The tables had more or less emptied and everyone was crowding inside the taverna, where there was a TV fixed high up on the wall.
‘Do you want to hear what happened?’ Fanis asked me.
‘I prefer to hear about it in the peace of my own home.’
‘I’ll go inside to pay because we won’t find a waiter to bring us the bill.’
In contrast to the amount of traffic on the way there, there was virtually no traffic on the way back and we only occasionally encountered another car. Fanis was about to switch on the radio, but I stopped him. I wanted to see the scene on TV without having heard the descriptions on the radio.
Outside the electrical shops in Dourou Square, a crowd had gathered to watch the TVs in the shop windows and was taking pleasure in watching the scene in multiple on some twenty different screens.
‘Do you think it’s connected to Favieros’s suicide?’ Fanis asked me.
‘I’ll want to find out how he committed suicide and what his last words were, but at first sight, it would seem so.’
‘What reason would such a successful politician as Stefanakos have for committing suicide?’
‘What reason did Favieros have?’
‘True,’ Fanis admitted. I was sitting beside him in the front, while Adriani was in the back. Fanis glanced at me while driving. ‘Haven’t you found out anything about Favieros?’
‘Nothing substantial.’
‘Not even from his biography?’
‘It hints at some shady aspects of his professional life, but it’s too early to know whether that had anything to do with his suicide.’
‘If you want my opinion,’ said Adriani suddenly butting in from the back seat, ‘the TV channel has a finger in all that.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Fanis surprised.
‘Have you stopped to count how many advertisements are shown each time they play the scene with the suicide? And that’s without including all the ones shown during all the talk shows and discussions.’
I turned and stared at her in wonder. ‘What are you trying to say? That the TV channel gets them to commit suicide to increase its ratings? Anyhow, how do you know that Stefanakos committed suicide on the same channel?’
‘Just wait and see,’ she replied with certainty.
‘And how does it manage to persuade them?’ Fanis asked her. ‘By offering them money? Neither of them had any need of money.’
‘I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing: plenty of people turn their noses up at money, but no one says no to fame,’ said Adriani, reducing us to silence.
I didn’t go on with the conversation because I knew it was impossible for me to convince her otherwise. She was naturally suspicious. Whenever I got a raise, she was sure they had cheated me and given me less than they should. She read that the new metro would be finished on time and she had no doubt that the contractors had only managed it by cutting corners and in less than three months the whole thing would collapse. You tell her a solution’s been found to the Cyprus issue and she smiles knowingly, saying that if it has been solved, it means the Prime Minister must be getting a rake-off from the Turks. The one thing I don’t understand with all these rich veins of suspicion that we have in Greece is how the Force takes on men like Yanoutsos.
Because of the heatwave everyone had gone out and it was easy for Fanis to find a parking space outside the apartment block. Once we were inside the house, we all rushed to switch on the TV. We found the right channel at only the second attempt from all the interviews going on. It was the same channel that Favieros had chosen for his suicide.
‘What did I tell you? There you are!’ said Adriani triumphantly.
I was ready to give her a mouthful, but the phone rang just at that moment. It was Ghikas.
‘Did you see it?’ he asked.
‘No, I was out and I came home as soon as I heard. I’m waiting for them to show it again.’
‘All right. Watch it and call me.’
‘I hung up and went back to the TV. Sitting at the bottom of the screen was the presenter together with two of Stefanakos’s colleagues: one from his own party and one from the opposition party. Various people kept appearing on the rest of the screen, some there permanently, others coming and going, and all of them singing Loukas Stefanakos’s praises. What a sharp and spirited parliamentary member he had been, but also what respect he had shown for the parliamentary ethos. How fanatically he had fought against bills that served political self-interest and what a great loss his death was to Parliament. The presenter then moved on to the recent campaign started by Stefanakos for the recognition of immigrants’ rights. He had proposed that lessons in their own language be introduced into the schools and that they be allowed to set up cultural associations to maintain their cultural identity. The praise and eulogies dried up and there began the yes-buts, because no one agreed with Stefanakos’s position on these issues. The opposition politician claimed that Stefanakos liked to provoke controversy, because he kept himself always in the limelight in that way. The member of his own party claimed that Stefanakos had been extremely disappointed of late with the general movement to the right across the whole political spectrum. The others all flared up at this and wondered whether, in fact, he had chosen that particular programme to make his heroic exit.
‘Let’s take a short break and then we’ll take a look again at the scene with the suicide, perhaps it will give us a clue,’ said the presenter, who was only waiting for an excuse to show the scene again.
The discussion is interrupted for a commercial break that lasted a full quarter of an hour.
‘You see? There’s no end to the advertisements,’ said Adriani triumphantly once again.
The director came out with his tricks and, instead of linking up again with the presenter, screened the interview again straight after the advertisements. The interview appeared to have taken place in Stefanakos’s office, which was very ordinary with the usual kind of office furniture that you find in any store. Stefanakos was sitting behind his desk. In contrast with Favieros, he was wearing a suit and tie. I don’t know if he was in fact as able a politician as his colleagues had made out, but to me he looked more like a bank manager than a politician.
Yannis Kourtis, the reporter, with thick white hair and beard, was sitting facing him. They rarely sent him out on interviews, only in special cases, because, although he looked like Santa Claus, he was their heavy artillery.
‘But don’t you find all this perhaps too progressive for the situation in Greece?’ he asked Stefanakos.
‘What exactly, Mr Kourtis?’
‘Your wanting to introduce the language of Albanian refugees into the schools in the areas where Albanians live, or saying that they should set up cultural associations, funded by the state, so that they can maintain their cultural identity. You’ll not only have the church and the nationalists up in arms, but even ordinary citizens who aren’t necessarily hostile to the refugees but believe that there are certain limits to how far one should go.’
‘Unless we follow this twin course of incorporating the refugees into Greek society together with allowing them to maintain their national identity, unless the refugees become Greek citizens with Albanian, Bulgarian or Russo-Pontian descent, we will find ourselves facing much more serious problems in a few years’ time. We’re deluded if we think that we can solve the problem just by issuing them with green cards.’
‘May I remind you, Mr Stefanakos, that the same view was held by Jason Favieros, who employed numerous foreign workers on his construction sites. Following his suicide, a nationalistic organisation claimed that it had forced him into suicide. I’m not saying that the claim is true, but, at least officially, it hasn’t yet been disproved.’
‘Jason Favieros was right,’ replied Stefanakos without any hesitation. ‘One moment and I’ll prove it to you.’