Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  Chapter 37

  There was great activity in the Chief of Police’s office when the traffic cop arrived. The Chief himself was in a state of feverish excitement. The telephone would ring, he would grab it and converse in a muffled voice with the person at the other end. Then he would be interrupted by a call from the Ministry of the Interior in Athens, wanting to know the latest developments. Then the orderly would come in to announce a new visitor.

  “The reason I called you in,” he said to the traffic cop, “was to set you right about the whole situation. The man you handed over to the patrol car wasn’t just a chance offender caught in a brawl on the public thoroughfare. The man you arrested is one of our own boys. The other fellow is a notorious Communist.”

  “But …”

  “There’s no need for you to look for excuses. You did your duty and I congratulate you for it. But that’s beside the point. Tomorrow you’ll probably be summoned to testify about the circumstances under which you arrested him. You understand of course that whatever you say must be favorable to the department that you serve. That’s all.”

  The General, ensconced in an easy chair and listening silently, shook his head. “Listen, my boy,” he said to the traffic cop when the Chief of Police had finished, “where are you from?”

  “Arnea.”

  “Are your father and mother still living?”

  “Yes.”

  “Any brothers and sisters?”

  “One sister, unmarried.”

  “Well then, about the club, it’s better that you keep quiet about it.”

  “But I’ve already mentioned it in my report.”

  “Listen, I am the General.”

  The traffic cop sprang to attention.

  “At ease! Think over what the Chief just told you. We are all of us subject to the Jewish-Communist menace. The great disturbance on the solar mass …”

  The telephone interrupted him. It was Athens again.

  “There’s a bit of light on the horizon,” the traffic cop heard the Chief of Police saying. “Everything’s shaping up. No, they haven’t arrived yet. They’re probably still at the ballet. Yes, immediately. Goodbye, sir.”

  The traffic cop saluted and departed. In the corridor a man was waiting in pajamas, with a coat tossed over his shoulders.

  Chapter 38

  Yango ate a helping of lamb stew in the canteen, at the end of the long corridor. He was hungry as a wolf. When he emerged, he saw that the three strangers were gone. On the bench where they had been sitting was a little boy. He was crying because the police had confiscated the tray he used to sell koulouria. A policeman had chased him, thrown his koulouria to the ground, grabbed him by the collar, and dragged him to the police station along with the empty tray. Then they had taken his tray and thrown it into the room where they kept all the trays of unlicensed peddlers. Wiping his runny nose, he pointed to a closed door. He had been at the meeting, but he hadn’t sold much there, so he went over to the theater, where he expected to sell all the koulouria he had. Instead, that policeman had pinched him. Why? He was still crying. Yango’s fingers slipped gently through the child’s blond hair. For a long while he caressed his head.

  Chapter 39

  The performance was almost over. Romeo, thinking Juliet dead, takes the poison and collapses on the floor of the stage, after two unsteady pirouettes. The superlative artistry, the grace of the Russian dancer, conveys all the shuddering horror of a man poisoned by love. He lies full length; his hand, undulating like the neck of a swan, floats in the air for a moment. And here she is now, thrice-beautiful in her flowing tunic, throbbing back into a world she thought forever lost. She lifts herself on her toes and with utter grace spins around in a hymn of joy, though it is not to last for long—because she sees him. With nervous leaps on tiptoe she approaches him, bends down as a branch bends, then springs back, like the branch when it is suddenly let go. She covers her face with both hands. The music—deep, pained, muffled—accompanies her writhing. In the orchestra pit the Maestro’s baton is lifted into the air, starkly, solitary, alert, like a submarine antenna. Ah, why did she awake? Why arise? Why not lie forever in her dreamless sleep? The Russian ballerina, despite her strict, disciplined technique, communicates chills of primitive feeling to the audience. And here she is now, preparing to put an end to her own life. She sees no light. A shadow has come over the sun. There is no joy. How high-spirited, ebullient she had been a moment before! Who would have guessed their love would end like this? Her last moments she dances round the dead body of her beloved, enfolding it in invisible circles of tenderness, as the spotlight tries to keep up with her, abandoning Romeo to the darkness. (If there had been one more rehearsal, the technician in charge of the lights would have been able to remember her movements better and would have had less difficulty keeping her in the center of the spotlight. But the ballet had arrived the day before and they had had no time for a second rehearsal.) And now Juliet is flying, dancing to her death. The music deepens. She grasps the poison and swallows it. She reels, storm-buffeted in her turn, ethereally graceful as she yields to inexorable gravity, which as a dancer she has been fighting all her life. But now it is not the dancer who sinks and falls: it is Juliet herself kneeling, lightly stroking his brow with one hand, his head cradled against her breast. And while the audience holds its breath, she dances in that spot until the thread breaks and she falls upon him, lifeless.

  The last bars of music mix with the mounting applause. The lights go on gradually beneath their cake-shaped frames. The red velvet curtain falls. The lights get stronger, as though the cheers of the audience were rousing them from sleep. The curtain swings open in jerks, like a pair of fleshy red lips stuck together by too much lipstick, and here is the whole Bolshoi Ballet applauding, as is the Russian custom, the audience. In their costumes—Doges, Infantas, Counts, plebeians—they make their bows, the third couple coming on to the proscenium first, and then the second. And when finally Romeo and Juliet step forward, the spectators, on their feet, cry “Bravo”; roses are showered on the stage; Juliet and Romeo stoop to pick them up; two enormous baskets of flowers are brought in from the wings. They are called back at least seven times. And then the curtain falls definitively and the crowd begins to move toward the exits.

  Ladies in the most expensive gowns, embroidered with jewels, from the best dressmakers in Athens, sigh:

  “How marvelous!”

  “I liked him the best.”

  Gentlemen in tuxedos jostle one another in the corridors. All the top society of Salonika is present.

  “I can’t see Deppy!”

  “She left during the intermission. You know she’s expecting a baby, and she gets nauseous.”

  They greet each other. They light cigarettes after the long deprivation. The Prefect, the Mayor, the Minister of Northern Greece, the Chief of the Army Corps. Only the Archbishop and the General are missing. All very well about the former, but the latter? Oh, look, there’s the Secretary General; he’s managed to get here, though heaven knows how he got an invitation! The city’s artists. The aged painter who makes portraits of the tobacco manufacturers’ wives. The ex-ballerina, who has now opened a ballet school.

  “I’m ashamed to say that I too used to dance.”

  Big-time merchants. Importers of tractors. The Director of the Esso-Pappas factories. Estate owners. Speculators. People who divide their lives between this city and central Europe. They take their coats from the cloakroom, handing back the check number and a small tip, and descend the marble stairs leading to the brilliantly illuminated exit of the theater. A few do not resist the temptation to go to the toilet.

  “Where did you have that dress made?”

  “At Kiouka’s. And yours?”

  “In Athens, at Thalia’s.”

  “It’s a dream!”

  “Thank you.”

  They are keeping their programs as souvenirs. The gentlemen help the ladies down the arduous stairs.

  “I didn’t li
ke the second part.”

  “I liked the death of the swan.”

  “It wasn’t the death of the swan, dear. It was Prokop’s Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Anyhow, he was as graceful as a swan.”

  “Romeo, the swan.”

  “Adorable …”

  Look look look! There are the two faded countesses who write the society news for the Salonika papers. All the ladies want to greet them.

  “What a marvelous tradition that country has in the dance!”

  “So what if it has changed its system and gone socialist? Dancing’s in their blood.”

  “The system has nothing to do with that.”

  “Then why did Nureyev run away?”

  Groups of friends greet one another. They kiss hands. The society that finances the arts is all there.

  “This was an evening I shall never forget.”

  “I wasn’t able to get tickets till the last moment. They’ve been sold out for two weeks.”

  “I got mine on the black market.”

  “And just think, this was only the second troupe of the Bolshoi Ballet. What if we’d seen the first?”

  Now some get into their private cars. Others take taxis. Others buy hot koulouria, or go next door to the terrace of the Do-Re Club. And they’re still coming out of the theater. The musicians, carrying their instruments in their cases, are swallowed up in the throng of spectators.

  “The Maestro used his baton like a drinking-straw.”

  “She was like a piece of chiffon in his arms.”

  “The psychiatrist told her she’d work out her troubles with Vallium.”

  “You know, I’m on a new diet. I’ve lost six pounds in a week.”

  “Impossible!”

  “And Alexandros?”

  “He’s getting married next week. I’m going to his wedding. You know who he’s marrying?”

  “I’m proud to say he met her at my home.”

  “She’s a pretty girl. A simple person, even with all that money.”

  “They’re suited to each other. You know the only thing they disagree about?”

  “No.”

  “About hunting. He wants to go every Sunday.”

  The inside lights go off; the last of the crowd has reached the bottom steps of the marble staircase. The theater and the White Tower confront each other, all flooded in light.

  “Shall we play canasta tomorrow? Come along, you’ll be the fourth.”

  “I’ll come. I’ve been wanting to play. I haven’t played for three days.”

  A group of young people go off in an MG. They’re going dancing at the Swings. Two bankers are discussing the slump in the market. The Minister is leaving in his official limousine, bowing to his acquaintances. And the two public prosecutors, holding their wives by the arm, move on in the direction of the old city. When a jeep stops, they rush to get into it, leaving their wives on the sidewalk and dashing to police headquarters.

  Chapter 40

  There they found the General and the Chief of Police.

  “How was the ballet?” the General asked.

  “Why didn’t you notify us earlier?”

  “We couldn’t locate you.”

  “What happened?”

  “A traffic accident,” said the Chief of Police. “The EDA deputy, Mr. Z., got hurt.”

  “Was the culprit arrested?”

  The Chief of Police started to speak, but the General interrupted him.

  “He hasn’t been arrested yet, but, no matter where he goes, he’ll be caught.”

  The Chief’s face turned ashen. How could the General tell such a crude lie? Why did he do it? The workings of the General’s mind had always baffled him.

  “Is Z.’s condition serious?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The prosecutors rose and went immediately to the AHEPAN Hospital, where the wounded man had been taken. They didn’t know how serious the accident had been. They thought they’d be able to get a statement from the victim. But when they arrived, they were shown a mutilated face. Clinically speaking, Z. was dead.

  When they returned to police headquarters, Yango was brought before them; he told them what he’d been told to say by the Commissioner.

  “Therefore,” the first prosecutor said to the General, very excited, “when we came here the first time, you knew that the culprit had been arrested and you concealed it from us.”

  The General protested violently. “By no means! I did not know it!”

  “But is it possible that your subordinates would not have informed you? And you, my boy, where have you been since ten-thirty?”

  “At the police station.”

  “In the station lockup, you mean?”

  “Lockup, nothing. I was eating lamb stew in the canteen.”

  “There you are! I regret to say, General, that you are going to be accused of protecting the guilty party and obstructing the course of justice. Z. is breathing his last and you didn’t even lock up his murderer. You didn’t even handcuff him.”

  The police captain intervened.

  “Mr. Prosecutor,” he said, “the cell at the station can’t be used. It’s full of koulouria trays and junk that has been taken from the unlicensed peddlers. Besides, the lights don’t work. But what better cell do you need than the police station itself?”

  “And you, Chief, were you also ignorant that the culprit had been arrested?”

  “Inasmuch as the General has answered in my place, I think it best if I keep silent. But in the interests of the truth I should like to add that I had not yet had time to inform the General of the circumstances of the culprit’s arrest, not being myself quite certain that the person in question was in fact the culprit and not some individual whom the policeman on duty had taken into custody, presuming him to be the guilty party.”

  It was 3:30 when they took down Yango’s statement in writing. The first prosecutor told him to open his mouth and say “A-a-a-h.” He noted down in the official report: “When the suspect exhaled at our request, his breath did not disclose a perceptible consumption of alcohol.” Thus collapsed the argument that he was drunk when he hit Z. Then the prosecutors signed a warrant for the arrest of the person who had been in the van with Yango. The warrant was transmitted to the police station in Vango’s neighborhood. The policeman on duty awakened the Commissioner, the Commissioner went to Vango’s house to “arrest” him. He failed to find him there, but a few hours later Vango came by the station on his own. The agreement was that he should come back next morning and turn himself in “voluntarily,” as the newspapers said he had done.

  Chapter 41

  Hatzis knew he should be getting back. He was the only witness, the only person who could help the reporters and the judges. The Athens–Salonika train would stop at Plati at 5:30 in the morning. It was 3:30 now. He slept for a while on the one bench in the deserted station. It was daylight when he opened his eyes. The broad plain was a baking sheet in the universal oven. Under the still-glowing embers of the stars, the yeast of dawn began to work. Soon the day’s loaf would be ready and the early workmen would buy it as it came out of the oven, to eat at lunch, with a few olives and some cheese. When such images as these occurred to him, Hatzis knew he was hungry.

  For some time he had been hiding behind the tank that supplied the trains with water, its huge hose hanging from it like an elephant’s trunk. He was watching for the train, having made up his mind to scramble aboard and stow away to Salonika. Finally he saw it coming, twenty minutes late, a monster whose head alone gave signs of life. It stood still a long time, waiting for the signal to leave. Hatzis fixed his eyes on the play of red and green lights and listened to the whistles. When the train began its jerky puffing, he scrambled up to the footboard of the last compartment and stayed there during the whole trip, holding on to the door and leaning out into the void. It wasn’t much of a feat. If he could jump into a van racing seventy miles an hour, why should he have any trouble when he had a whole train at his
disposal and it was moving at a snail’s pace?

  Along the way he watched the plain waking up, the first oxen on their way to the fields, the plows, the black-garbed peasant women. The mist hanging over the plain had crystallized into hoarfrost on the acres of clover. Later the scene changed, the odor of industry filled his nostrils. He saw the workmen on their bicycles, the nervous crowds, the gray suburbs, the central station. The sooty air irritated his throat. His hands were trembling as he let go of the train.

  In the railroad station, over somebody’s shoulder, he read about his leader in the headlines of the Macedonian Battle.

  He didn’t want to admit that Z. could die.

  PART II

  A TRAIN WHISTLES IN THE NIGHT

  A train, the train, non-stop, engine out-of-breath, coach with lights dimmed, and then Car Z-4383, in which he was traveling the same route traveled by air three days before, one hundred May hours before, as many hours as the agony of his soul had lasted, as many hours following his fall as his soul needed to prepare her departure, the eviction having struck her so brutally that at first she could scarcely credit it; in another coach his wife, veins swollen in her neck, a brother, the one who hadn’t studied, and his mother, her face a carved image of the earth, thinking of earth, which soon was to receive her beloved son; and in the last coach, filled with their rough stench, a squad of policemen, weapons between thighs, terror-stricken on this death train, prepared to intervene in any incident, however trivial, gaping at countrysides which could not penetrate the sealed door of his coach, whose coffined body descended from North to South while his soul, following above the coach like a helicopter, hovered, dawdled, careful not to leave the train behind, a lepidopter spraying the fields against mildew, its fleet shadow setting foliage aquiver, refreshing the parched soil for an instant only, and the earth, thirsting for rain these hundreds of years, vibrated at its mere caress, this shadow’s light as if one hand had lightly grazed another, the fingers not intertwining, because that would mean brotherhood, signal for blood and revolution, no, only an imperceptible plume stroke, waking the blood in the veins, and the earth (fields of Thessaly, plains of Macedonia, Bralos, Pinios, Sarandaporon, Thebes, Levadia) knew that it would soon receive his body, the “forty-first brave lad” of the song, the earth (so the winged soul reflected) whose blood, her waters, seeking their own level, in their own sweet time, undermine foundations, prepare the great, tidal revolution, in view of which the engineer’s orders were explicit: “No stop anywhere,” from the Communications Bureau of the Presidency of the Council in Athens, where an entire general staff was following the route of the train by radio, conferring with local police and regulating the trip accordingly, in touch by telephone with the engineer, all scheduled runs canceled, no trains approaching, none following behind, all postponed in order to clear the way for this one, in order that it not be sidetracked into some backwater whose sailors and whores and stevedores would rise up in revolt; these authorities panic-stricken, exposed, could not cover their shame, a child having shouted as in the fairy tale, “The King is naked!”, causing utter dismay after countless ceremonies had persuaded him of his rich clothing, of his own beauty, of his power rooted in the people’s enduring love, and then, at this one cry, havoc, whereupon, seeing no other way, they chose to remove the child, find peace once and for all, remove the witness to their deception, for it had not sufficed to cry “The King is naked!” but he had dared to strip the Queen as well, that time in London, a hired hand ripping her dress at the shoulder; and now the train was racing through a world suddenly stilled by his thunderbolt, a world wanting only the signal to rise up, but in the end everything would be orderly, there were to be no incidents even at the funeral, the slogans disseminated were soothing ones, appeals to avoid further bloodshed at all costs, the times not being ripe, and politics, its eye on final victory, must prudently, if temporarily, forfeit the great opportunity his death afforded, while the other side, all during his soul’s long agony, tried with vain words to cover their nakedness: