K. M., SECRETARY IN A POLITICAL OFFICE, MINISTER’S RIGHT HAND
I was good at my job. Everyone knew it, even my enemies. I accomplished things and left a good name behind. That was a different era, full of moral imperatives; our decisions affected people’s lives. At Christmas and Easter when I went back to the village everyone wanted to shake my hand. They would stand in a line, each with a gift and a good word. And each with a favor to ask. They were proud that their village had a man in the middle of things. I found people jobs, I attended their baptisms and weddings. I knew exactly how many votes my party could count on, how many each head of household controlled. I took care of the large families and they responded in kind.
I remember when they came to me about Stergios, they wanted me to make him a priest. But the church didn’t want him, his record wasn’t clean, he had some small-time theft on his record, and contempt for the law. The bishop had dug in his heels and was refusing to sign. Stergios’s uncle had eighty votes in his pocket, it was a big family, with plenty of kids and cousins.
— What you’re asking of me isn’t easy, I said, trying to lower his expectations.
— If it was easy, we’d do it ourselves. The kid is a bad apple, you can see for yourself, he’s not cut out for working. So we figured we’d make him a priest. He’ll have his salary, we can find him a wife. His mother wants him to be a teacher, but the boy never took to books. So a priest it is, and we’ll wash our hands of it.
The bishop acquiesced, but he wanted something in return: I had to find a place for one of his men in the gendarmerie. That’s how things happened in those days, you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Our ties were built with actions, not promises.
The minister signed off on it. He had more important things on his mind, was holding evening meetings with people in high places, while we did the dirty work.
That year things at the office were a mess. Foreigners had gotten involved in our affairs and the job was all telephone calls, paperwork, and visits. The case was of the utmost importance, the Minister informed us; there were national issues at stake. His superiors were constantly reminding him that how he handled the situation would determine not only the future of American aid to our country, but also his own career.
The Americans made statements to the press: The nation of Greece will be judged according to how its government handles this case. They’d lit a fire under our behinds, and we needed to find a solution.
The ministers were all at war with one another. No one wanted to be left holding the bag. Each of the suspects had his protector. They drove us crazy with phone calls.
They wouldn’t let Tzitzilis do his job. In the end, though, a suitable solution was found. Tzitzilis should be commended for keeping them all out of the mud.
The case was closed honorably and conscientiously; stamps and signatures rained down from above.
THROUGH OTHER EYES
It wasn’t long before a second-rate American reporter conducted the much-desired interview with the rebel chief. The American listened to his harangue, jotting things down in his notebook. The rebel fighters hadn’t eaten in days, their bodies were emaciated. Yet their eyes still gleamed, the reporter noted. They were nourished by privation and their faith in a common goal. The only problem is, you can’t eat faith, the reporter later commented to his editor. It’s faith that swallows your conscience and good intentions.
The General had a script ready in his head and was determined to say his piece. We’re strong, we will prevail. Truman had tricked the Americans, he said, into aiding the fascists. He repeatedly maligned the President and his underlings in the Oval Office, but made it clear that, in his view, good Americans had no part in these goings-on. And if they were to rebuild their country, the Greeks were in dire need of aid.
The General saw the reporter not for what he was — the representative of a small, regional radio station, a powerless nobody who was simply doing the dirty work assigned to him — but as a chosen representative of the entire American people. We’re ready to stop the Civil War, the General told him, and begin negotiations with anyone. Under one condition: that the members of the Greek government be recognized as the criminals they are.
The American was of course not the proper individual to respond, but he couldn’t restrain himself. He smiled, as much as his good manners would allow, and noted laconically: That’s one way of seeing things.
The General wasn’t fated to be in power long; the Party soon decided to depose him. He was packed off to the Eastern block to be crushed by the Iron Curtain. His old comrades rushed to renounce him, so as not to worry that they might be next. The methods were tried and true, the procedures straightforward — and the General’s name immediately lost its glory. His successor, who had orchestrated the General’s removal, was soon paid in the same coin. They erased him from the official books, too, tossed him into the mire and sent him packing. Others came to fill his shoes. They may have been no better than the rest, but they watched their backs more carefully and kept things in balance.
In the meantime, the interrogations regarding the murder of Talas continued. The absence of forensic evidence left almost everything to conjecture. Tzitzilis and his men tailored the findings to their needs — only their needs kept changing with the circumstances, so that the case skittered this way and that like mercury on the marble floors of the government ministries. Solutions were settled upon in secret, on the basis of phone calls from on high and pressures from all sides.
The foreigners kept expressing their desire for the investigation to follow a particular path. That bothered the Greeks, particularly Tzitzilis, who was used to being left to his own devices. His instincts were never wrong, as everyone in Greece knew. But the foreigners insisted on getting regular reports.
Tzitzilis wasn’t cowed. Those sons of bitches would get what they wanted; his main goal was to close the case. He handed over a file of scattered materials, in a royal mess, as its receivers commented. The case finally reached the courts with sufficient evidence — massaged behind closed doors into proof — though also with plenty of holes that were only filled in during the course of the trial.
The General of the Greek rebel fighters fairly quickly found shelter in the Soviet Union. Forty years later, in an interview about an unrelated issue, a young, ambitious reporter asked him about the Gris case.
The General had recently returned to his native land. He had agreed — without much thought, some judged — to run for office on the ballot of the ruling party. His old comrades were appalled, but the General believed he was doing the right thing in giving his support to the prime minister who would change the country.
In the context of a national reconciliation, he was photographed with his adversary from the Civil War. The old enemies shook hands, but the photographers weren’t satisfied, and so they embraced. Flashbulbs popped. It’s all an issue of symbolism, the prime minister had stressed when arranging this meeting. The old Greece, riddled by divisions of all sorts, has to be forgotten. What this country needs is change.
The General understood the need for old hatreds to be buried with the dead. He smiled when his old enemy pronounced into the microphones that the General had been his most worthy opponent. But he refused to make peace with the former head of the Communist Party, the one who had kicked him out of Greece. Bastard, he called him, opportunist. The reporters were pleased to get a front-page story out of it.