Goat Fever

The village of Mikro Hori, near Karpenisi, is locally renowned for its clear water and beautiful girls. One of the village's brightest jewels was Marianthi Antonopoula, a delicate girl with thick taffy-colored hair. Marianthi now recalls that she hated the "monarcho-fascist" enemies of the "people's democracy." Also, she yearned for adventure and romance. One day, a year ago, she left the village and sought out a battalion of guerrillas who had taken over a nearby monastery.

Rings on His Fingers. This band was led by a capetanios named Papouas, a onetime physical culture student in Athens who had joined ELAS during the German occupation. Papouas boasted that he had been a scourge of Thessaly and Roumelia for seven years. The name Papouas was a pseudonym--taken, he said, from a primitive tribe whose members wore rings on their fingers and toes and in their noses. Papouas had many rings, but he wore them only on his hands.

Marianthi's first talk with Papouas was interrupted by an enemy air raid. Side by side they dropped behind a boulder for shelter. It was love.

As one of the simmoritissai (girl guerrillas), Marianthi soon saw that she had a preferred position as Papouas' girl. Because the guerrillas did not like their girl fighters to be incapacitated by pregnancy, a decree of celibacy had been proclaimed. But Papouas and Marianthi seemed to be exempt. The simmoritissai who obeyed the celibacy rule looked at Marianthi askance--or, as the Greek saying goes, with "half an eye"--but they dared not criticize her to her face.

So that she might have milk, Papouas got Marianthi a goat, and also acquired the services of an orderly to milk and tend the animal. Marianthi knew that many simmoritissai who were sick, wounded, or burdened by babies had been left to die or be taken by the enemy; but she thought that such things could never happen to her.

Raid on the Village. When she was five months pregnant, Marianthi and Papouas asked their chieftain for permission to marry. He answered: "When ships are sinking, it is no time to talk of weddings." Later, however, he consented. The wedding was celebrated with a raid on a village, feasting, singing and dancing. Marianthi, of course, did not dance, but she was moved by the strains of her favorite song: "Ossa sidera o Truman na rixi nikitis thane panto, o laos" (However much iron Truman throws in, the people will always be victorious).

Then came a desperate week of marching and hiding. There was almost no food. The goat fell sick, and then Marianthi and Papouas fell sick. The doctor said angrily that they had caught a fever from the goat. Papouas was captured by the enemy, and Marianthi, disheartened and dizzy with fever, gave herself up.

In Larissa, a Greek army court sentenced Papouas and Marianthi to death. When her husband was taken out of the long whitewashed room, Marianthi knew she would never see him again. Last week Marianthi sat in a whitewashed cell, remembering, brooding, waiting for death.

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