Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  “I don’t want any trouble,” said Nikitas.

  “Now, any way you look at it, he’s going to be suspicious of us,” said Hatzis. “The point is, who’ll give the other away first?”

  “Two million’s no small sum,” said Nikitas.

  “The bad part is, it’s a great deal,” said Hatzis. “If the sum had been less, I might be more inclined to believe him. And if he’s on the level, so much the worse. Think what a vested interest they have in our silence.”

  “Who have?” asked Nikitas.

  “The people behind the Chief. How do you think he found the money, if he really does have it? On his own salary, five thousand drachs a month, he’d have to live as long as a dinosaur to collect two million.”

  “Everybody’s getting his share,” said Nikitas. “Why shouldn’t we get ours too? You took Z. and made a martyr of him. The old man became Prime Minister and forgot him. What are we doing?”

  “Nikitas, you don’t understand the evolution of history. That’s why you’re talking like this. We two, when things change, will become historical figures. We’ll be in the schoolbooks. Your face and my face will live forever. Why exist except to leave a good name for posterity? Marx said …”

  “Are you going to give me the catechism now, Hatzis? I’m just thinking out loud, just daydreaming.”

  The trouble was, Hatzis was daydreaming too. He could just see his mother in a big house, full of conveniences, automatic buttons, like in the movies. The garbage, so they said, was whisked away by a machine inside the sink. A three-story icebox. And his mother with all her medicines and two telephones. And his children would have all kinds of toys. Bicycles, trains, dolls. In the summer he’d take them to the country, to the seashore. He’d rent a house … His wife, who did other people’s laundry all week long, with her bad back and her legs blue with varicose veins, would be able to shop in all the stores of Europe: boxes, boxes, boxes …

  “What’d you say?” Hatzis asked him.

  “Pretend you bet on the lottery and lost by one number,” Nikitas replied. “Take it that way, because otherwise it can drive you mad. I’d rather die, lose my blood drop by drop, than act against my conscience. I just wanted to test you.”

  “Me too,” said Hatzis. “I just wanted to test you too. A varnisher and a blacksmith who can’t be bought! Long live honesty!” And he burst into tears.

  When he reached his underground hole, Z.’s eyes magnetized him. Hatzis saw him staring with his changeless gaze, stone-like, immortal. The site of the assassination, the roar of the motor, the hyenas howling—it all came back. How could he have dreamed of betraying him, this man whose words and glance, whose very footprints he loved? This man whom he’d followed with a dog’s blind instinct. How could he? When he opened his arms, he enveloped the whole world. When he smiled, the rain let up. Hatzis sat down on the edge of his wooden bed. The basement was damp, full of flying cockroaches. He opened the drawer and his mother’s letters spilled out. Of late, her obsession was that she had some terrible illness and must go for a medical examination, but she didn’t have the money. “So much the better,” Hatzis said to himself. “Let her drop dead an hour earlier.” And he made all her letters into a packet and burned them in the stove. Night. He heard only the footsteps creaking above his head. He was below, buried in the ground. And even so, absolutely alive, because he could not be bought by anyone.

  When Nikitas reached his own room, he felt precisely as he had the morning he read that Yango had killed the deputy and he had to go and testify. The nightmares of his mother and his sister came back. The ice bag on his head. The General: “You’re one of our own boys; how could you do this!” “He fell and hurt himself. Ever since he was little, he liked fairy tales.” “He was an epileptic.” The whole web. But now his conscience had got into the habit of standing erect. It didn’t get tired, as it had then. He wasn’t left wing or center or anything. He was a furniture varnisher who enjoyed doing a good job, going to a movie and the football game on Sundays. These things cannot be bought for anything. His head ached. He took an aspirin before going to sleep.

  Two days later they were back at the Chief’s office. The same unknown man had materialized in the corner, like philodendron.

  “Welcome, my friends! Welcome …”

  “It’s not enough,” said the blacksmith.

  “We each want two,” said the varnisher.

  “Have you gone mad?” exclaimed the Chief. “Where did you ever see so much money in your whole life?”

  “Otherwise we’re sorry. Can’t be done,” they both said in one breath.

  “Come down a little, fellows,” he pleaded. “You’ve gone too steep!”

  “We’re playing it all the way, Chief, sir. You think it’s a small thing?”

  “A last price?”

  “We’re not peddling wares or bargaining. We’re selling you our lives,” said Hatzis.

  “One million two hundred? It’s a deal?”

  “It depends on what you want us to say,” said Nikitas.

  “You,” he turned to Hatzis, “you’ll say that you were helped by the police to catch Yango. That Z. was lifted half dead into the Volkswagen and that, inside, the Communists finished him off. In the hospital where you were recuperating, a member of EDA came to see you and told you to say that Vango had a revolver on the pickup. If you say these few things, we’ll be satisfied. You see, we’re not asking to rob you of your glory. You jumped on the van, you fought the battle. But I don’t think your own personal prestige is harmed if you say you were helped by a few policemen. As for the rest …”

  “And how could I know the Communists finished off Z. inside the Volkswagen, since at that moment I was on the three-wheeler?”

  “You’ll say you heard them discussing it. And you,” he turned to Nikitas, “you’ll say that you did know Yango and did indeed use him for transport jobs. Only he didn’t say to you that morning that he was going to do something crazy tonight, something really nutty, that it might come to killing a man.”

  “And where did I make that up? Out of thin air?”

  “No. A Red came and told you to say it. And then you’ll also say that the day the hearse with Z. was going from the AHEPAN Hospital to the railway station you fell of your own accord (as instructed by the Reds) and afterward said you’d been hit, to avoid going before the Prosecutor.”

  “There’s already a court decision stating that they did strike me.”

  “You’ll say what I’m telling you to say. Now pay attention: both of you together will state that when you visited the Prime Minister he said to you, word for word: ‘Even if you hadn’t done anything, as we’d planned with the Z. case, we’d have forced the government to fall.’ ”

  “I can’t say that,” Nikitas said. “Who am I to tell lies on a full-fledged Prime Minister?”

  “A perjury charge can be cleared for twenty thousand. You’re the ones who chased out Karamanlis; you’re the ones who’ll bring him back!”

  “All right, we’ll say what you tell us to say,” replied Hatzis. “But what if one of the men now behind bars cracks and talks and the whole deal backfires?”

  “None of those guys are going to crack. They’re getting along fine.”

  “I read that Yango tried to commit suicide with Luminal.”

  “That was a trick,” said the Chief, “so he could get out of prison and go back to his neighborhood for a bit. He missed his kamikazi.”

  “And if Mastodontosaur cracks?”

  “He’s made of steel. Well, are we agreed?”

  “When’s the money going to materialize?”

  “As soon as you sign the statements I’ll prepare for you.”

  “In cash?”

  “No, in checks.”

  “Out of the question,” said Nikitas. “Gold. Pure gold. In little sacks.”

  “Nowadays, jobs are done only with checks.”

  “And if they bounce?”

  “You can pull a Tippit on me.�
��

  “Mr. Chief, we respect you. What’s that you’re saying?”

  “And our passports for abroad?” asked Hatzis. “You’ll arrange that for us?”

  “I’ll take care of it.” He took out his pistol again and laid it on the table. “Take care. These are critical days. And don’t forget, Hatzis, to bring the tape.”

  Suddenly he seemed terribly serious. Bushy eyebrows, fixed stare. The mute man in the corner opened his briefcase. “Day after tomorrow, at eight o’clock, here,” he said.

  Hatzis and Nikitas went off unseen. They jumped over the wall, because it was a police holiday and the front courtyard was all lit up.

  In the two days before their third and final meeting, Hatzis bought a blank tape and made a telephone call.

  On the appointed day Nikitas washed his hands well with turpentine so they wouldn’t smell of varnish, dressed, shaved, and at 8:30 met Hatzis outside Papaspyro’s Café. From there they got into a taxi and headed for Holargos.

  The ex-Chief of Police and the unknown man were waiting. They had covered the windows with blue wrapping paper so they couldn’t be seen from outside. Hatzis handed over the tape immediately. The Chief opened the drawer and was about to take out the statements when the door opened and in its frame he saw—was it true or a nightmare?—the new High Commander of the Royal Police who had succeeded the Generalissimo when the government fell, accompanied by his orderly. The former Chief shot up like a rod.

  “Sir, I mean—”

  The new High Commander entered the office like a whirlwind, paced about, and, seeing the others, who had risen, had his orderly take them into the other room. The orderly asked them politely to follow him. In the office now remained only the High Commander and the former Chief.

  “And who are those people, Colonel?”

  “Witnesses in the Z. case.”

  “What are they after?”

  “They come and visit me.”

  “How many times have they come?”

  “Three in all.”

  “What do they want?”

  “That I haven’t been able to ascertain. I’m feeling them out. They want something. I think, money.”

  “Are they blackmailing you?”

  “That’s not exactly the right word.”

  “Then what is?”

  “It’s that they move suspiciously. They want to see where they can get the most. They’ve had it from the left and the center. Now they’re trying to get it from us too.”

  “And why didn’t you report this to me at once?”

  “I preferred to have something more concrete first.”

  “You should have brought it to my attention from the very start, if you intended to be proper vis-à-vis the department, and not expose yourself as you have now.”

  “It will be kept from the press.”

  “They will inform the reporters.”

  “Can’t we lock them up on attempted blackmail?”

  “On what evidence?”

  “Unfortunately, I had the idiocy not to tape our discussions. What they said was incriminating enough.”

  “And why should the reporters, ill-disposed as they are toward you, not believe that you attempted to bribe them?”

  “That is slander. Whoever dares to say so will pay dearly for it!”

  “This is not a time for threats, Colonel. It’s a question of formality, and I daresay essential. Look here: I drop in after hours with my orderly and catch you closeted with two persons whom you should not even say good day to, for the sake of the prestige of the Police Corps.”

  “I don’t know what to say, sir.”

  “After the charges are filed, an investigation will follow. Good night!”

  Cold sweat drenched the Chief. They had betrayed him, set a trap. But which of the two? Hatzis, surely Hatzis. Yet a smile spread over his face. He had the tape! Now, if only Hatzis could be removed, he wouldn’t leave behind any dirty traces. The ex-Chief would destroy the tape.

  The High Commander went into the next room, where the other three were. He told his orderly to search them. On Nikitas a note was found with the ex-Chief’s phone number; on Hatzis, a letter from his mother; and in the third man’s briefcase, a check for fifty thousand drachmas. He began with him.

  “My name is Konstantinos Hristou, native of Kilkis, retired Police Major.”

  “Profession?”

  “Head of the disbanded organization Guarantors of the Constitutional King of the Hellenes—Might of God—Divine Faith—Greek Immortality.”

  “Why disbanded?”

  “It was recently disbanded on the grounds of illegal use of the royal emblem and usurping authority.”

  “And weren’t you arrested?”

  “I was arrested, but set free after being committed for trial.”

  “Why were you set free?”

  “Owing to congenital idiocy.”

  The High Commander looked at him in amazement, then, smiling, turned to the other two.

  “What did you want with the Colonel?”

  “We—nothing. He wanted to tell us something.”

  And Hatzis pretended to explain the situation. Nikitas added that the second time the Chief had visited him at the varnishing shop he’d taken him for a ride to Pancrati and bought him an ice-cream special.

  The following day the extreme right-wing newspaper reported: “In fact neither trembling nor stuttering, the ex-Chief received the High Commander. Several minutes after the High Commander returned to the ex-Chief’s office, the High Commander addressed the Colonel thus: ‘I have a bitter duty to perform. According to my information, you offered them two million drachmas to testify to certain things.’

  “The ex-Chief answered coolly: ‘You are in the presence of vicious liars. As it happened, retired Major Hristou was also present in my office. I kept him there to hear what those two were saying. They were the ones who made me the offer! I threw them out, saying that I was in the habit of fighting with the weapon of truth! I have nothing to add.’

  “This insidious reportage, identical in all the center and left-wing newspapers, endeavors to represent the ex-Chief as an idiot. The unknown intriguers have surely underestimated not only the genius but the professional experience of this venerable officer of the Police Force.”

  That night the Chief waited in vain for even a whisper to emerge from the tape recorder. Hatzis’s tape was virginal as untrodden snow.

  Chapter 4

  I am beginning to rise up from events, reflected the young reporter. I am emerging like deep-sea divers after a long plunge, short of breath, eyes stinging from the salt because I took care to keep them open in the depths, to see, to find what I needed to chart your submerged Atlantis. Finally, I brought back these photographs. Here and there, the development was imperfect. Things remained dark, the people shadowy. That doesn’t matter to me.

  What does matter to me is that I did not betray you. I did not forget you for a moment, though I was often without air. So many layers of water covering me, there in that utter dark, in that wet desert, you stirred my sleeping heart. The rest was the job of better or worse reporters. I am not of those. I belong to you, sweet martyr.

  When I’ve finished, I shall forget you more easily. Above all else, I want to forget you. To be delivered from your beauty that weighs upon me. To migrate to a neutral plane, where you do not exist. For you weary me. I cannot rekindle dead fires. I prefer live ones, however much in comparison with you they are ashes.

  Your face a terrestrial geography, I said once. Now I say a celestial one, for the heavens are seamless. I call you springtime, because fall contains you. I call you sun, because you are made of mist.

  All the same, I, Andoniou, must collect a few last details and add them to this unique collage of certain events following your assassination. I must tell you about the Hungarian doctor, Laslo Zoltan, who categorically stated that you were struck with an iron bar. Although he was not present at the autopsy (they had not invited him), he cou
ld nevertheless observe from the X-ray no serious injuries to your body, such as a heavy three-wheeler with two passengers might have caused if it had run over you. You had neither fractures nor breaks. Scratches only. What then caused your death? This riddle he solved by referring to the two small bloodclots he found on your skull and himself operated on. These clots, he said, could not have been caused by a fall on the ground. They were internal, each in a different place. So what had happened? He was prepared to testify under oath, he told the Investigator—assuming of course an invitation to do so. After so long an interval, he remembered you. “Z.,” he said. “Ah, of course I remember him!” He pronounced your name with a foreign accent I found slightly annoying. One feels disturbed when a thing so familiar to oneself become a peculiar, distant phenomenon for another. You, who have nourished me so this year and a half I have lived writing about you, I cannot bear for others to remember you only dimly, remotely.

  As though by coincidence or some diabolical conspiracy, that same week as Zoltan, I also got on the track of the “third man,” the one who probably struck you with the iron bar. He too is from Kilkis and belongs to the attack squad of the local ERE boss.” He had come to Salonika on the day of the incidents, along with some other provincial toughs. Next day, when news of your mortal injury reached his home town, Kilkis, a rumor started that he was the one who killed Z. by striking him on the head with an iron bar. You know that rumors (especially in small, provincial places, where the very walls have ears) never circulate without reason. This rumor’s gravity and the wrath it inspired now forced the third man to leave Kilkis and go to Nea Sanda, a village of Black Sea refugees near Salonika. And from there, with the aid of the same ERE boss, his papers were prepared for Germany. But he couldn’t stick it out. His health suffered up there in the industrial smog and he came back. Upon his return, I found him and filed official charges. He went to the Investigator without a lawyer. As the investigation is secret, I don’t yet know what was said.

  Oh, why can’t you yourself speak! Why? How much does a long-distance call from Necropolis cost? Speak. Reassure us. Talk to us. But the dead don’t talk. This great accusation weighs upon them.