Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  He heard the loudspeaker announce that Spathopoulos’s whereabouts were unknown. He had gone at once to the Kosmopolit Hotel to ask Spathopoulos to put an end to the rumors of his disappearance. Then the General appeared at the entrance desk and said: “You’re wasting your time trying to make him change his mind; that’s how these people are.” He himself had escorted Spathopoulos to the auditorium. He heard later that Spathopoulos had thanked him before beginning his speech and this had pleased him.

  The Friends of Peace refused to turn off the loudspeakers. He reflected that if he used violence to shut them off, they might retaliate with increased violence. Above all, he did not want “one nose to bleed.” And so he had let the loudspeakers blare away; he failed to hear Z.’s appeals, perhaps because at that moment he was attending to the evacuation of the demonstrators by bus—an evacuation which Z. had categorically refused. Then at his back he heard the noise of a motor. Turning round, he saw an individual “lying flat on the ground.”

  Concerning the Pirouchas affair, he could only say that he’d seen Pirouchas walking toward the ambulance with no help from anyone, while a group of counterdemonstrators prepared to attack him. At that moment a cordon of police surrounded the ambulance, thus facilitating his departure. He only learned later that Pirouchas had been badly hurt, “though it should be noted”—the Chief’s favorite expression—that at the time Pirouchas was in an area not under police control, a full four blocks away.

  To get back to “the individual lying flat on the ground.” He found himself at a point “located within the area formed between the perceptible extension of the left sidewalk of the descending line of Venizelou Street and of the north sidewalk of Ermou Street, as well as (by prolongation) its conjunction with Spandoni Street, at the intersection of the said streets.”

  He saw a person jump on the pickup van. He thought it must be a policeman in plain clothes and he crossed the square fast to take down the license number of the vehicle. But he didn’t succeed, because it disappeared up Venizelou Street, “the wrong way on a one-way street.” Then a group of policemen approached, some in uniform, others in plain clothes, and he told them: “Go after that pickup!” At the same instant he’d run into someone he knew from the Security Police, “and in actual fact this person did set off in pursuit, though I did not see him thereafter.” He approached the site where he had seen the person “flat on the ground,” and saw the “person” being put into a Volkswagen. He saw them fold his arms on his chest so they could close the door. He asked someone who the injured person was and he was told it was Z., and “then I thought that it would have been far better for this accident to have happened to any other person whatsoever, because the uproar that would follow, owing to the special function and mission of Z. here, would be very great indeed; in a word, my first thought (in view of all that had happened) was that it had been an automobile accident; because, of course, had there been any question of a premeditated criminal attack upon Z., I could not possibly have entertained the thought that it would have been preferable for someone else to have been struck, inasmuch as Z. had been walking in the midst of a group of his own followers.”

  And after these “thoughts” the Chief of Police began pacing up and down the sidewalk to forestall possible new disturbances, and then, “after approximately ten minutes,” a policeman had told him that the driver of the pickup van had been apprehended and was already at the police station. He met the General, who had absolutely no knowledge of these events, and told him that Z. had been assaulted, without mentioning that the culprit had been arrested, “inasmuch as I thought he must know the circumstances, as this of course involved a fact relevant to the case.” It must have been about 10:30 when they toured the surrounding areas in the General’s car to see whether any more fires had been kindled. They spoke very little. They were both absolutely terrified at the thought of the “Communist exploitation of the unfortunate circumstance.” And from there he had gone to his office and put through two long-distance telephone calls to Athens, “though it should be noted” that he did not talk, the General spoke in his place. He sent a police captain to summon the prosecutor from the theater. But the ballet was ending and the Captain, unable to make his way inside, waited at the exit, where he found not one but two prosecutors, put “the both of them” into the jeep, and brought them to police headquarters.

  And then the misunderstanding had occurred. One prosecutor had asked for the culprit. “Before I had time to give an answer, the General interrupted me and answered: ‘He has not been arrested, but he’ll be caught no matter where he goes!’ I experienced surprise and anxiety at the General’s answer. Surprise, because I didn’t see how the General could possibly not know of the arrest. Anxiety, because I reflected that perhaps the information I had received at the site of the meeting had not been correct. At which point I literally jumped out of my chair, went to the office of the orderly, and phoned the police station. The officer on duty answered that the culprit was indeed being held, and I, in a firm, strong, commanding tone, gave him the order, uttering the phrase ‘Hold him there!’ by which I meant that strict measures for guarding the culprit must be taken.” And then he sent an officer to get the pickup van from where it had been abandoned, and had gone back to his office; though now the General was no longer there. He informed the prosecutors that the culprit was at the police station and that was when the second prosecutor got furiously wrought up and said: “Listen, are you hiding him from me? This is the second time you’ve pulled this on me!”

  “I kept still, because I did not consider that I was morally obligated to give any explanation, it having been the General who said the culprit had not been arrested, and not I.”

  INVESTIGATOR: This is what strikes me as odd: the traffic policeman who arrested Yango did not know what he was guilty of, but at the police station, even before Yango was brought in, they knew that the alleged assassin of Z. had been arrested, and notified you at once.

  CHIEF OF POLICE: News of such gravity spreads like wildfire from one section of the police to another. I can give you no more precise information.

  INVESTIGATOR: Where had the anonymous policeman been who ten minutes after the assassination informed you that the culprit had been arrested on Karolou Deel Street, almost half a mile from the intersection where the accident had taken place? Either he was at the demonstration and could not have known that Yango had been arrested so far away or he was on Karolou Deel Street and could not have known any more than the traffic policeman or the fireman did—that the man who had just been arrested was the man who had run Z. over. Consequently, this anonymous policeman had been dispatched in haste by third parties who were in a position to link the two apparently unrelated facts—the murder and the arrest of the driver of the three-wheeler. Those third parties can only have been the officers in charge of the police station.

  CHIEF OF POLICE: I do not know where that policeman could have obtained his information, but such rumors travel fast, you know.

  INVESTIGATOR: They do indeed. So fast that at twelve-thirty the General still knew nothing …

  CHIEF OF POLICE: It is very difficult for me to tell you anything about the source of the information in question; I have nothing concrete to offer you.

  INVESTIGATOR: Then why did you send for the traffic policeman in the middle of the night? What did you wish to tell him?

  CHIEF OF POLICE: I wanted to ask him if it was he or the people in the street who had arrested Yango. Newspapermen were beginning to phone their papers that Yango had been arrested by people in the street. And for reasons of police prestige I wished to …

  INVESTIGATOR: I understand. Had you not been informed the previous noon that Z. was in danger of assassination?

  CHIEF OF POLICE: No one informed me at any time that Z.’s life was in danger. The following day my orderly told me that the Public Prosecutor had phoned him on the matter, but supposing the warning not to be serious, he had forgotten to tell me about it. In any case, he ha
d informed the Security Police, and they had taken appropriate measures at the airport.

  INVESTIGATOR: Did you hear Z.’s appeal to you personally over the loudspeaker for your protection?

  CHIEF OF POLICE: I heard no such appeal. If he had made it, I should have been very glad. That would have enabled me to take measures necessary to his security.

  INVESTIGATOR: When after the meeting Z. came to tell you his life was in danger, did you not reply that he had nothing to fear?

  CHIEF OF POLICE: I never said anything of the sort.

  INVESTIGATOR: Had the counterdemonstration been planned?

  CHIEF OF POLICE: I do not think so. Although most of the counterdemonstrators were illiterate, it does not seem impossible that the news of Z.’s arrival spread among them by word of mouth and that they decided among themselves to demonstrate their disapproval.

  INVESTIGATOR: And what is your opinion about the crime?

  CHIEF OF POLICE: A Communist machination. Vango is a former Communist resistant of the ELAS. He incited his koumbaros and friend Yango to run Z. over as part of an obvious plot to defame the Royal Police Force. I might add that they hurt no one but themselves.

  Chapter 3

  “Admittedly, when I arrived on the site with the Chief, the situation was not very pleasant. It had taken a rather nasty turn. The number of people in the area was increasing not from minute to minute but from second to second. This was in large measure abetted by the slogans over the loudspeakers and the arrogant retorts of the numerous persons assembled, constantly kindling and rousing tempers and provoking an influx of persons either because they had contrary views and wanted to show their disapprobation or else out of sheer curiosity, which we Greeks unfortunately have a surplus of.”

  He saw them passing by like this in front of him, a sad array of caterpillars crawling and dwindling over the pavement now that he, the Investigator, had sunk the knife in the sack and the oozing mass had spilled out, one glued to the other; without the protection of the moldering police station and the other departmental offices, without the files and the orders inside the faded dossiers, the procession headed by number one, the indomitable General; then number two, the Chief of Police; and then the others, a zigzag column, involuntarily forming on the pavement an enormous Z.

  “Anyone who finds himself on the outside may discover among the wealth of minor incidents that some happened which ought not to have happened, and vice versa. But, in similar instances, the taking or not of a measure should not be judged objectively but subjectively, and as a case in itself, and beneath the prism of expediency. Because an untimely or psychologically unwarranted act, without due weighing of the circumstances, may produce the opposite result, as specifically foreseen by the Regulations of the Police Force, article 296. More specifically, regarding the act of arrest, I must state that the regulations, article 261, paragraph 5, prescribe that arrest must be avoided when it is a question of a minor offense or when disturbance of public order is threatened. At this point may I be allowed to state that no one would have held the police in the slightest degree responsible if the injury to Deputy Z. had not occurred. As far as the injury to Deputy Pirouchas goes, all I have to say is that I do not even know this deputy by sight. I recall that certain policemen did inform me that he had suffered a heart attack rather than an actual injury and that he had boarded an ambulance of the Greek Red Cross and been sent to the first-aid station.”

  He saw them passing in front of him against the black background of the Investigator’s office, cut off, all alone, one by one, as he summoned them for the investigations, and their thoughts were black too and stuck to the background, and both—wall and thoughts—became one, as uniform as the uniforms enveloping them, rhyming, all made equal by the police regulations, and the Investigator holding the ruler in his hand saw that they were all the same size, regardless of rank, and his soul darkened.

  “Within the framework of my own departmental jurisdiction … descending the stairs of the auditorium, I returned to my position outside the entrance, after reassuring Z. (he’d shown me his bruises) that there was no question of another such incident … Whereas Pirouchas moved by himself in the direction of the ambulance and indeed to its rear door; in a word, without having previously asked to be seated near the driver, whereas a Red Cross attendant (I do not recall that he was wearing his white uniform) had opened the double rear door of the ambulance and Pirouchas or one of his followers, during the instant he was mounting the ambulance, shouted: ‘Down with the assassins!’ … I relied on the thought that in any case the pickup and its driver would be arrested … After these events, one of my men reminded me that we should also consider the possibility of the Greek-Soviet League …”

  He saw them passing by, leaving on his desk their “I don’t recall,” “I don’t know,” “I am unable to express any opinion,” “not …” “not …” “not …”—all of them intact, basing themselves on negation, on the absence of memory—as though the camera had no film in it and its clicks and hummings were for the credulous; whereas he, the Investigator, kept bringing to light tremendously specific details, only to have these creatures efface them in their track of spittle, caterpillars, gastropods of the pine tree whose needles pierce like the worst pangs of conscience; only the caterpillars are privileged to slither onward without suffering, for they have no bones, no centers of resistance; leveled and indifferent creatures, changing uniforms twice a year. And ranking officers have two extra uniforms, one for coronations and one for funerals.

  “Simultaneously with the arrival of these forces, by virtue of great effort and superhuman endeavors—using as always the logical methods which are, according to police tactics, conducive to handling situations, namely, first of all, to request; then, wherever this brings no result, to threaten; this must be followed by the minor precautionary tactics and finally by major precautionary tactics, taking care not to cause pain or enrage the crowd using said tactics, we succeeded in driving back the demonstrators to a distance of some hundred yards from the building, thereby creating a safety zone. The evacuation was general, and included persons as well as vehicles, even a pushcart … Yango was under guard in the office, as they reported to me (I cannot recall specifically who told me); this due to the electricity in the station lockup being out of order, and moreover, the lockup being full of koulouria trays, the kind abandoned by koulouri peddlers when they are chased for breaking Board of Health regulations …”

  He saw them in X-rays in the darkness of the laboratory, fleshless bones, blood flowing in the veins of regulations, a heart beating in rhythm with the departmental telephone, a Buddha with a hundred hands branching out like a forest, arms leading from the same nerve center, obeying one single computer, this higher power that controls all, and is called … Here the Investigator preferred to remain silent.

  “Nevertheless, before bringing to a close this, my present memorandum, may I be allowed to let my bitterness overflow, this bitterness which inundates my soul. Albeit I have served in the police force for thirty years and throughout this entire period never once been reproved, not even from a disciplinary standpoint, I was destined, O evil Fate! at the end of my career to suffer this cruel tribulation. But I am sustained by the conviction that justice, Mr. Investigator, will exonorate me, will prove me guiltless, as I have always been. Respectfully yours …”

  “Concurring statements of the Investigator and the Prosecutor were issued today shortly after twelve o’clock noon: warrants to place in custody pending trial four police-force officers; namely, the General, the Chief of Police, the Assistant Chief of Police, and one police captain. The persons jailed are charged with complicity in premeditated murder, in premeditated infliction of serious bodily injuries, in misuse of authority to a criminal degree, and with transgression of their duty.”

  Chapter 4

  There is a rather peculiar procedure for incarcerating senior officers of the police force. First of all, the arrest warrants must go to the Assistant
Ministry of the Interior; from there they must be transmitted to the High Commander of the Royal Police, and from there, if the accused are in some city other than Athens, to the local chief of police. Therefore, as they had been issued on a Saturday, with Sunday intervening, they had reached Athens on Monday and not been returned to Salonika before Wednesday.

  In accordance with time-sanctioned usage, the accused went to the head office of the police department and “took cognizance.” When the former Chief of Police saw someone else behind his desk, “impersonating” the Chief of Police, he thought for a moment that he was going mad. There was his own letter opener, the gift of an abbot on Mount Athos. The glass tabletop still bore his fingerprints. And when the new Chief of Police rose to take them to the door, he could see the shape of his own bottom in the armchair. All four requested to be locked up in Yendi-Koule, but this was refused by the new Chief of Police, who said that only after the final verdict had been delivered and only if the verdict were nonacquittal, only then would he imprison them in a military jail. For the time being, in accordance with the regulations of the corps, he was obliged to send them to the penitentiary of the Security Police. The rooms had been done over for this purpose and were awaiting them, all comforts provided.