The Man with the Black Worrybeads - Softcover

Rumanes, George N.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1462052398 ISBN 13: 9781462052394

Verlag: iUniverse, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

In the port of Pireaus, Greece, the early summer rains stopped and the clouds cleared away. The sun, slowly gliding onto the sea, cast its last rays on the German fleet. After the night patrols ran past and the sound of jackboots faded, Petros Zervas, the young resistance fighter, ran down the hill and, for the first time in years, saw Lela Lellos. Eleven years had passed since the thirty-year-old Lela contributed to the delinquency of fourteen-year-old Petros, taking his virginity and transforming him into a man. He then disappeared, leaving Lela with nothing but her memory and his name tattooed on her stomach. She had no idea that Petros has turned out to be a successful young man. What she does not know is that he has also become a wanted man- pursued by the Germans whom he is fighting in Pireaus. But one man has seen Petros and believes he can rescue a religious icon held captive by German chaplains who will never appreciate its power or understand its beauty. Only Petros can perform a miracle for old Spyros Kanares; if he fails, though, both will surely end up in front of a firing squad. This compelling tale of heroism, based on true events, culminates in an unforgettable attack on the German fleet anchored in the port of Piraeus, as a powerful love story is tested in the crucible of war.

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The Man with the Black Worrybeads

By GEORGE N. RUMANES

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2012 George N. Rumanes
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4620-5239-4

Chapter One

Lela made the sign of the cross in front of the waterfront church and splashed through a puddle, spraying water on the men who stopped to let her pass.

The longshoremen knew her. When she was in a hurry, all that mattered to Lela was her destination. She could not see to her right, her left, or in front. Though it was early evening—an hour she rarely permitted herself to be seen outside—she was combing taverna after taverna in search of Hans, her German lover. She knew he was drinking ouzo somewhere around the port. That in itself did not concern her—it made him easier to handle. But if he drank too much, he would begin to feel the need for companionship, and she knew those tavernas where he hung out. There was always a girl only too eager to listen to a soldier's story, especially if he paid for her drink. And this Lela did mind.

For the saints had smiled on Lela Lellos at last. Hans was the best of all possible lovers—six feet three and strong as an ox. But give him enough ouzo, and there was no telling what he might do. Lela had too much invested in him to take a chance. The Wehrmacht had consigned him to washing cars in the motor pool with the rank of private when Lela had found him. Not only was he now Colonel Schneider's personal driver, which gave him freedom to travel anywhere, but he provided her with food, and these days food was far more precious than anything she could earn on the waterfront. Everyone Lela knew was hungry, many were starving. And though at times she felt guilty, she was still careful to hide the choice rations Hans brought her—tins of meat and soup, bread made in Colonel Schneider's own kitchen, fresh fish. Yes, the saints were watching over her, and let those who believed the saints were indifferent to a waterfront girl go straight to hell.

Lela was not a standard five-thousand-drachma girl. She was an artist and had the credentials to prove it. Good thing, too, for only an artist could have violated the one rule a madam makes sure a new girl understands—collect in advance. Not only had she refused to do that, but on a memorable Easter Sunday eleven years ago she had refused to be paid at all for thirteen consecutive hours of work!

Lela had been awakened that morning by ringing church bells joyously commemorating the advent of Easter. The bells of the distant churches had subsided—as a rule they started services before seven, since their families went to bed early the night before—but around the port of Piraeus the people stayed up late and services didn't begin until after nine.

The bells of a nearby church had started to ring, two small bells that chimed rapidly because they were light and the bell ringer did not have to pull too hard. By using one hand for each bell, he was able to orchestrate his own cadence. The Bell ringer was an old man; he would drop the ropes of the two small bells, let them swing three times, and then yank the rope of a third, heavy bell and let it ring four times lightly. The fifth and final ring would produce a rich and heavy sound of low frequency, as if to say that the bell ringer was tired and, besides, most of the people had left the church anyway.

That last low rich note was the one to decide Lela. She had turned over on her stomach, put her arms around the pillow, and smiled. She knew that every Easter the boys of the orphanage held a picnic on Kastela Hill, only a mile away. Today, to celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, she would perform an act to win the saints' favor.

So it was that on Easter Sunday, behind a boulder and in the shade of a bushy pine tree located on the south slope of the Kastela Hill, Lela Lellos, then nineteen, did contribute to the delinquency of one hundred eighty-seven minors between the ages of twelve and eighteen. According to the sworn statement of fourteen-year-old Petros Zervas, who kept count, Lela engaged in sexual intercourse without a stop from ten in the morning to eleven at night. Petros Zervas was thorough; not only did he compile the total, but he kept track of the virgin boys she turned to men, a figure that reached an awesome record never approximated in the past and certain never to be broken in the future. In recognition of her achievement Lela had these figures tattooed on her left breast, while across her stomach another tattoo read: "Thank you, Miss Lela." It was signed: "Petros Zervas—14."

It was hard to believe that eleven years had passed since that memorable day. Eleven years of many changes. For one, she finally decided to pay good money to erase the statistics from her body—it was too time-consuming to have to explain her feat to all her clients and in her business, time was money. For another, Lela had started to bulge in the wrong places and her face showed the strain of trying to keep awake for the sailors who never seemed to seek her services until the early hours of morning.

With the German occupation competition grew tough, and she had to draw on all her experience to compete with some of the young, fresh amateurs who crowded the streets, parading their beautiful legs and firm breasts in broad daylight. Recognizing her limitations Lela became the Lady of the Dark. At that hour her clients, hard-up German replacements, did not mind about her looks.

Lela was getting old and knew it. The young ones told her as much to her face, called her one of nature's leftovers, and every time she passed a plate glass window she could see it. But at least she had Hans. Never mind that he was a German and the enemy; never mind that he was a drunk—her greatest fear was that some day he might sober up and take a good look at her and then what would she do? Where could she go?

Chapter Two

Aeschylus, writing in 490 BC, called the little port of Piraeus the "Jewel in the Diadem of Athens." But the father of ancient Greek dramatists carefully surrounded the phrase with quotation marks, so he probably borrowed it from some anonymous poet.

Piraeus rocky, inhospitable soil and benign climate helped form her character. Men had clawed away rough, gray-brown earth to build their homes and schools, their hospitals, and open-air arenas; along the waterfront and beaches the buildings clustered together, but immediately behind the harbor the land soared to the sharp, jagged cliff of Kastela Hill which overlooked the plains sweeping inland toward Athens, seven miles away.

The impression Piraeus created was one of dazzling, almost unbearably bright whiteness. The buildings, most of them simple, were painted white—not an ordinary white, not a white that smudged or turned gray, but a white so pure that in bright sunlight it could bring tears to the eyes. Ports in other Mediterranean countries, nations like Italy and Spain, relieved their whiteness with splashes of pastel, but since antiquity Piraeus had remained white only, with clarity unmatched elsewhere.

The water itself, Sophocles had written, was unlike the water anywhere else in the world. It was transparent, and shipboard arrivals marveled that they could peer from the decks of their vessels thirty to forty feet to the ocean floor. And as with the white buildings, those who saw the sparkling clarity of the water never forgot it. That water and the exceptional harbor attracted the ships of scores of nations to Piraeus, making her unusually cosmopolitan city for her size. She has been called...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: iUniverse
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1462052398
• ISBN 13: 9781462052394
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 292
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland