Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

At the end of my previous visit, she had given me her companies’ balance sheets. Now she was giving me the details of her mother’s death without my having asked. It was her way of saying: we’re done, on your way.

‘All in all, I think I prefer it when you ask me about our companies,’ she said as I reached the door. ‘What you asked me today was far more difficult for me.’

It was difficult for me too, because I couldn’t get it out of my mind that her father’s suicide was the starting point for the other three.

I wasn’t superstitious, but there was definitely something strange about it. Whenever we formally invited Fanis round for a meal, I was always in a state. The last time, I had been suspended and the meal very nearly turned into a wake. Now, when his parents were coming to meet us, my mind was fixed on the suicides. So I was worried in case I got lost in my thoughts in the middle of their visit and they took it to mean that I was fed up and couldn’t wait for them to leave. That was what had happened during Fanis’s first visit and we were on the verge of a life-long misunderstanding till I confessed that I had been suspended and the situation was resolved. And, when you come to think about it, suspension was a life-long matter. But how was I going to convince anyone that the suicides of three sharks were as serious a matter. I couldn’t expect any support from anyone other than my daughter and Fanis. Adriani would be the first to crucify me.

The said Adriani had spent her day between the supermarket, the butcher’s, the greengrocer’s and the stationer’s. She had been shut up in the kitchen all afternoon. At that particular moment, she had laid out in front of her about a dozen scooped-out tomatoes, rather like empty piggy banks, and half a dozen headless peppers that she was getting ready to fill. That was the first dish: stuffed vegetables in the traditional way. In other words, not à l’orphelin or without onions, as she had made for me during my convalescence so that I wouldn’t suffer from indigestion. The main course was a dish she made rarely, which is why she was anxious: veal à la jardinière . Veal loaf with vegetables, wrapped in greaseproof paper and baked in the oven. She had been running all over the previous afternoon trying to find greaseproof paper, which is hardly used any more as it brings back memories of a poor old Greece, and everyone had advised her to use tinfoil, which is just as good. In the end, she tried the stationer’s and found exactly what she wanted.

Katerina was against all this. She thought that there was no reason for going to all this trouble and that we could just as well have invited Fanis’s parents round in the afternoon for tea and cakes. The conversation was over in less than five minutes with Adriani exercising her veto.

‘I was brought up differently, Katerina,’ she said. ‘In our house, the parents of the bride had to invite the parents of the groom for a meal.’

‘Mum, I’m not the bride and Fanis isn’t the groom. Can you get that into your head!’

‘Ask your father,’ Adriani went on, unperturbed. ‘Would his parents have been pleased if they’d gone round and the bride hadn’t cooked for them?’

Katerina didn’t ask me. She preferred to swallow her anger and to go for a walk, but Adriani wouldn’t hear of it.

‘I think you could help me, Katerina, so I don’t have to do everything myself.’

So, there were two hotplates next to each other in a kitchen no bigger than five by eight. Adriani was worried that everything wouldn’t be ready in time and was impatient with Katerina, who, it had to be said, wasn’t exactly a star in the kitchen. On the other hand, Katerina was ready to storm off and take Fanis’s parents out for ice cream, but she gritted her teeth and held back so as not to seem ungrateful to her mother.

I decided to heed the popular proverb about too many cooks spoiling the broth and I went for a walk in Katerina’s place, out of fear of getting caught in the crossfire and of having to assume the role of mediator. Whereas, if the hostilities erupted in my absence, the two of them would hide it from me when I got back so as not to upset me.

My first thought was to go to the little square of Aghiou Lazarou. I rejected this idea immediately, however, because on Saturday afternoon, the café would be full of people and the square full of kids. So I changed direction and headed towards the park and my familiar bench. At that time on Saturday in the summer, people would still be at the beach or sleeping or lazing somewhere with an iced coffee or an ice cream.

It was as I expected, because only the cat was there waiting for me. It had come down from its usual place and was sprawled on the sunny side of the bench. It heard me approaching and half-opened its eyes. It saw who I was and closed them again, indifferent to me.

The park was quiet, not a soul around, apart from me and the cat, so it was an ideal place for thinking, provided that you had some ideas. I didn’t. I was at the recycling stage, but the recycled product hadn’t appeared yet. I had managed with Logaras’s help – the word ‘lead’ was an affront to my ego – to arrive at the original suicide by Yannelis. I could understand his daughter’s objections and I could accept that there were real differences, which were not confined to the ‘public’ and ‘private’ nature of the suicides, but to something else: Yannelis wasn’t wealthy, nor was he involved in businesses in Greece and the Balkans. He lived on his meagre resistance pension. Perhaps his children had helped him financially, but given the image of the proud revolutionary that I had gleaned from Coralia Yannelis’s description of him, that was something I ruled out.

I was aware of all these counter-arguments but my gut feeling told me that, nevertheless, there was some thread linking Yannelis’s suicide with that of the other three. What this was I didn’t know and there were only two ways I would find out: either Logaras would lead me to it step by step, as he had done so far, or I would have to uncover another member of the group who would tell me what it was. I didn’t imagine that they would cover my travelling expenses to visit Tellopoulos in Canada, nor was I crazy about the idea if the truth be told.

The sun had moved and the cat woke up. It stretched, sat back on its hind legs and yawned magnificently. Then it turned its gaze to me and gave me a curt miaow. It was the first time after an acquaintance of several months that it had spoken to me directly and I wondered how I should react, but it wasn’t necessary. It noticed the sun, which was now on the edge of the bench, curled up in its rays and shut its eyes again.

I got up and headed home in the hope that the preparations for the meal would have been completed and that the temperature would have returned to its normal level for the time of year. It was, indeed, quiet in the house, with Katerina setting the table.

‘All prepared for the meal?’ I asked her.

‘As you can see. I’m setting the table.’ She finished arranging the glasses and took the empty tray to bring the knives and forks. ‘Do you know where Fanis and I went wrong?’ she asked me, as she went to the door.

‘Where?’

‘We should have taken you all and sat you down together round a table at a taverna.’

‘It’s a bit late for that now.’

‘I know, but it’s my being away in Thessaloniki that’s to blame. I’d forgotten what Mum’s like.’

The prospective in-laws together with the prospective groom, as Andreadis would have collectively called them, arrived promptly at eight thirty. A couple, Prodromos and Sevasti Ouzounidis, both of average height and both of a portly build, were standing between an embarrassed doctor and an embarrassed prospective magistrate, waiting to hear our ‘welcome’ so that they could respond with their ‘nice of you to invite us’, before we all moved on to the quadraphonic ‘so we meet at last’.