3.
BY THAT TIME ATHENS WAS STARVING. THERE WERE beggars everywhere, some of them so hungry that they were like lunatics, but too weak to do any harm. Some lay down and died wherever they happened to be. Sometimes they were people you used to know, someone’s servants, or keepers of little shops, or someone’s poor relations; but famine had given them such faces that you might not recognize them at first glance. Mrs. Helianos was afraid to venture out of the apartment. Fortunately Alex took care of little Leda. He understood that sensibility of hers, so mixed up with dullness, he was as trustworthy with her as any governess, and he was not squeamish. He would go down to the street alone and investigate whether any of the dead lay in their neighborhood; then return for her and take her to play where it was all right.
Of course those families who had German officers to feed were entitled to certain supplies which the occupying authorities reserved for them out of the small national production or brought from abroad. At first the Helianos' expected to be able to live fairly well on the leftovers from the captain’s table, but unfortunately he had ideas of his own about that. Once a day he went into the kitchen and had all the cup-boards open and considered what staples they had on hand and what new purchases Helianos had been able to make. He showed a most expert mind at this. “You see,” said Helianos, “his work in the quartermaster corps is something like housekeeping, on a grand scale. There’s no deceiving him. We may as well be honest.”
His wife resented this pleasantry.
“You remember, my dear, how you used to keep an eye on your servants, even Evridiki. Though I suppose you never were as merciless nor as efficient; and of course they were not starving to death. . .”
The efficient captain never forgot a thing. He required his entire meal to be brought to the table at once in covered dishes, so that he could easily check the amount they served him against what he had seen in the larder. He was a heavy eater. Sometimes he left a bit of stew or a few spoonfuls of soup; but he smoked a cigar after eating and used his plate or the souptureen for an ash-tray. When he rose to begin the evening’s work or to stroll around to the club, he stopped and carefully brushed the crumbs into the palm of his hand and scattered them outside his window to attract birds. It was always his way to combine a painstaking, ungenerous frugality with some little manner of lavishness. Presently an idea came to him which satisfied him in both these inclinations: the extraordinary idea of purveying to a certain major’s dog.
This officer was his immediate superior in the quartermaster’s corps, with whom he also played cards at the officers' club; his name was von Roesch. He occupied the salon and guest-room of an old Macedonian couple whom the Helianos' knew slightly. They had an ancient half-blind dog, an English bull-terrier of good pedigree with an alarming pink-and-white face. When the famine started their intention had been to put it out of its misery, because it required an impossible amount of food. But meanwhile their major had taken a fancy to it; therefore its life had to be spared while its owners somewhat wasted away. Now it was to benefit by the wasting away of the Helianos' as well. Whatever there might be in excess of their captain’s appetite, a crust of bread, a fragment of meat or bone, a vegetable, he scraped together on his plate and ordered to be wrapped up and taken by young Alex with his compliments to the major.
After about a week of sending Alex with the little packages, the captain told them in his formal manner with sarcasm: “My friend Major von Roesch appreciates your good management and generosity in contributing your little superfluity of food to help keep his old pet in good condition. By the way, it comes of one of the best blood-lines of the breed, British stock, and has taken prizes at dog-shows.
“Furthermore, it is good for that soft boy of yours to take a little exercise after his evening meal.”
Then presumably the two officers compared notes as to the exact amount of dog-food entrusted to Alex, and perhaps they miscalculated. In any case they accused him of helping himself to it on the way, and first one and then the other upbraided him; one boxed his ears, and the other whipped him. His father questioned him about it patiently and gravely. The boy’s reply was that of course the dog-food tempted him—after all, what was that evening meal which in the captain’s opinion necessitated his taking exercise? a cup of weak soup and a single biscuit—but he had never touched it, because he was afraid to. He quite convinced his father of his innocence. Nevertheless a few days later the two dog-loving gentlemen charged him with a repetition of his offense and punished him again.
Helianos thought it over and decided to protect his offspring by a little stratagem. “My son is a growing boy,” he told the captain, “and suffers from his appetite. If you entrust the food to him he will steal some of it, alas, he cannot help it. Therefore, after this, please let me carry it to the major’s dog myself.”
Having to make this false confession angered him, and men of his type, passive and well-meaning, have a very physical anger. The captain observed his flushed face and watering eyes, and took them to mean that he was ashamed of his son; therefore the stratagem worked.
“You Greeks are all thieves by nature,” the captain remarked. “Only an old broken one like yourself knows that he cannot get away with it.”
Helianos, without understanding much about the class-distinctions in Germany, never doubted for an instant that the captain was a gentleman. His manners were extremely distinguished, and yet—it was hard to understand—they permitted him to indulge in a gross discourtesy or ugly outburst every now and then without a trace of embarrassment or self-consciousness. It was never a real fury; he himself was not deeply disturbed by it. Out of the cold dignity of his bearing as a rule, suddenly the fit would come on him. He would let himself go for a few minutes; then fall back into his ordinary composure as if it all had been a matter of course. To fly into a rage without losing one’s temper, to curse and shout without getting out of breath, without any fire in one’s eye or color in one’s cheek: what kind of self-contradiction and false spirit was this? It seemed to Helianos somehow in-human, possibly unhealthy.
Still he was trying to understand the German in general by this officer; and vice versa, to solve his domestic problem by studying the other officers that he saw around town, and by discreetly questioning fellow Greeks who had dealings with them. Invariably there appeared to be something self-conscious and methodical about their behavior, as if they had been instructed in it according to some new historic theory or psychological science. And they were complacent, even the young ones, as if they had every reason in the world to believe that it would work. Helianos concluded that it must have worked where they had already tried it, in France, Belgium, Holland. Sometimes this conclusion inspired in him a kind of wondrous patriotism. For he knew that the psychology of Greeks differed from that of other nations; they might withstand it better. But sometimes his heart sank, when he asked himself whether he and his family were withstanding it, and realized that he could not tell. Everything depended on how long it lasted.
He had been told that German gentlemen struck their servants, even in peacetime, at home; but he really had little to complain of in that way. When his gentleman was indulging himself, his fists were always clenched, and as it were to punctuate his ill-tempered utterance he struck out with them or swung them this way and that, apparently not minding whether you were hit by them or not; and striding up and down, he often gave at random what certainly would have been a kick if you had got in the way of it. When you helped him on with his coat, or rendered any other such service at close range, he would elbow you or shoulder you aside so brusquely that you had difficulty keeping your feet; and when you were removing his boots you had to look out for his feet. But as a rule, if you kept withdrawing and dodging with dexterity, he seemed satisfied. He was too proud a fellow to follow you across the room to give you a beating. As it seemed the look of self-preservation and intensity of shame on your face was enough for him.
Anyway, Helianos reflected, when he shook his fist or aimed his kick, you felt that he was human, after all. The unnerving thing was the great Prussian manner, serene and abstract, almost a mannerism; with insincerity in it somehow, but combined with absolute conviction. Priests have a manner somewhat like this, because in their sacerdotal function they are more than human, and their individual lapses and limitations of soul do not matter so much. So have actors, when they are sure that the play they are in is great; and so have certain madmen, when their dream is sublime. . .
Without a doubt in Captain Kalter’s mind, he was the personifier and minister of a power far greater than any foreigner could be expected to understand; greater than the past, present and future of Greece; greater than himself. What he was, in his mind, what he represented to himself, was far more intimidating to a simple rational man like Helianos than anything he actually did or could do. In fact he found that the fear of him physically, somewhat relieved the other deeper uneasiness.
As for himself, he came to the conclusion that he was a coward, and he told Mrs. Helianos so; but it was not exactly physical cowardice, nor chiefly on his own account. The way to upset him was to abuse Alex or frighten his wife, and before long Captain Kalter seemed to sense this.
Furthermore, in his German opinion, corporal punishment was the thing for a boy of Alex’s age, especially a nervous cowardly one. He said it was disgraceful how his parents had spoiled him, and he expected them to see a marked improvement as a result of his living with them, and to be thankful to him for it. He hated nervousness and cowardice and impertinence and idleness with a zealous hate, to say nothing of gluttony and thievery. As a rule all he did, besides scold, was to give the little fellow’s bony arm a bad twist while he scolded, or to strike him on the head suddenly with only the flat of his hand; but upon occasion he took the trouble to administer a more formal whipping.
Alex never seemed to mind as much as his parents expected. He learned to leap with alacrity away from the cuffs and kicks; and when he had not leapt in time, or it was a flogging in earnest, to be stoic about it and to forget it as soon as it ceased to hurt. But Helianos and Mrs. Helianos could not accustom themselves to it. They spent hours discussing his childish conduct, analyzing what it might be that chiefly aroused the German ire; and often they themselves punished him severely, in hopes of averting the captain’s punishment.
Once in a while, when they were getting into their narrow bed beside the kitchen stove, Mrs. Helianos showed Helianos black-and-blue marks on her poor pallid stout body, which at first angered and depressed him so that it was like sickness. But having questioned her each time, and grown accustomed to the captain’s ways, he had to admit to himself that in a measure it was her own fault. She was panic-stricken from morning to night and therefore, naturally, nothing she had to do for the captain was well done. She never had the self-control to stand and listen patiently to his sneering and complaining. He did not actually lay hands on her. It was only that same violent gesturing with which Helianos himself had to contend: histrionic shruggings of those broad shoulders, digs of impatient elbow, nervousness of booted foot. In her dread and haste she was forever springing sideways, and thrusting herself into corners, and knocking herself against furniture, and tripping and falling; hence the black-and-blue marks.
“My poor dear,” he told her, “you must remember that the way we feel seems funny to the captain. It can’t be helped. Now listen to me: I forbid you to reveal your feelings to him. It’s the only safe way; never let him see that you are afraid of him.”
Night after night with the patience of a saint he kept trying to impress upon her these first principles of protecting one’s self against a man like Captain Kalter; but she never understood one word. She merely wept and fell asleep with her foolish head on his shoulder, and rose next day in the same folly and panic. The serious aspect of all this was the increasing frequency of her heart attacks.
Meanwhile the city around them, and Greece as a whole, went from bad to worse. They were so absorbed in their domestic situation, afraid and angry, tired and hungry, that others' lives and the general plight and the long process of the war scarcely had reality for them. Indeed, some things that they heard brought a slight sense of relief, almost happiness—things happening to other people and other people’s children; things they and their children had been spared. They were thankful for the small favors of fate.
A neighbor woman’s baby, for example, had learned to relieve its hunger by sucking blood out of the palm of its hand, making an open sore and keeping it open. Mrs. Helianos remembered how Leda in her infancy had sucked her thumb, and they had tried everything but could never stop her; and this, the family dentist explained later, had caused the ugly protrusion of her teeth. Mrs. Helianos in her natural vanity had expected her daughter to inherit her own good looks, and long before there was any question of her not having a normal mind, Leda had disappointed her bitterly, as her baby-face grew plainer every day, pudgier.
Now as she gazed at the neighbor woman’s baby with its pale mouth buried in its skinny hand, like the mouth of a rat in the neck of a chicken, she was ashamed, and said to herself, All the disappointments of our life before the war were a fool’s paradise.
Helianos talked with a friend whose brother had escaped from Crete and gave a fantastic account of what happened there. Crete had always interested Helianos. In his youth he had studied anthropology as well as archaeology, and tried in vain to interest his wife in pre-Hellenic religion and custom. “The cruelest part of Greek mythology originated in Crete,” he reminded her. “But listen to these new stories. They are far worse, and harder to believe than the old.”
Outside a certain village the Germans established a burial ground for their sky-borne troops lost in the invasion; and the children of the village playing tag had tipped over two of the little crosses which marked the graves; and for this the Germans punished the entire community. It consisted of twenty-two men and their families. They dug a long shallow trench and lined up the twenty-two in front of it, with two officers and a firing squad of one soldier apiece facing them.
Behind the firing squad they assembled the families, the mothers and wives and little ones, with other soldiers to make them behave. Behavior meant watching the execution over the executors' shoulders without impatience or insolence or outcry. Whenever a woman said anything or hid her face in her hands, or a child made a tedious sound, a soldier or two stepped forward and disciplined them. The firing squad waited until all these eye-witnesses were under control, standing in good order, with their hands down at their sides, their heads up, their eyes open.
Meanwhile four of the twenty-two tried to escape, and these were shot in the legs and left lying or crawling on the ground while the other eighteen were dealt with and pushed back into the trench.
Then the younger of the two officers made a speech. Courage was the highest virtue, he said, and the four who lay on the ground, two unconscious and one groaning and one crawling along as a broken worm crawls, were obviously cowards. Absolute obedience to the commands of the army of occupation and the will of the German chief of state was required of every Cretan. Therefore the four still alive were guiltier than the eighteen dead, who had at least faced their death obediently. Therefore he ordered the four to be laid in the trench on top of the eighteen, and buried alive; and so it was done, with the women and children obliged to wait patiently until it was all over.
Mrs. Helianos wanted not to believe this story. “Are young German officers able to make speeches in Greek?” she asked. “And what Cretan villager would understand them if they did, with their impossible pronunciation?”
“Perhaps some of it is myth,” Helianos answered, “but for the most part I believe it. I have come to the conclusion that the Germans are cruel.”
She implored him not to tell her any more cruel stories, believable or otherwise, and not even to listen to them himself. “What is the good of knowing what has happened to other people? It provokes us to be rebellious, which only makes matters worse. It sickens us so that we cannot do the work that is expected of us.”
It also reminded them that, relatively speaking, they were fortunate to be living in Athens instead of Crete, and that there were worse Germans than their captain. Captain Kalter was a difficult, mysterious, but, after all, prosaic figure. Whereas the others who were worse seemed to fancy themselves in some barbaric poetic drama or terrible opera from morning to night, year in and year out. Or perhaps they sensed in the war the beginning of a new religion, and as the newly religious always have done, improvised things like that episode in Crete to be a kind of ritual. Or perhaps they were simply, by nature, dreamers of such things, and the war gave them an opportunity to make some of their dreams come true. . .
Helianos heard worse cruelties than the subjugation of Crete; certain inquisitorial techniques applied to agents of the underground movement who were supposed to be able to give information or to betray their fellows; various tricks that were like surgery gone wrong, with little up-to-date mechanical contraptions. . .Naturally he did not report things of that sort in detail to his poor wife. But once in the middle of the night when something the captain had eaten disagreed with him and he kept them awake by ringing for this and that, Helianos whispered to her a tedious and terrible discourse on the subject of atrocities in general.
“I think it must be useless to report things of that sort to anyone,” he said. “I’ll tell you something about myself, something I’d be ashamed to tell anyone but my wife: when I hear them I am always afraid that I may giggle. I suppose it is animal instinct; rejoicing in the very simple fact that at the moment I am hearing them they are not actually happening to me. Certainly it is not that they are unbelievable. By easy stages we get so we can believe anything. . .”
“But the mind,” he went on, “balks at the corresponding emotion, and it’s just as well, I suppose. There is a blessed stupidity about emotion. Even my brave cousins, if they were able to feel in their hearts and in their nerves and in their bones all that their noble minds are steeled to, all that awaits them if the Germans catch them, might not be so brave. . .”
Mrs. Helianos was too tired to protest against his talking to her like this. She shed tears quietly, and pulled the bedclothes up over her head to keep from hearing all of it, until at last they fell asleep.
Thus the nightmare of Greece in general gave their particular lives a background, historical and, as you might say, anthropological and psychological. Only it seemed a distant background, out of focus and in false perspective.
Daily and hourly their own slight circumstances were nightmarish too, and, alas, of a more intense interest: hurt feelings and fatigue and aching entrails, the body sore and the soul sore, and the round and round of domestic difficulty; the tired mind moving from one little trouble to the next with a little jerk like the minute-hand of a clock.
Sometimes they thought of friends of theirs who had succeeded in getting away to Egypt or England or America in 1941. This naturally increased their distress, in the way of loneliness; a sense of separation of mind in the time to come as well as of physical fact at present. Of course after the war they would try to tell them what they had been through, but it occurred to them that they might not be able to.
It is not easy to tell this kind of domestic ordeal and do it justice, without either exaggerating it or making a mockery of it. It has to be understated or else it will be lifted by one’s words above that triviality, ignominy, which is one of its worst aspects. In daily detail, they realized, it was only harrowing, not tragic. It should be told with severity, irony. But its actual effect on them was to make irony almost impossible, even for Helianos; and exaggeration a habit, especially for Mrs. Helianos.
They decided not to say much about it after it was over, if they lived to see that day. It was too far below the level of what other people recognized as courage. Their having been able to bear it would be nothing to boast of. They thought of it as having been embodied in themselves, like a disease all through them, like vermin all over them. That would be the story and they would be ashamed to tell it.