A small word, a great hope. "We shall see…" Two vague words as an answer, two words that shortened hope. "Do you think we have any news?" There was Ariadne's soul, insisting. "Maybe, Manolis. Couldn’t it be?" Insisting with passion and strength. Her little tree of hope trying once again to spread its branches and foliage. Nature was blooming, and with it, the souls of people were blooming too. You could hear it in the words that were no longer breathless from hunger, you could see it in the eyes that were no longer extinguished by fear. Only at night did the grim images come uninvited to their minds and hearts. Children's bodies with ribs like skeletons washed by the rain, with their little bellies swollen from chronic starvation, with their faces pale and faded, as they, emaciated, dragged themselves to the garbage bins and on the pavement slabs, searching for a crumb to keep them alive a little longer, even one day, even one hour. Blood spilled in front of the execution squads, piles of corpses stacked on the municipality carts every morning. Images of the Occupation, deep scars on the souls of people that refused to heal.
Yes, despite the sunny days, the nights in Athens were still dark and distressing, memories came uninvited and grim, tormenting and stirring unrest, making people shudder, even though they knew that the municipality carts had long stopped collecting skeletons and dumping them in mass, anonymous graves, even though they knew that German weapons had long ceased sending waves of innocents to the other world. Three and a half years of German Occupation do not fade away overnight, that’s what they told themselves to relieve the past pain, that’s what they told each other to comfort themselves until the redeeming sleep came and took them far away, to other places, to other worlds, where there were no cold blue bodies and emaciated children, only full stomachs and smiling faces, a paradise they now hoped would come to their own land too. Hope, that was their only weapon, it kept them on the course of life, it chased away the tightness from their hearts the next morning.
