Che Committed Suicide

‘Didn’t you show your husband the note that your father sent you?’

‘By the time I received the note, it was my husband’s turn to be in prison. They arrested him a week before the first Karamanlis government was sworn in.’

‘And afterwards? Didn’t you ask him to explain himself?’

She let out a bitter laugh. ‘Are you surprised?’

‘A little surprised, yes.’

‘Come with me,’ she said, getting to her feet.

She opened the sliding door and let me go through. I found myself in a smaller room with a sofa, a coffee table and four high-backed chairs against the walls. On the wall facing the sofa there was a TV with an enormous screen. Sitting midway, between the sofa and the TV, was a man in a wheelchair. It was clear at first sight that he had suffered a severe stroke. His left arm was paralysed, his head was resting on his left shoulder and was shaking constantly, while his mouth was twisted to the point of disfiguration. He could only move his right hand, and then with some difficulty.

‘This is my husband, Inspector,’ I heard her say from behind me. ‘Cashiered Infantry Major Yangos Skouloudis. Ol’ Yangos as they called him in the Military Police. He was sentenced to fifteen years’ detention, suffered three strokes in his despair and was released with irreparable damage to his health. He can’t walk or speak and our only communication is by means of these notes.’

She pointed to a basket with notes that was attached to the arm of his wheelchair. A little table, rather like a modern school desk, was fitted to the arm and on it were a notepad and a biro. Evidently, Skouloudis wrote the notes and pushed them into the basket.

‘Read them if you want,’ Yannelis told me.

The effort Skouloudis had to make to write them was visible to the naked eye. The letters were rounded, compressed and written separately, one by one.

This slant-eyed girl only makes me tea. I ask her for coffee and she pays no attention. Oh dear, Oh dear.

The second one was a cry of anguish:

MASHED POTATO! MASHED POTATO! I’M FED UP WITH IT!

‘He can’t chew,’ Yannelis, who was reading over my shoulder, explained. ‘All he can eat are soups, purees and at most a little mashed fish.’

The third was an order in a military tone:

Tell the old bird to take me out for my walk later in the day. She brings me back early and then I suffocate all day.

The last one was a comment:

I saw American Yakuza 2. Everywhere it’s the strong who win. We were the only ones who lost. A disgrace!

Yannelis bent over him. ‘I have to discuss a few things with the gentleman and then I’ll come back. All right, Yangos dear?’ she said sweetly.

With the constant shaking of his head, it was difficult to know whether he was giving his assent or ignoring her completely. Yannelis motioned to me to go out with her and she closed the sliding door behind us.

‘Three days after his arrest, a friend came by the house and gave me an address and a key. The address was in Liossia. I found a two-roomed flat full of files. Yangos kept copies of all the interrogations he carried out with documents, reports and photographs. Among them, I found my father’s file and the files of Jason Favieros, Loukas Stefanakos and Apostolos Vakirtzis. That’s how I found out about the “Che” organisation. After they’d burned the archives of the Military Police in Keratsini, these were the only records to remain,’ she added with a smile.

‘And where are they now?’

‘Let me finish. While he was in prison, I began to realise the size of the network that Yangos had set up over the years. From time to time, various people came knocking at my door, bringing me information in the hope that they would help “the Major”. One day, during his visiting hours, I told him in sign-coded language that various people kept coming and bringing me gifts for him. He understood immediately and said sharply: “Don’t even touch them.” Till one day, someone came with information that interested me personally. He told me that Yannelis and his group had begun their activities again. They had dissolved the Che Independent Resistance Organisation and, in its place, had founded the October 8th Revolutionary Organisation …’

The name reminded me of something. ‘Weren’t they the ones who planted the bombs in local bank branches?’

‘Yes. And two in the Stock Exchange that didn’t go off. Che Guevara was killed on October 8th, 1967. The man who brought me the information was extremely methodical. He had discovered their safe house and had photos of them coming and going. He had even succeeded in getting into the safe house using a skeleton key and had taken photos inside. Yangos had told me not to touch them, but I kept them. Apart from my father, all the others made their living in respectable professions. Jason had started a small construction business, Loukas had entered politics and Vakirtzis had started making a name for himself in journalism. As time went by, their careers took off and, dazzled as they were by success, they forgot about the revolution, till they wrote it off completely. By the mid-eighties, my father had remained alone, betrayed by his daughter and by his former comrades.

She went into the kitchen and came back with another glass of whisky. She took a sip, closed her eyes and tried to put her thoughts in some order.

‘The idea of revenge came to me after my father’s suicide. I convinced myself that it was they who had pushed him to commit suicide and not me. My reasoning was very simple. If he was going to commit suicide because of me, he would have done it much earlier. He committed suicide in the early nineties because he saw how his former comrades had become big names in the system they once wanted to overthrow. The collapse of the communist regimes was just the coup de grace.’ She held the glass between her palms and gazed at it. ‘I know, you’ll tell me that I see it like that because it suits me. Perhaps you’re right. I’m tormented by that doubt too. Whatever the case, I wanted to vent the anger that had accumulated within me. They had cashiered Yangos, the little money I had saved went to the lawyers and I had to find work. At the same time, I was studying business management and computer programming in the evenings. When I made my decision to exact revenge, I submitted an application to Favieros’s company using my name Coralia Athanassios Yannelis. My father had hidden his shame as he had told me and had never told anyone that I had married the torturer, Yangos Skouloudis. Yangos, on the other hand, had forbidden me to appear at the trial. So I was certain that Favieros didn’t know the truth. And, sure enough, after a few days, he called me to his office, satisfied himself that I was Thanos Yannelis’s daughter and hired me. I was good at my job and quickly climbed the ladder. In my free time, I wrote the biographies of the three men. I had Yangos’s huge archive together with all the information that the various do- gooders had brought me. When I had finished the three biographies, I put the plan into action.’

‘You’d already sent the first biography to the publisher?’

‘Yes. I chose a small, unknown publisher so as not to run any risks. Then, via email, I began sending Favieros copies of the documents I had in my possession. Each day, I sent something more, without any comment. The information automatically deleted itself the following day and was replaced by more information.’

I recalled one of Stefanakos’s notes about someone who had information and whose demands were outrageous. It wasn’t Vakirtzis, as I had thought, but Logaras, in other words, Coralia Yannelis.

‘And how did they react?’

For the first time, she allowed herself a spontaneous burst of laughter. ‘Favieros sent me a curt message: “How much?” Stefanakos was more diplomatic. He wrote: “I don’t know what you want, but I’m willing to discuss it”. And Vakirtzis replied bluntly: “Name your price, you bastard”. I replied to all of them in the same way. “What I want is for you to commit suicide in public and I’ll take care of your reputations with a eulogistic biography. If you don’t do it, I’ll bring everything out into the open and I’ll destroy you and your family”. Then I sent them the biographies in order to convince them I meant business.’

‘Why in public, Mrs Yannelis? That question has been bothering me since the first day.’

‘I know. You’ve mentioned it time and time again,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Because my father hanged