Chapter Twenty-Nine
Twenty-nine
The meeting was held in the church.
Katerina walked through the village with Leni, their arms tightly linked together, shawls wrapped around their shoulders.
It was early evening, the wind as lively as a dancing child and the air ripe with the scent of spring herbs.
Greece, it seemed, was not impervious to the war; its people no longer had any choice but to face it.
Athens had fallen, and soon, the enemy would come.
News of the defeat and subsequent surrender had come in across the wireless, and upon hearing it, Katerina had fled.
She’d run until her lungs burned, not down to the sea but up to the mountains, where she’d buried her face in Chrysí’s soft flank and wept.
Thousands of soldiers had been killed and many more taken prisoner.
Logic told her that Stefanos and Michalis must be among them, though her hope refused to yield.
It was enough to countenance the loss of your country; she could not accept the loss of him as well.
He had sounded so unlike himself in the last letter she had received.
Katerina read it often, taking it out from where she had secreted it beneath her cotton undershirt and running her finger over his words, his warnings and instructions, his expressions of love and regret.
How would she survive this conflict without him?
It was crowded inside the church and loud with urgent voices.
The twin brothers, Atlas and Zephyr, were standing at the front.
Both appeared ready for battle and had rifles slung across their backs.
Atlas, the taller of the two, had twisted his long hair into a neat ball, fixing it at the nape of his neck, while Zephyr’s trailed loose.
Both had grown heavy mustaches that pulled their features downward and made each man appear far more serious in nature than Katerina knew him to be.
As she led her sister toward a seat in the back, Atlas caught her eye and raised a hand of greeting.
The priest swept forward in his dark robes and began to speak, calling the gathered villagers to attention.
Murmurs rumbled around the room. People were scared, and they were angry.
Katerina said nothing, not even when Leni gripped her hand hard enough to stop the flow of blood into her fingers.
She merely listened, tapping her foot against the hard floor as the men argued with one another.
That was the problem with men—they did not know how to hear one another, could not abide the idea of someone else having an opinion that differed from their own.
Some wanted to flee, others to fight, all were craving reassurance, though that had become an impossibility.
“If we sit here like chickens at roost, the soldiers will come and run us through with their bayonets,” shouted their neighbor Constantine.
His son, Kostas, who was not yet sixteen, stood up.
“We must meet them at the shoreline and fight,” he declared, raising a fist. The declaration was met with widespread cheering and jeering.
“Madness,” Giorgos growled, grasping his wife Dafni’s hand as he got to his feet. “They will simply aim their machine guns and shoot us one by one from the water, and then who will be here to tend to the land, look after our families?”
“The land will no longer be ours to tend,” Constantine threw back. “The enemy will take it, and they will rape our women.”
Leni flinched, her grip growing harder. Katerina took a deep breath and got to her feet.
“You talk about us women as if we are not here,” she said, “as if we are incapable of defending ourselves and our homes.”
Many heads swiveled, the men shocked by her outburst. Zephyr clapped his hands together.
“She is right,” he said, shouting to be heard over the melee. “If we choose to resist, the women must be permitted to fight alongside us.”
“Come on now, man, this is nonsense,” Giorgos cried.
“It should be a choice,” implored another voice, this time belonging to Constantine’s wife, Phaedra. “A lot of women will not want to face combat, but who are any of us to stop those who do?”
“It is not right,” Giorgos insisted, shaking his head of gray curls.
“Come, it is not the 1920s,” Katerina said scornfully. “The world is changing, and we are at war now. Any rules that were set in stone are crumbling away.”
Giorgos shook his fist, remonstrating that if her father were there, she would never dare say such things.
“Agápi mou.” Leni tugged on her sleeve. “Sit down, please.”
Katerina wrenched her arm free.
“We will only survive this war if we work together,” she said with such passion that even Giorgos fell silent.
“We cannot allow the enemy to make us turn on each other. Greece must come first, before any petty squabbles or grudges. We are all one family in this village, and everyone here has a part to play in what is coming.”
“She is right.”
Katerina swung around, her gasp coinciding with that of Leni, who was already pushing past her, stepping on the feet of those seated around them in her haste to reach the two men who had just stridden in through the open church doors.
“Michalis,” she cried, throwing her arms around her husband’s neck. “You are alive. Praise God.”
Katerina continued to stare. She didn’t move, could not seem to make her limbs obey her.
It was not her brother-in-law who had spoken out in her favor but his companion.
Stefanos was thinner, his clothes torn and eyes hollow, though the fire inside him had not dimmed.
Raising his fingers to his lips, he blew her a kiss.
Atlas and Zephyr ran to greet their compadre, slapping his back in delight.
“I was confident that you would return,” Atlas said. “You are like a cat, my friend.”
Katerina heard a guttural sob, and realizing it had come from her, she slapped a hand over her mouth. She felt as she had at the last Easter Festival of Pascha, when she had spirited a bottle of wine from the shared table, her head spinning and legs unsteady.
He was here; he had come home to her.
Stefanos did not hesitate, his stride bold as he marched forward and took up position before the iconostasis. With his dark beard and air of authority, he could almost have been a saint himself. Katerina’s chest swelled with pride.
“I have seen the enemy,” Stefanos said, his tone solemn.
“I know what is coming for us and what they will do if we make any mistakes. My cousin and I”—he gestured toward Michalis—“we barely escaped with our lives. The Italians were battered by our earlier victory, and a soldier whose pride is damaged can be a fierce adversary. Once the German forces were organized, we could not hold them back any longer. It was carnage.” He closed his eyes briefly. “We lost a lot of good men.”
Constantine stood. “How did you get away?” he asked, his suspicion clear. “Why did you two escape with your lives when so many others did not?”
“Because we did not follow orders,” Stefanos said plainly, glowering at the man as if daring him to pass judgment. “We used false papers to join the army, so when it was time to retreat, we did not wait around to be told.”
“Cowards,” Giorgos muttered under his breath, though not so quietly that Stefanos missed it.
“What did you say, old man?”
“Deserters,” he said, more loudly this time. Katerina was sure that if they had not been inside the church, he would have spat on the ground.
Stefanos narrowed his eyes.
“You can think what you want about me,” he said.
“All of you are free to do this, but none of you were there. There is no glory in dying at the wrong time, not when you have things you must do”—his eyes strayed toward Katerina—“people you must protect. That was not a battle we could win, but we can win the next one, and the one after that. We must work together.”
The debate continued until long after the light had drained from the sky.
Katerina watched the flickering candles, Leni’s head on her shoulder as they sat side by side, watching as the men they loved tussled for dominance.
The women began to leave; children would be at home wanting to eat, chores must be done, fears suppressed.
Dafni paused as she reached them, and an understanding of sorts passed between the three.
They would look after one another, whatever else happened.
The priest was the one to finally call a halt to the meeting, though Stefanos hung back with the brothers as each of the men filed out.
Katerina waited until Leni and Michalis had gone, then she slipped out into the star-speckled night to wait for her lover.
The walls of the church were chalk-white in the glow of a yawning moon, its benign smile so at odds with the troubles they faced.
She wanted to feel strong but could not prevent the tide of fear from rising, even now, with her most primal of prayers answered.
One man could not stop the onset of war; love could not conquer an army.
“Kat.” His voice was low and tender. She shivered but did not turn, her heart beating irregularly, plucked strings of a bouzouki. He touched her hair, and she drew in a breath, felt his own on the back of her neck, hot and steady.
“You came back,” she said.
“Yes.” He moved closer, his hands now on her waist. Katerina sank back against him and closed her eyes.
A single tear rolled down her cheek, and Stefanos caught it, pulling her around and rubbing his thumbs over her face, examining her, gazing at her, then kissing her, all the while murmuring against her lips, telling her how much he had missed her.
She wanted to bite him, to tear at his hair, to shout and scream, though it was easier to push aside those more complicated emotions and simply be.
He tasted of tobacco and of the sea, the skin on his hands calloused and rough with scars.
Beaten, but not broken, as he had led her to believe in his letter.
“How long do we have until they come?” she asked, feeling him sag against her.
“Maybe a week, perhaps less.”
“Will you stay?”
Stefanos sighed.
“Come,” he said, taking her hand in his and leading her away from the church. “I brought somebody back to the island with me, and now the time has come for you to meet her.”