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Odyssey of Chaos
Odyssey of Chaos
Odyssey of Chaos
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Odyssey of Chaos

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With the Gestapo pounding on every door, no Jew in Athens is safe. Theo Kantos, a dress shop owner, has a desperate choice to make if he is to save his family. Does he trust the most despicable man he knows to hide them? Or does he place the lives of those he loves in the hands of a communist? And what does he do about his obstinate brother who always has to have the last word? SIX CONTEMPORARY SHORT STORIES follow the title novella. All are about dramatic events and choices that alter the course of lives and form who we are.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateFeb 27, 2017
ISBN9781370610433
Odyssey of Chaos
Author

Alan Fleishman

Today my wife Ann and I live with our Siberian cat, Pasha, high on a hill overlooking San Francisco Bay. Prior to beginning my writing career, I was a marketing consultant, senior corporate executive, university adjunct faculty, corporate board member, community volunteer, and an officer in the U.S. Army. Then at a time when most people are retiring, I began this new vocation as a novelist. Here's how it happened. My father Ben was born in the Ukraine amidst the worst of the Russian Tsar's bloody 1905 anti-Jewish riots - pogroms. Shortly after, my grandfather Max escaped with his family to America. A hundred years later, I returned to the Ukraine. I paid my respects at a tombstone honoring the victims of the 1905 pogroms and stood in the square where the Nazis in 1941 rounded up thousands of Jews and marched them off to be executed. Had my grandparents not left Russia when they did, I might well have died in a square just like that one. My yearning to connect with these grandparents I never knew arose in those moments. Writing novels seemed to be the only means for me to satisfy that passion. This led to my first book, Goliath's Head, then to A Fine September Morning, and finally to Lara's Shadow. I was more than a little surprised by the excellent reception to each of my novels. The wide audience of readers were a mix of both Jews and non-Jews keenly interested in the chronicles of Twentieth Century Jews, from persecution to tragedy to triumph. Most were from the United States, but a significant number came from many other parts of the world too. With the same passion born of gratitude, my latest book, Odyssey of Chaos, turns attention to my maternal grandparents. They came to America from Greece in the early Twentieth Century. However, most of my grandmother's family stayed behind, ultimately settling in Athens. That's where they were when the Germans invaded Greece in 1941 and occupied their city and country. Odyssey of Chaos tells the story of Jews caught in Nazi-occupied Athens, the Christian Greeks who tried to save them, and those who betrayed them. So many stories have been told of the Holocaust that we have become numb to the horror of it. So why write another one? Because for me, it's personal. My Greek cousins were among the handful of Greek Jews who survived. Some cousins were hidden in a cellar by a shepherd, aided by their Christian friends. Other cousins joined the partisans fighting the Germans. And some perished in Auschwitz. Nearly ninety percent of Greece's Jews were lost to the tragedy, the highest percentage in any country. Resurrecting the trials my family endured has not always been easy. But writing brings me enormous satisfaction. Big rewards come when I give a presentation and see how people react, or I receive a piece of fan mail or get a good reader review. Every reader brings a little bit of his or her own unique person to the reading and interpretation of a novel. They see the books I write through their own eyes and experiences, not mine. Their appreciation keeps me plugging away, trying to get better at it. Thank you.

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    Odyssey of Chaos - Alan Fleishman

    ODYSSEY

    OF CHAOS

    - A novella -

    Monday, March 13,

    1944 - 9:45 a.m.

    Perhaps Moses should be telling this story, but I think not. Everyone in it, even the Jews, is a Greek first. So I will be the one to tell it. It has an ending much like many of our Greek fables, though Shakespeare might insist it is copied from him. Nonsense.

    On this one cold, wet March morning in 1944, Theo Kantos turned onto Ermou Street. Just as he did every morning, he shielded his eyes from the Acropolis high above, where the huge, humiliating Nazi flag flapped in the biting wind. German troops raised it on the day they entered Athens three years earlier at the start of the occupation. The sight of that swastika right next to the Parthenon sent a shudder slithering through Theo’s slender body.

    He made up his mind to have it out today with his older brother, Solomon. Danger stalked every Jew in Athens now more than ever. The two of them had to find a place to hide their families, and he wasn’t going to listen to any more of Solomon’s procrastination.

    When he walked into the dress shop, only the gray light through the big front window illuminated the inside. He flicked on the switch for the chandeliers overhead, and then hung his overcoat and hat on the brass coat tree near the front door. Solomon was putting a new dress on a hanger. Actually, it wasn’t new. New dresses were scarce as chickens’ eggs since the war started. These were worn garments women sold or traded for someone else’s worn garments. Their shop, one of the few in Athens selling ready-made dresses, was a shadow of its fashionable past. Today dresses occupied only half of the store, the other half displaying everything from used pots and pans to tarnished silver candelabras, or anything else that might make a little extra money. The smell of mildew suggested a deteriorated warehouse, particularly on such a dreary day.

    Before the war, Theo and Solomon made a handsome living. They shared the profits equally, though their father left one percent more of the ownership to Solomon than to Theo so the older brother always had the final say in all decisions. Solomon was the wise one, the strong one. Theo followed even when he disagreed, usually showing his objection only by his silence. Solomon rarely noticed.

    This time was different. Gestapo agents now arrested anyone suspected of being a Jew, their tactics ever-more clever and unscrupulous. They snatched children from Hebrew school and then arrested the parents when they came to claim them. The sole kosher butcher and the kosher bakery became nectar to draw the bees. At roadblocks, Nazi troops would speak some Hebrew or Ladino words to see if they drew a smidgen of recognition. A few Jewish men disappeared without explanation, their families left to the agony of not knowing what happened to them.

    The lives of Solomon’s family were as much at stake as Theo’s. He had to make Solomon see that. He approached his brother cautiously, measuring how to bring up the touchy subject.

    So, does the synagogue have any Passover matzo yet? Solomon greeted him.

    I forgot to check, Theo said, immediately defensive.

    Forgot? How can you forget matzo for Passover? Solomon peered over the top of his horned-rimmed glasses, scolding.

    Things are getting worse. We have to talk about an escape plan.

    Again you want to talk about this nonsense? The Germans are losing. It won’t be long now.

    Solomon’s assertion was premature, but nonetheless not entirely wrong. The Russians crushed the Germans at Stalingrad and pushed them back into the Ukraine. The Americans and British pushed them out of Africa. Then the Italians surrendered last September and deposed Mussolini. That was not entirely good news because, when the Italians surrendered, the Nazis took control of Athens from them.

    Sometimes I think you’re the only Jew in Athens who doesn’t know we’re being hunted, Theo said.

    It wasn’t so bad when the Italians were running things, Solomon said. He shrugged as if to dismiss the change as a minor annoyance.

    This SS General they put in charge, Stroop. He’s the bastard who liquidated the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. Theo’s voice quivered a little. Massacred them all.

    The older brother gave the younger brother a patronizing pat on the shoulder. Remember what our father used to say: He who becomes a sheep is eaten by wolves. So don’t be a frightened sheep.

    Stroop’s pressing every Christian in the city to identify at least one Jew.

    We’re Greeks first, then Jews. The Christians aren’t going to turn us in. As if to contradict him, just then a police car raced past the store, its high-low siren wailing.

    Solomon stroked his bushy, grey-speckled mustache, paused, and then walked over to the cash register behind the glass-topped jewelry counter. He opened the drawer and began counting the money. Theo followed him.

    Drachmas, Solomon spit. The way prices are going up you can’t even buy a loaf of day-old bread for two million of them.

    Theo pressed on. General Stroop ordered Rabbi Barzilai to turn over the list he kept of every Jew in Athens. Instead, he went back to the synagogue and destroyed it. Stroop would have killed him, but the partisans hustled Barzilai out of Athens. They’ve hidden him somewhere.

    Leaving us to take care of ourselves. Some rabbi. The ash from Solomon’s cigarette dribbled onto his rumpled white shirt.

    Better than having the Gestapo torture him. They say it’s dangerous to go to synagogue. German agents are watching, making a new list.

    The bell on the front door tinkled and their first customer of the day walked in, a gray-haired woman in a frayed coat carrying a large canvas bag. Solomon smushed out his cigarette in the brass ashtray and then went to take care of her. Theo busied himself cleaning Solomon’s fingerprints off the top of the glass counter top.

    Father would have cried, he thought as he surveyed the current state of the business. He left the two brothers an elegant, thriving dress shop, one he spent his whole life building. He named it Anna’s, after their dear mother. Two years before he died, he insisted they remodel it. Theo was the one with the artistic talent, so he let his younger son take the lead. They installed fine polished light oak floors and painted the walls and ceiling stark white, except for one exposed cross beam which they painted a blue the color of the waters of Santorini.

    When they were all done, Father insisted they hang a large simply-framed picture of King George II on a wall near the front door. It still hung there, a token defiance of the Nazis. Next to it hung a smaller picture of their mother, Anna. Theo had removed the picture of the dictator, Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas, soon after he died in January 1941. He may have been a dictator, but he did lead the overmatched Greek army to the miraculous defeat of the first Italian invasion. The German blitzkrieg followed in April, supported by the Bulgarians, and the Italians again. Zeus could not protect his country and Athena could not protect her city from the onslaught. In less than thirty days, Greece surrendered and King George escaped into exile along with retreating Greek and British troops. The gods cursed and goddesses wept the day German jackboots paraded for the first time in front of the royal palace on Syntagma Square.

    The bell on the front door tinkled again when the stoop-shouldered older woman left carrying no more than what she walked in with. Solomon had to explain to her that they could not buy any more used clothes. They already had too much. He didn’t want to mention they also possessed little remaining money with which to buy anything. He offered to trade her, but she demurred, still hoping to raise some cash elsewhere. Solomon suggested she try the dress store on the other side of Ermou Street, the one owned by their competitor, Panos Perakis.

    Theo prepared to resume their discussion, but Solomon walked off to the back of the store. Theo followed him. Solomon lit another cigarette and busied himself re-arranging a stack of wool sweaters. We should move these to the front of the store, he said. It’s still cold enough to maybe sell a few.

    There are rumors the Gestapo rounded up all of the Jews in Salonika, Theo said. The Salonika Jews were mostly Sephardics, invited in by the Ottoman sultan in 1492 when the Spanish Inquisition threatened to burn them all unless they converted to Catholicism.

    Solomon continued with the sweaters, his back to Theo. What would they do with so many Jews? You can’t believe half of what you hear these days.

    You only have to believe half to be worried.

    The Germans will have a harder time finding Jews in Athens. In Salonika, the Sephardics stick to themselves. Here we’re just like every other Greek. He took a deep drag and exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. Those Sephardics think they’re better than everybody else.

    Careful. Rebekah’s Sephardic, Theo reminded his brother.

    I didn’t mean anything by it, he snapped.

    Theo wasn’t so sure. Rebekah and Solomon didn’t always see eye to eye. Solomon worried that her independent streak would rub off on his own wife, Hadas.

    Theo met Rebekah and courted her on a business trip to Salonika nineteen years ago. He hadn’t waited for his father or big brother to approve, as was customary, before proposing to her. Rebekah, in turn, said yes even before Theo asked her father’s permission. She was as good a wife as anyone could hope for, but try as she would, she could not be the submissive, subservient wife tradition decreed.

    Theo could see he wasn’t making any progress with Solomon, so he shifted course. Look at the people we know who just disappeared in the past few weeks: Matsil, Levi, Koen, Kamanto, Politis. They’re probably all in hiding or took off by sea for Turkey.

    We can’t just leave the store.

    Leave the store? Who cares about the store if we lose our lives?

    Oh, Theo, Theo. You always were so dramatic. Father used to say you should have been an actor. Solomon shook his head slowly, as though talking to a six-year-old. We have nothing to worry about. He put his arm around his taller brother. Haven’t I always taken care of you? I would not let anything happen to you, or Rebekah, or Lea and Yoni.

    Theo smoldered, dismissed again by his big brother. He retreated to the back of the store near the two changing rooms and plunked down in the swivel chair behind the desk.

    They had only three customers all day so they closed up early. Solomon, trying to make amends, asked Theo to join him for a cup of coffee at a taverna in the Plaka, but he declined. He was in a hurry to get home. Just before Theo turned the corner off Ermou Street, a helmeted German courier on a motorcycle roared by, going in the opposite direction, on his way, no doubt, to the German headquarters in the Hotel Grande Bretagne on Syntagma Square.

    When the roar faded away, the street turned still, devoid of automobiles and streetcars. This boulevard once bustled with noisy Greek life. Now only a few silent pedestrians with sunken red eyes tramped along, heads down. Three years of war will do that. Thank God it was no longer as bad as 1941 when tens of thousands starved to death, often in the streets, victims of Nazi food theft and the British blockade. Theo could never forget the time he found a dead man and his emaciated young daughter on the sidewalk right in front of the shop. It took nearly two days for their corpses to be carted away.

    Solomon anticipated and planned for any eventuality, but not this time. Why then, you might ask, didn’t Theo go his own way if his brother was so stubborn, so blind to the danger? Because Solomon was the head of the family by virtue of his birthright as the oldest son. Others could offer their opinions and even argue, but in the end, he made the decisions on matters affecting the clan, even for his married sisters Stema and Regina four hundred kilometers to the north in the town of Ioannina. That’s just the way it was. Besides, Theo disliked confrontation with anyone, particularly his big brother.

    So what was he supposed to do? Sometimes he resented Solomon for always being the boss, and for always having the answer to everything. Nonetheless, his brother was usually right. Rebekah would tell him he needed to stand up to Solomon. She didn’t understand it wasn’t just about obedience. It was also loyalty and love earned throughout a lifetime in which Solomon gave Theo much more than he received back.

    Theo vowed to protect Rebekah, Lea, and Yoni with his life. He also vowed to remain faithful to Solomon, ignoring the possibility he might not be able to do both. He decided to keep pestering his brother and try not to provoke him.

    Monday, March 13,

    1944 - 5:40 p.m.

    Late in the afternoon, the sullen skies yielded to spotty sun streams, and then a mellow sunset. Theo’s gate quickened the closer he got to home.

    When he came to the tiny park beside his two-story whitewashed apartment building, he spotted his nephew Ariel, Solomon’s sixteen-year-old son, playing football. The person he was playing with, the striker, faked to the left, and then cut back sharply to the right leaving Ariel sliding in the mud. The round white ball sailed hard into the makeshift goal.

    The striker turned around, arms raised in victory. It was Lea, his daughter. She saw him and came racing over, throwing herself in his arms and planting a warm kiss on his cheek.

    Did you see me, Papa? Did you see? I shot it right past him.

    I didn’t know you could play football, Theo laughed. He was surprised by more than that. Lea wore a pair of rolled up boys pants, too big for her, cinched with a too-big black leather belt. Her freshly cut hair was no longer than her cousin Ariel’s. Except for her blossoming maidenly figure, only partially obscured by her outfit, she might have passed for a boy. Theo worried she was growing up too fast and, though uncomfortable with her tomboy ways, welcomed her apparent disinterest in boys. And as long as she dressed like a boy and acted like one, boys’ disinterest in her was bound to continue. Still, even veiled, one could see she possessed her mother’s quiet beauty: dark eyes, thick black hair, full lips, and a classic Greek patrician nose.

    I’m a very good player, Papa. My teacher says next year she will consider allowing girls to play football as long as we do it in skirts and dresses. How unfair. She wiped perspiration from her forehead and dried her hand on her pants.

    Ariel gathered up the ball and walked over, the usual geniality on his handsome olive face. He stuck out his hand for Theo to shake. Theo grabbed it but then pulled his nephew to him. You aren’t too big yet to give your uncle a hug, he said, wrapping his nephew in his arms. Actually, Ariel stood nearly as tall as Theo, and an inch or two taller than his father, Solomon.

    Lea was born only a couple of weeks before Ariel. Their mothers were best friends, and the cousins grew up as best friends from the time they were infants sucking at their mothers’ breasts. Watching the two cousins play together always tickled Theo’s heart, even on such a dismal day as today.

    Theo climbed the outside stairs to their second-floor apartment. When he opened the door, Rebekah met him as she did every day with an eager embrace and a tender kiss. Even after eighteen years of marriage, this was the best part of every day. He tasted her sweet breath, sniffed her lavender smell, and sensed her heart beating against him.

    When he held her, he felt her bony ribs and shoulders - the residue of the famine a couple of years earlier. Her clothes hung on her like a child wearing her mother’s dress, only a little remaining of her once-shapely derriere and breasts. She hid behind long sleeves and a blouse buttoned to the neck. These days she undressed in the dark so he wouldn’t see her body, as though his hadn’t also withered. No words could convince her that he saw only her beauty.

    I could hear the trouble in your footsteps, Rebekah said, hanging up his overcoat and hat in the entry hall closet. Your brother wouldn’t listen?

    We’ll talk after dinner, he whispered. Now I must see what a fine day Yoni had. Theo forced a smile on his face for his son’s sake. Yoni half sat and half lay on the sofa in the living room. When he saw his father, he put his book down and boosted himself up on his withered leg.

    Yoni’s bones were no bigger than a chicken’s, his thin right leg twisted inward at an odd angle since his birth nearly twelve years ago. His thick glasses made him look like an owl. But his mind was bright as a supernova, and his disposition that of a gentle puppy. Today the budding trees touched him with a bit of allergy sniffles. Theo motioned for him to stay put and came over to give him a pat on the shoulder and a kiss on the forehead. Some fathers might look at such an imperfect son as a curse, but after two miscarriages and a stillborn girl, Theo and Rebekah cherished him as a gift from the gods. Yoni certainly didn’t see himself as enfeebled.

    What are you reading? Theo asked.

    The Odyssey, Yoni answered. Not the grown up version. The one for kids. Theo sat and listened while Yoni told him the part of the story where Odysseus and his men were captured by the Cyclops. He kept a smile on his face, but now and then his mind wandered. If they had to go into hiding, how was he going to deal with Yoni? He wasn’t mobile. He couldn’t run.

    After a few minutes, Yoni was ready to get back to reading his book. Theo got up and went over to the big window. He pushed back the fringed maroon drapes and looked down on the small park. Lea and Ariel huddled together on a bench, their heads and knees nearly touching. He was glad to see the two cousins were much better friends than he had ever been

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