When the Devil's Idle

by Leta Serafim

  “If your uncle, your so-called ‘papa,’ was indeed innocent of mass murder as you allege, why did he change his name? Gunther Bech, the Gestapo agent, assuming the name ‘Walter Bechtel,’ the pharmacist, while you, his nephew, the noble man in Africa, became ‘Gunther Bechtel’? He didn’t change them much, I’ll give you that—Bech, Bechtel. Still, it’s quite a coincidence.”

  “My uncle is the victim here,” Bechtel screamed. “Need I remind you of that? What he did or did not do during the war has no bearing on his death.”

  “He was killed for a reason.” Patronas decided to hold off and not tell Bechtel about the rapes. The German was already overwrought. It would only add to his rage.

  “Nonsense,” Bechtel said. “The war was a long time ago. No one would seek revenge now. Once this generation dies off, it will finally be forgotten.”

  “You think it will all go away, do you? If you wait long enough, no one will remember?”

  “Eventually, yes. Time eliminates many things.”

  “Graves?” Patronas asked bitterly.

  “It was wartime. My uncle did his duty. That was all.”

  Seeking to calm himself, Patronas lit a cigarette. He was so upset his hands were shaking and he had trouble working the lighter. He didn’t care if Bechtel objected or not. “Odd word, duty,” he said, inhaling deeply. “It can mean any number of things, depending on who you ask.”

  “All this is conjecture.”

  They were having this argument in English, Patronas pausing now and then to consult the dictionary. “ ‘Conjecture’ means made up, right? A lie, in other words.”

  “A lie. That is correct.”

  “I believe his title in the Gestapo was Scharführer. That’s what our witnesses told us.”

  Bechtel pulled Patronas out of the chair. “I want you to leave,” he yelled. Turning him around, he shoved him toward the door. “Go on. Get out!”

  Papa Michalis was knocked down in the ensuing melee, slamming his head against the edge of the marble countertop. Instantly, blood began to stream down his forehead and into his eyes, and his cassock was soon wet with it. It was World War II all over again, only this time the allies—at least Patronas and Papa Michalis—were losing.

  Patronas helped the old man to his feet. “If I weren’t on duty,” he told Bechtel. “I swear I’d beat the living shit out of you.”

  Hearing the commotion, Bechtel’s two children came running into the room, their mother close on their heels. All of them were dressed in pajamas. The Bauers followed a moment later.

  Gerta Bechtel gasped when she saw the priest and pulled the children away. “Gunther, what happened?”

  “He was slandering my uncle, Gerta, my dead uncle. Saying terrible things.”

  Gerta Bechtel became very still. “What things?”

  “He said he was a Gestapo agent and that the housekeeper recognized him.”

  “Maria?”

  “Yes. According to his theory, he was stationed in Greece and there was an incident in her village. Some people were killed.” Bechtel sounded exhausted, his anger spent. “It was war, Gerta. Who knows what happened?”

  “And she killed him?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  Gerta Bechtel turned to Patronas. “You arrested her?” She seemed relieved, pleased.

  “It’s just a theory at this point. Maria Georgiou hasn’t confessed.”

  “A theory?” she said. “After all this time, that’s the best you can do?”

  And with that they were back where they’d started.

  Telling Bechtel he’d be back, Patronas put his arm around the priest and led him out of the house and back down to the car. He had taken off his shirt and wrapped it around the priest’s head in a futile effort to staunch the flow of blood.

  “Well, that was a fiasco,” the priest said, settling himself into the front seat of the Jeep and buckling his seatbelt.

  Starting the Jeep, Patronas drove as fast as he could to Skala. The two of them had caused quite a stir among the tourists at the bus stop in Chora. A bloody priest under the monastery’s towering walls; it was the stuff of horror movies. All that was missing was Dracula cackling in the shadows.

  “You showed admirable restraint, I must say,” Papa Michalis said.

  “I shouldn’t have said anything about the Gestapo. It was a mistake.”

  “He provoked you.”

  “I know. All that crap about being ashamed. ‘The best you can do,’ ” Patronas mimicked Bechtel’s German accent.

  “It came as no surprise to him, that business about the Gestapo, his uncle’s participation in it. My guess is he’s known for years. One thing’s for sure: you didn’t tell him anything new. His wife, either. He might not have known the specifics about Epirus and Maria Georgiou, but he certainly knew the rest. All that righteous indignation, the shoving and the rest, it was staged. I’d stake my life on it.”

  “But why?”

  “Denial maybe. Who’d want that legacy? Who wants to face the fact that one’s ‘papa’ was one of Hitler’s henchmen?”

  The doctor was very young, a recent graduate of medical school. He probed the wound tentatively with his fingers. “What happened, Father?” he asked. “You got carried away saying your prayers? Wrestling with the devil?”

  Papa Michalis gave a wan smile. “In a manner of speaking.”

  His face was now totally covered with blood, his eyebrows and his beard encrusted with it.

  “It’s only a scalp wound,” the doctor reassured him. “That’s why it’s bleeding so much. Nothing to worry about.”

  He shaved the hair around the cut and painted it with mercurochrome, then gave Papa Michalis a shot of Novocain and stitched him up.

  Patronas had long presumed his friend had a head like a rock, but the priest had surprised him. An egg was more like it—a soft-boiled egg.

  Opening his cellphone, Patronas stepped out of the emergency room. “What the hell,” he muttered and dialed his wife’s number.

  Dimitra picked up on the first ring. “Oriste?” she said. Hello.

  “It’s me, Dimitra.”

  Dead silence.

  He pictured her in the parlor of her mother’s house, looking at the phone as if it had caught fire in her hand.

  “Yiannis?” she said hesistantly.

  “Yes. I heard you’re moving to Italy.”

  “That’s right, Bologna.” She sounded relieved. “My mother and I are leaving next week.”

  Poor Dimitra, lugging that old walrus with her to Bologna. Her mother would sulk the whole time she was there, develop an aversion to pasta and Chianti. Cause any manner of hardship.

  “Well, good luck,” he said. “I hope it works out for you.”

  More silence.

  “Thank you, Yiannis,” she said after a long interval. “Good luck to you, too.”

  So formal they were with each another, the two old adversaries.

  They spoke for a few more minutes about people they knew, how hot it was in Chios this summer and other matters, then said their goodbyes.

  “Arrivederci,” Patronas said. “That’s Italian for ‘so long.’ ”

  “God keep you.” Dimitra sounded like she was crying. “God keep you always, Yiannis, and bless you every day of your life.”

  “And you, Dimitra. And you.”

  “I did what you told me,” Patronas told the priest.“I called Dimitra.”

  “Really?”

  The doctor had left and Papa Michalis was standing by the sink, dabbing his face with a towel. “How did it go?”

  “Fine. We chatted and I told her arrivederci and she blessed me.”

  Papa Michalis turned and smiled at him. “Forgiveness, Yiannis, that’s the ticket. Forgiveness and love. It’s like the Bible says, If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or clashing cymbal. If I have faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. You’ll get there, my friend. You’r
e just out of practice.”

  Out of practice at love?

  Unable to sleep, Patronas was sitting on the edge of his bed, brooding about what the priest had said. He was the clashing cymbal, Papa Michalis, a damn bagpipe sometimes.

  He remembered his hours practicing the piano as a child. Like his marriage, his lessons hadn’t amounted to much. He’d never become adept, never mastered the art of making music. He didn’t know why his mother had bothered. They didn’t have the money and yet she’d insisted. Maybe love was like that, too. Some had the gift, others not. Maybe at the end of the day he was tone deaf, unable to recognize any song, save his own.

  He walked over to the balcony and looked out at the street. Cars were parked under the light in front of the hotel, and a solitary man with a suitcase stood waiting for a taxi. A lonely scene, it reminded him of the paintings of Edward Hopper. Dimitra had owned a book of the artist’s work.

  Maybe it wasn’t too late. According to the teachings of the Church, right up to the moment of death, a person could turn it around. Who knew what lay ahead? Maybe that melody, that duet he longed for with another, was still possible. The priest had warned against hope, but right now it was all he had.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Wisdom behind me …. Had I but had thee before!

  —Greek Proverb

  The priest took a lengthy shower the next morning, shampooing his hair and beard and putting on a clean robe. He was in good spirits, joking about how the row of stitches across his forehead made him look like Frankenstein.

  “I admit it was a little unsettling seeing myself in the mirror, but I’m over that now.” He gave a little sniff. “Vanity is unseemly in a priest.”

  “I’m sorry you got hurt,” Patronas told him.

  “My fault entirely. Unfortunately, unsteadiness comes with age. I should have stepped aside when you and Bechtel started wrestling.” His hair was still wet, freshly parted and slicked down like a little boy’s.

  Antigone Balis knocked on the door a few minutes later with the pot of coffee and the plate of sandwiches they’d ordered. “Let me know if you need anything else,” she told them.

  Patronas followed her out with his eyes. Was it his imagination or did she throw an extra something into that walk of hers, her jaunty little buttocks swinging from side to side. Not the green dress, a blue one this time.

  “You told me I needed practice at love,” he told the priest, nodding in her direction. “She’s the one I’d like to practice on.”

  The priest gasped. “Oh my, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Not that one, Yiannis, not her. Too brazen by half.”

  “I like her.”

  But Papa Michalis did not appear to be listening. Lifting up slices of bread, he was examining the contents of each of the sandwiches in turn. “Ham and cheese, ham and cheese, ham and cheese.”

  “She’s shown an interest,” Patronas insisted.

  The priest tsk-tsked. “You don’t want a woman like that, Yiannis, a loose woman. Vromiari.” Dirty. “You want one like they speak about in scripture: ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.’ ”

  “No, I don’t, Father. I want a harlot. The looser the better.”

  “Whatever for?” the priest asked, confused.

  It had been a long night and the last thing Patronas wanted at this point was to discuss the facts of life with a priest. “If you don’t know by now, Father, I’m sure as hell not going to explain it to you.”

  Selecting a sandwich, the priest took an exploratory bite. “Not bad,” he said between mouthfuls. “Now, if we could only get her to button up, you might have something. Not that I’d bless such a union, you understand. My mother would have called a woman like her a tsoula.” Slut. “And I must say, I concur. You might not have noticed, but that dress of hers was transparent.”

  Jezebel, in other words.

  They debated the pros and cons of Antigone Balis a few minutes longer.

  “You’re a priest, Father,” Patronas pointed out, “and as a priest, you appreciate chastity. Whereas, I have no use for it. I’ve experienced it, involuntarily I might add, for much of my married life, and found that it does not agree with me. I much prefer the sins of the flesh.”

  The priest pursed his lips. “You realize, of course, the key word in that phrase is ‘sin.’ ”

  “A matter of opinion, Father.”

  Papa Michalis ate another sandwich, looking askance at Patronas from time to time. “To welcome sin is worrisome, Yiannis. Satan, if you recall, started out as an angel, one of God’s favorites. He didn’t start out as a sinner. Things got away from him.”

  “I’ll say,” Patronas said with a chuckle.

  Tembelos, too, had expressed doubts about Antigone Balis’ character.

  “Afti i gynaika koimatai me oti kinietai,” he’d said. That woman sleeps with whatever moves.

  Difference between Tembelos and the priest was that Tembelos spoke in an admiring way, leering and rubbing his hands together. “Oh, if I wasn’t married …. I envy you, Yiannis. I love my wife, but night after night, it’s always the same. No surprises. You don’t want to eat lentils every day; sometimes you want eggplants. I only wish I could, but you know, Eleni ….”

  Indeed, if Tembelos’ wife caught him sampling eggplants, there’d be no plea-bargaining, no trial. No, she’d cut off his offending appendages and feed them to the dog.

  Perhaps dallying with Antigone Balis wasn’t such a good idea. She appeared to be a woman of passion, but passion could go either way. What was the expression, dikopo mahairi—a knife that cuts two ways. That might well be her. Remembering Tembelos’ wife, Eleni, he touched his manly parts protectively. No telling what a passionate woman might do. Dimitra had jabbed him in the calf with a pair of scissors. If provoked, Antigone Balis might well jab him someplace worse.

  He chewed contemplatively. Still, that ass of hers is a thing of wonder.

  Who knew what lay ahead? Lay being the operative word.

  He handed the priest a transcript of the first interview with Maria Georgiou. “Let’s go over it again, Father. See if anything jumps out at us.”

  Tembelos was at the police station, looking after the prisoner, Maria Georgiou. He’d just bought her breakfast, he reported when Patronas called, and was in the process of ordering lunch for her from a taverna. In addition, he had offered to bring her books, a radio or television, even a laptop computer if she wanted—anything to break up the monotony of her confinement.

  “She waved me off. Said she had her Bible and that was enough.”

  “How’s her appetite?”

  “Terrible. She didn’t touch her food last night. We’ve got to get her out of here.”

  “I know, Giorgos. I’m working on it.”

  Patronas poured himself a cup of coffee. “What about a lawyer?”

  “Evangelos is arranging it. He called around this morning, but didn’t get anywhere. There are only a couple of lawyers on Patmos and they’re all busy.”

  “Well, have him talk to Stathis,” he said. “See if we can get somebody to come from Athens. She has the right to counsel.”

  Bechtel turned up at the hotel an hour later. He flinched when he saw Papa Michalis and started to apologize, but checked himself. He looked exhausted and hadn’t changed his clothes since they’d last seen him. He seemed subdued, far less confrontational than he’d been the previous night.

  “The person who killed him? You said you arrested her,” he said to Patronas.

  “Maria Georgiou? Yes, we have her in custody.”

  “What will happen to her?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. A long sentence, probably. ”

  “The motive for the killing, the massacre in Aghios Stefanos, you said it will be brought up at the trial.”

  “Yes. I know you objected, but
it’s extremely relevant. By the way, it wasn’t me. It was my superiors in Athens who insisted that we charge her with murder. Your letter was what decided them.” Patronas added this out of spite. “They saw it as an ‘unwarranted interference in the Greek judicial system and a breach of national sovereignty.’ ”

  “What if I don’t press charges?” Bechtel bleated.

  In all his years in law enforcement, Patronas had never met the relative of a murder victim who didn’t want revenge. An eye for an eye cut deep. It went to their very core. And yet here was Bechtel, pleading with him to drop the case.

  “What’s this really about?” he asked.

  Bechtel fell back in the chair and covered his face with his hands. He stayed like that for a long time.

  “It’s a puzzle,” he said, choking a little on the words, “how you can love someone … love them and worship them and want to be like them … all the time knowing they are not what they seem, that they have blood on their hands. That was my dilemma as an adolescent, reconciling the man who lived only to please me and my mother, who was a gentle and playful uncle and grandfather, with such a foul history. You asked if I knew. Yes, yes, of course I did. That’s why I changed our name. It was me, not him. You got that part wrong—unfortunately not the rest. I wanted to go forward from that time, to leave it behind and start anew. My uncle was not pleased when I did it, but I told him I had no choice, that I must protect the children, and he eventually acquiesced. I did not know the specifics of what he’d done or where he had served. He never told me and I never asked. But yes, I was aware that he was in the Gestapo—my mother threw it up at him once when they were fighting—and the Gestapo was not known for its humanity.”

  Although Patronas struggled with the English, he understood most of what Bechtel was telling him. “Does your wife know?”