Are You Sure...

From my front door I can see the tiny deserted settlement I have named Karvounari in this story. In reality it was abandoned in the 1950's and 1960's as it became more and more difficult to scrape a livelihood. The village I know grew a scant crop of barley for bread-making, and olives for oil. The name I have given, Karvounari, implies that it was a settlement of charcoal burners. I have tried to envisage what might have happened if, instead of emigrating to Australia and prospering, the people had stayed and got progressively poorer and more desperate.

My thanks to Coaster 2 for permission to continue his short story Christmas conversation. I admire his work, and feel it an honour to close some of the ends of a beautifully crafted, open-ended story. His story was set in Canada. It will be apparent that I know less than nothing about Canadian culture and speech. Sorry about that.

My thanks to Chilleywilley and Creative talent for editorial help.

Are you sure she wants rescuing?

In early April in the Southern Peloponnese, the sun rises a few minutes after six a.m., but in our location, tucked in the western foothills of the Tagetus mountain chain, the sun did not clear the hills above us until well after ten o'clock.

By six there was a faint pink blush visible in the sky to the east of us, tinting the tops of the mountains. It was time to move.

Sheila and I drained our coffee cups and strolled casually out of our room in the small apartment building.

At sunrise we were sitting in cover, under a wide, low fig tree, showing the tiny, hard "male" figs which would later drop and be replaced in the autumn by the luscious ripe fruit.

Our attention was focussed up the mountain side to the tiny village of Karvounari, high above us.

There seemed to be about ten or a dozen houses, in one row overhanging the valley, a shorter, gapped row above them, and, higher up, three isolated houses, apparently in ruins, with blank, open window embrasures, sagging roof-trees and patches of semi-cylindrical tiles missing from the roofs.

All the windows looking down into the valley were shuttered with faded blue louvered shutters, and the doors of the animal shelters that comprised the basement floors of the houses, were closed up tight.

At a quarter past seven we heard a motorcycle being kicked into life, and the muffled pop-pop of the little 50 cc engine. Chained-up dogs howled at the disturbance as the two young men I recognised from photographs; black bearded and ponytailed, in work boots and overalls, rode precariously down the precipitous dirt track over the bridge across the river and on into the sprawling small town on the side of the valley, half a mile from where we were concealed.

Overhead a buzzard soared on the thermals. her wide, long wings held in a shallow v shape to spill some of the updraft of the westerly wind rising up the mountain slope. Soon she would be laying her eggs, and she needed to seek out a succulent rat, or better still a hare to help her build her fat reserves for the hungry times ahead when she had ravenous nestlings to feed.

An hour later we watched two older men walk down the same track carrying large hoes, heading down towards the river where a strip of cultivated land on either bank could be kept watered from the river so that potatoes, beans, aubergines, onions, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers could be grown in the Spring and Summer months.

Their task for that day was to clear the water channels through which the life-giving water could travel to water the rows of vegetables that were so essential to life. Then the ground would be ploughed, or dug, and planted.

We could see them working steadily, smoking the inevitable roll-up cigarettes as they raked the narrow channels clear of silt. From time to time one of them raised his hoe to shoulder height and brought it down with a crack upon the hard, parched earth.

Up in the tiny village we could catch a couple of glimpses of elderly women in the ubiquitous black, with black headscarves tight around their withered faces. No children had come down the path to school, no young women came down the track to visit the shops or workshops of Panagia Despina, the small town where we were staying.

We watched for another hour in which nothing happened more remarkable than a hobbled milking goat moving haltingly across the steep slope, browsing on the sweet young wild fennel plants amongst the grass, lush from the winter rains, that would so soon be parched and brown in the sparse, sun-scorched soil.

We had seen enough for one morning. Sheila and I got up, stretched and made our way through the trees, back to the kafeneio for coffee.

*****

We were sharing a room, as we had insisted upon doing from early childhood whenever we could spend any time together. I was brought up in Winnipeg by my Canadian father, Sheila in West Bridgford, Nottingham by her English mother. We were sister and brother, and until I met and married Leni Sheila was the only person I loved in the whole world.

Our parents split up, acrimoniously, when Sheila was seven and I was four. My father, Pat Melrose returned to his native Canada with Kirsty, his new lover, taking me, willy-nilly, in his baggage. Our mother, Sue stayed in England, moving back close to her mother and sisters and resuming her maiden name of Salter. We children were heartbroken at being separated, unable to come to terms with what was happening.

Happily for our sanity, as a part of the divorce settlement, our parents had agreed that alternative summers, Sheila would come to me in Canada, or I would go to her in England; and on alternate Christmases we would travel the other way. We children came under pretty heavy pressure from our parents to let this arrangement drop, but we knew that if we insisted hard enough we would get our time together.

We insisted, using all the scant tools of tears and sulks that we had to deploy. We had our summers and Christmases together right up until the time that I left school for University. By then we understood that our insistence had cost both our parents dear, not in money - our father could easily afford it - but by keeping the raw wounds of a failed, doomed marriage open for fifteen long years.

*****

Six months after we got married, Eleni had disappeared so abruptly and unaccountably the previous Autumn, I had walked around blindly in a state of bleak despair until Christmas. Then a chance meeting turned my thoughts around. (see Christmas Conversation by Coaster 2). Afterwards I felt strangely comforted, and over the next day or two I found I was developing an intense curiosity about what had broken up our marriage, and if the wounds in my heart could be healed.

Among the little that I knew, I was aware that the uncle and aunt she had been living with when we met, had left Winnipeg as suddenly and abruptly as she had. Maybe that could be a starting point.

I was astounded, numbed with shock, when, one evening, when I returned from work, she broke our marriage wide apart with her demand for immediate divorce. Half an hour later she was gone. Once she left that evening, she didn't return to the flat, even to collect her belongings.

Without, apparently, stopping even to initiate divorce proceedings, she was gone from the apartment and out of my life. Since then I had heard nothing from her or whatever attorney she might have contacted. Her credit and debit cards had had not been used, and her bank accounts showed no new transactions, other than the deposit of a final month's salary.

Naturally I went first to her office and asked if they had a forwarding address. The personnel lady explained that, far from having a forwarding address, they had no idea why she had suddenly stopped going in to work without a word.

They had called her cell phone a dozen times over the next few days, and even phoned her aunt's house, which was still her registered address. Then they had parcelled up her personal belongings and deposited the balance of salary outstanding into her bank account.

The personnel officer was relieved when I offered to take Leni's personal effects away, and she handed me a cardboard box and a shopping bag. That evening I examined everything obsessively, as if a box of tissues or a tube of throat lozenges might carry some clue. Not a glimmer.

So I did what I do when I need help. I called my sister.

"Sheila. Hi, it's Kirk. Got time to talk?"

"Kirk, lovey, good to hear from you at last. You've been so out of it for the last couple of months, that I'd decided that I am coming out to sort you out as soon as I can get free for a week or so. So sorry about Leni...It must be heartbreaking for you."

"It's been rough, but I'm finally trying to shake myself out of it. What I'm doing now is trying to find out what happened. Why did she just break up with me and go off so suddenly. I'd 'a sworn that she was really happy with me."

"So what now lovey? Are you coming to me, or shall I come to you?"

"I'd love to see you, and we must get together soon, but I wonder if you can pull some strings with your ex-service pals? I really need to see if I can find Leni and her aunt and uncle. I don't know about them, but I really don't think she's in Canada. Can you scratch around and see if you can find out something?"

"Course I can ducks. Give me what you know."

"Her aunt and uncle are Jimmy and Poppy Georgopoulos. I suppose his Greek name would be Dimitri, and hers would be Kalliopi Georgopoulou. They lived at 114, Ellice Avenue, Sargent Park in Winnipeg. They moved out on or around the 11th. October; the same time as Eleni. Eleni was still registered at that address at work, so that's your best chance of finding her."

Perhaps I should explain why I was loading all this on Sheila. I am a computer programmer; I write Java code for a specialist software company who design interactive sites for mail-order businesses. I am tall and well-built because at College I was a competitive butterfly stroke swimmer, but I lead a sedentary life, and wouldn't hurt a fly.

Maybe Sheila wouldn't hurt a fly either, but people is another question altogether.

At the age of eight, very soon after our parents split up for good, she was attracted to martial arts, and demanded that her mother signed her up for aikido classes at the local youth centre. From there she went on to judo, karate, kendo and Thai kickboxing. By her mid-teens she was in the judo team in the Commonwealth Games and she had an international reputation. Mother pushed her to take A levels and try for university, but Sheila got a better offer from the Army, and joined up.

She became, officially a Physical training instructor specialised in unarmed combat. In reality she spent a couple of years in training for the Army and Combined Services teams. To give her breadth and versatility she trained herself close to Olympic standard in the modern pentathlon, becoming a crack pistol shot and fencer.

Our lives had diverged, but our love for each other was the one constant in both of our lives. Every year we had holidays together somewhere, and whenever she competed internationally (pretty well every year) I would take the opportunity to cheer her on from the sidelines. So I knew a whole lot of her army pals, male and female, and I knew that there was little they couldn't find out if the need arose.

Six weeks later Sheila reported back. Jimmy and Poppy had put their furniture in store and were living across the border in Detroit. Sheila flew over and, the following Sunday we called upon them unannounced and uninvited. Jimmy was clearly horrified to see us but ingrained Greek hospitality and courtesy made him welcome us in.

"Kirk. And Sheila isn't it? We met at Kirk's wedding last Summer. Welcome to our home." All this came out at a gabble as he stood there with parchment-white face and trembling knees.

We went through to the lounge before Jimmy could slow us down.

When Poppy saw us her legs gave way and she collapsed onto a chair and burst into noisy tears. We stood there helpless as her husband tried to comfort her.

We tried our best to dismiss their fears, but, I suppose when we appeared the damage was done.

Dimitri explained what little he knew,

"Takis and Leftheris just turned up and told us that we had forty-eight ours to get out of Winnipeg and cover our tracks. You don't know them Kirk, they are truly terrifying people, and when they said that they would kill us if we stayed, we believed them, no question."

"Their father was a thug working for the secret police at the time of the Colonels and they disappeared people who did not do what they said. That whole family had a dirty fascist past from right back before the Civil War. Everyone was a afraid of the father, and the boys were no better. Takis would kill us as soon as look at us if we caused him problems, and his brother is not much better."

They had little more to tell us. They guessed that Leni had been taken back to Greece, very possibly against her will, but they did not know anything for sure.

Ten days later we had some positive news. Leni had left the country by scheduled flight the day after she broke the news to me. She was ticketed through Thessaloniki to Kalamata. She was accompanied by two young men. When I was shown the images from the surveillance cameras I recognised them as her cousins Takis and Leftheris. I thought I vaguely remembered them from our wedding, but they were clearly recognisable from some of Leni's old family photographs, left behind when she fled.

"We'll have to go and rescue her," was my immediate, unconsidered response.

"Are you sure she wants rescuing?" was Sheila's cautious response.

"Only one way to find out."

*****

Later we watched Karvounari for a couple of hours twilight hours and saw nothing worthy of notice. It was six months since Leni had disappeared, and we could see no reason to suspect that our presence had been detected.

The second morning was much like the first. We lay still and without a sound, our outlines blurred by a square of camouflage netting. We were so inconspicuous that a small red fox, no larger than a domestic cat, strolled insouciantly by within a dozen feet of us. Sheila said later that this invisibility to the natural world was the test of a good obbo.

On the fourth morning we got a sighting. The door of one of the houses swung open and a plump, tottering two-year-old waddled out and headed with suicidal boldness right for the ten foot drop off the edge of the terrace.

A white-faced Leni appeared, dressed in black blouse and blue jeans, with the obligatory headscarf clutched tight around her face. She snatched up the tiny girl and carried her, howling with rage, back into the house. It looked as if one of the old grandmothers dragged her the last step into the house and slammed the door behind her. She was there!

The following day Sheila and I broke off our observation and took a ten kilometre hike across some very harsh scrubby mountain terrain with the most ferocious thorns I have ever encountered. At the end of it, she had navigated us to a point directly above the village. We crouched out of sight, just above the margin of cultivation and watched the settlement below.

The three houses five hundred metres below us were clearly abandoned. From here we could see great gaping holes in the roofs where the roof members had rotted through. Never mind - one of the buildings would serve our purpose.

But we now knew that we could arrive and escape undetected up until the last couple of hundred yards. Darkness would add an extra element of difficulty, but it could be done. The gig was on. As to whether or not she would agree to go with us; Leni could answer for herself.

*****

After our journey to the summit of the mountain above Karvounari, Sheila insisted that we check our of our rented room and drive right away.

"Anyone can go unnoticed in a city", she explained, "but a remote rural area is another thing altogether. No stranger goes unobserved, and no action goes unexamined. There's no reason to think Leni's family know we are here, but we can't afford to take a chance. We have to up sticks and leave the area, until we are ready to move. Two days should do it, I reckon."

*****

"Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted," the Duke of Wellington is reported as saying in his characteristic, laconic, understated way. He knew of what he spoke. Two days later we drove to Areopoli and returned our rented Hyundai. We told the car rental agent that we wanted his oldest, scruffiest jeep or pickup to do some serious off-road exploring. Reluctantly he produced a ten-year-old soft-top Suzuki Samurai which, he explained was usually rented by hunters.

Later as the sun was going down we drove our jeep as far up the dirt tracks as it could go, turned it around for a quick departure moved it into the cover of scrubby holm oak bushes. We started out to get above the village under cover of dusk.

It gets dark quickly in this latitude, compared with either Canada or England so we could not afford to waste any time. Half an hour later we had walked the two kilometres to the edge of the garrigue, with the olive terraces below us. A long wait and watch, and Sheila gave the signal to move.

Like yachts tacking, we walked carefully and silently down in long diagonals to get to the abandoned houses on the upper level of the village. A door pushed open easily and we found a room with a rough dirt floor studded with jagged rocks, half full of old, rotting olive nets and old wicker baskets from the days of donkey transport. There was no reason for this place to be visited for months, or even years. With the front windows still shuttered, we could even light a torch with impunity.

We settled down to wait until after midnight. Meanwhile Sheila gave me an intense briefing.

"Kirk, lovey, when we get to the level with the house on it, I want you to go round to the back of the house and wait until you hear me go in. I'll make lots of noise. You stop anyone getting out, and come in as soon as you can to give me support. OK?"

"Yes, that's fine, but what about the dogs?"

"Don't worry about the dogs. It's the same old story. People keep dogs to give them warning of strangers, but then they disregard what the poor beasts are trying to tell them. People are so stupid, you wouldn't believe."

"Sheila, I am afraid I shan't be much use to you when it comes to the rough stuff. I haven't been in a fight since I was nine years old"

She produced a black tube about eight or nine inches long, and handed it to me.

"I brought this along for you. It's a spring-loaded, telescopic baton. Hold the handle with the closed end in your palm, and flick it sharply downwards."

I did as she said, and a long silver spring shot out of the handle, making the whole baton over two feet in length. Its balance changed dramatically and I was surprised at how it suddenly felt heavier in my hand.

"Hit someone with that and, believe me it hurts like fuck. You don't have to hit hard with it; just let its own weight do the job. Don't hit at the head or neck unless you want to kill somebody. Strike downwards to the shoulders and you'll paralyse the arms. Sideways to the arms or legs. Here, try hitting these old olive nets. That's right, short firm blows. Good, you've got it."

When I was satisfied I drove the tip into the ground to push the spring back into the handle and dropped it into the leg pocket of my camouflage trousers. I was fighting hard to control my fear, but at the same time I was confident that I could keep calm, avoid going off half-cocked, and, if necessary, make use of a powerful weapon.

In the little settlement below, all light and movement seemed to have ceased soon after ten o'clock. We waited in silence, illuminated only by a pocket torch. Finally, at around 2 a.m., the moment came. Sheila turned off the torch, plunging the room into darkness.