Petros Markaris - Che Committed Suicide

‘Why do you bother racking your brains like that, when you know you can’t do it?’ I heard Adriani’s voice coming from the kitchen. She was the ever-vigilant eye in the house that sees all and misses nothing.

I was comforted by the fact that, because of the downpour, the news bulletin would at least be different from the usual and we’d see rivers, flooded basements and buckets, but my delight exhausted itself after four shots, as the afternoon deluge had lasted barely half an hour. By the time the camera crews had arrived, the rivers running down the streets had dried up. I prepared myself to hear for a third time the same news stories that I had read in both the morning and evening papers, but the bulletin was suddenly interrupted by advertisements.

‘What, now we’ve got to have adverts during the news too?’ said Adriani puzzled. ‘They should be ashamed!’

My first reaction was to get up and walk away. To wait for the adverts to finish just to hear news reports that I already knew was just a bit too much. But then I thought whether I had anything better to do. I didn’t so I sat down again. Extraordinarily, my patience was rewarded because the advertisements were interrupted suddenly and the woman newscaster reappeared on the screen. She was holding a sheet of paper and staring perplexedly into the camera.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, just a few minutes ago, our channel received an anonymous phone call. A caller announced that he was phoning on behalf of the Philip of Macedon National Greek Front and stated that they claimed responsibility for the suicide of the businessman, Jason Favieros. The unknown caller said, and I quote, “Favieros did not commit suicide, it was we who forced his hand. The reasons we required his suicide are written on an announcement that we have left in a waste bin in the entrance to the channel’s offices.”’

The newscaster paused for a moment and stared into the camera. ‘In fact, Ladies and Gentlemen, the information given us by the unknown caller proved to be true. The announcement was found in the waste bin outside the entrance to our offices. This is it.’ She raised her hand and a sheet of A4 paper appeared on the screen with a logo showing the familiar helmeted head of the father of Alexander the Great with the following large black letters underneath:

PHILIP OF MACEDON

NATIONAL GREEK FRONT

There followed a sparsely written text. Even I could see that the logo and text had been prepared and printed using a computer.

The newscaster began to read the announcement, while at the same time the text appeared, covering half the screen, a method that divides the viewers into two categories: the deaf and the illiterate.

We wish to announce to the Greek people that yesterday we obliged the businessman, Jason Favieros, to commit suicide. The Philip of Macedon National Greek Front condemned Favieros to death because in his projects in Greece he employed exclusively foreign workers: Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbians, Romanians together with numerous Africans and Asians. Through these activities of his, the Communist, Internationalist, Jason Favieros, systematically hacked away at the very foundations of the Nation. Firstly, because by employing foreign workers from the Balkans, from Asia and from Africa, he contributed to the rising unemployment in Greece and consequently to the weakening of the national fabric to the benefit of foreigners. Secondly, because in this way he promoted the immigration of foreigners to Greece and the gradual undermining of the Nation by foreign races, who systematically marginalise Greeks and who, in less than a decade, will have succeeded in rendering them a minority in their own homeland. Thirdly, because by employing foreigners at degrading wages, he secured huge profits, without giving even a penny of it to the unemployed Greeks and their families.

We gave Favieros the choice to voluntarily do away with himself, otherwise one by one we would execute all the members of his family.

We call upon all those who employ foreign workers in Greece to dismiss them within a week and replace them with Greeks. Otherwise, they will suffer the same fate as Favieros and either will be obliged to do away with themselves or be executed.

We call upon the authorities to deport all foreigners from Greece within a month. Otherwise, we will kill so many foreigners each day that they will be forced to leave on their own.

Time to put a stop to the pillaging of our homeland by foreign nations!

Time to put a stop to the rising unemployment in Greece so that our enemies can eat and prosper!

Greece belongs to the Greeks and Greeks want it pure and exclusively their own.

Let those who have ears to hear, hear!

PHILIP OF MACEDON NATIONAL GREEK FRONT

The newscaster looked up from the text. ‘That was the text of the announcement, Ladies and Gentlemen,’ she said. ‘The original has already been sent to Police Headquarters.’

I stared at the screen, dumbfounded. Of all the possible explanations for Favieros’s suicide, this was the only one I hadn’t thought of. It crossed my mind to phone Sotiropoulos to find out whether he’d thought of it, but I immediately dismissed the idea.

That night, it wasn’t Philip of Macedon I dreamt about but Bucephalus. He was pure white with a thick mane. He was standing in the middle of a meadow and had raised his head to the sky, like a cock that instead of crowing neighed.

It seems that God loves reporters of all kinds. Otherwise there’s no explaining how, every time that a story is about to fizzle out, manna falls from heaven and it rises again from its ashes. This time the manna went by the name of the Philip of Macedon National Greek Front and came to completely turn things on their head, without actually changing anything. Because this new line that certain nationalists had supposedly forced Favieros to commit suicide for the simple reason that he was employing workers from the Balkans and Third World countries in his factories and that he committed suicide in public in order to indulge their whims didn’t stand up even as the kind of cock-and-bull story told by aunt Lena, who, in any case, only had truck with good nationalists. On the other hand, however, it opened up a whole new ballgame for conjectures, theories and opinions and for all kinds of claptrap so that the news reporters would have plenty to discuss with the usual TV experts for the next ten days or so. This amazing combination where everything seems different, though nothing changes, can only be achieved by God and only with the help of Greeks.

The other thing that stuck in my mind was the name of the organisation. The Philip of Macedon National Greek Front. Where had I heard that name before? I racked my brains but I couldn’t for the life of me recall. And yet it kept echoing in my head.

The answer came with a phone call from Katerina, who was dying to discuss the developments in the Favieros case.

‘But do you seriously believe that they forced him to commit suicide?’ she asked.

‘It seems unlikely to me too, and yet the one sure thing is that Favieros committed suicide publicly. What we need to find out is why. There’s something we’re missing.’

‘I agree. Everything they’ve been saying and writing about his bad financial situation, about incurable illnesses and the like doesn’t have any basis in fact from what I can see.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘What then?’

‘Why would he commit suicide publicly? There’s no logical explanation for public suicide.’

‘So what are you saying then? That they told Favieros, who was on first-name terms with everyone in the government and even with the Prime Minister, to go to some TV channel and, in front of the camera, put a pistol in his mouth and blow his brains out?’