Front Matter

Tragedy and Wrath (In the shadows of exile)

A selection of Short Stories

By Stoian Kochov

(Translated from Macedonian to English and edited by Risto Stefov)

Tragedy and Wrath

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June 11, 2016

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THE RECEPTION

For a long time I did not want to think about the fifties. Even now the word “fifties” torments me. It takes my thoughts along a terrible path and brings back memories of terrifying moments. I wanted to forget that word, to drive it out of my mind because until then our mothers and women died of natural causes in bed, of various diseases and of old age. Many died during childbirth or wilted away in poverty. But after that more died from broken marriages. For most, their thoughts dried up on foreign shores thinking of their husbands and children.

For years now I have found peace in the Australian bush, cutting “Jerry” trees with a sharp ax, with rage, until exhaustion, because my mind gets flooded with memories of the reception, which pushes me to the brink of destruction, to get revenge, which does not subside but brings back more of the same memories.

And now I remember...

My father and I came to the reception. Both dressed in our best clothing, we made sure to arrive early to the crossing station which was secured by guards. The air was still, there was no breeze blowing.

It was dark. There was not a single star shining up in the sky and nothing was visible, not even what was growing from the ground. “Perhaps the stars have disappeared?” I muttered to myself. But soon enough dawn broke and a breeze began to blow from Lerin, wheeling clouds in our direction. At one point I began to count the clouds. I counted a fair number of them but then I was distracted. I began to see colours.

Not too far away from us we heard someone crying. It was a man, firmly wrapped up in his long coat. We slowly approached him as he watched us with a merciful look on his face.

“Over there is the dead zone... only up to here. I too am waiting… like a dog that has been driven away… They hound us like we are

vermin and are driving us away… and from where? From our own homes!” he said.

The man spoke, asked questions and then answered them himself. I kept looking at him and kept thinking that if only my father spoke to him, but my father was overwhelmed and kept squeezing my hand, tighter and tighter, as if wanting to tell me something… When the darkness began to disappear we saw a human figure appear in the distance. And as the image became clearer we noticed that it was a woman. She walked sternly and kept looking at us. We waited quietly looking confident as we received an official letter from the Lerin authorities declaring that my mother’s return was approved and that she was allowed to return immediately!

This is what the letter underscored in Greek “...after a personal request was made...”

After that my father took me out of the children’s evening camp where he had taken me a while earlier, bathed me in a portable tub and dressed me in my best clothes. He then combed and parted my thick hair. I had lived without parents for four years and I was not looking forward to this. I had forgotten my parents. All I remember was what I was told about my mother; that she was taken by the Greeks and punished on account of my father being a participant in the Macedonian army.

Now we came to the reception where the two of us waited for my mother to arrive; who my father kept describing all this time.

“There she is…” yelled my father excitedly when he saw a silhouette of a woman.

“She is Lena... Lena, I can tell from her walk… it is her... your mother…” he yelled. I felt chills run down my spine… I tried hard to remember her… but I could not remember her at all.

I was very young, a baby, when they took my mother away from our home and deported her to the island Leros. I was told that there was no one to breastfeed me.

All of a sudden my father stopped.

“No! That can’t be Lena?” he muttered with uncertainty in his voice.

The woman came closer. She walked reluctantly with small, painful and unsure steps. She was holding documents in her left hand and a bag in her right. The bag was stuffed with all her belongings; everything she owned in her life… and nothing else.

“Lena!!!” cried my father reluctantly, still unsure if it was her or not. She was coming towards us, closer and closer… She was silent… She did not answer… Her hair was cut and her clothes were frayed. She was wearing military boots tied with colourful laces.

I lifted my hand with a strong desire to greet her, but when I saw her expressionless look gazing at me I quickly dropped my arm back down like someone had hit it with a stick.

After seeing how she looked at me I wanted no part of her...

My father was expecting me to run to my birth mother and plunge into her embrace. He was expecting me to do that… with great desire... He wanted me to do that and probably died with great sorrow that I didn’t…

“Lena!!!” he again cried out. She suddenly stopped… She looked dazed.

She was closer now and my father was certain that it was her.

“This is Lena!” he said, this time with confidence.

At that very moment he let go of my hand and walked toward her. I was left all alone… Neither I nor my mother moved. We were both silent and still. My father and she were looking into each others eyes, just a few steps apart from one another. But when I thought that she would break the distance, run back into my father’s arms and speak to him, she looked away and stepped forward obeying the orders given by the Greek guards who were shouting, “Embros!

Embros!” (Forward! Forward!). She then reluctantly and apathetically moved away with suspicion.

My father was very upset… She was only steps away from him when she walked away.

The woman turned her head and gazed at my father. She stopped walking and looked back while firmly holding onto her papers. She stretched out her arm… as if wanting to give him the papers. The whole episode looked like a business transaction… This is how it was when a prisoner crossed from one prison camp to another.

She suddenly took a step back and stared at my father with her expressionless blue eyes. After that she began to weep. Tears rolled down her elongated face like a torrent. She was a tortured person and found it impossible to trust anyone no matter how kind they appeared. I don’t know if at that very moment she said to herself: “How dare you abandon me and let me live in hell all these years…?”

But we will never know because she had no voice. She had lost her voice while being tortured… she had also lost her ability to bear children… she would never have children like her predecessors did, who multiplied and grew in numbers… She was going to die an unnatural death.

The man wearing the long black coat, who had drifted towards me, at that moment asked me if I wanted to be looked after. He said:

“And this is what is left of us…” but before he could finish what he was saying, the guard calling “Embros” began to clap his hands, as if he wanted everyone’s attention. When he got our attention he waved us to go away, to leave Greece now; he kept yelling “Eksondosi! Eksondosi!” (Get lost! Get lost!).

“And to where should we get lost… eh dog?! Where are you chasing us from? From our own homes…?!” the man yelled back. The guard continued to clap his hands forcing us to clear out, letting us know that he was done with us.

The man’s face had turned red. Clearly he was upset, furious, he was struggling with something that was bothering him, tormenting him, deep inside. He looked like a beaten up beast that was out for revenge.

On the way back to Skopje he told us a story about his children who were forcibly taken away from him by the Greek royal authorities, by Queen Frederica who turned them into janissaries. In the meantime he and his wife had been looking for them for many years.

Seeing how I was watching my mother and the worried look I had on my face, the man whispered to me saying: “They have tortured her a lot! She has survived the most terrible treatment under the poorest conditions imaginable!”

The next day I was taken back to the children’s camp so that I could continue living my “happy” childhood. But my mother died on February 5th; I remember them carrying her in the snow.

My frail father, now feeling very emotional, embraced me, pressed my head against his black shirt and sorrowfully clutched my hand. That day, for the first time, he looked like an old man. He was crying at the funeral.

It was a cold foggy day. The children from the camp walked behind the coffin. Many of my parents’ friends and co-fighters attended.

There were many flowers on top of the coffin and my mother looked very beautiful.

I cried when we started dropping handfuls of soil, one after another, on top of the casket as it was being lowered into the ground...