Zannis simply made a dismissive gesture: we don’t have to talk about it.
“I know,” Pavlic said. “But even so, thanks.”
“Here,” Zannis said. He handed Pavlic three packs of cigarettes, a box of matches, the morning newspaper from Athens, and two magazines. German magazines. Pavlic held one of them up to admire it; Brunhilde, naked, full-breasted and thickly bushed, had been photographed in the act of serving a volleyball. Pavlic said, “Modern Nudist. Thanks, I’ll share these.”
“You should see what we have in Salonika.”
“I can imagine. What becomes of you now?”
“Back home, so they tell me. I’ve lost the hearing in one ear. And they say I might get a little medal if there are any left. And you?”
“A concussion, cuts and bruises.” He shrugged. “I have to stay for a few days, then I’m ordered back to Zagreb. I suspect they don’t think what I was doing was so important. They’d rather I keep the police cars running.”
“Marko,” Zannis said. Something in his voice made Pavlic attentive. “I want to ask you to do something.”
“Go ahead.”
Zannis paused, then said, “We have Jews coming into Salonika now. Fugitives from Germany, in flight. At least some of them have disappeared on the way. Where I don’t know.”
“I thought they went to the port of Constanta.”
“Some of them do,” Zannis said.
“But the way things are going in Roumania these days, it may be easier for them to get away if they try from Greece.”
“As long as I’m there, it will be. And we have more ships, and more smugglers. For Europe, it’s like slipping out the back door.” After a moment, he said, “What do you think about it, this flight?”
Pavlic said, “I don’t know,” then hesitated, finally adding, “God help them, I guess that’s the way I’d put it.”
“Would you help them?”
For a time, Pavlic didn’t answer. He was still holding the nudist magazine. “Costa, the truth is I never thought about-about something like that. I don’t know if I …, no, that’s not true, I could, of course I could. Not by myself, maybe, but I, I have friends.”
Zannis said, “Because-” but Pavlic cut him off. “I don’t know about you, but I saw this coming. Not what you’re talking about, exactly, but something like it. That was in ‘thirty-eight, September. When Chamberlain made a separate peace with Hitler. I remember very well, I thought, So much for Czechoslovakia, who’s next? It’s going to be our turn, sooner or later. So, what do I do if we’re occupied? Nothing?” The word produced, from Pavlic, the thin smile of a man who’s been told a bad joke.
“Well,” he went on, “‘nothing’ doesn’t exist, not for the police. When somebody takes your country, you help them or you fight them. Because they will come after you; they’ll ask, they’ll order: ‘Find this man, this house, this organization. You’re from Zagreb-or Budapest, or Salonika-you know your way around; give us a hand.’ And if you obey them, or if you obey them during the day and don’t do something else at night, then-”
“Then?”
For a moment, Pavlic was silent. Finally he said, “How to put it? You’re ruined. Dishonored. You won’t ever be the same again.”
“Not everybody thinks that way, Marko. There are some who will be eager to work for them.”
“I know, you can’t change human nature. But there are those who will resist. It goes back in time forever, how conquerors and the conquered deal with each other. So everyone-well, maybe not everyone, but everyone like you and me-will have to take sides.”
“I guess I have,” Zannis said, as though he almost wished he hadn’t.
“How would you do it, Berlin to Vienna? Cross into Hungary, then down through Yugoslavia into Greece? That’s by rail, of course. If you went city to city you’d have to transit Roumania, I mean Budapest to Bucharest, and if you did that you’d better have some dependable contacts, Costa, or a lot-and I mean a lot-of money. And even then it’s not a sure thing, you know; the way life goes these days, if you buy somebody they’re just liable to turn around and sell you to somebody else.”
“Better to stay west of Roumania,” Zannis said. “The rail line goes down through Nis and into Salonika. Or even go from Nis into Bulgaria. I have a friend in Sofia I think I can count on.”
“You don’t know?”
“You never know.”
“How do we communicate? Telephone?” He meant that it was beneath consideration.
“Does your office have a teletype machine?”
“Oh yes, accursed fucking thing. The Germans wished it on us-never shuts up, awful.”
“That’s how. Something like, ‘We’re looking for Mr. X, we think he’s coming into Zagreb railway station on the eleven-thirty from Budapest.’ Then a description. And if somebody taps into the line, so what? We’re looking for a criminal.”
Pavlic’s expression was speculative: could this work? Then, slowly, he nodded, more to himself than to Zannis. “Not bad,” he said. “Pretty good.”
“But, I have to say this, dangerous.”
“Of course it is. But so is crossing the street.”
“Do you know your teletype number?”
Pavlic stared, then said, “No idea. So much for conspiracy.” Then he added, “Actually, a typist works the thing.”
“I know mine,” Zannis said. “Could I borrow that for a moment?”
Pavlic handed over the Modern Nudist. Zannis took a pencil from the pocket of his tunic and flipped to the last page, where a group of naked men and women, arms around one another’s shoulders, were smiling into the camera below the legend SUNSHINE CHUMS, DUSSELDORF. Zannis wrote 811305 SAGR. “The letters are for Salonika, Greece. You use the rotary dial on the machine. After it connects, the machine will type the initials for ‘who are you’ and you type the ‘answer-back,’ your number.” He returned the magazine to Pavlic. “Perhaps you shouldn’t share this.”
“Does the message move on a telephone line?”
“Telegraph. Through the post office in Athens.”
“I think I’d better have the typist teach me how to do it.”
“Someone you trust?”
Pavlic thought it over and said, “No.”
Pushing a cart with a squeaky wheel, a nurse was moving down the aisle between the beds. “Here’s lunch,” Pavlic said.
Zannis rose to leave. “We ought to talk about this some more, while we have the chance.”
“Come back tonight,” Pavlic said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
7 December, Salonika.
Zannis wasn’t sorry to be home, but he wasn’t all that happy about it either. This he kept hidden; why ruin the family pleasure? His mother was very tender with him, his grandmother cooked everything she thought he liked, and, wherever he went that first week, room to room or outdoors, Melissa stayed by his side-she wasn’t going to let him escape again. As for his brother, Ari, he had exciting news, which he saved during the first joyous minutes of homecoming, only to be upstaged by his mother. “And Ari has a job!” she said. With so many men away at the fighting, there was work for anybody who wanted to work, and Ari had been hired as a conductor on the tram line.
And, he insisted, this was something his big brother had to see for himself. So Zannis had ridden the Number Four trolley out to Ano Toumba and let his pride show-sidelong glances from Ari made certain Zannis’s smile was still in place-as Ari collected tickets and punched them with a silver-colored device. He was extremely conscientious and took his time, making sure to get it right. Inevitably, some of the passengers were rushed and irritable, but they sensed that Ari was one of those delicate souls who require a bit of compassion-was this a national trait? Zannis suspected it might be-and hardly anybody barked at him.
So Zannis returned to daily life, but a certain restless discomfort would not leave him. Able to hear out of only one ear, he was occasionally startled by sudden sounds, and he found that to be humiliating. A feeling in no way ameliorated by the fact that, just before he returned to Salonika, the Greek army had managed to find him a little medal, which he refused to wear, being disinclined to answer questions about how he came to have it. And, worst of all, he felt the absence of a love affair, felt it in the lack of commonplace affection, felt it while eating alone in restaurants, but felt it most keenly in bed, or out of bed but thinking about bed, or, in truth, all the time. In the chaos that followed the bombing of the Trikkala school, whatever goddess had charge of his mortality had brushed her lips across his cheek and this had, he guessed, affected that part of him where desire lived. Or maybe it was just the war.