krste, Kolio, seven young men and three young women from Kostur, Lerin, Epirus and Thessaly Region villages. Among them is Yannakis, a talkative, cheerful thirty year old man, who talks about himself non-stop, repeatedly saying that he is a confident civilian sailor working on a ship in the harbour; a proletariat and a good communist. He wants to talk all the time but he is frequently interrupted by a long, wild, dry and suffocating cough. Accompanying Yannakis’s conversation are incessant drops of muddy water, dripping from the oak logs above and forming little puddles of water on the ground.
Yannakis was the last of the thirty or so dock workers and sailors who were brought into the brigade after the end of the great battles for Gramos. They were specially trained emissaries, hunted down to work in the cheap French and Italian restaurants and hotels in the ports in Odessa, Gdansk, Constanta, Varna, Rieka and Split, promised that they would be sent to the Soviet Union and to the People’s democratic countries for military and naval training in various academies. They were promised that in the new democratic and socialist Greece there would be no place for capitalist captains and admirals and for the children of the rich. Those positions would be given to them, the children of the docks and the poor from the dirty suburbs.
The dock workers and sailors were brought to Prespa through channels unknown to them and after two weeks of military training they were allocated to units in the Macedonian mountains. They brought them to Macedonia and told them that they would be fighting against imperialism and domestic service exploitation. They were also told that they were much too valuable to be fighting in Rumely, the Peloponnesus, Crete and other parts of Greece where the opponent was much too weak and it would be a shame for such capable men to fight a weak opponent. They brought the dock workers and sailors to Macedonia to show the unworthy, local village boys and crybaby “chupres” how to fight. They called the armed Macedonian young women “chupres”. But these young women who were in the first line, especially those brought from Bulkesh, were former sergeants, second lieutenants and first lieutenants of the Royal Army and later they were the so-called “kapetanios” of ELAS (National Liberation Army of Greece). Now the same women, with minor exceptions, are the commanders and commissars of DAG (Democratic Army of Greece) and there is nothing that they don’t know.
So they dragged the sailors and dock workers from unit to unit telling the units “Avrio sto tmima sas tha erthun i naftergates” (Sailors and dock workers will be coming to your units tomorrow).
They made the sailors and dock workers famous before they even entered the war. They turned them into heroes just by going from unit to unit and from command to command. They made a great name for them so that every unit wanted to have them and was waiting for their arrival with great anticipation. They were all waiting to see, meet and admire the seasoned fighters, the brave men and heroes of the working class who had spent such an exhausting time to reach the mountains of Macedonia.
The thirty or so men, who were deployed in Brigade 103, were expected to smell like sea salt and have the aroma of distant lands; but they smelled more like the sea, like salted cod, soap and cheap perfume; the kind found in brothels. They were everything, except fighters. They were out of breath even on the gentlest of marches and would quit half way through a march. They were afraid of the dark and of dark forests. During the short rest periods they rubbed their swollen feet and blew air on their chafed to the bone heels. They also swore profusely and cursed in many languages. They were number one in story telling and boasting. The seas, bars, taverns and brothels were all theirs. The trenches, bunkers and minefields, on the other hand, belonged to the “village children” from Kostur, Lerin, Voden, Kozhani, Grevena, Thessaly, Epirus and other regions... Their mouths were full of flattering words, always trying to get a look and a smile from the ladies, not like the rude, unworthy young villagers whose character was their strength and courage in battle, endurance on marches, the cold, rain and hunger.
The ones who boasted the most about the dock workers and sailors being good fighters were the people in high command, the high commissars. Here is an example of what one of their leaders said about them: “…protopori ston agona, protopori tis ergatikis ke tis proleteriakis epenastasis” (… champions in battle, champions of the working class and of the proletarian revolution), which they have yet to initiate after these “village children” [Macedonians] conquer Anglo-American imperialism and Monarcho-fascism.
That is what the commissars preached because that is what their leader commanded. The dock workers and sailors brought mandolins, guitars and bouzoukis and during short rest periods they played their instruments in the name of the leader. They had orders to play, sing and dance until exhaustion. Everyone was joyfully distracted by the song and dance, leaving no time to think. While attached to the units, these working class champions played their instruments well; it was their duty as fighters.
With the greatest of pleasure they played the rebetiko and sirtaki but most of all they played sad songs about the painful fate of sailors stranded at sea. They played their instruments well and sometimes quietly sang sad songs and cried about their troubles. However this type of behaviour tended to affect the morale of the fighters, so someone from the top ordered the commissars to ban these types of songs and only allowed them to play revolutionary songs about the struggle.
“Ma then ta xerume!” (We don’t know them!) They complained.
A local commissar, a twenty year old man from Prespa who barely knew how to speak Greek, with his bad pronunciation and Prespa accent yelled at them with a threatening tone of voice “keratades ta ta matete” (scoundrels you will learn them). It did not matter to the young commissar where the emphasis fell on the Greek words; he did things his way, the way things were done in Prespa.
They felt insulted. When they heard conversation spoken in the Macedonian language they made remarks to one another: “ma edo then ine Eladha” (this is not Greece). When they listened to Macedonian songs they lightly hit the strings and said: “Omorfa, poli omorpha tragudia” (Beautiful, very beautiful songs).
The unit commissar, trained in Bulkesh and before that a horse groom of some Capetanios, staring at the Prespan sarcastically asked: “Where did those strings come from? Bitola or Skopje?”
The Prespan commissar, looking serious, replied: “From your mother’s fleece…” and after a short pause he added: “understandably, comrade, unit commissar, they came from Russia…”
They played “Eleno mome” (Eleno girl), “Mlada Partizanka” (Young Partisan girl), “Na Vicho planina” (on Vicho mountain), “Vo borba, vo borba” (In battle, in battle) and again began playing those sad sailor songs. They sailed the high seas and met thousands of individuals, learning to make no distinction between people. So they had no problem befriending the young Macedonian men and women and they found it easy to learn a few Macedonian words from them.
They were indifferent until the commissars started pushing them to join the Party. The commissars worked on them day after day and it seemed to the sailors and dock workers that someone was out to darken their serenity, which they had brought with them from the seas and from foreign environments. It seemed to them that someone wanted to stifle their laughter and remove the old smell of the sea and the warmth of the women they knew everywhere. They felt like eagles in a cage.
The barracks where they were kept, to which they were not accustomed, seemed like the cages they had in the ships. They knew how to cook, wash cauldrons, wash and mend clothing, repair clocks, tell all kinds of jokes, sing and swear in many languages but when it came to fighting battles, they lost their perkiness, became sad and their smiles wilted. They looked like abandoned wet cats without their sailor courage. They completely lost themselves. They hated the war.
They appreciated hard work, honesty, laughter, singing and sincerity. They did everything and worked on everything that they had learned on the ships, at the docks and around the world. They came to love the mountain air, the dew on the grass, the mountain flowers, the mountain sunrise and sunset, but still they felt like they were caged; the mountains had shrunk their world. Here they were afraid of the dark forests and craved the wideness of the sea, the city hustle and bustle, the cafés and taverns and the women who would be waiting for them in the various seaports that they visited around the world.
During the cold nights and mornings they missed their rum and whiskey and the salty sea breeze. They spoke of bananas, pineapples, dates, oranges, avocados and about life on boats and at sea; a bitter life full of torture, sorrow and loneliness. Yet they wanted everything from life, a sailor’s kind of life, the kind of life they were used to living in the ports, a life that had nothing to do with war. They did not want to go to battle. They were accustomed to duty, responsibility, diligence and freedom but were not ready to die on the mountains. They knew how much to work and for how much and wanted to have some free time for themselves to visit the big wide world, but without orders and away from the barracks.
Here everything was different. Get up, line up, lie down, forward, march, clean, sing, dance, finish, listen and don’t think. And as the others dreamed of bread, warm clothes and a sound sleep, they dreamed of the sea, ports, docks, boats, bars and brothels. From the great sadness, which for them was life, now only a daydream remained and a sickness for home. They now said, “On the ship there was much to mourn, but here in the mountains there is even more, and that’s what hurts the most, especially during the nights...”
They complained it was cold and uncomfortable during the night and one by one they would abandon their posts. They acted like civilians, the way the sea had taught them, the way they acted in city ports, coffee shops, taverns and in life ashore with all its vices.
In the beginning they went after the young ladies and forced themselves upon them. But when the law caught up with them some were sent before a military court and were executed. Then even the higher ups in the leadership discovered what kind of people these highly praised sailors and dock workers were. To quickly cover up the shame and put it in the background, they pretended that it was necessary for these people to be there because they were educated and experienced cadres.
Finally when they removed them, the talkative non-stop chatterers and flatterers quickly succeeded in pushing their way into the supply corps, kitchens and storerooms. And there, clean and well fed, they stayed in warm rooms with different commissars who smelled more of cologne and less of gunpowder. They trained these highly praised dock workers and sailors in the arts of leading a proletarian dictatorship.
Away from the damp bunkers and underground hangars these people were happy chatting the nights away. They slept like the crickets in the dry grass and woke at daybreak to the song of the nightingales. They forgot their own pains when they saw stretchers with wounded young men passing by but were most hurt when they saw wounded young ladies. They sobbed in secret and cursed loudly. There was no comparison to equal their swearing and cursing in the groups with whom they congregated.
Only Yannakis now remains in the Cheta (Unit). He is quiet, collected, distracted and often withdrawn. There is always a playful, cheerful, gentle, timid and good hearted smile on his face, which is barely visible and fully blooms and warmly spreads along his cheeks at the ends of his mouth, and with his trembling lips hanging down he provokes trust in everyone. But in his eyes there is a sinking and disturbing sadness hinting of pain and sorrow which grows more intense when it is quiet, not so much for himself but he hums for his mother and for the woman he loves. In this ugly and dirty world he has only his mother and it seems to him that he can stop his pain and unrelenting grief with a song. He believes that those now lying beside him in the underground hanger and in other hangers like it love him. But not once have they given him a piece of their bread or allowed him to get closer to the fire, or have substituted for him on guard duty or even carried his backpack full of ammunition. His stories about distant lands and people are filled with gaps and his knowledge of the world is scanty at best.
“Has any one of you seen the sea?” Yannakis went on to say “Ah, the sea, the sea… It is endless and all encompassing and it seems like a person is nothing next to it but it needs people to rule over it. When the sky is covered by clouds it is black, when the sky is clear, it is azure blue, it has the colour of steel, of sapphire. When a cloud appears, it is reflected in the water and its reflection travels in the water. But when winds blow the water gets angry, nasty, unrestrained, enraged, infuriated… Just then you know you are at sea. Exactly then you prove to yourself that you are in a fight with it, that you defy it, you laugh in its face and you hold it in the grip of its own will. Oh, the sea, the sea, it knows how to be wild, how to roar like a wounded beast and how to rumble, and when it slowly subsides, it becomes tame and you think it is whispering to you. But then when the wind starts to blow again, it knows how to whip a wave clear and blue, silver, white like wool, roaring and thundering, long and tall… Ah, the sea, the sea… When the wind subsides the waves calm down, they pile up, roll out and burn one another out, calmly unwinding on the shore. The froth returns to the bosom of the wave and calmly rolls to shore, telling something untold, whispering and rustling softly…”
Yannakis paused for a moment and while holding his chest with his hands, coughed for a long time. He wiped the sweat from his temple. Someone came out from the hanger and did not lower the blanket acting as a door. Through the narrow opening a foggy arch of the moon could be seen in the distance. Far away, a red rocket flared up in the sky and as its brightness slowly diminished, the darkness returned. But those inside could only see the flame from the fireplace flare up and diminish again, creating shadows on the wall. Yannakis leaned on the damp wall, took a deep breath and continued:
“At night when the sky is clear, the sea is embroidered with pearls created by the reflection of the stars. They move around, pile up, flash and disappear but only for a moment before they return in the calm and after that they quiver in the gentle sea waves… If you look up you will see the stars in the sky, if you look down you will see the stars so close you can catch them with your hand… Above there are stars, below there are stars and you stand between them… They twinkle and quiver. Sometimes one comes loose and as you look at it in the water it seems to be coming out of the sea and flying towards the sky… The fishing boat, floating, cuts the sky, cuts the stars, and cuts the full moon in half. When gilded by the moon if you touch the water it will look like it is kissing your hand. Listen… someone is playing the mandolin on the shore…”
Yannakis paused again for a long and enduring cough. This time he lost his voice. In the dark he could not see the staring eyes of his comrades gazing at him. He spit out what he had coughed up and reached for his mandolin, leaning on the wall beside his automatic machine gun. He lightly and gently placed it in his arms and braced it on his left knee. His trembling fingers caressingly stroked the strings, gently pushing on them. Silence filled the hanger as Yannakis played a sad song without words, touching even the strongest of hearts, in some softly and deeply squeezing out a sigh and in others squeezing tears of pain down their cheeks and bitterness, sadness and grief…
Yannakis again gently squeezed the strings and paused. The sound of the mandolin lingered on in the hanger. Someone sighed aloud, and leaned their head on his shoulder. It was a woman’s touch. He felt something warm drip on his hand and slowly cool down. He raised his right hand and ran his fingers through the mandolin strings. Stretching and with a torn up long vocal tremble, which for a moment broke up and died out, he shook and roared; his roar slowly diminishing out there somewhere. It seemed to him that everyone had felt the storm in the sea, which they had never seen, and the storm in their own souls… He paused for a moment and when he began to play again his voice choked. His mandolin suddenly went quiet, as if the strings were cut with a sharp knife and in place of melody Yannakis’s voice came back on:
“When you stroll along the shore, the sand rustles under your feet, little well-washed white stones crackle and the water is peaceful; so peaceful and tame that it makes you want to caress it… And when you do touch it, it feels like a hand gently caresses you back… Yes…” said Yannakis quietly.
His voice was now completely gone, there was only silence…
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