One unshakable conclusion emerged: Mavroulis should be in prison and he, the Commissioner, should be out.
These few things he had wanted to say about his colleagues. Now if he might just say two words about the others who were in prison with him.
Yango he’d met only once, again thanks to Mavroulis. One evening Mavroulis had notified him that the Communists were descending on Toumba with leaflets, and to take care to set some ambushes outside their houses. Indeed, Mavroulis had reproved him for not knowing the situation. Mastodontosaur had gone to his agent’s house and there met Yango, who had been alerted that night—except that not a single leaflet materialized. He had seen him next at the time of de Gaulle’s visit. After that, at the pastry shop. And for the last time on that Thursday morning when Mavroulis had told him to escort an individual from Kalamaria who wanted to help Yango financially, this person, like Yango, having been embittered by the Communists. Who it was, Mavroulis could tell them.
Vango he knew as a type who sat down uninvited at a table of friends.
Baron he had thought was an active Communist. Once, in 1962, he had purchased two cardinals from him; “his pastime was catching songbirds.”
And Autocratosaur he’d kicked out of his office, rough and tough though he could be. He had come to gloat that his organization had protected General de Gaulle. The Commissioner told him if he ever set foot there again he’d break his legs for him. “I’ll fix you!” Autocratosaur had howled. The two had always got along so badly that Autocratosaur, though he was in the Commissioner’s precinct, went to another police station to see to the identity cards of the members of his organization. And fortunately so, because otherwise they’d have accused him of being behind Autocratosaur now, just as they had accused him of having organized the “colored-pin gang”—when in fact these pins had been given to the protectors of de Gaulle for the sole purpose of their recognizing one another.
“With good reason, the question arises: why have I delayed so long in bringing to light and justice this personal evidence? Alas, I should have followed Plomaris’s path, who disassociated himself from the other accused officers, hired his own lawyer, even though they all said that if ‘we went as a body, we’d be given general amnesty.’ Plomaris said he was no guerrilla gangman, for the state to grant him amnesty, and went his own way. Had I done likewise, I would not be paying for it in this way now. For there is clear proof that the others have tried to throw the blame on me to vindicate themselves. Nevertheless, the first principle of justice is the just distribution of responsibilities.
“Most respectfully yours,
“MASTODONTOSAUR”
Chapter 6
Slowly but surely I am discovering my own face, his wife reflected, my own true face, hidden so long (ever since the day you died) beneath variously named masks. You, who are you? You have:
Two eyes
A nose
A mouth
A neck
From the neck I climb to your jaw and kiss it, all of it fitting into my mouth. From there to your lips, two strands of sand in the infinite. And from your teeth (now toothpicks for the rats, but adored once as the beacons on my coast, an avenue of lanterns, or, seen from an angle, a single whiteness flashing in the dark of your mouth as it swallowed glass upon glass of water) I reach the adored cheekbone, pure in corruption beneath the myrrh of a thousand kisses from the cemetery. I am not morbid. In my heart I celebrate you, as at a festival. I do not want to reach your eyes. I deny them once and for all. I deny them like the sleep that undoes me.
Now I know who you are. You are he who has gone and whom I shall love forever.
My feelings may not interest anyone. But they interest me. And without me, you do not exist. It’s as simple as that. The irony is that without you I do not exist either. A freak of destiny killed you. I live by the same coincidence. Nothing separates us. I live in order to think about your death.
When I see young girls walking where you walked, I come to understand your immortality. These girls, in the children they will bear tomorrow, will have been delivered as well of some trace of the emotion you aroused in them.
Inorganic matter wins out over organic. Texts, investigations, court proceedings, my God, how dead it all is! As if I were employed in the Public Registrar’s Office. And you, how alive still! I have nothing else to tell you, I cannot think about you soberly. For me you are not part of reality. You are somewhere else, where cloud rests upon cloud in a net of starlight.
I feel sacrilegious, a trespasser, a violator. I should be behind bars. Perhaps an earthquake would cure me: to see buildings and people I believed in fallen, to see the world flat on its face, and so find myself cured—enough at least to know that dirge and lamentation belong to another order of human being. That action, everyday action, alone exists. That I who betray you every day am unworthy of you.
And yet, no! I cry it with all my heart. There is a corner for dreams, a corner where deterioration can be arrested. And you and I …
With you, I come to my end. If I cease to suffer for you, I shall cease to exist. If I saw you before me suddenly, I would go to pieces, having learned by now to love you only from photographs.
I say, I shall leave you. And yet, deep down, I do not believe it. I shall be occupied for some time more with certain details of your perfecting, the way photographers retouch the likenesses of the dead. But tell me—why don’t you know me? Why do you never come some evening to the room with the broken clock? I loved you in my first springtime, when I did not know what fasting meant, or abstinence, or separation. You were my first love. There is no second.
Come to this cave with your great arms outspread, come. Take the whore, the widow, the soul, Papilio crespontes, Vanessa atalanta: me.
Chapter 7
His former colleagues, the police officers, betrayed Mastodontosaur. The Investigator summoned them one by one. The symptoms never varied: collective amnesia.
“I,” stated Mavroulis, “it is not true that … in particular, it is not true … what the Commissioner of Ano Toumba maintains is absolutely fantastic … In large measure it is not true … nor is it true that … Besides, it was not possible for me to give the Commissioner an order; because I am six grades below him in the hierarchy.”
“I,” stated the second, “was not present at the aforementioned meeting of the Friends of Peace even for a moment. At that time our department was occupied with the case of the so-called Ogre. Thus, at approximately 6 P.M. on the aforementioned date 5.22.63, we had gone out with Captain Yevyenopoulos in search of individuals bearing the traits of the Ogre. We crossed Ayia Sofia Street, Ermou, Venizelou, Dragoumi, Nea Megalou Alexandrou Streets, as far as the Floka Pastry Shop opposite the Lambropoulos stores. Returning, we met Plomaris near the old Macedonian Research Building. ‘Is there anything here for us? What is happening?’ Yevyenopoulos asked. ‘Nothing,’ Plomaris answered. Whereupon we proceeded by bus to Seïch-Sou, where, as everyone knows, the famous Ogre committed his crimes. There we met Paralis; I asked him if he had any news of the Ogre. After a few minutes we proceeded to the Pendeli Taverna up over the Kavtanzogliou Stadium, and from there, after an hour, we went down to the center of the city and parted near Yevyenopoulos’s house. Specifically, when Mastodontosaur named me as a witness, I said: ‘How can I be a witness if we were not at the site of the incidents, except much earlier; that is, before the incidents took place!’ ”
“I,” stated the third, “during the time of the incidents and preceding them was in my own district around the Administration Building for the purpose of surveying the movements of the Communists and guarding the Ministry of Northern Greece.”
“I,” stated Plomaris, “between four-thirty and five that afternoon went to my office for afternoon rollcall. The officer on duty informed me that, because of the Friends of Peace rally, I and my colleague Koukos had been ordered to be on duty, each with five policemen. Our job was not to survey the Reds but to watch out for malefactors in the vicinit
y of the rally, to prevent burglaries and other such breaches of the law. I was furious about this additional duty (I kept this to myself, needless to say); it seemed absurd to have a force of two officers and ten men for absolutely nothing at all. It was then that Mavroulis came by. As I said, I was in a state of irritation. ‘You’re dragging us to the rallies again!’ I said to him. ‘That’s a job for the Security Department!’ Mavroulis is a quick-tempered loudmouth. ‘So it’s only us who have to support the anti-Communist struggle?’ he shouted. ‘Why—you think the rest of us are Communists?’ I retorted. That’s what we said, and not as Mastodontosaur testified. A proof that we didn’t go at each other is the fact that afterwards, if I recall correctly, I offered him a coffee.”
“I,” stated the fifth, “know nothing … I do not know who … it is not true that … I do not know whether … Mastodontosaur was not hard on the Communists … He was indulgent, gave licenses to Communist vendors and made no objection to granting a passport to a Communist, Odyporidis Platonas, so that Platonas could go to Russia for treatment of a supposed heart ailment.”
“I,” stated the sixth, “since it was Wednesday and the market was closed, was out to prevent robberies and to search for the Ogre. I went to the police station after many days’ absence on a personal matter—to interview the buyer of an apartment whose sale I was interested in. To be sure, we must have heard something about the incidents from the police captain. But it is absolutely false that I said ‘I’m interested in Mastodontosaur, not in Mavroulis.’ ”
“As for me,” stated the seventh, “that afternoon Captain Poulopoulos of the military reserve corps picked me up at my office and we went to visit the priest from the Phaneromeni Church, Kosta, who’d celebrated his name-day the previous day. We also visited an Eleni, who was also celebrating her name-day. Since my wife’s name is Eleni too, I hadn’t the chance to go out of my house for Konstantinos and Eleni. On my way past Ermou Street, I did in fact see Mastodontosaur, who greeted me ‘Good evening, Mr. Polychronis.’ ‘Good evening,’ I replied and proceeded to take my bus. This is the truth and not that I said ‘Let them get beat up!’ It was still seven-thirty and no rally had even begun. In the end, we didn’t find the priest at home (he was out at a baptism) or Mrs. Eleni either. She’d gone to the movies. But we stayed at her place till eleven-thirty, waiting for her to come back.”
“I,” stated the eighth, “learned that Yevyenopoulos was at the rally at least at the start, and had bought a belt with brass buckles from a stall in the vicinity.”
“I,” stated the ninth, “it is not true … nor is it true that I saw Mavroulis at the rally, spinning about like a top and pointing out Communists.”
“I,” stated the tenth, “when my attention was called to the change of site for the rally, was unable to go on. It was forbidden, and I was in civilian clothes. At this point I went to the Serraikon Restaurant, where I dined on rabbit and onion stew which the proprietor prepared especially for me.”
Chapter 8
“The Investigator was awarded a fellowship in Paris. The Public Prosecutor died of a heart attack, so they said. Hatzis and Nikitas were placed in custody, charged with libel by the former Chief of Police. The police officials were transferred to peaceful provincial towns with lots of greenery and few worries. We are in the autumn of 1966. For three and a half years we have missed you terribly. For three and a half years King Constantine has been learning the mysteries of Japanese wrestling. He began with jujitsu, continued with judo, and for the past year now has been indoctrinated in the amazing secrets of karate. Here for a year now, ever since His Majesty’s ‘anti-constitutional act,’ I’ve been feeling deposed. I’m in the same room, facing the same house across from me. On the third-floor balcony, the old woman died who used to look through her binoculars. Now they’re painting the house again. All day long, workmen sing. The hot wing of tiles is my only company. The trial about to begin will bring to light perhaps more, perhaps less. The result matters less than the procedure. It remains to be found who struck you with the iron bar, who ordered whoever ordered the one who ordered the one who ordered the next man, who gave the order that you be struck. Across the way, they’re painting the balconies red. My teeth have discolored. I will no longer write you.”
Z, 50th Anniversary Edition Page 36