by Leta Serafim
She studied him for a moment. “It is true,” she said, her German accent becoming more pronounced. “I saw him with Walter. The same games. Grobpapa was old and feeble, but he was touching him the same way he used to touch me. He said everyone did what we did. It was even in the Bible. ‘Where do you think all those people came from?’ he told me once. ‘They all slept together.’ Only he didn’t say ‘slept,’ he said, sie fickten einander.” They fucked each other.
It was interesting to watch, the way the memory aged her, made her look older and coarser than her years.
“We never did it, if that’s what you’re thinking. He couldn’t, not unless he took those pills men take, the ones that make you hard. But oh, how he wanted to. Every time we were together. You could see it in his eyes.”
“When did it start?”
“When I was the same age as those kids in Epirus. My parents were away, in Africa. I don’t really remember. There was a woman who came in during the day, but at night it was just the two of us. Walter wasn’t born yet and I was alone with him. He took my clothes off and touched me all over. Night after night he’d come into my room and grab my hands and make me rub him, poke at me with his fingers. He was old and trembly and his hands would shake. ‘Hannelore,’ he’d say. ‘Hannelore.’ Like I was a lover, not a child. I didn’t understand what he was doing. All I knew was that it hurt. Sometimes he’d unbutton his pants and make me put my mouth there. He liked that the most.”
She stared off in the distance. “I’d wash myself after, but it didn’t matter. I could never get clean, never get rid of the smell of him. It was like his hands were still on me, but invisible. No one could see them but me. I started cutting myself when I was older. It felt good, like I was finally getting free of him. I would have peeled my skin off if I could. He hurt me and then I started hurting myself. Funny, huh?”
“The Japanese have a custom,” the priest said with great gentleness. “When someone wrongs them, they go before that person and cut their own stomachs out.”
Hannelore Bechtel contemplated this, then, nodding, made a fist and drew a circle around her stomach. “I told him to stop. But I was only six and he didn’t listen to me.”
“What happened then?” the priest asked.
“My parents came back and he quit for a while. Later Grobpapa told me it was my fault, what had happened, that I’d liked it and wanted it. I was a slut then, he said, a little slut, eine kleine schlampe, and I was a slut now. I would always be a slut. Schlampe, schlampe, schlampe.”
“Did he say this on Patmos?”
“Oh, yes.” Her voice rang out. “It was after Walter went back to the house. We were in the garden and I told Grobpapa to leave him alone or I’d tell my parents what he’d done. He just laughed at me and told me I was imagining things. ‘You’re always making things up,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what the truth is—you lie so much. I would never do anything to Walter or you.’ ‘But you did,’ I said. ‘For a long time, you did.’ ‘Lies,’ he said. ‘Lies.’ Lügen. He was stroking the cat when he said it, rubbing its fur with his fingers.”
“Is that when you decided to kill the cat?”
She nodded. “It was nothing, just a dirty stray. I don’t know why he cared about it.”
“How did you kill it?”
“I choked it. I wrapped my fingers around its neck and shook really hard. Back and forth, back and forth.” Her eyes gleamed as she relived the moment. “It was small and it didn’t take long. It kept twisting and meowing, trying to get away from me.”
She dropped her head down onto her shoulder, imitating the way the cat had looked after she snapped its neck. Laughed out loud in an ugly way.
“I wanted to hurt Grobpapa. Hurt him the way he hurt me. I was big now, and he couldn’t do anything to me anymore, but it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t leave me alone. All the time talking about it, using his filthy words. Whenever we were by ourselves, he’d start. ‘You had such a sweet little body,’ he’d say. Like it was something good we had shared, a happy memory.” The girl’s voice was thick with disgust.
“What did you hit him with?”
“I didn’t. I know you think I did, but I didn’t.”
Dry eyed, she stared at him defiantly. “I’m glad he’s dead, but it wasn’t me. I wasn’t the one who killed him.” She repeated this several times.
“Who knew about the two of you?”
“Nobody, not for a long time.”
“Why didn’t you tell your parents?”
“I don’t know. Like I said, he told me it was my fault and I believed him. ‘It has to be our secret,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they’ll send you away. Girls who do these things are bad girls. You’re a bad girl, Hannelore.’ I hated him,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “He was always there. I couldn’t get away from him. When I had a friend over, he’d sit and watch us and sometimes the front of his pants would get wet. I tried to tell my mother about him once, but she waved me off. She was in her room putting on a dress, a ruffly dress for a party. She likes to do that, my mother. Likes to make herself pretty. She isn’t interested in me, in what I have to say. She never sees anybody. Only herself in the mirror.”
Her anger had been growing as she spoke, had taken on a life of its own. It was a like a presence sitting with them at the table.
“Is that why you killed him, Hannelore? Because no one else would help you?”
“I didn’t kill him,” she said again.
“You said no one knew for a long time. Does someone know now?”
“Yes. My mother.”
“When did you tell her?”
“The day I saw him with Walter. The day he died.”
“So you confronted him in the garden.” Patronas was seeking to establish a timeline for the murder. “What happened next, Hannelore? Did you lose your temper and hit him with something? You’re a strong girl, an athlete. It would have been easy for you. Or did he lose his balance and fall and you finished the job?”
“I didn’t touch him,” she said. “Don’t you understand? I couldn’t.”
Suddenly, the door of the house flew open and Gerta Bechtel came running out, screaming her daughter’s name. Tembelos tried to stop her, but she pushed her way past him.
“Hannelore! What’s going on? Your father said the police were talking to you! What’s this about?”
“The stupid cat. The one those Greek boys killed.”
Hannelore Bechtel was far more clever than he’d originally thought, Patronas suddenly realized, and possessed great presence of mind.
A wily, manipulative creature, she’d been only too willing to admit to killing the cat when it was just the three of them. She’d reveled in it even. He remembered the joyful expression on her face. But now that her mother was here, she’d quickly set about deflecting the blame. The swiftness of the change was remarkable; her face actually seemed to grow younger as Patronas watched—her voice to take on a more girlish tone as she lied—and the transformation hadn’t been to spare her mother’s feelings. Patronas was certain of that. It was because Hannelore was an evil, calculating little bitch. She needed her mother to keep her out of jail.
“Oh, Hannelore,” Gerta Bechtel said.
“He says because I killed it, I must have killed Grobpapa. He’s mean, Mommy. Don’t listen to him.”
Ignoring the outburst, Patronas continued to speak. “And then you tried to frame the maid, didn’t you, Hannelore? It was you who cut the swastika on his face. As with the cat, you wanted us to think a Greek was responsible.”
“Hannelore,” Gerta Bechtel said, tears running down her face. “I will talk to them. Go back to the house.”
The daughter dutifully got up from the chair and started toward the house, looking back at her mother once or twice. The expression on her face was unsettling. She looked triumphant.
“It wasn’t Hannelore,” Gerta Bechtel said after her daughter had disappeared inside. “It was me. I killed him.”
Reaching for Patronas’ cigarettes, she pulled one out of the pack.
“Take your time,” Patronas urged, lighting the cigarette for her. “Start at the beginning and describe what happened.”
“I heard them fighting. Hannelore was yelling, ‘Ich hasse dich!’ ” I hate you! “I reprimanded her. You mustn’t speak of your grandfather that way,’ I said to her. ‘You must show respect.’ ”
Her voice was sardonic, self-mocking.
“Respect,” she said bitterly. “You must show him respect.”
“Where was your husband? Surely he must have heard, especially if your daughter was shouting.”
“Gunther had just come from Africa, and he was exhausted. He was asleep maybe. I don’t know. Anyway, inside the house. Walter and Maria, also.”
Gerta Bechtel hesitated, as if seeking a different ending to the story. “Hannelore, she told me I must keep Walter away from Grobpapa. ‘Schmutzig,’ she kept saying. ‘Schmutzig.’ Over and over. Dirty. Dirty. My daughter, always she says ugly things when she’s angry—ugly, ugly things. Gunther’s uncle, he soiled himself once at dinner. And this is what I thought she meant. That he was dirty from shit.”
Patronas believed her. There was nothing false in her demeanor.
“I told her she must not speak this way of him,‘He is very old,’ I said. ‘He cannot not help it.’ It was then that she told me, told me what kind of dirty he was.”
The bruises on her face were still pronounced, especially around her eyes. She looked drained, so exhausted she could barely speak. Another victim, Patronas thought as he listened, another ruined life.
“I have lived with that man almost my entire adult life. Ever since the day we got back from our honeymoon. At first it was all right. I didn’t know his history and it was acceptable, but then we moved. Gunther wasn’t there. He was in Africa, and I had to pack myself. We had a closet under the stairs and there I found a box. Inside were many things from that time, a uniform and some photographs, a diary from when he was in Greece. I read what he wrote. It was all about the Gestapo, full of bragging. I asked him about it later that day, thinking it must be a mistake, that the things had belonged to someone else, but he told me no, no, the things in the box were his. He said he was proud of the way he’d served Germany and kept the Jews from taking over. Proud to have been a Scharführer in the Gestapo.”
She looked over at Patronas to see if he understood the term. “After that, whenever it was just us, he would speak about those years. He was always very crude and it got worse as he got older. I remember once he lit two paper matches and put them on top of each other, laughing at the way they writhed and twisted as they burned. ‘Wie die Juden,’ he said.”
“Like the Jews,” Patronas said, and she nodded.
“Gunther told me to ignore him, that he was an old man and didn’t know what he was saying half the time. But he did—you could sense it, see it in his expression whenever there was something about Israel on the news. He was still a Nazi; he had never changed. Blacks were Untermenschen because of the shape of their heads, he’d say, as if it were science. ‘Racial pollution is corrupting us.’ And the way he spoke about the Jews … I was so ashamed, so ashamed to have a man like that in my life, to have him in the lives of my children. My family, we were different. My father was a school teacher, a gentle, peaceful man. He despised the Nazis.”
She smoked in silence for a few minutes, watching Patronas.
“Go on,” he urged.
“You cannot understand. You are not German.” She shook her head. “You cannot understand the shame of those years. What we did as a people. Gunther spent his whole life making up for it. Going to Africa to work off the sin. He, too, was ashamed. All the young people of my generation were, and then to have to live with it morning, noon, and night. To have it sitting in my kitchen, talking about the war as if it had been a good thing … but I loved Gunther and I made a kind of peace with it. ‘He is my husband’s uncle and I should respect him,’ I told myself.”
She looked back at the house, as if searching for her daughter. “We had trouble with Hannelore always—much trouble. She was not obedient. It is important, respect for parents in my country, but Hannelore, she was not respectful. Unhappy always. I didn’t know what was wrong. I should have guessed, but I didn’t. I overheard Gunther’s uncle talking to her once in Stuttgart. He was trying to grab her hand and she was pushing him away. ‘You were friendlier when you were little,’ he was saying. ‘You liked to touch me.’ It seemed a strange thing to say to a child, but he was like that, and I told myself I was imagining things. I should have known. The signs were there, but I didn’t want to see. This is my fault. Mine, mine.”
She started to cry. “Hannelore. Oh, God, Hannelore. My little Hannelore.”
Patronas was watching her closely, convinced she was confessing to the murder to save her daughter, as a kind of penance.
“It wasn’t so hard to kill a man, I found out. I pushed him out of his chair and hit him with a shovel, once and then again. He deserved to die. I only wish I’d killed him sooner. I only wish he was still alive so I could kill him again.”
Hannelore later admitted she’d cut the swastika on the victim’s forehead after her mother had gone back inside the house.
“It was my idea,” she boasted brightly to Patronas, proud of what she’d done. “I wanted people to think a Greek had done it. I knew how they felt about us. In Athens, there are swastikas everywhere. It was no big deal. I’d cut myself before. I knew how to cut.”
Pulling up her shirt, she showed him the scars, a grid of striated white lines running across her abdomen.
“I don’t do it anymore, but I used to a lot. Not just there. Other places, too. He bled a little when I did it, which scared me. I mean, he was dead, so why was he bleeding? It was like he was a vampire or something.”
Patronas handcuffed both Hannelore Bechtel and her mother, unsure who he should charge with the murder. He’d let the prosecutor sort it out—a jury, when the time came. He and Tembelos had found the shovel mixed in with the rest of the tools in the back, but it had been washed clean. Again, Hannelore had seen to it. It wouldn’t reveal much. They were unholy collaborators, the girl and her mother, the girl carving a swastika on a dying man with a knife while the other washed his blood off her hands.
‘En psychiko vrasmo,’ their defense attorney would say in court, a plea acceptable in Greece. They acted while their souls were boiling.
One final question. “Your husband beat you up, didn’t he?” Patronas asked Gerta Bechtel as he settled her into the back of the car.
“Yes. I told him about his uncle, what he’d done to Hannelore, and he went crazy. We are sad people, Chief Officer. Gunther, atoning for what his uncle did in the war. All those years in Africa. Never seeing what he did to us, what he did in our house.”
Patronas didn’t know what to do with the information, whether to charge Bechtel with domestic assault or not. In the end, he decided to let it go. Gunther Bechtel had not emerged from the house during the interview, nor had he shown much interest when Patronas knocked on the door and told him that he was charging his wife and daughter with murder.
“You need to find someone to stay with him,” Papa Michalis counseled, worried that the man would take his own life. Evangelos Demos had done what he could to safeguard against such as possibility, alerting the Bauers and finding a man on the force fluent in German to sit with him. He called a man from his office in Germany who had worked with him in Africa and summoned him, saying it was imperative that he come.
Patronas visited Maria Georgiou in her room later that night. “It was you who burned the candles, wasn’t it? Scattered the flowers over the body?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “It was important to me.”
“Why? You hated him.”
“It wasn’t for him, if that’s what you think. No, never. I was grieving for me, for the girl I’d been. With his death, that part of my life was over. All th
ose feelings, I could finally let go of them, bury them alongside him. After the massacre, I was always alone, always a stranger. There was no one I loved or who loved me. And I wanted to cry for that child, for the little girl who got left behind in Aghios Stefanos in 1943. Who was unlucky enough to live when everyone else had died.”
“Where’d you get the candles?”
“They were on a shelf in the kitchen. The flowers, I found in the garbage. Mrs. Gerta had bought a bouquet a few days before and thrown them away. Carnations and lilacs. She said her daughter, Hannelore, always loved the carnations.”
A tear ran down her face. “I didn’t mind that the carnations were old and brown. It seemed right to throw dead flowers on him.”
Patronas still wasn’t sure who’d actually done the killing, but he was betting it was the daughter, Hannelore Bechtel. Even at sixteen, she was an unsavory creature, had nearly torn the head off a cat. Seventy years before, she, like her Grobpapa before her, might have served in the Gestapo. She seemed to have the calling.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Better to be envied than pitied.
—Greek Proverb
As the boat for Piraeus wasn’t leaving until after midnight and there was nothing left to do at the station, Patronas, Tembelos, and Papa Michalis spent the day in Grikos, a village to the south of Skala.
A nearly perfect circle of sunlit blue water, the Bay of Grikos was breathtaking. A narrow strip of land led out to a pyramid-shaped rock on the far side.
“Kalikatsou,” the priest called the rock, saying hermits had once inhabited it, carving out caves, chimneys, and staircases in the sandstone. “It’s named for the birds, the kalikatsoudes, cormorants, that nest there. Supposedly, there was a temple dedicated to Venus on Kalikatsou in ancient times. Archeologists think the caves might be older, might even be paleolithic. People say the place emits a strange energy.”