The Scapegoat (16 page)

None of this was entirely foreign to Soukiouroglou, but in Bristol it seemed more appealing. Perhaps it was the unbearable wetness of the place, or the solitude, the fact that he never heard Greek being spoken on the street. He even dreamed in English. It wasn’t something he enjoyed—on the contrary, it was a heavy price to pay.

He wrote two articles while he was there and took notes for more, but nothing could make up for the nights he spent shut up in the cell of a room they gave him, his gaze trained on the wall. As was natural, he became even more suspicious in the face of what was commonly known as truth. So many of his fundamental certainties had been shaken. And yet deep down, he knew it was all not much more than intellectual gymnastics. He didn’t see the wisdom in radical skepticism.

On his return to Greece, he was a different person altogether. Fani was the first to notice.
Your voice changed
, she’d said.
It’s deeper, less certain
.

That lesson from his days in Bristol was what he wanted to share with Minas, whose paper he had conceived as an exercise in recognizing that there were multiple versions of reality. A simple statement of the various viewpoints on the case wasn’t what Souk had in mind.

Souk’s colleagues couldn’t believe how slippery he was, pretending to be some kind of monk and then suddenly showing up in the society column in a tender tête-a-tête with Fani Dokou. The photograph that got published the morning after the concert showed them leaning in toward one another. Rumors flew, his colleagues jumped to all kinds of conclusions.

But the joking and laughter stopped abruptly when Souk walked into the teachers’ office, silent and obviously exhausted.
He had sunglasses on and didn’t bother saying hello to anyone. They observed his entrance, exchanging glances and committing his movements to memory, as fodder for later conversations. Souk opened his locker, got out his things, and made photocopies for class. He still hadn’t said a word to anyone by the time he headed down to morning prayer. He never crossed himself during prayer, a stance that had attracted comments of all sorts during the years he’d been working at the school.

He was in no mood for small talk or smiles. He stood behind the rows of students, alone, entirely alone, with an armful of books shielding his stomach.

He had missed Fani. They tried to keep up on the phone, but sometimes things got in the way: concert tours, travel, resounding silences initiated by one or the other or both. But then at some point they would simply pick up the thread again, start right where they’d left off, in the middle of a sentence, telling stories to fill in the gaps. Fani told him about experiences she’d had, things she’d done and seen, while he mostly talked about what he’d been reading. They never intruded on one another’s lives, perhaps out of discreteness, perhaps out of discomfort. Souk also talked on the phone with her son. Nikolas Dokos didn’t know Souk all that well, but the boy clearly had a soft spot for him. He was intrigued by the unlikely combination of the teacher’s austere, almost ascetic personality and the abrupt flights of his thought—his unconventional mind, his biting irony, the way he toppled the walls of established logic, overturning everything. Souk didn’t pretend to be a revolutionary, like most of the musicians Nikolas had grown up around. He never launched into long diatribes against the system, he didn’t try to one-up others by being the most radical person around. He said what he thought, didn’t hold back with his opinions, and didn’t change them to suit the circumstances. When you asked nothing of him, he gave you everything. But if you put a knife to his throat, he’d dig his heels in like a mule.

Nikolas would accept advice from Souk that he wouldn’t from Fani. Mostly because there was nothing preachy about him: his relentless irony undermined everything. Nikolas told his mother he didn’t find her friend boring, like all the tutors with their fancy degrees whom Fani paid through the nose to teach her child to give the right answers. And while she was happy that Marinos had developed this channel of communication—even at a distance—with her sourpuss of a son, it worried her, too: even she preferred a more conventional approach to the issue of her son’s education.

So when she saw Nikolas hanging on Marinos’s every word that night after the concert, agreeing with whatever the teacher said, she sent him away. Nikolas went off in a huff. For the thousandth time, his mother was spoiling his fun.

Fani leaned toward her friend, whom she hadn’t seen in a long time. He was the one she called with unwashed hair, in pajamas and slippers, when Nikolas was driving her up the wall, but also when she had some important job prospect that she wanted to discuss. She was eternally grateful that she’d never shared a bed with him, as she had with most of her friends, artists with high ambitions and low self-awareness. He wasn’t a very physical person, or at least that’s what she used to think, when she was an undergraduate and would watch him in the lecture hall, the graduate student and teaching assistant for the course. He seemed to be wrapped in barbed wire. The other students didn’t like him, called him a
leper
, or
uptight
. They made fun of her for talking to him. But Fani liked how Souk kept his distance. He shunned the crowd. Though in the end he paid for it.

—Why don’t you have a job at the university? she asked abruptly that night after the concert.

He showed no surprise at the question. It was one Fani often returned to. From the moment his advisor, Asteriou, had retired, Fani wouldn’t let it rest.

—I’m not cut out for that kind of institution, Souk replied.

—You’re wasting your life at the school, Fani insisted.

—Who says?

—I do. What on earth are you doing there? I mean, I’m sure you’re doing those brats some good, I see how Nikolas is with you. But you’re made for other things.

—Mmmm, he murmured ironically.

—You’re a fool, Fani said, starting to get mad. A stubborn fool. The king of fools, the fool to end all fools.

—For a bard, your prose isn’t half bad, either, he teased.

Fani tickled him in the ribs. She liked touching him. Sometimes she pinched, or sank her nails into his flesh, or, like now, tested him with a tickle. She liked seeing him pull back in a panic. His body was on alert, it wouldn’t stand for any incursion, even in the form of a caress.

—I’m not cut out for all that, he repeated. Running around to conferences, padding my c.v., making connections. I’m a solitary researcher.

—Okay, Lucky Luke.

Fani clinked her glass against his. After a concert a few drinks helped her relax. But even with alcohol, she could never get to sleep before dawn.

—You don’t understand, Souk insisted. You think things would be better there.

—Yes, I do, Fani answered without hesitation.

He weighed her with his eyes.

—I’m not going back there, even if they burn me alive.

—Well, I can’t argue with that, Fani said, and let the subject rest.

Grandpa Dinopoulos was walking slowly from the olive tree at one end of the veranda to the mallows at the other and back again. Elena helped ease him into the turn. The weather was lovely, the sun caressed his bald spot and eyes, warmed his pajamas. This
brief excursion onto the veranda had lifted his mood. So much so that he was considering asking Elena to read him a few pages from the penal code. It might give her some trouble, but she’d manage, she was diligent and compliant, and her Greek wasn’t bad. He was already daydreaming of the moment when he would sink into his armchair and listen.

—Could you bring me my binoculars? he asked.

Elena sat him down in his chair on the veranda.
A gorgeous day
, the old man thought, closing his eyes.

How could I have imagined
, he wondered.
Back when I was so anxious all the time, when I thought work was everything. When I spent my days strategizing. When I confused unimportant things for important ones
.

Grandpa Dinopoulos raised the binoculars to his eyes. On sunny days when he could sit and daydream outside on the balcony, this was his morning entertainment: watching the passersby and his neighbors, the activity on the street and in the apartments across the way, whenever a curtain parted. He turned his gaze to the tables on the sidewalk outside Terkenlis, the sweet shop on the corner. That’s where Elena bought his favorite tsourekia covered in white chocolate. She brought them home still warm in the box, and he liked to touch them with his hands, stick a finger in the frosting and bring it to his mouth. Buying a whole tsoureki for a few fingerfuls of frosting struck Elena as a waste, but then there weren’t many pleasures left to the old man. The manhandled sweet would end up at the Georgian housekeeper’s apartment, where she gave it to her kids and neighbors.

Grandpa Dinopoulos watched the morning customers at the tables set out on the corner of Agia Sophia Street and Ermou. Middle-aged couples, a few extremely old women, some university students. Evthalia and her girlfriends had taken a spot at the corner table. He recognized her from her knitted suit; she’d always liked bright colors. This one was a roof-tile red that caught the eye, particularly as she was surrounded by her friends’
gray, sky-blue, and salmon-colored jackets. Evthalia was lecturing them, he could tell by the way her head bobbed, and the rest were listening, most likely agreeing.

Grandpa Dinopoulos put down the binoculars with a sigh. How could he possibly have imagined, over half a century earlier when work was his whole life, that the sight of a suit in roof-tile red would be enough to make his day?

MARGARET TALAS, MOTHER OF JACK TALAS

Each child is born with its character already in place. Teachers and missionaries like to think they tame souls. What do they know? They’re all men, and most of them childless. They think character is something you can shape, that punishments or encouraging words actually make a difference.

Bullshit, darling.

As soon as you take your child in your arms you know. From how it cries and nurses and sleeps. You know how much it’s going to put you through from that very first moment. Jack is a perfect example: he was as stubborn and hardheaded as they come.

—What a beautiful baby, my mother-in-law crowed. He sleeps like an angel.

But when he was less than a month old I saw what his anger looked like: face blue from screaming, legs so stiff he looked like a dry branch. He didn’t know how to talk, so he shrieked until we figured out what he wanted. In all the years that followed he didn’t change a bit. If he set his mind on something, we all had to get out of the way.

My other boy, Mike, wasn’t like that. He went along with whatever his older brother wanted, he didn’t like to fight. They slept in the same room, shared clothes and toys. Mike used to grind his teeth in his sleep, I could hear it at night, and Jack would twist and turn so that in the morning his sheets would be tangled into a ball.

Jack excelled at everything. He was the best student in his class, and had a shelf full of sports trophies. People loved him, but they were jealous, too. At school and in the neighborhood, Jack’s reputation made things hard for Mike. Everyone compared them.
It wasn’t fair, but that’s how people are, darling. Jack just laughed, and Mike learned to grit his teeth and bear it.

The day Jack told us he was going to be a radio reporter, we were sitting right here on the sofa, listening to the radio, as a matter of fact. I scolded him for not taking off his shoes, but he was in a hurry to tell us
what was going to happen
—that’s how he said it, since the decision had been made and there was no changing his mind.

We had intended for him to be a lawyer, a well-paying, respectable profession. But he went his own way without consulting anyone. He’d already signed a contract to go overseas as a foreign correspondent. Instead of being upset, his father was proud. Mike became a lawyer in his place.

Jack left for the Middle East, the other end of the earth. While I was ironing his shirt collars, he came and hugged me.
Don’t worry, Mommy
, he said,
I’ll be fine
. And he was. His letters were always upbeat, full of jokes. Even when his plane crashed. Anyone else would have begged to come back home, but he insisted on finishing his assignment. He had a journalism fellowship waiting for him at Harvard, he would rest on his laurels later.

It’s my fault. I often think that, darling.

I never taught him what danger meant. My child hadn’t learned to fear. Of course at other times I say that they’re born with their character already formed. You could turn the whole world upside down, but you couldn’t change him.

I went to the country that killed him. Jack’s widow welcomed me. A good girl, I could see why he’d chosen her. She was made for happiness.

—Take off those widow’s weeds, child, I counseled. They won’t do you any good.

She insisted on wearing black. I told her to at least go sleeveless. To dress nicely, not in nun’s habits. She was a polite girl, and
didn’t want to upset me by objecting too strongly. I talked to her mother and made myself understood: I would be bringing Zouzou to America. We would figure out her visa. I saw no reason for her to stay behind in that wild place.

Stench and filth, darling. That’s all I remember of Greece. Miserable people, hungry children. You had to find the proper person to take care of the least little thing. If you found him, the job got done in seconds flat. If you didn’t, door after door just shut in your face.

Before Jack went there, I didn’t know a thing about Greece. When he wrote to tell me about his latest assignment, I looked for it on the map. Such a tiny place, it was hard to find. Mike helped me, moved my finger over from Asia to Greece, a tiny splotch.
It’s a country with a lot of history
, he told me.

—If it mattered, we’d know about it. I bet they know who we are.

Then I saw that photograph in the newspaper. A man on horseback with a rope of severed heads hanging from his saddle. Only communists do things like that.