FACE DOWN (title of the original:ΠΙΣΤΟΜΑ)
By Konstantinos Theotokis
(From the anthology: Corfu’s Stories)
Rendered by Vassilis C. Militsis
For the Greek text with explanatory notes see:
Κωνσταντίνος Θεοτόκης «Πίστομα - Σημειώσεις Νεοελληνικής
Introductory Note:
The source of the story:
The incident that inspired this shocking short story is real and registered in the book by Markos Theotokis, Konstantinos Theotokis’ father: Ioannis Kapodistrias and the Insurrections at Cephalonia in the Years 1800, 1801, 1802.
The specific extract is as follows:
“Amidst all this bloodshed, lootings, devastations and unheard-of crimes, as they happened at Magoulades, where a fugitive criminal* returned home and finding a child more than those he had left behind, and suspecting that his wife had been unfaithful, he opened a pit and compelled the mother to put in it the infant, which he buried alive. Then he murdered some thug** from the same village, whom he thought to be the child’s father***….” The writer is appalled by those gruesome deeds, but at the same time he finds solace in the fact that the heinous crimes had been perpetrated by a small number of vulgar, rural teams.
*Antonios Vrachnos, a.k.a. Koukouliotis
** Called Koutsomoulos
***This information was obtained from the sons of those criminals.
The historical context
After the conquest of the Ionian Islands by the French in 1797 and the Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt in 1798, the Sublime Porte asked the Russian assistance against the French. The Russian fleet passed then for the first time through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles into the Aegean in 1798 and sailed on westwards conquering the Ionian Islands.
The Russian conquest led to the creation of the Ionian State (1800 - 1807), subject both to Russian and Ottoman domination. During the first years of the new regime revolts and riots broke out on the Islands. The people were disgruntled with the initial constitutional regulations, which deprived them of the rights ceded to them by the French. Fearing that these uprisings could have provoked Ottoman intervention in the Islands, the head of the Ionian Senate, Spyridon Theotokis, sought to appease the domestic disputes by asking both the nobility and the bourgeois classes to plead for the Russian mediation again for a new constitution.
After the upheaval that had unsettled the place by allowing the wicked elements to gain the upper hand and perpetrate all sorts of delinquency and law and order had been restored, amnesty was given to miscreants. With those bandits that returned home from the mountains or from places far away, Antonis Koukouliotis was also coming back to his home at Magoulades.
He was then around forty, short, swarthy, with pretty, thick curly black beard and hair. His countenance was graceful and his regard, despite its green flashes, was meek and affectionate. In contrast to these features, he had a very small and narrow mouth, almost lipless.
This man had been married before the people’s rebellion. When he resorted to the mountains for fear of the authorities, he had left his wife alone at home. But she was not faithful to her husband and believing that he had been killed or died she had a lover. Out of this affair she had a baby, which prospered charmingly and which the woman loved excessively.
The bandit descended to his village at dusk. He burst into the house unexpectedly – like the Grim Reaper – and his wife was so terrified that she snatched her blond baby and held it tightly into her bosom trembling and almost fainting, unable to utter a word.
But Koukouliotis told her with a rueful smile:
“Don’t be afraid, woman! I’ll do you no harm, though you deserve it. This child is yours, isn’t it? But it’s not mine! So say; whom have you had it with?”
She replied sobbing:
“Antonis, I can hide nothing from you. My fault is grave, so will be your revenge – I know it. And I, weak as I am, and this infant, which is also trembling with fear, are in no position to resist you. Look at the way I’m shaking with dread as I’m looking at you. Do what you like with me but spare this hapless, unprotected creature.”
As she was talking his countenance was going dark but he did not interrupt her. He fell silent but shortly he said:
“You are a bad wife! I am not concerned with your pleas; I take no pity on you or on the baby. All I want to know is your lover’s name. Should you not tell me, I’ll find it myself; after all, the entire village knows who you had been living with. And then I’ll sacrifice the three of you, and so I’ll wash away my shame caused by you, foul creatures!”
She confessed. And Koukouliotis went out immediately. After some hours, he returned home and found his wife at the same place with her slumbering baby in her bosom. She merely looked at him. He ignored her and lay down on the floor; then, as if after a heavy meal, he fell fast asleep until daybreak.
Upon waking on the following day, he said to her:
“Let’s go to our fields so that I can check if someone has seized them the way the scoundrel I killed had taken you from me.”
“You’ve killed him!”
That day was sunless as the sky was clouded over and daylight was barely gaining any strength.
Koukouliotis, shouldering shovel and hoe, ordered his wife to follow him, along with her child, and all three left the house.
Upon reaching the field, which was still wet from the rain of the previous day, the bandit set himself to digging a hole.
He was digging away in silence while his face was pale and the sweat on his brow was dripping cold. The ashen light from the sky gave a weird hue to the place. That autumn early morning manifested its utter sad grimness. The woman, curious and anxious, was looking at what the villain was doing, while the child was playing with the small, round stones and the turned earth. For a moment there was a glimpse of the sun, which gilded the blond hair of the infant, which was smiling like an angel.
And as soon as the pit was ready, Koukouliotis, leaning on the shovel, ordered his wife:
“Put it in face down.”
By the same:
NEFARIOUS FRATRICIDE - O ΑΔΕΡΦΟΦΟΝΙΑΣ
