The Scapegoat (28 page)

When the Gris case fell to him, his sleep became even more troubled. Particularly after the night when the district attorney knocked on his door. He knew that taking the case was the right thing to do, that he was saving a man from the firing squad. That was the bitter truth. He believed time would take care of things, that the storm would pass, the political situation would settle down, and a retrial might then yield a better result. It was perfectly clear that the confession was false, the evidence fabricated; everything about the case was an insult to the intelligence, particularly to that of the lawyers. Even if they had expressed the opinion that Gris (the
defendant
, as the legal documents had it)
knowingly and purposefully collaborated with those who committed the crime, both before, during, and after its execution
.

The deviations from procedure were obvious, the professional negligence of the lawyers and judges was impossible to miss, and yet the district attorney’s office saw nothing, heard nothing, understood nothing.

And when Gris was sentenced to life in prison—an indication to those in power that the country had managed to avoid the worst, had punished the wrongdoer, had put its best face forward and acted properly—rather than transferring the prisoner to the jail, they kept him in the holding cells of the General Security Police, under Tzitzilis’s keen eye. There, many prisoners
, momentarily escaping the notice of their guards, rush to the window and hurl themselves out. Others, shouting and shrieking, cause bruises and cuts
on their own persons, with the aim of exposing the defenders of our nation to calumny
.

Whether in prison or in a holding cell, the years passed. Gris served his sentence and was released. Appeals for a retrial were constantly being filed. Lawyers introduced new evidence in attempts to prove the obvious. 1977, 1999, 2002, and 2006: four appeals, all rejected. The judges demonstrated evident solidarity with their colleagues. The new arguments were sent back and the verdict stood, as did the flawed documentation, written in
katharevousa
or in demotic Greek—but though the language changed, no one dared touch the content. Those who disagreed, who felt the case damaged the country’s reputation and offended the sense of justice they held so dear, distanced themselves, sometimes silently and sometimes with a fuss, from the committees, resigned from the bodies that made the relevant decisions. It didn’t matter: they were the minority, their opinion never determined the outcome.

Over the years Dinopoulos realized that good intentions are worth nothing, actions are what matter. Gris was released and Dinopoulos went to see him. The man’s emotions seemed raw, tears came easily to his eyes, he spoke with his soul in his mouth from the very first phrase. After twelve years behind bars, he wouldn’t rest unless his name was cleared. He could forgive the suffering, but not the injustice.

The lawyer, who knew that justice is won and lost in first impressions and that words matter only when they’re written, shaped the appeal with mastery and patience, yet it didn’t have the result they had hoped for.

Gris died without finding justice. And Dinopoulos was no longer sure whether he’d acted rightly back when he made his decision. What he did know was that he couldn’t have acted otherwise.

What’s done is done. One man was sacrificed to save a country. All that nonsense about the pursuit of justice was better
left to a student essay. The machinery in place was all-powerful. Whoever believed otherwise probably hadn’t lived long enough to know better.

FANI

—Fine, I understand your not being on Facebook, you think it’s childish. But Skype is totally different, I’ll be able to see you when we talk. I don’t understand why you’re so resistant, I’d even find someone to set it up for you. You wouldn’t have to lift a finger. You’re acting like a crotchety old man, you know that, right?

Fani had been trying to convince Marino to join the present moment for a while. The stone age had ended, he couldn’t just ignore advances in technology. At least not the ones that made life easier and more enjoyable. Marinos dug his heels in like a mule.
I don’t have time
, was his excuse,
I don’t have time to waste on things like that
. And when she, who wasn’t one to beat around the bush, asked him straight out,
You mean you don’t want to see me when we talk?
, he answered, in a tight voice but sure of his response,
No
. And while he could still hear her breathing on the other end of the line, he hurried to add:

—It’s not enough for me. Screens aren’t real, Fani. Don’t mess with things. Leave them how they are.

Fani let it go.

She sent him a plastic yellow duck, by courier in a bubble envelope. It was the duck Nikolas used to have in the bathtub when he was little. It had a big round belly, so it wasn’t easy to balance on a flat surface, it would rock back and forth, you kept thinking it would tip over but eventually it found its footing and settled down. The right wing had collapsed, you could still see where the baby’s thumb had squeezed out the water. She didn’t know why she’d held on to it, she was a person who threw things out, or at least gave them away, she didn’t fill cupboards with
memories. But the duck had stayed, and if you’d asked her she couldn’t have said why, just that whenever she tried to get rid of it, her hand wouldn’t obey. She kept it in a desk drawer with a pile of old demos and photographs. It lay there forgotten, gathering dust. Though sometimes when she was worried about her son, an unbridled foal who ignored her prohibitions and her advice, she would open the desk drawer and pull out the plastic duck. She would let it wobble on the surface of the desk until it found a spot it liked, where it would balance for a few seconds and then fall.

As she was putting it in the envelope, she stopped for a minute and almost changed her mind. The duck was her good luck charm. If her mother had known what she was doing she would have stopped her, there are things you just don’t do. But Fani did whatever she pleased; she never saw the signs that stopped others in their tracks.

And so she sent it, and Marinos opened the door to an envelope with an odd bulge: usually she sent him CDs, sometimes books, the occasional postcard when she was on tour. He saw the duck and smiled, remembered Nikolas squeezing it with all his might in the old home videos. And his mother standing over him, trying to rein him in but just getting soaked for her trouble. There was nothing else in the envelope, and he liked that, not even a word to accompany the gift. Then he noticed some tiny, glistening slivers of ivory, and remembered that when Fani was on tour in Africa, she had described the beach beside a lake called Kivu, or something like that.
Strewn with ivory
, she had told him,
you’ve never seen anything like it, it cries out for you to walk on it in bare feet
. Marinos spread the ivory out in his palm and watched as the duck rocked back and forth on the table. That day he didn’t crack a book, not once. It was something he never did, not even on New Year’s, and certainly not on his birthday.

ONE TEST IS ENOUGH

Teta had planned to camp out at the entrance to the school with the rest of the mothers, but Evthalia dissuaded her.

—All you’ll do is annoy him, she warned. Can’t you just wait it out? Go out on the balcony and wait.

Some students had brought pens that the bishop himself had blessed. Others were wearing their baptism crosses, while the more extreme carried icons of saints. Minas, meanwhile, had on his lucky underwear, blue with Japanese manga characters. His grandmother had secretly splashed a drop of sainted water into his glass of orange juice that morning; you never know what might help, and it was no time to be closing any doors.

Evelina was standing in front of Agia Sophia. They hadn’t arranged it ahead of time, but they left the house at the same time and looked for one another in the street, to walk over together.

Minas grabbed her cheeks with both hands and gave her a quick kiss. His pants hung below his hips and the laces were loose on his Converse hi-tops.

—Just think about summer vacation, he whispered to her as they walked through the gate.

He reached out a hand and squeezed her hip.

—
Pimplimi
, she said, quoting the ancient Greek present transitive for
fill
.

—Gemo
and
plitho
, he quoted back the two possible intransitive versions of that verb, with his usual confidence in his ancient Greek, and they laughed conspiratorially.

Evelina Dinopoulou, Minas Georgiou. They were sent to neighboring rooms.

The exams would be distributed in ten minutes.

The mothers were frantic, the students chewed their pens, trying to concentrate. The whole place buzzed with nerves.

Tasos, meanwhile, watched as the danger marched toward them. At the newspaper and out in the streets, he took the city’s
pulse. Anyone with eyes in his head could see. Decisions were being made and those making them were thousands of kilometers away, playing Stratego and Monopoly; they’d set out the pieces and were rolling the dice.

If you looked down Agia Sophia Street toward the water, you would see a snippet of the tranquil sea that hugged the city. It was a bright, beautiful day. Old folks with bypasses were out taking their constitutionals along the waterfront. Others lazed in the sun. Spring was in the air.

On a day like this, living here felt like a privilege, not a prison sentence or a curse.

AND ALL THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

If Greece were a country where silence wasn’t hereditary, like genetic material.

If Gris had a protector.

If Greek politicians had more backbone and the great powers less of a tendency to impose their will.

If money and influence—that is, everything—hadn’t been at stake.

If the past taught us lessons; if there were play, fast forward, and rewind buttons for historical events.

If the answer were single and final.

If passivity in the face of injustice were a crime, and punished as such.

If Georgiou hadn’t given in to common sense.

If Teta had a life and not just a child.

If Dinopoulos aimed for the best case, and didn’t just avoid the lesser of two evils.

If Evthalia’s wishes were commands.

If Soukiouroglou lived his life with his body and not his mind.

Then, perhaps.

“I like my country,” the villager told the CBS correspondent. The statement seemed entirely logical and made no particular impression on the foreigner. He looked across the way at the eternal mountains. Spring was bursting into bloom. It smelled of damp soil and blossoming petals.

A triumphant light.

The American pressed the button.

Click.

He wanted to remember that moment, that place.

The Scapegoat
takes place during two key periods of recent Greek history: the Civil War in the late 1940s and the current financial crisis.

The Greek Civil War (1946–1949) was the final stage of a bitter civil strife that broke out shortly after the Axis occupation (1941–1944). With the support of a full-fledged British military intervention in December 1944, Greek anticommunists ousted left-wing resistance forces from a provisional National Union government. As a consequence, the former resistance fighters faced political persecution and a wave of “white terror” by royalist squads. This situation turned into an open civil war in late 1946: on the one side, the Greek government army, created by royalist officers and other far-right elements, including former Nazi collaborators; and on the other, the Democratic Army of Greece, comprised of former procommunist guerrilla fighters who had meanwhile fled to the mountains. The Greek Civil War was one of the first episodes of the Cold War. After the Truman doctrine was announced in early 1947, the Greek government received financial, military, and political support from the U.S. administration; on the other side, the left-wing guerrillas received a much more reluctant and covert support from the Soviet Union and the neighboring communist states.

In the midst of the civil war, an American journalist for CBS, George Polk (the model for Jack Talas in this book), was killed in circumstances that remain unexplained to this day. Polk was investigating atrocities on both sides, as well as calling the Americans to account for their support of the Greek government. His uncompromising attitude toward the truth has been honored posthumously in the George Polk Award, which is given annually to “intrepid, courageous reporters committed to doing whatever it takes to uncover matters of critical importance to an informed public and the very foundation of democratic society” (from the Polk Award’s website).

After Polk’s death, American diplomats, the military, and journalists placed
considerable pressure on the Greeks to close the case. Two members of the Communist Party were accused of the crime, though it was later discovered that one was himself already dead at the time Polk was killed, while the other was not in Greece. The journalist Grigoris Staktopoulos (the model for Manolis Gris) was also accused, quickly tried, and convicted on very thin grounds. He served eleven years of a life sentence, was released in 1960, and died in 1998, having filed a petition in 1977 for the Supreme Court to overturn his conviction, claiming that his confession had been given under torture. His widow filed three more petitions after his death, in 1999, 2002, and 2006, each of which presented new evidence that challenged the prosecution’s case; all three petitions were rejected.

There are other layers of history in
The Scapegoat
as well. Thessaloniki, the city where the action is set, only became part of the Greek state in 1912, when it passed from Ottoman rule. Ten years later, the failure of an expansionist attempt in Asia Minor brought about 1.5 million Christians, most of them ethnically Greek, to Greece from Anatolia, while some 350,000 Muslims were deported to Turkey. Part of that population exchange involved the survivors of the genocide of Greeks in the Pontus region—among them Staktopoulos’s family. The story Manolis Gris’s mother tells in the novel of her family’s flight to “Salonica” (another name for Thessaloniki, used in this translation to distinguish sections set in the past from sections set in the present) reflects that experience.