Lambros Zissis lived on Ekavis Street in Nea Philadelphia. If you set off around one o'clock, as I did, you need at least an hour and a half to get down from Galatsiou Avenue to Patission Street, to come out onto Acharnon Street, and, from Treis Yephyres, to get onto Dekelias Avenue. Ekavis Street lies in a fork, between Dekelias Avenue and Pindou Street, and runs parallel to lokastis Street. Hecuba and Jocasta, two fallen queens. It was as if they'd put them together to tell of their sufferings and console one another.
I'd met Zissis at security headquarters on Bouboulinas Street in '71 when I was a cell guard. Kostaras had always insisted that we be present at the interrogations, supposedly so that-greenhorns that we were-we might learn something, or so he said. Deep down, he didn't give a damn about our "training." It was simply that he prided himself that there was no one he couldn't break, and to prove it he set up a whole show at which we greenhorns were the audience.
But in Zissis, he found his master. Zissis had begun his career in the dungeons of the SS on Merlin Street, had gone on to the Haidari prison, had taken his diploma in the detention camp on the island of Makronissos, and was as tough as they came. He sat staring Kostaras straight in the eye, and never opened his mouth. Kostaras was fuming. He tried all his advanced technology on Zissis: beatings, bastinado, fake executions. He'd let him soak for hours in his clothes in a barrel of freezing water, take him up to the roof above Bouboulinas Street and threaten to throw him off; he even tried electroshock, but all he managed to get out of Zissis were his screams of pain. He never uttered so much as a word. Whenever I took him back to his cell, I'd have to hold him under the arms and drag him because it was impossible for him to stand on his own feet.
At first, I'd taken him for a plucky but misguided lunatic who would break sooner or later. But while it lasted, I began making bets with myself to pass the time, given that I was obliged to sit in silence and witness the whole spectacle. It was as if I had placed a bet that Zissis wouldn't break. Perhaps that bet was how we came to know each other. They had him in strict isolation and wouldn't even let him go to pee. During the night shift, when I was alone in the cells, I'd let him out of his cell to get a bit of air and stretch his legs. I'd give him a cigarette, and if Kostaras had had him in the barrel, I'd let him lean against the radiator to let it soak up a little of the dampness. Whenever I heard footsteps, I'd lock him back into his cell. I told myself I was doing it so that he'd keep up his strength and I'd win my bet. When I took him to empty the slop pail and he spilled it because he didn't have the strength to lift it, or when I dragged him back to his cell after an interrogation, I'd give him the odd backhander in front of the others so they wouldn't think I was being soft on a commie. That way I'd get in trouble. I never explained to him why I did it, nor did he ever thank me. Afterward, they took him on a stretcher to the Averof prison and I lost touch with him.
I met him again, completely by chance, in the corridors of the security headquarters in '82. His hair had turned white, his face was covered in wrinkles, and he was walking with a stoop. But the look in his eyes still inspired you to bet on him. We stood there staring at each other in silence. We both felt embarrassed. Neither of us dared make the first step. Suddenly, Zissis held out his hand to me and, shaking mine, said: "You're okay, man. Too bad when you became a policeman."
I don't know what I was thinking. I said: "Would you let a policeman buy you a coffee?" I was sure he'd say no, but he laughed. "Let's have one, now that we commies are legal and you fascists are all democrats," he said. "Who knows what'll happen tomorrow." Over coffee, he told me he'd come to the security headquarters because he needed a certificate to enable him to draw the pension given to members of the resistance, but he was being messed around. I undertook to take care of it for him. It was then that he told me he lived in his family house on Ekavis Street in Nea Philadelphia.
At that time I was on the drugs squad and had begun to learn my broken English. One day, we got a call from the police station in Nea Philadelphia. They had information that a house on Medeas Street was a hideaway for illicit drug dealing, and they asked us to investigate. The chief sent me so that they could fill me in. Zissis's certificate had been issued in the meantime, and, as I'd be in the area, I thought of letting him know he could come and pick it up. It wasn't just to do him a favor. I hoped he could give me some information about the area.
He lived in one of those houses built without planning permission that were added to the town plan just before the general elections. The small front yard was filled with cutoff oil cans, painted in various colors, containing geraniums, carnations, lemon plants, and begonias. He welcomed me without much enthusiasm, though he offered to make me a coffee.
"You didn't have to go to so much trouble over the certificate," he told me. "I would have called you."
When I explained to him why I'd come, he shot me a scornful glance and shook his head fatalistically. "Ah, you people will never change. You're always chasing after the last spoke in the wheel. Harmanis is the man you want."
The Harmanis in question had a motorbike business that he used as a front for pushing drugs. Everyone knew it, even the police at the local station, but he was a former army officer and had friends in high places. I was surprised that Zissis knew all this.
"As long as I can remember, you've been keeping tabs on me," he laughed. "Now, I've decided to keep tabs on a few of your people. Just to get some of my own back. Who knows, in the future I might write a book on all these sharks and need the information on them." And he smiled wryly.
But when I asked him to show me his files, he grew serious. "I'm not even going to even tell you where they are. I wouldn't put it past you to confiscate them."
As for Harmanis, what he told me proved to be true. We nabbed him, and it was one of our biggest successes in all the time I was in the drugs squad. Later, after we grew closer, Zissis came to trust me and showed me his files. I was flabbergasted. Compared to him, we were in complete darkness. This guy had files on around five hundred people, some of them well known, some I'd never heard of. It seemed that for years he'd been collecting information, bit by bit, like an ant. From then on, whenever I was stuck in any investigation that was connected with dirty money, I'd go to him. It was a relationship that no one but the two of us knew about. Of course, that didn't stop him from complaining or being difficult every time I asked him for information.
That's how it was in this case. We sat facing each other across the table with our coffee. His house was strangely decorated, as if he'd brought the balcony into the living room. Four folding canvas chairs and a small, folding metal table, like the ones in the old-style cafes. The only other piece of furniture in the room was an enormous bookcase all across the wall behind him, with bricks for its base and planks for the shelves. It was filled with books, stacked upright or flat, right up to the ceiling.
"They've hounded you your whole life, and now you're living on a measly resistance pension. Where did you find the money to buy all those books?" I asked him. The question had been nagging me for a long time.
He chuckled. "Wake up, you silly copper. The bookshops are there so that we can steal from them," he said proudly.
"So you steal? You?"
"In a capitalist society, you either have to pay for knowledge or steal it. There's no other way."
I was about to inform him that education in Greece was free, but then I suddenly remembered how much Katerina's studies in Thessaloniki were costing me and I kept my mouth shut.
Zissis said: "You haven't come to talk about my books, you're here for some other reason. You want something from me again."
As he'd brought it up, I'd no reason to hide it. "Pylarinos," I said. "Christos Pylarinos. Does that name mean anything to you?"
"Why do you come to me?" he said, annoyed. "Why the hell did I have to go and tell you about the files I keep for personal use. You have your own files, you have the Security Service-"
"Information Agency," I interrupted. "That's what it's called now. The Information Agency."
"All right, Information Agency. Same difference… What business is it of mine? I'm not one of your agents and I'm not a squealer that you can blackmail into giving you information."
"He's a former leftist," I said undeterred, because each time we dug up the same skeletons and rattled the same bones. "Like you."
"I know who he is," he replied in a disdainful tone, though I couldn't tell if the disdain was directed at me or at Pylarinos. "Except that I'm not a former leftist, I'm just retired."
"But he is a former leftist. Because now he's gone over to the other side. In the last fifteen years, he's made barrels of money. And money that comes so easily is usually dirty money."
I saw him break into that wry smile of his, the one he produced when he knew he was going to come out on top. "When was it you graduated from the academy?"
"Sixty-eight."
He shook his head. "They taught you to hate all leftists, to hunt them down like bandits. They told you that they'd make commies of you all… But what they didn't teach you is how leftists think, what methods they use, what tricks they devise. You know nothing about all that"
He remained silent, thinking. I knew him now, and I knew he was deciding what to tell me and what to keep from me.
"Pylarinos is a swine who's brought a lot of people down. But dirty money is like fire to him and he's too clever to touch it. He's involved in other rackets."
We stared at each other. That had stayed with us since Bouboulinas Street. When I gave him a few backhanders in front of the others, we'd exchange a conspiratorial look because we knew that that was the way it had to be if we were going to have our heads free of worry. The same thing was happening now. In the past I wouldn't explain anything. Now he was the one who wouldn't explain; he waited for me to understand.
"Have you heard of Yanna Karayoryi?"
"That she was murdered? I read it in the papers"
"It's quite possible that Pylarinos was somehow involved in her murder."
"And why have you come to me?" he said, annoyed at my persistence. "You have a whole intelligence agency. Start looking if you want to get to the bottom of it."
"If I had something concrete, I could take out a warrant for his arrest. But I don't and I can't start investigating him because I'll have all the bigwigs on my back, from the chief of security to the minister, and my hands will be tied."
"You can be sure of that," he said with a sudden outburst of sincerity. He let out a deep sigh and shook his head. "I never believed that we'd get into power. But if you'd told me when we first met that I was rotting in the cells so that Pylarinos's kind could get rich, I'd have spit in your face."
"Karayoryi had a huge file on him. That's what put a flea in my ear. She was evidently investigating him for some shady business, but she didn't find any incriminating evidence. The only explanation is that he's involved in illegal dealings. That's why I came to you."
He looked at me for a while, but now there was a glint in his eye. Illegal dealings had become second nature to him, and as soon as he heard the magic words, he was ready to go to work.
"Look what you're doing to me," he said. "I was about to paint the house because the damp is killing me. Now I'm going to have to leave it and start rushing around."
I got up. "When shall I call for an update?"
"I'll call you."
"You still don't have a phone? I can understand you not wanting a TV, but a phone?"
"Don't get me started. I've been waiting two years for one. And I need one. The way that your buddies have screwed me, if anything were to happen to me, the neighbors would find me from the stench."
I looked at him in silence. What could I say? But he read my look and was annoyed because he didn't like to be pitied. He made a joke of it.
"Look at me," he said. "Investigating former leftists. If I were a businessman, at least I could say that I was expanding my activities."
Outside, a raging wind blew and the drizzle had turned into sleet. The wind had blown over the lemon plant. I stooped to pick it up. Only ten days before we'd been under a sweltering heat, and now we were shivering with the cold. God-awful weather.