The Scapegoat Read online

  —His mule of a wife comes and goes without a care in the world, people at the hotel whispered behind my back.

  I asked them to heat water, so the bath would be ready when he came back. I left him a note and went out for a walk in the town, to buy ribbon for a hem. Make sure to shave, honey, so your whiskers don’t tickle me. I miss you. Zouzou.

  That was his pet name for me, Zouzou. He would purse his lips and say it playfully. Zouzou, will you pour me some whiskey? Zouzou, what did you do with my newspaper? Zouzou, want me to teach you to dance jazz? He thought it was funny that I knew how to waltz but couldn’t dance jazz. He was a wonderful dancer. He could dance for hours on end. He would pull me onto the dance floor, hold me in his arms, and I’d let myself go.

  —Listen to the rhythm, he would whisper in my ear. With this kind of music, all the dancing happens below the waist. You’re from the East, you know how it goes.

  He would slip his hand under my skirt so casually that no one even noticed.

  —He’s handsome, your husband, Antrikos’s wife said to me one afternoon when we were getting snacks ready in the kitchen.

  I liked it when other people admired him. I didn’t even mind all the crazy things he did, the fire in his belly. I preferred him that way, it was better than him clinging to my skirts. A husband should be the master of his house, my mother said. And a wife should know how to manage him, she would continue, embroidering dishtowels for my dowry. Marriage takes work, little miss, she lectured me when I was a girl. She taught me the rules, her rules. First, always be attentive. Second, learn how to pamper. Third, provide beauty in the home and in your dress. Fourth, housekeepers and maids should be good, obedient, and fat. If I asked why they should be fat, she would shake her head. Because a fat woman knows how to cook, my dear. And she’ll never set a house on fire, she would continue, though she never explained what she meant by that. Five, tell the truth to the priest, not to your husband. Six, separate bedrooms save a woman’s sleep and her marriage, too. Seven, a husband should love and care for his children. Eight, your nightgowns should be even finer than your dresses. Nine, always be a lady, except in bed. Ten, marriage is a career. It takes persistence, endurance and dedication.

  Those are the things my mother taught me. If she could, she would have opened my little girl’s brain and shoved it all in. The first time she met Jack, she gave him her hand and smiled. That night she pumped me for information. Where he lived in America, who was paying him now that he was working in Greece, if he’d ever behaved improperly with me, since she’d heard that Americans have no manners. She wasn’t too keen on the fact that he didn’t speak French. How would she tell him everything she needed him to know?

  Because my beanpole, as she called him, would be taking me far from the war. We would go to live in New York. The houses there didn’t have bullet holes, as they did in Athens. The shelves in the markets were full of canned vegetables and colorful candies. We would buy a car. I would meet important people. I would wear nylon slips. I would live well.

  What mattered was that I leave as soon as I could. My passport had been issued. There was nothing standing in the way. Life had been kind to us.

  ARIS TSIRIGOS, ENGLISH TEACHER TO MANOLIS GRIS

  He was a good student. Diligent, conscientious. He took care with his homework. At recess he didn’t run around in the courtyard with the other kids, he just sat and watched. He liked difficult words, the ones he thought would impress people. But he didn’t know how to use them properly. When I corrected his papers I always encouraged him to write more simply, but he kept going for the big words.

  He tried hard to imitate an American accent. Language requires a good ear, it’s a kind of music. I tried to explain that to those hulking teenagers, but they paid no attention. Except for Gris. He tried, he studied. He worked hard. But he never excelled. He didn’t have a good ear. He couldn’t hear the words. A clean pronunciation, basic syntax—that’s as far as he got.

  To be fair, he did improve. He was one of few students who actually improved over the years. He works like the devil, I once said at a faculty meeting, and my fellow teachers laughed. It had gotten to where I was no longer covering his papers with red ink. His English no longer had any mistakes. But his writing was still obviously that of a foreigner, someone who would never grasp the subtle resonances, the cadence of a phrase, the way an idiom can explain everything in just a few words.

  He knew that speaking English would open doors for him. That’s why he improved. He didn’t make any embarrassing mistakes, but he also never expressed exactly what was in his mind with the precision of a native speaker. He simply didn’t have the vocabulary.

  He always picked up his report card himself. I only saw his mother once: standing respectfully in the door of the teachers’ office, not wanting to disturb us, since we all seemed to be busy. She was waiting for someone to look her way, to muster the courage she needed to open her mouth. The headmaster had sent for her. She left her younger ones at the entrance to the school, she must have given them strict instructions, because they stood there stock still for a long time—the guard even commented on it, said he’d never seen such obedient children. Manolis Gris’s mother was wearing black, a widow, we all thought. Her clothes were ragged from use and from washing. The literature teacher whispered her enthusiastic praise of the velvet braid on the hem and cuffs of the woman’s dress, how lovely, she whispered to the man next to her, with one tiny detail, she’s made that dress fashionable. But what most of us were really admiring was her hair. Glossy and as black as a winter night. She had gathered it into a bun, but little wisps escaped from the hairpins and fell unnoticed at the nape of her neck and at her temples. She must have come at a run. Some of us raised our hands almost imperceptibly. We would happily have reached out to touch that hair. We had frozen in our seats; bent over our papers, we stole glimpses at her. After all, we were the child’s teachers, responsible for his education.

  Then I suddenly remembered that Gris had misbehaved, and realized that was why his widowed mother had come running, and why the headmaster had sent for her in the first place. When I entered the classroom for third period that morning, the upper jamb of the door was missing, as we later noted in the disciplinary proceedings. Holes gaped where the nails had been, and the piece of wood that had been pulled out was laid carefully to one side.

  —Who did this?

  I had two troublemakers in mind. Worse than troublemakers, pigs.

  Gris raised his hand.

  —I did, sir.

  He had hung from it for a game, don’t ask me why or how he got himself up there. He, a kid you’d never even notice, had pulled down the entire top of the doorframe with one motion. And he had the courage to admit it in front of the entire class.

  I took him to the headmaster’s office. He was quaking. I was careful to present the situation in a neutral manner. It was a tricky situation, since it wouldn’t do to sully the child’s record because of a single mistake.

  —Punish them, don’t crush them, the headmaster had told us during our last faculty meeting. We want to graduate men from this school, not hens.

  Until that moment, Gris had been more or less invisible. A good kid, a good student. Diligent but unremarkable. The kind of student who continues to greet you politely in the street for years, but whose name you can never remember. The headmaster had already been informed of the incident. He listened patiently to my account of the events, then turned to Gris.

  —Is he telling the truth? he asked the student.

  —I did it, sir, I hung from the doorframe, I was only playing, I didn’t think it would come loose so easily, the child answered in a single breath.

  That same day, Gris’s mother was called to the school. The headmaster punished the child—it was impossible not to—but he didn’t touch his scholarship. He accompanied the widow to the gate, and gave the other children candies, a poor reward for their excellent behavior.

  One thing I realized tha
t day was that Gris’s mother, a woman who seemed as fragile as porcelain, could withstand fire and rain. She wouldn’t allow a headmaster, who’d spent his life ordering others around from behind a desk, to decide the fate of her son.

  When Gris asked me for a reference letter, I wrote him one, something I rarely agreed to do. I testified to his perfect knowledge of English, though I knew he was hopeless when it came to idiomatic language. His writing was unrepentantly functional; he was going to be a journalist, he informed me proudly. So I put my hand to my heart and signed the letter. As far as a news service was concerned, he would manage. He knew how to put a sentence together, and he would work like a dog to do the job well.

  And he did. Every so often I would come across one of his articles. He would write for anyone, from communists to Germans, so long as he got paid. I couldn’t blame him: as his mother used to say, words come easily to people whose bellies are full. Gris was careful to provide actual information, rather than pepper his texts with the pretty but empty phrases so many journalists seem fond of. He nurtured his sentences as if they were plants, trimmed them, fertilized them. The poor things still came out colorless, miserable, weak, and his attempts to improve them only made them worse.

  But a reporter isn’t judged by the pulse of his phrases. That’s for dilly-dallying poets, or so most people think. Philistines. I never shared their opinion. They supposedly care only about the news itself. But they also love bright, shiny words. Popular phrases are their greatest weakness. In his later writings, Gris didn’t stitch phrases together merely to impress the ignorant. He crafted the joints of a paragraph, made sure his sentences followed one another logically and consistently.

  When disaster befell him, the city buzzed with the news. People are naïve. They’ll believe whatever they read, rather than trust their own opinion. Gris desperately needed character witnesses. Individuals who had known him since he was a child, reasonable citizens with unsullied names who would put their hands on a Bible for him. Who would, moreover, allow their names to be associated with his in the papers.

  At certain times, little things assume significance. The headmaster refused to come forward in Gris’s defense. He used the school as his excuse: he didn’t want its name to be dragged through the mud. What would the students say, not to mention their fathers? He was truly sorry, but he simply couldn’t do it. I suspect he slept easily after that. He didn’t second-guess his decision, he dressed it up, supported it, and that was that.

  The truth was, he was shitting himself with fear.

  Gris asked for my help from behind bars. His sister came and found me at home. She didn’t cry, didn’t fall at my feet. She asked calmly, resignedly, already convinced I would refuse. She’d already been to see everyone else: colleagues, employers, old classmates. Neighbors, other teachers, the headmaster. By that point she knew what to expect.

  I always try not to act rashly. Spontaneity is for Shakespearean plots, not for real life, and when the situation calls for it, I can usually distinguish between the two. I’m fairly certain even Shakespeare wrote with a cold, calm hand, even as he tossed his characters into the fire. I told Gris’s sister that I wanted to weigh things before making a decision.

  Sleep is a good advisor in difficult moments. By the next morning I had made up my mind. Gris’s sister kissed my hand as if I were a priest.

  I’m no saint. But whatever the newspapers said, I did know Gris. During the trial they asked if I had children of my own.

  —Of course, I answered. Two hundred each year. Does that suffice?

  Some in the audience laughed; the papers quoted me in their coverage of the trial. For me the issue is simple. I teach Shakespeare. Literature is my life. For years in my classroom I’d been telling generations of young, impressionable students that words are actions. The time had come for me to prove it. I put my hand on the Bible and swore. If the opinion of a teacher who’s paid to tame souls counts for anything, Gris never raised a gun.

  THROUGH OTHER EYES

  On May 16, 1948, a few hours after the body of the American journalist was pulled from the sea, the prime minister of Greece anxiously stated that he had personally ordered the police force of the entire country to take action regarding this affair.

  The police realized right away that it was no time to drag their heels, no time for excuses or sloppiness. It was a matter of pride for the force.

  Politicians and various people of influence asked to be kept abreast of developments. Some even called the office of the head of the General Security Police in Salonica to exert pressure. To make matters worse, the American government, whose forces were distributing food and promises throughout Greece, was demanding that an example be made of the murderer. They went so far as to give the prime minister a deadline. In other words, the Americans didn’t believe the assurances of the Greek authorities, and issued an ultimatum.

  Which is to say, no more dollars or napalm.

  No more convincing argument was needed; the Minister of Justice assumed personal responsibility for the case. With an administration susceptible to compromise and unwilling to stand its ground, the nation’s protectors hurriedly manned all posts in an attempt to push the investigation forward.

  Foreign policy isn’t a job for priests, commented those in high places, who knew how difficult it could be to keep your hands clean if you wanted to get results. Anyone who thinks otherwise is just naïve, they added cynically. Words come easily to those whose hands have never been held to the fire. Greece needed money, munitions, tanks. The war had ended everywhere else—but not here.

  Jack wasn’t just any foreign correspondent, which would have been bad enough. He also came from a historic and wealthy family, from old money—to the extent that there is such a thing in America. The eleventh president of the United States of America occupied an important position in his family tree. Jack had plenty of journalistic successes on his résumé, as well as a badge of honor from his days in the Navy. In Palestine he had almost killed an Arab who dared throw a punch at him. In 1947 his airplane had crashed while he was on duty in the Middle East. The nurse who tended to his wounds saw a tall, thin man smiling at her through the blood.

  —There’s no way I’m going to die, I’ve got a fellowship at Harvard, I have to get home, he whispered.

  The nurse had seen people die of less severe wounds, but the young man wouldn’t give up. He’d decided to live, so he lived.

  And now his swollen corpse had turned an entire country upside-down. The head of the Security Police in Salonica, Thomas Tzitzilis, under whose jurisdiction the case fell, was widely praised for his work, and was considered able and sharp-witted. He was a pious citizen who took communion regularly. He crossed himself in public, always bought the most expensive candle to light at church, and took care of the poor and the weak, especially if someone else was watching. He was on good terms with God—and even better terms with the devil, his enemies claimed. A rabid anti-communist, he had served in the city of his birth for all the years he was in the police force. He knew all the side streets and back alleys, he knew which witnesses would be most willing to talk, he knew everyone’s weak spots. He was on a first-name basis with men in high places but had ties to the underworld, too, and particularly its nightlife. Perhaps that was why some suggested that a case of such international significance wasn’t for the likes of him, that he was too much the uncouth boor who knew, to be sure, how to make a man scream, but hadn’t learned the art of subtlety or circuitousness.

  Of course the American reporter had gone too far, had dug his own grave, as many hinted but no one dared say outright. Before he came up to Salonica Talas paid a visit to Rimaris, the Minister of the Interior, and threatened him to his face. It was as clear as day, in fact he had proof, that government insiders were selling arms to the rebels and stealing American aid. Those were dangerous words, especially when spoken by a reporter.

  Jack was fighting with fire. He confided to a friend, also a well-known foreign corre
spondent, that in Greece there were royalist right-wingers who are squeezing the country for their own benefit—and sending dollars out in diplomatic pouches as fast as possible. Antrikos, who was present for the conversation, hurried to close the door. There were informers everywhere, and an American passport wasn’t a suit of armor, even if Jack thought his indignation should be contagious.

  The worst was that Zoe, or Zouzou—whatever they called his widow—had naïvely asked the American consul, when she heard that her husband had been killed:

  —Was it the far right?

  Her mother wasn’t there to tug her sleeve, to put pepper on her tongue, to keep her in line. So she let it slip without considering the consequences. It took weeks for them to undo the damage.

  Thomas Tzitzilis had never cold-cased a file. He tidily completed his investigations, had an unfailing instinct, and didn’t waste time on bureaucratic formalities. His superiors were sure his smarts would be sufficient to solve the crime.

  But certain critics—fairies, the men in the police force called them—were bothered by his disregard for due process. What did they know of prisons and interrogations? Greece was at war, it would behoove them to remember that fact every now and then. Due process was all fine and well, but the current political situation didn’t allow for any dragging of feet.

  The coast guard had catalogued everything on the dead man’s person: checks and bills, in drachmas and dollars, an identification card, a watch, and a wedding ring. There was thus no evidence, Tzitzilis noted, that the victim had been murdered by a thief.

  The next scenario he considered was a crime of passion. The deceased’s wife seemed too refined for affairs, a spoiled, impulsive, almost childlike young woman. She claimed to be nineteen, but she had the chest and hips of a sixteen-year-old girl. The police chief questioned her no fewer than eight times. Such a thing was unheard of, the girl’s parents objected, but Tzitzilis insisted on asking her all kinds of unspeakable questions—how many suitors she’d had before she met Jack, if her hymen had been unbroken on the night of her marriage, if she had a lover, if Jack might have had a lover, if they had intercourse regularly.