Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-three
The girl was hunched on a low stool in Leni’s kitchen, a cup of coffee clutched in both hands.
She looked caught between childhood and adulthood, innocent and haunted at the same time.
Draped in the kind of black dress a grandmother would wear, she met Katerina’s eye as she and Stefanos made their way into the room, only to glance hurriedly away.
“Come,” Stefanos said to her. “Do not be afraid. Kat is a friend. You can trust her.”
When the girl did not respond, Katerina looked across toward her sister.
Leni was preoccupied with ladling soup into five bowls and kept her head down while, at the table, Michalis sat silently, one foot restlessly tapping against the floor.
His spectacles lay discarded, one lens veined with a spiderweb crack.
Stefanos lightly touched her arm as he stepped around her, removing his hat and tossing it down. Michalis jumped violently at the sound, eyes wider than a snared rabbit’s, though when Leni rushed to soothe him, he shooed her away, muttering impatient words.
“Sorry,” she said meekly, turning away to fetch a spoon for each of them.
Katerina saw the flare of color on her sister’s cheeks, felt the sting of rejection as keenly as if it had been her own.
At one time, she would have been quick to leap in and defend Leni, though something told her this would be unwise.
Her brother-in-law had changed, been reduced to someone smaller, harder, more unyielding.
Stefanos beckoned for the girl to move closer.
“This is Esther,” he said. “Her brother, Daniel, was with us in the mountains.”
“Where is he now?” Katerina asked, taking a seat.
“Gone,” Stefanos said. “Killed during an ambush.”
The girl, Esther, sniffed as she sat. She had neat, symmetrical features, rosebud lips that she pursed to stem her tears, curls of black hair, and watchful eyes.
“He had given us a letter to pass on to her if anything were to happen, and when we reached the village, we found that the Germans had been through already. Many people were dead.”
“They killed my mother and father,” Esther said.
It was the first time she had uttered a word in Katerina’s presence, and her voice was tight with defiance.
“The soldiers demanded to know who in the village was of Jewish faith, and a traitorous neighbor pointed to our house. I did not know what to do, and so I hid. There was a hut in the back, where we kept the chickens, and I lay on my stomach beneath the straw, heard the gunshots and the screams.”
Leni reached across and placed a hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“It was not safe to leave her,” Stefanos went on.
“Daniel, he saved me more than once, and so it was only right that I save the only surviving member of his family. The Germans had burned her house to the ground, and they have also sworn to kill anyone who defies them by concealing those they seek. There was no one in that village with the courage to help Esther. It was not a choice.”
Michalis picked up his spoon but made no move to begin eating. It was as though he was not there at all. Katerina had once found the skin of a snake on the hillside and was reminded of it now, that impression of a living thing, left behind.
“I am very sorry for the loss you have endured,” she said to Esther.
“You will be safe here,” Leni added. “We will look after you.”
Michalis banged his fist against the table.
“Safe?” he spat, with a mirthless laugh. “Nowhere is safe anymore, you foolish woman.”
“Don’t speak to her like that,” Katerina snapped, ignoring Stefanos’s sigh of displeasure. “You are the fool who went to fight in the first place, who wanted to play at being a man.”
“Kat,” Stefanos hissed. “That is enough.”
Michalis pushed his bowl away, soup spilling onto the tabletop.
“All we have done,” he said slowly, “is provide Esther with a stay of execution. When the Italians and Germans arrive here, they will find her, and they will punish those who keep her.”
“Then they cannot be allowed to find her,” Katerina said loudly as Esther folded further into herself.
“There are plenty of places to hide on this island, and nobody knows them better than I do.” She turned to Stefanos.
“I did as you asked in your letter,” she said.
“I have hidden tools, food, medical supplies, everything I could collect. I will show you. We can go right now.”
“Wait.” He stilled her with his eyes. “First, we eat.”
“I do not want anyone to die because of me,” Esther said. Her words were steady enough, though the tremor in her voice gave her away. Michalis stood abruptly, his chair toppling backward and crashing against the stone floor.
“I need to sleep,” he said, and stalked toward the door. Leni hesitated for a moment, then went to follow him, only for her path to be blocked by Stefanos’s outstretched arm.
“Leave him,” he said. “Your husband has not slept properly for many months now. He is home, and for tonight, at least, that may mean he feels safe enough to rest.”
“Yes.” Leni lowered herself shakily into her seat.
For a while, the only sound was the scraping of their spoons against the bowls.
Katerina wondered if it was hunger that drove them to eat or merely the desire not to converse.
Though there was much to say, there was also a benefit in allowing some time for new information to settle.
To give in to the fear would be to lose the fight before it had even begun.
She was afraid of the rapidly approaching war and what it would mean for her community.
Would neighbors turn on one another? It felt impossible, and yet it was happening all over Greece. It had happened to Esther.
When the bowls were empty, she and Leni collected them, wiping the table and pouring Michalis’s abandoned soup back into the pot on the stove.
Katerina turned to Esther.
“Come next door with me,” she said. “I have clothes that will fit you, a bed in the attic where you will be safe tonight.”
Stefanos nodded his approval, ushering the girl outside, and Katerina turned to Leni.
“Will you be OK,” she asked, “with Michalis? I can stay here if—”
“No, no.” Leni unfastened her apron. “I must look after him myself. Stefanos is right, he will sleep, and tomorrow, he will feel better, more like himself.”
“Of course.” Katerina gripped her sister’s hands, the silence between them saying everything.
They had always spoken in this way, conveying through touch alone how they were feeling.
In that moment, all Katerina felt was uncertainty.
She wanted to offer reassurance, but it would have been a lie. Instead, she simply squeezed harder.
Stefanos was waiting by the boundary wall her grandfather had built between his family’s neighboring properties, rolling a cigarette.
He had been inside Katerina’s house with Esther, shown the girl how to reach the attic bedroom, given her a small amount of whiskey to sip in the hope that it would ease her into slumber.
“Shall we go somewhere that we can be alone?” he asked.
Her stomach dipped, then lifted, as though the ground had tilted below her feet.
“The ridge,” she murmured.
The hour was late, midnight mere breaths away.
Katerina led the way up the hillside, retracing the steps she had taken a thousand times or more, comforted by the tread of his boots, the trail of smoke that followed them.
When they reached the ridge, she stopped and looked back across the island, squinting into a darkness that would have been total were it not for the few remaining lights burning in windows.
Sleep would be a hardship for many on this night, as it would be every night until the war concluded.
Stefanos lowered himself to the hard earth with the groan of a man who might have been ninety and lay back, his gaze locked in on stars.
“What are you thinking?” Katerina asked, folding down beside him.
“That it is a miracle,” he said. “I dreamed so often of being on this hillside again with you.” He turned to her, reached up, and stroked her cheek.
“I did not believe that God would answer me—how could he hear me among all the other noise, all those poor souls begging for mercy?” He closed his eyes briefly, refocused them on the sky.
“Perhaps it was me he heard,” Katerina said. “Because I was asking for the same miracle.”
Stefanos shifted onto his side, drawing her close against him.
“You are my miracle,” he murmured. “The only brightness in this black world. You belong up there with the stars.”
Katerina tightened her hold on him.
“I belong down here with you.”
She hoped he would kiss her, but instead, he let out a soft, broken sigh.
“How soon will you go?” she asked, for she knew he would. She felt the truth in the way he held her, in the urgent pressure of his fingers against her skin.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “If we wait any longer, it may become impossible. You know that if they find me here, they will kill me?”
“ ‘We’?” She blinked, daring to hope, to envisage a future without separation.
“I must take Michalis with me,” he said. “He has become…It would not be safe to leave him. Some of the other men from the village will also accompany us—Constantine, Giorgos.”
“The brothers?” she asked. “Atlas and Zephyr? Surely they will also go?”
“No.” His gaze remained set on hers. “That is what they want, of course, but I convinced them to stay here. We need someone to lead the Resistance, to protect the people and fight if necessary. However, they cannot remain in the village. Will you take them to the place you have found, show them where to hide?”
“Of course,” she said. “Anything. But I don’t understand why it has to be them—why not you?”
Stefanos rested his forehead against hers. He was near enough that she could feel the soft brush of his eyelashes on her cheeks.
“I am not from this island,” he murmured. “The men, they will not follow me.”
“The brothers are not from here, either,” she said, heat creeping into her voice. “They are exiles, not even relations of anyone on Folegandros.”
“But they are respected, yes? They are liked?”
Katerina blew out a sharp breath through her nose.
“You are liked,” she insisted, and he smiled.
“Only by you, katsikáki. And I fear that you and I alone cannot beat an army.”
“I want to come with you,” she said, though even to her, the statement sounded hollow, despondent. Stefanos pressed his lips to hers and kissed her once, very gently.
“I spoke to the priest tonight,” he said. “In the church, when everybody else had gone.”
“About Esther?” she guessed.
“Not about her. I think it is best to keep that truth as close to the family as we can. War can turn even the oldest of friends into enemies, and you will discover that many will do whatever they must in order to survive, even if that means condemning another.”
“Then what were you talking about?” she persisted. “Were you asking for absolution?”
A flicker of sorrow crossed his face, there and gone.
“I was asking for something more important than that,” he said, his fingers once again digging deep into her flesh. “A blessing.”
“For what?”
“For us,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, as if he’d told her once before and she had forgotten it.
“What do you mean?”
“Katerina,” he said. She had never heard him use her full name. It was always Kat or katsikáki. The brevity of his tone, the way he was staring at her with such intensity, made her chest flutter.
“If your father were here, I would be asking him this question,” Stefanos said. “When he returns, when Greece has won this war, I will beg for his forgiveness.”
Katerina could barely breathe.
“Forgiveness for what?” she asked.
“For marrying his daughter.”
She sat up, pulling him with her, laughing out loud through her shock.
“Kat.” He seized her hands. “Will you become my wife?”
She did not have to think. The answer flew out of her in a rush, repeating over and over until the words became a torrent of pleasure, of joy, of love. Stefanos leaned back, smiling as she fell to the ground in a mock faint.
Her, married? It was absurd!
She had believed love to be nothing more than a trap, though this love, his love, had set her free. Katerina was sure that if she were to run as fast as she could off the highest cliff on the island, she would soar through the air. All was light, all was glorious color.
“When?” she asked, scrambling back to her knees and crashing into his arms. “Now?”
“Patience,” he chided with affection. “The ceremony will be tomorrow morning before I go.”
It dawned on her then. He had not returned to bring Michalis back to Leni or even to hide the orphaned sister of his fallen comrade—Stefanos was here for her.
To abandon the fight when he did was an act of rebellion, though it was one driven by a need to close the circle they had begun to draw together, to attach himself to her in the eyes of God and the law.
“I love you,” she said, and the smile he gave her then was wide enough to swallow the world.
“I love you, too, my beautiful little goat.”
There was no longer a need for words, and as the wind broke ash-colored clouds across the distant mountains, they let their bodies take over.
She was his.
He was hers.
For as long as eternity lasted, they would belong to each other.