Dead Europe (26 page)

—My grandmother was a Jew. She was very superstitious.

—That makes you and Pano both Jews, doesn't it?

The only sound in the city was the tap of heels on the cobbled street.

—Syd does not know. He would not employ us if he knew. He is obsessed with taking revenge on history. But being Jewish was never of importance to me. I did not even circumcise my son. You noticed his tattoo? He did this to spite me. Of that I'm sure.

—Your name is not very Jewish.

—Was not Christ's mother a Jew?

I blushed. And she laughed.

—I am not named after your Virgin. I would like to believe I am a descendant of another Maria, or to give her the true name, Miriam. She was a Jew as well, living in Jerusalem when the Temple fell. There was a great hunger and a great death when the Romans took the city. The people feared both the powerful Romans and the fanatical Jewish rebellion. Rather than letting her children suffer she killed them and ate from their flesh. When the rebels came upon her she offered them the meat. Maria paused, and then spoke in a language that I knew was not Russian.

—Was that Hebrew?

—Isaac, I am so disappointed in you. That was your language, that was spoken in the tongue of the ancient Greeks.

—That is not my language.

She translated for me.

—Eat, for I have already eaten. Can it be you are afraid? Are you weaker than a woman, weaker than even a mother?

She then touched my face. We had stopped before a tall apartment block, its blue paint chipped, its windows cracked and dirty.

—Next time you pray to your Maria, give a thought to my Miriam.

—Leave, I said quietly. The three of you should leave Prague.

—My daughter-in-law is pregnant, Isaac, who will protect her? Where should we go? Would you take us to Australia?

And for one moment, a grace of a moment, I thought I saw hope in her eyes. Then there was only a mocking tenderness.

—A pleasure to meet you, Isaac.

—Can't you go to Israel? The words came out in a rush and for a moment I thought she had not understood me. She touched my cheek again.

—It is possible. Maybe I go when my wanderings are finished. Maybe I go when God forgives me. When God forgives me, maybe the Russians in Israel will forgive me as well. She kissed me on the lips.

—Goodbye, Isaac.

I watched the two women walk, hand in hand, into the shadows of the night.

I walked the dark city, past whores and beggars, drunkards and dopers, revellers and madmen shouting out the varied names of Paradise and of Hell. I crossed streets and alleys and boulevards and bridges and I kept walking, exhausted, all the while repeating to myself, I once had a teacher, I once had a teacher, and he taught me there was a city called Prague and that once hope existed in this city, and I kept walking and walking but dawn came and I had found no hope.

 

He was waiting for me. He began beating me with his fists as soon as he saw me. His photographs of Pano were scattered
all over the floor. Someone or something had scratched the prints; serrated tears ripped through Pano's face and body and neck. In the near-dawn light it seemed that the portraits were bleeding from their wounds. I held Sal Mineo's fists and whispered to him that I had not done this, I had not done this, and eventually he stopped hitting me and began to cry and I took him and lay in bed with him, stroking his shoulders, kissing his neck. I held him tight till sleep took hold of him instead.

In the morning I packed my things and Sal Mineo took me for coffee in the square. There were tourists with backpacks like mine and there were elegently suited young people sipping espressos in the sunshine. I looked across to the intricate figures on the cathedral dome and I said to Sal Mineo, You live in a beautiful city. While we were drinking our coffee, the old woman who was cleaning the cafe floor tripped over her broom and upended a bucket. The dirty water spilled across the cafe's smooth porcelain floor. The goateed waiter rushed over to her, screaming. He was pulling her arm, and the young people around us were laughing and pointing. I asked Sal Mineo what the waiter had said and he answered, That they will get rid of her, that she's worthless, that she's no good. The old woman, now crying, was wiping her hands on her stained blue uniform. She refused to look any of us in the eye as the waiter dragged her out back. I stood up.

—I have to go.

 

Sal Mineo kissed my cheek. Once, twice. A gypsy child asked me for money and I gave him the last
krona
notes I had left. The train arrived.

—You shouldn't do that, said Sal Mineo, you shouldn't encourage them. He then slipped a thick joint into my shirt pocket. Memento from Praga, he grinned. He became serious. Smoke it before the German border. It didn't use
to matter, but, you know, these days, security. Of course, I answered, security.

And with that, without once glancing back, my friend turned and walked away from me.

STELLIOS LEPTOULIS HAD his blue cap rolled tight into a ball and he was crushing it with a tense grip. He was oblivious to what he was doing: what concerned him was that he had been ordered to wait in the town hall's tiny cold vestibule till the Colonel was free; and Stellios was fearful that he would be spied by someone strolling past the building from the street. He kept his head bowed low into his chest, crushed his cap even tighter, and tapped his left foot with growing impatience. He could hear voices in one of the rooms off the hall, he could hear sounds from the markets outside in the main square, and he could hear the soft lilt of music from a wireless coming from deep within the town hall's bowels. A heavy drop of sweat fell from his brow onto the cracked tile floor.

He wiped his brow with his cap and swore softly to himself. What the devil is keeping him? The Colonel usually saw him straight away; Stellios would answer any questions the man had for him, and the interview would be terminated quickly. Ten minutes at the most. Stellios would then leave through the back of the town hall and make his way back to the centre of town in order to finish his bartering at the markets. He was distraught that he was being made to wait today. An old woman, her black shawl wrapped tight across her skull, peered through the heavy wood doors and Stellios abruptly turned his head away. The young soldier standing guard called out to her.

—What do you want, Auntie?

—Nothing, grumbled the old crone, and quickened her
pace, almost tripping herself over in her fear and haste to get away. The soldier started to laugh, then looking back at Stellios, his young face turned sour and contemptuous.

What the devil is keeping him, muttered Stellios. He turned his eyes towards the clock on the vestibule wall. An hour and a half, the Colonel had kept him waiting close to an hour and a half. This was ridiculous: how was he to be back home before nightfall? Ignoring the suspicious eyes of the young soldier, he got to his feet, made his way down the short corridor and knocked three times on the door to the Colonel's room. He heard a hurried scraping of a chair across the tiles, a giggle, and then heard the Colonel's low voice call out in anger, What the fuck is it?

Stellios Leptoulis opened the door. Even as his hands were turning the cold brass handle he was beginning his obsequious complaint.

—I'm so sorry, Colonel, but I just cannot wait any longer. He stopped, his mouth fell open and a hushed blasphemy vaulted from his mouth.

The Colonel was tightening his belt. But this was not what made Stellios' eyes bulge and his mouth go dry. Sitting across from the Colonel, a mocking smile on her lips, was Lucia Panagis. Her mourning scarf had fallen lazily across her shoulders and her long flowing hair was scandalously exposed; the once raven black waves were now as white as the sparse locks of a dying old man. But what was most shocking was that her thick wool skirt and her cream hessian pantaloons were lying untidily around her feet. Lucia, with a small laugh, rose, and facing Stellios, she hoisted her skirts back to her waist; but not before he caught sight of her thick white bush. He dropped his eyes.

—What the fuck do you want? repeated the Colonel, his tone now calm and taunting. Without a word Stellios shut the door and rushed back to his seat in the foyer.

It was true what the village gossips said: Michaelis Panagis'
wife was mad. He cursed his brother, for if it wasn't for Antonis, Stellios would not have come to town. Instead of walking into an abomination he would be now tending his flock, and preparing his fallow fields near the Cold Water creek. But Antonis had convinced him to make the journey, urged him to make an appointment with the Colonel one last time. Antonis' son Giorgos had come of age and Antonis was determined that if his boy had to do time in the army, he should serve as far away as possible from the mountains and borders. The war was officially declared won by the government but the bandits and guerrillas still roamed the winter mountain peaks, increasingly desperate now that they were scattered and hunted. Any uniformed soldier they came across, they finished off immediately. Stellios honestly wished the guerrillas no harm. He was quite happy to see them flee to Albania and to the Slavs' lands and leave Greece far behind: he was not vindictive but a fair man, and was grateful that the bandits had led the resistance to the German occupation. But he had lost patience with them over the harsh years of the civil war. They had pilfered his flock and this last winter they had demanded most of his stored provisions. With his children hungry and sick, he had even remonstrated with the two men who had come to take the cheese, the corn and the wine from his cellar. They had ignored him and ignored the cries and screams of his youngest daughters. Stellios had once been in sympathy with their cause. Now he damned them and all politics, all governments and all nations. God, just grant us a little peace.

His brother was far less forgiving. The Germans had plundered the whole village and had stolen from across the valley, but once they had left, Antonis' fields had flourished. It was as if the Devil had protected him. That first year after the Germans had fled, the village's harvest had been disastrous. Other men had seen their crops fail, their seedlings puny or mouldy or poisoned. Antonis had begun to rent
out his own fertile fields, charging a small interest. Of course, there was grumbling and insults but it was acknowledged that the eldest Leptoulis had always been a crafty schemer. He gets it from his great-uncle Mitsos Bertes, it was said, Mitsos Bertes being a young man who had managed to gain a favoured position in the court of the last sultan. Mitsos Bertes had ended up stabbed ruthlessly to death by a Greek patriot on the streets of Constantinopoli and there were many men in the village who were keen to see his great-nephew suffer a similar fate. There were few tears when the guerrillas came into town and announced that Antonis Leptoulis had been convicted in absentia by a people's court which had found him guilty of capitalist usury. His rich crops were all plundered, his fields denuded and most of his stock of goats and chickens stolen. For good measure they had given the man a whipping that left him bruised, humiliated and blind in one eye. Though people had thought it quite merciful of the guerrillas not to have executed him, Antonis did not quite see it this way. He swore to avenge himself on the bandits and forced his brothers to do the same. However, he was loath to lose his oldest son to that struggle.

Stellios looked up as he heard the heavy tread of the Colonel's boots across the tiles. The Colonel was a tall man, and though the years of war had trimmed his solid frame, he was still imposing. He had a thick moustache that he wore in the Cretan style, and which reminded Stellios of Stalin. Not that it would do to tell this to the Colonel—better to not even try to make of joke of that.

—Come, barked the Colonel, and Stellios followed the man into his private office. There was no trace of the mad whore. The room was cold and sparsely furnished with a long desk and two small wooden chairs. A photograph of the King and a silver crucifix were the only adornments on the walls. The walls themselves were cracked and peeling from the shelling during the war.

—Sit, ordered the Colonel, and Stellios perched on the edge of the wooden chair, his grip still tight on his cap.

—What news have you for me?

He's not even looking at me, thought Stellios. The Colonel lit a cigarette without offering one to the other man.

—Excuse me, Colonel, but I have a favour to ask of you.

—And what news have you for me?

Stellios stirred uncomfortably in his seat.

—Colonel, nothing to report. All the bandits have fled our village.

—And their supporters?

Stellios said nothing. Who can tell anymore, he wanted to reply, but he knew that would be a damaging retort.

The Colonel turned from the window and looked at him. His eyes were large, dark and smiling. Stellios distrusted them.

—How about Paparaklis?

Stellios frowned. Sotiris Paparaklis had died the last winter, an icy landslide had buried him.

—Colonel, Sotiris Paparaklis is dead.

—But not Vasilis Paparaklis.

Despite his fear, Stellios could not help laughing.

—But little Vasilaki is not yet twelve, Colonel.

The Colonel leaned into the desk and blew a thin stream of smoke through his thick pale lips.

—I have it on good authority that your little Vasilaki, that little bastard, has been carrying messages to the guerrilla captains. I have it on good authority that your little Vasili Paparaklis is a communist.

Stellios kept his mouth shut. He thought of Sotiris' widow and her three young children, her oldest son fighting desperately up in the mountains. I will not say a word, Stellios resolved to himself.

—What do you have to say to that, Kire Leptoulis?

—I know nothing of this.

—Then what the fuck are we paying you for? The Colonel butted out his cigarette on a tile and spat after it.

Stellios blurted out his prepared speech.

—Colonel, my nephew Giorgos is to be drafted and his father fears for his safety as the bandits are already suspicious of his allegiances. Please, Colonel, you who have been so good to our family, could you use your influence to ensure that he serves somewhere far from us? Stellios hesitated. The other man was again lost to the sights outside the window. A faint note of panic, a desperate shrill, now entered Stellios' voice.

—Please, Colonel, can I ask of you this one last small favour? My brother was slaughtered doing his duty on those damned devil mountains around Karpenissi. When we found his body he had been beaten so savagely by those madmen that I could not recognise his face. We identified him by the Cross he was wearing.

The Colonel's eyes were still smiling as he turned and faced Stellios.

—My brother did not fear his duty.

The two men stared at one another. Stellios dropped his gaze.

—What news have you for me?

Stellios now sat upright on his chair. Forgive me, God, he whispered to himself, and quickly patted his foot on the cold tiles. I step on you, Satan, he mouthed.

—In the coffee-shop, Colonel, I overheard Costas Meniotis condemn the banning of the Party. Stellios spoke firmly and coldly. The Communist Party, he added quickly.

Stalin's moustache twitched furiously.

—I know which fucking party he meant. The Colonel lit another cigarette. Stellios did not dare ask for one.

—I'm not interested in gossip, Mr Leptoulis.

Stellios looked up at the silver crucifix on the wall.

—Vasilis Paparaklis, they say, is often seen wandering out
of the village at nights. Since he was a young boy he has not feared the night. I don't know where he goes. But he returns before dawn. He has an aunt in the village of Gravitas. I think he stays there. If your men were to keep a watch on her house you will be able to follow him.

The Colonel nodded and rose.

—I'll see what I can do about your nephew.

Stellios shook the Colonel's hand and walked out of the office and out through the back of the town hall. A latrine stood in the far corner of the yard. Stellios squatted over the hole and a long hard turd emerged from his body. He wiped his hands across his buttocks, then on some tall wild grass and hitched his trousers. He turned and spat into the hole and for one moment stood in silence, watching a swarm of flies dance merrily over the dirt and the shit. You are running very late, he reminded himself, and he walked away.

He quickly finished his chores at the markets, and placing the pepper, the coffee and the salted meat into a thick hessian cloth, he tied his purchases with a tough weathered rope, and placed the bundle under his arm. The sun was high in the sky as he began his journey and he knew that it would be dark before he reached the village. He made his way out of town.

As he was travelling along the thin dusty road, he heard his name being called. He turned around to see Lucia Panagis following him. Damn that woman, he cursed to himself, but he slowed his pace and allowed her to catch up to him. Her young daughter, Reveka, marched alongside her.

The little girl was going to be a great beauty, like her mother. Her round face was pale from the winter dark, and her hair was long and black. Stellios had been one of the boys who had fantasised about making Lucia his wife, and in his youth the Devil had often sent temptation at night in Lucia's guise. Now, looking down at the little girl's stern shy face, he
felt the familiar stirring in his crotch. He knelt and kissed Reveka.

—What's wrong, Reveka
mou
, aren't you going to give your Uncle Stellios a kiss? Reveka tried to hide behind her mother's legs. Lucia laughed, then quickly slapped her daughter.

—Go on, you wild animal, kiss Mr Leptoulis.

Reveka gave Stellios a hurried kiss. He smelt oil and rosewater in her hair, and he closed his eyes.

—And did you have a good interview with the Colonel, Stellio?

He rose to his feet, placed his bundle back under his arm, and continued his journey. Lucia fell in step behind him.

—How is Michaelis? he asked her.

Lucia was silent. Stellios smiled to himself and kept walking. He could hear Reveka's rushed steps, trying to keep up with the steady gait of the adults. He turned and smiled at the girl.

—Would you like to ride on my shoulders, Reveka?

The little girl looked up at him suspiciously, then nodded slowly.

—She's heavy, cautioned Lucia, but ignoring her, Stellios lifted Reveka to his shoulders, waited for her to relax with her long warm legs falling across his chest, and the three of them continued their way up the mountain.

From time to time, Stellios would glance back at Lucia. She was still a beautiful woman. Michaelis Panagis was lucky to have this to return to every night. Then he thought of little Christaki, the poor departed one, and his face saddened. Stellios bore Lucia no ill: far from it. He only felt a deep sadness for what had befallen the couple. He had heard Lucia's screams of pain the night their son had died. The howling had lasted all through the night, and it was as if the very sky itself was screaming with her. Her shrieks had seemed to echo throughout the valley for days, for weeks
afterwards. Lucia had been driven demented by Christos' death and had even accused her own mother-in-law of killing the child. Stellios believed that Maritha had indeed been a witch. Even though his own mother had always called for her assistance when one of the children had fallen ill, she had also warned them against the
Albanesa
. But he refused to believe that Maritha was capable of evil towards her own grandchildren. No, Lucia had done great damage to her soul by condemning Maritha. Evil had come to their village and it was the old woman Panagis who had ensured that evil had also been banished.