1
My office is on Gamvetta Street. I got it at a low rent since the previous tenant, a Jewish tailor, had to leave in a hurry, bundling up all his worldly goods as best he could and departing on a ship to Morocco. I met him the day he came to hand over the keys to the landlord, Mr Menagias. He’d tried to haggle at the last minute, hoping to get the value of some bits of furniture which he hadn’t had time to sell and was leaving behind deducted from the rent he owed: there was a battered chest of drawers, a little desk with drawers and a standing lamp with a yellowed parchment shade. Menagias wouldn’t hear of it: “Get that stuff out of here, you nincompoop, get my premises emptied. Mr Angel” (meaning me) “doesn’t have a square inch left for his own things that he’ll be bringing over tomorrow.” The tailor swore his chest of drawers only needed a lick of polish and it would look really good. It was part of his wife’s dowry, they hadn’t had room for it at home which was why he’d had it temporarily in his shop. They shouldn’t mistreat such a fine piece; “It’s genuine walnut, Mr Angel, almost too heavy to lift!”
“Too heavy to lift is it, well I’ll soon find someone who’ll pick it up and chuck it out of here,” replied the landlord coolly, putting his hand out to the tailor once more. “Come along, let’s get finished…” I’m perfectly sure Mr Menagias fancied the furniture himself but wanted to get hold of it without paying.
The other man was almost in tears. He turned to me. “It’s a sin, Mr Angel—my Sarah’s dowry…” He choked, got a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket, blew his nose noisily. “It’s a sin…”
“I won’t throw your furniture out,” I told him, “don’t worry. And if I decide to keep it, drop me a line with your address and I’ll send you something for it…”
The man brightened up, a smile creasing his face and he grabbed my hand with the hand in which he was still holding the handkerchief. “Angel by name and angel by nature, Mr Angel, sir! Go ahead and keep the fur-niture—it’s all yours! And whenever you can… though I haven’t a clue where we’ll end up… My brother-in-law Ariko was going to give me ten thousand for it, ten whole thousand! Just give me whatever you see fit! It’s a sin! I’ll let you have it for five, five thousand to you because you’re a good man, an angel! That’s not too much, is it?”
“It’s far too much. Anyway, it’s not walnut, it’s only a veneer. I might be able to manage three at some point though I haven’t got it right now. Like I said, send me your address.”
He looked at me, trying to work out if I was intending to cheat him. But what could he do? Time wasn’t on his side. It was the beginning of April ’41. The Germans had already entered Salonica, the omens looked ugly, flocks of Jews were arriving from the north like birds driven before the storm, some by one means, some by another, each managing as best he could. In Piraeus people were knifing each other for a place on one of the few foreign packet-boats. The other ships had been commandeered by the Government and, from what we heard, were transporting God only knows what to Crete.
So the tailor departed and I was left with the chest of drawers, the little desk and the lamp, to the chagrin of my landlord; from that day on he considered me “a smooth operator” who’d succeeded in wresting these pieces from his incipient grasp in return for nothing more than a promise. The tailor—whose name I’d noted in an old diary—never did write to me asking for his money.
These three pieces of furniture served me well. The chest of drawers was intended to hold the files that I never acquired, the lamp stood beside my desk and saved me from having to switch on the ceiling light very often, and the desk I put behind the glass partition, in the anteroom, for the secretary I no longer had.
When I first opened my detective agency in an old building at number 44 Panepistimiou Street, on the corner where it joins Harilaou Trikoupi Street, I’d hired Vanda. That wasn’t long after I arrived in Athens and I still had some of the money I’d brought with me. Vanda taught me to drink Turkish coffee which she had a really wonderful way of making. She used to go out and buy it in the Hafteia area, at frequent intervals so that it would always be fresh. The aroma of this coffee invariably reminds me of those early happy and carefree days, when I believed that I was all set to do well. Athens was a virgin market for my profession, so far unexploited. Until I got going properly I’d spend the money I had. I never did get going though.
It was Christmas ’37 when the ship docked at Piraeus and disgorged me and my trunk onto the quay of the commercial harbor, for I’d travelled on a freighter under the Argentinian flag. I was now just like the immigrants you’d sometimes see on Ellis Island, back in my own country.
After the U.S. Consulate in Athens—my first port of call—I made my way to a hotel on Ermou Street for a few days. The guys at the Embassy’s Information Bureau, alerted by Freddy Lamera and their pals in the FBI, had come up with three different apartments in the center of town for me to choose from. But right from the word go they made it perfectly plain that my profession didn’t have any future in this country. Unless I was incredibly lucky, that is. I didn’t believe them.
The office was cheap to rent (but then everything was cheap here for someone who earned a half-way decent wage): I took it at once. As for a place to live, I chose the first apartment on the list they’d drawn up for me. It was five easy minutes away from the office. You turned left on the corner of Harilaou Trikoupi and Fidiou then twenty yards further on you came to Georgiou Gennadiou, a narrow little street on your right. Ten more yards and you were there. The apartment had three main rooms, two looking onto the street in front and the bedroom looking onto the yard at the back. The owner, an engineer by the name of Balomenos, was a thug from the Peloponnese who maintained good relations with the cream of society and, if what people said was true, was a personal friend of Lulu, the daughter of the dictator Metaxas. He let me have the apartment without too much haggling because the previous tenants, a couple called Kanellis, had been months behind with the rent, hadn’t wanted to hear a word about increasing it, and, as he himself said, had wrecked the place. What he wanted was a professional gentleman and bachelor, like me. What’s more, he liked the idea of my job: I’d most probably be a right-wing patriot, not a communist as they were. After relentless pressure on the part of Balomenos, culminating in threats, the Kanellis family (husband and wife both lawyers and a servant-girl from the island of Paros) had taken a smaller apartment on the second floor.
Our apartment block had been built less than ten years earlier; on the other side of the narrow street were some fine old buildings, on the corner an abandoned mansion standing in a garden (“Christomanos’ place” as people called it), a little further on the Varvitsiotis house, while on the corner at the top of the street was another little garden surrounding the church of Zoodochos Pigi. Being something of a beginner as regards both the language and the ways of this country, it took me quite a while to realize that this wasn’t the name of some saint but meant “the life-giving source”—or anyway something of the sort.
Jobs never did materialize, in spite of the fact that the guys at the Embassy helped as much as they could. I wasn’t making any money and my savings were running out fast. The rents for office and apartment and Vanda’s salary (not to mention the coffee, which we went through at the speed of light) were eating up my money. So I decided to let the office go. Either because he noticed it or because someone told him that I rarely left the house early in the morning, Balomenos got wind of the fact that I’d begun receiving clients at home. One fine morning he knocked at the door and after asking me for the rent—it was the time of month that it was due—he announced that the sum we’d agreed on was for a residence. If I wanted to use the place as my office too we’d have to discuss new terms. “It causes wear and tear,” he said. Or something of the kind.
I’d dismissed Vanda when I let the office go, but all the same at the beginning she’d often come over unofficially “to see how I was getting on” and to tidy up my mess. I resorted to Zisis’ café across the street and for a while received clients there; however, a café doesn’t really make a very good impression. And the clients who would visit a private detective agency in those days weren’t poor wretches but people with money and social standing. People who required both a proper office and a secretary.
The worst was yet to come. It wasn’t long in coming. The worst was the war. It may have made it easier for me to find a new office on Gamvetta Street for a very low rent, but it put an end to my last hopes of establishing a clientele and a name for myself. People now had more important things to worry about.
Vanda was Jewish. But either she didn’t want to go or she hadn’t managed to leave with all the other Jews who were hastily trampling over each other to escape. For something like a year she’d been involved with an officer in the Fascist Youth and seemed to think this would be enough to keep her safe from any trouble.
Her boyfriend was a young man about the same age as her, Nikiforos Velentzas by name, who knew Lieutenant Pylarinos in the Security Police. Pylarinos knew me well: it was he who’d stamped my stay permit and recom-mended that I acquire a Greek passport as fast as possible if I wanted to open a detective agency. He’d been to America and had contacts in our embassy here. For some reason he liked me. My paperwork was sorted out rapidly and I found myself in possession of a passport and a permit from the Security Police to open my agency. Velentzas was sent to me by Pylarinos. Probably in order to impress me, he was wearing his Falangist uniform—the forage cap with its white braid, a white tie and spats—and had slicked his hair down with ample brilliantine. After questioning me about detectives and America, whether it really was the way the movies showed it, he asked if I needed an assistant. At first I thought he was looking for a position for himself. But in fact he was trying to find a job for his girlfriend. I’ve no idea what conclusions he came to about me as a result of this visit (certainly he didn’t know the most important thing and never would), but he considered that the job was a secure one and the boss a gentleman through and through. He brought Vanda along a few days later.
She was a cheerful and good-hearted kid. She learned the work fast and from the very first week began to help me do nothing. What this means is that I was free to wander around town while she answered the phone and made appointments and so on. The office immediately began to take on a different appearance; a woman’s touch was obvious everywhere, and I don’t just mean that the place was cleaner. Everything was orderly and in its place. If I’d had work, her salary would have seemed less of a problem to me. When the German attack began, Velentzas disappeared as if the earth had gaped open and swallowed him. A little while later Vanda disappeared too.
In Athens at that time you couldn’t practice my profession except in the most demeaning way. The business that most frequently came in my direction was nosing out illicit couples in some hotel room or bachelor pad and, with the help of a photographer—I used Pelopidas Lebesopoulos, who had a ground-floor studio on Gamvetta Street—bundling them up and taking them naked to the nearest police station for a criminal charge of adultery to follow. You needed a heart of stone for this kind of work. But my heart had already grown fairly hard and I did it without a second thought—dragging them off to the station, pale and distressed, stark naked beneath a rough and ready sheet or blanket, trembling and weeping or cursing us and promising the sun and moon if we’d only let them go.
Twice, when the money was good and the social position of the man offering it seemed to promise future favors or protection if the need arose, I did just this. I let the little birds fly and told my clients that the information they’d given me had been wrong. But this happened only twice. A third time, much later, I almost paid very dearly. However, the war got me off the hook then.
I’d been obliged to take the plunge and leave New York, where I’d inherited Freddy Lamera’s agency—an old agency with traditions and an established clientele. Freddy was a Greek, born in Astoria, from one of the oldest immigrant families: his parents had been among the first to arrive, at a time when you rarely came across any Greeks in America. My father sent me to work as Freddy’s assistant and when he died Freddy had more or less adopted me; being unmarried and without any financial obligations, he left the agency in my hands when he decided to retire.
Not far from Astoria, in Corona, Don Guzman and his lieutenants held power in those days. The “Sicilian,” whom the Americans also knew as “Don Gasman,” never got on too well with Freddy. However, he’d taken a shine to me—perhaps because I’d helped his consigliere come out clean from a nasty adventure, and I’d done it so swiftly and effectively that everyone was left open-mouthed. Freddy grumbled. “Don’t get mixed up with that shit,” he kept on saying. But it’s a wonderful feeling being high in the esteem of Don Guzman and I wouldn’t listen. “He’ll become legal,” I said. “It won’t be long, Jos’ll manage it, he’s half-way there already. And then just think of the favors we’ll get.”
Don Guzman never did become legal, nor did I ever see any favors from him. And—fool that I was—in spite of old Freddy’s imprecations I got involved with the mafia boss’s youngest daughter, Laura. I was rash enough to do what I did without any attempt at concealment. I was secure in the knowledge that the Sicilian had a soft spot for me. The result was that Laurina disappeared overnight—I couldn’t even get her on the phone—I destroyed Freddy’s old age (the Italian’s thugs used to call him La Merda in mockery) and the agency closed down.
One night I heard the sirens of the fire engines. I didn’t pay any attention until someone telephoned me. “Your office is on fire,” he said. I pulled on a pair of pants and a raincoat over my pajamas and went out into the street. Three blocks further down I could see the glow. I pushed through the police cordon and ran up the stairs. The outer office with the files was burnt to ashes. You couldn’t advance a step further—the place had gone up like a torch. The smoke was suffocating and I collapsed unconscious. When I came to, I was on a stretcher with a male nurse bending over me. “You were lucky,” he said.
Lucky indeed! A couple of days later, as I was coming back from visiting Lamera, two of the Sicilian’s men cornered me in a narrow alley. Beppo, his chief henchman, had always liked me. But what has liking got to do with it? No one quibbles when Don Guzman has given his command. “My orders are to do you some grievous damage, Angey boy,” he told me. “Sorry, but you were asking for it.”
I don’t want to remember that night. Beppo himself severed the tendon of my left leg (this was the Sicilian’s favorite punishment—since the early 1930s, when the bastard was at the height of his power, Astoria had become full of men who limped.) However, the worst damage he left to a mute they’d recently brought over from their own country, a numbskull who didn’t understand a thing. He did it just as if he were slicing vegetables for dinner…
I was in the University Hospital on Staten Island for two months, in strict isolation. Police Officer Hendry came over twice a week from Astoria to see how I was doing. Instead of pressing me to make a statement about who’d done these things to me (something that in any case everyone knew), the first time he came he told me, “In your place I’d count myself darn lucky to be alive. In your place I’d be thinking very seriously of taking a trip to see my relatives in Greece.” When I told him I didn’t have any relatives in Greece, he smiled: “In your place I’d find some.” Don Guzman or Jos Gasman was sending me a message via Hendry to get out of there fast.
At the beginning I was obstinate. At night I dreamed of finding him and doing to him what he’d done to me. Of cleansing the town of that bastard and his gang. Of being decorated for it at the Town Hall and of being taken on by the Force—with the prospect of becoming its Chief. Old Freddy, who in the meantime had had a heart attack, brought me back to earth. “Hendry was right, you’ve been lucky. Get out, don’t stay here. There’s no future for you as long as Guzman’s alive. You’re finished.”
When, about a week before I left, I ran into Beppo in the street, he stopped to have a word with me. He was all smiles, glad to see me alive. “Sicilians,” he said with a grimace (he was from Venice, a northerner), “like to hurt you where you hurt them.” It was as if he were apologizing. “Why did you sever the tendon in my leg?” I asked. “Jos loves you, buddy,” he answered, “so he did it to save your face…” “By making me lame?” I asked. “Exactly,” he replied. “The whole world needs to know that the man who dared raise his eyes to the Don’s daughter has been punished. That’s why he lamed you. The other thing… only you and he know about the other thing. And Lauretta.”
This, put briefly, was my story. I could write a whole separate book about it but it no longer interests me. Other things interest me and it’s of these I want to speak. I left my life behind me, the place where I’d grown up, the woman I loved, old Freddy, my mother’s and father’s graves. I was now making the reverse journey of all the shiploads of immigrants who come to America to seek their fortune. I was returning to Piraeus by steamship, to the land of my origins whose language I thought I knew fairly well (I still used to speak Greek with Freddy in the evenings—he spoke it perfectly as if he’d only just arrived from Greece the other day), a land, however, which I’d only set eyes on once when I was four years old and never since. I was more familiar with Mexico than with Greece. I went to the U.S. consulate, they received me pleasantly, forewarned by Lamera and their contacts at Head Office; they gave my papers to be translated and then were kind enough to talk to the Security Police. The Greek police weren’t quite sure what a “private detective” was. One or two high-ranking officers had opened agencies after retiring but—what with the lack of work and what with their advancing age—these had soon closed down. My profession hadn’t managed to make a name for itself in the market.
And I was living in limbo. I did a few jobs for some Americans at the embassy, for some elderly English women who lived here. Of my Greek clients during that first period, someone wanted me to follow his daughter and her boyfriend. He put the photographs I gave him into his pocket with an enthusiastic smile, as if I’d just handed him the most valuable gift. He paid me and disappeared. For weeks I used to scan the newspapers in case something about them caught my eye, some drama, some row, but it was a waste of time. Total silence. I ran into them, father and daughter, sitting at Zacharatos’ café in Syntagma Square, and they both looked perfectly happy. Just how exactly they’d sorted matters out between them I never did understand.
In the building on Gamvetta Street most of the offices were occupied by lawyers, notaries, some mysterious dealers on the windy side of the law, house agents and jacks of all trades, who gradually faded away as business dried up, electricians, radio repair shops, plumbers and other similar folk. Everyone wondered how I managed to make ends meet and what I lived on. The only person I spoke to much was the photographer, Pelopidas, whom we called Pelos, and his wife Fotini, a slim dark-haired woman with an ample bosom, who kept the shop while her husband was out and about. It was Pelos, enjoying the best of memories of our profitable collaboration, who informed me in April ’41 that the tailor’s shop was for rent.