The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [36]
One night Mike felt particularly high and leaped into the ring with Eleftheria and danced her into a state of exhaustion, to the shouting approval of the villagers. He ended his dance with a leap and a firing of both pistols into the air—then collapsed into Eleftheria’s arms.
It seemed to Mike that the very soul of Greece danced by firelight.
After the dance, the women would be dismissed and the men would gather in the coffee house or someone’s cottage and talk the night away. And Christos would retell his adventures in the whorehouses and his valiant stand against the Bulgarians.
Each day Mike learned more about this strange and wonderful land. The land from which sprang the ideal that has become the eternal striving of man—the ideal of freedom. From earliest days Greece had been a tormented land—tormented by Nature—famine, flood, earthquake—and tormented by man—conquest, war, civil strife. Blood ran deep in her soil. But the Greek was a man of steel. This latest scourge—the German conquest—this, too, would pass as the others had passed.
It was as though Greece was being put to the test during the ages for conceiving the ideal of freedom. The brief eras of peace and plenty were but interludes in the everlasting trial by fire. But anyone who has seen a man dance the calamatiano would surely know, as did Mike Morrison, that Greece would be free again.
The presence of British escapees in Paleachora became an open secret. Food supplies were running low in the big cities and every train to Dadi, the nearest terminal, brought city people scouring the countryside in search of food. They carried possessions, many of great value, to trade for wheat and other staples.
Christos and the other farmers were quick to capitalize on this tragic situation. Wheat went at fabulous price. When inflation made money almost worthless, barter became the means of exchange. Christos, as owner of the mill, hit upon a windfall. In return for wheat and other food products, he acquired possession of a half dozen properties in Athens.
Mike argued bitterly against this, but Christos reckoned he was doing the city folk a favor by keeping them alive. He added that the city people had always considered the farmer a second-class citizen and had cheated him for years.
As the presence of escapees in Paleachora became known, “big-town girls” from Dadi drifted to the village in search of fun with the British, whom they admired enormously. The city girls were not a bit shy. They had cast aside the age-old traditions of female inferiority and took pleasure in flaunting their equality before the farmers. The shocked villagers warned the British boys that they were all tramps with venereal diseases or German spies or both. Mike seemed to agree with the latter explanation and kept clear of all outsiders.
Within a few weeks after the British collapse in Greece, hundreds of escapees roved all over the country and were accepted by the people with open arms. Even in the cities the people were sharing the last loaf of bread with escapees.
This situation became a major headache for the Germans. Even in their position of helplessness, the British gave hope to the people by their mere presence. Vicious counter measures were taken. Spies were planted, bribes were offered, traps set, threats were made. The Germans began using British turncoats as bait. Then came the announcement that any village found harboring an escapee would be burned to the ground. Still the British escaped and still the people