I’m talking like this to you because I could not keep you at a distance, writing my newspaper pieces as though you had never existed. That, no! I want you as the grapevine its trellis, that it may grow higher; as beauty its mirror, that it may grow more beautiful still. I want you because I want you. I have no explanation to offer. I want you, all the more for knowing there is no question of ever possessing you, you have gone beyond the limits, an incandescence.
Reporting keeps me from going down to the sidewalk and shouting out for you. Newspaper writing is my camouflage against becoming you. Even so it’s good, it’s useful. However much you differed from me by temperament, a man of action, therefore more just.
Meanwhile, these things become more and more tangled, what with our inability to free ourselves from your heritage. Five days ago a grenade exploded in the stove that heats the Salonika Security Department, destroying documents concerning you. At first they blamed the cleaning woman. But any such nonsense was quickly ruled out, and as usual a pile of question marks remain unanswered. How did such important documents come to be in a cupboard next to the stove? What sort of documents were they? Are there copies? Such things keep bobbing to the surface and there are left, unexamined forever, because no one can wrest the truth from those who don’t want to tell it. And then this second “suicide” of Yango’s! At first one heard he’d taken thirty-two Luminal tablets. But they pumped his stomach immediately after and he was forced to admit that he had taken at most four or five tranquilizers his doctor had given him because he suffered from insomnia—a quantity, furthermore, in exact accordance with the prescription. He had taken them, said Yango, because his request for transfer from prison to the reformatory had been ignored. And you, how are you feeling?
I am blackening my lungs with cigarettes. I’m smoking a lot. And drinking. I need you. Your face floating up in the night glimmers like stars that, weary of flashing erotically earthward, have retired to a corner of the sky, to spin their golden webs in peace.
I feel better as I finish this report. From now on I can relax my preoccupation with you, return to my everyday reality, so long forgotten for your sake. Return to port, having tasted the ocean. Return to life, having tasted your death. Of my own death I shall not be able to write.
Chapter 5
And so it went until—yes, until the Commissioner or Mastodontosaur cracked. He couldn’t stand any more. After two years he was still in prison. Of the men in uniform, only he was still keeping company with the dregs: Yango, Vango, Baron, and Autocratosaur. Why had the other officers been released? Once you’re out, he thought to himself, you can stay out. There are ways. Your movements are free. But when you’re in, you stay in. You can’t do anything. Who cares about you?
He was the scapegoat. Why should he pay? From his very first days at the Police Training School, he had had a second-rate destiny. He was considered illiterate. They used him for hard labor. He’d married a cultivated girl, teacher at an English institute, to counteract the bane—to no avail. Nothing changed. They appointed him Commissioner in Ano Toumba, a district supposedly within the city but in actual fact resembling the most backward village. Instructed what to testify, he had obeyed readily. He felt a solidarity with the others. But they had cheated him, they had forgotten him in prison, and his resentment was mounting. One day he decided to compose a memorandum telling the truth. Until that moment, from the battlements of the police force, had come only silence and repression. The memorandum opened a crack in the wall. The waters rushed in, all but flooding the fortress. But within less than a month, July 1965, the Center government was deprived of power by an anti-constitutional act of the King, and under the new puppet Cabinet primordial silence was restored. Nevertheless, the memorandum had said almost everything:
On the morning of that day the Commissioner, acting officer on duty, was also, according to regulations, officer in charge of victuals. With the canteen supervisor he went to the Modiano Market to buy fish: according to regulations, every Wednesday the police department eats fish. It was ten minutes to ten. The fishmonger told them the fish would be arriving from the Salamis market after 10:15. Fresh fish, codfish to be precise: according to regulations, the canteen provides no deep-freeze goods. At that point, leaving the canteen supervisor, he had thought of going to pay his telephone bill, which that month was higher than usual because his wife had called Crete twice, to speak to her family there. The Telephone Company office was at Vasileos Irakleiou Street, alongside the Electra movie house. When he got there he saw a lot of people waiting and decided to leave so as not to miss the first pick of the fish. Just as he was going out the door, a voice behind him said, “Hello there, Mr. Commissioner.”
He turned and saw Yango.
“How do you happen to be over this way?” Yango asked him, approaching.
“How do you?” he asked in return.
“My stand’s here,” he said. “I have the pickup. There it is.” And he pointed to it.
“And I’ve come to pay my bill, but there’s a line at the tellers’ windows,” the Commissioner said.
“Give it to me and I’ll pay it for you,” Yango offered.
Of course the Commissioner refused, saying it wasn’t yet due and besides there were some questions about his wife’s long-distance phone calls, this month’s bill having struck him as exaggerated, there might be some confusion with another phone.
“Let me offer you a cup of coffee, Commissioner,” Yango said then. “There’s a coffee shop under the arcade.”
“No, thank you,” he answered. “Today I’m in charge of provisions and I’m waiting for the codfish to arrive from Salamis.”
“I know,” Yango said. “They say it comes at ten, but it’s never there before eleven.”
The Commissioner was impressed that he knew this.
“You’ve got plenty of time,” Yango persisted. “Come on, let me offer you a drink of something.”
“I already had my coffee this morning,” the Commissioner had replied.
He had slept the night before in the main Security Department building because, as stated, he was duty officer. His watch lasted from Tuesday noon till Wednesday noon, the day of the incidents. Well then, Tuesday afternoon, Assistant Police Captain Mavroulis had telephoned all the branches of the Security Department with the order that the following day at 7:00 P.M. every patriotic citizen at their disposal be sent to the Catacomb Club for the purpose of harassing the Friends of Peace “in the usual fashion,” with stones, shouts, shoving, and the like. Later that evening—Tuesday—Mavroulis stopped by in person to ask the Commissioner if he had carried out the order. He replied that he hadn’t received any order, he hadn’t been at his own station but here, as duty officer. Mavroulis told him to phone immediately then, and he did so in front of him. He phoned Ano Toumba and ordered the police there to notify five or six individuals, though not named, to come down to the counterdemonstration tomorrow. Then he also phoned his agent at Sykiés; he couldn’t give his name now; no charges had been filed against him and it wasn’t right to involve him. At any rate, he would give the message to his own group outside the Catacomb.
“Are we going to have a little party?” the agent had asked.
“Yes,” he had answered. “Little party” was code for “trouble.” By all this he wanted to say that the counterdemonstration was by no means spontaneous. It was pure make-believe that the crowd had gathered because of the slogans being broadcast over the loudspeakers.
To return to the following morning. He had refused Yango’s invitation because it was a central location and the devil, as they say, has a lot of legs. If one of his superiors happened to pass by and see him drinking coffee with a character like Yango, he might draw conclusions. He said goodbye and went back to the fishmonger; the codfish hadn’t arrived yet. He sent the canteen officer to mail a letter at the central post office, and as he was waiting for him to come back, another porter from Yango’s stand appeared, also to invite him for coffee. These ch
aracters (he should explain here and now) thought it a great honor for a Commissioner to sit at the table with them. He refused this one too, explaining that he had just turned down Yango.
“Give us a chance there, Mr. Commissioner,” the man persisted. “Do us the favor.”
Finally he gave in. “You come with me and I’ll treat you to a bougatsa,” the Commissioner said. “I’ll have some milk, because lately my stomach’s been giving me trouble.”
“Just a minute,” the porter called and went off. “If I find Yango, shall I bring him along?” he shouted, stopping a little way off.
Knowing how easily hurt these underworld people are, he answered: “All right, bring him!” And so, shortly, there they all were, sitting in the pastry shop.
In the course of eating the bougatsa, Yango showed him the tip of a club he’d passed through his belt. He said he was carrying it because that evening he had some roughing up to do. The Commissioner advised him to be careful and not act rashly as his friend Odysseus had done once when he broke the leg of a man from Pylaia and it had cost him thirty thousand drachs. He should be careful not to strike anyone, because if charges were brought against him he’d be convicted. The Commissioner also advised him not to listen to Autocratosaur, because Autocratosaur was mad. By all this he wished to emphasize that Yango had known about the meeting before they ran into each other. Who had told him about the Friends of Peace? Who had given him the club? If the investigation were to turn in that direction, it might discover the thread within the labyrinth.
Finally, the fish had arrived. Mastodotosaur paid and left. He didn’t see Yango again. Except that that afternoon he ran into him at the police station, going out with the other patriotic citizens from the slums who’d been rounded up there. How and why he did not know, but the order to collect outside the Catacomb had been canceled by Mavroulis and a new order issued for them to meet at the station. Mastodontosaur found them all there, gathered in the police station, that afternoon when (after finishing his shift) he passed by to see what was up. The “patriots” didn’t all fit in the room and they spilled out in the corridor, as at court when an important trial is on. As he arrived, he heard Mavroulis winding up his speech with the words: “That’s all we have to say. On your way out, go a few at a time to avoid attracting attention.” He had not heard Mavroulis say: “Your target is Z.!” This he had learned later, from other colleagues. And so the “patriots” poured into the corridors, all on fire; Mavroulis had apparently kindled their blood. In their excitement they carried him along with them, though they didn’t recognize him in civilian clothes. Among them was Yango. Mastodontosaur had left by another exit so as not to get in the way. As they poured out, he had gone over to the Catacomb. He saw a big poster announcing the change of site for the Friends of Peace meeting. There he met Leandros and Baron and someone else he didn’t recognize. They came up to him and asked him where to go, meaning where to station themselves. He told them they weren’t needed and to go back to their homes. This he said more for Baron’s sake, who till then he’d considered a Red. He was afraid that if there were any incidents Baron might be beaten up as a Communist. Only later did he learn that Leandros had gone to Baron’s house that same afternoon and taken him to the Ano Toumba station, where, as stated, Mastodontosaur had been away “on duty.” How dare they accuse him of “conducting special activities in the course of the twenty-four hours preceding the meeting” and of “summoning people to the counterdemonstration,” when during the entire twenty-four-hour period he’d been away from Ano Toumba? And whether or not he was lying wouldn’t be difficult to ascertain from the Security Department files. No, over at the Catacomb he had not seen Yango tearing down the poster, or kicking a woman either. If he had, though, he wouldn’t have stopped him, because that afternoon the officers had explicit orders not to make any arrests. This was part of the whole framework of the counterdemonstration.
He had gone to the counterdemonstration as ordered. Besides, everybody was there. Only the officer on duty (the one who had taken the next shift at the Security Department) was missing. Now why his name hadn’t been included when the Investigator had asked for the list of officers who had been at the site of the incidents, he did not know. Nor did he understand why they had concealed the presence of another police captain on the grounds of “a pressing need for secrecy.” What game his superiors were playing, he couldn’t say. His only gripe was that they had picked him to pay for it all!
Yes, the police at the rally had taken a passive role. The only active police officer was Mavroulis. He scurried this way and that, pointing out Communists, whom the bullies then beat up. He had also formed groups and assigned a Communist to each, for beating up afterwards. A few officers had said they left early, before the “accident.” That was a big lie; according to regulations, no officer was permitted to leave before the last citizen, and then only on the order of the Head of Security. On this, the heads of the various branches might be better qualified to speak.
As soon as Z.’s speech was over, a very upset Chief of Police had ordered them to disperse the counterdemonstrators. And in actual fact they did begin. The Commissioner had helped push some of them back. He had talked with no one except the General’s orderly, whom he had mistaken for the General because they resembled each other. The General was there, a short way off. No, he had not spoken to him. Nor had he seen Yango or Vango. Nor had he looked toward Spandoni Street to see if the pickup truck was there. Besides, why should he have looked, since he knew nothing about it? However, he had seen the many vicious acts of the bullies and the stones they threw, and had heard their curses. He also clearly heard Z. making appeals over the loudspeaker, saying his life was in danger.
At the moment of Z.’s mortal injury, the Commissioner had been in front of the auditorium. He heard the noise of a motor, saw a person standing upright in the van and another person fallen on the ground. He rushed in that direction. He asked what it was and heard from passers-by: “They’ve butchered our Z.! They’ve killed him!” He hadn’t taken any action, because much closer than himself to the Volkswagen into which Z. was being lifted stood the General and the Chief of Police. The presence of superiors, according to regulations, canceled his own right to act.
Mastodontosaur had left the meeting by automobile around 10:30 and stopped by the station to make a routine report on what Communists from his district he’d seen at the meeting. In the station he ran into Yango again. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I was speeding on my three-wheeler and I hit someone. They arrested me and carted me over here,” Yango told him. Also present at the station were two lawyers he knew. He entered the office marked ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER to make his report. As he was finishing, in a hurry because his wife would be waiting for him outside the English institute, Yango came in and asked, “Mr. Commissioner, since my pickup’s insured, will they hold me? And if they do hold me, will it be here or at the Traffic Department?” “I don’t know,” he replied dryly. Then he handed his report to the officer on duty and left quickly. The fact that he had stayed at the station all of ten minutes was corroborated by one of the two lawyers.
He went home, had something to eat, and went to bed. At 2:30 in the morning a policeman woke him. “Mr. Commissioner, you’re wanted urgently on the phone!”
“Who wants me at this hour?” he asked drowsily.
“It’s the Chief’s office,” the policeman said.
He got up and shuffled to his desk. “Commissioner of Ano Toumba speaking,” he said into the phone. “What is it?”
“Come, come, Vassili! It’s Mavroulis! You’re late. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time!”
“What’s up?”
“Listen. The Chief of Police wants Vango Preka from Ano Toumba by morning. Take some policeman who knows Ano Toumba, go find him, and bring him to the station. I’ve already tried but he wasn’t home.”
“Shall I arrest him?” Mastodontosaur had asked.
“No! The order is to fi
nd him and bring him in.”
And in fact, along with the policeman who had awakened him, he did find Vango Preka and brought him in to the station as requested. The story about the “voluntary surrender” of Vango after reading the morning papers was untrue. Mavroulis had given him the order; not, as stated at the investigation, someone else. They all knew this; they were all lying; the General, the Chief of Police. Why they wanted to protect Mavroulis, he didn’t know. Or who had given Mavroulis the order.
Next they sent him to the police station to tell Yango and Vango what to say. That they had been drinking at a tavern and blind drunk had run over Z., and so on. To his considerable surprise, he discovered that they both knew the story better than he did. Why had he been sent? To put them through a dress rehearsal before they “confessed” to the Prosecutor? A further surprise: he now learned that they had already talked with the Prosecutor, before daybreak! So why send him at all? He hadn’t been able to understand then. Now he knew. To throw the blame on him! They had done everything, his colleagues had, to put the whole thing on his shoulders.
Three facts he learned much later supported this view. That Wednesday night, a superior officer had gone to the police station to ask the officer on duty whether he, the Commissioner, had been there. The officer on duty replied that Mavroulis had. “I’m not interested in Mavroulis. I want to know about Mastodontosaur!” This was one point. Another was that after he made his report and left the station, Mavroulis arrived, in a sweat. He was trying to hide Yango. When this proved impossible because they were seen by the officer on duty, who was apparently not in on it, Mavroulis had put Yango in the detention room and instructed him what to say, about being drunk and the rest. Last of all, Mastodontosaur had learned from the Security Department barber that on that Wednesday afternoon, before addressing his toughs at the station, Mavroulis had stopped in the officers’ lounge and told them, with a nod toward his assembled “patriots”: “Today you’ll see what happens!” A ranking officer, knowing the abnormal character of Mavroulis, warned him: “Watch out because someone might get killed and then we’ll all be in trouble!” Mavroulis had not taken this well; words were exchanged. They would have been at each other’s throats if the others hadn’t pulled them apart.
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