A Separation

10.

Stefano stepped out of the car, he was wearing a button-down shirt and had not shaved. His expression, as he greeted us, was polite and somewhat sheepish, he looked, in the bright sunlight, entirely innocuous, suddenly my suspicions of the previous day seemed nothing short of absurd. I noticed, for the first time, that he was a small man, shorter and slighter of build than Christopher. The evident intensity of his emotions had built him into a larger figure than he actually was, in reality, Christopher would have easily overpowered him.

Still, as we stood outside the hotel, and I greeted Stefano, I felt Mark tense beside me. This is the kind of man who killed my son, I could see the thought pass through his mind. As Stefano opened the doors for us, Mark’s distaste seemed to increase. I introduced the two men. Stefano’s face grew reserved, it was as if he looked at Mark and saw not simply a bigoted foreigner—although he would have also seen that, Mark shook Stefano’s hand with an expression of both disdain and consternation, impossible to misapprehend—but the father of his rival.

Was there any likeness between the two men, between Mark and Christopher? It was always said that there was not, but the impression the two men made was not dissimilar. The same confidence and ease and entitlement, perhaps all Englishmen would seem that way to Stefano. He shut the door behind us and got into the driver’s seat. As he sat down, he glanced at Mark in the rearview mirror, his expression guarded, as if the father might now steal the affections once possessed by the son.

Mark ignored him, gazing out the window as we drove out of the village with a fixed expression of contempt. Is this from the fires, he asked. I nodded. He shook his head and then stared straight ahead. Once we had gone he would never return to Mani, likely he would never return to Greece. The entire place would be a dead zone for him, contaminated by this single incident, as it had been for Isabella. He looked at the scorched earth, no doubt it was all he could do not to declare this place a hell and be done with it.

That impression could not have changed as we arrived at the police station, which was busier than the day before but had not lost its air of lassitude. There were people in the waiting room who looked as if they had been waiting there for hours if not longer, a man with an open wound to his head was sitting quietly in the corner, he must have been there to report a crime, another mugging perhaps, in different circumstances Christopher might have arrived at the station in a similar condition. Mark stared at the man and his wound, the ghost of his child, he flinched and turned away.

Stefano remained outside with the car. He had insisted on waiting—a gesture of concern on his part, which Mark appeared to interpret as an act of menace or calculation. Stefano stood by the car as Mark walked toward the station in silence. As I passed, Stefano looked at me with an expression of mute pleading and something else I could not identify, it left me unsettled. As we entered the station Mark asked why we couldn’t simply call for a cab once we were done, it would cost a fortune to keep the driver waiting and in any case he wasn’t sure he liked the look of him. I was saved from replying by the appearance of the police chief, a man I had not seen before, he quickened his pace when he saw Mark, Isabella had been right.

He introduced himself—speaking to both of us but addressing Mark—and offered his condolences, which Mark impatiently waved away. With a sweep of the hand and a politely enunciated Please, the police chief escorted us to his office. Mark sat down without being asked, the police chief asked if we would care for a coffee, a glass of water. Mark shook his head, brushing invisible dust from his trousers, a small gesture indicating dissatisfaction. At the same time, his hands were trembling, soon his fingers were compulsively tracing and retracing the seam in his trousers.

The police chief sat down behind his desk and clasped his hands together. His eyes were on Mark’s trembling fingers.

We will release the body today. I assume you will be bringing the body to London?

Mark nodded.

It will need to be embalmed before it can be taken out of the country. This is required by the airlines. There is a funeral home in Areopoli— He wrote a name and number on a piece of paper and slid it across the table. Kostas should be able to help you.

Kostas—

The concierge at your hotel.

Mark took the paper, stared at it a moment and then folded it in half.

I’ve already informed the British Embassy. There will be an inquest.

Of course. There generally is, in such cases.

What can you tell me about the investigation?

The police chief leaned back into his chair, he looked at me briefly before looking back at Mark.

We have faced some terrible budget cuts in recent years. Matters with the central government are nearing a state of emergency, I’m sure you have read about it in the newspapers.

I don’t see what that has to do with Christopher’s death.

The police chief nodded.

It has nothing to do with your son’s death. But it has a great deal to do with the investigation into your son’s death, that is to say, our chances of apprehending the person—we assume man, but of course it could also be a woman, and indeed it could be persons, more than one—who killed your son.

He sighed and leaned forward.

People go missing, people are even killed, and many times the culprit is never found. This office— He gestured at the metal cabinets against the wall. It is full of unsolved cases. Investigations that are closed without a satisfactory solution. I’m afraid we do not have the best record.

This cannot be the case with Christopher’s death.

I wish I had arrived at the crime scene earlier than I did, but unfortunately I was in Athens, I was visiting my family. At this point we don’t even have a suspect, usually with a dead husband you look at the wife, but in this case—

He nodded in my direction, then continued.

Of course, not very much time has passed since your son’s death, in many ways this conversation is premature. We will do our best. It is in our own interest. You can imagine, a wealthy foreigner found dead in the street, it makes people feel unsafe. There were rumors that there was a woman involved—

Mark half rose in his seat. He grew flushed as I turned to look at him, I realized it was not only the outrage of the police chief having raised Christopher’s infidelity before me, the betrayed. In the idea of Christopher’s faithlessness there must have been a reminder of Isabella’s own lack of fidelity, as if the trait were inherited, and therefore in some way both inevitable and fated—not simply Christopher’s infidelity but this situation, and by extension his death.

—but we discovered nothing, the rumors remained unsubstantiated, although we interviewed all the likely candidates, a jealous husband would have solved the case for us. Unfortunately, this did not come to pass, it does not seem as if there was any relationship between the killer and your son.

Was it my imagination, or did Mark’s body relax at that moment? As if his child had been restored to him. I turned once more to look at him but he did not move, he did not return my gaze, it was as if I were not there. After a brief pause, the police chief continued.

I am only attempting to give you the full picture of the case. I do not know if you intend to stay here in Mani, but I must advise you that I do not expect this matter to be resolved at once. If there is any kind of breakthrough, we will of course inform you immediately. He paused again. For now, I think you should return to England, with your son.

Briefly, Mark’s shoulders slumped—I nearly asked if he was okay—but then he straightened, he asked if I would leave the two of them alone. I rose to my feet and nodded, I said that I would wait in the hall, in the lobby. Without turning to look at me, Mark said he would not be long. I lingered at the door for a moment, hesitating, but neither man looked up.

I watched the two men sitting across from each other. I had not yet said anything to the police about Stefano, if not a jealous husband or even lover, then a jealous friend, a jealous man, perhaps the one who would have solved the case for us, I knew he had sufficient cause for envy. But it did not seem possible to mention this before Mark of all people, he would have mostly felt this to be an accusation against his son, perhaps in some ways it was—Christopher was not, after all, without guilt in this scenario.

And jealousy in and of itself was not the same as guilt. It would take only a small gesture on my part—the articulation of a fear, which was perhaps not the fear that the driver had killed my husband, but the fear that Christopher’s betrayals went further and deeper yet, that they would continue to reveal themselves, long past his death—to ruin a man’s life, such a thing was not to be taken lightly. I stood at the door, I could not even confirm to myself what it was I thought I knew, Christopher had slept with Maria, but then he had likely slept with several women here in Mani, there might have been multiple men in Stefano’s position, I had nothing but a vague suspicion.

I returned to the waiting area. For the first time, I was conscious of being widowed, of lacking the protection of a man, it was an entirely atavistic sensation. Here in the lobby of this police station in Greece, I suddenly felt extraneous to the workings of the world, which is to say the world of men, I had grown invisible, standing at the threshold of that door. I sat down in one of the plastic chairs. The man with the head injury had disappeared, it occurred to me now, how strange it was that he had come to the police station without first tending to his wound, he should have gone to a hospital or a doctor, perhaps there wasn’t a local hospital or perhaps it was necessary to first lodge the complaint, certainly you would be more effective in doing so if you were bleeding from the head. If only Christopher had been able to do the same.

Still, as I sat there, even as I felt the essential injustice of his death—perhaps all deaths were unjust, but some were more so—I could not imagine a denouement such as the police chief had evoked only to negate again: the revelation of a jealous husband or boyfriend, someone in Stefano’s position, a man in search of revenge. The idea was abhorrent, not simply because it exposed Christopher’s own infidelity, but because of its patent absurdity, the image of a man who had been cuckolded, possessed with the impulse to kill, that man would have come with a knife or a gun, he would not have planned to kill with a rock of all things.

No, it was almost certainly as it had appeared from the beginning: a robbery, both a stupid and a simple death. I thought it likely, however, that Mark would persuade the police chief that a culprit must be found, he would incentivize the situation, wasn’t that what happened in these cases? I was about to rise to my feet and go back into the room when Mark appeared. His face was grim and he only said, Let’s go.

I followed him out of the police station, once we were in the car and before I could stop him, he said, They will continue the investigation, but I am not hopeful. They appear to have no leads, not even one. I don’t know how I’m going to tell Isabella, I don’t know what she will do.

Stefano was watching us. I had felt he was listening to our conversation, as soon as I met his gaze in the rearview mirror his eyes flicked back to the road, but not before I saw some complex emotion pass across his features, not before Mark saw him too. He leaned forward without warning and shouted, Why are you listening, why are you eavesdropping? What does my son have to do with you?

I gripped Mark’s arm and he leaned back into his seat and then he began sobbing, he said again, I don’t know what Isabella will do, I don’t know what she will do. I embraced him as well as I could, he was a large man and the car was bumping along the road. He held my hand as he continued sobbing, my arms around him. I looked up and my gaze met Stefano’s, we watched each other for several long seconds and then he dropped his gaze back to the road in front of him.

How is Maria? I asked him.

Although he did not look at me, I saw from his reflection in the rearview mirror that he was startled. She is fine, he said after a moment, she is okay. He still looked uneasy, he had been caught off guard, I continued watching him in the mirror but he did not meet my gaze, he was looking at the road ahead, perhaps it did need his attention, the surface was in terrible condition.

Deep down, Stefano must have known that Christopher was only the external manifestation—like ectoplasm from a medium’s mouth—of the deeper and more intractable deadlock between him and Maria, the problem of his unreciprocated love. I continued watching Stefano, as we drove out of the village and toward the hotel, Mark’s body heavy in my arms. What was the meaning of the relief I had seen in his face, when he had been listening to Mark, was it the fact that there were no suspects, very little evidence, a net with plenty of holes, through which he might yet escape? Could it have been, as he drove us back to the hotel, that he sat in the front seat with his feeling of relief—the police didn’t have a clue, they didn’t even know that Maria had seen Christopher just before his death—and his belief that he was still a free man?

A free man. Who soon would carry on with his slow courtship, who once again had all the time in the world. Maria would be in need of comfort, and Stefano would be in an ideal position to provide it. If he was smart he would not denigrate Christopher too much (that scum, he got what was coming to him) but would be kind, sensitive, entirely forgiving (what a terrible and unfathomable thing, a man in the prime of his life, no, I couldn’t have wished such a death on anyone).

And if he was patient, if he was not too pushy (as was his wont, this was his fatal flaw, but perhaps he had learned a thing or two), she would eventually turn to him. Because however insubstantial the affair with Christopher—and for all I knew it had been nothing more than a night, two nights—his death would have left a hole in her life. Where previously there had been the fantasy of love, of escape, the excitement of an unknown man, there was now nothing, a woman could coddle a fantasy for only so long, particularly a dead one.

And then there would be space for Stefano. Perhaps it would not even take that long—once you had made up your mind, if Maria were to make up her mind, then things progressed very quickly, perhaps that was even why she had been so reluctant, knowing that once she gave in to Stefano, the remainder of her life would be delineated in an instant, the entire future known. She was young, it was only natural that she would fight against such certainty.

Whether he was guilty or innocent, I knew that he sat in front of us in an agony of anticipation, which he was struggling to conceal, he had hopes for the future, or rather a single hope, which might yet prove foolish. But it was closer than ever before, just within his grasp, a fact of which he could not help but be aware, and so he sat in the car, trying to maintain an appropriately funereal air—after all, there was a grown man crying in the backseat—while a symphony of excitement welled inside him. He reached back with a tissue, which I accepted in silence and passed to Mark, he blew his nose into the paper and said, to me, to Stefano, Thank you.

I left Mark to tell Isabella. He went up the stairs very slowly—if he went slowly enough then perhaps he would never arrive at the top, never have to confront his wife—it was clear he dreaded telling Isabella about the investigation, or rather the lack of it, the whole thing already dead in the water, that he was fearful of her response, there would be a scene, hysterics, she would not take the news lying down. She would upbraid Mark, the nearest and most obvious target, insisting that he go further into the matter (Lady Macbeth, chastising her lord), and yet Mark had said, There’s nothing to be done, and I believed him.

But had everything been done, truly everything? Inside my room, I hesitated and then picked up the telephone and dialed the police station. I was put through to the police chief at once—I did not identify myself on the telephone, there was no need, they knew who I was, there were not so many Americans here—and he answered with a wary, Yes? I told him that I had a piece of information, that might or might not be relevant, but given that they were looking for a woman, the signs of an affair, or had been—

Yes?

He was growing impatient. I opened my mouth but did not speak. Yes? he said again. Abruptly, I told him that Christopher had been seen in Cape Tenaro with another woman. Perhaps my voice caught, or I sounded ashamed. He asked me why I did not tell him earlier, and I said that I hadn’t wanted to tell him in front of Christopher’s father, He has illusions about his son that should be preserved, illusions that I no longer have, and the police chief was silent for a moment and then said, I see.

But do not worry, he continued, we know about this woman, it was a casual friendship, he left her behind in Cape Tenaro, where she remained. There is no husband, no brother or father, and the woman herself has a perfect alibi, another man.

I was silent. The police were more competent than they pretended, which made the case more and not less hopeless—there were fewer unexplored avenues or possible solutions—but what had unnerved me was the sudden disclosure of information about the woman, another lover of Christopher’s, until that moment entirely abstract but now on the precipice of becoming concrete. I only had to ask and I would know more about her, perhaps even her name, already I knew that she was unmarried, without a father or brother, that she lived in Cape Tenaro and was promiscuous, at least by certain standards.

A crime of passion is something you read about in books. And although your husband—the police chief paused—seems to have involved himself with the local population, I do not think this is anything other than what it appears.

There were others, I said.

There was a long pause.

Yes, he said at last. But I can only repeat: I do not think this is anything other than what it appears.

I hung up shortly after. A red light pulsed as soon as I put the receiver down. I picked up the receiver again, there was a message from Yvan, I would need to call him back. I dialed his number, he answered at once.

What is happening? I’ve left three messages for you.

I’m sorry.

Is everything okay?

Yes. Isabella and Mark are here, there has been a lot to do.

Of course.

I think we’ll be coming back soon.

What about the investigation?

They don’t expect to find the killer.

How so?

They have no leads. No suspects, no real evidence—the police chief more or less told us that the investigation was stalled, he told us that we should not get our hopes up.

Yvan did not say anything and I continued, In some ways it would be easier, if there was no known killer, if Christopher had been a victim of circumstance only. If we could say instead, it’s the fault of the situation.

I paused, but Yvan was silent.

Are you still there? I asked uneasily.

Yes, he said. I’m still here.

Okay.

Go on.

There’s nothing more to say.

What will you do?

That’s not up to me, I don’t think.

You’re his widow, Yvan said. You’re his wife.

I was silent.

You haven’t told them, have you?

How could I?

Will you? Is it even important anymore?

I don’t know.

Legally you are his wife.

Legally, according to one set of laws, but according to another—

What other?

I mean our own internal laws, we try to do what is right.

And according to those laws—

I let Isabella and Mark decide. Although I do so without letting them suspect that I am anything other than Christopher’s wife, his widow.

Because they would be hurt.

Because I—because we—can allow them that much, surely. They have certain illusions that I think they should be permitted to preserve—I used that phrase again—so many having been stripped from them, for example the illusion that as a parent, you do not have to bury your child.

Is this about Christopher?

I don’t understand.

I mean is this for Christopher’s sake, not Isabella and Mark’s, is all this for Christopher? He paused. Christopher is dead, the bonds of the promise you made to him no longer hold.

I was silent. Outside, a group of men sat in one of the tavernas, facing toward the sea. It must have been later than I thought, the sun was beginning to dip down toward the water and the men were drinking, perhaps they had been drinking for a while. They were far away, too far to make out their features—anyway it was unlikely that I would recognize them, I had seen no more than a handful of people in the village, I was still a stranger here. But I could hear the sound of the laughter, they were obviously having a good time.

Are you there?

Yes, I said.

He was right, of course. In Colonel Chabert, Balzac’s story of a husband returned from the dead—a work I had once translated, although not with particular success, I had not been able to find the correct register for capturing the peculiar density of Balzac’s prose, I generally translate contemporary fiction, which is an entirely different affair—the colonel of the title is presumed dead in the Napoleonic Wars. His wife promptly remarries, she believes legitimately, becoming the Countess Ferraud. Then the colonel returns, effectively from the dead, derailing her life completely, and that is where the narrative begins.

Although the story favors the colonel—the countess is the villain of the story, insofar as there is one, she is portrayed as callow, manipulative and superficial—as I worked on the translation, I found myself increasingly sympathetic to the countess, to the extent that I began to wonder if this feeling showed in the translation, if I had weighted the words without realizing it. Of course, this sympathy might not have been so errant, it might have been Balzac’s intention, the very effect he wished to cause in the reader: after all, what a terrible fate, to be faithless, to commit bigamy without being aware of it, it was all in the text itself.

Perhaps because of this concern—one that is in the end a question of fidelity, translators are always worried about being faithful to the original, an impossible task because there are multiple and often contradictory ways of being faithful, there is literal fidelity and there is in the spirit of, a phrase without concrete meaning—I thought about Chabert now. In this case it was not the unexpected arrival of the husband but his unexpected departure that led to a crisis of faith, death rather than life causing the return of the undesired relationship, the reopening of what was once thought closed.

Wasn’t that what Yvan feared? That we would sink beneath the weight of this rubble, the line between death and life was not impermeable, people and matters persisted. The return of Chabert is essentially the return of a ghost—it is only Chabert who does not realize that he is a ghost, that he does not belong with the living, and that is his tragedy—a ghost, or rather homo sacer: a man without standing in the eyes of the law. Chabert is legally dead; the central character in the book, after Chabert and his treacherous wife or widow, is Derville, a lawyer (the Count Ferraud—Yvan in this situation—is hardly present in the text).

But although we operate under the illusion that there was a single law that regulated human behavior—a universal ethical standard, a unified legal system—in fact there were multiple laws, this was what I had tried to say to Yvan. Wasn’t it also the case in Billy Budd? Captain Vere is caught between two laws, martial law and the law of God. There is no way of choosing correctly, he is haunted by the death of Billy Budd, Billy Budd, the last words of the dying Captain (in the novel, that is; the opera—the libretto written by E. M. Forster—grants Vere life, Forster and Britten having chosen to avoid the operatic cliché of yet another singer keeling over dead in the final act).

It is only when Chabert recognizes that his legal standing is distinct from his living reality—that he will never be anything but a ghost to the Countess, haunting the living when he should not—it is only when he recognizes the multiplicity of the laws governing our behavior that he allows himself to be relegated to a hospice or insane asylum, and finally accepts his status as homo sacer. Chabert relinquishes the very rights he has enlisted Derville to obtain, that is to say, the legal recognition of his status as colonel and husband, he slips down into the cracks, beyond both the reach and the acknowledgment of the law; he ceases to exist.

But Christopher could hardly be called upon to die a second time. And the law remained only too keen to declare the bond between Christopher and myself. We were married, there could be no doubt on that account—and yet we were not, just as the Colonel and the Countess were not, regardless of whatever the lawyer Derville might uncover or prove. And so despite the clear differences, life rarely finds its exact likeness in a novel, that is hardly fiction’s purpose, there was a similarity to the situations, a resonance that was the product of the mutual chasm between the letter of the law and the private reality. The question was which to service, which to protect.

Never mind, Yvan said. This is not the time to be talking of such things.

One of the men had risen from his seat outside the taverna and stood by the edge of the embankment, he had his arms extended and he held aloft a glass of some kind. The other men were cheering him on, perhaps he was making a toast or telling a story, they were men in the company of men, it happened less and less, special provision was made for it—the Sunday soccer match in the park, the monthly poker game—but it was not the same thing, it was then a little too orchestrated and self-conscious. I would not see Christopher among that group down on the embankment but perhaps he had been there as little as a week ago, perhaps he had.

The figure that beckons from a previous life—particularly when that life is genuinely good and gone, when it is not a question of real options, a marriage to be repaired, a life to be restored, either right or left, yes or no—can be uncannily persuasive. There is a reason why the living are haunted by the dead, the living cannot haunt the living in the same way. When it is a question of joining the living, you are reminded of all the reasons why you would rather not (or in most cases, as was the case with Christopher and me, you hardly need the reminder). But with the dead, who are sealed off in a separate realm, it is different.

No, I said, we should talk. We should talk before it is too late. And Yvan was silent for a moment and then he said, Okay. Let’s talk.