Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  Chapter 24

  He didn’t understand how it had happened. Undoubtedly he never would. These moments are like shooting stars. They pass before us, leaving only a luminous trail impossible to decipher. Where do they come from? What do they plunge toward?

  O dark night, night of evil, night of Satan. He held him firmly by the arm, because he knew what Z. was capable of, and led him toward his hotel. He felt the muscles of Z.’s arm twitching with restrained rage. He held him tight so he couldn’t escape. After his exchange with the Chief of Police, Z. seemed furious. The indifference, the apathy in the Chief’s face, when all around them injustice had run rampant, filled him with horror. To keep Z. from making some gesture that he might later regret, the lawyer held him firmly, accompanied him toward the hotel.

  They walked to the middle of the square strewn with the stones that a few hours before had been hurled at the windows; the stripes of their jackets merged, giving the impression of an enormous hand. They were walking along, the lawyer trying to calculate how many steps they must still take before reaching the hotel on the opposite sidewalk, when he saw them returning—the same three envoys from hell in their black pullovers, who, before the meeting, had struck Z. on the brow. Now that it was darker, they looked even more menacing. Z. saw them too and seethed with indignation. No, he must not let them begin again. He yanked his arm away, despite the lawyer’s efforts to restrain him, turned around, shouted: “What are the police doing? Here they are! They’re here again!”

  And then? A deafening uproar, something like the explosion of a mine in a peaceful meadow where ordinarily nothing was heard but the cows mooing at pasture, and no one would have suspected the mines still buried from the days of the Occupation—mines and men, committing crimes they hadn’t had time to finish during the war, now, twenty years later, when the world was preparing to celebrate the defeat of Hitler’s Germany, everywhere except in Greece, where the leading collaborators survive and prosper omnipotent—ichthyosaurs, shoebills, swamp dwellers, Siphonophora, pterodactyls, Anopheles mosquitoes—where there were still kings with German blood. Though he couldn’t have described it, he saw it. Four men suddenly moved apart and revealed the monstrous pickup van, headlights turned off, descending upon them in terrifying fury. He barely managed to get out of the way himself. Had he still been holding Z. by the arm, he could have saved him. But Z. had turned toward the opposite sidewalk, where, only a moment before, he had been talking with the Chief of Police. Then a man armed with a club rose up in the rear of the van and hit Z. No, he wasn’t certain of that—his eyes had been so filled with terror that he hadn’t made things out clearly. He imagined himself in Z.’s place, lying on the pavement in a pool of blood. When you get hit by a bullet, you feel nothing at first but a gentle warmth pervading your body. He thought it must be like that when you fall: for some seconds you think you are standing up and someone else is lying on the ground in your place. The lawyer regained his presence of mind sufficiently to try to see the license number of the pickup, this monster that like Achilles’ horses was dragging the dead body of Hector. But the number was covered over.

  He heard a multitude of voices shouting all around him. For a moment they drowned out the backfire of the van as it vanished, like a black shooting star, up Venizelou Street, in the wrong direction.

  “Murderers!”

  “Shame!”

  “You’ve killed Z.!”

  He saw several people running after the pickup van in an attempt to stop it. But in vain. The three-wheeler continued its insane race. They had to give up. O dark night, night of evil, night of Satan.

  And then—all this took place within a few seconds, he later realized—raising his eyes from Z.’s body on the street, he saw the same three young thugs, or three others resembling them—how could he tell, he was so confused—coming back to attack Spathopoulos. Telling himself that his duty was to protect those who were still alive, and also—he wasn’t ashamed to admit this—from an instinct of self-preservation, he grabbed Spathopoulos and pushed him into the hotel. Two minutes later the other lawyers arrived, panting, alive, guilty and innocent, thankful that they had escaped the slaughter—at least for tonight.

  Chapter 25

  But for him, Z.’s self-appointed bodyguard, it was different. Not for a second did Hatzis’s courage desert him. Before he heard the roar of the motor, he saw a hand pointing in Z.’s direction. Too short to see the van racing toward them, he couldn’t pull Z. out of the way and save him. He watched him collapse at his side, the man who a little while before had planted a trident in his own blue eyes. He heard the muffled sound of the wheels as they ran over the former Balkan champion, and his whole being turned into a vessel of foaming wrath, bent on catching the assassins.

  Two men who had succeeded in getting a grip on the pickup were shouting, gesturing. But the vehicle moved so fast they had to let go. The Tiger realized that if he tried to grab hold he risked having his fingers broken by the shadow skulking in the rear. He decided to jump on the vehicle. Either he’d fall on the street and get hurt or else he’d be able to hang on … Luck was with him. He managed to land on the pickup. It was an insane plan but it worked. Now there were three persons on the van.

  Vango threw himself at him. Still reeling from the wild jump, Hatzis lost his balance and received a volley of blows full in the face. But the image of his dead leader intensified his rage. His adversary was better acquainted with the inside of the van and didn’t knock against things as he lunged about. Despite the disadvantage, Hatzis quickly got used to it.

  While Vango had him flat on the floor, Hatzis kept kicking him from below. Every time Vango bent to strike him, Hatzis would kick him in the face. Keeping Hatzis pinned down, Vango pulled out his pistol. But the pickup, still pursuing its mad course, made a savage turn, and Vango fell over. Hatzis got up and grabbed the hand holding the pistol. He twisted it so hard Vango let the pistol drop, howling with pain. It fell out of the van onto the busy avenue.

  With renewed courage, Hatzis butted him in the stomach. Vango had already picked up his club but dropped it when kicked in the groin. The desperate battle went on in silence, except for the cries for help that Hatzis addressed to passing cars.

  At the beginning they had been moving against the traffic, but after a sudden turn they were now going in its direction. Not a single driver seemed aware of the desperate struggle in the van. Hatzis could shout himself hoarse; no one paid any attention. He was aware of their impassive expressions; how could they know that at this moment he, a blacksmith, was on the trail of a dastardly political crime—he no longer had any doubt of it—and was in danger of paying for his daring with his life. Even in the frenzy of the struggle he was aware of the people in the passing cars. A blonde beside a fat driver, head resting on his shoulder as she stroked the nape of his neck. A society woman with a petrified smile reminiscent of toothpaste ads, at the wheel of her latest car; every so often she would peer at herself in the rear-view mirror and smooth her eyebrows or adjust a hair that had rebelled against the hairdresser’s tyranny. A priest seated next to a sailor, who drove with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, had placed his plump clerical hand between the sailor’s thighs while gazing attentively at some invisible point ahead. A malicious-looking taxi driver, elbow protruding from the open window, was trying to pass the pickup, radio blaring out deafening bouzouki. In one car sat a stodgy bourgeois couple, the wife driving, the man obviously delighted with his wife’s modern ways; they saw the fierce battle in the van and roared with laughter, thinking it an acrobatic stunt. Hatzis had no time to dwell on the scenes that flashed by. But later, on his hospital bed, where he lay recuperating from his wounds, he was able to recall at leisure those masks belonging to a neutral and indifferent universe in which each being was isolated in a world totally different from his own.

  He didn’t owe his wounds to the little shrimp, for much sooner than Hatzis had expected, thanks to his knowledge of judo, he’d put him out of commi
ssion. No, his wounds were inflicted by the driver of the van. This is how it happened.

  When he disarmed Vango and knocked him out, Hatzis tossed him like a useless sack out on the street. Vango turned two or three somersaults and then crawled to the sidewalk; the pickup roared from the scene. Without losing a second, the Tiger—even though he rarely went to the movies—drove his fist through the window behind the driver and with one hand held Yango’s head while with the other, already blood-smeared, he broke off a piece of glass to sink into Yango’s neck. Yango braked violently, Hatzis lost his hold, and the pickup skidded toward the right-hand sidewalk. Yango jumped off the seat, leaving Hatzis with his arm caught in the broken window, his sleeve torn, and slivers of glass in his elbow. He painfully wrested his arm free, but it was too late. With a club that reflected the neon signs of the Titania Cinema, where the pickup had stopped, Yango struck him a powerful blow on the head. Before passing out, Hatzis heard: “He’s a Communist criminal. He killed several people.”

  “It must be me they’re talking about,” he thought.

  Another blow followed. He’d fallen from the van and was lying on the road, face against the pavement. He saw boots approaching, resembling policemen’s, then some high, laced shoes which might have been a soldier’s. As he rolled over on his back, he saw a fireman in uniform and helmet bending over him. Then he lost consciousness.

  Chapter 26

  The red light stopped him just as he was ready to go. In his profession—he was a policeman as well as chauffeur to the Secretary General at the Ministry of Northern Greece—he’d learned to be scrupulous about obeying the law. Any other driver would have gone ahead on the yellow, but not he. He, deus ex machina, stopped at the red and looked about him. Only a few people passing by; the jeep belonging to Branchiosaur, which he knew well because he often saw it in the front courtyard of the Ministry, was parked before the Kosmopolit Hotel. The jeep’s driver, in plain clothes, noticed him and signaled him over. When the policeman lowered his window, the jeep’s driver ordered: “Get moving.”

  At that moment he heard a shrill female voice shouting: “For shame!” A pickup van raced past him and he saw two shadowy figures struggling inside. A traffic cop blew his whistle, but the van only increased its speed, hurtling up Venizelou Street the wrong way. The square, which a moment before had seemed empty, was now full of people. He started off, rolling along slowly, taking care not to hit anyone. He heard shouting around him; people were pounding the hood of his car with their fists. He lowered the window once more.

  “Please, mister,” said a stranger. “Take Z. He’s badly hurt. It’s a question of life or death.”

  He got out, calmly opened the door, pushed the front seat back to make more room, and let the men lay the critically wounded man down. Two men got in and sat in the rear; a third one tried to join them but couldn’t squeeze in. The front seat was soaked in blood. The sight of the giant, half prone at his side, gasping and bleeding from the mouth, unnerved him so that instead of pressing the starter he turned on the windshield wipers. The world in front of him misted over.

  “Who is it?” he asked the two men in the back.

  “Z. Get to the hospital as fast as you can. His life’s hanging by a thread.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The bastards got him. Get going! Faster!”

  “What bastards?”

  “The thugs and the police.”

  “I’m a member of the police,” he turned around to say. “And I’m doing everything I can for you, as you see.”

  The two were silent. The only sound was the groaning of the wounded man and the blood trickling on the seat.

  “Use your horn! Faster!”

  “The horn doesn’t work.”

  “Damn!”

  “The car’s not mine. It’s rented.”

  He had rented it for two hours from an agency he knew. He had a date with Kitsa, a “friend of a friend,” whose telephone number he had gotten by chance. He had rented the Volkswagen for two hours so they could be alone. He’d come within a hair of missing the date. The Assistant Minister’s lecture on downy mildew had lasted longer than expected, and then the General had delivered a lecture on the Communist peril. But, luckily, he hadn’t had to drive the Assistant Minister to the airport himself. The General had offered to take him in his own car. And so he’d been able to meet Kitsa at the appointed time.

  “But this isn’t the way to the hospital!”

  “It’s better to make this detour; we’ll avoid heavy traffic.”

  “Step on it!”

  Then he collided with another car. He stopped; it was his fault.

  “Don’t stop!” shouted one of the men behind him. “Let the guy take your license number. This man must not die! He must not die!”

  “You see what happens when you speed?” he replied. “Now I’m going to have to pay a fine.”

  The driver of the other car, after examining the damage and seeing that it was nothing serious—a dent in the rear door—came over to jot down the particulars.

  “There’s a man on the point of death inside,” the policeman told him.

  The other man glanced inside the car and nodded. He took out a pencil and wrote down the Volkwagen’s license number on his package of cigarettes.

  The evening had been one unexpected thing after another Kitsa and he had gone to a vacant lot near Kavtanzoglio Stadium; he parked the car and they began to make love softly, gently, when suddenly she put a stop to it. “That’s enough for the first time,” she announced. She wanted to get married and she had no wish to get involved in a love affair that had no future.

  “Why no future?” he asked.

  “Because you’re a student,” she said.

  “But any minute now I’ll be getting my diploma,” he replied. “And I’ve already done my military service.”

  He hadn’t told her he was a policeman: too many girls were scared off by that occupation, though some liked the security it offered. He didn’t know Kitsa well enough to be able to decide whether to tell her the truth or not. They went to a tavern in the neighborhood and had some beer. After nine o’clock he began to get nervous. He wanted to leave and gave the excuse that he had to return the car on time. He told her he’d phone her the next day.

  “Don’t you have a phone?” she asked him.

  “No.”

  She took out her lipstick and with it scrawled on a scrap of paper a telephone number where he could reach her during office hours. She left in a hurry—he noticed for the first time that she was bowlegged. As she went, she was playing with the shoulder strap of her bag.

  The wounded man was breathing with increasing difficulty. His two companions listened anxiously, keeping his head still. The road to the hospital was smooth. When the car arrived, two attendants took Z. in on a stretcher, the news having already reached the hospital, so that everything was in readiness. The policeman heard a doctor giving orders to someone to take down the license number of the car, and in a panic he rushed back to the Volkswagen and started off at top speed. He spent some time looking for an open-air water tap to clean the bloodstains from the upholstery so he could return the car to the rental agency as he’d been given it.

  Chapter 27

  Immediately after the wounded man—or the dead man—had been placed in the Volkswagen, Dinos turned to the police inspector who was standing beside him, pipe in mouth.

  “What happened? Who was hurt?” he asked.

  “They hit a seventeen-year-old boy,” the inspector replied.

  “But it was the same van that was parked here a little while ago. Didn’t you notice?”

  The inspector made no answer.

  “It was the same one,” Dinos insisted. “It shot past like a rocket and disappeared. It was the same.”

  The inspector moved away a few steps. Till now the two of them had been amicably chatting about a police officer they both knew who’d been transferred a month ago to Preveza. Why, suddenly, a
fter the accident, had he stopped talking? Why was he pretending to ignore him?

  Dinos had known the inspector since his student days. He had often seen him at student conferences or when preparations were being made for demonstrations for Cyprus: on these occasions the inspector would turn up as a quiet observer, always smoking his pipe. At that time Dinos had been an active member of the student body. But afterwards—he had never graduated, because his studies were interrupted by his military service—when he opened his own shop, a branch of a firm that sold agricultural products, he no longer had time for such matters. Besides, for the sake of his shop’s good name, he couldn’t. Everything depended on the police. If they wanted to close your shop, they could find a thousand excuses. And the city was small, everybody knew everybody else. So small that this evening he recognized, despite his civilian clothes, the inspector of police from his own neighborhood.

  He had seen him anxiously pacing back and forth. At one point he had an argument with somebody on a motorcycle when the motorcycle, along with a pickup van, had blocked two intercity buses that were trying to cross the square with their lights off. Until then the motorcycle and the van had been maneuvering up and down the street, getting in the way of every other vehicle and in effect tying up the whole square—and the inspector had not seemed to notice. Later Dinos ran into the inspector as the inspector came from across the square, and he greeted him for the second time today (the first had been in the morning when Dinos opened his shop). The inspector was heading for the pickup van, which had now been parked for half an hour outside the Kosmopolit Hotel. He had a talk with the driver of the van. Dinos couldn’t hear what they said, and wasn’t interested anyway. However, he did observe that a few moments afterwards the van moved off and parked in a side street behind the hotel. If he hadn’t recognized the inspector, he wouldn’t even have been aware of its movements. Suddenly, about two minutes later, he saw the van again. This time, moving with lightning speed, it ran over someone right in the middle of the square, then disappeared up Venizelou Street, and none of the policemen and detectives there had made the slightest move to pursue it.