Greeks Bearing Gifts

FIFTY-THREE

Elli had stopped the car and switched off the engine. We were in a western suburb of Athens and surrounded by a strange landscape of fuel tanks and gasometers. In the distance we could just see the range of mountains that guarded the peninsula of Attica like the giant walls of a more ancient Troy. A beggar came to the window of the Rover and Elli shook her head angrily, which sent him away. She gripped the steering wheel firmly and stared straight ahead of her as if she’d been planning to crash into one of the storage tanks so that we could all die in the explosion like the final scene of White Heat. She probably found my silence even more deafening. I know I did. Merten stayed silent, too. He’d done his worst and this was all that was required; it was obvious to everyone in the car that anything else said by him would have been redundant, not to mention the fact that it would have earned him a punch in the mouth. It was also obvious that Elli was upset. There was anger in her eyes and her voice sounded hoarse, like she was getting a cold. Suddenly I was feeling pretty cold myself.

“Is it true?” she asked, after a while. “Do you have a wife in Berlin?”

“Yes, but we’re estranged.”

Even before I’d finished this short sentence Elli had got out of the car. She collected her bag off the passenger seat, slammed the door behind her, leaned back on the wing, and lit a cigarette angrily. I followed her outside.

“She left me more than a year ago while I was living in France, and went home to Berlin. Unlike her, I can’t ever go back there. At least not while the communists are in charge. The Stasi is every bit as bad as the Gestapo. Worse, probably. Anyway, the last conversation I had with my wife she told me she wanted a divorce. And for all I know she’s already got one. Given the fact that the city is surrounded by the GDR, communication is difficult, to say the least, so we haven’t spoken in a long while. A letter I had last year turned out to be a put-up job by the communists trying to lure me back to Berlin.”

“And is her name Elisabeth? Like that Nazi bastard said it was?”

“Yes.”

She stared down at the ground for almost a minute while I stumbled, badly, through the rest of my explanation: since my wife and I hadn’t seen each other in months I’d ceased to think of myself as married and so, I imagined, had she; we’d known each other as friends for more than twenty years; we’d married for the sake of convenience as much as anything else since we both needed to escape from Berlin at around the same time; this wasn’t very long ago—1954—which ought to have provided a useful snapshot of just how inconvenient the convenience of our marriage had become when, finally, she lit out for Germany and home. It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was the only one I had.

“When were you thinking of telling me?” she asked. “If at all?”

“I should have mentioned it before,” I admitted.

“Yes, you should. You could have mentioned it last night, for instance. Before we checked into a double room at the Poseidonian Hotel. But you didn’t. You were oddly silent about your wife back then.”

“You’re right. But in my own defense, yesterday I still half-believed you were going to shoot me with your little Beretta. I’d only just started to believe in you and me so it didn’t seem to be that important. It felt like a small thing. At least while I was trying to put that rat Merten in the bag. As if I couldn’t concentrate wholly on you, the way you deserved, until Max Merten was properly out of the picture. But I would certainly have told you eventually. When we were both back in Athens. Made a better job of it, too, with dinner and chocolates and flowers. I could still do that, you know.”

“Flowers wouldn’t have helped this.”

When she said nothing more, I felt obliged to add an explanation about everything else Merten had told her.

“As for the rest of what he said, there was less than ten percent truth in any of it. I was a detective at police headquarters in Berlin and I did work for the Nazis but only under considerable duress, and while I did meet some of those people he talked about I never murdered anyone, Elli.”

“Damn that man,” she said angrily. “Damn him for finding the weak spot. And not yours. This is my weak spot. That’s the irony. He was looking for yours and he found mine. Look, I’m sorry but I don’t like married men. Especially when they’re married to someone else. Maybe I should have mentioned that last night. A few years ago I had an affair with a married man, someone in the ministry, and I swore then I would never get involved with a married man again. That’s not your fault. But it’s just how it is, do you see?”

“I told you; we’re separated. And we’re getting a divorce.”

“That one’s as old as the Odyssey,” she said. “You should read it sometime. In the end Ulysses goes back to his wife. I have to say that this is what happened to me.”

“That isn’t going to happen with me.”

“Like everything else, I’ve only got your word for it.”

“And my word won’t do, I guess.”

“If you didn’t happen to be a man it would probably do just fine.”

“So where does this leave us?” I asked.

“I’m not sure where it leaves you, Bernie, or whatever your real name is, but I already know the way out of this particular labyrinth. Me, I’m going home. On my own. Leaving you and your fat friend to sort things out between you.”

“You’re reading this all wrong, sugar. I was fixing to stay on in Greece a while, just to be with you. With the hope of making that stick.”

“That’s going to take a box of tools you neither own nor know how to use.”

“Tell me where to get them and I’ll try to make this work.”

“I’m standing on higher ground than you, Bernie. I already see what you can’t. I was brought up Greek Roman Catholic and we believe in dead wives, not in divorced ones. Which reminds me. I’m pretty sure you told me your wife died eight years ago, in Munich.”

“Kirsten. That’s right.” I thought it best not to mention that I’d had a wife before Kirsten. I figured there were only so many ex-wives, dead or living, that poor Elli could take.

“That explains but doesn’t excuse it. Not in my book. When you changed your name, maybe you forgot that women don’t change quite as easily as that. In fact, most of them don’t change at all. Most of us want the same things: a nice handbag and a husband we can trust, but we’ll generally settle for one or the other.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way.”

“You don’t know the half of how I feel. Honestly, it’s not even your fault. I’m that kind of woman and you’re just that kind of guy. A survivor. I guess maybe the war did that to you. Perhaps you had standards once, and lived up to them, too. I don’t know but I have standards, too. My only regret about all this is that I threw away my father’s Beretta. Probably just as well. If I had it now I might even shoot you. Maybe I wouldn’t kill you. What you’ve done to me isn’t so bad in the great scheme of things that you need killing. I can’t answer for the rest of humanity. But you’d always have a little hole to remember me by.”

“I suspect I’ll have one anyway. I’m not likely to forget you, Elli.”

“I think you’d best try,” she said, and walked quickly away.

I watched her go. I felt a pang of regret seeing her go. There was a real possibility that it might have worked between us. Then again, we might just have been friends and it wasn’t like I had many of those. You can never tell how these things will play themselves out. But if I’m honest I have to admit I also felt a degree of relief that she had walked out on me. The age difference was only one thing. There was something else, too, and again it wasn’t her fault: The fact was I didn’t have the patience for any woman, not anymore, and not just her. I’d probably been on my own for too long and I guess I preferred it that way.

I kept on watching Elli for a while thinking she might look back, but of course she didn’t and I didn’t really expect her to. I watched her until I couldn’t see her anymore and then turned to look at Max Merten still seated in the back of the Rover. I pulled the Bismarck from under my waistband and waved him out and when he stayed put I opened the door and, ignoring the pain in my arm, hauled him out by the scruff of the neck.

“Move.”

“You’re not going to shoot me?”

His eye was nervously on the ditch behind him and the gun in my hand as well it might have been. I had killed people—he’d been right about that much, at least, although arguably most of them had needed killing. But it had been a while since I had shot anyone and although it would have paid him back for his lawyer’s smart mouth, I knew it wouldn’t have solved anything very much. It never does. It certainly wouldn’t have brought Elli running back.

“No, I’m not going to shoot you,” I said. “I want you to drive. Drive the car, Max.”

“Sure. Whatever you say, Bernie. Just say where to.”

He slipped behind the steering wheel and I got into the front passenger seat.

“Police headquarters. Constitution Square. Next to the Grande Bretagne Hotel.”

“Right away.” He checked my expression nervously and then said, “She’ll be back. Just as soon as she’s calmed down a bit.”

“Not this one.”

“It’s not their fault. They’re irrational creatures in need of protection from themselves—all of them ruled by their ovaries. Take my word for it, Bernie. She’ll get over it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. Look, women are sensitive beings. Like children. They feel things more than us men. Especially Greek women. They’re very excitable. All they need is firm guidance and direction. You see a woman like that and you can understand Aristophanes. I tell you, she’ll think better of whatever it was she said to you and then come crawling back. They always do.”

“I don’t think so and neither do you.”

“Maybe you should have listened to me.”

“I think that’s where the problem lies, Max. Look where listening to you has brought us today.”

“I did warn you. Look, you might still have had her if you hadn’t wanted me as well. You could have let me go and held on to that lovely girl without any difficulty. But you were greedy.”

“Don’t talk to me about greed, Max. Better not say that again. And don’t even think of apologizing, because then I really will do something I’ll regret.”

Max ground the car into gear and we set off. On the way we passed Elli walking along the street, and when we drove by her it was like she was wearing blinkers and we weren’t even there. She paid us less regard than if we’d been just another couple of racehorses coming up on the outside in a big steeplechase. I think that was the moment I knew I was right about her: she wasn’t coming back, not ever, and I let out a sigh they could have heard on Mount Olympus. Merten heard it, too, and must have concluded he needed to say something—anything—to take my mind off her.

“However did you catch Gormann anyway?” asked Merten. “I always meant to ask.”

I suppose he was asking in order to avoid having me smack him in the mouth with the pistol. It was certainly what I felt like doing, and if ever a man needed to lose teeth, it was Max Merten. But since the gift horse had already bolted, I saw little point in fixing his rotten dentistry. So I answered him as calmly as I was able, which was a very useful way of controlling my own violent temper.

“There was nothing to it. My whole reputation around the Alex wasn’t built on anything very substantial. The key to being a good detective is to find time to do nothing, which runs counter to the whole idea of being German. Teutonic efficiency seems to cry out for someone to be busy. That’s the problem with Germany—we worship industry—but avoiding work, or at least what other people perceived to be work, was the only way I had time to think. I would close the door, clear away the reports, take the phone off the hook with orders that under no circumstances was I to be disturbed. Only that way did I ever find the time to think. You’re wasting your time if you don’t find time to waste. Letting your mind wander above the clouds like Caspar David Friedrich is what makes a detective any good. That’s what I mean by doing nothing. Doing nothing is usually the best thing to do, at least until you have worked out something better to do. Just like now. My first instinct when she got out of the car and stalked off like Achilles in a sulk was to put a bullet in your face, Max. Only I am not going to do that. In fact, I am going to do nothing to you I wasn’t going to do before she left.”

Merten breathed a sigh of relief.

“Now that she’s left there’s no reason for us to stop being friends,” he said. “You were trying to do the right thing in her eyes. I understand that. But those beautiful eyes have gone. And nothing much is going to be served by handing me over to the Greek cops.”

“Just for the record, we were never friends.”

“Sure we were, Bernie. Hey, what was the name of that brandy bar you took me to once, near the Alex? The one near that weird hotel with the word ‘Hotel’ upside down? You know—that bar with the picture of the lion over the electric piano.”

“The Grüne Quelle.”

“That’s right. Do you remember the sign on the wall? ‘Roar like a lion roars when you need another shot.’ I could use a glass of that stuff now, couldn’t you, Bernie?”

I didn’t answer but I remembered the bar, all right, and the taste of the brandy. I could even hear the tunes on the pianola, too: “I Kiss Your Hand, Madame,” followed by the Glorious Prussia March and everyone in the bar full of cheap brandy and singing along at the top of their voices. I even found myself recalling the taste of the giant fifty-pfennig steamed sausages they served. I missed it all and more than I cared to admit; I certainly wasn’t about to start reminiscing about the old days with a man who’d just scared off my girlfriend. It was important not to forget, but sometimes it was even better not to remember, to permit the new to overwrite the old.

Merten was still full of talk about old Berlin but because I knew why he was doing it I’d almost stopped listening.

“And surely you remember that little restaurant near the courts? Hessel’s, was it? You’d been giving evidence in a murder case—the Spittelmarket Murders. It was there you gave me the best advice I ever had. About not joining the SS.”

“You should have taken it.”

“But I did take it. I told you, I was just an army captain.”

“Perhaps you didn’t join the SS, Max. And maybe you didn’t kill anyone, like you said. But what you did was as bad as anything any of those others did: Eichmann, Brunner, the whole rotten crew. You lied to all those people in Salonika. You took all their money and all their hopes and then you sent them to their deaths. That’s a terrible thing to have done.”

“Nonsense. Look, the war is history. No one gives a damn about Hitler in Europe. That’s the whole point of this new EEC. So we can all forget about the horrors of the war and become good Europeans instead. Life is one enormous horror, Bernie, and periodically society proclaims its natural fascination with evil and then feels obliged to destroy itself. For the last time, there is no soul, there is no creator, there is merely this poor thing of flesh and blood called man, which, for whatever reason, other men feel compelled to gas and to burn. It’s been happening for centuries. Take my word for it: no one is going to remember the Jews of Salonika in a few years’ time. Hardly anyone remembers them now.”

“You’re wrong about that, too, Max. It was another German, Heinrich Schliemann, who proved that the Trojan War was a real event in history. Homer was writing about it five hundred years after it probably happened. And we’re still talking about it today. It’s the same with the Second World War. This stuff isn’t going away in a hurry. We Germans are stuck with it, like the Greeks and the Trojans were. Whether we like it or not.”

“So what happens now?”

“You’re going to drive us into the center of Athens. To police HQ. And there you’re going to volunteer yourself as a witness in the ongoing trial of Arthur Meissner. After that it’s up to the Greeks what happens.”

“Look, you’re still not thinking straight. Maybe she has gone, but there are plenty more fish in the sea. Think of the gold on that sunken ship. Think how many girls like her you could have with a proper share of that treasure.”

“Maybe you weren’t listening but there is no proper share of money obtained like that, Max. And I just lost the only treasure I was ever likely to have. That’s the nature of real treasure. You just don’t know how precious it is until you lose it. So, drive.” I brushed his earlobe with the sights on the gun. “And please, Max, not another word until we get to police headquarters. If you can keep your mouth shut until then, you stand an even chance of staying alive for the rest of the day.”