Eleni by Nicholas Gage Page B

all the responsibility for the children in a world overshadowed by the threat of war. Then he kissed her again and was gone, mounting the lead mule with an agility surprising in a man of his bulk.
    She was lonely and irrationally afraid, like a child who senses something terrible lurking in the darkness. She didn’t cry. She only waved at the departing figure of her husband.
    As the mule approached the first bend in the road, Christos turned around in the saddle to look back. All he could see of Eleni were two white spots made by her apron and her face. It was the last time he would ever see her.
    The exodus to the caves took place almost two years after the day Christos left Eleni, neither of them suspecting that there was a new life growing in Eleni’s womb. During that time the impending war that Nassios thought would be good for business had grown into a tidal wave which had alreadyinundated Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France. Now it had spilled over the tops of the Mourgana mountains into Greece.
    After two days of being crowded into the caves, the villagers grew short-tempered and food supplies ran out. Some women ventured down to their homes to make fresh bread, then returned with the news that the Italians had advanced no closer than the distant ridges of Plokista and the village of Povla, and seemed uninterested in crossing the foothills to scale the mountains.
    Apprehensively, the villagers returned to their homes. Life settled into a tense normalcy, although Eleni left her treasures hidden in the oak tree, and the old men of the village who were not away on their annual working journeys or fighting in the army cleaned their hunting rifles.
    A few days later a small patrol of Italian soldiers arrived in Lia, guided by local Chams, including Mourtos the mule driver. The Italians were polite to the terrified villagers as they searched their houses for weapons.
    When the patrol was leaving the gate of the Gatzoyiannis house, Eleni pulled Mourtos aside and asked him for news of the war. The young Turk whom Christos called his friend turned on her with a look of triumphant hatred. “The Italians have promised to make all of Epiros, as far as Preveza, part of Albania, as Allah willed it,” he said. “Moslems will rule here as before. The Italians will be in Preveza tonight, and in Athens by the end of the month!”
    Both Mourtos and Mussolini were disappointed in their expectations of an easy victory. Fourteen miles inside the Greek border, the Italians were stopped for days by a ragged army of soldiers in mismatched uniforms and shepherds’ cloaks. Outnumbered two to one, the Greeks astonished the Italian generals with their courage and the accuracy of their artillery, although they had only six mortars for each division against the invaders’ sixty.
    An early and bitter winter fought on the Greek side. Freezing rains flooded the Kalamas River, which cuts off the northwestern corner of Greece, turning it into an impassable yellow torrent, clogged by dead animals and the rubble of blown-up bridges. In the pass above Metsovo called Katara (“the Curse”) Italy’s proud Alpinists of the Julia Division became victims of the white death, which turned their legs and feet black and swollen like potatoes.
    They rubbed mud on their shiny black-plumed helmets, which seemed to draw the Greek mortar shells. They slept in the yellow mud, their once white puttees sodden and heavy. They urinated on their frozen fingers and learned to crack open the skulls of the donkeys dying of exhaustion and use the steaming brains for warmth. In the end, 12,368 Italians returned home mutilated by frostbite, 13,755 were buried in the mud of Greece, and another 25,067 were missing.
    Within a month of the invasion, the Greeks drove the Italians back intoAlbania and kept on going. On the morning of November 21, the villagers of Lia saw the denouement of the Italian campaign taking place in the hills below them.
    Greek troops