Read Online Fugitive pieces by Anne Michaels - Free Book Online

the ground and suck dry whatever was left.”
    “They drove their trucks to the Acropolis and took tourist photos of each other in front of the Parthenon.”
    “Athos, they turned our Athens into a city of beggars. In ‘41, when it snowed so much, no one had coal or wood. People wrapped blankets around themselves and stood in Omonia Square and just waited there for help. Women with infants …”
    “Once, after the Germans loaded up a train at Larissa, a patriot decided to liberate the cargo. The train exploded as it pulled out of the station. Oranges and lemons flew, raining into the streets. A glorious sweet smell mixed with the smell of gunpowder. Balconies glistened, lemon juice dripped in the sunlight¡ For days after, people found an orange in the crook of a statue, in the pocket of a shirt hanging to dry. Someone found a dozen lemons under a car—
    “Like eggs under a hen.”
    … I saw my father and Mrs. Alperstein shake hands and I wondered if they had traded smells and if all the shoes would smell like flowers and all the wigs like shoes.
    “Our neighbour Aleko revived a man in the middle of Kolonaki with a bowl of milk. Aleko himself didn’t even have a piece of bread to share. But soon when people collapsed in the street they didn’t get up again, they simply starved to death.”
    “Kostas and I heard stories of whole families being killed for a case of currants or a sack of flour.”
    “We heard of a man who was standing early one evening in Omonia Square. Another man rushed up to him, carrying a parcel, ‘Quick, quick,’ he said, ? have fresh lamb, but I must sell right away, I need to buy a train ticket to return home to my wife.’ The idea of fresh lamb … fresh lamb¡ … was too much for the man on the corner, who thought of his own wife and their wedding supper and all the meals they took for granted before the war. The good tastes he remembered chased all other thoughts from his head and he reached into his pocket. He paid a large sum, all he had. Lamb was worth it¡ And the man hurried away in the direction of the train station. The man on the corner rushed off in the opposite direction, straight home. ? have a surprise!’ he shouted, and handed his wife the parcel. Open it in the kitchen.’ Excited, they stood over the bundle of newspaper and his wife cut the string. Inside they found a dead dog.”
    “Athos, you are a brother to Kostas and me. You have known us many years. Who could believe we would ever have such words in our mouths?”
    “When the British were still here, we managed to find things. A little margarine, a bit of coffee, sugar, sometimes a little beef¡ … But when the Germans came, they even stole cows about to calve and slaughtered both the mother and child. They ate the mother and threw away the child….”
    Daphne touched Kostas’s arm to stop him, inclining her head in my direction.
    “Kostas, it’s too terrible.”
    “Daphne and I cheered, ‘Englezakia!’ as the English bombs fell in our streets, even as the smoke turned the sky black above Piraeus and sirens screamed and the house shook.”
    “Even I learned to recognize which planes were theirs and which were English. Stukas shriek. They’re silver and dive like swallows —”
    “And drop their bombs like shit.”
    “Kostas,” chided Daphne, “not in front of Jakob.”
    “He’s sleeping.”
    “No I’m not!”
    “Since Daphne won’t let me swear in front of you, Jakob, though you’ve seen so much it’s only right you should know how to swear, I’ll tell you instead that war can turn even an ordinary man into a poet. I’ll tell you what I thought the day they abused the city with their swastikas: At sunrise the Parthenon is flesh. In moonlight it is bones.”
    “Jakob and I have read Palamas together.”
    “Then, Jakob, pedhi-mou, you know Palamas is our most beloved poet. When Palamas died, right in the middle of the war, we followed another poet, Sikelianos, in his long black cape