Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  I hate you. I always hated you. I always envied you. Without the olive trees, even the vineyards look like orphans. Without the rocks, even the sea seems unreal. Without your kiss, my lips are two worms. Without you I am nothing. I hate you for betraying me, my beloved house, I hate you tonight for being late to our rendezvous. I shall never believe that you aren’t coming back. I shall never believe that you have canceled your trip. Do you know why? Because I am incapable of suicide. I must carry you in me until I become utterly dissolved, voice of a voice that has faded away, chaos of my time, the sun’s rays burn savagely here, high up here. Burn and are beginning to singe my wings. Now I’m melting. How pleasant it is! Disappearing at last. Forgetting you. Yes, so suddenly. Who were you? Where was it? I remember dimly that once … No, it can’t have been you. On earth? You mean that planet? Yes! Yes, of course, yes indeed. Oh, very well, thank you. Yes. Yes. I don’t know. What was that? I don’t understand. I don’t know. I never knew you. What pleasure, this losing of oneself! What a relief! Once, perhaps … No. It’s you who betrayed me, you are faithless. You abandoned me first and left me homeless. And I became a whore and forgot you in the brothel of the Great Bear. I forgot you. You deserved to be forgotten. You betrayed me. Betrayed me. I have lost you and myself alike. I do not know you.

  “In the course of the funeral of Deputy Z. yesterday there were no incidents or clashes with the police. Why? because the EDA decided to give orders for the funeral ceremony to be conducted in an orderly fashion. When the EDA does not want incidents, there are no incidents. And when entanglements with the police are provoked, they are provoked because the EDA wants them, organizes them, creates them. These are the conclusions to be drawn from the funeral of Z.”

  PART III

  AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE

  Chapter 1

  It was hot. People went about their jobs indifferently, except in a district near the AHEPAN Hospital: Syntrivani Square. The stadium had been closed, but the street leading from it to the hospital was full of people. The hearse would soon be passing on its way to the railroad station and the train to Athens. “The hearse of our adolescence,” reflected the young student, for it was on this same street, under this same tree, in front of this same bolted stadium gate that he had parted forever from his girl two days before. And now, though he had come to bid farewell to the dead hero, the two funerals were strangely confused in his mind.

  A friend who was with him tried to console him by saying that in this day and age there were more important things happening and that anyone wanting to face the problems of his time could not allow himself to succumb so easily to autosuggestion. “Because in one way or another,” he said, “you are enjoying your obsession with Maria. You love your legend. Maria is an excuse. Even if you hadn’t broken with her, you’d have found some other reason to suffer.”

  He listened, relieved to hear his friend talking this way. Yet on that particular morning he was inconsolable at having lost her. Spring with its leaden weights sank, into his sea, nets utterly lost in the deep blue waters, a darkness on the floor of the sea. That’s how he felt since parting from her. It was so senseless! And all this in front of the cold, ugly, forbidding gate of a football field! A cry behind him made him turn abruptly.

  “I’ve been hit!”

  He saw a man lying in the middle of the street, unconscious. In the dense traffic of Syntrivani Square—cars seem to spin around it like tops—he couldn’t make out who had hit the man. In a second all his personal obsessions vanished. He ran to the nearest telephone, the one from which he used to phone Maria after class, and called for an ambulance. It arrived a few minutes later, picked up the injured man, and drove him to the city hospital.

  Chapter 2

  On his way to the Public Prosecutor he was struck on the head. It was the second time he was going there. The first time he had told the Investigator the whole story. After struggling with himself all day he had weakened. Ever since that accursed Thursday morning when he’d read in the newspaper that Yango had run over the deputy, he was revolted. He was the only person who knew the truth. The day before, Yango had said: “Tonight I’m going to do something big—really wild. It may come to killing a man …” And he’d done it. He didn’t know if Z. would die, but did it matter? “Clinically, Z. is dead. A body, essentially speaking, without a head. The body is still alive. The brain has undergone necrosis.”

  He was at his varnishing shop when he read the news. He was stunned. In spite of all the work he had to do (yesterday’s order still hadn’t gone out and the dealer was waiting for the furniture, the same furniture he had called on Yango to deliver yesterday, but Yango couldn’t make the delivery, he had more important things to do, such as “killing a man,” and he had not been able to find another three-wheeler; it was Wednesday, the shops were closed, and the pickup trucks had left the stand early), in spite of all the work he had to do, his hands turned to stone. He let the newspaper drop. His smiling deaf-mute apprentice picked it up and handed it to him. Nikitas shoved him aside. For the first time that smile exasperated him. He began pacing nervously. The shop seemed too small. The polished walnut coffins depressed him. No, he had to do something. It wasn’t possible to remain silent when he was the only one who knew the truth. Then he would be no different from his apprentice: a deaf-mute wearing an idiotic smile.

  He was not a leftist. Or a rightist. Or anything at all. Of course, he read the right-wing papers—to delude his enemies, since he had a shop. Just the day before, someone had tried to open the same kind of shop across the street. Nikitas lost no time in going to the police; the result was the man’s chances were destroyed. But what angered him was that the newspaper should refer to “a traffic accident.” He knew perfectly well that Yango the night before had been planning in cold blood to kill a man. How could he keep his mouth shut?

  That Thursday seemed endless. He felt he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. No one else knew what he knew. At noon he bought the Athens newspapers. All of them were decorated with Yango’s mustache. In one night this good-for-nothing braggart, this lazy bum, had become famous all over Greece. He was jealous. If he went to see the Investigator and made a clean breast of it, they’d put his picture in the papers the next day too. An insignificant varnisher suddenly abandons his modest vocation and becomes a celebrity, like … certainly not like Yango, who wins fame by committing a crime. He would make a name for himself with a good deed. On his way home at noon, he looked at all those people who took no notice of him, and he imagined the sensation he would create after his revelations, recognized and hailed everywhere, boarding the Forty Churches bus, where everyone would get up to give him a seat.

  His mother had cooked rice with spinach for lunch. She noticed that he ate without interest while angrily reading a pile of newspapers.

  “What’s the matter, Nikitas?” she asked him.

  “Nothing,” he said, not looking at her.

  “Why did you buy all those papers?”

  “Because of the crime.”

  “What crime, Nikitas? A man killed his daughter?”

  “No.”

  “Did some brothers kill each other over a legacy?”

  “No.”

  “A lunatic escaped from the asylum?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, tell me. What crime?”

  “Somebody I know killed a deputy yesterday right in the middle of town.”

  “Heavens! How is it you know him, my son?”

  “He had a pickup truck and once in a while he made deliveries for me.”

  “What party did this deputy belong to?”

  “Communist.”

  “Then he had it coming to him.”

  “Keep still, Mama. What was this man guilty of? He’d come here to make a speech, and Yango, the guy I know, sneaked up and hit him from behind.”

  His mother put on her old-fashioned spectacles and leaned over to look at the newspaper. First she studied the photographs and then she sp
elled out the headline: “Traf-fic ac-ci-dent. EDA dep-u-ty in-jur-ed …”

  “Eat, child, and don’t worry about the world. When it’s not the bougatsa you’re eating, you don’t have to worry if it’s burning in the oven.”

  Nikitas wiped his mouth and got up from the table.

  “I made the kind of cake you like,” said his mother. “I’ll go get you a piece.”

  Instead of waiting, he went out. The house was too small for him. He went back to the shop and worked absentmindedly till evening, speaking to no one. When he got home again, his sister was there. His mother, worried about him, must have asked her to come.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Nikitas said to her. “I’m in a dilemma.” He explained the affair to her.

  “Are you mad?” his sister said. “Do you want us to be in trouble for the rest of our lives? Do you want my husband to lose his civil-service job? I suppose it was you who provided my dowry? I got married without anybody’s help. We’re getting along fine. And now you … Forget it. Do you hear me, Nikitas? And besides, it served him right. Don’t believe what you read. The ERE* is a great party. It doesn’t sponsor crimes.”

  “Oh, stop it! You bore me.”

  His sister left sputtering threats. What wounded him most was that she called him an epileptic. He had never been an epileptic. Once when he was a little fellow, he’d had a convulsion because some children in the neighborhood had hit him on the head. He had never been an epileptic. Never.

  He lay down to sleep. Though he had done less work than usual today, he was worn out. His mind kept running on and on; he turned off the light so his mother would think he was asleep. He saw the world divided into two hemispheres. On one was written “Go”; on the other, “Don’t go.” Rotating faster and faster, the two merged and became one. The deputy left a wife and two children. He was a doctor, a professor, a cultivated man. Why did that lout Yango do it! He fell asleep and he saw Yango delivering furniture and killing people with it. Since the furniture belonged to him, then he, Nikitas, was responsible. Then it was noon in his dream and he had stretched out in his shop for a nap, as he often did when he was working too hard. Suddenly the door opened and there stood Yango, threatening him with a pistol. “Choose a coffin that suits you.” And he pointed to the coffins that Nikitas had been polishing that day. “Traitor!”

  “Why, Yango, why?”

  “Come on. Step on it! Faster! One, two, three!”

  He woke up with a start. He was streaming with sweat. At last it was morning. He shaved, put on his Sunday clothes, and presented himself “voluntarily” to the Investigator, to make his deposition.

  From that time on, his shadow appeared to proliferate. No matter where he went, two men followed him. Then a car with no license plates turned up. He deliberately took long walks in the center of town. The car was always twenty or thirty yards behind him. Meanwhile some lawyers, members of the Peace Committee, contacted him. They persuaded him that without his help nothing could be done. His deposition in itself, they told him, had torn the case for the “traffic accident” to shreds; he had to stick to it and not give in. For the good of Greece. For everybody’s good.

  Yes, he agreed. But how was he going to live? He was afraid to go back to his shop. He walked around all day, as if there were no safe place to sit down. They’d got one deputy, they’d almost got another, and they certainly wouldn’t have any qualms about him! It was a question of time. Now he was determined. He wasn’t an easy nut to crack.

  Then the Public Prosecutor had summoned him. He had an appointment with him this morning. Leaving his house, he made a wide detour through the Old City to shake off whoever might be shadowing him. He had a coffee at the Skopos Café, where he used to play backgammon. As he rose to leave, he looked carefully up and down the street. For the first time the anonymous car was not in sight. He walked the length of Ayiou Dimitriou Street and skirted the Evangelistria Cemetery to reach the avenue leading to the Prosecutor’s office. Taking the right-hand sidewalk, he mingled with students and with priests who were also studying theology. Arriving at Syntrivani Square, he was suddenly confronted by a large crowd and an array of police cars crammed with helmeted policemen, the rifles between their thighs resembling enormous Easter candles. He asked what was going on and was told that the deputy’s hearse would shortly be passing by. He swelled with pride at having been the first to lift the stone and reveal the vermin swarming underneath. And reassured by the presence of so many policemen, he started to cross the circle of Syntrivani Square.

  He was walking rapidly along when suddenly a truck pulled up beside him. Two crab-like hands reached out, grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, and dragged him against the side of the vehicle. The first blow made him scream, “Oh, I’ve been hit!” The Syntrivani fountain seemed to be spurting jets of scarlet blood, turning green, blue, white, and red, like the Water Ballet at the International Fair. A second blow opened a crack in the earth, and then all was darkness.

  He came to in an empty ward with forty beds, himself the only patient. There was a hospital smell. He saw a chart hanging at the foot of his bed; he knew that must be the fever chart. He felt a weight on his head. Cautiously he raised his hands and discovered an ice bag. But what he couldn’t figure out was why all the other beds were empty. If he’d had someone to talk to, he would have found out what had happened.

  His head ached. Maybe there was a fracture. But if so, wouldn’t he be bleeding? No, he’d got off lightly. But for how long? And suppose this was the prison infirmary? Suppose everyone had forgotten him? Suppose everyone was happy to know he was locked up there?

  He began to shout. No one came. He tried to stand but he quickly saw this was impossible. He dragged himself on his knees as far as the window, and looked at the hospital garden, which was teeming with policemen. With a great effort he crawled to the bed. As he lay down, the ice bag almost fell off. He ached all over. Now he recalled the two hands which had lashed out of the truck like the tentacles of an octopus. Whose were they? And why hadn’t the police interfered? Had the hearse gone by? His bones ached; had he been trampled by the crowd? Perhaps his sister was right, he shouldn’t have talked. Nonsense. He was alive, wasn’t he? Nobody could shut him up. He might not be a hero but he was very touchy where honor was concerned.

  The door creaked open as in a horror movie. He heard authoritative voices. Then a man, followed by his bodyguard, entered and, introducing himself as the General, sat down on Nikitas’s bed.

  “Well, sonny, how did you fall and hurt yourself?”

  “Are you kidding, General?”

  He saw that the General was looking him over, casting an ironic glance at the turban of ice covering his head. He saw the wrinkles at the corners of his lips, clothespins on a sarcastic line, holding up the dirty laundry that tumbled from his mouth. Nikitas bravely propped himself up higher in the bed.

  The General bent over him, pretending to be searching vainly for a serious wound. “You’re in fine shape!”