When it’s hot in Halandri, it’s sweltering in Ambelokipi. And when it’s sweltering in Ambelokipi, it’s boiling in Acharnon. And when it’s boiling in Acharnon, it’s sizzling in Dekeleias Street. I left the boiling pot of Acharnon and turned into the frying pan of Dekeleias Street. As I drove up it, I had the impression that the asphalt, the concrete and the glass were all emitting red-hot lava that was burning my face. A few ladies and several pensioners were sitting under the umbrellas at Kanakis’s and were gazing languorously at the orange juice or ice cream before them, barely able to reach out and pick it up.
I stopped at the first kiosk and bought a bottle of water that I downed in one go to clear my parched throat. I prayed that Zissis wouldn’t have finished watering his plants that morning so that I’d be able to cool down under the hose.
I must have arrived about a minute too late as the cement in the yard was still wet and steaming. Zissis was sitting upstairs, in the doorway, half inside the house and half outside on the balcony, drinking his coffee. He saw me coming but continued drinking his coffee as though he hadn’t seen me, either because he didn’t want to notice me or because I wasn’t particularly noteworthy. I would discover that as soon as I saw the expression on his face when I had him before me. I slowly climbed the steps leading up to his place, holding the plastic bag in my hands.
‘I need to pick your brains.’
We had dispensed with the usual ‘good mornings’ and ‘welcomes’. Sometimes months passed when we didn’t see each other, yet it was as if we were going in and out of each other’s house all day long. He got up without saying a word and went inside. I watched him going into the kitchen and I sat on one of the two old wooden chairs that, together with the café-style table, constituted his furniture. In less than five minutes, he was back with my coffee, which he put, still not saying a word, in front of me on the table.
I suddenly had a vision of how things would be if I didn’t have Adriani and Katerina. Every day, we’d sit together, two miserable old men, and make coffee for each other that we’d drink in silence. It would be the first copper-commie cooperative in the history of the world. I went along with his game and, without saying a word, I took the red Che Guevara T-shirt out of the plastic bag and handed it to him. He took it, looked at it carefully on both sides, and said slowly:
‘What is it, a gift for me for the summer?’
‘It’s a gift for me. It was sent to me by Minas Logaras, the one who wrote the biographies on Favieros and Stefanakos.’
I began telling him about all the similarities in the circumstances of the three suicides, and also in the biographies of the three men. I explained how Logaras had sent the third biography to my home, just before Vakartzis’s suicide.
‘Do you see what I’m telling you? First the biography and now this. He’s playing games with me and now he’s sending me messages. That’s why I’ve come to you. Maybe you can help me discover what it is he’s trying to tell me.’
He again examined the T-shirt, turned it inside out, but didn’t seem to come up with anything. ‘One of those T-shirts that you can find anywhere and that make a mockery of Che,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘So what’s he trying to tell you?’
‘There was another gift too.’ I took out the CD and handed it to him. ‘Perhaps together they might make more sense.’
He took hold of the CD and went over to the stereo system on the edge of his huge bookcase. Despite the stifling heat, I felt overcome with excitement. What was I expecting to hear? Perhaps a recorded message from Logaras explaining why he was doing all this or why he had obliged the three men to commit suicide, or some challenge, perhaps, in the form of a game, or even some ironic remarks. Instead, I heard a Latin American song with guitar accompaniment. It was pleasant enough, but it didn’t solve the mystery for me; on the contrary, it only deepened it. A Che Guevara T-shirt and a Latin American song, with the usual guitar accompaniment. What could they mean? And what connection could Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis possibly have with Latin America? So far, I hadn’t found the slightest shred of evidence that might connect them in any way. Consequently, it must have been something else that Logaras was trying to tell me, or perhaps he wanted to turn my attention elsewhere. But where?
I was awakened from my thoughts by the sound of Zissis’s voice. There he was, an old man, bald and stubbly, with half his teeth missing, holding a cigarette between his yellowed fingers, singing a Latin American song in a loud voice, while the tears ran down his cheeks. I got the impression that he was singing with a slight Vlach accent, but I wouldn’t swear on it because I didn’t understand a word. I couldn’t understand the song or why Zissis was crying, or anything for that matter. All I managed to catch were the words ‘Commandante Che Guevara’ every so often. It was the only phrase connecting the song with the T-shirt.
I waited for the song to end in the hope that some explanation or message would be forthcoming, but all that followed was silence. There was nothing else on the CD. Zissis had fallen silent, too. His eyes were still filled with tears. I’ve said it before, I’m not very good at expressing my feelings. That’s why I preferred to fast-forward and come straight to the point.
‘Make anything of it?’ I asked him.
He got up without saying anything and went out of the room. I suspected that something had flashed through his mind, but I knew I would have to be patient and go along at his pace. Before long he came back holding a small card covered in scribbles. Because I had seen cards like that before at his house, I knew that it was from his secret archive and I waited.
‘Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis claimed that, politically, they belonged to the left but that they were not members of any particular leftist party.’ He stopped and twisted the card in his fingers. ‘But they were only telling half the truth. It’s true they didn’t belong to any party, but they were members of a group.’
‘Which group?’
‘A group that called itself the Che Independent Resistance Organisation. When you gave me the T-shirt I didn’t think of that straightaway, but the song brought it back to me.’ He heaved a sigh and said, as though to himself: ‘Songs always take you back. They did then and they do now.’
I understood what he meant, but I preferred not to make any comment. I let him go at his own pace, even though I was sitting on hot coals.
‘Don’t imagine it as being any big or important group. At most it had about ten members. But they believed in armed resistance. Not that they ruled out other kinds of struggle: gatherings, occupations, demonstrations. But they believed that in order for all these to be more effective, they had to be backed by armed resistance. I don’t know whether they ever actually planted bombs or whether they remained at the planning stage, like lots of groups did then. At some stage, the Military Police announced that they had broken up the “Che” ring of terrorist bombers. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they had actually planted any bombs. In those days they arrested you on suspicion, and then they tortured you until you confessed what they wanted to hear.’ He paused and added meaningfully: ‘You of all people should know that.’
Whenever he came out with a dig about my police careeer, I automatically defended myself.
‘I didn’t have anything to do with the Military Police,’ I said coldly.
‘You don’t have to tell me that! Neither did I. It was your lot on the Force that I had to do with! Do you want me to show you how they left my body? It’s all your lot’s work!’
I fell silent and waited for the storm to pass. I knew that if I aggravated him, the conversation would take a different course and I still hadn’t got what I wanted out of him. And, true enough, after a few moments, his tone changed and calmly he said to me: ‘I’m talking about your predecessors. I don’t put you in that category.’
He said that because when he had been locked up in the cells in Bouboulinas Street, and I was just beginning my career then as a guard, I used to let him out of his cell late at night to stretch his legs or have a smoke and warm his clothes on the radiator after he’d been left fully clothed in cold water for hours.
‘Do you know who else was in the group?’ I asked to bring the conversation back to the topic that interested me.
‘I know of three, but there may have been more.’ He gazed at his card. ‘Stellios Dimou, Anestis Tellopoulos and Vassos Zikas. But I can’t tell you where they are, or whether they’re alive or dead.’
I took out my little ringed notebook and noted down the names.
‘The only one of them who’s dead for sure is the organisation’s mastermind,’ Zissis went on. ‘He must have started it on his own initiative and then recruited the others. It seems the Military Police thought the same way too, as he was tortured more than the others. The younger ones called him “uncle” because when the Junta came to power in ’67, he must have already been about forty-five. In other words, around twenty-five years older than they were. After the fall of the Junta, he disappeared and nothing was ever heard of him again. About a year ago, I learned quite by chance that he’d died.’
‘Give me his name so I can note it down with the others.’
‘Thanos Yannelis’
I clutched at my notebook to stop it falling from my hands. What connection might there have been between Thanos Yannelis and Coralia Yannelis? Was it simply a coincidence? If Yannelis had still been alive, he would have been over seventy-five. So Coralia couldn’t be his sister. Perhaps she was his daughter?
‘Do you know whether Yannelis had a daughter?’
‘You never stop, do you!’ he shouted, indignantly. ‘You’re not satisfied with the information I give you, now you want his family tree. No, I’ve no idea whether he had any kids, or any pets for that matter!’
I suddenly remembered all the women in their fifties who worked at Favieros’s companies and something that I’d said to Koula: that Favieros had known them all from his years in the resistance and that’s why he had hired them. If Coralia Yannelis belonged to that category, then it was certain that she was related in some way to Thanos Yannelis.
As I was getting up to leave, he threw the T-shirt to me. ‘Take it, I don’t want it,’ he said. ‘But is it all right if I keep the song?’
‘Keep it, if you want.’ Besides, it wasn’t as if it were evidence in a murder enquiry.
‘Thanks, Lambros,’ I said, while putting the T-shirt back into the plastic bag. ‘I know you can’t stomach coppers, but you’re always a big help to me and I’m grateful.’
He avoided having to answer by lighting up a cigarette. When I was out on the balcony, however, I heard him say behind me: ‘Ah, you coppers. We used to despise all your people when they had money to burn. Now our people have turned the revolution into T-shirts. And everybody’s profited.’