“Are you here to see me or do you just like this bar?”
She gave me and then the bar a withering look of pity and sat down, adjusting herself for comfort a couple of times, which gave me a second to appraise her nicely shaped backside; that was perfect, too.
“My boss is having a meeting with someone upstairs and I was bringing him some business papers he claimed he needed. We both work for the Ministry of Economic Coordination, on Amerikis Street. This hotel has always been popular with journalists and all sorts of people in the government, for all sorts of reasons and not all of them respectable. It’s just as convenient as the Grande Bretagne but a lot cheaper.”
“Well, I should fit right in. Expensive things don’t interest me. Except when I don’t have them, of course.”
“How did you happen to pick this place, anyway?”
“My colleague picked it.”
“He must really dislike you. In case you didn’t know, this is the kind of hotel where not a lot of sleeping gets done. It’s not a complete flophouse but if a man wants to meet his mistress for a couple of hours and wants her to think well of him, then he brings her here. In other words it’s expensive without being too expensive. Also it’s where a member of parliament comes when he needs to have a meeting in secret with another member of parliament but he doesn’t really want it to be a secret—if you know what I mean—then he arranges a meeting in the bar here. That’s why my boss is here. He wants the prime minister to think he’s thinking of switching political parties, which of course he’s not. This place is like a talking drum.”
“Won’t the PM know this is what your boss is up to?”
“Of course. It’s my boss’s way of sending Karamanlis an important message without sending him a memo and without it being held against him later on. A memo would formalize his dissatisfaction. A meeting in here just hints at it, politely.”
“I’d no idea that Greek politics were so subtle.”
“You’ve heard that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Of course you have, you’re German. Well, politics is just another way of being Greek. Aristotle certainly thought so and he should know. He invented politics. If I were you I’d move to the GB. It’s much more comfortable. But don’t move there before you’ve bought me a drink.”
I waved the barman over and she said something to him in Greek; until then she’d been speaking to me in German.
“You speak good Greek. For a German.”
She laughed. “You’re just being kind. For a German.”
“No, really. Your German is all right. Especially your accent. Which is to say you have no accent at all. That’s good, by the way. German always sounds better when it’s spoken by a nice-looking woman.”
She took that one on the chin and let it go, which was the right thing to do; it had been a while since I’d been equal to the task of speaking to any kind of woman at all, least of all to the task of handing out compliments. My mouth was too small for my wit, as if my tongue had grown too big and ungainly like some slavering Leonberger.
“My father worked for North-German Lloyd,” she said. “The shipping company. Before the war he was the chief officer on the SS Bremen. When it caught fire and sank, in 1941, he came home to Greece. He taught me German because he thought you were going to win the war and rule in Europe.”
“Hey, what happened there? I know I should remember.”
“You may have lost the war but—and this is a first, I think—it looks like you’re going to win the peace. Germany is still going to help rule Europe as part of this new EEC. Greece is already desperate to join. We’ve been trying to be good Europeans since the fall of Constantinople. And mostly succeeding, too, I’m happy to say, otherwise I’d probably be wearing a veil and covering my face.”
“That would be a tragedy.”
“No, but it would be a hardship, for me at least. In Greece, tragedies usually involve someone being murdered. We practically invented the idea of the noble hero brought low by some flaw of character.”
“In Germany we’ve got plenty of those to go around.”
“This is Greece, Herr Ganz. We’re not about to forget any of those.”
“And yet you still want to join our club?”
“Of course. We invented hypocrisy, too, remember? As a matter of fact I’m hoping to be part of the Greek delegation in Brussels when we lobby the Germans and the French for membership next year. My French is good. On account of how my mother is half-French. But you’re wrong about my German. I make lots of mistakes.”
“Maybe I can help you there.”
“I didn’t know it was possible to insure against those kinds of mistakes.”
“If it was I certainly wouldn’t be your man, Elli. I don’t sell insurance. I just check the claims. Disappointing people is usually part of my job description. But only when they’ve disappointed me. There’s something about insurance that brings out the worst in people. Some people can just smell dishonesty. I’m one of those, I guess.”
“Papakyriakopoulos said you used to be a cop. In Berlin. Not a German-language teacher.”
“That’s right. But I wouldn’t mind talking to you, Elli. In German or in French. We might meet from time to time and share a cup of coffee or a drink. In here since it’s so public. When you’re not too busy, of course. We could have some German conversation.”
“That’s one I certainly haven’t heard before. Hmm.”
“Does that mean you’re thinking about it?”
“You amuse me, Herr Ganz.”
“Next time I’ll wear a straw hat and carry a cane if it will help.”
“I bet you would, too. If you thought I’d like that.”
She should have said no, of course. Or at
