Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  “But what’s the matter with you, Mr. Zoumbos? We’re the ones who should be angry, not you. You’ve left us in a fine jam, without a roof over our heads. And you have the gall to shout at me!”

  “That’s all I have to say. I can’t stand it any more. I can’t sleep. My father died today. Goodbye.”

  How strange, Matsas thought at the time. But now it didn’t seem at all strange. Now everything was converging on the same point, like so many radiating roads leading to the same neuralgic center: this hall on the third floor, found at the last minute by a “process of elimination.” The shadowing; Zoumbos’s reneging; the anonymous tip that Z. was in danger—all these unrelated events of the past days now, at five minutes to eight on the twenty-second of May, 1963, in Salonika, were falling into place, like the parts of a child’s puzzle finally fitted together: a menagerie in full array—vultures, jackals, pterodactyls—monsters shrieking, striking out, snarling, under the very eyes of the police, who suddenly seemed blinded. Why don’t they maintain order?

  Someone came downstairs to say that the hall was full and that he should get the speakers. Their hotel was directly opposite. But to get there he would have to cross this storm-tossed sea, with mines broken loose from the depths and floating like jellyfish on the surface. He set someone else to watch, took a deep breath, and headed for the hotel.

  He walked with his heart in his mouth. Presently he found himself exposed in the center of the little square formed by the deltas of the streets. He hurried his steps, dodged a blow aimed at him from behind, and reached the opposite sidewalk, like a drowning man who unexpectedly gets hold of a board. “Not even in Mau-Mau land do such things happen. Where are we? What sort of cannibals are we? What’s happening?”

  At last he reached the hotel. He found Z. and Spathopoulos sitting there, upset by the delay and prepared to go into the arena with the lions.

  Chapter 6

  The dead do not speak. Clothed in the beauty of death, they have carried off those innumerable secrets that no April profusion will ever bring to light. Earth pregnant with revelations never made; with stifled confessions, memoranda, apologias, petitions for exemption, statutes, interpretations, all deposited among the frozen bones, like salt.

  The dead do not know how history is made. They have fed it with their blood; what comes after, they never learn. They are unaware of their sacrifice and this makes them still more beautiful. The early Christians knew why they were being sacrificed; they went to conscious martyrdoms. But in our day why should anyone talk of being sacrificed when what he believes is simply common sense—just common sense? Who ever said that justice and injustice should go hand in hand? Poverty and wealth? Peace and war? Nonetheless, though no one has ever said it, many people—a great many people—seem to uphold it every day in their words and actions.

  He had no missionary impulse. It was merely that he had known poverty and illness at first hand. That was his work. He knew that better hospitals lessen pain. He knew that, in another order of things, many intractable problems of our time would become clarified. If a bullet costs as much as a bottle of milk and if a Polaris submarine costs enough to feed a whole people for one week—and feed it well—what was the difficulty?

  Common, very common sense; and out there, the dark. Thick darkness, without flashes of lightning or even the schizophrenic’s lucid intervals. This was how he saw things, and why he wanted to talk. He wasn’t a Communist. If he’d run for deputy as a candidate of the left-wing party, he’d done so because their views were the only ones that somewhat accorded with his own. They stuck together, like twin shadows. He wasn’t a Marxist theoretician, a person enclosed in a theory. Open on all sides, he felt the currents passing through him unobstructed. He naturally preferred the ones that warmed him.

  He’d come to believe that human pain could not be cured by attention to individual cases. He was able to take a certain number of patients free of charge at his clinic, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. To no avail. When he compared the number of patients he cured with the number of human beings the world over who could not buy even the most ordinary medicines, it was enough to make him shudder. The same with begging. What was the good of giving money to the poor? The balance of poverty on the planet remained unaltered. For the world to change, the system had to change.

  Knowing this, he could remain, in a tense situation like today’s, unperturbed and beautiful in his serenity. It had nothing to do with apathy. Only impassioned people sink into apathy, and he was not impassioned. He believed merely that sense, common sense, must triumph once again; that a certain few words must regain their meaning, a certain few actions their original urgency.

  It didn’t matter whether you agreed or disagreed. It mattered only that you saw. Saw how the world is weighed down by the pressure of a threat. How military rulers are always wrongheaded idiots. How monopolies are obliged to defend monopolies for the good of monopolies.

  He didn’t care about becoming a professional politician because he was a professional doctor—one of the best. University professor, when the country had only two universities. In his youth an athlete, a champion of the Balkan Games. Now that his body had grown heavy with years, thought darted up and stole the body’s shape, becoming sword-like, supple, daring, broke records in high-jumping and long-distance running.

  He was not self-deceived. He knew he couldn’t go it alone. Like it or not, he would need to channel himself to arrive at the sea. How many good wells ran dry because there was no one around to exploit them! And exploitation was a proper course of action. There was metal—iron, copper, gold—in the bowels of the earth, congealed by planetary frost. Needing it, people came and dug it out. There was no evil in exploitation, so long as the metal existed and people wanted it.

  A man alone can have whatever he wants and it is of no interest to anyone except himself. But the moment you aspire to reach the many, the anonymous masses, you choose whatever means of mass communication is nearest to hand. Then begins the problem of choice, which is no problem at all, because things speak for themselves.

  Unless you are alienated to the marrow of your bones; unless you are stone-blind—like so many people in this world; unless you are one of those who live in fear of change, of any change, tell me, what other position (not to speak of party) stands for the progress of the whole rather than of the individual? Or aims to deliver us from hunger, poverty, misery, to help us evolve into a nobler animal and leave behind the old familiar ways that have tormented us over the years and the centuries, glued to us like leeches to the dull-eyed fish in the tank.

  And how beautiful life becomes when you believe in others! How womanly the women seem, how manly the men—thinking for the moment just in terms of the two fundamental poles of self-perpetuation. Never again those weak and pitiful creatures forever multiplying and forever lost, submerged in obscure abysses where no light falls, these Giuliettas of the Spirits, these moons in eclipse. How beautiful life is when you say to me: “Your hand in mine …”

  The dead have never spoken; this great accusation weighs upon them. They have forgotten once and for all the precious uses of the voice. It is we, then, who must speak in their name. We must plead the cause in their absence.

  One is afraid of being insignificant; of lacking horizons to roam in, sand to stretch out on, women to caress, and the chance to extract from falsehood the seeds of the great truth. One is afraid of being small, one’s head not reaching the foliage of the tree, the almond grove of the stars. One is afraid when one has grown used to the law of gravity, a law as intimately related to our planet as the hen to her egg. On another planet, with another law of gravity, one would have to learn all over again how to live.

  And when your soul has not rusted, love is always love. Bodies, the vessels of love, may change. Alas, if they didn’t! But love remains always the same, behind every face, behind every pair of transparent eyes. It is the thirst for water, the thirst for something transcending us. Rejecting these walls tha
t hem us in, these easy chairs, it demands something else. Your voice within my voice, two voices, no voice; you and I, without our being you and I, but we, who to the rhythm of drums from a prehistoric era perform an act as sure of itself as sunlight.

  He loved his wife. When she complained, weeping, of his unfaithfulness, those blue veins in her neck, swollen with sobs, became roots that led him deep into creation. Its very source was this alabaster neck of hers, the human form, the light of the soul, the voice repeating “Come!” And her eyes, her large eyes fixed magnetically upon him, with all the intensity of seas that have never been sailed or that have been much sailed (it comes to the same thing), her eyes, light-bearing, earthy, struck a chord within him, vibrations that woke the chord of the whole world. “I love you,” he told her, and with these words a thousand times uttered, “the world became beautiful once more according to the measure of the heart.” And it was as it had always been, every evening, at the time when he scarcely knew her. The same agony: “Will she come? Won’t she come?” The same pounding in his chest until she did come and draw near, infinitely dead in her vitality, infinitely dark in her whiteness. And her hands had a taste of loam.

  With her he recaptured his lost youth. With her the world grew wide again. The studies, his military service had made him small. “You’re always drunk,” she had told him. “What’s to be done with you?” Until he slept with her and then married her. And then he knew other women and he went on loving her always. Now, in this unfamiliar city, he missed her incredibly.

  Life is beautiful when you trust in the sun! You stare and everybody stares. You love, and everybody loves. You eat and it is just you eating, and not the person next to you.

  This was why he sought the organization, why he ran for deputy. All his deputy’s salary he turned over to the party. He didn’t mind. Knowing that in order to admire the sunrise you must first have a full stomach, that in order to enjoy love you must have a strong body, he knew also the necessity of working with means that were perhaps not so pleasant. Otherwise the danger was that one would always settle for substitutes; live by illusions; hope for illusions; see the half-used lipstick and dream of her lips; notice how the edge of the stick got blunted in its passage over her large, ideal mouth, those lips so intensely desired, without ever being able to kiss them.

  Suppose they did murder him, what would it mean? Ever since first hearing of threats against his life, he had not only felt free of anxiety—he had felt happy. He was sure of just one thing: that he would never in any way hinder them. Exactly as he had never lifted his hand against a policeman even while being pursued by one, because he knew the strength of his fist. One good blow and the other might sink to the bottom, men and all, like a foundered ship, on the spot. All he knew was how to caress; it is the way of the very strong.

  He had risen and was preparing to go out with the rest of them. Mastas seemed upset. “You’ve got no idea what’s happening out there,” he had said. “We’ll have to collect some of our own people to form a protective ring around you.”

  “It’s not necessary,” he heard himself say. “If they’re men, let them come on alone, each man by himself.”

  The others, however, disagreed. They weren’t playing with fire. The entire police force was out there, virtually assisting the counterdemonstrators in their task. Practical steps were necessary. In our era, there was no place for heroics.

  “Who said anything about heroics? Those people are such cowards underneath, they won’t dare even come near us.”

  “They’re beating others up without any restraint. No one’s stopping them.”

  “Let’s go.”

  He went ahead. He glanced at the hotel manager, who greeted him from behind the desk. Then he stepped out on the sidewalk. Night had settled on Salonika. Across the way, a neon sign flashed on and off at the pace of a feverish pulse. His own pulse was calm. For the speech ahead, he’d merely made some notes. When you have something to say, it’s not difficult to say it. The difficulty comes when you have nothing to say and must talk anyway.

  The others followed him. At his nod they all started out. They crossed the little square without incident. Then, near the entrance to the building, three young men in black turtlenecks jumped on him from behind. They struck for his head, the blow fell above the eyebrow. He heard a voice: “For shame! What sort of behavior’s this? We have guests here. We’re civilized human beings.” And falling back on the shoulders of the people hurrying forward alongside him, he went in. A great wave surged forward at that point, intent on passing through the open door, violating the immunity of the meeting. But, with an immense effort, those inside managed to bar the outer, iron entrance. In the midst of the butchery, however, Spathopoulos was left outside—and for a long time after, it seemed to those within that he had fallen among sharks and was being torn to pieces.

  Chapter 7

  “This is only the appetizer!” said Autocratosaur to the General, alluding to the blow Z had received. “The main course is still to come.”

  The General agreed in silence and assuming an air of indifference moved a few steps away. Even though he had no respect whatsoever for this worm, this larva desperate for wings, he was indispensable all the same: he was his eye in the mud, where dozens of protozoa swarmed. He had known him from the Occupation, in the squads of Poulos. As much as he detested him, he was obliged, every time Autocratosaur came to visit him in his office, to make him feel welcome, talk with him, offer him coffee. Every New Year’s Eve he attended the cake-cutting ceremony with his organization at Ano Toumba.

  This organization had turned out to be the salvation of Autocratosaur. He had left Greece with the Germans and, with a fake Greek government, had become, in Vienna, self-appointed Minister of Propaganda. He returned, expecting to go scot-free; but they caught him and tried him as a traitor and collaborator; he was given a life sentence, only to be released shortly after, his legs rotted by the dampness of the prison. He remembered his chilblains in the Partisan War, when he and poor Poulos exterminated the Red bastards. This time he had little courage to appear anywhere or to embark upon any career, until he founded the organization of the Combatants and Victims of the National Resistance of Northern Greece, thus emerging from disgraced oblivion to fame and recognition. The police force—a good mother—welcomed back her prodigal son, especially since the aim of his organization was “the reinforcement of the security units for as long as they continue to be needed for preservation of order and tranquillity in our land, for protection of Greek rights and interests by every legal means, for combating all anti-nationalistic activity and plots wherever they may originate, and, finally, for defense to the last breath of our Hellenic-Christian civilization.”

  It was this final item—“our Hellenic-Christian civilization”—that had won the General over and led him, despite his personal antipathy to the quisling, to bestow his approval on the organization. From the General’s point of view, ever since the reconstitution of Israel, the sunspots had been multiplying, because the sun refused to shine upon the Jews. “We are terminating a very brief period,” the General used to say, “from whose depths is emerging a Hellenic-Christian world hegemony. The significant disturbance on the solar mass and the crisis of the nations are due as much to the Jewish conspiracy as to the expansion of Communism.”

  Autocratosaur was no fool. The police force was one thing, the state another. It was necessary to arouse the latter’s interest. So he began publishing a small bulletin called Expansion of the Hellenes! (of a “truly infuriating pro-German character,” as the General admitted), which, though supposed to appear every month, had in fact been published three times in two years. But that was of no importance. With this small bulletin, Autocratosaur burrowed like a rodent into the secret funds of the ministry supporting the anti-Communist struggle, nibbling on whatever cash the official anti-Soviet experts left behind. It made him furious to be told he was doing this for his own profit. In answer he would point to two newspapers
he’d brought out in the past: a weekly, The Olympus News, in 1928, in Katerine (where the Communists had butchered his nephew and his wife’s brother); and The Agricultural Flag, in 1935. Perhaps he wasn’t a professional journalist—one had to live—but he could always pass as one, and tonight he was at the scene along with the other reporters.

  There were other outfits similar to his: for example, the incredible Organization of National Security—Guarantors of the Constitutional King of the Hellenes—Might of God—Divine Faith—Greek Immortality, whose leader, a retired major from Kilkis, had been removed from office because of congenital idiocy. But these outfits weren’t recognized by the big shots. They were fly-by-night subversives without any character. For that reason they had been approved neither by the courts nor by the police. Autocratosaur’s, on the other hand, was a well-disciplined organization. Every Thursday evening he assembled its members in Ano Toumba at The Six Little Pigs, a tavern owned by one Gonos (now deceased). Gonos would close the door, posting his son to make sure no one else entered. Here Autocratosaur instructed his disciples.

  It was his greatest joy. He talked to them about the Communists. About the fatherland. Religion. The family. The members, a fantastic assortment of ne’er-do-wells, would listen openmouthed. He recalled their last meeting, just before de Gaulle’s visit, when his theme had been “Communism as Infuriating Arrogance.” What he hadn’t told them!

  “Don’t be idiots. In Russia, the self-styled working-class paradise, the worker doesn’t own a thing. He works not for the boss, who might appreciate what he does and give him a raise, but for someone he doesn’t know, doesn’t see, and never will see. Because the people in power over there aren’t like our leaders, who walk about in plain sight and show themselves on their balconies. Over there they live in houses full of mirrors. They can see the others behind the mirrors. But those who talk with them can’t see them. The worker gives his blood for them. The farmer doesn’t own even a tiny field where he can plant a few onions or his little tomatoes. He doesn’t own one little olive that he can press for oil. You need coupons for everything. The way it was here during the Occupation. You don’t know, because you were too young. The Germans gave the people something to eat. But the Communists came along and gobbled it up. That’s why the people were starving. Well, then—you over there, when the leader’s talking, listen to him, so you can get a little sense pumped into your brain—and you, Yango, that’s enough retsina …”