The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [53]
“You don’t love me,” she said.
“It wouldn’t make any difference whether I did or not. It wouldn’t make any difference.”
“You don’t love me.”
He turned slowly and faced her and shook his head, no.
It was quiet for a long time.
The girl walked to the large open fireplace. Her back stiffened and she held her head high. “I shall return to Dernica. There is a boy there who wants to marry me. He has wanted to marry me since we were...” Her voice faltered and tears streamed down her cheeks.
Mike walked up behind her. His hands squeezed her shoulders. He turned and walked quickly from the room.
Barba-Leonidas grumbled as he placed a quarter of a large cheese in the package he was preparing for Mike. He grumbled that he didn’t trust women in general and city women in particular.
Old Despo began wailing at her weaving machine.
“Get out of the cottage and cry, old woman!” her husband shouted.
“Two blonds on a trainload of Greeks,” he sputtered, tying up the ends of the bundle. “Even the Macaronades aren’t that stupid.”
Lisa sat quietly as the scene unfolded. The barefooted peasant girl who watched from the doorway was obviously in love. Most likely they had had an affair,
Lisa thought. Eleftheria’s eyes, filled with jealousy, glared at Lisa.
“We must be started if we are to reach Dadi by sundown.”
Mike nodded.
He took one of his pistols and shoved it into Barba-Leonidas’ hamlike hand as a gift. It was the same pistol that had been earmarked for his death by Mosley outside of Kalámai. Once again Mike tried to offer money, but the giant proudly refused.
The two men stood facing each other awkwardly and tears welled in the corners of Leonidas’ eyes. He seized Mike in a bear hug. “God be with you,” he whispered. He turned and walked from the cottage.
Mike lifted the sack to his back and nodded to Lisa. They walked from the cottage and climbed aboard a donkey cart. In a moment it nudged down a path away from Kaloghriani.
Mike turned around and looked back to the hills. He saw the colossal form of Barba-Leonidas outlined against the sky, and Eleftheria stood at his side. He smiled sadly. “Forgive the hearts and flowers, but they are my friends.”
“I understand,” Lisa answered in perfect English.
The cart turned onto another dirt path and soon Kaloghriani disappeared completely from their sight.
Lisa glanced at the man she knew as “Vassili.” He was not at all as her mind had pictured he would be. He was a strapping, extremely handsome man, deeply tanned, and his beard was close cut and neatly trimmed. His pale-blue eyes had a penetrating and searching look.
His eyes frightened her. Mike had observed her carefully when she entered the cottage but his look was not like that of other men. It was a look of curiosity and it seemed to penetrate her thoughts. She was uncomfortable in an instant and avoided his glances. Who is he? she thought. Could he possibly be aware? Could he possibly know?
Lisa looked at her watch. They could make Dadi by nightfall, a bit later than anticipated. There were many things to be done.
It was pleasant here in the hills, far from Athens. Athens had turned into a city of sorrow. Here, the birds sang as if they did not know their land had been conquered and the forest stood tall and proud.
Mike was quiet.
He felt that a door had shut behind him which he might never be able to open again. He felt he would never again know men like Barba-Leonidas and Christos and the peasants of Paleachora and Kaloghriani. He was surprised at how deeply he felt the loss of Eleftheria.
All his life Michael Morrison had accepted mediocrity in people. He accepted it fully when the long struggle to produce his first book was over and the shocking disappointment of a small sale embittered him.
He accepted mediocrity when his writing turned sour and his pages were cluttered with mediocre people. It had become a struggle to keep at his typewriter and he had hated himself as he saw his words drip venom.
The death of Ellie had seemed to put a stamp of mediocrity on him for life.
But now as he came