The Scapegoat (14 page)

Gris smoked a carton of eighty-eight Matsaggou-Stoukas cigarettes a day, equivalent to four normal packs. In other words, this little lizard had balls, though you wouldn’t guess it from looking at him. So Tzitzilis decided to add hashish to the prisoner’s cigarettes; after all, a little relaxation wouldn’t do poor Manolis any harm, and it might even loosen his tongue.

Tzitzilis served him a coffee spiked with his special cognac, banking on the fact that the man wasn’t used to narcotics. He let him light a cigarette, too, one of the ones he himself had rolled. Then he sat back to watch the show.

Gris was confused at being treated so well. He smoked his cigarette, drank his coffee, and suddenly felt his brakes fail. It was as if someone had reached a hand straight into his soul, as if he’d
stepped into nothingness, as if the springs that kept his thoughts and emotions in place had all unsprung at once.

—I was just wondering, Manolis, if you might be a communist, Tzitzilis said as soon as he thought the prisoner was sufficiently dazed.

Manolis couldn’t control his tongue, and his mind was stuck like a cart in mud. His limbs seemed to have been poured into the chair. Words seemed impossible—where to find them, how to pronounce them. He wasn’t a communist, and didn’t side with the others, either. All he wanted was to be left in peace, to not be bothered, to do his job well, to provide for his family, to make his mother proud. He certainly didn’t believe that an idea would save the world. He didn’t even believe that God could save him, so why would he put his faith in human beings?

His body abandoned him. All he wanted was to sleep. After so much torture, a man becomes sentimental.

Terrifying in his despair. That was Gris.

An egoistic individualist
, those in the Party would say. In Greece, where everything was a performance, the verdict was a foregone conclusion. There couldn’t be smoke without a fire, most people thought. Surely the reporter had sullied his nest somehow. Besides, there was indisputable evidence, witnesses, signatures. Lawyers came and went behind steel doors, attempting various agreements and plea bargains. They knew what they had to do, but their consciences weren’t convinced. That made things more difficult.

Some claimed that the district attorney assigned to the case had gone to visit Gris’s lawyer, a young man by the name of Dinopoulos, at his home, an unprecedented move for someone in his position. Rumor had it that the lawyer managed to bargain the sentence down. He would keep his mouth shut, he promised, about the irregularities in the proceedings, if in return they
would rule out the death penalty. The district attorney weighed Dinopoulos’s intentions, trying to decide whether he could take him at his word. The two men quickly reached an agreement, with a few sentences and a slap on the back.

A few years in prison wasn’t the end of the world, the district attorney apparently hinted. And it was a holy cause, the fate of the nation hung in the balance.
My job
, he said in conclusion,
is to take responsibility for my decisions
. He didn’t want to give too much ground, but he took care to calm the young, untried lawyer—who, moreover, was a member of the party in power, and therefore someone to work with rather than against. Dinopoulos swallowed his doubts. He’d avoided the worst, he told his conscience. What it came down to was, he’d saved an innocent man from the firing squad.

A few days later the young lawyer went out to walk through the city. Salonica was divided into semi-autonomous regions: the city below Tsimiski, the city above Egnatia, the city beyond Venizelou. Urban zones whose borders were nowhere demarcated and yet were sharply cut, separated by lines of fire. Residents knew where those secret dividing lines were; they moved with ease to and from their burrows, and took care on foreign turf. Dinopoulos hugged the exterior walls of Agia Sophia, great is her grace, but decided not to cross the threshold of the church itself. An agnostic from the cradle, he wouldn’t let his current difficulties defeat him. Besides, his back was covered: his mother and wife regularly lit candles at the church, so the family already had representatives before the icons.

On his walk he tried to consider the situation from a practical angle. Greece, since its formation as a modern state, had been a nation of useless, dreamer politicians who gambled away the fate of the Greek people. The country had from the start been overrun with outcasts of all sorts, worthless upstarts and coattail-riders.
Why should he be the one to pay the damages, to snatch the chestnuts out of the fire? He would stand as tall as he could; he would make sure the proper formalities were observed; he would protect Gris from the worst. He had drawn a line in the sand. If he quit now—a thought that had passed through his mind the previous night—they would crush the accused man entirely. The least of all evils, wasn’t that the mature and judicious approach to take?

It was certainly what Evthalia would have advised, if he’d had an opportunity to discuss the case with her. He saw her every so often in the neighborhood. She reminded him of the girl in that famous painting, her beauty all corners, hidden miracles in her cheekbones—what a pity he’d never be able to tell her. She just would have given him a sardonic look and walked off, ponytail swinging in rebuke. She had been admitted to the literature department at the university, and still wore girlish ankle socks. She didn’t hesitate to correct his quotations of Cicero whenever he tried in vain to impress her. She respected the proper order of words in a sentence. His mother didn’t like her, though; in her opinion, Evthalia was an obstinate girl who talked too much and couldn’t even boil water, much less cook a proper meal.

If the lawyer’s mother and the student found themselves side by side at the grocer’s, the younger woman never ceded her place as she should have. His mother complained that the girl had no manners, she was a wild creature. And since he had no desire to argue with his mother, he’d made up his mind not to bring any unpleasantness down on his head for Evthalia’s sake.

And so he married Froso. It was an arranged marriage. She was a good, sensible, respectful girl. She could darn socks and cook. There was nothing missing from Froso’s dowry, not even a needle. She was obedient in bed, fulfilled her wifely duties convincingly. As for flowing conversation, that’s what his friends were for.

Evthalia, on the other hand, was an untamable beast, and
he needed to secure his career, he didn’t have time to waste on winning a girl over or strategizing about his love life. At times, though, he still thought of how it might have been. Particularly when he saw her in her green pleated dress, her white ankle socks, and her ponytail, walking home from the university hugging her Cicero to her chest. He found Homer less exciting—Homer was a poet, all empty words—but the sight of the girl clutching her Cicero could keep him dreaming for days. That was enough for him. And it was something no one could take from him.

Meanwhile, Froso learned to cook papoutsakia the way his mother did. She wrote his name on the prayer paper in the evening, for his health, and took care of his laundry. As far as his mother was concerned, that more than sufficed for a successful marriage—and in the end, he came around to her opinion. Evthalia was the moon. You don’t take the moon down from the sky and marry it. You admire it from afar. That would have to be enough.

What had gotten into him, why was he thinking about all that? He needed to focus on other things right now, things that couldn’t wait. Perhaps it was because he had caught a glimpse of Evthalia’s ponytail from afar. And he knew she had her Cicero class today.
De oratore
.

Oh, if only.

MINAS

Souk makes no sense. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he barely eats. His pants always look like they’re about to fall off, his stomach is actually concave, I’ve never seen another belly that doesn’t stick out at least a little bit.

Evelina says his whole body is an appendage. That it’s just there to hold up his head. It’s more or less what everyone says who doesn’t like him, including the other teachers. They can’t criticize his knowledge of the material, so they start out saying how well-read he is, only to end up saying he’s
not cut out for high school. He’d do great at a research institute, or the university, but here, it’s not about how smart you are, you need other skills
. They’ve mastered the art of the backhanded compliment. Yes, of course, but.

None of the other teachers came to Fani Dokou’s concert. If they had, they’d have been stunned. Souk was way up front, all in black, as usual. And next to him stood Dokou’s son—I knew it was him, I’d seen him in photographs. He’s about my age and plays in a band at his school in Athens. He has a pierced eyebrow and a tattoo on the back of his neck. My mother would have a heart attack.

Anyhow. Souk looked like his usual somber self, only he was standing there with his arm around Fani Dokou’s kid like it was no big deal. Souk, who never touches anyone. The tenderest thing he’s ever done in class is say five nice words in a row. But there he was, all tight with Fani Dokou’s son. You could tell how much fun he was having by the look of them from behind. Souk’s back speaks volumes—like when he’s writing on the board, he doesn’t have to turn around for you to know what look he’s got on his face. At the concert, it was obvious he was having a good time.

—Look who’s here, Evelina said, giggling, as she body-checked me from the side. She came over and stood right next to me, waving to some big dolt who was making eyes at her from across the crowd.

—I came with a friend, she said.

—I can see.

She raised her cell phone to take a picture, but there wasn’t time. Just then the lights dimmed and Dokou started singing a folk song that everyone in the audience knew, about a jealous husband who murders his wife. The drums fell silent, the keyboard hushed. Her voice rose up from deep inside, she held the high notes, then plowed on, filling the stage, filling the whole square with sound. She lifted us up and swept us away with her. The crowd was a pulsing sea creature. Cameras flashed, cheers rang out.

—My mom used to sing that as a lullaby, Evelina whispered in my ear, her hands raw from clapping.

My mom sang it on road trips. It was so sad, but it always put her in a good mood.

—That song goes out to someone I love dearly. For you, Marinos, Fani Dokou said, pointing right at Souk.

Respect.

Maybe Souk has a body after all?

Fani Dokou hadn’t given a concert in Thessaloniki in over a decade. She left in her twenties and never looked back. But Thessalonians never forget their own, particularly when someone makes a name for herself in Athens. And now Dokou is an internationally recognized ethnic singer, with concerts in Portugal and Oslo, recording sessions in Paris, tours in Israel. She popularized Greek folk songs, reworked them, added electronic touches. And in the process, she achieved the impossible: she made music that both Mom and I like.

—She’s good, Evelina agreed.

That didn’t seem strong enough to her, so she added,

—A goddess.

For real. The light around her wasn’t that fake, plastic light, all smoke and cameras and kilowatt hours. Her sweat shone. She was on fire up there on the stage. Mom always talked about her concerts, the flowing skirts that fell around her like veils, the bracelets all the way up to her elbows, the bells at her ankles. Any other woman who dared to wear what she wore would just look ridiculous, but Fani Dokou pulled it off.

The concert ended, the floodlights flickered off. Most people pushed as fast as they could toward the exit.

—Should I walk you home?

Evelina hesitated.

—My friend was going to walk me, but his house is in the opposite direction. Wait a minute, I’ll let him know.

We walked without talking, half an arm’s length apart.

—Are you really not going to take your exams? she asked.

—Can we really not use that word today? It’s Saturday, and I hear it enough during the week.

—Okay, category change. Let’s turn to affairs of the heart, Evelina said, doing her best impression of a talk show hostess. Do you think they’re a couple?

—Who?

—Souk and Dokou. I wish I’d gotten a shot of them with my phone. I could’ve put it up on Facebook.

—They were at university together, ages ago.

—You know everything, don’t you? she commented.

—Yes.

—Modest as always.

—Just acknowledging the facts.

She laughed. When Evelina laughs, her whole face changes. She turns into a normal person. At school she’s always got a smile plastered on her face, like a good, obedient student, pretending to
be social. You never see her alone during break, the others always cluster around her. In class she rarely asks questions, she’s too full of certainties. She hates philosophy but still quotes philosophers left and right in her essays. That’s how people are who believe in the absolute: they need a guru to show them the way.

But now, walking up Iktinou Street, Evelina had left her shield and spear behind. She reminded me of how she was in grade school, a little girl in sweat pants and braces. She used to steal candy bars from my bag, and she once ruined my shirt from pulling it too much during a game of tag. She was always trying to engineer trades. She would grab my Scooby Doo erasers and give me chewed-up straws in return.

We were almost at Agia Sophia. Her shoulder brushed my sleeve, her hair tickled my nose. She smelled like a garden.

—Want to go in? I suggested.

—Are we allowed?

—This late at night, everything’s allowed.

I hopped over the low wall around the churchyard and held out my hand.

—I bet what we’re doing is against the law, she said gleefully.

I didn’t tell her I jump this wall every day, to look at the sky from inside the churchyard. From in there the stars are dizzying. The way they leap out at you all at once, you can almost hear it, like a wave crashing. If you close your eyes, you can even pretend that the coastline of Halkidiki has beamed itself into the city center. Of course you’re brought back to reality by the honking of cars and the stink of exhaust. But even car exhaust smells different, better, around Agia Sophia. If you’ve grown up with that smell in your lungs, the countryside throws you for a loop. Grandma might be right when she says Agia Sophia is the heart of the city. If you drew a circle around the city with a compass, this is definitely where you’d plant the foot.