When the Devil's Idle (18 page)

“
Got
anything more recent, Father?” Tembelos asked. “World War II, say?
The reason we’ve come?”

“
Yes,
yes, of course. Some of the worst fighting of the war took place in
Epirus. In 1943, the Nazis and a rogue group of Albanian Cham
Muslims massacred hundreds to the north of here. The crime was so
terrible it was cited during the Nuremburg Trials, but the general
in charge—Lanz, I think his name was—defended it, saying it was
part of ‘war regulations.’ The judges didn’t accept his
explanation. The executions were ‘plain murder,’ they
said.”

Yet another
tragedy.
Patronas could feel the burden of the past weighing
him down. All those slaughtered innocents rising up and demanding
justice.

“
What
happened to Lanz?” he asked.

“
Nothing. He got away with it. They all did. No one was ever
found guilty.”

“
It’s
always like that,” Evangelos Demos said, leaning over the front
seat. “The Greeks die and their killers go unpunished. You wouldn’t
believe what the Germans did to my village, the carnage. That’s why
I became a policeman.”

“
You
became a policeman to fight the Germans?” Patronas eyed him in the
rearview mirror. “They’ve been gone a long time, Evangelos. You
might have miscalculated.”

“
You
know what I mean. To serve justice.”

“
We
all did,” Tembelos said. “That’s why we became cops. To serve
justice.” After a lengthy pause, his friend went on. “I’m not sure
that’s what we’re doing here.”

“
What
do you mean?” Patronas asked.

“
If
this woman, Maria Georgiou, did in fact murder the man who killed
her father, there’s a kind of symmetry to it, a catharsis. I
probably would have done the same thing, had it been me. Ancient or
modern, that’s who the Greeks are, people who fight for their
families, who avenge the wrongs that are done to them.”

Patronas frowned.
“So you think this trip was a mistake?”

“
Maybe. All I know is if she killed him, killed the man who
murdered her father, what she did was just. Maybe not legal, but
just. And maybe we shouldn’t be up here, chasing our tails in
Epirus, seeking evidence to convict her.”

“
There
has to be an accounting,” Patronas said. “Justice for the victims,
no matter who they are.”

“
With
respect to the war, the Nazis got off easy. Their victims—some six
million of them, historians say—didn’t get justice. There isn’t
enough justice in the world, in the whole fucking universe for
them.”

A
ghios Stefanos was located to the north of the city of
Ioannina. Tembelos had printed out the directions and was reading
them aloud to Patronas, using his cellphone for light. Night had
fallen and it was very dark. They’d passed the village of Lingiades
earlier and driven on, the road narrowing ominously and shifting
from asphalt to gravel. The village was located on the western
slope of Mount Mitsikeli, Tembelos said, well over 1800 meters
high.

“
Better for goats than people.”

Patronas was
inclined to agree. About a kilometer straight down, he could see
the lights of Ioannina, so far below the road he was on, it was
like the view from a satellite.

Lingiades had
been the site of another massacre, Tembelos had said as they drove
through the town. “The German president apologized for it, said it
had been a ‘brutal injustice’ and that he was apologizing to the
families of victims—as if saying ‘we’re sorry’ would cover
it.”

“
Anything about where we’re headed?” Patronas asked.

“
No,
nothing. But from what I read, they burned their way across the
whole region. More than a thousand villages were destroyed during
the war and most of them were here.”

They’d seen no
signs of life since turning off the highway, no houses or
livestock, and Patronas was getting worried. In addition to its
other problems, the car apparently had cataracts; its headlights
were so weak he could barely see. Worse, they kept going out, only
to come on again a few seconds later as if the car was blinking its
eyes. He was wiping the windshield with his hand, praying he
wouldn’t drive off a cliff in the dark and die like the Souli
women.

“
How
much farther?”

“
Two
or three kilometers. I Googled the place before we left and I think
you’ll find what you’re looking for. There were some pictures of
the residents of Aghios Stefanos posted on the Internet by the
tourist authority. Older than time, most of them. Could have been
with Moses when he crossed the Red Sea.”

“
You
see any advertisements for hotels?”

“
There
were a couple in Lingiades, but not up here.”

“
Shit.”

It was going to
be a long night. The priest had fallen asleep in Evangelos’ arms
and the two were snoring up a storm in the back seat. Patronas
couldn’t face the thought of sleeping in the Skoda, of staying in
the car with the other men one minute longer than he had to. He’d
camp out, he decided. Pull up one of the car mats and use it as a
blanket.

They reached
Aghios Stefanos half an hour later. Built on the summit of Mount
Mitsikeli, it was partly hidden behind a scrubby forest of pine.
The buildings were in such disrepair Patronas thought at first the
village must be be abandoned, but then he heard a dog bark, saw
yellow lights in a few of the windows.

Not wanting to
disturb the residents, he turned the car around and parked in a
field below the village. Starving, he and Tembelos rummaged through
the suitcase, searching for the priest’s canned ham.

“
God
bless America,” Tembelos said. Holding the can, he inserted the
metal key and opened it.

They’d eaten
about half the ham when, alerted by some kind of digestive radar,
Papa Michalis sat up.

“
What’s that you’re doing?” he asked.

“
Eating,” Patronas said. He took another piece and wadded it in
his mouth, determined to eat as much as he could before the priest
took possession. By rights, the ham was his.

Worn out by his
travails on the boat, Evangelos slept on in the
backseat.

The night air was
cold on top of the mountain, and they gathered up sticks and built
a small fire in the field, using pine cones for kindling and
setting them ablaze with Patronas’ cigarette lighter. The priest
had packed a small bottle of brandy, and they passed it around as
they watched the fire burn, the crackling flames bright against the
darkness. The pine cones exploded as they caught, shooting geysers
of sparks high in the air.

Patronas
gradually relaxed, enjoying the smell of the woodsmoke. Taking a
swig from the bottle, he passed it on to Tembelos. “You said it was
a mistake coming here. What do you think we should do? Go
back?”

“
Hell,
I don’t know,” Tembelos said. “All I was saying is I probably would
have done the same thing if I’d been her. You can’t let it pass,
not a thing like that.”

Patronas nodded.
Giorgos was from Crete, an island where revenge was part of the
culture. The need for it buried deep in the Cretan DNA.

“
Scorched earth,” Tembelos said, waving the brandy bottle at
Aghios Stefanos. “That’s what they did here. Shot them all and
burned the place down.”

Damage from the
war had been evident on the road to Aghios Stefanos. The sunken
indentations in the land could only be bomb craters.

Patronas had seen
a monument to the victims in the town. A simple white obelisk, it
had been like a beacon in the darkness. He had made a note of it,
planning to have Tembelos photograph it as soon as the sun came up.
There were similar memorials all over Greece, listing the names and
ages of the dead. Judging by the size of the one in Aghios
Stefanos, it was a miracle Maria Georgiou had survived.

The priest
reached for the bottle. “I, too, grew up during the war,” he said,
taking a demure sip. “And I saw people I love die—my sister of
hunger in December of 1941, my little brother six months later.
They shot my uncle during a round-up and the fathers of many of my
friends.
Love thine enemies as thyself
? It’s a hard thing to
do, I can tell you.
Forgive those who trespass against us
,
harder still. But then what would be the point if it was easy? What
value would it have?”

“
So we
should forgive the Nazis?” Patronas asked. He wasn’t in the mood
for a theological conversation tonight—one of Papa Michalis’ little
sermonettes.

“
You
say that as if forgiveness is a passive act, Yiannis. It’s not.
Believe me, I know. Forgiveness has power, purpose.” He went on
like this for some time, as usual, insisting on having the last
word. “You don’t forgive them for
them
, Yiannis. You forgive
them for
us.”

Morning came too
quickly. Getting out of the car, Patronas walked stiff legged down
to the stream and washed his face. It had gotten too cold to stay
out in the field the previous night, and around one a.m., he,
Tembelos, and Papa Michalis had put out the fire and returned to
the car.

Surrounded by
trees, the glade was full of shadows and the water was very cold.
Wondering if this was where the river had run red in 1943, Patronas
searched for evidence of the massacre but found nothing. It was
very quiet, the only sound, the birds stirring in the
trees.

Tembelos and the
priest were pawing through the food when he got back, eating
Nutella out of the jar with their fingers. Rolling up his sleeves,
Patronas pushed them aside and ate his share.

Now that it was
light, Patronas was able to observe the village in greater detail.
The shale roofs of many of the houses had caved in, their walls
blackened by fire. A stream coursed through the town, pooling in
the forested glade where he’d washed his face, but there was little
else of note. Athens had been bad, full of empty storefronts and
graffiti, but this was far worse. Here the decay was
palpable.

“
You
need to talk to Christos Vouros,” the owner of the
kafeneion,
the local coffee shop, told him, nodding to a
grizzled old man in the corner. “He is in his eighties and his
father was in the resistance, one of the
antartes.
He knows
better than anyone else what went on here during the
war.”

Remembering
Stathis’ warning, Patronas had been deliberately vague about why
they’d come to Aghios Stefanos. “We’re investigating the massacre,”
was all he’d said.

The owner had
approved of their mission, saying he’d help in any way he could,
even put them up in his house if they needed a place to stay.
“Start with Christos,” he said again.

The old man
watched them approach with interest. Bent nearly double, he was no
bigger than a jockey and supported himself with a cane. He was
dressed in a white oxford shirt and shabby topcoat, a handknit
woolen vest.

Keeping a hand on
the table to steady himself, he rose to greet them.
“
Kalimera,”
he said, nodding to each of the men in turn.
Good day.

They bought him
coffee and sat with him for over an hour, questioning him about
life in the village after the Germans came.

“
Georgiou was the priest then,” Patronas said.

“
That’s right. Young, he was, with four children and a wife.
Only Maria, the youngest, survived.” His face darkened as he
remembered the massacre. “It was a miracle, her surviving that day.
Not many did, I can tell you. I’d gone up in the mountains with my
father to gather firewood. It’s the only reason I’m alive
today.”

Patronas handed
him the photograph. “Was this man in Aghios Stefanos?” He pointed
to the figure at the center of the picture, the soldier with scars
on his face.

The old man got
out his glasses and studied the photo. “Bech,” he said after a
moment. “That was his name. Bech. He was in the
Gestapo.”

Patronas and the
others exchanged glances. “Are you willing to swear to
that?”

Vouros nodded. “I
remember the war. Remember it better than yesterday.”

“
Who
else was here in the village then?”

“
Most
of them are gone now. What can you do?” His voice was resigned.
“
As is the generation of leaves, so is that of
men
.”

The words were
from Homer
, The Iliad.
Patronas realized he’d underestimated
the old man, his level of education.

Vouros had
noticed his reaction. “I read a lot when I was younger,” he said by
way of explanation. “I wanted to go to university. Would have, too,
if the Germans hadn’t come.” His laugh was forced. “Only wanted to
eat then. Put my books away.”

He had married a
woman from Ioannina and had six children. Two were in Chicago; the
rest lived in Athens. “My daughter hired an Albanian woman to look
after me. She’s asked me to come live with her in Athens. She
doesn’t like me being up here all alone.”