by Ben Pastor
He refrained from comments only because German soldiers had participated in the raid one way or another. A quick look revealed that the kitchen and pantry had been ransacked as well.
Foodstuffs, pots, plates and tableware gone, curtains stolen from the windows: only the layout of the ground floor resembled the photographs. “Upstairs?” he asked.
Kostaridis wiped his eyebrows with the back of his hand. “Bedrooms and library.” He kept his voice low, to avoid the slapping echoes of an empty room. “Capitano, it’s the habit of our peasants to take what the dead no longer need. Times are meagre. If there was anything useful, it’s gone.”
“It depends on your definition of useful. Most of the books seem to be here. Fine editions, too.”
“I mean money-wise and in terms of clues.”
“Clues? Does it mean you no longer believe it was German soldiers who did the killing?”
“I don’t recall ever saying I did. But soldiers might kill for reasons extraneous to war. Don’t you agree?”
I never would. Bora did not speak the words, but they were contemptuously stamped on his face.
“You would, you would.” The sweaty Kostaridis widened his eyes, Lorre-like, and was for a brief moment repulsive to the eye. And then, placidly, as if he was referring to Bora’s opinion on the matter: “…agree that soldiers might kill for personal reasons, I mean.”
Next, softly for two men, they moved around and busied themselves with the evidence still there, especially the lead fragments embedded in the walls. Somewhat reluctantly, and only because he had no acceptable reason to avoid it, Bora shared with Kostaridis the photos taken by the Englishman and the War Crimes Bureau. “See? Villiger must have been standing in front of the woman when he fell. Not that it necessarily means anything.”
“Or maybe it does, capitano. The field hands huddled instead of trying to get away, and that’s why they’re so tangled together. That, too, may mean something, or not.”
Bora retraced his steps to the front door. “I’d say the first round was fired from about here; it wasn’t exactly done close up. Provided the victims were all in this room, it would take seconds.”
“Right. And whether or not you’re aware you’ll be shot, there is no getting away from submachine guns.” Kostaridis pinched his old trousers at the knees before crouching to study the wall. “Same sort of weapon, used from different standpoints.” He fingered the bullet holes. “My initial thought was that only one of the attackers opened fire. After seeing the wall close up, I conclude at least two of them did. And although number two might have hesitated, opening fire after the victims were already falling, both exhausted their ammunition.”
Bora had reached a similar conclusion the night before. “I wonder if the dog was killed first. A stray that wandered into the garden might not bark at the coming of strangers, but once the shot that killed it was heard outside the door, you’d think the boys at least would seek refuge upstairs.”
“Maybe.” Backing away from the wall, Kostaridis kept looking at the bullet holes. He stumbled in his open-toe sandals across a hefty paperweight shaped like the Colosseum, no doubt a souvenir from Rome. He gasped the next words in pain. “Maybe they killed the dog last.”
“No. Powell heard a single shot before the wild firing. A watchdog would race at strangers and be killed much closer to the gate, or even outside of it. A stray might cower, but wouldn’t wait around in the racket of gunfire until they shot it, too.”
“Anyway, capitano. From past experience as a marksman, I know that with a firm hand you can centre a moving target on the front steps even before crossing the gate. I think they mistook it for a watchdog and killed it as they approached the garden.”
“Could be.” Through an archway Bora crossed into the study, which in the photographs appeared as an indistinct background. Plundered like the rest, it was kept shady by the trees outside. More empty bottles (beer, wine, soft drinks, a single Rodinal container) lay discarded on the floor. What in the prints he’d mistaken for oblong plates hanging on the wall turned out to be in fact chalk moulds of human faces: a miscellany of Villiger’s Aryan Cretans, no doubt.
Bora lifted a mask from its nail. The holes in the nostrils suggested it had been modelled on a living person, breathing through straws inserted in the nose. A hand-written label glued inside bore a number, location and a generic description: “Twenty-year-old farm girl, area of Agia Paraskeve. Eye colour, No. 5. Hair, straw blonde”. Another mask read, “Fifteen-year-old street urchin, Iraklion. Eye colour, No. 3. Hair, dark blonde”, and so on. A third face, a young woman’s, so closely reminded him of Remedios that Bora hastened to look for written indications. But the label was incomplete, and only read in pencil “Shepherd girl, outside Gonies?” A question mark, and no details given. To the right of the masks, a framed photograph showing rows of glass eyes illustrated the grading system: 5, Medium Blue; 3, Light Blue… On the list, developed by a long-dead Swiss researcher who’d read his dissertation at Leipzig University, Bora’s green eyes registered a six. Or was it a ten?
Christ, as if it mattered where I fit. This taxonomy makes as much sense as judging a racehorse by the colour of its mane. But he looked to see where his wife’s eyes and his mother’s eyes ranked in the diagram. And wasn’t it true that his stepfather, a superb rider like all the family, used horse terminology as he pointed out the boys to guests visiting the estate? “There they are: the seal brown is Martin, my wife’s son, and the sorrel is my Peter.” For him, colour did not mean quality necessarily, but belonging: I’m not his son, after all.
The noiseless Vairon Kostaridis, so far down the chart as not to count, joined Bora in the twilit study. As he walked past, his shabby figure was intercepted by a sun blade from the curtainless window, a single luminous shaft that burrowed through the thick of garden trees. When he stepped beyond, it beamed freely. To Bora, the white scalpel of light seemed capable of burning a hole through the wall like a blowtorch. That’s how the Eye of God, he thought with a shudder, will sear and wither our man-made categories. How can we be so foolish as to ignore it?
“If you look outside, capitano, that’s the Sphingokephalo memorial up there.”
Bora drew close to the window, but not so close as to enter the sunbeam. High above the palm trees, the sugar-white monument appeared as if suspended in mid-air, a small round temple watched by its mythical animal guardians. Grieving and honouring the past, too, is a human artifice. Directly below, in the garden, Bora’s attention rested on the gaping rear gate. It was through it that Preger’s men claimed they’d passed without stopping at the villa. On his map he’d marked in red pencil the locality they headed for – Skala. He planned to walk the distance himself before returning to Iraklion.
It was the first time since their arrival at Ampelokastro that Bora and Kostaridis paused in their search. For no reason other than they had nothing to tell each other, they stood side by side at the window in complete silence.
But both men remained vigilant. When out of the stillness a thud, so muted it would otherwise escape notice, reached them from upstairs, it startled them entirely.
A step, a book fallen flat on the floor… Bora looked up at the ceiling. He could have kicked himself for not inspecting the second floor right off, but it was too late now. A rush of considerations shot through him – If they wanted to attack us, they could have, and didn’t. They’re hiding from us, or didn’t hear us, or they heard us and stupidly betrayed themselves – in the time it took him to nod at Kostaridis. Kostaridis, staring motionless at the same ceiling, really did look like Peter Lorre as the child murderer, hopelessly trapped by his adversaries at the end of the movie. “The library,” he mouthed.
A resolute about-face, front room, stairs. Bora released the safety catch of his pistol as he climbed two steps at a time, with the policeman at his heels. The instant he reached the upper floor Kostaridis directed him to the sole one of three doors that wasn’t wide open, and Bora kicked it in.
> Standing by a towering bookcase with overfull shelves, a man in shirtsleeves and linen trousers froze at the sight of the gun. It was all that kept him from dropping a boxed set of volumes, a pile of which sat on the library table within his reach. At his feet, a cloth-bound dictionary lay where it had given him away by falling.
“I was tidying up,” he stammered to Kostaridis in Italian. “Recovering texts I lent the professor… I didn’t hear you come in.”
Possible. The door was soundproofed by padding; a true library door. Had it been locked from the inside, there’d have been no kicking it open. Bora holstered the gun before stepping up to the stranger. He flipped open the volume at the top of the stack, revealing Villiger’s ex libris glued on its frontispiece.
In his rolled-up sleeves and canvas shoes, the man facing him had a holidaymaker’s toasted look. Bulgy-necked, with neatly combed-back hair, he seemed surprised at the sight of the frontispiece. “I can’t believe he glued his ex libris over mine.” It sounded like a lame excuse. Assuming the German didn’t understand his words, he stared at Bora but addressed Kostaridis. “I am Professor Pericles Savelli, formerly of the Archaeological Museum in Rhodes. Whom am I addressing?”
Kostaridis did not answer. To a questioning glance from Bora, he confirmed the man’s identity with a blink of the eyes.
“Ma insomma, who’s he? What does he want here?” Savelli insisted.
Bora blandly replaced the volume on the shelf. “Capitano Bora, esercito tedesco.”
“He speaks Italian!” Savelli said, as if a large animal had just shown itself capable of articulating a sentence.
“He does,” Kostaridis drawled. Searching around the room with his crafty, somnolent eyes, he added, in the same vein, “And you, Professor, know me.”
“Va bene, e allora? What next?” Savelli took a resentful step sideways, to put more space between himself and Bora’s looming presence. “I’m within my rights, gentlemen. The front door was unlocked, the place was deserted, so… It’s natural, isn’t it? I heard the news of the disgrazia, after all.”
Calling the massacre an “accident” might be Italian understatement. “Who told you?” Bora cut in.
“The expatriate academic community in Crete is a small one.”
Villiger, Pendlebury, Allen, Savelli… Bora latched his pistol holder. “It seems to be growing by the hour as I learn about it, and that doesn’t answer my question. Who actually told you what happened here?”
The gap opened by the removal of several editions caused a slender quarto to fall flat on its shelf; other books came to lean sideways against it. Spines bearing Greek, German, English authors’ names, mostly followed by the dotted initials of academic titles, shifted behind Savelli’s head. A man’s death, Bora told himself, may also be signified by the disarray of his punctiliously sorted books. In the rummaged library, only the massive, built-in desk kept an appearance of normalcy.
A frown of alarmed spite came and went from Savelli’s face. If he wondered what role a German officer played in all this, he knew better than to ask outright. “I live just over the hill in Kamari. My landlord informed me after witnessing the commotion when the police and ambulance came. A friend retired from the Italian Archaeological School confirmed the news. It’s brutto, brutto. As foreign nationals you understand we’re all concerned. First the rumours about the disappearance of the English scholar, Dr Pendee-bury…” (Bora noticed he mangled foreign surnames like Kostaridis, the Greek way) “and now this disgrazia.”
The emphasis on the words “ugly”, “accident”, like the tone used to pronounce them, sounded affected, artificial. But is there a natural response to violent death? Cocking his head, Bora read the leaning title of Winckelmann’s fundamental essay on ancient art, in the recent Phaidon edition. “How well did you know Professor Villiger?”
“Ah, not well, not so well – buongiorno and buonasera.”
“You barely exchanged a good day, and he lent you books?”
“No, no, no! I said I lent him books, as a professional courtesy between colleagues.”
Kostaridis nudged Bora’s elbow. A moderate prod, which Bora resented but understood to mean he needed to step away to hear some whispered communication. “I’ll give you details later, capitano, but the Iraklion police was notified about this gentleman by the Italian Carabineers in Rhodes. Money questions.”
Bora turned back to the scholar, whose book-picking had started again. “Your late colleague – where and when did you last meet him?”
“When?” Savelli took a deep breath of air to gain time. The baring of teeth gave a moment of glory to what must be an expensive set of dentures, somehow appropriate to a literate’s mouth. “About six weeks ago, during Orthodox Easter week, in Iraklion. He couldn’t wiggle away, there were others present. See, I asked him about – my books.” Vice versa is more likely, Bora judged. “Imagine, he denied having them. I said I’d be passing by Ampelokastro anyway, and would pick them up. He told me he was very busy, and planning a trip besides.”
So, Villiger meant to leave Crete at least as far back as April. This was new information. Kostaridis did not react to it (he stood by the built-in desk, opening and closing drawers as if their smooth functioning fascinated him and their contents meant nothing), but Bora wanted to know more. “A trip where?”
“He didn’t say. Naturally I took it as a brush-off, but he was jittery.”
“Jittery as in impatient,” Kostaridis spoke up, “or jittery as in scared?”
“Dio santo, what do I know about that? Within a week, all hell broke loose and every one of us had to lie low because of the fighting. My landlord can confirm this is the first day I have put my head out of the house.” Encouraged by the safely holstered gun or by Kostaridis’ negligent attitude, Savelli stood his ground. “Look here, gentlemen, I’m the damaged party in all of this. I’m only taking back what’s mine.” The bound set of volumes joined the stack on the table. “Civilization as we know it is coming to an end, if we innocent scholars can be killed or abused in our homes, and stolen from to boot.”
Oh, do me a favour, Bora thought. Generational annoyance with older men and their idea of rules made him sneer to himself. Civilization as you know it is coming to an end, and good riddance. From the titles pulled out so far, he could not make out Savelli’s specific focus of research. “May I enquire what your speciality is?”
“My speciality? Young man, I worked with the great Halbherr, with Maiuri, with Jacopi: the entire Aegean is my speciality. I dug at Tavernais no later than this spring. And I’m not leaving here without my books.”
“No.” Bora laid his hand on the stack. “I’m afraid there have been enough independent withdrawals from this house. Make a list of the titles that belong to you, I’ll make sure they’re returned.”
“What? I don’t remember all the titles!”
“List those you recall, then.”
Savelli made a choking noise. “This is unheard of! This is an outrage! I’ll bring it up with His Excellency the Italian Governor, General Ettore Bastico, I’ll ask for support from the Italian commander in Crete!”
“I’m shaking with fear. Be my guest.”
During the exchange, Kostaridis kept his equanimity. Leaning against the desk, with his thumb and forefinger he scrupulously reshaped a lonely cigarette fished out of his pocket. He stuck it, still slightly bent, in his mouth, lit it and looked around for an ashtray to place the spent match in.
It was an odd, infinitesimal gesture of regard in the middle of chaos. Bora caught it out of the corner of his eye, and was intrigued. Kostaridis could have tossed the match on the desk or dropped it anywhere on the floor. Unknowingly, he had been waiting for a sign that he could trust the policeman, and that refusal to litter a ravaged room came close to doing it somehow. When Kostaridis’ cigarette went out after the first drag, Bora decided to be gracious, and stretched his lighter out to him.
“And please do not smoke,” Savelli complained. “I moved this
far south on doctor’s orders; I’d rather not breathe tar and nicotine while I’m being insulted.”
Kostaridis shuffled to the window, opened it, and continued to smoke.
One by one Bora gathered up the ex libris and re-stacked the volumes under Savelli’s angry stare. “When you prepare the list, please include author and publishing house.”
“I protest! Do you take me for a librarian? This is – really, this is untenable!”
“You’re free to turn me in. Remember, Bora is the name.” Bora punctiliously righted the bookmark sticking out of a nineteenth-century volume, whose ex libris indicated a proprietor – Marcel Amédée Duvoin – who sounded like a Frenchman. “Chief Constable,” he said without glancing at Savelli or Kostaridis, “will you escort the professor out of the house?”
Shouted recriminations about stolen books and stolen ideas came to Bora’s ear while the scholar was dragged below. Stolen ideas? Did Savelli mean plagiarism? Likely another empty claim. And yet, resentment between scholars could run deep. Decades before, the Bora Verlag had entered a controversy by publishing Dörpfeld’s field notes on Troy after the death of his great mentor, Heinrich Schliemann. The debate surrounding the site of the ancient city was still raging at that time; it mattered that an important Leipzig publisher had chosen to support the Schliemann–Dörpfeld thesis versus the French and American school. Careers and recognition were furiously made, risked and lost in the process. There was no telling to what excesses academic infighting might lead.
