Greeks Bearing Gifts

SIXTEEN

The Mega Hotel was in Constitution Square, named after the constitution the first Greek king, Otto, had been obliged to grant to the leaders of a popular uprising in 1843. It was situated opposite the Old Royal Palace, which now housed the Greek parliament, and the Grande Bretagne Hotel, which was a lot nicer than the one I was in. I took a walk around the tree-lined square after Garlopis had left me, to stretch my legs, see a bit of Athens, and get a lungful of the local carbon monoxide. The eastern side of the square was higher than the western and was dominated by a set of marble steps that led up to the parliament, as if you might have to make some kind of effort getting to democracy. In front of this lemon-colored building a couple of soldiers called evzones were making fools of themselves to the delight of a group of American tourists, only they called it changing the guard. Dressed like Pierrots, they made a very big thing out of not doing very much, regular as clockwork. I guess it was no more ridiculous than anything you could have seen performed by soldiers of the National People’s Army outside the New Guardhouse on Unter den Linden in what was now East Berlin, but somehow like a lot of things in Greece, it was. Call me a xenophobe but there seemed to be something inherently comic about two very tall men each wearing a fez, a white kilt, and red leather clogs with black pompoms marking time and waving their legs in the air with an almost tantalizing uncertainty; indeed, it was almost as if these two were trying to send up the whole ceremony, which only seemed to make it all the more amusingly photogenic.

I bought some Luckys, a map, and a copy of The Athens News—the only English-language newspaper (there wasn’t a German one)—and took these back to the bar at the Mega to have a drink and a smoke and to acquaint myself with what was happening in the ancient Greek capital. A lawyer in Glyfada had been murdered. There had been a spate of burglaries in Amaroussion. Some Greek cops from police headquarters had been arrested for taking bribes. The Hellenic Police Internal Affairs Division reported that ninety-six percent of the population believed the Greek police were corrupt. And a German called Arthur Meissner was about to go on trial accused of war crimes. Apart from the relentlessly cheerful Greek music on some speakers above the bar, I felt quite at home.

Even more than I might have expected.

“How do you like those smokes?” said a voice speaking German.

“They’re all right. I’ve been smoking them for so long I hardly notice, except when I have to smoke something else.”

“So you’d smoke something else if you liked them better?”

“There are a lot of things I might do if I liked them better,” I said. “I just don’t know what they are yet.”

The man at the opposite end of the bar was German, or perhaps Austrian, and in his mid-to-late forties. He was slim with a thin hooked nose, a short mustache and a chin beard, a high forehead, eyes with a strong hint of oyster, and, as far as I could tell, he wasn’t very tall. He was wearing a Shetland sport jacket and whipcord trousers. His Adam’s apple was the most pronounced I’d ever seen and shifted around above his plaid-gingham shirt collar like a Ping-Pong ball in a shooting gallery. His voice was a quiet nasal baritone with a lot of patience on the edge. It sounded like the low growl of a house-trained leopard.

“I’m reading an English newspaper and spoke English to the barman. So how did you mark me out as a German?”

“You’re not a Tommy and you’re not American, that much is obvious from when you spoke. And the only way you’d be smoking Luckys would be if you were a German living in the American zone. Munich, probably. Frankfurt, maybe. The label on the inside of your jacket says Hugo Boss, so I guess they’ve finally been denazified. Good thing, too. That poor Fritz was just a tailor. Trying to make a living and stay alive. You might as well try to denazify the doormen at the Adlon.”

“You should have been a cop.”

He smiled. “Not really. I was just kidding. As a matter of fact I saw you checking in a while ago. Heard you speaking German to the other fellow. The one with the flashy American car. And but for the war I would have been a lot of things. Hungarian, probably. I guess I’m lucky to be Austrian, otherwise I’d be living under the damn communists and scratching my ass with a hammer and a sickle. The name is Georg Fischer. I’m in the tobacco business. And at the risk of sounding like a lousy commercial, here, friend, try one of these.”

He pushed a packet of cigarettes along the marble-topped bar.

“They’re Greek, or Turkish, depending on how you look at these things.”

“Karelia. Sounds like they should come from the Baltic.”

“Fortunately they don’t smoke that way. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s Russian smokes.” He blinked his lashless eyes slowly; they looked like smaller versions of his almost hairless skull.

“That’s for sure.”

“Karelia is the oldest and largest tobacco company in Greece. Based in Kalamata, down south. But the tobacco comes from the Black Sea coast. Sokhoum. The leaves are almost like those in a cigar. Sweet on the tongue and cool on the throat.”

I lit one, liked it, and nodded my genuine appreciation. “Life’s full of surprises. The name’s Christof Ganz. And thanks.”

“No, thank you. It’s certainly nice to speak a bit of German again, Herr Ganz. Sometimes that’s not such a good idea in this town. Not that you can blame the Greeks very much after the hell we inflicted on this damn country during the war. Hard to credit now. But I’m told that during the first year of the Nazi occupation there were children’s bodies lying on the sidewalk in front of this hotel. Can you imagine it?”

“I’m trying not to. I try not to think about the war now if I can possibly avoid it. Besides, we’ve paid for it since, don’t you think? Or at least half of us have paid. The eastern half. I think they’re going to be paying for it for the rest of their lives.”

“Could be you’re right.” He was staring straight ahead of him at a bar that contained so many bottles it looked like a cathedral organ. “I get a bit homesick sometimes.”

“Sounds like you’ve been here a while.”

“My friend, I’ve been here so long I’ve started smashing the crockery when I’m in a good mood.”

“And when you’re in a bad mood?”

“Who can be in a bad mood in a country like this? Maybe the Greeks are feckless. But in summer this is the best country in the world. And the women are very nice, too. Even the lookers.”

I pushed the pack back along the bar.

“Keep the pack,” he said. “I’ve a suitcase full of them in my room.”

“You said you’re Austrian?”

“From a village called Rohrbrunn, near the Styrian border in what used to be Hungary, so we used to call it Nádkút. But I lived in Berlin for a year or two. Before the war. So. What line of business are you in, Herr Ganz?”

“Insurance.”

“Selling it? Or paying it out?”

“Neither, I hope. I’m a claims adjustor. Buy you a drink?”

Fischer nodded at the barman. “Calvert on the rocks.”

I ordered another gimlet.

“Insurance is a nice respectable German business,” said Fischer. “We all need a business like that, where you can take a pause and draw breath, especially after everything that happened.”

He didn’t say what but then he was Austrian so he didn’t have to say it; I knew what he meant. Any German would have known.

“It’s only when there’s a pause that you can hear yourself think.”

“Nothing much ever happens in the insurance business. I like that. It’s the only way you can get a handle on life.”

“I know exactly what you mean. Tobacco’s a bit like that, too. Steady. Unspectacular. Unchanging. Harmless. Guilt-free. I mean, people are always going to smoke, right? My company is about to start exporting these cigarettes to Germany.”

“You just made a customer.”

“At least we are just as soon as the Greeks sign up for this new European Economic Community.”

“Any other tips? Besides not speaking German in Greece?”

He toasted me with the whiskey he’d ordered.

“Just one. Don’t drink the tap water. They’ll tell you it’s safe. That it’s made by the Americans. And it is—made by the Amis. Ulen & Monks; they own the Marathon Dam. But I’d stick to bottled if I were you. Unless you want to lose weight and fast.”

I toasted him back. He handed me his business card.

“Sounds like good advice.”

“If you get into trouble or you need my help, then call this number. We Germans have to stick together, right? What does the proverb say? Caught together, hanged together.”