The rooster call spiked her ears at dawn. Maria cracked her eyes open into the black. Straw poked her head and scratched her face. Her bed
in the stable she shared with the farm animals under the house kept her warm with the wool blankets the Germans let her keep. The NAZI officers in her house will be wanting for their breakfast soon. She had to get up.
Andonis was already out. He and their youngest son, Yianni, had all the farm work to do these days. All her boys except her youngest escaped to the mountains when the Germans took the village. Too much work now for an old couple and a teenaged boy. Andonis had already begun feeding the goats. Yianni was out, but Maria did not know where.
She sat up to take a breath before starting the day. Red sun bled into the dark sky, seeping daylight slowly above the silhouetted trees. Her breath smoked in the cold. She’ll warm when she builds the fire for the soldiers in the house.
Maria swept the straw off the clothes she slept in. The soldiers came into Moulatsi months ago and the officers picked her house to set up their office because she was the only one with running water. In return, they let her and her family sleep with the animals in the stable under the house and expected her to keep their quarters and cook their food. She and her family could eat the leftovers, if any.
She stood at the open stable door and looked out beyond the sloping field to the church where her daughter, Anna, married before the war. The bell tower reached above the distant mountain ridge, coming out of the darkness and just touching the new beams of the day. Burning wood scented the crisp air like the incense in church blessing the people. We could use a blessing now, Maria thought as she looked for her boots.
She found them by the door, pulled them on, tied them quickly and cut through the fenced yard to the steps up to the house over her head. Maria stopped at the foot of the stairs to catch her breath. She assumed that it was just her age and her hunger, but her head felt light and her chest felt heavy. She looked up to the door to her kitchen. “Ti na kanoume,” she thought. What can we do?
“YIANNI!” She called for her son, her voice swallowed by morning stillness over the fields. She needed him to fetch eggs from the chickens so she could make the occupying officers their breakfast.
He came quickly from the road to the kafeneio at the center of the village. It was a risk for men to gather, even old men over coffee in the mornings. What could he have been doing there at this time of day?
“Ti theleis, mitera.” Yianni said as he marched up from the road. He was gruff this morning. Not his usual self.
“Get me eggs. For the Germans.”
Yianni turned his sights down field toward the church. He shook his head, faced back to his mother and squinted his eyes, hands on hips.
“That’s why am here?” He asked, sharply, as if already in the middle of the argument that had been raging in his head since speaking with the men at the kafeneio. They had connections with the units in the mountains fighting for the resistance against the fascist invasion. “To feed our NAZI masters?” Yianni pressed.
“They are not our masters.”
“How can you say that? This is ridiculous. They take our home, make us sleep with the goats. They treat us like animals. How can you live like this? Are you that deluded?”
“Yianni, they only become your master if you hate them. Then, they live inside you, like a disease. That’s how they kill your soul.”
“No. They kill you with guns. Or by starving you. Look at us. Look at you! They are killing you. You are skin and bone. And you FEED them? This is pointless. I should be with my brothers in the mountains with the units.”
“You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Where will that leave us?” “Better to die like men than to sleep with goats.”
He is so young, thought Maria. She shook her head. He can’t see that resistance is a long game. So many wars, so many occupiers, over centuries. And, we’re still here. Her grandmother remembered the Turks. They occupied for 400 years. How long will the Germans be here? No matter, she thought, we will still be here when they finally go.
“Empires fall. Survivors go on,” Maria said.
“Hah!” Yianni scoffed. He could not believe how even his own mother could justify such passivity. “And how do we survive as we starve and feed the murderers?”
“Yianni, you talk big. You just want to cut off the soldier’s ear in the garden.” “Maybe Jesus should have let him fight.” Yianni saw no point in turning the other cheek.
“And where do you think that would have gone?” Boys are all the same. “Oli ta jourounia exoun ta ithi miti,” she thought. All the pigs have the same nose. They fight fire with fire. “The people traded Jesus for Barabas. Remember? What did Barabas do for them?”
“That’s a fine story, mitera, but not everybody can just come back from the dead after letting themselves get crucified. The rest of us need to fight to keep what is ours.”
“I’ll tell you what he gave them!” she raised her nose towards Yianni’s chin, pressing her point. “War. And what did that give the people? The temple burned down and the people driven out.” She waved her arm demonstrating the banishment and shooing Yianni back. “And now we have NAZI’s,” she continued, pointing up the stairs. “So, you can thank Barabas!”
Yianni was tired of his mother’s sanctimonious passivity and snarled, “Don’t you think you’re worth more than this?”
“Nobody is special. We can only work to be useful.” “And feeding NAZIs is useful?”
“How is war useful?”
Yianni spun toward the coop, swirling in his cloud of rage. His father was defeated and his mother was deluded. He had to do something to stop the madness. He had spoken to one of the old men, Takis, at the kafeneio. His grandson, Costa, was with the units. Yianni knew Costa. He was probably with Yianni’s brothers. Takis said Costa comes to the village at night about once a week to pick up intelligence and whatever food and supply could be offered. Costa would be coming tonight, Takis said. Yianni agreed to meet him and learn how he could join the fight.
Maria paused at the base of the stairs and caught her breath. This did not bode well. Her sons, all but one, had left ahead of the Germans to join the guerilla units. Thank God Yianni had stayed. They needed him to keep the farm going. Maria knew many who would rather die rather than accept occupation. Yianni now appeared to be one of them. She respected the fighters but who really won wars? The men boast, “Eleftheria ee Thanatos!”, but death seemed like the easy way out. A short cut to satisfy pride. No, in the end, survivors won wars. The ones who outlast the occupiers, the ones who struggle to carve out a life for their children even when there is nothing left to carve out. Instead of dying for country, what about living for people? Maria saw no glory in death. Life can be sacrifice enough.
She began her ascent, holding on to the rail as she watched her feet and took one step at a time. It felt like a march up to Golgotha itself. She pushed through the door at the top and entered the kitchen. The soldier guarding the officers was asleep at the table, his head leaning on the wall behind him. Just a boy, she thought. The officers were in the next room the other side of the wall. She flicked on the light to disturb the boy’s sleep and got to work. He rubbed his face lazily as she filled her pot for coffee. He stood at the sink to wait his turn so he could wash his face. They didn’t share a language so they could only gesture. When she moved to the stove, she nodded her head to the sink to let him wash. Strange this boy knew how to be polite after stealing her house and taking their food and forcing them to sleep with the animals in the cold.
The soldiers had kept the fire in the woodstove burning overnight, but sleepy one let it settle to embers and Maria needed to stoke it back up. She looked for the wood bin. Yianni needed to refill it, but there was enough to get the morning started. She grabbed a thinner cut piece to jump start the flame and dropped it in the stove. The radiating glow sprouted limbs around the log and embraced the fuel quickly. Maria lingered at the opening to feel the warmth on her face. Spring dawns cold in the mountains and a morning fire is always a blessing to savor. There were such few blessings for her to enjoy these days.
Maria rose from the stove to face her chores for the morning, but her head seemed to float and the kitchen began to swirl. “Frau!” the sleepy one called out.
She turned to the blond boy. Curious, she thought, he could be Yianni, except for that bloodless skin and that ridiculous army uniform that turned the human into a machine. He didn’t know what he was doing either, she thought. She couldn’t talk sense to Yianni. What could save this boy from that uniform? He spoke again but God forgive him she didn’t understand what he was saying. Her ears blurred sound as the kitchen began to spin. She reached for the kitchen table to steady herself.
Strange, she thought as she went down clinging to consciousness along with the back of the chair, that dull metal cross dangled on the boy’s chest when he reached for her before everything went black.
◊◊◊
Andoni heard the officers bark orders inside his home. He stretched his back from the buckets he brought out to his goats. He gave the goats garbage, but it was less than usual. The soldiers did not leave much for the people, which meant the animals got less. Still, he needed to feed them all enough, the chickens, the goats, the donkeys, otherwise there would be no eggs, no milk, no food. Andoni with his elementary education understood this. He wondered if the Germans did too.
The shudders overhead burst open. “Mann! Kommen! Der Frau! Kommen!
Macht schnell!”
Andoni hated their language, but he understood some. They were saying something about the woman who could only have been his wife. Something was wrong. Above him, he saw one of the officers reaching out the window overhead waving him inside. “Schnell, schnell, schnell!”
He dropped his bucket and started for the stairs. The door to the kitchen was open and the young private stood at the landing, “Schnell, mann!”
Andoni sprinted to the top of the stairs and barged through the open door. His wife laid sprawled on the floor, her head by the dull black boots of the officers who looked down at her and up at Andoni. Maria showed no life. Andoni first thought the soldiers had done it, but they wouldn’t kill their cook and housekeeper. More likely they would kill him or his son.
He knelt to touch her hand and came close to her nose. Not even breathing. He bolted back up and yelled out the door, “YIANNI! ELLA TORA! YIANNI!
TORA!!”
Yianni appeared at the bottom of the stairs. What other servile task would he be asked to perform?
“Ei mana sou. Kanei katerrrevse. Fenrnei Dimitrios. To jiatros. TORA! PAI!
Fernei to yiatros etho. Tora!”
Yianni, stunned, at first saw only white. His father’s sunken face floated over him at the top of the stairs. It told the whole story. His stubborn workhorse mother finally broke. He shook his head and caught his breath and remembered the harsh words he left with her. The pit of regret and fear stabbed from inside.
“Nai baba!” Yianni called as he ran off the property to the dirt road. Dr.
Dimitrios Yiorgantas was a cousin who lived just a couple hundred feet up the hill.
Yianni panted at the doctor’s door as he pounded. “Asta Vrai!” a man called from inside, clearly annoyed. The door swung open and the disheveled young man in a stained undershirt and wrinkled shorts who just woke blinked at Yianni, looking for what sense could come from this madness.
“Lee pah meh Theo,” Yianni referred to him as his uncle because of the age difference, but they were really cousins. “My mother. She’s collapsed in the house.”
“Is she breathing?” “I don’t know.”
“Vlahos,” Dr. Dimitri spat, confused, and rubbed his face. “How can you not know!” He turned immediately to put on shoes. Where did he put them? He gave up. There was no time. He pushed passed Yianni in just his undershirt and shorts and bare feet and ran to the house.
They arrived in what felt like seconds but had to have taken at least a couple minutes. Dimitrios stopped short at the door. His aunt lay dead on the floor. There was no doubt.
“How long has she been this way?”
She collapsed about ten, twenty minutes ago? Andonis answered.
It takes just 3 to 6 minutes for it to be over, thought Dimitrios. He stepped to the body, knelt, and touched her neck for a pulse. Nothing. He held her wrist. Still, nothing. He put his ear to her nose and mouth and his hand on her chest. No breath, no heartbeat. Already, she was beginning to feel cold.
Dimitri held her wrist again, just to see if he missed something the first time. He waited. He felt the eyes on him, the pressure from Andoni. Did he seriously expect him to raise the dead?
Dimitri gently replaced her hand. Her eyes had already closed and so he didn’t have to make the dramatic gesture of closing them for her. But he had to tell Andoni the truth.
“I’m sorry Theo. She’s gone.”
Andoni showed no reaction. Not in front of the soldiers.
The blond guard turned to one of the officers. The officer waved his hand toward the door and gave an order to get the body out of the kitchen.
“Ella Yianni,” Dimitri called to the boy. Andoni bent to reach under her shoulders. She was a small woman, bony now from lack of food, but it was still awkward for three men to pick her up with any dignity. The blond guard stepped up and silently offered to help. Andoni nodded. They each had a hand under her back and the other under her shoulders while the other managed her legs and waist. Slowly, they walked her body down the stairs to the stable under the house.
Word got out and already a small group of people stood at the gate. As the small procession came down the stairs, three women from the group made it to the stable and laid out blankets on the bed of straw where Maria had slept that evening. They would lay her there for her wake.
Andoni’s sister Thespina managed her way through the growing gaggle and hugged her brother as he stood by his wife’s body in the stable. He had felt nothing until her warmth. His head seemed to spin as he fell short of breath, but she held him up. “Ella brother. Can you stand?”
“Nai, nai.” He looked down, turned to Yianni, and pointed his head outside the stable. He needed air. Yianni followed Andoni while Dimitri stood by the straw bed next to Thespina.
“She needs to be buried tomorrow Thespina. You know that.” “I know.”
“I’ll get the priest then get back home. I’ll write up the death certificate and give it to you. I don’t think Andoni will manage it well.”
“OK.”
◊◊◊
The sun set and the body was laid out for the wake. Family and neighbors milled about in the stable under the house. The animals and equipment had been cleared out so that people could stand freely by Maria’s body which appeared asleep in her straw bed in the corner. Yianni stood near his dead mother, watching the others approach pay their respects.
The priest arrived in full liturgical robes. His gold embroidered stole swept the floor by his feet and his royal silk cape draped over his black cassock. He frowned through his white beard and his eyebrows furrowed behind his glasses. The altar boy held the smoking incense and followed the priest as he cut through the crowd. The old cleric approached Andoni and whispered his well-practiced words of condolences and encouragement.
The people continued to murmur and the priest turned to his altar boy. The thurible rang and the priest swung the censor toward the body and began his prayers.
“Evloyeetos o Theos imon, pantoteh nin kai aei, kai eis tous aionas ton aionon . . .”
The same prayers that have been said for over a thousand years, the same prayers that were said for her parents and theirs, and their ancestors before them, and for others beyond memory began now for Maria. Andonis knew this day would come, but yet it came, as always, as a shock.
“ . . . Give rest to the soul of Your departed servant Maria in a place of light, in a place of repose, in a place of refreshment, where there is no pain, sorrow or suffering “
Yianni watched the priest as he murmured his prayers over the smoking incense.
The double headed eagle spread across the back of the priest’s robes, echoing the ancient imperial status that the church held as an organ of the Roman Empire. He sniffed at the liturgical futility. Liturgy, literally means “work of the people”. But what work did the church do? “Religion is the opiate of the masses” Costa had said to Yianni before he left to join the units. “They lead lambs to servitude and slaughter with false promises and cold comfort.” Yianni was not sure what angered him more, the NAZI’s or the pitiful sheep who accepted occupation. He studied his father’s face. The prayers washed over his father as he stood with an erect dignity Yianni did not understand given the humiliation they had been suffering.
Yianni shook his head and turned to his mother and replayed their morning argument in his head. “Empires fall, survivors go on” she said. But she didn’t survive. Still, he considered her words from the morning. They had talked about it many times. How the Romans persecuted Christians for years. Fed them to lions for spectacle in the ancient circus, burned them as torches to light the emperor’s garden parties. But they survived and eventually converted the emperor and became the dominant religion of the empire. How did turning the other cheek conquer the occupying legions?
Yianni looked back at his father and sighed as he considered the loss everyone had experienced in recent years. Their home, the entire people, were suffering a crucifixion in this war. Could they ever come back from this? Right or wrong, Maria had carried her cross long enough. She too, had a right to move on.
“I am an image of Your ineffable glory, though I bear the scars of my transgressions. . . Grant me the homeland for which I long and once again make me a citizen of Paradise.”
◊◊◊
A pinprick of light pierced the black. Slowly, it grew wider and brighter. Soon, the shining white light consumed the blackness, and she could see nothing but the light. She drew toward its center until she found herself in a massive banquet hall. A long table stretched from one end of the hall to the other, and it was laden with food. Plates overflowing with fruits and pastries, cheeses and meats. It was an abundance beyond imagination. At the other end of the long banquet table, she saw a group of people. They were distant but they slowly came into focus. She saw her parents, who had been long dead. Her older brother, too. Others crowded around them, some vaguely familiar, but all the people she knew had died. Some waved, others reached out, all welcomed her, calling to her, “Come, Maria! Stay! The table is full! Come, stay, be with us! There is nothing to worry about.” She missed her parents and felt so deeply welcomed and happy. “Mama!” she called as she jumped on her toes in pure joy. They reached out again, some toward her, others toward the food at the table, “Stay! Eat!” But Maria knew that if she ate, she could not leave and, though she wanted to stay, she needed to go back. “No, Mama, Baba, I have to go back. I have my family. I have work to do. I have to go back.” The people in the banquet hall continued to urge her to stay, but Maria backed slowly from the table, sad that it meant she was leaving them. As she stepped, the hall blurred, and the black narrowed around them until they were gone in the void.
◊◊◊
“Aionia ee mnimi . . . God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.”
The priest concluded his prayers with a final ring of his censor and handed it back to his altar boy. Incense hung over the heads of the small crowd, and the stable now smelled sweetly of Jerusalem Rose. He shook Andoni’s hand softly and put his hand on his shoulder briefly, then turned to leave without speaking with anyone else. His robes waved in his wake as he swung out the door.
Some crossed themselves, others laid hands on her, while others stood silently before they moved aside. But Yianni couldn’t leave. This was too hard to accept. Maybe by witnessing the others accept this harsh reality he could come to understand it too. The doctor, now fully clothed, had signed the death certificate authorizing burial and handed it to his aunt Thespina. There was nothing left now but to say goodbye and to bury her after church tomorrow.
Yianni pondered his mother’s face. Her head rested on their best-embroidered pillow. Colorful flowers and vines stitched from days near the end of the Turkish occupation. Now, it adorned her deathbed during the days of the NAZI occupation. He wanted to tell her he was wrong, but her death seemed to prove otherwise. Maybe she was right in the long run, but in the long run, we’re all dead anyway, and until then, he could not bear accepting an occupation that killed his mother and murdered so many others. He felt her bony hand, and his grief veered again to rage. Enough with suffering indignity like lambs to slaughter. He will meet up with Costa later tonight. He stared back at Maria, looking for some message from the beyond, either to rebuke him or encourage him. Anything. But he knew that, too, was ridiculous. All of this was.
Something moved. Near her mouth. He thought his vision must have blurred. It had been a rough day. He blinked and focused on her lips and waited. He saw it again. Her tongue peeked out and touched her bottom lip.
“Baba!” Yianni called. He doubted himself. This must be some involuntary tick that corpses do shortly after death, but it had been hours. “Baba! Kita ‘tho!”
Andoni stood up from a chair that had been placed near the bed. He had been accepting the condolences from neighbors and leaning into the warm, strong hands on his shoulders, but his excitable son clearly needed to be settled and it was his turn to provide support.
“Come, son, I know it is hard.” “Baba, look at her mouth.”
Denial. The boy was young. He couldn’t accept the hard truth that people got used to bearing with age. We die. Sometimes at peace. Sometimes not. But we pass and we have to accept it and whatever comes next.
“It’s ok, my boy. She is at peace now.” “No, Baba! Look!”
Andoni humored his boy and looked at his dead wife. She looked no different from those early mornings when she stayed in bed as he got up to start the day.
Those tired bones need their rest. She has earned hers. Andoni turned back to his son.
“She’s asleep, son.” “She’s awake, Baba!”
Andoni wrinkled his brow, concerned that his son was hallucinating. He turned back to Maria and waited.
“Her mouth. Watch her mouth.”
And there it was. The tip of her tongue reached out for her bottom lip.
Andoni brought his nose to nearly touch hers, not trusting his eyes as they may have simply followed the suggestion of his hallucinating son. He watched her mouth. The weak little tongue peeked again.
“DEE-MEE-TREE-OS!” Andoni cried out. “DIMITRI!” Dr. Georgantas had left. Yianni did not have to be told. He turned to run back to the doctor’s home.
This time, Dimitri answered the pounding door without yelling. He stood, resigned, expecting to have to comfort his young cousin.
“Theo, do dead people lick their lips?”
What kind of question is that, thought Dimitri. “What do you mean?”
“Mama, she’s licking her lips. Do dead people do that?” “No.”
“Well, she is!”
This was hard to believe. Dimitrios stepped back inside his house. Put on his shoes and grabbed his coat. There was no rush this time. But this was part of the grieving process, and he stepped out with Yianni and slipped his arms into his coat to cover from the evening chill.
◊◊◊
The blond guard from the kitchen saw the young doctor and teenage boy come down the dirt road toward the house. The boy seemed excited, but the doctor grudgingly followed. The guard looked back into the stable. The villagers were now crowding around the body, creating a commotion. It was autumn in the mountains, and he felt a shiver.
Dr. Yiorgantas finally arrived with the boy and looked first at the guard as if confirming permission to enter.
“Herr Doktor,” said the guard and nodded to let him in.
Dimitri pushed through the small crowd to reach Maria. He didn’t wish her dead, but this could be embarrassing. She still lay where he left her. Yianni explained again that she was licking her lips.
“Impossible.” Dimitri crossed his arms.
“I saw it!” Yianni insisted. “How is it possible she could be licking her lips?” “What can I say!” Dimitri shook his hands as he stage-whispered to Yianni.
“They had no class in school about how to raise the dead!”
“Did you miss the one about how to tell if someone is dead!?” Yianni shot back.
Just like these villagers, accepting the worst without a fight.
“Let’s just see for sure,” said Dimitri. He began to sweat as he patted himself down. “Do you have any fruit? Like a lemon or orange?”
“Who has an orange?” Thespina asked in disbelief. There was no exotic food in the village. There was barely any food at all after the soldiers had their full. What a ridiculous question.
The guard heard the talking and looked in. He saw the young doctor motion with his hands like he was squeezing a lemon to explain how he wanted to check on Maria. He approached the doctor, tapped his shoulder, and opened his hands to ask, what do you need?
Again, Dimitri played charades for the guard, motioning how to cut an orange, squeeze the slice, and rub it on the lips. The soldier nodded. He knew where to find an orange.
The guard, just a young private, marched away and up the stairs to the kitchen door. He remembered the bowl of fruit for the officers that rested on a table in this old lady’s house. It sat by the window with a balcony looking over the gate at the front of the property and the dirt road up to the village square. It was in the room next to the small kitchen where she collapsed, what had become the officers’ quarters. They’d sit there with their morning coffee, enjoying their fruit while the villagers struggled to survive. The private had seen enough. He strode to the table and grabbed an orange right in front of the officer sitting by the window, smoking his cigarette.
“What are you doing?” the officer said, his hand frozen while the smoke slowly curled out the window.
“What are you doing?” the private responded.
The officer raised his eyebrow as the private stepped back to the kitchen. The private knew he had been insubordinate. He would have a series of run-ins with this officer as the war went on, eventually ending in a confrontation months later in Stalingrad, where their unit redeployed during the winter. When the officer ordered a family’s execution after his unit seized their house during the fighting, the private cocked his weapon, pointed at the family, paused, then turned on the officer and emptied the cartridge. But he had no idea whether he’d saved the family as his fellow soldiers barged into the ruined house and fired in response to what they heard. Nobody noticed the dull cross dangle off his uniform from under his combat jacket as he lay lifeless in the rubble.
Back in the kitchen the private took a knife out of the sink and stepped out and down the stairs to meet Yianni and Dr. Dimitri looking over the old woman. He handed the orange and knife to Yianni.
Yianni took the fruit. He shot a quick look at the soldier and sneered at the soldier’s presumption. Now he helps? Could he not have shared an extra egg with the old woman when she was alive? Yianni held both the orange and the knife, feeling the choice he had at that moment. The soldier did not step away, but his shoulders sank at Yianni’s stare.
Yianni turned back to Dimitri. “Where will that leave us?” Yianni recalled his mother’s admonishment. He handed the orange and knife to the doctor. Dimitri fumbled the fruit under the blade. He was no surgeon, but he cut the orange and brought the wedge to Maria’s lips. He held it over and gave a squeeze. Her tongue poked again but then took a sweep along her lower lip. Dimitri dropped the wedge on her face in shock. She kept licking, and her eyes twitched. He picked up the wedge and placed it on her mouth.
“Sit her up! Slowly!” Dimitri called out to whoever was close. Neighbors reached behind her while Andoni pushed through and pulled Maria up by her arms.
“I told you! I told you!” cried Yianni. Yianni asked for a message and he got a miracle. He forgot about Costa, who left the village later in the evening without meeting Yianni after hearing the strange news. Yianni did not know that Costa never made it back to his unit. Costa took a bullet behind his head before he got to the tree cover. Nobody heard the shot. In the stable under the house, as his mother slowly sipped the water her sister-in-law held in front of her mouth, the noise muffled around Yianni, and all he knew was that his mother had come back from the dead.
◊◊◊
Maria’s story shocked the people and became a legend, but Maria thought little about it. The young men went off and died for their country, but she came back to live for her family. It was what she had to do. Sacrifice was a practical thing.
Meanwhile, Yianni stayed home through the end of the war. Yianni remained uncertain for some time about which would have been the better decision, but he let his mother have the last word when she returned from death. Later, the murderous cruelty during the Civil War confirmed how pointless fighting was for working people. He worked the family farm the rest of his life, stayed in the old house, married, and raised 6 children, all of whom moved away to make their own lives in Athens. He lost count of the grandchildren that visited during holidays and during the summers when they escaped the Athens heat. He reaped the peace his mother sowed, and he was grateful.
Shortly after the war, Yianni saw a neighboring shepherd from one of the lower fields approach Maria near their house as she walked toward the church down the dirt road.
“Ella Maria!” the neighbor called out to her, “I have a small favor to ask.” Yianni stopped to listen.
“What is it?” she asked. When they say it’s small, they know it’s not.
“So, my son, he is herding our sheep from the upper field back home. He’d like to come through your land by the orchard so he can make the trip in one day.
Otherwise, he will need to go all around the village, and it will take an extra day.” He circled his arms across the horizon to demonstrate the length of such a burdensome trek would be.
The shepherd offered nothing else but an air of entitlement.
“Oli ta jourounia exoun ta ithi miti,” Maria said, shaking her head with her hand on her hips. What made this man think she should just let his herd trample over the hay she was growing for her own animals?
“What?” he responded.
“No! What do you mean small favor? You want to flatten the hay and have your sheep feed on it on the way for nothing? No. Make yourself useful. Help your son go around.”
“I bought a hundred candles for you to light in the church when you died!” the shepherd argued. “This is the thanks I get!”
“Fine. When you die, I’ll buy you a hundred candles!”
She looked up at him as he peered down at her. Neither budged. She didn’t come back to this life to get walked over. She came back to work. This one needed to work more and whine less.
The shepherd mumbled something as he looked down and walked around her.
She softened her shoulders and thought some more. She was on her way to the church after all.
She turned and called back, “Wait.”
The shepherd stopped and turned to Maria, hoping to hear a change of heart. “I won’t wait ‘til you die. I’ll light a candle for you now. But, you still go round!”
He didn’t argue. He looked up the road to continue his walk to the kafeneio and noticed Yianni standing at a distance, observing the scene.
Yianni heard the exchange, but he was far enough away to pretend otherwise. He just gave a wave as the man trudged up the road. Yianni knew what it was like arguing with his mother. She always had the last word.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chris Vrountas is a writer and lawyer. He lives in Essex County, Massachusetts, with his wife, who still laughs at his jokes after 34 years. He has practiced law for just as long and serves as a mediator of discrimination disputes for the Human Rights Commission. He grew up in an immigrant faith tradition that has evolved over the years, and he writes about impermanence, hope, and rebirth.
Most recently, his poems Lenten Eve, 2021 https:// www.vitapoetica.org/poetry/lenten-eve-2021 and Meadow Aers https:// www.vitapoetica.org/poetry/meadow-aers were published in the Winter 2023 issue of Vita Poetica. His short story, The Photo, was published in February 2024 by the Academy of the Heart and Mind https://academyoftheheartandmind.com/.
About the Author
