The Black Life

by Paul Johnston

  It was a bright morning in the autumn of 1947 when we sailed past Mount Olympus on our way to the Gulf of Thessaloniki. I found myself weakening as I approached my home city, as if the steel in my bones was melting despite the chill breeze. My close family members were all gone, but there would be people I knew, maybe more distant family members. We would not be the only ones to return.

  Zvi started praying aloud as we came into the enclosed waters. Shlomo and I moved as far away as we could on the cramped vessel.

  ‘Will he talk?’ my comrade asked.

  ‘And if he does? We have taken eyes for eyes and heads for heads, as in the holy writings.’

  He shook his head. ‘You still have a devil in you, Aron.’

  ‘While you do not. Never fear, I’ll tame the beast. So will you.’

  But we didn’t. From the moment we set foot on the concrete wharf, we were treated like outsiders, unworthy of consideration let alone the rights of other Greeks. The city was in effect under martial law because of the war against the Communists. I had no interest in the party any longer – what I had been through was so much deeper than class politics that I avoided all contact with the few old comrades who had remained in the city. Zvi went to the synagogue and was soon a leading light in the long beard and ringlets faction. He even found a wife to set up home with. For Shlomo and me it was different. His family home had been knocked down and there was only wooden scaffolding over a hole in the ground. He spent his days in the City Council and Jewish community offices, trying to establish his claim.

  I went to our house on the seafront the day after we arrived. I tried the first day, but I was sick and had to bed down in a hostel provided for camp survivors by some American charity. As I walked by the water, I felt purged, cleansed, though the weight of the Lager was always on my shoulders. The old building was still there, the shutters open and a much brighter blue than they had been. I walked up the path. It was a Sunday and I could hear voices from inside – children’s and adults’. I knocked on the familiar door, also freshly painted. Heavy steps sounded on the tiles.

  ‘Yes?’ asked a solidly built man, running a critical eye over me.

  ‘This is my house.’

  I was taken by surprise, for all my combat expertise. The man punched me hard in the face, sending me sprawling down the steps. He came after me, kicking me in the ribs and groin. I protected myself as best I could, unable to fight back. As I lay with my lips to the earth, I was back in the Lager, a helpless victim.

  ‘Listen, you Jewish swine,’ the man said, lifting my head by the hair. ‘This is my house, you hear? Bought and paid for, all the papers in order. What the fuck are you doing here? Why didn’t they make soap out of you?’

  I heard a wave of laughter. Through the blood that was running into my eyes I saw a crowd of people outside the door – teenage children, middle-aged men and women, and grandparents.

  My attacker lifted me by the scruff of my neck and my belt and carried me to the gate.

  ‘Never come back. If I see you again, I’ll kill you,’ he said, then threw me into the road.

  There was a horn blast and a jeep swerved, the driver shouting.

  I crawled away, suffering from shame as much as from the blows, which were no worse than the many I had suffered from the capos and SS men. Not only had the bastard stolen my family home, he’d beaten me like an unworthy slave. I got up and stumbled off. Eventually I found a ruined house and took refuge in the basement. It stank of sewage and rat piss, and was no more than I deserved.

  In the following weeks I avoided contact with anyone in the Jewish community. I did not feel I belonged with them any more. They had survived and were rebuilding their lives. I had been in the Sonderkommando and they would see me as a traitor, especially because I would seek no atonement. I had not asked to join the unit and once I was in it, it was impossible not to follow orders. Zvi no doubt impressed people by his religiosity. I had no such crutch and no desire to obtain one. I knew then that what we had been doing in Germany and Austria was right. And the fascists, whatever their nationality, were still at large in their thousands.

  Stealing food had become second nature in the Lager and I kept myself alive in the city without too much difficulty. I had a single aim – to bring down the man who had stolen my birthright. Shlomo was the only person I saw. He found out what I needed during the days he spent pressing his claim to the hole that had been his home. Soon I knew all about Efthymis Kalogirou, son of Petros. His father had joined one of the most violent ultra-nationalist groups after the Germans occupied the city. Somehow he had escaped the violent retribution his fellow fighters suffered at the hands of the resistance and had worked to increase the family wealth after the war ended. He should have been shot as a traitor, but the Civil War meant that old sins were disregarded – all that mattered to the government, first backed by the British and then the Americans, was the eradication of the Communist fighters. Efthymis Kalogirou should have been executed too – there were many stories of him cosying up to the Germans and paying them for Jewish property with stolen gold. He had been a personal friend of Max Merten and had benefited from that connection.

  I waited before striking because I wanted to see what happened with Shlomo’s case. But by the summer of 1948 it became clear he was wasting his time. He had no money for a lawyer and the man who had bought the property was a leading local politician with connections in Athens.

  ‘We will kill them both,’ Shlomo said.

  ‘No, we won’t,’ I replied. ‘I’ll deal with Kalogirou on my own. It’s the only way I’ll get my self-respect back.’

  He laughed. ‘Self-respect after the SK? That’s a joke.’

  ‘Do what you want,’ I said. ‘If you can, take his money. That’s what I intend to do with my fine Christian.’

  ‘It’ll be better if we help one another.’

  ‘No, that’s for the future. This job I do on my own.’

  And I did. I followed Kalogirou, taking care he never saw me. I kept my head down when anyone from the Jewish community came near and I don’t think others recognised me. By high summer I knew his daily movements in precise detail. I also knew exactly when and where to pick him up.

  On Thursdays, after eating with friends, he went to a brothel and returned home after one in the morning. I’d been observing the house and saw the room he went to; it used to be my father’s study, at the rear on the ground floor. The lights were out in the other rooms when I reached the back balcony. The shutters were closed, but I flipped the catch with a switchblade I’d stolen from a stoned gambler. The window hadn’t been replaced since our time and there was enough of a gap between the edges of the frame to accommodate my blade. I climbed in and settled down behind the large leather armchair. I was struck by the smell of the room, unchanged despite the passage of the years, but I kept a grip on myself. Steel had filled my veins and bones again.

  It was a simple job. The collaborator came in and crashed down into the armchair. I knocked him out with a good-sized stone I’d picked up and tied his hands behind his back. Then I gagged him as I’d done with Knaus and waited for him to come round. I thought his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets when he recognised me in the single light I had turned on.

  ‘So, traitor thief,’ I said, blade against his neck. ‘You’re going to open that safe.’

  He made a series of muffled noises, and then went silent as the knife point pierced the skin of his throat. I encouraged his cooperation by telling him what I would do to his family if he resisted. He complied with alacrity. From my observations, I knew he was a loud-mouthed bully. They always crumbled quickest.

  The safe was a treasure trove. Not only was there a large number of gold coins, mainly British sovereigns, but there was a Luger Parabellum pistol and six eight-round magazines. I pushed one in and fed a round up the spout, then closed the safe.

  ‘You’re coming with me,’ I said, pushing him to the door. I already had his house keys in my hand
. I got him outside with no trouble and locked the door behind us. As far as his family would be concerned, he had never come home. We walked along the darkened seafront – no vehicles passed – and I told him what I was going to do with him. He quivered and tried more than once to run away, but I held on to the rope round his wrists. I also stabbed him repeatedly in the arms and legs – not enough to disable him, but to maximize the pain. By the time we reached the building site I had identified earlier, he knew exactly what was ahead. The cement foundations of an apartment block had been laid that day. I stood him by the side of a still soft trench and used the knife all over him. But he was still alive when I pushed him into the concrete. When he stopped struggling I smoothed the surface and sat watching as the dawn’s first slivers appeared. Efthymis Kalogirou had gone to the underworld.

  ‘He disappeared like our people,’ I said to Shlomo on the boat south next day. ‘His family will never know what happened to him. They’ll live with a cruel hope that will eventually turn into despair and desolation. That’s justice.’

  ‘Justice would be getting our property back,’ Shlomo said lugubriously. His target hadn’t shown up where he had lain in wait, so his family was unavenged.

  I put my arm round him as the city vanished into the mist. ‘My friend, there are plenty of Nazis for us to kill. By now they’ll be all over the world. And they don’t know we’ll be on their trail. We also have enough funds to start operations again.’

  ‘But there are only two of us. It’ll be harder.’

  ‘Someone will turn up.’

  I was right. We found Baruh Natzari in Italy. He had been in Auschwitz and was the only survivor of a vengeance squad that had been pursued in Bavaria. His need for justice was still great.

  We followed the Nazis to South America and turned their new world into a living hell.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  ‘We may as well walk,’ Mavros said. ‘Finding parking places is a nightmare in this city.’

  ‘What was that name I heard you mention to her?’ Rachel said. ‘Merton?’

  ‘Merten, Max Merten. He was the German civilian administrator of Thessaloniki during the war. He was involved with the setting up of the YDIP and made a fortune from it.’

  ‘What does he have to do with my great-uncle?’

  ‘Nothing that I’m aware of, but he would have known the elder Kalogirou, the collaborator who got your family’s property and grandfather of the Phoenix Rises’ leader.’

  The evening air was chill and Rachel’s features had taken on a spectral look. ‘What happened to Merten?’

  ‘He made the mistake of coming back to Greece in 1957, was arrested on the orders of a sharp-eyed prosecutor and accused of war crimes. My father worked on the case – not as a defence lawyer, I hasten to add. There were all sorts of political shenanigans behind the scenes. Merten accused Greek ministers in the Karamanlis government of being collaborators. He was sentenced to twenty-five years but was whisked out of the country soon after and set free after a couple of months in a German jail. As you can imagine, that didn’t go down well in the Jewish community worldwide.’

  ‘Why are you interested in this sidebar to my great-uncle?’

  Mavros decided to be straight with her. ‘The Phoenix Rises is only a surface-level manifestation of the interest groups that pull the strings in this country. The roots of those people’s fortunes were either in the war – collaboration, assisting the Germans financially, black-market activities – or in the Civil War that followed. The ship-owners flourished in the post-war years. The super-rich are quite happy when the far right struts about, but they like it less when terrorists kill businessmen, as has happened in the past. They also aren’t keen on people like me, especially when I turn the media on them as I did last year.’

  The Noufara Café’s sign was ahead.

  ‘You think they burned your friend’s house down?’

  Mavros shrugged. ‘Their minions, maybe.’

  ‘So this case is about you, not my great-uncle.’

  ‘I’m beginning to suspect it’s about both. They may be interested in locating Aron too.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Maybe we’re about to find out.’

  Niki took a deep breath and went into the twin-bedded room. Only one was occupied, though the large figure could have done with a double.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, in a low voice.

  The Fat Man’s eyes shot open. He had an oxygen line in his nostrils and there were dressings on his arms.

  ‘What are you … I mean, it’s good of you to visit.’

  ‘I wanted to see how you were,’ she said, unwrapping a bowl of fruit and putting it on the bedside locker.

  Yiorgos gave the fruit a dubious look. ‘I don’t know why they’re … keeping me in here. I’m perfectly … all right.’

  ‘You don’t sound perfectly all right.’

  ‘Smoke inhalation … no lung damage.’

  ‘That’s good. What about burns?’

  ‘First degree, all of them. I got out in time.’ He paused. ‘How’s the house?’

  Niki looked him in the eye. ‘I’m sorry. Only the exterior walls are still standing. The roof collapsed and everything inside is … gone or unusable.’

  The Fat Man turned away, blinking repeatedly.

  ‘I know,’ Niki said. ‘It was your parents’ house, you lived there all your life …’ She leaned forward. ‘What?’

  ‘Fucking bastards,’ he said, then started coughing. ‘I’ll … tear their … balls off.’

  ‘Did you see anyone?’

  ‘In that smoke? No chance. Someone … in black … face covered.’

  ‘So how do you know there was more than one person throwing the Molotovs?’

  He looked at her as if she were stupid. ‘Because they came in quick succession through the door and the windows. I don’t suppose the cops have found anyone.’

  ‘Not that I’ve heard.’

  Conversation dried up. A nurse came in and took the patient’s blood pressure and temperature.

  ‘Can I get out … of here now?’ Yiorgos demanded.

  ‘That’s up to the doctors. They’ll be round tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Marx and Lenin, another night in this dump.’

  The nurse gave him a supercilious look and departed.

  ‘You … you can stay at our place when you’re discharged,’ Niki said.

  The Fat Man stared at her. ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course. But I need a favour from you.’ She smiled. ‘I know we haven’t always got on—’

  ‘Understatement … of the millennium.’

  ‘Well, yes, but we do share an interest.’

  ‘You mean the half-Scottish long hair with the weird eye?’

  ‘I mean Alex, yes.’ Now she couldn’t look at him. ‘Yiorgo, please, tell him to come home. He listens to you.’

  ‘Does he … really? That isn’t a major … feature of our friendship.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Please, will you do that for me? I … I need him.’

  He watched her as she dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘Look, I know you’re having … a hard time right now. But it’s early days. The doctors will work things out.’

  ‘No, they won’t,’ Niki said firmly. ‘I … I know I can’t have children.’

  ‘What do you mean? That’s not what Alex told me.’

  ‘I feel it like a ball of ice inside me. I … I can’t.’ She broke down.

  The Fat Man tried to take her hand, gasping as a dressing snagged. ‘Come on, Niki. It’s not that bad.’

  She stood up, unaware of the movement he’d made. ‘I have to go. Just tell him, Yiorgo. I need him home. Make him understand. Please.’ Then she gave him a tremulous smile, turned on her heel and walked out.

  He lay back, swearing under his breath. The truth was, he wanted Alex back too. He felt lost without the house, the structure and substance of his life cremated and ruined. His friend should be there for him and for Niki.
<
br />   But he couldn’t do it. When Alex was on a case, he couldn’t be restricted, especially not by the people who loved him. When he was ready to come back, he would. It would be a betrayal to plead with him.

  The Fat Man thought about Niki. She had dressed well as usual, but she was a wreck. Someone needed to take care of her, but he was the last person to do that. He struggled even to take care of himself. As he thought of the house and his possessions – the photographs of his father and mother, the latter’s beloved kitchen equipment, the furniture that had been there for decades – he did what Niki hadn’t: he started to wail inconsolably.

  A solitary man was stooped over a chessboard on a table in the far corner of the café.

  ‘Mr Tsiako?’ Mavros said.

  ‘Yes, yes.’ The seated man got to his feet. He was in his fifties, stout and completely bald. After the introductions were completed, he beckoned to them to join him.

  ‘Miss Samuel doesn’t speak Greek,’ Mavros said.

  ‘I have English,’ Tsiako said. ‘This helps?’

  ‘It does,’ Rachel said, with a smile.

  A waiter appeared and they ordered coffees.

  ‘I must say, I am intrigued. Shimon said you were a historian, Mr Mavros.’

  ‘Alex, please. Of a sort. I’m assisting Miss Samuel—’

  ‘Rachel.’

  ‘Rachel, with enquiries into a family member.’

  Tsiako looked at her more carefully. ‘Are you a Thessaloniki Samuel?’

  She nodded. ‘My father is Eliezer, but he ended up as a small child in Canada during the war.’

  ‘I have no knowledge of him.’

  ‘My great-uncle Aron was the son of Iosif Samuel, the jeweller.’

  The chess player’s eyes opened wide. ‘Aron Samuel,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I hoped not to hear that name again.’