Signs of a Struggle Read online

  About the author

  Tony Kaplan, when not immersed in his writing, paints portraits of characterful people, leads a long-established drum circle, and finds time to travel the world with his camera. He was, for thirty years in the NHS, a pioneering consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and family therapist. He grew up in an activist family in South Africa, leaving his homeland in his twenties, having refused, after medical school, to serve in apartheid's army. He now lives in London.

  Signs of a struggle

  Tony Kaplan

  Signs of a struggle

  Vanguard Press

  VANGUARD KINDLE

  © Copyright 2020

  Tony Kaplan

  The right of Tony Kaplan to be identified as author of

  this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the

  Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All Rights Reserved

  No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication

  may be made without written permission.

  No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced,

  copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions

  of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).

  Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to

  this publication may be liable to criminal

  prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is

  available from the British Library.

  ISBN (PAPERBACK) 978 1 784656 00 3

  Vanguard Press is an imprint of

  Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers Ltd.

  www.pegasuspublishers.com

  First Published in 2020

  Vanguard Press

  Sheraton House Castle Park

  Cambridge England

  Printed & Bound in Great Britain

  Dedication

  For those who have suffered and for those who have died in their struggles for freedom and justice.

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to the many people who helped and inspired me in getting this book written. I thank especially Malcolm Kohll and Mariel Kaplan for reading the first draft of this novel and giving me incisive feedback; Colin Moss for his suggestions about pacing after reading the second draft; Faye Zachariadis for checking my rendition of Greek phrases and forms; Barbara Trapido for her enthusiasm for my writing which gave me the confidence to persist; Costa Gavras whose movie, Z, started my fascination with Greek political history; my cousins who married Greek men; my wife and children who share my love of Greece; and Julian Morris, whose wide-eyed credulity and wonderment in response to my riffing on some of the characters in the Greek village our families stayed in all those years ago, convinced me I had a story worth telling.

  Prologue

  “He knew he would die long before they killed him. After they’d burned the soles off his feet and gouged out his eyes, all he could see were his sons’ faces when they told them their father was dead; his youngest not understanding why his father had gone forever, his wife moaning and trembling, her hands over her face. He gave no names – he would never give up his comrades to them – I could have told them that. But once the torture started, it would only finish when the torturers had had enough, when they’d shown the American how ruthless Greeks could be in eradicating the filth of communism. Once the torture had gone that far, then it was certain the man would die. He knew that. But when they took him from the car, his mouth was numb. He wet himself, the stain spreading, and with it his shame, which he vainly tried to hide from the men he knew were watching and judging. I don’t know for certain whether he knew that I was there, but I believe he did. His legs could not bear his weight and his shoes, loose without the laces they’d taken from him so he would not hang himself in his cell, made a trail in the dust as they dragged him to his place of execution on the wasteland behind the town’s dump, beyond the first ridge of hills. As they pushed him to the ground, he tried to scramble away, slithering on his belly, his fingers clawing at the sand. He knew it was no use, but I understood his wish to go to his death resisting them, not giving in. A boot on his back forced him down. All of this in silence. The American grinned, his eyes under his dark glasses, hidden, his trousers sharply creased. The man, his face pressed to the earth, would have felt the metal of the gun in his neck. The air went out of him. I thought I heard him groan, ‘Eleftheria’, but this may have been what I wished, my prayer for him. Then the explosion, brief, discreet. His body went tense… ena lepto… and then he relaxed.

  “The American shook a packet of cigarettes loose, placed one on his thin lips and offered the pack around. The executioner unrolled the tension from his neck and shoulders and took one. His men murmured and each accepted the gift. The American flicked his lighter open and a flame sprang up, and the faces of the defenders of Greek purity were lit, as they leaned forward, like a Caravaggio, proud and mean. Then the American, exhaling a thick cloud of fragrant tobacco in my face, offered the pack to me. I am ashamed of it now as I tell you this, but although my hand was shaking, I took a cigarette and allowed him to light it for me.

  “I have carried the ghost of that man on my back for nearly 40 years. He never leaves me, and I must not desert him. To do this, I must be a wandering spirit. This is how my debt is paid.

  “Greeks in all their wars have said Eleftheria i Thanatos. Freedom or Death. There have been many wars. Many people died. Who is free? Am I free? You tell me.”

  ****

  1

  2005

  The day I arrive on the island, I hear about the body in the bridge.

  “Un-be-lieve-able!” Yiannis sets down the tiny white cup of dark coffee and a glass of water on my table facing the sea, the pale blue water in the bay glistening in the still fierce heat. The table is in the shade of an ancient tamarisk tree, its trunk twisted and deeply lined, its bark whitened with lime to keep away the ants. “Unbelievable!” he says again, “A hand - sticking out the cement - like this!” He shows me, his arm outstretched into a balled fist, his face contorted in disgust.

  “Yianni! Ela!” His wife calls him. Yiannis, sighing his protest, goes back into the tiny kitchen where all the food for the taverna is prepared on a two-plate electric cooker and a charcoal burner to see what she wants.

  When I’d arrived at the island’s airport earlier, I’d expected to see Lucy waiting for me. The terminal building was a low-roofed single room with a glass partition to separate the newly arrived from the already there. Nauseous and bone-jangled from the ride on the single prop island-hopper which had brought me to Mythos from Athens, I’d managed to retain a hope that, against the odds, she’d be there. I’d searched for her face amongst the bored faces waiting for their relatives to appear. I don’t know how I’d managed to convince myself, to believe, she’d actually come to fetch me. She hadn’t replied to any of my messages. My forefingers-to-temples eyes-tightly-shut visualising a positive outcome hadn’t seemed to work.

  Striding out from the conditioned air of the terminal building, I slammed into the dry heat, like something solid, like a fist in the chest, the blazing sunlight dazzling white. I fumbled in my pocket and extracted my shades, and looked around. The lenses polarised the vast dome of cloudless sky a cartoon blue, like it had been photoshopped with ‘saturation’ on max. Greece. Blue and white. My feet on the ground for the first time in the land of my father’s birth.

  In front of me, a row of taxis pretended indifference – Mercs, none less than ten years old, clones of white with silver trim. The driver of the saloon at the front of the queue leaned against his car, his meaty arms folded over his prodigious belly, a cigarette h
anging off his lower lip. The briefest of eye contact from me, immediately but without haste, he ambled to the back of his car and opened the trunk. I passed the scrap of paper with Lucy’s address in Agia Anna scrawled on it to him. He scowled at it, then nodded faintly. “Endaxi,” he growled and signalled for me to get in the back seat.

  No traffic to speak of on the freshly-laid tar road to the village, as I’d taken in my first views of the island – scrubland and white rock all the way to the coast, and then suddenly the turquoise sea, jewel-like and immaculate. The taciturn taxi-driver liked the glide in his driving, and sped us smoothly and silently around the coast road’s gentle bends.

  And then we’d been held up at the bridge. The taxi driver had cloaked his frustration in long-suffering forbearance. In a gully several feet below us, the old bridge, back broken, leaned unsteadily on concrete legs poking out of a scribble of brush and weeds. Construction vehicles stood idle; demolition workers in hi-vis jackets sat on rubble, smoking. A section of the bridge had been demarcated with crime-scene tape and off to the side two figures in white forensic suits contemplated the edifice, hands on hips. A muscular young cop sat on his motorbike shouting into a phone. My driver wound down his window and let in the hot air, acrid with new tar, and called over one of the workers, his cousin, as it turned out. A body had been found in the concrete of the old bridge two weeks before, the laconic taxi driver relayed to me in an offhand way as we drove off. The body in the bridge. Was this the story Lucy wanted me to come to Greece for? I’d soon find out, or so I’d hoped.

  I angled the air-con onto my face, closed my eyes and imagined what would be my first encounter with Lucy for more than two months. She’d be there, reading a book, her legs tucked up under her, frowning at the text earnestly, a wisp of hair to tuck back behind her ear. I’d knock on her door, a slight mocking smile playing on my lips. She’d look up slowly, irritated to be interrupted, then her kitten eyes would widen in amazement and then melt into joy as she’d take in that it was me. That I’d come.

  This being real life, my knocking had remained unanswered. Eventually, I’d accepted that she wasn’t there and let myself in. The key was under a flowerpot, the same hiding place she’d used at her flat in Amsterdam. Not very original. Then again, I’d surmised, there probably wasn’t much crime in Agia Anna. Not right then, but later, I wondered who the key was meant for.

  The house Lucy was renting had only enough space for a smaller version of itself. I put my suitcase against a wall so as not to intrude and poured myself a glass of cold water from the half-empty bottle of Nero in the fridge. The fridge was well stocked, but some of the vegetables looked senescent and a piece of cooked lamb had gone a mournful grey. The water in the bottle tasted vaguely of ammonia.

  Once I’d got used to the idea that Lucy wasn’t home, I thought there was no point in waiting for her, so I went down to the beach to get something to drink and maybe something to eat. There were two tavernas to choose from, conveniently placed side by side – a modern-European one, with clean lines and rattan furniture, condescending like an entitled, rich kid, hands on fat hips, to the more down-at-heal ‘traditional’ taverna under an old tamarisk tree next door. I’d chosen the poor cousin.

  ****

  So, here I am now, sitting, mesmerised by the gentle undulation of the patterns on the blue sea, when Yiannis (“Call me Johnny!” – I never do) reappears with a cloth to wipe down the tables from the dust of the tamarisk tree. I ask if he knows Lucy. “The Australian? Fiisiika! Of course. How many people there are in this village? - I know everybuddy!” he beams prodigiously. But Yiannis hasn’t seen her for a while, he’d thought she’d maybe left and gone home. “But why she no come say goodbye?” he says, sounding hurt. He calls his wife, Soulla, to check. No, they’ve not seen her for two weeks. His wife comes out the kitchen wiping her hands on her apron.

  “I keep for her bread. Psomi. Every day. She no collect,” she says seriously, then, eyebrows lifting, lips tightened, “Dhen peirazei,” she shrugs, hands open. With no more to say on the matter, she goes back inside.

  About two weeks ago, the phone on my desk at New World Order had rung. I was half way out the door. “Your phone, I think,” said Eric, without looking up from the book he was reading. There are only three of us on the recently downsized office staff at New World Order, the small progressive journal I write for: Marsha Galpin, the Editor, Eric Listed, the Deputy-Editor and me - sub-editor, occasional on-the-spot investigative reporter and general dog’s body, a tight little hierarchy in descending order of egos. Print journalism is in freefall, so now we gather stuff from our well-sourced network of freelance reporters, turn it into readable prose, publish a bit and sell on what we can to more well-to-do sibling papers for a commission. Nothing that would need me to answer a phone when I'm already leaving it late to get to the Barbican for the legendary Ornette Coleman, anxious as I was already that the dizzying free jazz would prove to be above and beyond the fresh-cheeked young woman whom I’d persuaded to join me for the concert (and maybe for the night). Fuck it, my phone can wait, I'd thought, as I'd walked out the door.

  The next morning, emerging from the fug of all the overpriced lager I’d drunk later in Soho to try to redeem myself to the girl who had not liked my taste in music at all, I remembered I’d turned my phone off before the concert, found it under a pile of clothing (my own – she had declined to come back to my flat with me), and turned it on. I made myself a strong cup of coffee and checked my messages. Two text messages – one from my sister inviting me for dinner and one from the phone company offering me a new deal.

  And a voice message. From Lucy. Lucy’s excited voice: “I’ve got such a good story for you, Tom. I’m in Greece. On a small island. Why don’t you come visit me? I miss you… Call me.” That Australian accent! - the vowels stretched and bent out of shape. Lucy! I hadn’t heard from her for months, five months to be precise; five months of waiting for her to call and getting used to pretending it didn’t matter that she hadn’t. And now this – “I miss you” – just that, and my breathing dysregulated. God, Lucy! I’d been so into her. Especially after our last weekend. All those months ago. When I had, by most conventional definitions, been seriously in love with her. Then, after an amazing weekend (to me only, apparently), she’d upped and left on the Monday morning without even waking me to say goodbye. And nothing from her until now. “I miss you.” Really?

  “Don’t jump in,” I counselled myself wisely. Not that I am known for accepting good advice. I waited until I got to my desk at the office before trying her number. Lucy had worked as a ‘stringer’ for us quite a bit, but it had been a while since she had called a story in. I wanted to be able to make notes, have my props around me. I would be professional, cool and analytic. Let her do the running. I made another cup of coffee and gave myself time to surface and ponder her invitation. Was she playing me, or was she thinking seriously of us being together?

  I called. No reply. The invitation to leave a message was in what I took to be Greek. I didn’t understand it, but a beep is a beep, so I left a message after it. She didn’t get back to me, so I left another message later and then left it at that. I didn’t think too much about Lucy not calling back straight away – Lucy was like that, or at least that was my image of her – racing from one far-flung country to another to get a story, the intrepid environmental activist – more adventurous (to me, her allure) than unreliable (her reputation with Marsha and Eric, and most of our colleagues). In my mind I prompted her to call back. But nothing. Maybe she didn’t miss me that much after all. I’d been right not to jump in.

  A few days later, my sister, Irini, called. Lucy had left her a voicemail – on the same day she’d called me. Irini said there was something about Lucy that wasn’t right. She’d sounded too excited about some “serious shit” her research was uncovering.

  “There’s something not right, Tom. Her cheerfulness sounded wrong… forced,” said Irini. “She went off on one - bird migr
ation patterns, wild pigs, killer fish, the smoke of forest fires in the evening sky, and god knows what, then joked about not being able to trust ‘The Authorities’. I tried to call back. No reply. Nothing. No e-mails or facebook postings. You think we should be worried?” Irini said, in a worried voice.

  “This is Lucy we’re talking about, Irini,” I’d patiently reassured my neurotic sister. “She’s probably gone off like a hound after some environmentally subversive squirrel. You know what she’s like,” I told her. “Lucy's wild.” I had tried to hold from my voice the pang of disappointment that Lucy hadn’t called back.

  I thought I was over her, but apparently not entirely. Straight after Irini had rung off (“Ooh, I don’t know, Tom, I don’t know. Something’s not right.” Click.), I tried to call Lucy’s number again, but this time, not even voicemail. I sent an e-mail and messaged her on facebook. I didn’t want my desperation to show, so kept it professional. “What’s the story?” I’d written coolly. But then couldn’t resist writing, “I miss you too” – and then I deleted it. I wanted her to make the moves this time. I wanted to be sure.

  A week later, still no return calls from Lucy, no e-mails and no facebook activity, and Irini’s view was that not worrying was definitely over-relying on a sometimes-useful psychological defence. “Tom, I know you probably don’t want to get involved. But we’re the only proper friends of hers I know of. She’s never not been in touch with me for this long before,” Irini said apologetically, her voice catching. “The only proper friends…” this was my little sister being manipulative. That kind of language made me back off instinctively. I’d been hurt before. How much did I want this? For the purposes of this crisis, Lucy was first and foremost Irini’s friend.