Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  Dinos was especially shocked by the inspector’s indifference. He stood in front of Branchiosaur’s jeep. Not a gesture, no reaction at all of surprise. On the contrary, when Dinos asked who had been hit, he answered with no feeling whatever, almost cynically: “A seventeen-year-old boy.” And then, when Dinos remarked that it was the same van that had been parked near them a little while before, the inspector had simply turned his back. What was going on? Or was he an idiot for prying into some plot that already involved the police themselves? But why? What? How?

  Crossing the square on the way to a friend’s house to listen to some new jazz records, he had heard the loudspeaker: “Attention! Attention! Z. is going to speak in a few minutes.”

  He had stayed out of curiosity to hear the first words of the speech. He was standing in front of the Kosmopolit Hotel, along with the hotel proprietor, who was a business acquaintance, and the owner of a nearby pastry shop, who had left the doughnuts he was frying and come out to watch also; they looked on in amazement as the angry crowd howled its chants of “Bulgars, get out!” and “Death to Z.!” Dinos was thunderstruck when he heard the deputy’s first words: it was an appeal to the Prefect, the General, the Chief of Police, and other authorities to protect the life of Spathopoulos, who was in danger. He was bowled over by it. All this maneuvering of the counter-demonstrators suddenly acquired meaning. It was reassuring that almost the entire police force was on hand and could intervene at any moment. But the longer it was, the more clearly he could see that the police were doing absolutely nothing. They were not restraining the thugs. They were not arresting anyone. Once in a while they would ask the noisiest demonstrators to step back. That was all.

  He couldn’t hear Z.’s speech. All he could hear over the loudspeaker was the thunderous applause and the peace slogans. He decided to stay. To hell with jazz! These events were like none he had ever witnessed, even during his student years.

  When he saw the pickup van start off, a man crumple and fall, some others get a grip on the vehicle without being able to stop it, and three panic-stricken lawyers run for refuge into the hotel as though seeking shelter from a bomb raid, his face twitched painfully. And then the strange attitude of the man with the pipe bothered him profoundly. He went home. Under such circumstances it was better not to be present. A wedding was coming next month; he was marrying off his sister. His own youth had long since been buried beneath the agricultural machines.

  His apartment was on the same street, two blocks down, directly in front of Ayia Sophia Church. He went home, had some stuffed eggplant his mother had prepared yesterday, and then went out again. He was consumed with curiosity to find out who had been hit by the van. By now the square was almost empty; a few people wandered about like movie extras on a set after the stars have gone. He approached a group.

  “What happened here a little while ago?”

  “The gentleman’s interested in what happened,” said a thug to someone who seemed to be the leader.

  “What does the gentleman want?” asked the leader.

  “Excuse me …”

  “Go screw yourself!”

  “Why don’t you go home?” said another.

  At that point the thug Dinos had talked to first spoke up. “Nothing very interesting happened,” he said. “We’ve killed a Communist.” He puffed up like a peacock. Then he and the others burst out laughing.

  “We’ve canonized him in style!”

  “We made another Athanasios Diakos out of him!”

  “We Macedonians, we gave him a little lesson.”

  Dinos stood still while the group slowly walked away. “The bastards,” he said to himself, “they haven’t any God.” The next instant—his brain was working fast—he started out for the first-aid station. There he encountered the same hostility. The guard wouldn’t let him in.

  “What’s happened? Who was brought here?”

  “Who are you? A newspaper reporter?”

  “No, a citizen. A simple Greek citizen, who wants some information.”

  “Nothing happened. Nothing serious anyway. A young man was wounded.”

  Disappointed, he was about to leave when he saw a man at the admissions office, shirt torn, blood all over him, asking to have his wounds bandaged. On getting a better look, Dinos saw with astonishment that it was the same man he had observed in the rear of the van when it was parked before the Kosmopolit Hotel and the police inspector had come up to speak with the driver. But he could see no connection between these facts.

  His way back home took him past the square, now completely empty. A few people were prowling around in the darkness of the side streets. At the spot where the pickup van had run over whoever it was lay two bouquets of red carnations. “Thus untouched you go unto death,” he reflected, sure that a seventeen-year-old youth had been killed.

  Chapter 28

  He had twenty minutes to go before his shift would end, and he’d written only five traffic tickets. A very poor harvest for a whole evening in the heart of Salonika, the traffic cop considered, as with his right hand he signaled away a little Fiat parked illegally in front of the Agapitou Pastry Shop. It was dangerous to direct traffic among so many cars. And the new head of the traffic department was very strict. He considered it a failing on the policeman’s part not to issue a great number of tickets. Unhappily, he hadn’t found many people violating the law today. If this Fiat would only stay parked five more seconds … But it started off just as he pulled out his pad.

  In his uniform he was a great success with female drivers. One of them was smiling at him right now through the window of her car. Following her with his eyes, he caught sight of something a block away, in Karolou Deel Street, across from the Titania Cinema: people coming together from all directions. Thinking that some accident must have occurred, he ran toward the movie house, blowing his whistle. Approaching the wall of onlookers, he saw a bald man wriggling out from between their legs, on all fours like a rat. He was small in stature and was clutching his head as he screamed over and over like a child: “I’ve been hit, I’ve been hit.”

  Thinking there must have been a collision and this man must be one of the injured, the policeman left him to his fate and began to think of the report he would make. He went through the dense crowd of people, forcing them to scatter, and finally he saw a pickup van parked on the curb, with its motor turned off. Astride the seat a husky individual, who seemed to be a transport man, was engaged in a violent argument with the bystanders.

  “He was the one who started it.”

  “You hit him on the head. People saw you.”

  “The bastard. Too bad he didn’t get knocked out.”

  “You’re the b—”

  “Shut up, or I’ll sock you in the mouth.”

  “What’s going on here?” said the traffic cop, stepping between them.

  “Nothing, sergeant.”

  “What do you mean, nothing?”

  “My buddy and I had an argument. I slugged him. Then he slugged me back.” And he made as though to leave.

  “Stay where you are,” said the traffic cop, advancing toward him menacingly. “Show me your driver’s license and all your papers.”

  “With pleasure,” said Yango, taking a plastic case out of his inner pocket.

  The traffic cop took the papers, examined them carefully, and was about to give them back when a fireman in uniform and helmet and holding his wife by the arm broke into the circle.

  “Excuse me, sir,” he said, “but I witnessed the whole scene. This guy, without any excuse as far as I could see, took a club from under his arm and began to beat the other man on the head and ribs—a bald man, who fell, half conscious.”

  He looked around for the injured man, turning his head with some difficulty because of the helmet. The traffic cop took the opportunity to order the crowd to move away.

  “What are you doing here? Come on, move back, move back so we can do our job. Get going! Don’t block traffic.”

  The cr
owd dispersed.

  “He’s got a club on him,” the fireman went on.

  The traffic cop was about to search Yango, but Yango handed him the club. It was a new club—as new as those just delivered to the police force.

  Yango could see that things weren’t going well. The fireman’s uniform had at first given him a feeling of security. But the nut of a fireman, he thought, didn’t seem to know much; didn’t seem to know that it was for the good of the country that he’d knocked out the dirty Communist, the leech that had almost spoiled everything. The traffic cop seemed to be a jerk too. He didn’t know anything either. If he could only get to the police station! How their eyes would pop if they came there to ask for him. At one point, while the traffic cop was talking with the fireman, he got down from his seat, explaining that his back hurt from staying in one position, and was all set to beat it up Karolou Deel Street, cut through Kapani, and wind up at the police station. But the traffic cop got wind of his intention and grabbed him by the arm.

  “Come on across the street,” he said.

  “And my van?”

  “Never mind. No one’s going to disturb it.”

  Across the way was the police canteen. A good place, thought Yango. If he had the luck to run into some policeman he knew, this comedy would soon be over. But the canteen was closed. They had to stand in the corridor.

  The traffic cop asked the fireman to go out and phone the emergency patrol from a kiosk and ask them to come pick up the fellow. “For willful bludgeoning and inflicting of wounds, as well as for traffic violations,” he said.

  The people in the street had moved along. At the canteen there was nobody but the cop, Yango, the fireman’s wife, and two friends of his, who had come too. Every other minute a switch closed the circuit, plunging the building into darkness. Each time, the traffic cop had to press the button so the lights would go on and he could check on his prisoner.

  “Pst!” Yango whispered to him in a confidential tone. “I’m going to tell you …”

  “What do you want?”

  “I have to tell you … to tell you …”

  “I don’t want you to tell me anything. You can say what you have to say at the police station.”

  “What a nerve he’s got,” he thought. At the same time Yango was thinking: “What a moron—if you only knew your boss was a friend of mine!” The light went off again and the cop pressed the button.

  “I’m leaving,” Yango said to the cop. “Just pretend you didn’t see me.”

  “What’s that you’re saying?”

  “I say I’m leaving,” Yango repeated. “I can’t tell you any more. You just play dumb.”

  “Don’t you budge, or I’ll lay you flat, you bum!”

  “Who are you calling a bum? You’re going to be mighty sorry for this. Show me your papers.”

  “…”

  “With the pull I’ve got, I’ll see to it that you get transferred.”

  “Who are you?” asked the traffic cop in amazement.

  In the street, the sword-sharp light of the patrol car foretold the end.

  Chapter 29

  Vango was scarcely pleased when the man he had noticed outside the Kosmopolit Hotel emerged from the first-aid station just as he was going in. From the rear of the van he had watched him for more than half an hour standing motionless, eyes fixed on the loudspeaker, straining to hear what Z. was saying, turning slightly sideways so that the sound could reach his ear more clearly. What was he doing here? Who was he looking for? But for the moment Vango had other fish to fry.

  He had come to the first-aid station on the advice of his friend, the newspaper reporter. Though his wounds required no special attention, the reporter had urged him to go to the hospital and get himself on the list of the wounded, so that it wouldn’t be only the Reds who had something to complain about. He was a court reporter for the Macedonian Battle. Vango had a passion for trials. He boasted of never missing an important case. He would rather watch a good, spectacular trial than a movie any day. He and the reporter had met each other in the crowded corridors of the criminal law courts. Vango secretly hoped that if he ever got caught in a nasty case the reporter would keep his name out of the papers, so that he wouldn’t have the neighborhood poking fun at him. The newspaper was right-wing, and all the people with whom Vango had relations were right-wing also.

  He suddenly remembered the reporter when he found himself lying on the pavement outside the newspaper office. A crowd circled the pickup van, which, as Vango could see, had stopped farther down the street. A few inquisitive people collected around him, wanting to know what had happened. He was afraid that the pacifists might notice him and come around later to settle accounts. Complications might develop before he had time to receive further instructions from Mastodontosaur. They’d foreseen everything, except that someone would jump into his van. “I hope Yango will polish him off,” he said to himself, though, seeing the van parked fifty yards away, beneath the lights of the Titania Cinema, he didn’t have much hope.

  Unable to think of anything better to do while waiting for the crowd to thin out, he decided to seek refuge in the newspaper office. The doorway of the building was garishly illuminated. Huge cylinders of paper, lined up like steam rollers, ready, at the crack of dawn, to pave the way for a new day. Over the main entrance, a wide ribbon dotted with tiny lightbulbs that connected with the teletype was flashing the latest news. Vango pushed through the crowd watching the news evolve. Straightening his disordered clothes as best he could, he went up the stairs.

  The reporter was sitting behind his desk, hard at work, as were several editors at adjacent desks. Vango’s friend, dizzy from writing, did not recognize him at first. The face seemed dimly familiar. Then Vango came to his rescue.

  “Aren’t you the reporter from the courthouse?” he asked.

  “Why, yes. Ahh! Now I remember you! But you’re a sight. What’s happened?”

  “Happened?” Vango sighed. “We had some trouble tonight.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “With the Communists. They were holding a meeting for peace. Z. came from Athens. Do you think we nationalists were just going to stand there with our hands folded? We beat them up good. They got in a few licks themselves. Finally a pickup went past and in the midst of the hullabaloo ran over Z. by mistake.”

  “By mistake?”

  “What? Do you think the guy did it on purpose? He must have been on a delivery job. It happened where Ermou and Venizelou Streets cross. Z. was wounded. Nothing serious. They took him to the first-aid station. Serves him right.”

  “Well, what can I do for you?” the reporter asked. Political reporting wasn’t his job. “You want to make a formal complaint? I’m at your service.”

  “I want you to write in the newspaper that I was one of the guys who beat Z. up when he came to the meeting. So the boys won’t think I’m a coward.”

  “The boys?”

  “You know, the guys who make the trouble.”

  The reporter stared at him, amazed.

  “In any case,” he said to get rid of him, “my advice to you is to go to the first-aid station and have yourself put on the list of the wounded so it won’t be just the Reds who have something to complain about. And buy tomorrow’s paper. Your name will be first on the list.”

  He must have been in the office of the Macedonian Battle about ten minutes. He took a taxi to the first-aid station. At the entrance he ran into Dinos. That seemed odd; but when he came out, his face bandaged and some iodine on his elbow, it seemed odder still to find a patrol jeep waiting for him.

  Before he had time to ask any questions, they nabbed him and started off.

  “You’re wanted urgently. Where’d you disappear to, you louse?” was the sergeant’s greeting. “So? We do the job and then we blow, do we? Things are beginning to look tough. And it’s your fault for not polishing off that guy who jumped into the van. Yellow windbag! All you know how to do is go make statements to the pa
pers about what a big hero you are. Jackass! Do you want to get us all killed? Huh?”

  Out of that flood of words, only one thing struck Vango: how did they know he’d gone to the newspaper?

  Chapter 30

  After handing Yango over to the patrol car, the traffic cop left the canteen and dispersed the last stragglers. He notified the head of the Traffic Department to come and collect a pickup from Karolou Deel Street and then returned to his post on Nea Megalou Alexandrou Street, opposite Ayia Sophia Church. The next-to-the-last movie shows were ending and the traffic was somewhat heavier. However, before he had time to make a single signal, he saw his replacement approaching. It was exactly 10:30. He went back home quietly, took off his uniform, sat down to eat, and about a quarter past eleven lay down to sleep. Within fifteen minutes somebody arrived with the news that he was urgently wanted by the Chief of Police. So he dressed again and, cursing every god in creation, left the house.

  Chapter 31

  Yango, finding himself inside the patrol car on the way to the police station, felt infinitely relieved. He was finally going to get in touch with his own crowd again. He’d been exposed long enough to all those imbeciles. The only thing he worried about was having abandoned his van on Karolou Street. Hadn’t it been for the sake of the pickup van that he’d done the job? How could he leave it unprotected in the middle of the street! Even though the traffic cop had assured him that he’d be able to get it back tomorrow, it pained him to think of it abandoned and neglected, like a horse that pines away without its rider.