11 - A Year in the 'Cold Trough': into the ‘Lame Village’ then

‘Cold Trough’ like most villages in the predominantly agricultural region of Central Macedonia, was surrounded, as is today, by cultivated fields amidst the fertile plain that extend to the town of Giannitsa in the north, Thessaloniki in the west and south, and the town of Veroia on the slopes of Vermion Mountains in the east, which enjoys panoramic views overlooking the plains below. At times when private car ownership and use were not widespread, the first impression of ‘Cold Trough’ for the unsuspected visitor would have been, proverbially, that of ‘a place in the middle of nowhere’. From a geographical point of view, however, reality might not have been that disheartening. There was life and transport links amongst the villages and nearby towns of the region, thanks to the regular routes that a vibrant franchise of privately owned green-grey coaches established, as well as the agricultural vehicles of local farmers. Nevertheless, it was still a place burdened by dullness and a dire lack of sophistication that characterize many villages of the Greek countryside. There were always the few, especially amongst the older and retired of the village folk, who were contented with uneventful or indolent lives, even if for a cosmopolitan outsider they appeared trapped in an inescapable boredom of a daily routine, oblivious to a monotony that gnaws away invaluable time on this earth and, at the end, reduces a life an amorphous mass of trivial, repetitive and forgettable days.

Agriculture, therefore, was at the heart of the economy of the village and its region, as it has been for generations in the long history of Macedonia and the Balkans. At that time, cereals and tobacco accounted for the bulk of the local produce. I remember, from my first autumn days there, the bales of grain stacked on tractors or horse-drawn carts, going back and forth along the central and peripheral roads and, later, on school excursions the tobacco dryers in tall wooden warehouses.

There has been raising of cows and pigs, too, for our meat on the table, as I realised in another school walk that passed by a local slaughterhouse. A wretched and gray building, covered by corrugated metal sheets, in the middle of a muddy patch dried by the spring sun, with only a few scattered, sad acacia trees behind a broken wooden fence. The barren landscape, a calvary -so to speak, that the children procession traversed was crisscrossed by rough, makeshift dirt roads, marked by animal footprints and cart and truck and tractor wheels; in grim contrast against the deep blue firmament, the glorious sun, and the green fertile plains beyond. It was an intimidating place for virgin souls. The mind inevitably conjured images of living creatures indoors suffering horrible deaths, by cruel men in blood-stained overalls with butcher-knives in hand, wandering nonchalantly in pools of blood. (The horrors emanating by such mysterious buildings, perceived as haunted by young children, exerts an unwarranted attraction and intensifies the vivacity of an already vivid imagination.) I was shaken by those fantasies then, as triggered by the ugly site. Feelings with the intensity of ‘first time’ tightened my heart. The natural curiosity that the unfamiliar attracts is combined with a primordial feeling of fear springs instinctively from every soul in the face of the unknown.

Our eyes probed for glimpses of death, or at least shadows of it through the openings into the dark enclosure, our ears were grasping for groans of suffering, but in vain. Escaping, however, from the pervasive and unforgettable stench of death, which I have not experienced again ever since, proved impossible. Many children used their fingers to trick their noses. It was the very first sensation that bore witness of death -through the stench it left behind in its path. And the sense of its presence nearby causes dread even amongst the young, no matter how detached and distant in time still are from the event per se. Admittedly, the feeling was fleeting and shallow. Beyond a momentary strong heartbeat and the memory of that smell, it left no other imprints and was quickly forgotten in our plays and relaxation, later in our trip. It was nothing more than a little stepping stone in the building of our living consciousness. Besides, later in life I learned that the idea and expectation of death can be more distressing and frightening than witnessing it happening. But I had still a long way to go.

Childhood innocence could have hardly been compromised in that school trip. It was not in our teachers’ intentions their school children to conjure images of the horrors of death taking us around the slaughterhouse, for the educational purposes of maturing and toughening our souls. The autumn walk ended up in a citrus orchard in its full blossom, in a fruit and vegetable farm, where enjoyed our play and snacks, followed by fresh fruits and cool spring water from a trough in the yard of an old farmhouse. It was just unfortunate that the path to a pleasant destination had to pass through the hell of that dreary site, which inevitably would intrigue children and stimulate their imagination far more than an orchard, whilst it leaves indelible, yet thought provoking, imprints in memory.