The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [59]
One series of sledgehammer blows followed another. The area around Athens had never been self-sustaining in food. Now it was being stripped to the last kernel of wheat by the Germans. Crop taxation was in force and villages and fields were being burned wherever defiance flared up.
The Greeks fought back as best they could, only to see their citizens massacred at the rate of fifty to one. Organized resistance did not yet exist.
Mike realized now how much depended on the seventeen men on the Stergiou list who worked in the inner orbit of the Nazi Command.
The ration allowance dropped to almost starvation level. Black markets were beginning to appear. Jungle law was taking over. Schools closed for lack of attendance and children began to rove the country in packs.
This was only the beginning for Greece.
It was a strange relationship between Mike and Lisa.
Mike wanted to say so much, but he had to keep on guard always. He wanted to talk about his children and his writing and about San Francisco. Somehow Lisa seemed to fit with San Francisco.
Perhaps it was the strangeness that attracted them to each other. Then, on the seventh night, she abruptly asked if he had had an affair with Eleftheria. At that instant their relationship changed. Lisa seemed annoyed with herself; then she retreated to her original coldness.
On the eighth day she did not visit him.
The ninth day.
Lisa lifted the phone and dialed Gestapo. Her face was chalky and beads of perspiration formed on her brow. She asked for Zervos.
“Do you know who this is?” she said.
“Yes,” Zervos answered.
“Tonight at ten I shall be walking down Æolou Street past the National Bank. I may have someone with me.”
“Very well.”
Lisa hung up the receiver and clenched her teeth to fight off the uncontrollable tremors in her face.
The door to the shack opened.
Mike smiled as Lisa entered. He was so happy to see her, he was willing to forget yesterday when she did not come.
“I have good news, Vassili,” Lisa said. “We are going into Athens tonight. We have made contact with someone about your departure.”
SEVEN
THEY LEFT THE PUMP HOUSE.
Mike walked beside Lisa toward the tram line and he was riddled with conflicting feelings. First there was the relief of his departure from the pump house. There was excitement at the thought of getting out of Greece, and there was a little sadness in the knowledge that he’d never see Lisa again. But uppermost in his mind were the same fears that had tormented him before the train ride from Dadi to Athens.
He had seen Lisa operate coldly and efficiently. He had seen her in a warm and friendly mood. But he had never seen her act in doubt. Now she was betraying too many signs of nervousness for his comfort.
The tram rolled into the northwest corner of Athens and continued down a broad road past the large grounds of the Ceramicus.
They got off on October Street and took off afoot in the general direction of Concord Square.
It was eight-thirty.
She held his arm and at that moment much of the doubt vanished. As they strolled he became terribly aware of her nearness.
A feeling came over him that he had not had in many many years. A feeling he thought he’d never have again. His memory telescoped backward in time some eighteen years. Now he was just a fellow with his girl taking a walk, nowhere in particular—just killing a day.
A walk in the flower-filled Golden Gate Park past the concourse where the band played. Or a walk toward the Memorial Stadium in Berkeley in the fresh nip of November air before the big game between Cal and Stanford.
It may have been a week-end hike in the hills of Marin over the Golden Gate Bridge or it may have been a lazy stroll past the sun bathers at Playland at the beach.
There would always be a girl beside him and he would feel good. He felt good now with Lisa beside him and he wondered why this feeling returned after so many years and in this foreign place.
Athens was depressing. Shops that once were bursting with goods were now bare. The people looked emaciated