Z, 50th Anniversary Edition

by Vassilis Vassilikos

  With the Peace March, springtime took on meaning for Hatzis. As though by coincidence, Sunday (the day the march was to begin at Marathon to end in Athens) fell on May 22. The left-wing newspapers had been preparing it for some time: “The first spring following the death of Z. has returned to earth. Greece is celebrating the memory of the late great figure, the hero of peace. The hero of the entire world.” Photographs of Z., journals, family albums. A festive atmosphere everywhere. The only thing that struck Hatzis as wrong was the Prime Minister’s statement. Of course, he dared not forbid the march, but he was not in favor of it. He was trying to chill the people against it. He said the march was organized by the left wing and did not represent the vast majority of the Greek Friends of Peace, only the miserable minority of the left-wing Friends of Peace. Hatzis was bewildered. This man, at about the same time last year, as a member of the Opposition, had condemned the banning of the march, and now this year, when his party was in power, he was taking its failure as a foregone conclusion. And last year he had excoriated the crime and attacked the “government of blood.” This year couldn’t he, if not honor it, at least hold his tongue in awe of that blood? What was politics anyway, Hatzis wondered. Did it hold nothing sacred? Or maybe there was no difference at all between the bourgeois parties? Sometimes the one rose, sometimes the other, like two peasants sharing the same mule, and the mule—the common people—just went on carrying them one after the other upon its back, understanding the change only from the difference in weight. He didn’t know much about it. He was self-taught in such matters. He was a Communist, and though there were many weaknesses in his own party, at least there was a dividing line. As for the others, whether you called them Mary or Katina, they were both Athinas Street whores. These were Hatzis’s reflections until daybreak Sunday, the day of the second Marathon Peace March.

  In the dark of the night he mounted the bus from Ameriki Square. He sat down next to the driver. When he boarded the bus, everyone applauded. This bolstered his morale. They drove with the lights on. The road, forty-two kilometers, was narrow; every time they met another car the driver slowed down to avoid a collision. At the Tymvos Mound of Marathon there were few people when he arrived. But later the place was teeming. By sunrise the greetings, the speeches, the poems had ended and the grand march set out.

  Hatzis was at the head of the procession, along with the officials. But at some point he stopped to survey its full length. He was awe-struck. For two whole hours people of every age passed in front of him, from all corners of the nation, carrying banners (“Immortal,” “He Lives”), photographs of the leader; singing, dancing. The faces, however, were austere. Faces of seafarers, of the first Christians. Then it was that Hatzis understood the grandeur of the sacrifice. The man unjustly killed rouses the conscience in lethargy. To a conscience already roused, he gives wings. He lends a steadying hand, throws a rope from the sea wall. And Hatzis was proud to have contributed something, himself, to the moment. The march was no different than a religious procession, and Z. no different than the saints his mother believed in.

  Young men, girls, old men, cripples passed in front of him; one had written on his crutch “No More War!” Manufacturers, builders, merchants, laborers. The bakers had written “Peace!” in loaves of bread. From Crete, from the Morea, from the Dodecanese, from Thrace and Macedonia. And when it started raining nobody stopped. They went on walking till the rain let up. At a crossroads, a marriage was celebrated; at another point, where some patriots had been executed by the Germans, a memorial service. And in Hatzis’s eyes, misty with ecstasy, arms looked like olive branches, green foliage, downy skin; on towering legs the marchers grazed the dome of the sky. Last year Z. had walked alone. This year the road was all feet, a millepede. How did this miracle differ from Christ’s feeding the starving multitudes by the Dead Sea with five loaves and seven fishes?

  He remembered Z. coming down the stairs of the building where he had spoken, drawing the iron latch, looking out at the jungle that drew back from the shaft of light as in forests, where hunters wait for the stag to pass. Then Z. had crossed the street with his long strides (six of his to Hatzis’s ten) and shouted: “Here they are again, they’re coming! What are the police doing?” And with this last word on his lips, the pickup truck had placed a seal on him forever. He who had planted the trident in Hatzis’s blue eyes. These saw again the dark case Z. was carrying, the striped suit, the tar of the road that became a matted wreath round his hair.

  And night fell late that evening. The sun lingered over Salamis to survey the march in all its grandeur. In the city, people had come out on their balconies to cheer the marchers. They had put out their flags. That evening Hatzis slept peacefully.

  But time passed and bit by bit the grandeur of the march faded within him. Once more he became a stranger in a strange city. A body washed up there, condemned to fast. The summer went by, and one autumn evening (when the weather turns honey-like in Attica), near the kerosene lamp of a corner chestnut vendor, he ran into Nikitas.

  Chapter 3

  Nikitas had come down to Athens too, about the same time as Hatzis, driven by the same need to seek safety. Since his release from the hospital, with a policeman to escort him everywhere to prevent further assault, no one had set foot in his shop. Finally he left, bag and baggage. Nikitas, unlike Hatzis, did not want to make his weight felt: he applied for a job in a varnishing shop and so earned his daily bread. He had gone with Hatzis to the Prime Minister; it had not changed his life. The only thing he was glad of was getting even with his sister. Now he was “in” and not she. Her party had fallen, and his own risen to power. But he bore her no grudge. When the Prime Minister asked him if he wanted anything, he requested only that his brother-in-law not lose his position.

  His life changed in no way. After work he went back to his room or went to the movies. On Sundays he went to the football games. This year the PAOK was in second place. If the Olympiakos Team lost only one game, they’d have a chance for the Cup.

  He took care to have nothing to do with the Z. case. Since ideologically he didn’t belong to the party that had adopted the hero, he too sank into oblivion. He followed the newspapers, was annoyed by the lies of the Grand Judge of the Areopagus and in the end approved of the six-month suspension imposed on him. Whenever any reporter discovered him, he said he had no comment, he was just waiting for the trial.

  One day temptation appeared in the guise of the former Chief of Police. He saw him coming down the steps into the shop where he worked. He was startled. The bushy eyebrows brought back all the darkness of Salonika. He recalled the General, the hospital, the nightmares about their killing him, Yango. But, on a closer look, he saw that the Chief had changed. He might have been a defrocked cleric. The same face that beneath priestly regalia had exhaled an other-worldly air, now a layman’s once more, might have belonged to any merchant in the marketplace. Stripped of his embroidered robes, he was without splendor. Are mitres and crowns capable of thus altering a person? Or was it that a year had passed, that everyone changes?

  “How are you doing, Nikitas?” the Chief asked. “How are you getting along? You’re here too? We’ve all become emigrants.”

  Nikitas offered him a chair.

  “You’ll ask me how I found you. I know Giorgios, your boss. I saw him the other day on the street and he told me you’re working for him. ‘Ah, Nikitas,’ I said. ‘He’s a fine man. I’ll drop around to see him.’ And I’ve come. Let bygones be bygones, forgive and forget, as they say! Are you married?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Neither am I. Marriage is a fine thing, to be sure. But when you get on in years like me, it’s not worth it any more. Either get married very, very young, or else … You see, with my work, I didn’t have time to think of myself. The Fatherland absorbed all of me. And what came of it all in the end?”

  “You’re not to blame, Chief, sir.”

  “I’m no longer Chief. They’ve assigned me somewhere—Holargo
s—in charge of a supplies warehouse, just to give me something to do. This case cost me my career, everything. I became the laughing stock of the country, and I wasn’t to blame at all. Yes, I’m a victim!”

  “That’s what everybody says about you,” said Nikitas.

  “And you’re a victim too,” the former Chief said. “What reason did you have to get mixed up with that rabble? You know who I mean. The toughs and the Communists. You worked and minded your own business. You weren’t interested in politics. Then, without meaning to, you found yourself involved.”

  “Now I’ve got disinvolved,” Nikitas said. He didn’t like the Chief’s visit at all. “At the trial I’ll say what I have to say and that’s the end of it.”

  “Did you have any complaint against me personally? Did I ever molest you, before or after?”

  “Before I didn’t know you, and afterwards I didn’t see you.”

  “I read that they promised to move heaven and earth for you. They were going to give you a position, they said, and money. Where’s all this then? Giorgios tells me you barely manage.”

  “For them I don’t exist.”

  “That’s just what I mean. What did you gain?”

  “I lost ten years of my life.”

  “There you are. The Communists are well off because they got a hero out of it. The center rose to power. The right lost its holdings, but they would have done so anyway, without what happened; eight years are a long time. In the end, no one suffered. Only you and me, and a few others.”

  “That’s the way it is.”

  “Tell me, do you ever see Tiger?”

  “No.”

  “If you happen to see him sometime, bring him to my office and we’ll have a coffee. I have an interesting proposition for you. Here, take my phone number too.” He jotted it down on a scrap of paper. “Before you come, phone me. There’s one chance for us to get even once and for all, in a very simple way. You’ll be compensated, and I, poor guy, I shall be vindicated!”

  “What chance?”

  “I’ll tell you some other time. Now that I know you’re here, I’ll come and see you.”

  And he went off, leaving a big question mark in the air. And he did come another time, just as the shop was closing. He took Nikitas to Pancrati and treated him to an ice-cream special. This time he didn’t mention the “chance.” They talked only about the PAOK, which was headed full steam ahead for the Cup. He too was a PAOK fan, he said. And he gave him his phone number again, in case Nikitas had lost the first scrap of paper.

  And here, speak of the devil, not a week had passed since their second meeting and Nikitas recognized Hatzis’s bald head in the white light of the chestnut vendor’s kerosene lamp. Nikitas approached him from behind and laid a hand on Hatzis’s shoulder. Hatzis whirled round, a real tiger. They hadn’t seen each other since the day they had gone to the Prime Minister together.

  They went into a milk bar next door and ordered orangeade, Nikitas’s uncarbonated, Hatzis’s carbonated. There were two tables in all, but the noise of the huge electric icebox provided sufficient camouflage for their talk.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” Nikitas said. “But I didn’t know where to find you. I went to the Post Office Square a couple of times, but you weren’t there. It’s about the Chief. He’s been to see me twice. He gave me his phone number too. Here it is, I have it here.” He rummaged inside his wallet and found the scrap of paper.

  “What does he want with us?” asked Tiger.

  “He wants to see us, so we can discuss a little job. How should I know what job he means? He seems very mysterious to me.”

  “You think he might have some photographer planted outside to start the rumor that we’ve been seeing him on the sly?”

  “I don’t know, Hatzis. But he’s gone very soft.”

  “He’s afraid, that’s why.”

  “What can we lose by seeing him?”

  “That’s right. We can’t lose anything,” Hatzis said.

  “I’ll phone to say we’ll come tomorrow.”

  “I don’t mind going to see him once. Agh!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My stomach! Those carbonated drinks!” groaned Hatzis.

  The following evening, at a discreet hour, they went through the gate. The guard had been notified and they didn’t have to say whom they wanted to see. He took them, not through the main corridor leading to the office, but through a side way, past some stairs, till they reached the ex-Chief of Police’s room.

  He was waiting with open arms. He was especially effusive over Hatzis. Someone else was there also, whom he introduced as a “person absolutely in my confidence.”

  “Here we are, we three, the victims of injustice in the case, the emigrants. We ought to establish a party.”

  “Exiles of the world, unite! That’s how we’ll call it,” laughed Hatzis.

  “Yes, yes!” agreed the Chief idiotically. “In union lies might! Would you like a cigarette?”

  Nikitas did not smoke. Hatzis took one. The Chief lit it for him.

  “How are we getting along?”

  “We’re not getting along at all well,” answered Hatzis. “Gloom and doom are on us.”

  “Do you like Athens? Have you got used to it?”

  “It’s all right. Everywhere’s all right so long as you’ve got money. If you haven’t got any, everything looks black.”

  “That’s it,” said the Chief. “Nikitas and I had our little chat the other day. Now I want to hear your news.”

  “I don’t have any new news,” said Hatzis. “I’ve just got old news. I’m waiting for the trial, to have my say and find peace and quiet. But since I’m afraid I won’t live that long, whatever I have to say I’ve recorded on tape. This way, even if they do kill me they won’t gain anything by it. I’ve made my last will and testimony.”

  The Chief’s eyebrows knit. “So you’ve settled your accounts? And what’ll come of it?”

  “Something doesn’t always come of something, Chief, sir.”

  “I don’t want you to call me Chief any more. I’m not the Chief. I’m not anything. Here they’ve handed me a tiny post as warehouse attendant. Well now, listen to what this is all about. I’ve invited you both here to ask you—I mean, to tell you … For how much will you shut up? For how much will you change your statements? You two are the main witnesses for the Prosecution. If you take back what you told the Investigator, we’ll all live happily ever after.”

  “What you’re suggesting,” Hatzis said, “is a serious offense. It sends us all to jail much more surely than Yango and Vango.”

  “I know that,” answered the ex-Chief in a fake, melodramatic voice. “But for me personally the situation has reached a deadlock. I’ll go out of my mind! And I thought of making this desperate overture because I know you’re in need. I know they cheated you and that other people are reaping the fruits of your labors.”

  “That’s how it is,” said Hatzis, giving Nikitas a look.

  Nikitas’s huge Byzantine eyes had turned glassy.

  “Give me that tape you made, Tiger, and you can have my soul. You’ll become rich and I shall be reinstated. I wasn’t to blame. By the Virgin of Dexia, I’m innocent! And the trial, whenever it takes place, will prove it. I’m not afraid. But my honor is at stake, you understand. You can’t wipe out thirty-six years just like that.”

  “How much?” Hatzis was the first to ask.

  “Two million drachmas. You can share it between you. You each get one.”

  Nikitas jumped out of his chair. “This table needs varnishing,” he said. “Send it to the shop and I’ll fix it for you.”

  “The question needs some consideration,” said Hatzis. “We can’t tell you anything right at this point. Isn’t that so, Nikitas?”

  Nikitas shook his head. Then, as though in league, they both looked at the stranger standing motionless, expressionless in the corner. The Chief was sweating and puffing where he sat.

  “You
’ll get rich,” he said to them. “You’ll go live abroad. Who knows you, who’s seen you? You’ll be fine, just fine.”

  “Before we get abroad, we’ll get to prison, for perjury!” said Hatzis. “We told the Investigator one set of things. How can we tell him different things now?”

  “You’ll say you were forced to say what you said then. You were pressured. After all, it’s not an absolute lie,” he added. “Isn’t that so?”

  “In two days we’ll give you our final answer,” said Hatzis.

  “But take care these two days,” the Chief threatened. “You’ll be watched. This gentleman,” and he pointed to the mute individual, “will be following you. Take care you don’t doublecross me.” He opened a drawer and took out a revolver. “I’ve never used this in my life. I’ve never made anybody’s nose bleed. This will be the first and the last time. One bullet in the traitor and one in my own brow.”

  “No more suicides!” cried Hatzis. “You’ll be the third police officer in a row—not to commit suicide!”

  “Tiger, quit joking. Whoever squeals—he should know this from here on, because I like clean work—will end up like Oswald.”

  They went out through the back door, as stealthily as they had come in.

  “There’s something fishy in all this,” Hatzis was the first to speak.

  “What does he gain by setting a trap for us? He’d be the first to fall into it.”

  “If they catch us, who will they believe? You and me, or him? Between a varnisher or a blacksmith and a former Chief of Police, who will they choose? We ought to put one over on him first.”