Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  “You’re playing the big shot these days, Yango.”

  “And what’s he after, Yango?”

  “He’s after me because he needs me. Did any Commissioner ever treat you to a bougatsa?”

  “When you don’t eat bougatsa, you don’t care if it’s burning in the oven.”

  “I’m indispensable to them.”

  “You’re an honor to the porter’s profession.”

  “We’re not porters. We’re transport men.”

  “You wangle things for yourself. You do jobs outside the city too. If they catch us, they take away our license.”

  “If you get caught for any violations, I’ll wangle things for you.”

  “And just how, Mr. Yango?”

  “I’ve sweated to have a good name with the police force. I’ve got privileges.”

  “I’d rather croak without a cent than have a good name with the police. You never know when they’ll do you dirt.”

  “What’re you saying, you scum?”

  “Your mother’s ass. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Your own mother’s, you piece of fairy tail!”

  “Go get screwed, you dirty stool pigeon …”

  In a rage he pulled out the club.

  “Calm down, boys,” said Mastro-Kostas, stepping between them. “Stop the brawl. All this time here and not a single job yet. Are we going to earn some bread or just eat each other?”

  At that moment two men appeared, calling out from the sidewalk across the way for Yango Gazgouridis.

  It was the first time Yango had seen them. They were mysterious types, whom he immediately sized up as shady characters. One of them crossed the street in his direction.

  “Are you Yango?”

  “I am.”

  “We want you for a job.”

  Yango understood and went toward him.

  “Let’s go and I’ll explain it to you.”

  “Looks like a lot of chasing about today, Yango. Watch it!” the oldest of the porters shouted after him.

  The other shady character was waiting behind the columns of the Agricultural Bank. They put Yango between them—one on his left, the other on his right.

  “Guarantors of the King.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Members of the League of Guarantors of the Constitutional King of the Hellenes. Fatherland—Religion—Family.” And simultaneously taking out their membership cards, they stuck them under his nose. Though Yango didn’t know how to read, he understood from the shape of the card and the skull and crossbones that they must belong to some organization affiliated to his.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said.

  “Tonight our league is going to participate too. And we’re rather insulted that they chose you for the GC.”

  “What GC?” asked Yango. He certainly didn’t like these shady characters at all.

  “This baby here’s a fine one,” said the second one sarcastically.

  “He’s playing the virgin. Doesn’t know what GC means! What do they teach you in your league?”

  “I do delivery work, big boy—pickup runs, as we call it.”

  “GC—as you call it—means Gorilla Communist. Get it?”

  “I get it.”

  “Well, we came first of all to make your acquaintance—look you over because we’re guarantors of the King—and then we’ll make our report to the leader.”

  “Which leader?”

  “Ours. He sent us a message last night to come and meet you. You better know we’ll have an eye on you tonight. It’s a tough assignment. Evidently you don’t know. But we do, we’re in the underground network. Our outfit isn’t recognized officially and our membership cards aren’t stamped by the police department. We’d have liked to do the job, but since we’re underground … Well then, good fishing.”

  He gave Yango a kidney punch, but his hand hit the hidden club and he pulled it back, making a face.

  “He looks good,” said the first to the second.

  “Armed to the teeth,” said the second to the first.

  “Now go back to your little truck and shut up,” said both together to Yango.

  With relief he watched them out of sight, then went back, walking glumly under the arcade. Though it had stopped raining, the pickup trucks were still covered with burlap, parked one behind the other. “Not a single hauling job all day, not one single hauling job.” As he passed the kiosk, Yango heard the voice of the kiosk owner, like an answer to his complaints: “Yango! Nikitas sent his apprentice with a message for you to stop by. He needs you for a transport job.”

  He turned and looked at the old man in his kiosk, all covered with scaly newspapers and gaudy magazines. This job was what he wanted. He’d got dizzy tramping around all morning. Time to get down to the grind. Besides, Nikitas owed him twenty drachmas: he had gone by yesterday to collect but hadn’t found him.

  On his way to the varnisher now, he glanced at the big town clock. Twelve o’clock sharp. Very little traffic in the center of town. He thought of going into a tavern to have a drop, but he preferred to wait till he had concluded the job with the furniture man.

  The shop had that familiar smell left by soot and turpentine. FURNITURE—WALLPAPER—POLISH—VENETIAN BLINDS—UPHOLSTERY. Bent over a small table, Nikitas was rubbing away. In the back the apprentice, who had a way of always looking dumbstruck because he was deaf-mute, was puttying an armchair.

  “I got the message from the kiosk and came,” Yango announced.

  Nikitas wiped his hands on his white smock and extended his little finger by way of a handshake.

  “I’ve got two bureaus, one bed, and this table I’m varnishing; they have to be delivered to the merchant this evening.”

  “It’s Wednesday. The stores are closed after noon.”

  “That doesn’t matter. He’ll be expecting them. Take them around to the back door. Here’s the address.”

  “This afternoon I can’t. I’ve got work.”

  “Come later this evening. Seven, seven-thirty.”

  “I can’t.”

  “They have to go tonight. The merchant is a good customer and I’ve promised him. Then I’ll give you the twenty drachmas I owe you. I’ll be here till nine.”

  “Tonight I’ve got work,” said Yango with a sigh. “Tonight I’m going to do something big—really nutty. It may come to killing a man …”

  “Quarreling with somebody again?”

  “Don’t bother about it. You’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Why tomorrow?”

  “Because it’ll happen tonight and you’ll find out about it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s up?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Yango, you get worked up too easily. You’re a good man, watch out you don’t get involved.”

  “I thought you had a job for me right now. If I’d known it was for later, I wouldn’t have come.”

  In the background the apprentice was smiling, dumbstruck, uncomprehending.

  “You think what I’m saying is funny, kid?” Yango said, ready to take offense.

  “Let the poor kid alone,” Nikitas begged him. “I took him in for my father’s soul.”

  Yango went back to the stand.

  Now it wasn’t just the General who greeted him. Other familiar faces nodded as he passed. Astride his kamikaze, he couldn’t make them out clearly. Night had fallen and the area was now jammed with people. There were very few neon signs and the lighted store windows were hidden by the passers-by. He kept thinking of the ten thousand drachmas he’d get to buy out Aristidis and of the fine that was going to be paid to buy off the law. He felt proud of being the only mounted person among so many pedestrians.

  Yes! Now he was getting hot. He was getting angry. He was boiling inside, all over, looking for an excuse to blow his lid. An hour ago he’d been at the Catacomb. Mastodontosaur was there and told him to go tear down the announcement put up by the peace-meeting people. Yango didn’
t understand why he had to tear it down. “So they won’t know where to go,” the Commissioner growled. The hell with it, was Yango’s opinion. What did he care? He knew the place well. With a resolute step he pushed through the waiting crowd and reached the big poster put up there in the traffic island, where a little grass relieved the expanse of asphalt. With one big hand he grabbed the poster from up top and tore it off the way he would undress a whore—a violent movement which aroused general anger all around him. “You, if you’ve got the guts, come back here!” someone shouted at him. That did it. The blood went to his head, but he had his instructions: steer clear of these people. He—Yango Gazgouridis—was assigned to the VIP. On the other hand no bastard had ever dared say to him: “You, if you’ve got the guts, come back here.” He turned and eyed them as they gestured threateningly. He could have taken care of them easily. But he had to hold back. And he moved along down to where the Panorama bus station used to be. Outside the Petinos Café.

  And right there he saw her. “You here too, you bloody bitch?” It was the female community councillor in his neighborhood, the one the leftists had supported. Seething inside from the insults he had had to put up with, he had to let off steam. He gave her two kicks in the belly. The first one missed, but the second landed right in the meat. She doubled up. He was ready to pull out his club, but she ran. She was hiding in the shop next door, where there were antiques, icons, candlesticks, and other junk in the window. “She got away,” he thought, enraged, and in his blind fury he grabbed a chair from the café and hurled it into the bric-a-brac shop. The chair went through the door, hitting a little girl, but missed the dirty bitch he was after. The café owner and his customers got up; they were coming at him menacingly. The shopkeeper, a fat bald man, came out with a pole. Yango realized he would have to put the brakes on again so as not to show his hand too soon. If Autocratosaur heard about it, he might refuse to pay up. So, even though all these dead ducks were no problem for him, he hopped a taxi—it was almost time—and went straight to the police station.

  The taxi driver, who had witnessed the scene, made no comment. “Those son of a bitches,” said Yango, “think they’re somebody.” The station was close by. He told the taxi driver to wait: he’d go upstairs for two minutes and be right down.

  Inside, the smell calmed him, his fever passed as though he’d taken a cold shower. He had a buddy with him when he took the taxi back to the Catacomb. By now the crowd had dispersed. The stand at Vasileos Irakliou was only a step away; he went there and got in his pickup, and now for an hour he’d been doing chariot races by himself on the pavement, which was gradually emptying of traffic and filling with people, outside the new hall found for the meeting, at the corner of Ermou and Venizelou Streets. He greeted the General and took courage. “You, if you have the guts, come back here.” The voice refused to subside. “I’ve got the guts and here I am,” he told himself. Just so long as they weren’t late for the transfer job. Now was the time to strike, while the iron was hot.

  Chapter 3

  Mastro-Kostas couldn’t stomach Yango. And tonight he’d dropped by there—corner of Ermou and Venizelou—just to have a look. He saw the fierce expression on the faces of the counterdemonstrators. He saw the policemen, some in uniform, some in plain clothes, unmoving; he saw stones being thrown at the Labor Union Club windows, heard shouts: “Bulgar Z., you’ll die!” “You dirty nances, you’ll all die!” And he saw some of the true believers who were heading for the meeting being seized abruptly and beaten in dark corners. He veered sharply and took the bus back to his little house. What he had suspected ever since that morning, what he’d “squealed” in fact, he now saw with his own eyes actually happening tonight. And who knows, he thought, what is still to come.

  In his mind he relived the black days of the underground, deportation, torture. To someone else, what he had just seen would have been inexplicable. But not to Mastro-Kostas, whose whole life had been taken up with fighting for the same ideals. In the end he’d gotten tired; he’d bowed down. Eh, he wasn’t made of granite. Others he knew, more established than himself, with better connections, had nevertheless signed their “declaration of repentance” even earlier. He had been out of action only for the past six years, and he’d sworn in the name of his children never to get involved in politics again. Because, as he got older, his arms got weaker. He could not lift heavy weights any more. He was a porter at the same stand as Yango.

  But he couldn’t bear Yango; he reminded him of the torturers he’d known on the barren islands. Those brutes, who had no soul yet tried to tear souls out by the roots, who dipped men in the sea tied up in sackfuls of cats till they’d abjured Communism, who beat them raw, who degraded them. That was the kind of scoundrel Yango was. And if they took it upon themselves to build a New Parthenon,* Yango would have been among the first to be drafted.

  But Mastro-Kostas had learned to keep his mouth shut. He himself had been shaken. His faith in the Idea had crumbled. So much struggle, so much sacrifice, so much blood; and once again the traitors, the collaborators, the men who’d sold out to the Germans, were in power. Those who had “repented” earlier, he realized, had been paid off, were more or less in clover. And he was still here, with two kids who never stopped growing; with a wife who never stopped doing other people’s wash; with his back, which never stopped lugging other people’s wares. Well, what for? The time comes when a man cracks. It had happened to him just six years ago.

  But that Yango, he couldn’t stomach him. He knew about his life and habits. They would talk it over with the other fellows at the stand, whenever Yango was off on a job. A pet of the police, Yango could operate as he pleased. They all had licenses delivery jobs in the city only. Yango had a license to take the stuff anywhere he wanted. If any of them stepped over the line, they had to pay for it down to the last cent. Yango always fixed things up—how? in what way?—and even groused into the bargain. He was so sure of his power he didn’t even bother to keep it secret. He blurted out everything like someone who’d never learned to be afraid.

  Exactly like this morning. When Mastro-Kostas saw him glum and sullen, he asked what was wrong. Instead of answering, Yango suggested they have a drink of retsina. Mastro-Kostas also liked a drop. And so they went to the tavern across from the Modiano Market. While they were walking side by side, his hand had involuntarily brushed against the brute and hit something hard, heavy, something he didn’t recognize.

  “What’re you hiding, Yango? A whip?”

  He said it was a club.

  “And what do you need it for? You’ve got strong arms.”

  “Tonight arms aren’t enough. Forget it. Better not ask. I’ve got obligations.”

  They had sat down at a little table and ordered half a kilo of wine.

  “Well, here’s to you!”

  “Here’s to you,” replied Mastro-Kostas, who had noticed something funny in Yango’s mood and wanted to get to the bottom of it.

  “Eh, how’ll you do it? How’re you going to get hold of those ten thousand drachs?”

  Yango explained, told him everything down to the tiniest detail.

  “Don’t get involved in such things, Yango. You’re poor, a nobody, a nothing. The poor always get it in the neck. The big ones stay on top. The big fish eats the little one …”

  “Are you giving me a lecture to wake me up, Mr. Kostas?”

  “You have kids, a family, Yango.”

  “Anyway, if it’s leaked, it’ll have come from you. Watch out!”

  That Z.—Mastro-Kostas didn’t know him. He must have been one of the deputies who’d come up with the left after withdrawing from the party. His brain, still murky from sleep and retsina, began turning swiftly. He hadn’t tried to find out more; he hadn’t wanted the brute’s suspicions aroused. Deep inside, a feeling of solidarity began to stir, a feeling for whatever had once formed the core of his life. In front of him he had an enemy, someone aiming, if he could, to mangle a deputy on his side. Every time an elect
ion came around, though he steered clear of the parties, for once Mastro-Kostas would feel at one with the others, when he secretly gave his vote there.

  “Let’s drink another half,” Yango suggested and banged the half-kilo can on the table.

  “No. I have to get some radios in a shop.”

  He had been in a hurry to get away. Mrs. Soula, in the shop where he went for these jobs, was the wife of the director of the EDA** offices of Salonika. He wanted to tell her at once what he had heard.

  He walked along in anguish. It was his first political act after he had sworn he would never touch politics again. And his joy, surging from a source he was surprised to find in himself, only increased his anguish.

  Yango, who had not known him very long and to whom nobody talked much at the stand, was ignorant of his past. If he’d known that Mastro-Kostas had once been a devoted party man, perhaps he wouldn’t have opened his mouth.

  In every man—especially in a porter—there are smoldering embers from a life never lived, a house never built, a pickup license never obtained. At the slightest breath, the embers flare up and the past comes to life.

  He had reached the Electroniki shop and walked in through the glass door. The manager, seeing him enter in a hurry, shook his head no; he didn’t want him to deliver anything today. But Mastro-Kostas signaled he was not there for business and skipped behind the partition to find Mrs. Soula, who worked there as a bookkeeper.

  She was surprised to see him. Maybe he even smelled of wine. He told her it was absolutely urgent that they go outside and talk. On the sidewalk, once he’d made sure that no one was listening, he said: “Someone’s supposed to come who’s called Z. They’d better look after him; a trap’s been set.”

  “And where did you find out about it?”

  “They were talking about it somewhere. I was there and I heard. Don’t say I told you; I’ve been threatened. They said: ‘If it’s found out, it could only have come from you.’ ”

  “Who are they? Where’s the somewhere? Who threatened you?”

  “I can’t tell you any more, Mrs. Soula. I’m only a poor guy, try to understand. I’ve started building a house without a permit. I’ve been after a license for my three-wheeler for two years now and I haven’t got it yet. And then I’m afraid of their gang. They’re brutes, don’t stop at anything. I’ve got three broken ribs from Makronissos.”