forgive? the important thing was to survive. that was the keyword, survive, did he understand?
now you can feel the night going away, you pick up the sounds that say the night is slowly draining off, that before long birds will be pushing the sun up, light filtering through the grating of the cell, the heat starting up again, soldiers’ footsteps in the corridor and a truck waiting outside. so it was better to speak of papa, of grandma’s youth, of mama’s wedding dress, better the first time grandma saw alexandra at that dance, the first words babbled by fidelia, you’d ask her about those memories that only she has now, the time grandpa michael found himself alone in a tavern full of the landowner’s thugs and his friend theodoro came in howling with joy, you had to hold every breath in the memory as the night moves on. whatever they do, you’re not going to harden so much that you won’t know how to forgive the fallen.
maybe, alexis, that’s what she hoped.
“So that’s the first thing. You don’t want them alive anymore? Only dead?”
You catch the captain’s neck muscles tightening, you sense a rumbling beginning in his throat which he keeps down and doesn’t unleash, and in his stomach, and still lower, you see through those veins on the verge of bursting and his clenched teeth clenching and can tell that he too knows how to swallow his rage, store it up, feed it, winding and folding it in on itself, not offering it to anyone, the enemy also knows how.
but papa was alive, grandma, and if she declared him dead, they might really kill him someplace, in some jail. he wasn’t going to contradict her in public, because these were family matters, and she knew where dirty clothes should be washed, but dead, grandma, not that.
“They’re dead, Captain. We knew it as soon as my son walked through the doors of the school.”
“And the second thing?”
it wasn’t easy to come back home from where he would be, child, but she was going to tell him a few secrets, a few tricks, like a magician, alexis, little things that could help. suddenly you feel yourself a child again, you and fidelia, it makes you want to put your head in grandma’s lap, right here and now, but you remain standing, like a grown-up, standing, hearing the night running out. you’ll wait. grandma has never been the one to tell you stories. she didn’t have time, she said. let the men take care of the children, let them help out with something at least. but now, for a while, her voice tempering the darkness, you can imagine nights that never were, around the fire or the kitchen in winter, or perhaps the way papa would have dreamed them when he was little. like serguei and cristina and rosa and maria, like maybe grandma herself had planned and envisioned it curled up at the foot of her mother or father or grandpa or in her youth or some glorious period of engagement, when we say we’ll never change, we’ll always know what it means to be young. of course later people forget, maybe out of the future like some terrible wave we feel coming, from so much anticipating the tragedy, from submerging ourselves in it, from knowing that cellars like these await us, that captains with that look, that bodies like those of your grandpa or your papa, and the river, and serguei coming back bowed and pale and a living insult to everyone, from so much, from so much that after a while one forgets how to celebrate the present, breathe in the moment, wash off your grief and bless the bread, and then one day it’s like we’ll have woken up and the moment will be gone, the pleasure vanished, we’re here, alexis, waiting for those footsteps to take you away, unable to save you, without having told you any of this before, a grandma like a capped well, without having laughed together, and the day after tomorrow they’d take her away too, that’s how we’d lived, like that.
except papa.
except dimitriou, dimitriou never had. our own sadness is enough, he would say, why add more?
that’s why he was going to find him, grandma, in the capital i’m going to.
it could be, alexis, so listen closely, because she wasn’t going to be coming back for sure, so listen.
“The second thing is that we want the killers punished, Captain.”
There’s disbelief, almost malice in the captain’s voice. “You want the killers punished?”
“There was a crime, wasn’t there? Then there has to be an investigation.”
you suddenly hope that grandma will take out a potion that can turn you both invisible, herbs to make you evaporate, or something as practical and simple as a key capable of opening one door after another, a secret that can save you.
a secret, listen, little fool, another sort of secret. very simple. human beings are never alone. at the worst moment it was a matter of folding oneself inward and there he, you, whoever, would find something which, well, one carried the people you love inside, that’s the truth. and that was all. if there was love, those people were inside you. these military men seem to see us, very defenseless, helpless. but one should feel sorry for them, finally, because they were so blind that they were shut off from their own insides, cut off. was that the secret, grandma, that?
“Well, woman, it’s like I’ve said all along. This is nothing more than a political conspiracy.”
“A conspiracy, Captain? My husband never even wanted me mixed up in politics.”
“Politics, pure politics. They lost the war, and now they want investigations and trials. Mrs. Angelos, they’re using you, and the worst thing about it is that you don’t realize it, I believe you’re completely unaware of it. Punish the killers? Impossible.”
yes, that was the secret. you had to focus on a person. like when you were little and you wanted something deep down, even with your fingertips. it could be more, but one was enough. did he have someone he could, some person he could fix in his own mind? not let himself ever be separated from that person, always feel their presence, and when you speak it’s as if they were listening and also were there in your mouth. and nothing you could say would make them feel ashamed. then you’re never left alone. that’s how. that’s how one survives, talking with someone inside, that’s how, she’ll say, grandma will say, that’s how. did he have some such person?
you’ll close your eyes so the gray beginning of light now scarcely profiling grandma’s face, the cot back there, the bars behind you, you’ll close your eyes but you’re not going to weaken and you’re not going to give up even a teardrop.
yes, grandma, of course.
yes, of course, you little ruffian. you weren’t telling your grandma, eh? you’ll let her stroke your hair, she’ll pull you roughly against her breast and pass that hand over your hair. then, then he’d come back. you can be sure, alexis, that if you have at least one person planted inside you, solid, growing, you’ll make it back.
“Impossible? I don’t think so, Captain.”
you feel the footsteps, a ways off, on the stairs like a drowsy dripping which advances and starts to echo. you’ll feel the unmistakable sound of footsteps coming with the first light, just before dawn.
and you, grandma, don’t you have anyone inside to help you come back?
you’ll see on her face the beginning, yes, it’s definitely the beginning of a smile. the light’s coming in and it’s enough to make out subtleties, shades, her face. ah, child, she was full, stuffed, totally swollen with people. and if not, how, how could she have gotten through these years, but when one was old … the important thing is, was, that the people we’ve carried inside us find another home, they mustn’t die out, alexis, understand?
yes, grandma, he understood.
The captain’s voice shatters the scene with its urgency, surprising them both.
“Mrs. Angelos! Did you know that the day after tomorrow a German colonel is coming through here on a tour of inspection? Did you know that if I don’t impose order, he will? Someone will always do it if I don’t, there’s no doubt about that. And I truly believe that if they decide to take charge of this region, you’re going to be yelling out loud for my return. You’ll remember me as the very Garden of Eden.”
now no one can stop the approaching footsteps, those boots,
those soldiers. you try to keep the anguish from choking your voice and you think you’ve managed to do it. you’ll be speaking as casually as if you were home, under the tree, with fidelia nearby and mama and with.
the steps have arrived at the cell. hands are struggling with keys to open the door.
and they, grandma, how come they were so strong, his voice serene as if all the time in the world were before him, and not that deafening noise of keys and a door on the verge of opening and hands on the verge of, tell him that, how come they had so much, so much power, their enemies?
strong? her reply will arrive as if you were separated, as if an ocean already divided you or a mountain range or something worse. you think they’re strong, alexis? take a good look at the difference between them and us. the difference. not so much that they were rich and we were poor or that they were armed and we defenseless or that they owned everything and we, well, we … but that they were empty, empty, understand, and we … it’s clear how we are. they’re empty, if you opened them a little sad blood might spill out and filth and after a while even their guts would disappear too, and that’s why when they died, they died forever while
“And why are you explaining all this to me, Captain?” says Grandma’s hardened, furious, contemptuous voice. “What for?”
and that’s why when they died, they died forever, while we
“As a matter of fact,” answers the captain, “you’re absolutely right. What for?” And again he makes that gesture with his hand, this time yes, definitely.
“Just a minute, sir.” You see how she reaches out now to touch you. Without even realizing it, you’ve been imperceptibly moving your body like a magnet toward the bars, slowly sliding toward her, and now her hand is fused with your arm. “Captain, you are better than that Gheorghakis. Captain, listen to me. They’re going to go on appearing, one by one. You see already, Captain, how the river’s been bringing them home. Until they’ve all come back. We’re going to get them all, Captain, every single one. Be a good man, Captain. Why not bring them back yourself?”
The captain presses himself as close to the grate as he can. He’s that close to Grandma and her outstretched arm, that close, but he doesn’t touch her.
“You’re not going to scare me with ghosts. I’m going to leave here and I’m going to have a good sleep and tomorrow morning I’m going to do my duty. And this conversation, this conversation never took place. I’m erasing it just like that. Nobody’s going to remember it. Because you people, you people don’t count. You don’t count, understand? Look what all your efforts have accomplished. Look at this. Look.”
And he makes a violent signal with his head, like a lion roaring, decisive, final.
You feel the thick hands pulling you. You try to take a step forward but the screaming in your shoulder flares up again, the cord, your wrists are torn, and you stagger backward, Grandma’s not touching you now.
You manage to stay there, somehow you manage to stay there long enough to catch Grandma’s smile. She doesn’t say good-bye or see you later or Godspeed, there isn’t the trace of a word. She gives you that smile because she has nothing more to give you and tonight there’s not even a crumb of time left to you alone to be able to—
“Let’s go,” says the captain.
The hands obey at once, the hood covering you, closing your eyes in black, wrapping you one more time in the endless sticky suffocation of the cloth. Now you can’t see your grandma, now you’ll never see her again, not even once.
They push you and shove you and rough you up but you keep your feet, in the dark, there in front of the cell, facing what must still be your grandma’s smile.
Under the smothering blindfold, praying for a little fresh air, you suddenly smell—oppressive, intense, an ocean penetrating, invading you—the other men who’ve been there, here. The other men. Hours and hours, weeks and months and years and hours of men, second by second, minutes, eyes, tongues, spit, sweat, hair, stains, salt, vomit, recriminations, betrayals, confusion, fear, that insufferable smell brewed by other men, supplications chewing this cloth before yours, eyes that tried to record a face like Grandma’s or perhaps didn’t even have that privilege, something, someone, anything, some last discernible light, some smile that won’t be wiped out, they put it over every single one, one by one, minute by minute, one plus one plus one.
Then Alexis knew that Grandma was right. Even if she’d never said so, yes, she was right. He was going to survive.
You knew it like you knew that beyond the blindfold Grandma went on smiling in the darkness. You knew it better than if you were looking at her, better than if they’d taken that hood off, or if the captain had granted thousands of hours to talk before dawn.
Somebody shoves you brutally.
For a fraction of a fraction of a second, a second that delays and then melts away, you manage to hold yourself fast in front of the cell.
You move your head, already going, already on the way, lightly you nod, to say yes to Grandma or to say good-bye or for something else you don’t know how to express any other way, and there’s not even any light to see by, and you do it all the same because no one on earth will see you or be able to remember, going already, but it’s good for you and you do it, that nod of the head in Grandma’s direction. And then you set out walking down the corridor of your own free will.
It no longer mattered who said it, who whispered it way inside, so far inside, far off to the side.
He, Alexis, was going to survive.
I was going to the capital to find my father.
chapter eight
xii
A little before dawn, accompanied by his orderly, the captain arrived at the river.
“How are we doing, Lieutenant?” he asked, although by the flickering firelight he could already see him smiling. He’d never seen him grinning with such complacency.
“Fine, Captain, just fine. I was trained, I was born for this, not for talking all day long. And the kid?”
The captain started poking at the fire, stamping out a piece of wood that had managed to escape the flames. He noticed with fascination how the heat ate at his boot, the whistling and whipping of the fire blazing in the reflection of the boot’s black leather as it stamped at the stubborn coal.
“Emmanuel,” said the captain. “Tell the lieutenant.”
“The prisoner has been dispatched. His grandmother didn’t want to cooperate.”
“That old woman mustn’t have blood in her veins,” the lieutenant remarked. “Cold as a snake.”
“And stubborn as a mule. She saw the last man in her family being taken away and she didn’t even say good-bye. I waited, to see what she’d do. But not a word. With people like that … Tell him, Emmanuel.”
“There’s not much more to tell, Captain.”
The captain withdrew his boot from the fire when the heat became unbearable. The piece of wood hadn’t moved. “With people like that …”
“I’m glad you see it that way, Captain.”
“Everything in its time, Lieutenant. Now, even the priest will have to testify in our favor. We’ve done everything possible to save lives, explored every way out of this. Irreproachable conduct.” He noticed the lieutenant was aloof, unresponsive. He’d be thinking he always figured this was the only language these animals understood. A tough one, just like his father. To crack down halfway is worse than not at all. The only enemy that won’t come back is the one we killed yesterday. Every little defenseless kid today will be a man tomorrow. He still remembered every sentence of the general in the military academy. The lieutenant’s father will be happy now, when they inform him that finally, after so much negotiating, so many respectful attitudes and doves of peace and smiles for the defeated, that finally the only viable course had turned out to be the one he’d recommended, along with a group in the high command, since the beginning: force.
Suddenly the captain felt sick, with a weariness welling up from every fold in his body, merging with all
the surrounding air, crushing in on him from the vague horizon of the hills. They all thought that: the general, the lieutenant, Gheorghakis, Kastoria, even the orderly, they all thought this effort had been pointless and, worse, doomed to fail. There were the bodies that someone was dumping with premeditated efficiency upriver, the bodies that would go on turning up later, perhaps by accident, in cesspools, ravines, crossroads, and they’d have to keep killing so that no one would ask where they came from, who’d put them there, why, how, how much longer. Deep down—and the captain wanted to obliterate the image, he wanted to wipe out the source of what was building inside him, the weariness that wasn’t disgust, that would never be disgust, he wanted to negate what was deep down or the idea that a depth even existed—deep down, the only thing he really wanted was to go back home, open the door and find Nicola there and his three kids, to take off this skin that covered his body, turn himself inside out, trade these intestines for others, and have a nice Sunday with the family, for the family, and someday go back out to fight if necessary, but against armored divisions and airplanes and machine guns, a real war, without old ladies and little boys and half-grown girls. He looked at the lieutenant beside him, so satisfied, farther away than if he’d migrated to the other end of the universe, and he knew once more that he’d never be able to give him or so many others even the slightest hint of what had just happened to him and was now receding, squashed like a poisonous bug, fading away. He said, steadying his voice, “In any case, our instructions are the same. We resort to bullets only if we meet with violent resistance. Otherwise we proceed without fire. Those instructions come from higher up.”
“Understood,” said the lieutenant. “There’s no point in wasting ammunition on these … women. Let’s hope they don’t start throwing rocks, eh?”
“Let’s hope.” The captain automatically pulled out his cigarette case. He was going to offer the lieutenant a cigarette, then remembered he didn’t smoke. Same as his father. He stood looking at the cigarette case in his hand as if it were some strange and extravagant instrument whose exact use he couldn’t be sure of. Why did he have it in his hand? Without opening it, he put it back in his pocket. “And them?” the captain asked.
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