When the Devil's Idle (27 page)

“
I’m a
policeman. I go where the evidence leads me …” Patronas said,
thinking he might as well tell him the rest, “and it led me there.”
He consulted his notes. “Are you aware that your uncle was a
Gestapo agent?”

Bechtel’s tone
was dismissive. “What proof do you have of this?”

“
Eye
witness accounts. Photos.”

“
That
can’t be true. I knew him. I knew what kind of man he
was.”

“
Mr.
Bechtel, people picked him out; they recognized him.”

“
Greeks
?” He turned it into a slur.

“
Yes,
Greeks. Elderly Greeks who survived the massacre. Like your uncle,
they, too, have scars, only theirs are from bayonets and shrapnel.
They showed them to me.”

“
Why
are you telling me these things? It’s not enough that he was
killed … now you have to slander him, too?”

“
I was
hoping you’d verify what we’ve learned.”

“
You
bastard! Why would I do a thing like that? So you can convict him?
So you can perpetuate the lie that he deserved to die, that he
brought it upon himself? You masquerade as a police detective, but
like everyone else in this godforsaken country, you don’t know how
to work, to do a proper job. Is this really the best you can offer,
Chief Officer? Aren’t you ashamed?”

Upon reflection,
Patronas concluded it was Bechtel’s use of the word ‘ashamed’ that
set him off. He’d been willing to tiptoe around, exactly as Stathis
had ordered, to pretend the victim had been a simple soldier—a good
German, one of the ones everybody talked about who’d only been
obeying orders. But then Bechtel had given his little speech and
all hell had broken loose.

“
If
your uncle, your so-called ‘papa,’ was indeed innocent of mass
murder as you allege, why did he change his name? Gunther Bech, the
Gestapo agent, assuming the name ‘Walter Bechtel,’ the pharmacist,
while you, his nephew, the noble man in Africa, became ‘Gunther
Bechtel’? He didn’t change them much, I’ll give you that—Bech,
Bechtel. Still, it’s quite a coincidence.”

“
My
uncle is the victim here,” Bechtel screamed. “Need I remind you of
that? What he did or did not do during the war has no bearing on
his death.”

“
He
was killed for a reason.” Patronas decided to hold off and not tell
Bechtel about the rapes. The German was already overwrought. It
would only add to his rage.

“
Nonsense,” Bechtel said. “The war was a long time ago. No one
would seek revenge now. Once this generation dies off, it will
finally be forgotten.”

“
You
think it will all go away, do you? If you wait long enough, no one
will remember?”

“
Eventually, yes. Time eliminates many things.”

“
Graves?” Patronas asked bitterly.

“
It
was wartime. My uncle did his duty. That was all.”

Seeking to calm
himself, Patronas lit a cigarette. He was so upset his hands were
shaking and he had trouble working the lighter. He didn’t care if
Bechtel objected or not. “Odd word,
duty
,” he said, inhaling
deeply. “It can mean any number of things, depending on who you
ask.”

“
All
this is conjecture.”

They were having
this argument in English, Patronas pausing now and then to consult
the dictionary. “ ‘Conjecture’ means made up, right? A lie, in
other words.”

“
A
lie. That is correct.”

“
I
believe his title in the Gestapo was
Scharführer.
That’s
what our witnesses told us
.
”

Bechtel pulled
Patronas out of the chair. “I want you to leave,” he yelled.
Turning him around, he shoved him toward the door. “Go on. Get
out!”

Papa Michalis was
knocked down in the ensuing melee, slamming his head against the
edge of the marble countertop. Instantly, blood began to stream
down his forehead and into his eyes, and his cassock was soon wet
with it. It was World War II all over again, only this time the
allies—at least Patronas and Papa Michalis—were losing.

Patronas helped
the old man to his feet. “If I weren’t on duty,” he told Bechtel.
“I swear I’d beat the living shit out of you.”

Hearing the
commotion, Bechtel’s two children came running into the room, their
mother close on their heels. All of them were dressed in pajamas.
The Bauers followed a moment later.

Gerta Bechtel
gasped when she saw the priest and pulled the children away.
“Gunther, what happened?”

“
He
was slandering my uncle, Gerta, my dead uncle. Saying terrible
things.”

Gerta Bechtel
became very still. “What things?”

“
He
said he was a Gestapo agent and that the housekeeper recognized
him.”

“
Maria?”

“
Yes.
According to his theory, he was stationed in Greece and there was
an incident in her village. Some people were killed.” Bechtel
sounded exhausted, his anger spent. “It was war, Gerta. Who knows
what happened?”

“
And
she killed him?”

“
That’s what he says.”

Gerta Bechtel
turned to Patronas. “You arrested her?” She seemed relieved,
pleased.

“
It’s
just a theory at this point. Maria Georgiou hasn’t
confessed.”

“
A
theory?” she said. “After all this time, that’s the best you can
do?”

And with that
they were back where they’d started.

Telling Bechtel
he’d be back, Patronas put his arm around the priest and led him
out of the house and back down to the car. He had taken off his
shirt and wrapped it around the priest’s head in a futile effort to
staunch the flow of blood.

“
Well,
that was a fiasco,” the priest said, settling himself into the
front seat of the Jeep and buckling his seatbelt.

Starting the
Jeep, Patronas drove as fast as he could to Skala. The two of them
had caused quite a stir among the tourists at the bus stop in
Chora. A bloody priest under the monastery’s towering walls; it was
the stuff of horror movies. All that was missing was Dracula
cackling in the shadows.

“
You
showed admirable restraint, I must say,” Papa Michalis
said.

“
I
shouldn’t have said anything about the Gestapo. It was a
mistake.”

“
He
provoked you.”

“
I
know. All that crap about being ashamed. ‘The best you can
do,’ ” Patronas mimicked Bechtel’s German accent.

“
It
came as no surprise to him, that business about the Gestapo, his
uncle’s participation in it. My guess is he’s known for years. One
thing’s for sure: you didn’t tell him anything new. His wife,
either. He might not have known the specifics about Epirus and
Maria Georgiou, but he certainly knew the rest. All that righteous
indignation, the shoving and the rest, it was staged. I’d stake my
life on it.”

“
But
why?”

“
Denial maybe. Who’d want that legacy? Who wants to face the
fact that one’s ‘papa’ was one of Hitler’s henchmen?”

The doctor was
very young, a recent graduate of medical school. He probed the
wound tentatively with his fingers. “What happened, Father?” he
asked. “You got carried away saying your prayers? Wrestling with
the devil?”

Papa Michalis
gave a wan smile. “In a manner of speaking.”

His face was now
totally covered with blood, his eyebrows and his beard encrusted
with it.

“
It’s
only a scalp wound,” the doctor reassured him. “That’s why it’s
bleeding so much. Nothing to worry about.”

He shaved the
hair around the cut and painted it with mercurochrome, then gave
Papa Michalis a shot of Novocain and stitched him up.

Patronas had long
presumed his friend had a head like a rock, but the priest had
surprised him. An egg was more like it—a soft-boiled
egg.

Opening his
cellphone, Patronas stepped out of the emergency room. “What the
hell,” he muttered and dialed his wife’s number.

Dimitra picked up
on the first ring.
“Oriste?”
she said. Hello.

“
It’s
me, Dimitra.”

Dead
silence.

He pictured her
in the parlor of her mother’s house, looking at the phone as if it
had caught fire in her hand.

“
Yiannis?” she said hesistantly.

“
Yes.
I heard you’re moving to Italy.”

“
That’s right, Bologna.” She sounded relieved. “My mother and I
are leaving next week.”

Poor Dimitra,
lugging that old walrus with her to Bologna. Her mother would sulk
the whole time she was there, develop an aversion to pasta and
Chianti. Cause any manner of hardship.

“
Well,
good luck,” he said. “I hope it works out for you.”

More
silence.

“
Thank
you, Yiannis,” she said after a long interval. “Good luck to you,
too.”

So formal they
were with each another, the two old adversaries.

They spoke for a
few more minutes about people they knew, how hot it was in Chios
this summer and other matters, then said their goodbyes.

“
Arrivederci,
” Patronas said. “That’s Italian for ‘so
long.’ ”

“
God
keep you.” Dimitra sounded like she was crying. “God keep you
always, Yiannis, and bless you every day of your life.”

“
And
you, Dimitra. And you.”

“
I did
what you told me,” Patronas told the priest.“I called
Dimitra.”

“
Really?”

The doctor had
left and Papa Michalis was standing by the sink, dabbing his face
with a towel. “How did it go?”

“
Fine.
We chatted and I told her
arrivederci
and she blessed
me.”

Papa Michalis
turned and smiled at him. “Forgiveness, Yiannis, that’s the ticket.
Forgiveness and love. It’s like the Bible says, If I speak in human
and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong
or clashing cymbal. If I have faith so as to move mountains, but do
not have love, I am nothing. You’ll get there, my friend. You’re
just out of practice.”

Out of practice
at love?

Unable to sleep,
Patronas was sitting on the edge of his bed, brooding about what
the priest had said.
He
was the clashing cymbal, Papa
Michalis, a damn bagpipe sometimes.

He remembered his
hours practicing the piano as a child. Like his marriage, his
lessons hadn’t amounted to much. He’d never become adept, never
mastered the art of making music. He didn’t know why his mother had
bothered. They didn’t have the money and yet she’d insisted. Maybe
love was like that, too. Some had the gift, others not. Maybe at
the end of the day he was tone deaf, unable to recognize any song,
save his own.

He walked over to
the balcony and looked out at the street. Cars were parked under
the light in front of the hotel, and a solitary man with a suitcase
stood waiting for a taxi. A lonely scene, it reminded him of the
paintings of Edward Hopper. Dimitra had owned a book of the
artist’s work.

Maybe it wasn’t
too late. According to the teachings of the Church, right up to the
moment of death, a person could turn it around. Who knew what lay
ahead? Maybe that melody, that duet he longed for with another, was
still possible. The priest had warned against hope, but right now
it was all he had.

T
he priest took a lengthy shower the next morning,
shampooing his hair and beard and putting on a clean robe. He was
in good spirits, joking about how the row of stitches across his
forehead made him look like Frankenstein.

“
I
admit it was a little unsettling seeing myself in the mirror, but
I’m over that now.” He gave a little sniff. “Vanity is unseemly in
a priest.”

“
I’m
sorry you got hurt,” Patronas told him.

“
My
fault entirely. Unfortunately, unsteadiness comes with age. I
should have stepped aside when you and Bechtel started wrestling.”
His hair was still wet, freshly parted and slicked down like a
little boy’s.

Antigone Balis
knocked on the door a few minutes later with the pot of coffee and
the plate of sandwiches they’d ordered. “Let me know if you need
anything else,” she told them.

Patronas followed
her out with his eyes. Was it his imagination or did she throw an
extra something into that walk of hers, her jaunty little buttocks
swinging from side to side. Not the green dress, a blue one this
time.

“
You
told me I needed practice at love,” he told the priest, nodding in
her direction. “She’s the one I’d like to practice on.”

The priest
gasped. “Oh my, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Not that one,
Yiannis, not her. Too brazen by half.”