Che Committed Suicide kj-3

by Petros Markaris

  How do you fill five hours when you’re on tenterhooks? I kept the reporters longer than usual. They stared at me flabbergasted because it was the first time I had ever engaged in chit-chat with them. Sotiropoulos, who suspected something, decided to stay longer, for the benefit of all. He opened up his favourite discussion concerning the suicides and I answered him with a lot of twaddle simply to pass the time. In the end, I felt some remorse and told him to wait another twenty-four hours as I would have more news the following day. He pressed me for details, but I was unshakeable as a rock, and so we went on for a while tossing the ball back and forth. I went down to the cafeteria three times and got three not-so-Greek coffees, a croissant in cellophane and a packet of rusks to settle my stomach.

  I reckoned that it would take me three quarters of an hour to reach Pefki. The most reasonable route was to go up Kifissias Avenue and then, at the Ivi building, to turn left into Aghiou Konstantinou Street and that would bring me to Chrysostomou Smyrnis Street. It was Monday afternoon in summer, the shops and offices were closed and I didn’t meet any traffic. I arrived a quarter of an hour early and drove round the block twice in order to arrive exactly on time. The bell at 7 Tobazi Street bore the name Coralia Yannelis. I wondered whether Skouloudis was dead or whether he had simply been struck off by the living. Her flat was a penthouse on the fifth floor.

  She opened the door herself. She had the same smile and was wearing one of the same outfits that I’d seen on her at the offices of Balkan Prospect.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, leading me to a spacious sitting room that spilled over onto a balcony with the awnings lowered and with a variety of plants, mostly saplings, in large pots. In the wall on the right, there was a closed sliding door. The faint sound of a TV could be heard from the other side.

  ‘Please have a seat,’ she said, pointing to an armchair that was facing the park. ‘Can I get you something?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  She sat down on the sofa opposite me. She seemed to be trying to give the impression that she had invited me for coffee and a chat, but she found it difficult to conceal her anxiety completely.

  ‘So where shall we begin? With Minas Logaras?’

  She laughed. ‘There is no Minas Logaras, as I’m sure you’ve realised.’ She suddenly became serious. ‘No, we ought to begin with my father’s arrest.’

  I let her start in her own good time. Now that I was sitting opposite her, I felt more relaxed. I was in no hurry and I waited.

  ‘They arrested my father in the spring of ’72. They woke us up one night at around two a.m., grabbed hold of my father and began hitting him and dragging him towards the door.’ She halted and said without any emotion, as if simply stating a fact: ‘That was the last time I saw my father, Inspector.’ She let out a sigh and remained silent for a moment. ‘Throughout his life, my father was involved in movements and revolutions. So was my mother. But they wanted to keep their children away from all that. They never talked about it to us, they never explained it to us, they never said anything. They did it to protect us, but also out of fear we would let something slip. And so we grew up in the dark, in an atmosphere of indefinable fear. I’m telling you all this so you’ll understand our panic when they came to arrest my father.’ She looked at me and said with a slightly ironic smile: ‘Anyhow, you’re a police officer and I’m sure you know what I mean.’

  I knew. Although in my line of work I rarely saw the panic of the innocent. It was usually the panic of the guilty that I saw.

  ‘I was in the final year of high school then. Kimon was in junior school. Our mother had died two years previously. We didn’t have anyone, we didn’t know anyone. The following morning, I began asking discreetly where those who had been arrested by the soldiers were taken. And so I learned about the Military Police Headquarters. I got together a bag with clothes because my father hadn’t had time to take anything with him and I went to the Headquarters. They told me I should see Major Skouloudis. He received me very cordially. He said he would personally see to it that my father got the clothes, that they were holding him for interrogation and that he didn’t know when he would be released, but that I shouldn’t worry because he was fine in his health, and that if I wanted to know anything or leave anything for my father, I should always go to him.’ She stopped again and looked at me. ‘Perhaps you’ve already guessed what I’m about to tell you. When you’ve lived all your life in fear and in the dark, when you’re on your own and with a younger brother and you don’t know where to turn and suddenly you meet someone who is friendly to you and seems ready to help you, then that person sooner or later wins you over. But it wasn’t only that. I never got any answers from my parents. Skouloudis, however, was always ready with an answer. He answered all my questions. Agreed, a lot of what he told me was make-believe, but frightened, little children are reassured by make-believe, it’s as simple as that.’ She again let out a sigh. ‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ she asked.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Then I’ll fix myself a drink.’

  She got up and went out of the sitting room. I’ve done countless interrogations in my life and I knew how confessions are extracted: like getting blood out of a stone, with hesitations, long-windedness and pauses. I waited patiently, with the sound of the TV still coming from the adjoining room. Yannelis returned holding a glass of whisky with ice.

  ‘That’s why I fell in love and married my husband, Inspector. For the sense of security that he gave me,’ she said, sitting down again. ‘I was still a minor. I don’t know how Yangos managed to get hold of a marriage licence. We got married quietly. I had Kimon with me, Yangos had invited two friends of his. After the marriage, I asked to see my father. Yangos said that it would be bad for me psychologically, but it would also be bad for him because no one looked kindly on his marriage to the daughter of a bomber. So I sat down and wrote my father a long letter. I didn’t receive any reply. I wrote to him again. Again there was no reply.’

  She paused and took a sip of her whisky. It seemed she wanted to get her breath before moving on to the more difficult stuff. ‘The reply came after the fall of the Junta.’

  She got up and went over to a cabinet that was on the wall facing the sliding door. She took a folded piece of paper from one of the drawers and handed it to me. I wouldn’t have called it a letter. It was more of a note, written on a white sheet of exam paper.

  You betrayed me. You married my torturer. From now on, all I want is to hide the shame. Don’t ever come near me. You’re no longer any child of mine. Kimon will stay with me. You’ll never see him again either.

  The signature was a capital ‘T’. I returned the note to Yannelis.

  ‘I made countless attempts to see him, tried numerous times to phone him, but to no avail. Both my father and my brother cut all ties with me.’ She was upset and took a deep breath in order to calm herself. ‘When I read the news of his suicide, I managed to find out where he lived and rushed to his home. My brother opened the door. He told me to go away and not to attend the funeral because he would have me thrown out of the church.’

  ‘Didn’t you show your husband the note that your father sent you?’

  ‘By the time I received the note, it was my husband’s turn to be in prison. They arrested him a week before the first Karamanlis government was sworn in.’

  ‘And afterwards? Didn’t you ask him to explain himself?’

  She let out a bitter laugh. ‘Are you surprised?’

  ‘A little surprised, yes.’

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, getting to her feet.

  She opened the sliding door and let me go through. I found myself in a smaller room with a sofa, a coffee table and four high-backed chairs against the walls. On the wall facing the sofa there was a TV with an enormous screen. Sitting midway, between the sofa and the TV, was a man in a wheelchair. It was clear at first sight that he had suffered a severe stroke. His left arm was paralysed, his head was resting on his left
shoulder and was shaking constantly, while his mouth was twisted to the point of disfiguration. He could only move his right hand, and then with some difficulty.

  ‘This is my husband, Inspector,’ I heard her say from behind me. ‘Cashiered Infantry Major Yangos Skouloudis. Ol’ Yangos as they called him in the Military Police. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ detention, suffered three strokes in his despair and was released with irreparable damage to his health. He can’t walk or speak and our only communication is by means of these notes.’

  She pointed to a basket with notes that was attached to the arm of his wheelchair. A little table, rather like a modern school desk, was fitted to the arm and on it were a notepad and a biro. Evidently, Skouloudis wrote the notes and pushed them into the basket.

  ‘Read them if you want,’ Yannelis told me.

  The effort Skouloudis had to make to write them was visible to the naked eye. The letters were rounded, compressed and written separately, one by one.

  This slant-eyed girl only makes me tea. I ask her for coffee and she pays no attention. Oh dear, Oh dear.

  The second one was a cry of anguish:

  MASHED POTATO! MASHED POTATO! I’M FED UP WITH IT!

  ‘He can’t chew,’ Yannelis, who was reading over my shoulder, explained. ‘All he can eat are soups, purees and at most a little mashed fish.’

  The third was an order in a military tone:

  Tell the old bird to take me out for my walk later in the day. She brings me back early and then I suffocate all day.

  The last one was a comment:

  I saw American Yakuza 2. Everywhere it’s the strong who win. We were the only ones who lost. A disgrace!

  Yannelis bent over him. ‘I have to discuss a few things with the gentleman and then I’ll come back. All right, Yangos dear?’ she said sweetly.

  With the constant shaking of his head, it was difficult to know whether he was giving his assent or ignoring her completely. Yannelis motioned to me to go out with her and she closed the sliding door behind us.

  ‘Three days after his arrest, a friend came by the house and gave me an address and a key. The address was in Liossia. I found a two-roomed flat full of files. Yangos kept copies of all the interrogations he carried out with documents, reports and photographs. Among them, I found my father’s file and the files of Jason Favieros, Loukas Stefanakos and Apostolos Vakirtzis. That’s how I found out about the “Che” organisation. After they’d burned the archives of the Military Police in Keratsini, these were the only records to remain,’ she added with a smile.

  ‘And where are they now?’

  ‘Let me finish. While he was in prison, I began to realise the size of the network that Yangos had set up over the years. From time to time, various people came knocking at my door, bringing me information in the hope that they would help “the Major”. One day, during his visiting hours, I told him in sign-coded language that various people kept coming and bringing me gifts for him. He understood immediately and said sharply: “Don’t even touch them.” Till one day, someone came with information that interested me personally. He told me that Yannelis and his group had begun their activities again. They had dissolved the Che Independent Resistance Organisation and, in its place, had founded the October 8th Revolutionary Organisation …’

  The name reminded me of something. ‘Weren’t they the ones who planted the bombs in local bank branches?’

  ‘Yes. And two in the Stock Exchange that didn’t go off. Che Guevara was killed on October 8th, 1967. The man who brought me the information was extremely methodical. He had discovered their safe house and had photos of them coming and going. He had even succeeded in getting into the safe house using a skeleton key and had taken photos inside. Yangos had told me not to touch them, but I kept them. Apart from my father, all the others made their living in respectable professions. Jason had started a small construction business, Loukas had entered politics and Vakirtzis had started making a name for himself in journalism. As time went by, their careers took off and, dazzled as they were by success, they forgot about the revolution, till they wrote it off completely. By the mid-eighties, my father had remained alone, betrayed by his daughter and by his former comrades.

  She went into the kitchen and came back with another glass of whisky. She took a sip, closed her eyes and tried to put her thoughts in some order.

  ‘The idea of revenge came to me after my father’s suicide. I convinced myself that it was they who had pushed him to commit suicide and not me. My reasoning was very simple. If he was going to commit suicide because of me, he would have done it much earlier. He committed suicide in the early nineties because he saw how his former comrades had become big names in the system they once wanted to overthrow. The collapse of the communist regimes was just the coup de grâce.’ She held the glass between her palms and gazed at it. ‘I know, you’ll tell me that I see it like that because it suits me. Perhaps you’re right. I’m tormented by that doubt too. Whatever the case, I wanted to vent the anger that had accumulated within me. They had cashiered Yangos, the little money I had saved went to the lawyers and I had to find work. At the same time, I was studying business management and computer programming in the evenings. When I made my decision to exact revenge, I submitted an application to Favieros’s company using my name Coralia Athanassios Yannelis. My father had hidden his shame as he had told me and had never told anyone that I had married the torturer, Yangos Skouloudis. Yangos, on the other hand, had forbidden me to appear at the trial. So I was certain that Favieros didn’t know the truth. And, sure enough, after a few days, he called me to his office, satisfied himself that I was Thanos Yannelis’s daughter and hired me. I was good at my job and quickly climbed the ladder. In my free time, I wrote the biographies of the three men. I had Yangos’s huge archive together with all the information that the various do-gooders had brought me. When I had finished the three biographies, I put the plan into action.’

  ‘You’d already sent the first biography to the publisher?’

  ‘Yes. I chose a small, unknown publisher so as not to run any risks. Then, via email, I began sending Favieros copies of the documents I had in my possession. Each day, I sent something more, without any comment. The information automatically deleted itself the following day and was replaced by more information.’

  I recalled one of Stefanakos’s notes about someone who had information and whose demands were outrageous. It wasn’t Vakirtzis, as I had thought, but Logaras, in other words, Coralia Yannelis.

  ‘And how did they react?’

  For the first time, she allowed herself a spontaneous burst of laughter. ‘Favieros sent me a curt message: “How much?” Stefanakos was more diplomatic. He wrote: “I don’t know what you want, but I’m willing to discuss it”. And Vakirtzis replied bluntly: “Name your price, you bastard”. I replied to all of them in the same way. “What I want is for you to commit suicide in public and I’ll take care of your reputations with a eulogistic biography. If you don’t do it, I’ll bring everything out into the open and I’ll destroy you and your family”. Then I sent them the biographies in order to convince them I meant business.’

  ‘Why in public, Mrs Yannelis? That question has been bothering me since the first day.’

  ‘I know. You’ve mentioned it time and time again,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Because my father hanged himself and remained hanging there for three days till he started to smell. They had to die before everyone’s eyes. Of course, on the other hand, I was offering them the possibility of a heroic exit which would be accompanied by their biography. You realise what would have happened if I had revealed that these businessmen, politicians and journalists had been planting bombs in banks and the Stock Exchange in the early eighties? It would have meant not only their end, but also of their wives and brothers, who were the shop windows for their businesses. All three of them had grown used to the high life, they were big names and couldn’t stand the thought of ruin, exposure and prison. They preferred the so
lution that I offered them.’

  ‘And how did you know that Vakirtzis would commit suicide on the same day that you sent me his biography?’

  ‘I knew that every year he threw a big party on his name day. I made it a condition. I told him that either he committed suicide then or the deal was off.’

  So now all the pieces were there before me: the common secret from the past, Logaras and his biographies, the hypotheses I had made that had been correct up to a point, but that hadn’t got me anywhere. There was just one question I had left.

  ‘Why me, Mrs Yannelis? Why did you choose me?’

  She stared at me and laughed. ‘Because you were the only one who wanted to find out the truth. That made an impression on me from your first visit. No one else was interested. They wanted to take care of the funeral, put the unpleasant event behind them and move on. You were the only one. And something else, that I’ve already mentioned to you twice today.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think you understand. I don’t know why but I honestly do.’

  ‘Perhaps I do understand, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is an indictable offence. Incitement to commit suicide is a crime and is punishable. You’ll have to come with me to Headquarters to make an official statement.’

  She laughed. ‘Come now, Inspector. How are you going to make the charge stick? You have no tangible evidence other than the printout of a biography written by someone called Minas Logaras.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I’ll find something.’

  ‘You won’t find anything, I can promise you. I destroyed the part of the archives that didn’t interest me years ago. The other day when you received the Che T-shirt, I burned the rest. There’s not even one document left, Inspector. Apart from my father’s note. Other people have photos of their fathers to remember them by; all I have is a piece of paper in which mine renounces me.’ Her bitterness was only momentary, she immediately recovered. ‘So how will you make the charge stick, Inspector? And where will you find a public prosecutor to indict me?’