Greeks Bearing Gifts

NINETEEN

Telesilla, the not unattractive red-haired woman whom Achilles Garlopis employed as a secretary, had narrow green eyes that were made narrower by the thickness of her eyebrows, the breadth of her nose, and, perhaps, the knowledge that I was a German. She knew who I was but still regarded me with what felt very like suspicion, which probably explained her obvious hesitancy in permitting me to await the return of Garlopis to his office. She told me he’d gone to the ministry in Piraeus, offered me a coffee that I declined out of respect for my delinquent heart, closed a filing cabinet that Garlopis had left open, and then went back to an adjoining office to sit at a typewriter beneath a large photograph of King Paul dressed in a British army uniform and wearing more stars on his chest than a Russian grand admiral, leaving me to take her employer’s chair, where I was faced by a phalanx of photographs on the desk that showed a younger Garlopis with his large wife and even larger children. It was a very uxorious display and a little at odds with a recent copy of Playboy I found under the blotter. I leafed through it idly, ignoring some probably worthy articles on jazz, Mexico, and women in business in favor of Miss January, a voluptuous redhead called June Blair who managed to promise a great deal while showing very little of what had made her the Playmate of the Month. You could probably have seen more on any German beach, even in winter, and this made me think that it took a certain kind of genius to persuade men to pay for a magazine like this: the American kind, probably. After a while I closed my eyes. I was feeling tired after my walk back from the Acropolis and I may even have slept a little. In my experience there’s nothing quite like an office chair to make a man feel that he needs to take a nap. Especially when Miss January’s shapely image is still imprinted on the insides of his eyelids.

A bit later on I heard the slow footsteps of a big man coming upstairs and, opening my eyes, I concluded that Garlopis had finally returned.

“How did you get on, sir?” he asked breathlessly. “Did you find out where he’s been living?”

I stood up, left him to his own captain’s chair, and went and sat facing the desk on a chair where I imagined Telesilla taking dictation under the lubricious eyes of Garlopis and, now that I considered the matter further, it occurred to me that she was not unlike the flame-haired playmate in the centerfold underneath the blotter. Maybe that was the reason Garlopis had bought the magazine in the first place. Either that or Telesilla had only been in the job since January.

“Pritaniou, number eleven, in the old town at the base of the Acropolis. I couldn’t tell if he’s living alone there or not. But at least now we know where to find him. And you? Did you see your cousin at the Mercantile Marine Ministry?”

“I did.” Garlopis adjusted his bow tie and allowed himself a smile. “And the news is—well, interesting to say the least, in that it provides us with a possible motive for a case of arson. I only say possible, sir. That’s for you to decide, of course. But people have long memories in this country. With the many centuries of history we have, we need long memories.”

He found a cigarette, rattled a box of matches, lit up, and removed a piece of paper from his pocket. “As we know, the Doris was formerly registered as the Carasso. I discovered that the previous owner was a Jewish merchant in Salonika, which, as you know, is now our second city, Thessaloniki. The Jewish merchant’s name was Saul Allatini and he bought and sold coffee. Before the war, Thessaloniki was home to a large number of Jews. Possibly as many as there existed anywhere in Europe outside of Poland. Sephardic Jews mostly, from Spain; but also a great many who had fled from Muslim persecution in the Ottoman Empire. But unlike most countries, Greece, I’m proud to say, gave its Jews full citizenship, and they thrived. As a result of all this, perhaps the majority of people in Thessaloniki—at least sixty thousand—were Jews.

“Anyway, I don’t want to embarrass you, sir, with a lachrymose tale of Jewish suffering in Greece—you being a German n’all—so, to cut a long story short, most of the Jews in Thessaloniki were deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and gassed to death. Meanwhile their property was subject to confiscation and resale by the collaborationist Hellenic government of Ioannis Rallis. Which is how the unfortunate Mr. Allatini’s three vessels—two of them merchantmen, and one his own private yacht, the Carasso—were sold to Greeks and to Germans at bargain-basement prices. Or rather to one particular German. The Carasso was bought by Siegfried Witzel for a pittance and he renamed it the Doris, and sailed it to Piraeus, where it remained after the war.” Garlopis paused and puffed at his cigarette for a moment. “Those Jews who survived the camps—less than two thousand, it would seem—returned to Thessaloniki and found their homes and property in the possession of Greek Christians who had bought them in good faith from the Germans. And any attempts at Jewish property restitution quickly failed when a British-backed right-wing anti-communist IPE government came to power in Athens. None of these men had much time for the Jews, and of course Greece collapsed into civil war soon afterwards. A civil war that lasted three years. Since when there has been little appetite to open up these scars and say who owns what. Certainly the ministry has no record of anyone from the Allatini family as having petitioned it for the return of the Doris. At least none that my cousin was able to find.

“In defense of my country I should also mention that this regrettable situation is complicated by the fact that many of the properties bought by Jews long before the war had themselves been owned by Muslims previous to the so-called diaspora that followed the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–1922. Many Muslims were obliged to sell up at knockdown prices and emigrate to Turkey, while many Turks, including thousands of Jews, were obliged to leave their Turkish homes and go to Thessaloniki. So you see that nothing in this part of the world is simple. No, not even the status of the marble friezes taken from the Parthenon by the Turks, and sold to the British Lord Elgin for seventy thousand British pounds during the Greek war of independence that was fought against the Ottoman Empire. My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that Greece should set an example to the British and restore as much previously owned Jewish property as possible, regardless of the cost. But until that happens, this situation causes a great deal of bitterness among those few Jews who continue to live in Greece.”

“Enough for someone to set a ship on fire, perhaps?”

“It’s certainly possible, yes,” admitted Garlopis. “But here your guess is as good as mine.”

“It might explain why Herr Witzel feels the need to carry a gun. It may be that he’s been threatened before.”

Garlopis nodded and stubbed out his cigarette in a Hellas pottery ashtray. “In this particular context it’s also worth mentioning that because of the civil war, the Doris was never insured against acts of terrorism. If it could be proved that the ship had been attacked for political reasons by Jewish activists, then this would certainly fall under the umbrella of war risk exclusions which, according to the terms of the policy, are considered fundamentally uninsurable.”

“And it would certainly be in Witzel’s interest to allege that the engine caught fire because of a shipyard’s negligence.”

“Exactly, sir.”

“What does the coast guard have to say about the incident? Is there any way of proving that the ship really did sink out at sea where he said it did?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“It’s a pity we can’t speak to this Professor Buchholz, in order to corroborate Witzel’s story.”

“With that in mind, sir, after I’d been to the ministry, on Kolokotronis Street, I went just around the corner, to the Archaeological Museum and set up an appointment later on this week for us to go and see the assistant director, Dr. Lyacos. At three o’clock, to be precise.” Garlopis looked at his watch. “But while we’re in Piraeus we should certainly make time to go to Vassilenas.”

“What’s that?”

“The best restaurant in Piraeus, sir.”

“By the way, I don’t suppose you have a cousin in the Attica police; I made a note of the license plate on the car Witzel was driving.”

“No, sir. I’m afraid not.”

We went outside and walked to the Olds, where a beggar woman had taken up position, no doubt in the mistaken belief that the owner was a rich American. I knew quite a bit about being on the streets myself so I gave the woman twenty lepta and got into the car. But even the small change, which was made of aluminum, had holes in it.

“By the way,” I said, “I told you to get rid of this car, didn’t I? It’s hard to move around quietly in this thing. And it’s a magnet for beggars.”

“You’re so right, of course,” he said as we drove away. “And I will. Just as soon as my cousin is back in the office.”

“When will that be?”

“He took a couple of days off, sir. So perhaps the day after tomorrow. By the way, sir. If I could ask you not to give money to the beggars. It only encourages them. They’re Hungarians, mostly, sir. Refugees from last year’s terrible and abortive uprising. There’s plenty of work for them in Greece—picking cotton—but they won’t take it if people keep on giving them money, sir. It’s bad for them and it’s bad for us. In my opinion they’re too proud for their own good.”

“It’s only excessive pride that the gods punish, isn’t it? Hubris? Which leads to nemesis?”

“Yes, indeed, that’s quite true. And you do well to remind me of that, sir. But for my own hubris I might still be married—to Mrs. Nemesis.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, what went wrong?”

“In a word, Telesilla. She’s what went wrong. She’s what always goes wrong for a man such as myself. My head was turned, sir. The wrong way, too. Nothing actually happened between her and me, you understand. But I imagined it might and, unfortunately, in a moment of sheer delusion, I led my poor wife to believe that I was enamored of Telesilla. Telesilla herself was entirely blameless and remains happily married. And she’s a very good secretary. Which is why I couldn’t bring myself to dismiss her. I mean, it would seem rather pointless now that Mrs. Garlopis is no longer au courant.” Garlopis smiled sadly. “And for you, sir? Is there a Frau Ganz?”

“No. That particular chapter of my life has now closed—forever, I think. Especially now that I’m working in insurance. You wouldn’t know it to look at me but I’ve had an interesting life. That’s one of the reasons I like this insurance business. It feels like a nice quiet pew at the back of an empty church.”