by Ben Pastor
“Other than fetching you later tonight, is there any last thing I can do for you in Crete?”
Bora would think about this moment in the weeks and months to come, wondering. What there was in the look they exchanged had no special name: Bora looked straight at Kostaridis, and the policeman returned the stare. Then Bora averted his eyes, and spoke as if not expecting a reply: more, as if no reply were needed, or the subject was peripheral instead of being the reason for his being here. “Not unless you can favour me with thirty bottles of good Mandilaria, and the same with Dafni.”
“Ah! Capitano, the widow Spinthakis —”
“She’s dead, I know.”
“The rest sell average wine, nothing you want to give as a gift.”
“I was hoping to buy in Athens, but not at half past one in the morning.”
“Good Dafni and Mandilaria in Athens?” For all his acting scandalized, Kostaridis still had the expression of their mutual stare. “You might as well buy from Panagiotis, although it is true what the Turk says, that he deals in dishwater. Sorry, I can’t help you.”
They got in the car.
“Well, hell then. I’ll stop by Panagiotis’ before I go to the Megaron.”
Bora tried to sound casual about it. In fact, now that the investigation was drawing to an end and time was running frightfully short, the matter of satisfying Lavrenti Pavlovich, Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars and NKVD Chief, resumed crushing dimensions. Not even in Moscow had he felt so put upon. It was as if he had awakened from one nightmare straight into another. I can’t go back to Moscow without highest quality goods. What am I going to do?
He brooded over it during the short ride, down streets patrolled by Germans and streets where life sank back into normality. Swallows and noisy swifts dipped and soared across the paling sky. Elders sat and smoked; women kept out of sight or leaned crossing their arms on windowsills. The middle class, the professionals, were away or collaborating or keeping aloof. Fear faded into resignation, turned inescapably into indifference.
And yet out there stood a disquieting wilderness. Mount Pirgos, Mount Voskerò, one-eyed shepherds, red-haired girls, mermaids dressed as young peasants, the solitary birthplace of Zeus – a grand theatre of dead temples and ghostly sites around this small harbour of the many names.
It was as if Kostaridis read Bora’s mind, because he said, “Remember, after you leave: Mount Ida is an ancient name that means ‘The Wooded One’. Now it’s called ‘Psiloritis’, Bare Mountain. That’s the summary of Crete’s history, capitano, so long and so troubled – all was taken from us.”
“I’ll remember.”
They were already turning into the narrow street where Bora roomed. Kostaridis braked, and said, “Let me see you in.”
“It’s not necessary.”
“I lost two men on this street, whether or not it was on your account.”
“Maybe Minos tried to get done by day what he failed to do at night.”
“One more reason to let me see you in.”
“As you wish.”
Bora found the precaution annoying, but when he touched the lock with the key, and the street door gave way, both he and Kostaridis took out their pistols. A gradual push of the wooden door showed it was dark and quiet inside.
“Capitano, let me go in first.”
“No.”
“Then let me flash the electric torch in.”
Bora shouldered Kostaridis aside to enter, and the cone of light shining behind him did not keep him from stumbling and skinning his shin on something hard and immovable just inside the entrance.
Once the stairway light was flipped on, they faced a stack of wooden crates, filled with bottles of wine, straw-packed and ready to go. “Export quality,” Kostaridis said in admiration. “Mandilaria from the Spinthakis winery, and Dafni with the Minotaur label! The pride of Crete. It doesn’t get any better than this, capitano.” And because Bora didn’t answer, busy counting to make sure the bottles came to sixty, he reasoned, “That whoreson of a Turk must have dipped into his personal cellar. And he forced the lock to get in.”
“I don’t care if he passed through walls, Epitropos. It saves my neck!”
“Not unless you find a truck to get them to the airfield.”
Bora had until now scrupulously kept tab of every drachma he’d spent from the cache in Villiger’s deposit box. “Here.” He dug out the remaining bills, without counting them, and shoved them in Kostaridis’ hand. “Buy one if you have to, will you?”
Washing thoroughly and changing into his Moscow uniform were the next steps. Bora went through them mechanically, pushing forward the time when he’d allow himself to crash as if it were the notch on a slide rule. Riding breeches and boots on, tunic on. Immediately the evening seemed much warmer.
At the Megaron, where he arrived shortly after eight, he spoke to a non-com in Preger’s company, a fellow with a splinted middle finger on his left hand, who said he’d enquire if the captain was in. Bora waited in the lobby, ignoring the glances at his impeccable riding boots. Already the hotel was taking the appearance of stable occupation, with thumbnail-studded noticeboards on walls and typewriters ticking behind closed doors. It seemed ages since Major Busch had sipped Afri-Cola in the back room and broken window glass was heaped on this polished floor.
Who knows where the portraits of the Greek royals had ended up? Certainly, coffee cups were being regularly washed now, and beds made upstairs for the officers.
The non-com returned in minutes. “Sorry, Rittmeister, the commander isn’t in. Do you have a message for him?”
“No, never mind.”
“I’ll take a message if the Rittmeister has one.”
The solicitous insistence meant Preger was in the building and curious to know what his colleague had to say, but would not meet him. Through the thickness of Bora’s exhaustion anger mounted slowly. He further delayed it by avoiding the man’s face, with his eyes on the ridiculous splinted finger.
“There’s no message.”
He’d done well walking there; he needed to breathe in the tart sea air and bracing saltiness as he returned to Ithaca Street. In less than three hours, Kostaridis would send a truck and driver. He had time to start drafting a report in longhand, and with a four-hour stopover in Bucharest, would have time to type it as well. In Lublin, Bora only had half an hour. God willing, that’s where he would hand it in, to be forwarded as needed.
At eleven o’clock, a Fiat delivery van was idling below. Kostaridis met Bora on the doorstep, and with the help of the driver they loaded the cases. Bora had bundled up the clothing he’d worn in Crete, and left it upstairs with the mountain boots and whatever he no longer needed. The rucksack, with maps and food for the long journey, he took along with his briefcase. The driver climbed in the back and Kostaridis himself drove to the airfield.
Along the way, as often happens when departure is near, the two had nothing to say to each other. Bora’s mind was already in Athens, where Lattmann would await him on the runway, and in Bucharest and beyond. Soon Max and Moritz would be following him to his Moscow hotel. He’d soon walk by Maggie Bourke-White’s door, and smell lilacs. Already, notwithstanding the incompleteness of his task, he was leaving Crete behind. He kept his eyes closed to avoid seeing the few flickering lights, the phosphorescent trim of the backwash. Kostaridis would think he was asleep, and that was fine. But at one point, out of that darkness, Bora thought of the wax candles he’d seen among the ruins at Týlissos, whose presence Frances Allen wouldn’t explain. That point, at least, he could make clear to himself by asking.
“I thought you were sleeping,” Kostaridis commented. “In places like Týlissos, at Easter time folks make pilgrimages to the cemetery. They burn candles, bring food for the dead as in ancient times. What you saw at the archaeological site were probably tapers left by those who camped overnight among the ruins.” He deftly changed gears. “It’s a strange relationship we have with the departed. As
I told you, poor Siphronia, who died a violent death as a married woman living in the house of a frangos, had to be buried before she started haunting. At times not even a hastily dug grave is considered sufficient. In the twentieth century, capitano, we had best leave alone what practices are occasionally carried out to make sure the dead don’t ‘walk’.”
But for those who investigate, the dead walk, and how! At the airfield, the van was let in because of its cargo and Bora’s satisfactory paperwork. A Ju 52 sat on the runway. There were no pilots around, but an airman confirmed it was the outgoing flight to Athens.
“Call me when you’re ready to go.”
The wind from the sea was nearly cold. It came with the deep breathing noise of the undertow; white ghastly fringes marked waves and emerging wrecks. Once he had made sure the bottles were safely loaded, Bora tried hard not to think that Patrick Sinclair was within this same perimeter and that he could do nothing to keep him here. He’d leave Crete first, and it was unlikely he’d ever return.
He gave back the keys to the small apartment to Kostaridis, and Kostaridis returned the bundle of drachmas. “None were necessary. Forgive me, capitano, but to a departing German my compatriots will offer free transportation.”
Bora nodded, tolerantly. “For a departing foe, we’ll build a golden bridge: the Italians say and do the same thing.” He watched Kostaridis pocket the keys. “How curious, if one thinks about it, rooming on the island of Crete at a place named after the island of Ithaca.”
Kostaridis smiled his frog smile. “Not so curious. Every place is Ithaca to the native who longs to return there. And then every road is the road to Ithaca. Isn’t it? Just as every wanderer is Ulysses if he is conscious of his roving.”
But you never quite return to Ithaca. Or, if you do, it is not forever. Bora didn’t voice his thought. What he said, was, “Hm. Das Gewissen-haben-wollen wird Bereitschaft zur Angst: the desire for a conscience prepares one for anguish – that’s how Professor Heidegger, one of my teachers, nicely put it.”
“I’m not a learned man, capitano. But we Greeks call Ulysses ‘long-suffering’, so he must have had a conscience.”
“Not when he first started out. Boyhood is where most of us stop being virtuous, and the need to develop a conscience comes in. You had better go, Epitropos. I have kept you up far too long, and I apologize.” Bora saluted, they shook hands. “So long. How do you say it in Greek?”
“Adio. But it’s best to say kalì andàmossi – until next time.”
“Until next time, then.”
But they still stood irresolute in front of each other. “Are you sure the Englishman is guilty, capitano?”
“More than sure.”
“And that, shall we say, you’ll be able to prove it?”
“Not so sure.”
Kostaridis made a vague gesture and turned away. “Kalì andàmossi, then.”
“Kalì andàmossi.”
Half an hour to departure. Bora walked into the terminal with the intention of jotting down an update in his diary. The last person he expected to see entering after him was Preger – so soon he must have been waiting in the dark until now to catch him alone.
The crude neon light of the room made his suntanned face look ashen. And so, Bora thought, must his own face seem.
He said, “I came to the Megaron to let you know I am convinced that your men had nothing to do with the deaths at Ampelokastro, and, God willing, will be able to prove it soon.”
Under the ugly glare, Preger heard him out with an unreadable blankness on his hard face. Just a few sentences, no details, and when Bora finished, both men remained standing unemotionally, stiff-shouldered. Not close enough to touch each other, as if it were wise to keep out of striking distance. Bora was running on empty, but was perfectly capable of hiding his weariness and disappointment. Preger – hard to say what Preger was concealing. Surprise, unplanned gratitude? He picked his words as one gathers small change after buying something.
“I’m not going to thank you because there’s nothing my men did that needed to be disproved, by you or by anyone else.”
“Fine with me. I didn’t come here to do what I ended up doing, so we’re even.”
“That we can never be.”
Neither surprise nor gratitude – it was hostility that lay under Preger’s lack of expression. Bora kept himself even from blinking.
“‘Even’ is a word that doesn’t work between us, Rittmeister. Not because of the spat we had as kids, the blows and all that. I’m not so small-minded. The reason, Martin-Heinz Douglas Freiherr von Bora, is that you are all that we’re striving to leave behind, the kind of Germany of lords and ladies and generals’ sons and estates. You weren’t in the streets of Königsberg in ’32, as I was. You didn’t build any of the Germany we have now. I’m not even sure you’re fighting for the same Germany I’m fighting for.”
Through the open door, the wingtips of the aeroplane, green and red, flickered as it taxied slowly towards the runway.
It was as if Preger had secured a tool and now was digging inside him to scoop up anger from where it rested. Bora swallowed the provocation, but barely. “Germany is one. It pre-dates both of us. Unless we really make a mess of things, it’ll continue after us. Are you really certain we’d be having this conversation if we hadn’t punched each other that day?”
“Fuck you, Rittmeister, you kept vacationing with the family at Trakehnen. I was packed off to Königsberg.”
There it was, the sore, unforgiven spot. Not so abstract after all. Not small-minded but not high-minded, either. Bora blinked. In all these years he had never connected the row to Waldo’s school transfer. “Did my parents send you?”
“Worse. My parents sent me.”
“Come on. We fought just that once!”
“Ha. Hegemeister Preger, whose father and grandfather had been managing Herr Baron’s estate, couldn’t bear the shame of seeing his dead master’s son apologizing to him. That was Germany then. I’m sure your parents didn’t even notice I had gone.”
Saying that no doubt his parents had taken notice would ruin the picture of Waldo’s resentment, so Bora did not suggest the possibility. If I know my mother, not only would she have enquired about Waldo; having learnt what happened, it would have been just like Nina to urge the Pregers to let him come back: but it would have been just like old Preger to insist that a man’s a guardian of his good name, and he’s entitled to rule his family as he sees fit. He wished he could say that, if it was any consolation, he’d been mortified by his punishment as well, but it wasn’t the case. And I admit that after asking about Waldo the following summer, I accepted the fact that he lived elsewhere now. Soon Peter was old enough to become my privileged playmate, and on our bikes we were gone from the estate most of the day.
Should he feel sorry? At the moment Bora was totally unwilling to see himself and his old playmate as anything but expendable: they were two among millions of soldiers; they’d live or die fighting in spite of their different childhoods.
“Hauptmann Preger, please know that I’m not going to justify myself for my family, or my upbringing, or anything else that doesn’t relate directly to what you and I are today within the German armed forces. Much less will I apologize for being who I am.”
“As if you ever could.”
Bora was not above spite, and could be ungenerous. To himself, he admitted what he never would out loud, that in a way Preger was right. The Germany they lived in had been built on street brawls and fisticuffs he hadn’t taken a part in, just as he hadn’t participated in intimidations, set books or synagogues on fire, jailed political adversaries or silenced his conscience. Preger was right about that. He recalled the hostility of police inspector Weidlich in Leipzig, little more than two years earlier. There, too, under the ideological varnish, there was class-related resentment waiting to explode. The scores might be settled in that regard as well, sooner or later. He chose to retaliate by keeping from Preger that he had remembere
d the reason for the row.
The airman looked in out of the darkness. “When you’re ready, Rittmeister.”
Bora nodded and turned back to Preger. “Well, comrade, if you’re done, I have a flight to catch.”
“So you can go back to your cushy embassy job?” Preger sneered. “I’m done, I’m done. The blood we spilt on this island has nothing to do with your kind.”
The three dead von Blüchers were “my kind”. This, Bora did no more than think. Walking out onto the dark runway, he felt as resentful as on the day he’d apologized in the Pregers’ living room, with his stepfather looming behind him. He’d imagined then that the general stood for all the ties and rules and traditions he was hankering to be rid of. And yet Sickingen also embodied the connections, the beliefs, the solid network of those who would not, it’s true, let go of power and influence so easily, but at the same time wouldn’t bow to gangsters’ methods and would fight back. Since then, how many times had he disagreed with the old man, disobeyed him, and for all of his achievements and first career successes, let him down? It couldn’t be helped, it was generational, and for many years deep down he’d told himself contemptuously that Sickingen wasn’t his father after all, and couldn’t tell him what to do.
Aside from the cases of wine, the plane carried to the mainland CreForce paperwork found here and there on the island. Bora would be the sole passenger. “Climb in, Rittmeister,” the co-pilot said, inviting him in. “Ten minutes, and we set off.”
Bora answered the co-pilot’s summons, climbed the ladder and found a place to sit. The truth of the matter was that generations of German and Scots ancestors had parented him. They weighed on him more than they bolstered him. Preger needed to feel superior at this time.
And, who knows, maybe he was ahead of Bora in today’s Germany.
And so, farewell to Crete and its time machine, to the metaphor of the Wanderer, to the question of truth and untruth, and the many masks we wear, whether we’re heroes or not, to go through life.