The Scapegoat (12 page)

—Why are you so determined that Minas go to university? he asked.

Teta had thousands of arguments at her fingertips, but the question took her by surprise. She launched into her spiel, but it sounded too much like a school essay, she realized as she spoke. She despised rhetoric and emotional blackmail, but when it came to her child, all logic flew out the window. Her weapons were the weapons of all mothers since the beginning of time.

Soukiouroglou sat there silently and let her go on. At some point alarm bells started ringing in her head:
He’s testing you, stupid
. She wanted to say something clever, something to show she wasn’t like other mothers, she didn’t care about the diploma, what concerned her was the heart of the matter. The only problem was, the diploma
was
the heart of the matter.

In the end she said something to the effect of,
A university
education will open his eyes to what’s out there
. She might even have said,
Knowledge requires guidance
, or tossed in some nonsense about the joys of the intellect, a necessary awareness of the world, who knows.

Teta shook the teacher’s hand and left, feeling burned. She’d been counting on him. After all, she didn’t have many other options; asking Minas’s teacher for help was the only solution she could think of. When Soukiouroglou spoke, Minas bowed his head and listened.

What she’d had in mind, of course, was a direct intervention, a strict talking- to that would fix things immediately, not a research paper on a topic utterly outside the program of study. When she first heard about Minas’s assignment, she was dismayed, and her absolute confidence in Soukiouroglou shaken.

—Look at it this way, Evthalia pointed out, your child started opening books again. Isn’t that what you wanted?

No, it wasn’t what she wanted. What she wanted was for him to take his exams.

—Besides, now we’ll get to see him butt heads with Evelina and her mother, your favorite person, Evthalia teased.

And since Teta didn’t seem to follow, Evthalia pointed out the obvious:

—You can’t research the Gris affair without talking to his lawyer from the trial. In case you don’t remember, his name was Dinopoulos. He’s the girl’s grandfather. As far as I know, he’s the only one who never spoke to the newspapers. Why are you looking at me like that? You didn’t know?

THOMAS TZITZILIS, HEAD OF THE SECURITY POLICE IN SALONICA

I’m the one who cleaned the Red rats out of this city.
The great benefactor of the Capital of the North
, they wrote in the history of the gendarmerie. The Americans turned out not to have a brain among them, they bought into the anti-Greek propaganda. Even Greek citizens who cared about the health of our nation, who could see the danger posed by those communist thugs, called it a
Greek outrage against an American reporter
. Their radio stations cursed our country.

A nation’s leaders have to make decisions. It’s their job. To make calls. To give interviews. To see the smoldering coals and call in Tzitzilis to get the job done. All of America was up in arms and the puffed-up jackasses here in Greece took up the tune.
You’re accomplices, the government isn’t doing anything to arrest those responsible for the murder
. Generals and journalists kept getting in my way. Suddenly they had opinions about everything. Plenty of theories but no proof.

I know how to handle those types. Those kowtowing nobodies who supposedly run this country ought to have their wits about them. Brown-nosers and slaves to foreign interests, each and every one, all scared shitless that I might offend the outsiders.

To hell with the lot of them.

Earlier that day, before the American General barged into my office, strutting his chevrons and his attitude like a cock in someone else’s henhouse—a third-generation American, of European refugee stock, if you want to call a spade a spade, whose grandfather was a convict and whose mother was a whore—the Minister had called me, scared out of his wits. He warned
me that the General was quick to anger, owing to his rank. He told me to watch my tongue and not say anything that might put the country at risk. I could have reminded him that he was the bootlicking fool who’d made us an international laughingstock in the first place, but ministers are all talk, they’re not great at listening. They say their piece and hang up as soon as they’re done.

And when the General came, he just barged in without knocking. He was wearing his dress uniform, covered in medals. A spoiled man used to giving orders at a safe distance from enemy lines. He planned the attacks on a map, wrote memos, and told other people what to do.

—Entirely unacceptable! he howled. To ask American taxpayers to support Greece, and then have Greeks kill American citizens in return!

The foreign journalists tore us to shreds. They attacked the gendarmerie, claimed we were stalling on purpose, covering up for the perpetrators.

Damn them all. Tzitzilis isn’t a man of words. He’s a man of action. Everyone in the force knows it, and they respect me for it.

I went into the church of Agios Dimitrios. I wanted to consult the city’s marshal, our patron saint. Agios Dimitrios knows plenty about war. Friend and savior of the city, as the priests say. The commies in the mountains have no God, they don’t believe in saints. Which means they’ve got no one looking out for them.

Tough souls shatter the easiest. Just mess with them a little and they break. Take it from me, I’ve seen hulking men plead, strong young men crying like babies. I see them come in for questioning and can tell right away how long they’ll last.

—How do you do it, boss? the new guys ask.

They’re amazed at how I’m never wrong. Because when I say
a thing, it’s guaranteed. And if it’s taking too long I get in there myself, I don’t waste time giving orders.

Screams and pleading don’t faze me at all, tears won’t make me relent. I know how to break the toes on a man’s foot one by one. I teach the others, it’s not as easy as you might think. The prisoners who have been here a while would rather be beaten, their bodies are nothing but sacks anyway. But when I start on the toes they confess right away, they piss blood. Some people protest. Fresh-faced young lawyers, judges who think they’re God’s gift, who think you can solve things with a few words. Smart-asses with university degrees who never had to interrogate a prisoner. They parade around town in their starched collars and spit-shined shoes. They swear by the scales of justice. As if laws were written for obedient schoolgirls. The bastards are delusional, every last one.

When I bring them the accused men who’ve spent time in my prison and signed confessions scripted by others, they’re not pleased by my
successful resolution of sinister plots
. They just complain about broken legs and bruises. They don’t believe the prisoners fell down stairs and hit their heads on the wall. They don’t realize these are routine techniques used by scoundrels and crooks who want to make the police force look bad.

Gentlemen, the government is treading water when it should be punishing men, and making examples of them. We’re at war. If you’ve got balls, you do what it takes.

Saints speak to the pious. They give you a sign so you know how to proceed. I lit my candle and waited. I sat down in the pew and studied the icon. The saint spoke with his eyes, I saw it clear as day.

I crossed myself and stood. I had my orders.

When they brought him in, I told myself this one would break in two days. Not a real man at all, push him with a finger
and he’d stumble. A dandy. A bureaucrat. A sissy. Fragile bones, not much meat on him, boiling him in a pot wouldn’t get you much broth.

He didn’t seem to understand what was happening, he looked at me foggily and kept whining like a schoolboy. He pretended to be naïve, but it turned out he knew perfectly well what was what.

Watch out for the silent types. You think you’ve got them under your thumb, as soft as dough. But they’re cunning. Like water. You wouldn’t think it, but there’s nothing more devious and cruel than water. It wears down even stone.

That’s how he was, silent. Nobody you’d ever pay much attention to. With his clean suit and ironed shirt, the note pad in his pocket, his fancy words and his press pass. Quiet as a mouse in its hole.

There’s no sense betting on a little lizard like him, but my guys didn’t have much else to do for entertainment. After interrogating brutes all day long, they deserved a little fun behind closed doors. One guy bet three days’ wages that he would break.

And lost.

None of us could have imagined how long the lizard would hold his ground. I screamed at my guys until I was blue in the face. I called them incompetent, useless.

—Drop your pants, all of you, none of your cocks is worth a thing.

In the end I had to deal with the situation myself. With words and with deeds—the usual tricks. But he was a dog. He kept his mouth shut tight. We kept roughing him up, then waiting. When he came to, he still wouldn’t confess. And what we needed was a confession. Without his signature I couldn’t move forward.

He didn’t leave me much choice in the matter.

I told them to bring in his mother. If Tzitzilis takes on a case, he puts it to bed. For a true leader, to begin is to finish.

VIOLETA GRIS, SISTER OF MANOLIS GRIS

The well-fed shouldn’t complain. I always got annoyed when my mother said that. Don’t stretch your legs beyond your blanket. Only go as far as your own two legs will carry you
.

—Oh, Mother, you’ll go through life with your head down, you don’t ask for much. And that’s why they’ll never give you much, either.

—Don’t disrespect our mother, Evgnosia protested.

I can practically see them now, sitting by the window with their mending in their laps. Needle, thread, thimble. The tin box of spools open, the pins lined up neatly in the pincushion. They would turn the fabric inside out. Evgnosia would hold the needle to the light, lick her fingers and twirl the thread. Then Mother would take over. She never tied knots, that was for second-rate seamstresses who couldn’t do better, or careless housewives in a hurry to be done, who didn’t understand that each action has its time and manner. Mother took hold of the thread with dexterity, smoothed the fabric under her finger and began. There was no better mender than she, you had to look hard to see where her needle had been. With a bit of ribbon and a button she could make a dress look entirely new. She would change the collar and the cuffs, always careful about the details in the finishing.

Mother was a woman of the old style. She knew never to throw out scraps of fabric, one day they might come in handy. Even a torn petticoat would find its way into something else. If it couldn’t be mended, it could be turned into a little curtain or a bag for smelling salts. All it needed was a hand to show it off in its best light.

They never made me do those kinds of jobs, because I was studying at the university.
This family’s hard work has paid off
, Manolis would say. His hard work, really, only he never drew attention to himself like that. What he wanted more than anything was for someone in our family to study. That had been our
father’s goal, too, or so our mother would say, turning her head in the direction of the Pontus.

When I announced that I had been accepted into the faculty of law, Mother left the food on the fire and the wash in the washtub and ran to kiss me.
Come here, child, let me kiss you
, is what she said. It was a formal kiss, first on my forehead, then on my cheeks, accompanied by a stream of wishes and tears, memories and aspirations. Manolis proudly told her about my scholarship, and our mother said,
Oh my, I have to sit down
, and collapsed into a chair. With the money from my scholarship she bought Evgnosia a new overcoat, and we decided to make a few repairs to the house that we’d been putting off. We did that as a matter of course: in our house everything was common property, and we certainly weren’t going to make an exception for money.

I wore Evgnosia’s hand-me-downs all through my university days, I never had new clothes. That was fair, if you ask me. They’d taken care of me for years, and now it was my turn to give back. They’d spoiled me since I was a girl. I was twenty, and Mother still boiled an egg for me each day so I’d have energy to study. She would chase me down in the yard and make me eat it.

My last class of the day ended at eight. By eight-thirty I had to be home. I would walk with a fellow classmate named Crete—what a ridiculous name, I can’t imagine how any mother would let her child be baptized Crete. At any rate, her family had money, so Crete could have taken the tram home if she’d wanted, she didn’t have to walk. The first time I ever saw real English pounds was at her house, tossed on top of the piano.

None of my classmates liked her, but Kyriakos, first in our class, was particularly hostile.

—Violeta, he would ask, why do you go around with her? She’s at university just for fun, to have something to talk to her girlfriends about between dances. She and her kind will be ordering you around soon enough. We’re studying so we can work for them one day. Open your eyes.

I had no interest in comparing myself to Crete. My mother had taught me never to compare myself to anyone. My mother, the poor, Pontic, refugee widow, who knew how to dress even if she didn’t have money for new clothes, who thought her children were better than anyone else in the world. She passed that on to us, too, with her praise and her chiding. It was a deeply rooted belief, something that went without saying. She didn’t shout it from the rooftops. She kept both feet on the ground and prevailed in difficult situations. When bad times brought other people to their knees, we dug in our heels and clenched our teeth. We went as far as we could, to the edge of the cliff.

My mother. Harsh and forgiving at the same time. She’d be the first to point out our weaknesses, but she turned into a wild dog if anyone else dared hint at some flaw in her children. There was no job she couldn’t do, no burden she couldn’t bear, no silence she wouldn’t impose if circumstances called for it. She blew wind into our sails. She never touched our souls with dirty hands. She gloried in us from afar and prayed for the best. She believed we could take the moon down from the sky if we wanted. She didn’t care if no one else agreed.