Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  “I, Georgios, the fruit dealer, got off the bus from Michaniona and went straight to Baron’s shop in the Modiano Market. Baron wasn’t there. I had about 200 pounds of figs for him and I carried them into his shop myself, going back and forth five times. I didn’t run into him on any of those trips. I don’t know where Baron could have been that evening.”

  “I, Nikos, no occupation, did actually see Baron that evening at Chinky’s Café. It was the bouzouki hour on the Armed Forces station, and they were playing the song Baron likes: ‘Society Has Wronged Me.’ I remember, because Baron shouted to Chinky to turn the radio louder. Baron is my friend. We’ve both been in the AETOU ever since it started. He can’t play, he’s too fat, but sometimes he acts as referee, to lose some weight.”

  “I, Petros Paltoglou, member of EDA in Ano Toumba, heard from Baron’s brother that when he asked him: ‘Where were you yesterday?’ Baron answered: ‘They wanted to foul me up again, the louts …’ Who the louts were, or what to foul me up meant, his brother didn’t say.”

  “I am Baron’s younger brother. We don’t disagree politically as people say we do. I’m on the left, but my brother isn’t anything, so I don’t see how we could disagree. I know he wants a license for his stall, and that the matter depends entirely on Mastodontosaur, who calls on him from time to time. I know my brother. He’s a coward. He’d never hurt anybody, he’d be too scared. But he’s more scared of the cops.”

  “I, Chinky—they pinned that nickname on me because I took part in the Korean War and the Chinese captured me (but I escaped)—can’t remember whether Baron was in my café that evening or not. How do you expect me to remember? My customers come and go. I’m not supposed to check up on them, I’m supposed to wait on them. They come in from the docks dog-tired and they’re hard to please. Everybody wants to be the first one served. As far as his credit goes, Baron is in good standing.”

  “I, Epaminondas Stergiou, a mason, declare that the day following the incidents, Toula, a dressmaker, whose brother works at the same stand as Yango, dropped in for a visit. She shouted—my wife Korina being a little deaf—that her brother had seen Yango the day before, that is, on Wednesday, at lunchtime, just when the shops were closing. Her brother said he had suggested to Yango that they go back home together, and Yango told him he couldn’t because he had a job to do later. And Yango had opened his shirt and showed him a club. He’d actually said, Toula told us, shouting at the top of her lungs, that ‘it might come to killing a man.’ Then I told Toula, who’s a neighbor of ours, to tell her brother to report all this, because it would help the investigation along. But she answered that neither her brother nor she wanted to get into any trouble. ‘And besides,’ she said to me, ‘you saw what happened to that poor furniture varnisher when he talked. Leave the poor to their poverty.’ ”

  “I, Toula the dressmaker, never heard my brother say that Yango had boasted that he was on the point of killing someone. All I said was that he showed my brother a club. Nor did I call Yango a drunkard and a bum. My brother and I don’t want any trouble. Korina may be deaf, but Epaminondas hears things that haven’t even been said. That’s all I have to tell you.”

  “I, Autocratosaur, condemn crime as a means of political persuasion. At the tavern of the late Gonos, where I was in the habit of meeting with the members of my organization, I used to speak to them about the noblest ideals of humanity: fatherland, religion, family. I was trying to make them more human. Yes, I am an out-and-out anti-Communist. But no member of my organization could take part in any action without first receiving my consent. As far as the membership cards are concerned, there was nothing secret about them. The reason that some of the letters on the membership card are written in black and others in red is that my typewriter has a ribbon in two colors and the lever you use to switch from one to the other doesn’t work well. Occasionally it slips and then the key strikes the red ribbon. My review Expansion of the Hellenes! is a monthly, except that the last issue came out two years ago. The organization, being recently established, doesn’t have any archives. The evening of the incidents, I was present in my capacity as a journalist. I was intending to publish my impressions in the next issue of Expansion of the Hellenes!, which was already on press. I believe that it is to the interest of Greece to maintain good relations with West Germany. I am opposed to the English, and in favor of the Americans insofar as they have German blood in their veins. I do not live in the Federal Republic because I love my own land. However, I am preparing to make an extended tour of that country, in order to infuse them with the divine flame of the Hellenic-Christian civilization. Mr. Investigator, I wish to use this occasion to demand that you call a halt to the indignities to which I have been subjected today—not for the first time—and I appeal to your impartial judgment to restore me, cleansed of all suspicion, to the bosom of society and my sorely-tried family.”

  “I, the widow Gonos, after my late husband’s funeral—attended by Autocratosaur, the General, Mastodontosaur, and the cream of society—cleaned up the tavern and threw whatever papers I found into the fireplace and burned them. I don’t know whether these were the archives of the leader’s organization or not, especially as I can’t read. The only things I remember are some skulls and crossbones.”

  “And I, Apostolos Nikitaras, butcher by trade and brother-in-law of the late Gonos, never had anything to do with Autocratosaur’s organization, because my father-in-law warned me that it would ruin our business if I did, since most of the people in Ano Toumba are Reds. On my honor as a butcher, I hereby declare that I am stating the truth.”

  Chapter 12

  They decided to drop in on him in Oraiokastro, a village a few miles outside Salonika. This time the reporter took a colleague along. While the Investigator was opening plank by plank the doorway to the mystery, only to be confronted by an even denser darkness, since all these rotten mobsters were only the façade of the haunted castle and when you opened one door it led to another door and that one in turn to another, till suddenly you found yourself out in the open again, but on the opposite side from where you’d entered—the journalist had scented a new hare, who might prove exceedingly valuable to the investigation. This was a certain Stratos Panayiotidis, member of the ERE in Ano Toumba. He had been described by the neighbors as “the man who knows a lot and, if he wants, can get them all grilled.” Andoniou had contacted him first and learned that on the evening of the crime he had met Vango late at night on a street in Toumba. “Where have you been to get in such a shape?” Stratos had asked him. “There’s been some trouble in town,” Vango had said. “And since when have you been wearing glasses?” Vango had removed them at once. “It’s to keep people from recognizing me. How can I go home at such an hour?” This was what Stratos had told Andoniou a couple of days before. Today, when Andoniou went back to find out more, he was told that Stratos had left for Oraiokastro to help his uncle build a house. Andoniou and the other journalist took the Fiat and went off to surprise Stratos in the village. They had no idea what might come of it. But the fact that Stratos had met Vango, “by chance,” on the night of the crime looked suspicious. They didn’t find Stratos. They were told by his aunt that he had returned to Toumba yesterday to see his mother, who had had a heart attack. The aunt added that Stratos had told her when he was leaving that he intended to go by the office of the Security Police to see what was going on.

  At that point the uncle interrupted. “What’s this fairy tale you’re telling these fellows? What Security Police?”

  The two reporters exchanged significant glances.

  “You just shut up,” retorted the aunt. “Go talk to your friend, the police sergeant of Oraiokastro.”

  “You go back to your kitchen,” the uncle ordered. Then, addressing the reporters, he said: “My nephew Stratos doesn’t know anything about all this. He comes here once in a while to give me a hand with the house I’m building.”

  “Does he know Yango Gazgouridis?” Andoniou asked him.


  “Who doesn’t know Yango? They grew up together. They’re the same age.”

  “Did he tell you what he and Vango said to each other when they met that night?”

  “No. He didn’t even tell me he’d met Vango.”

  Nothing was coming of all this. The reporters prepared to leave. Stratos, they decided, was a sphinx without secrets. Just then they saw him emerging from a thicket, holding his feeble mother by the arm. Even before he noticed the reporters, Stratos was troubled by the sight of the car in front of the house.

  “You again?” he said to the reporters.

  “Yes, it’s us,” Andoniou said. “You lied to us. You told us you didn’t know Yango. Your uncle just told us you grew up together.”

  “I didn’t tell you that I didn’t know him. I told you I hardly know him. The fact that we grew up together doesn’t mean we’re friends.” He helped his mother into a chair, in the shade of a tree.

  “Why don’t you come inside?” suggested the aunt from the door. “That sun’s too hot.”

  They went into the house and sat down in the big, peasant-style room decorated with handwoven hangings.

  “Well, where were you a little while ago?”

  “I don’t have to account for myself to anyone.”

  “Did you go to the Security Police by any chance?”

  Stratos blanched. He looked around him nervously. Had they been talking while he was away? His aunt brought out her walnut preserves.

  “No, I didn’t,” he said. “What business could I have there?”

  “Why didn’t you tell your uncle that you met Vango the night of the incidents?”

  “I did tell you, Uncle. Don’t you remember?”

  “Absolutely not, Stratos. You didn’t tell me any such thing.”

  “Then I’m mistaken. I must have said it in the café. I don’t remember. Anyway, I had no reason to hide it.”

  “What else did Vango say to you?”

  “That the police were looking for him.”

  “That’s something new. According to what you told me day before yesterday, all he said was he was coming back from town and all hell had broken loose. You didn’t say anything about the police.”

  “I guess I forgot.”

  “And if the police were looking for him, why did he go to the Ano Toumba police station all alone at the crack of dawn?”

  “Maybe he had a friend there.”

  “You seem to be getting things a bit confused, Stratos,” said Andoniou.

  “Stratos, were you at that wedding too, perhaps?” The question came from his aunt, who was sitting there, her long braids wreathed around her head.

  The reporters looked at each other. By “wedding” she must surely have meant “murder.”

  Then Stratos’s mother, who hadn’t said a word, spoke up: “The evening of the incidents, Stratos was at the ballet.”

  “What ballet? The Bolshoi?” asked the other reporter.

  “No. He was at the Turkish ballet at the Pathé movie house.”

  “Yes,” said Stratos, thanking his mother with a glance for getting him out of a tough spot. “I stayed for both performances. I’m very partial to belly dances.”

  “How did it happen that they allowed you to stay for both performances? Did you buy another ticket?”

  This took Stratos off his guard.

  “A ballet,” Andoniou explained to him, “is not the same as a movie. When the performance is over, the audience has to leave, like at the theater.”

  “Well, I’m telling you, I stayed to see both performances and nobody kicked me out. Ask the usherettes at the Pathé, they know me. I went back home at twelve, and that’s when I met Vango.”

  “O.K. But don’t you think you ought to make a statement about all this to the Investigator?” asked Andoniou.

  “I don’t think it would be of interest to anyone.”

  “You’re wrong! It’s a very important piece of information. We’re going back to town. There’s room in the car. Do you want to come with us?”

  “I don’t have anything to hide,” Stratos said. “I’ll come.”

  The next day the papers carried a photograph of Stratos Panayiotidis being escorted to the Investigator not by the police but by newspaper reporters.

  Chapter 13

  On the point of lying down to rest, the Investigator saw all their faces filing past in the darkness. Faces twisted by horror, between two cracked walls, beneath a ceiling ceaselessly dripping, small-change victims while the bankers, the backers, the backgammon players carefully preserved their invisibility. He saw them unwittingly entangled in a web of steel, fish caught in a net of indestructible royal horsehairs; and if he had placed them in custody before the trial, it was less for what they themselves had done than to reach the powers behind them. But would he succeed? Or like mountain climbers who aspire to untrodden peaks, would he succumb to his own passion for heights? Somewhere must be a shelter, he thought. A fire to warm him. He was as sure that in the end they would remove him as he was of his own eventual death.

  And if he believed in society, it was precisely to prevent this void, this vortex caused by the abrupt departure of some particular person. Z. had vanished and immediately the whirlpool had begun to rage. How foul the water must be, he reflected, for such chaos to exist! In youthful waters—the expression pleased him—the void fills automatically. The molecules of water, living cells, immediate reflections of the sky, renew themselves as rapidly as the brain cells of the young. Whereas, in swamp water (that of the society he served), you have only to toss a stone to release the stench of prison latrines.

  He had started on this case the way one sets out on a cruise, brimming with the hope of enriching his still limited experience. But nausea had overcome him. He already longed for solid ground. Everything from the food to the entertainment, from the captain to the merest mechanic made him want to vomit. The boat was old and rusted, a Liberty ship, now a slave ship for all concerned. There were leaks everywhere. How was he to plug each one?

  But he could not give up. He had been sucked into the vortex. He found himself buffeted by the full force of the cyclone even as he tried to keep within its calm eye. The pressure was growing more and more intense. Every day increased the load. He couldn’t hold out.

  Now he would have to renounce forever the girl whose fresh young face had helped him forget the documents piled on his desk. On the street the other day he’d met an acquaintance from the army. With all the intimate candor one acquires with the khaki and forgets to put aside afterwards, he had offered advice: “Let them fight it out themselves! Do you think that you’re going to pull the snake out of its lair? After a hundred and twenty years of slavery, servility, and corruption? Do you think that you, at the very beginning of your career …”

  Only the faces, he thought during the long night when sleep was impossible, those faces whose common denominator wasn’t the fifty-drachma note or the hundred-drachma note (much less the thousand), those faces with the ten-drachma coin for a denominator—what was the answer to that? What was the answer? Where then were the eminent ones? The great ones? The vertebrates who, while the protozoa suffered in their scum, were drinking whisky with ice and soda on some cool veranda, where the hostess, trilling a thousand pardons for being late, was just back from the Athens Festival?

  Chapter 14

  “I am beginning to forget your face,” thought Pirouchas. “Little by little it is being erased from my brain cells, as new faces arise and supplant your beloved features. What will become of me? Little by little you are disappearing. Only your eyes in the enveloping darkness. What will become of me? Your movements I so admired. Merely to see you walk made the world my own. I no longer expect your phone call. Worst of all, one grows accustomed. We haven’t time to mourn forever. I forget you and something inside me rebels, twists, a blade, a bayonet that pierces me. It isn’t possible. I am inhabiting your last dwelling place, this hospital built with money from Greek emigrants in America.
You are sinking and I sink with you. Neither of us has any hope. You are a dead man reborn. I am a live man dying.

  “I wish I had you on film. I could look at you and recharge my cells with your battery. Nothing remains except photographs. I shall have to reconstruct your movements from these. I haven’t even a tape recording to bring back the warmth of your voice.

  “We are being swallowed up, you understand. How many years have I left? It doesn’t matter. In earth that received you I place all my love. In black earth, for springtime’s sake, for the flowers of May to blossom.

  “I am suffering. Nothing can fill the void you left. The pavement weeps, they say, at the spot where you fell. I too am weeping. To what avail? Tears are only salt and water.

  “What particles of air have preserved your glance? Into what caverns has your voice descended? My ears are split with the sound of a distant motorcycle. A single unending rattle, as of machine guns or road drills.

  “I miss you. I know there is no return. Only in our memory do you go on living. You will live as long as we do. Otherwise I’m in good enough health. You, who used to worry so about me. My heart beats with a different rhythm now.

  “How do you feel in this inaudible silence?

  “I never imagined that I would be the survivor. Life belonged to you, I’d told you that. There’s nothing I can do in the future. It’s night. Outside, the heat has dulled the stars. Everything puckers up, like the hide of an elephant. I do not exist. The heat anesthetizes me. No, we aren’t water, because we loved you. What one loves cannot die. If only I were in your place now, and had you to think these thoughts about me! No, one doesn’t die when thousands of mouths shout ‘Immortal!’—or one mouth only, mine.”

  His meditation was interrupted by the arrival of his daughter, who announced that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of Kareklas. Kareklas was the much-talked-about student member of the EKOF* who had led the attack on him. Pirouchas’s daughter had found out about it from a neighbor, a woman who had been at the meeting of the Friends of Peace. On the day after the incidents, while Z. was still in his death throes and her father in a coma, the girl had seen this student hanging about outside the hospital and had called out to him: “Go away! Haven’t you done enough! You wanted to kill my father!” He was astounded. “All right! All right!” he replied. “Don’t shout! I’m leaving.” Then he sent friends to beg her not to file charges against him because his stepfather would be outraged and would not let him go on with his studies. Two other students asserted that Kareklas had not taken part in the demonstration. But someone else heard from the butcher that Kareklas had boasted of being there and even of having got in a few blows himself. One Sunday evening when the girl was alone, a stranger came to her house and told her that Kareklas was the one who had assaulted her father in front of the ambulance. The man left without revealing his identity, not wishing, as he explained, to create difficulties for himself. Finally, the neighbor who had been at the meeting, who had identified Kareklas in the first place, also received an unexpected visit: Kareklas’s mother, who came to beg her to say nothing about her son; his stepfather would beat the boy up. She pleaded with the woman not to mention her visit; her son might find out and turn against her. The mother wept and the neighbor said merely that it wasn’t the first time Kareklas had made trouble. Since they all lived on the same street—Pirouchas and she and Kareklas—she had had to endure his arrogant backtalk, especially as her husband had been exiled for political reasons. Well, it was time he got a little sense into his head, she told his mother; otherwise there was no telling how he might end up.