The Black Life

by Paul Johnston

  I didn’t want to visit the family memorial after it had been destroyed, but Father insisted. He knew Mother and the older women would be hard to control. My widowed grandmothers lived together in advanced age and infirmity, though they visited us every week. That cold day at the end of 1942, we gathered round the fragments of our ancestors’ resting places. The gravestones had been knocked over and the slabs covering the bodies smashed.

  ‘His hair!’ my maternal grandmother gasped. ‘His face!’ She staggered against Isaak and then fainted.

  I looked down at the blackened remains of my grandfather. He had played with me when I was small, his thin fingers moving model soldiers and horses around the drawing room carpet. There were remnants of skin on his skull, though the eyes had dissolved and the white hair I remembered as shiny was stained and filthy. The shroud was ragged, the head poking through and a frightening rictus beneath the collapsed nose. The old man’s teeth were still attached though his flesh on his gums had gone.

  The women were wailing, tears drenching their cheeks, as they offered up prayers. We were never a very religiously observant family and my involvement with the party meant I hadn’t recently participated in synagogue visits and the like. Raising my head from the horror and taking in the uncaring beauty of the grey-blue gulf, with snow-wreathed Mount Olympus in the distance, I knew for certain there was no god.

  But there were plenty of human devils and their work had only begun.

  SEVEN

  Mavros met Rachel Samuel at the airport outside Athens before six in the morning. They checked in without delay.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to make it, Mr Mavros,’ his client’s daughter said. She was wearing a dark blue trouser suit and white blouse, with no jewellery. There was a hint of eye shadow, but no other make-up.

  ‘Sorry, early mornings aren’t my thing. Call me Alex.’

  She turned her piercing brown eyes on him. ‘Very well. And you may call me Rachel, but only when we’re alone. I don’t want people getting the wrong idea.’

  Mavros was tempted to ask what the right idea was, but let it go. Half an hour later they were in a Boeing as it taxied towards the runway.

  ‘Am I right in thinking you aren’t a very good flier?’ Rachel asked.

  ‘That obvious?’

  ‘You’re as twitchy as a teenager on his first date.’

  ‘While you’ve seen it all before.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve amassed a lot of air miles, yes.’

  ‘Within France?’

  Rachel smiled briefly. ‘I didn’t want to point it out when you met my father, but your research was incomplete. We’ve opened stores in New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Sydney and several European cities in the last five years.’

  Mavros felt like a jackass.

  ‘But don’t worry,’ Rachel said, accepting a sweet from the stewardess. ‘We’re in partnership with Middle Eastern interests who, for obvious reasons, don’t want the name Samuel to be used. There’s no link on our site to Luxury Jewels of the Orient.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’ Mavros gripped the arms of his seat as the pilot gunned the engines and asked innocently, ‘What are you? A travelling saleswoman?’

  Her expression – supercilious with the slightest trace of flirtation – didn’t change. ‘If you like.’ She glanced at him as the plane rose into the air. ‘I represent the family company too. Apparently I’m an acceptable face.’

  Mavros returned her look. It was true, she didn’t look particularly Jewish – she could easily have been Lebanese or Jordanian, not that he had much knowledge of those countries or the region in general. She was certainly a lot more than acceptable, but he disliked her haughtiness. He once had a brief relationship with a Frenchwoman. It foundered on her objection to what she called ‘Mediterranean brio’. Like his employer’s daughter, she was from Paris.

  ‘So, Alex, how do you intend to start?’ Rachel raised a finger at the stewardess and asked for tea with lemon. There were only three other people in the business-class section, but she wasn’t going to wait her turn.

  He shrugged. ‘Simple things. Interview the woman who says she saw your great-uncle. Talk to a research contact I have. Ask around in the Jewish community.’ He could have done with a brandy, but he wasn’t going to ask for one in front of his stern companion.

  ‘I’ll be able to help with the first and third of those.’

  Mavros was already unhappy about being lumbered with an overseer. If the money hadn’t been so good he’d have declined the case. The one time he’d taken a client with him on an investigation had ended in mayhem.

  ‘Couldn’t you look into opening a store in Thessaloniki?’ he asked.

  Rachel Samuel’s laugh rang out like a knife striking a glass. ‘That isn’t why I’m here and you know it. Besides, how will you converse with an elderly Jewish lady? I’m prepared to bet she doesn’t speak English.’

  ‘And you speak Greek? Or Ladino?’ Mavros was pleased with himself for finding out the name of the language spoken by Sephardic Jews.

  ‘The correct term is Judezmo. It’s a complicated issue, but Ladino specifically refers to Hebrew or Aramaic text translated into Judaeo-Spanish, and is not a spoken language.’

  ‘Oh. But you speak it?’

  Rachel’s gaze wavered. ‘No. In fact, I don’t even speak Hebrew. My father’s the same. He left Thessaloniki as an infant and he could never face learning the old family language. That may change if our search is successful.’

  The word ‘our’ grated on Mavros. He made the mistake of looking out the window and his stomach somersaulted. The pyramid peak of Mount Dhirfris on the island of Evia was approaching. He was keeping Shimon Raphael, the Communist customs broker, as a personal source. In his experience, clients who wanted to be involved frequently had ulterior motives – though he couldn’t think of an obvious one that would account for Rachel Samuel absenting herself from her high-powered job. He had done Internet searches for her great-uncle and found nothing. That wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. He’d once located a former policeman on the World Wide Web: his client had nearly beaten the man to death because he’d killed his son during the dictatorship.

  He thought about the man he was looking for. Aron Samuel would be eighty years old now. Even if he had survived the death camps, why would he return to his birthplace? A sixty-year case of amnesia? A man who had been so damaged that he’d been in mental institutions for most of his life? Neither was very likely. Perhaps the best bet was that he’d hidden himself away, perhaps on another continent, and had only returned when he sensed death was near.

  He put that to Rachel.

  ‘We have considered those possibilities,’ she said. ‘Sephardic communities around the globe keep in close touch, especially since the advent of new technology. My father submitted the names of his entire family to on-line groups everywhere, but no one has responded. None of my relatives was issued a death certificate, as you can imagine. The SS kept lists of numbers, but they are incomplete.’

  ‘You are sure that they were all transported to Poland?’

  She nodded. ‘The Jewish community in Thessaloniki has those lists, or at least the ones with my relatives’ names on them. Once people arrived at the Auschwitz complex, there was only one way to leave.’

  Mavros had read Primo Levi. ‘There were some survivors.’

  ‘A few.’ She turned away.

  Suddenly Mavros felt the weight of responsibility the case had placed on him. He’d handled investigations that had ended in multiple deaths, but this was different – this concerned the enforced end of a 50,000-strong community.

  Rachel Samuel’s eyes were on him again. ‘You look even worse.’

  ‘I’m OK, thanks.’

  Then the plane dropped into an air pocket and he clutched her arm, gasping loudly.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, removing his hand.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Rachel said, smoothing her sleeve.

  It was onl
y as the plane turned away from Mount Olympus towards Macedonia International Airport that Mavros recalled how her forearm had felt: like tightly twisted steel cable. He watched the coastline come closer, spotting the beach at Ayia Triadha before the plane touched down with scarcely a bump. A few passengers behind them applauded.

  ‘How quaint,’ Rachel said, closing her laptop bag.

  ‘You should have seen it when I was young. Everyone crossing themselves and cheering as if the pilot was a superhero.’

  They were off and through the terminal quickly, both having only hand luggage. Niki had told Mavros to buy more clothes and put them on expenses if he had to. He wondered if he’d be able to get that past his client’s daughter.

  ‘Shall we hire a car?’ she asked.

  ‘Not for the time being. The traffic in the centre’s a nightmare. The hotel can arrange one if we need to go further afield.’

  The taxi took them through outskirts full of stores and business properties. The post-Olympic boom, based on apparently inexhaustible credit, was still in full swing. It was only when they approached the centre that Rachel began to look more animated.

  ‘What are those buildings?’ she asked.

  ‘The Aristotelian University – biggest in the country.’

  ‘I thought so. I’ve been doing research too. You know it was built on part of the old Jewish cemetery?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ Mavros replied, feeling guilty. He’d visited friends at the institution several times when he was on vacation from Edinburgh University.

  ‘Yes, there are pieces of gravestones embedded in the walkways.’

  He’d never noticed that. He decided to keep his familiarity with the campus to himself.

  ‘There’s the White Tower,’ he said, as the taxi turned towards the seafront. ‘Maybe Venetian, maybe Ottoman.’

  ‘And rather beige.’ Rachel looked at the faded circular building that was capped with a smaller round fortification.’

  ‘The symbol of the co-capital.’

  ‘Strange they couldn’t find something more Greek.’

  ‘The Archaeological Museum’s back there,’ Mavros said, looking over his shoulder. ‘It’s full of Macedonian gold from the time of Alexander the Great.’

  Rachel had turned her head to the water on the other side of a wide pavement. It was blue, but the sun created rainbow tints from oil on the surface. There were several cargo ships anchored in the bay.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but were the ancient Macedonians Greek?’

  Mavros laughed. ‘That’s a bit of a hot issue.’

  ‘There are others that no one gets worked up about. Such as, were the Jews of this city Greek?’ Her voice had hardened. ‘Their papers showed they were, but very few people seemed to care when fifty thousand of them disappeared during the war.’

  Mavros hoped the driver’s English wasn’t up to following the conversation. He seemed oblivious as he pulled up outside the Electra Palace, one of the best hotels in Thessaloniki.

  ‘Am I staying here?’ Mavros asked.

  ‘Of course. We need to be in close touch.’ Rachel paid the driver and strode ahead, pulling her wheeled case.

  Was there a hint of innuendo in her words, he wondered. Then he remembered her stern look. Behave yourself, idiot. And remember the woman you love is waiting for you back home.

  He padded into the luxurious reception area and registered. They both had rooms on the fourth floor. The clerk handed a rectangular package about the size of a desk-top keyboard but thicker to Rachel. He waited when she answered her phone till she waved him away, signalling that she would call him. He took the stairs as his bag wasn’t heavy. The room was large, overlooking Aristotelous Square and the bay beyond. He wondered what Aristotle would have thought of his name being used in the city. As far as he remembered, the philosopher was born some distance away and the city was founded after his death. When he was tutor to Alexander the Great, he would have been at the Macedonian capital of Pella, half an hour’s drive to the north-west. Still, that was close enough for the municipal council. He remembered what Rachel had said about the Jews. Every Greek knew something about Aristotle and Alexander, but next to nothing about the people who had comprised Thessaloniki’s biggest population group for centuries. Their cemetery may have gone, but he suddenly felt the presence of a myriad ghosts.

  The room phone rang.

  ‘Shall we go and see Ester Broudo?’ Rachel said, the question more like a command.

  ‘Who?’ Mavros said, playing dumb. He’d never been good with authority. ‘Oh, you mean the old lady who saw your great-uncle? Whenever you’re ready.’

  ‘Downstairs in ten minutes.’ The call was terminated.

  ‘Make that eleven,’ Mavros said. He washed his face and hands, then called Niki on her mobile.

  ‘Semen Supplies.’

  ‘Very funny, Alex.’

  ‘You sound harassed.’

  ‘It’s a normal day at work, so yes, I am. You survived the flight.’

  ‘More or less. Now we’re off to see a woman about a man.’

  ‘We?’

  Mavros froze. ‘Um, yeah, didn’t I say? The Fat Man’s got a friend up here who’s going to show me around. Shimon’s his name.’ It wasn’t a full-blooded lie.

  ‘No, you didn’t mention that. I’ve got to go. The Phoenix Rises tried to burn down a flat full of Afghanis near the museum last night.’

  ‘Scumbags.’

  ‘Fortunately no one was hurt but the place was gutted, so I’ve got to find them alternative accommodation. Call me tonight. Love you.’

  ‘Love you too.’ As he headed for the door, Mavros thought about Niki’s dedication to her job. She worked much harder than most of her colleagues and liaised with NGOs about illegal immigrants. Could she be too run down to conceive? Her blood tests had been OK, though her iron count was rather low. The issue might be psychological, in as much as that could be separated from her body. Was devoting so much emotional energy to society’s unfortunates adversely affecting her physical condition? He needed to talk to her and the doctors about that.

  He came down the last flight of stairs in a rush. As he’d expected, Rachel looked at her watch.

  ‘Scottish-Greek time,’ he said. ‘If I was fully Greek, you’d have had to wait even longer.’

  She didn’t grace that with a reply, leading him to the main doors. Her heels, medium height but still enough to elevate her slightly above him, clicked over the marble. By the time he joined her, she was already getting into a taxi. The vehicles were blue and white in Thessaloniki, less garish than the Athenian yellow.

  ‘Here,’ she said, handing him a slip of paper.

  He gave the address to the driver, who knew it and drove east.

  ‘A football stadium?’ Rachel asked, as they passed a concrete mass.

  ‘Toumba, the home of PAOK.’ Mavros wasn’t a football fan, but one of his friends had dragged him along when he was visiting. ‘The club was set up by immigrants from Constantinople after the exchange of populations.’

  ‘Is that so? Academics must go wild over Thessaloniki’s anthropological complexity.’

  ‘Have you ever met a wild anthropologist?’

  She glanced at him. ‘Several. The discipline seems to attract oddballs.’

  Mavros was about to ask where she had learned her unusually formal, almost Queen’s English, but the taxi stopped outside a pink villa surrounded by a high fence. He got out and looked for a name plate – Rachel had told him earlier that Mrs Broudo lived in an old people’s home – but there was none.

  ‘Well, well.’ Rachel was standing on the other side of the gate. A swastika had been spray-painted on the stone column.

  ‘Bastards,’ he said.

  ‘Probably not. I’m sure our artist was baptised into the Orthodox Church like every Christian Greek.’ She rang the bell.

  ‘Not me. Then again, I’m faithless. But you know what I mean. I hate neo-Nazis.’

  She smiled t
ightly. ‘Not surprising, given your father’s politics. You had a run-in with some of them on Crete, didn’t you?’

  ‘How thick is that file you’ve got on me?’

  ‘It’s a memory stick.’

  ‘Miss Samuel?’ said a middle-aged man in passable English. He wore a dark suit and blinked from behind thick round glasses on the other side of the steel-barred gate. There was a skullcap on his thinning black hair.

  ‘Rabbi Rousso, I presume.’

  He nodded and smiled, then looked at Mavros. ‘And you are?’

  Rachel was too quick for him. She gave his name, glancing at him as if he were a necessary villain. ‘My … assistant.’

  The rabbi took in his hair and clothes with a degree of bewilderment, then pressed a button. The gate swung back.

  ‘Welcome to the Molho Home,’ he said, leading them up the slope to the villa. ‘The house and grounds used to belong to a cotton merchant. They were donated to our community by his grandsons.’ He dropped his gaze. ‘The two of them were the only members of the family to survive the Shoah. They emigrated to the United States in the 50s.’

  They followed him through an entrance hall that had seen better days. It was spotlessly clean, but the unmistakable odours of institutional food and elderly bodies prevailed. The place was also colder than it might have been. The rabbi took them down a corridor lined with paintings of bearded men in sober suits then earlier ones in ornate robes, their wives and offspring gathered round them.

  ‘This is the sun room,’ he said.

  The eyes of old men and women in thick cardigans were raised, initially those of the former to Rachel and the latter to Mavros. He could almost see the words ‘beauty’ and ‘beast’ floating up.

  Rousso introduced them in their language, then Mavros heard the name ‘Ester’. A short, crumpled woman pulled herself up with a Zimmer frame, refusing help from the rabbi. Although her movements were slow, her unclouded blue eyes were agile. They were led to a room on the left.