That afternoon, in addition to the heatwave there was a rise in humidity that made your clothes stick to you like postage stamps. Fanis came at nine to pick us up so we could go off in search of a little respite from the heat and we ended up in a taverna in a little back street square, parallel to Pentelis Street. He’d discovered it a few days previously with a group of his friends and he’d found it something of an oasis from the heat. He was right because now and again you felt a few currents of cool air hitting you. And even better, it was an old-style Greek taverna with fresh greens, string beans and split peas.
Adriani found the beans ‘a little’ undercooked, the split peas ‘a little’ watery and the main course of meatballs ‘a little’ dry. She added the ‘little’ each time to modify her criticism, not wanting to offend Fanis, who had taken us there. However, he knew her by now and was amused by it.
‘I brought you here to escape the heat, Mrs Haritos. I know it’s no match for your cooking!’
‘You know, Fanis dear, compared with the junk we usually get served today, the food here is at least edible,’ said Adriani, who always becomes magnanimous once her primacy has been re-established.
‘Anyhow, it’s paradise here compared to the oven inside the house,’ I said, not being one to split hairs.
‘The sun hits the house all afternoon and the heat is unbearable,’ Adriani explained.
‘Why don’t you install air conditioning?’
‘I can’t stand it, Fanis dear. It dries the atmosphere and starts me coughing.’
‘You’re thinking of the old ones. The new ones don’t have those kind of problems.’
‘You tell her because she doesn’t believe me,’ I chipped in.
Adriani made a show of ignoring me and answered Fanis: ‘A waste of money, Fanis dear. I manage just fine with the fan. As for Costas, he’s back to his old ways, roaming the streets all day. Maybe we should install air conditioning in that old crock he drives.’
My nerves were on edge because of the heat and I was looking for any excuse to let off steam, but I was cut short by the stir that suddenly filled the taverna. People were leaving their meals and rushing inside. We looked around without understanding what was happening.
‘What’s going on?’ Fanis asked one of the waiters passing by at that moment with a tray. He bumped into our table because he, too, had his eyes turned towards the interior of the taverna.
‘Stefanakos has committed suicide.’
‘What, the politician?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
‘Just now. On TV. While he was giving an interview. Like that contractor! What was his name?’
He had already forgotten Favieros’s name, but now, thanks to Stefanakos, he would be dragged up out of oblivion. Because Loukas Stefanakos also belonged to that generation of students who had resisted the Junta and had had his share of prison, the dungeons of the Military Police and torture. Except that he had remained faithful to politics and hadn’t gone over to the world of business, with the result that he had become one of the politicians with the highest popularity ratings. In the mornings he was on the radio, in the evenings on TV and in between in the sessions of Parliament, where he was feared by all the parties because he wasn’t one to mince his words, not even with his party colleagues. Even I knew that he was the main candidate for succeeding the present leader of the party.
The tables had more or less emptied and everyone was crowding inside the taverna, where there was a TV fixed high up on the wall.
‘Do you want to hear what happened?’ Fanis asked me.
‘I prefer to hear about it in the peace of my own home.’
‘I’ll go inside to pay because we won’t find a waiter to bring us the bill.’
In contrast to the amount of traffic on the way there, there was virtually no traffic on the way back and we only occasionally encountered another car. Fanis was about to switch on the radio, but I stopped him. I wanted to see the scene on TV without having heard the descriptions on the radio.
Outside the electrical shops in Dourou Square, a crowd had gathered to watch the TVs in the shop windows and was taking pleasure in watching the scene in multiple on some twenty different screens.
‘Do you think it’s connected to Favieros’s suicide?’ Fanis asked me.
‘I’ll want to find out how he committed suicide and what his last words were, but at first sight, it would seem so.’
‘What reason would such a successful politician as Stefanakos have for committing suicide?’
‘What reason did Favieros have?’
‘True,’ Fanis admitted. I was sitting beside him in the front, while Adriani was in the back. Fanis glanced at me while driving. ‘Haven’t you found out anything about Favieros?’
‘Nothing substantial.’
‘Not even from his biography?’
‘It hints at some shady aspects of his professional life, but it’s too early to know whether that had anything to do with his suicide.’
‘If you want my opinion,’ said Adriani suddenly butting in from the back seat, ‘the TV channel has a finger in all that.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Fanis surprised.
‘Have you stopped to count how many advertisements are shown each time they play the scene with the suicide? And that’s without including all the ones shown during all the talk shows and discussions.’
I turned and stared at her in wonder. ‘What are you trying to say? That the TV channel gets them to commit suicide to increase its ratings? Anyhow, how do you know that Stefanakos committed suicide on the same channel?’
‘Just wait and see,’ she replied with certainty.
‘And how does it manage to persuade them?’ Fanis asked her. ‘By offering them money? Neither of them had any need of money.’
‘I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing: plenty of people turn their noses up at money, but no one says no to fame,’ said Adriani, reducing us to silence.
I didn’t go on with the conversation because I knew it was impossible for me to convince her otherwise. She was naturally suspicious. Whenever I got a raise, she was sure they had cheated me and given me less than they should. She read that the new metro would be finished on time and she had no doubt that the contractors had only managed it by cutting corners and in less than three months the whole thing would collapse. You tell her a solution’s been found to the Cyprus issue and she smiles knowingly, saying that if it has been solved, it means the Prime Minister must be getting a rake-off from the Turks. The one thing I don’t understand with all these rich veins of suspicion that we have in Greece is how the Force takes on men like Yanoutsos.
Because of the heatwave everyone had gone out and it was easy for Fanis to find a parking space outside the apartment block. Once we were inside the house, we all rushed to switch on the TV. We found the right channel at only the second attempt from all the interviews going on. It was the same channel that Favieros had chosen for his suicide.
‘What did I tell you? There you are!’ said Adriani triumphantly.
I was ready to give her a mouthful, but the phone rang just at that moment. It was Ghikas.
‘Did you see it?’ he asked.
‘No, I was out and I came home as soon as I heard. I’m waiting for them to show it again.’
‘All right. Watch it and call me.’
‘I hung up and went back to the TV. Sitting at the bottom of the screen was the presenter together with two of Stefanakos’s colleagues: one from his own party and one from the opposition party. Various people kept appearing on the rest of the screen, some there permanently, others coming and going, and all of them singing Loukas Stefanakos’s praises. What a sharp and spirited parliamentary member he had been, but also what respect he had shown for the parliamentary ethos. How fanatically he had fought against bills that served political self- interest and what a great loss his death was to Parliament. The presenter then moved on to the recent campaign
