Antonis Samarakis (translated by Andrew Horton)

 

Thank god he had time to shave. Lately he had often shown up unshaven, and although she said nothing about it and had given no sign that it bothered her, he didn’t wish to appear always to her as if he had just escaped from Devil’s Island.

“You know, I have begun to be fascinated,” she had told him on Tuesday, a week ago.

She meant, of course, that she had begun to be fascinated with him, in other words, that he had begun to fascinate her. Now he must safeguard this power of fascination he possessed, increase it, give it depth, and not risk it. The truth was that she was not the kind of woman who gave importance to such details. She wasn’t upset about a beard, rumpled pants or permanently unpolished shoes. That’s for sure. But in the future he would have to take care of his appearance. You can’t take chances when it comes to women. You must take things seriously.

He shaved in record time and caught a taxi at the taxi stand as soon as he left his house. He had not planned on tonight’s meeting. While filling out his income tax form, he suddenly felt that he couldn’t meet her tonight, impossible! Tonight was impossible just as yesterday had been and the day before yesterday…

***

6:55. He waited for her on the street, opposite the door where, in a little while – 7 o’clock – he would see her come out. There was no light there, only the glow of his cigarette. Near the other sidewalk, a melancholy construction site.

“Athens is being destroyed!” he said to himself. “Apartment buildings going up everywhere.”

His eyes were riveted to the door where two or three minutes later…. He would let her come forward a little, then he would go and walk beside her as if by chance they were headed in the same direction.

“Happy first of the month!” he would tell her.

Perhaps she would not have remembered that it was the first of the month; he would surprise her. A couple came and stood on the steps of the apartment building, standing close together like potential thieves in the night.

He almost didn’t recognize her when she came out to the street with two other girls.

“Your new outfit looks great! It really suits you!” he heard one of the girls tell her, and then he knew. Last week, one morning when he didn’t find her at home but rather at the corner as she was leaving, she told him that she was going to her dressmaker’s. So he would have to wish her “Happy first of the month!” and “Your new outfit really suits you!”

He couldn’t get near her because she saw him first in spite of the dark that surrounded him. She thanked the other two girls and came toward him, pretending indifference. She didn’t want to make it obvious to the others. Then he came forward on her right – best to meet far from curious eyes.

He stopped and waited for her. He watched her draw closer to him, her outfit seeming blue to him. But she looked different to him tonight. It wasn’t the outfit alone, it was her makeup as well. He had never seen her made-up before, at least not so heavily. And she wore perfume. He looked her over carefully as she came closer and then she suddenly stopped a few meters away from him.

“You’re all decked out tonight!” he thought. She’s a woman who is ready to meet someone, someone who is interested in her, that is to say, me! But was she waiting for me? We hadn’t made a date for tonight. It must be intuition… what marvelous intuition women have!

He thought about what he should say first, “Happy first of the month,” or “Your new outfit really suits you!” He couldn’t make up his mind, but she solved the problem by speaking first, “Please don’t come again.” She no longer had that special smile, that smile which turned him on. A smile that was a little ironic, a little off-center and careless and very bewitching.

***

Step by step the investigation of the murder would lead by a process of elimination to the culprit, the criminal morally responsible. It was a perfect crime in every way; there was even a moral instigator. No, the investigation had not led to a moral instigator simply because they had not yet begun an investigation… But why should they begin? The murder had not yet been committed.

The point was, however, that he had already planned the crime. From the moment he made a 180 degree turn and disappeared from her sight…. “Please don’t come again!” weren’t those her very words? If it weren’t for the “please” perhaps he would have responded, at least have said something instead of giving up like a common criminal. He did not say a single word! So when he made a 180 degree turn and disappeared from her sight, he felt as if he had been caught off guard and hit over the head with an iron bar or a sandbag. His eyes clouded over. He truly did not know where he was going; he was dizzy from the tremendous shock; he felt sick to his stomach.

“Cut with a knife!” A street vendor called out from the corner. His cart, one of the old-fashioned kind, was loaded down with watermelons. Placed among the melons was an acetylene lamp. The man was putting in a hard day’s work, and if the cops were to show up – everyone knows the police were severe with such sidewalk salesmen.

“Watermelon freshly cut with a knife!”

That cry was a sign for him. The vendor – the moral instigator – gave him the idea, the inspiration for the murder. But not only that, the vendor also selected the weapon for him.

“With a knife!” he said loudly and went toward the cafe on the corner to ask if there were a hardware store where he could order knives.

It was 7:20. At 7:30 sharp, merchants locked their shop doors and lowered the shutters. Near the cafe he met a policeman on duty. “Please, I desperately need a knife,” he said. “A knife that cuts well! Do you have any idea if I can find a shop near here?”

“Sure! But you’ll be lucky if you find it open. OK, see that truck over there? Not the first one, but the second. Less than ten meters from that truck you’ll find what you’re looking for. I bought a knife there myself about a month ago. It was a kitchen knife, but what a knife! Tre­men-dous!”

***

When he reached the taverna he was in bad shape. Wind­blown, ragged, with mud on his pants and a paint stain on his jacket…. While wandering aimlessly for hours, he had stopped occasionally to catch his breath, to calm the storm he felt inside his head. He must have rubbed against some freshly painted post then.

His whole appearance was the kind that makes people uneasy. But no one in the taverna paid any attention to him, his appearance didn’t make the slightest impression. Perhaps because the others seemed to him to be in more or less the same shape.

He took a seat at a table in the back. He ordered a large plate of beans, feta cheese and a half a kilo of wine. As for the knife, he had it wrapped up in his left-hand jacket pocket, luckily he had found the shop open! From a large selection he had chosen the sharpest and the most elaborate.

“It’s our best knife!” the shopkeeper assured him with a look as if it was breaking his heart to sell it. “It could cut a bull on the run to pieces!”

He wasn’t that impressed by the lavish recommendations which the man made for the knife. If he had shown any enthusiasm, he would be in danger of being suspected of something.

Back on the street, the shopkeeper’s speech came back to him: “It could cut a bull on the run to pieces!” He liked the phrase, yes! But he could not picture a bull on the run. “On the run?” he repeated a few times and then stopped thinking about it.

Once in awhile they stopped, and he secretly stole a look at the knife. He liked the way the blade sparkled in the night.

In the dim light of the taverna, he had all the time he needed to plan the murder, to take care of all of the details one by one.

“First of all, I will finish off myself. First: I will run the knife into my chest. Next-second-I will run it through hers. And of course if it happens to be when she is wearing her new outfit the blue will immediately turn to red…”

He swallowed a few beans, and drank his wine. “Bottoms up” he said loudly.

Then he was troubled by a problem. “OK. I’ll knife myself first. But then how will I finish the job? A bit difficult! I’ll have to think about the order of events again. There’s no doubt that my goal is clear murder. If not, why the hell did I buy the knife? Since I have the knife, I must make good use of it!”

“We also have chicken breasts,” he heard the waiter tell a new customer. “Chicken breasts…” It was a shame that the conversation ended abruptly with her breast.

It was the first time he had been in her house, one rather misty morning. One of her friends let him in. “Come in,” she told him “but wait a while if you don’t mind. She’s in the bathroom” He sat in a chair next to the couch and began talking to the girl about nothing in particular. Soon he heard her call out to her friend from the bathroom. For the next two minutes he was alone.

“Excuse me,” said the girl when she returned, “Can you move the chair to the right. I must get something from the drawer.”

He tried hard to see what she was looking for when with a swift movement she pulled out a pair of ‘mini’ panties from the next to the last drawer and took them to her in the bathroom. He wanted badly to know what color they were.

Soon she came out with a cat-like wiggling walk, wearing an Arabian robe slit up the side. She sat on the low bed and tucked her legs beneath her. He was turned on as he saw her legs, naked all the way up and freshly bathed. “She’s got nothing on underneath!” he realized. “Only those scanty panties her friend brought her. Her breasts…”

He made an effort to peep inside her half open robe; he couldn’t see much, just the top half. “They must be small. Small and firm.”

That’s how they were, because that’s how he wanted them to be.

In other words, he loved her. Everything about her. And especially because she had nothing planned, programmed in advance. She was spontaneous in every way, instinctive and direct. Somewhat clumsy in a cute way. She wasn’t at all frigid or coldly efficient like those dexterous ones who scheme in advance.

“In our time, one ought to be suspicious of dexterous people. The best sign of purity is awkwardness,” he thought when he pictured her in his mind.

She was also nervous. He liked the fact that she always seemed to be in a state of nervous tension. One morning in her room – on the ground floor with the window, the only one, looking onto the street – she had wanted to tell him something about “them”. Just then a large alarm clock on the small table near the window went off loudly bothering her. She jumped from the bed, grabbed the clock and hid it in a drawer. That scene had remained with him, had touched him in some way.

He also liked the way she bit her lips now and then when she spoke as if she was confused or embarrassed. It was a tic, a childish reaction. But it was a movement that excited him and drove him crazy enough to want to take her and kiss those lips. Up till now, however, he had attempted no such action. The only thing he had done was to caress her hand once. Oh, yes! And another time he had caressed her hair, caressed her hair twice.

“You know, I have begun to be fascinated,” she had told him.

Then her follow-up a week later: “Please don’t come by again!”

He couldn’t understand what had happened. He had always been so careful, so perfect in his behavior. Or maybe that was the problem, that he had not dared to give and take­, especially to take more?

“There’s no logic to women” he concluded and asked for more wine. “They keep you at a distance whether you ask too much of them or if you ask nothing at all.”

But he had now reached the end: he had a knife with which to solve his problem.

He took the knife from his pocket and put it on the table. He opened the paper in which it was wrapped and admired it. A fine knife! Built with real skill. It had its own character. Sharp, light, dangerous, deadly.

He got up to go to the toilet.

***

“You know that damned knife they gave me was useless. It took me half an hour to cut my steak and I finally gave up. What the hell! But yours….The waiter took care of you just fine. He gave you a knife that cuts. Just splendid. A fine knife!”

As soon as he sat down he noticed that the knife was not where he had left it when he went to the toilet. Then the customer at the next table – an old near-sighted man­ returned and spoke to him.

The blow was so strong that he couldn’t find the courage to protest. After all, what good would it do? The old man was only cutting his meat. And the knife, that brand new light knife had become unrecognizable. Congealing fat clung to the blade and small bits of meat were on the handle. He couldn’t see well because of the dim light but his heart was pounding. How could he take this wretched knife and stab her breasts…. A greasy knife dripping fat!

“You see, poor old Greece is going to the dogs,” the old man continued. “In the good old days taverna knives would cut and cut well, my friend! It’s no joke…. Today, you can’t even cut a cigarette. So…”

He didn’t wait to hear the rest. He paid quickly, left the knife in the hand of the old man and went out. It had begun to rain steadily.

***

He now stood outside her window. He didn’t care about the rain. There was no light in her room, the shutters were closed, she had gone to sleep. He struck a match and checked the time, three minutes before midnight.

He wanted to tell her, “As for murder, I’ve changed my mind. Something happened and I lost my taste for it. I no longer have the desire.”

He went toward the window, almost touching the wall. “Happy first of the month,” he wished her softly so as not to wake her.

He started to leave, turned and added…

“Your new outfit really suits you.”

 

Antonis Samarakis was born in Athens in 1919 and studied law at Athens University. A civil servant in the labour ministry, he resigned in 1936, when General Metaxas imposed a fascist-style dictatorship in Greece, but resumed his post in 1945. During the German occupation, he joined National Solidarity, a precursor of the main left wing resistance organisation, the National Liberation Front. In 1944, he was sentenced to death for his resistance activities, but escaped and went into hiding. In 1954, Samarakis published his first collection of short stories, Ziteitai Elpis (Hope Wanted). Samarakis wrote his first novel, Sima Kindunou (Alarm Signal), in 1959. His second collection of short stories, Arnoumai (I Refuse, 1961), won the state literary prize for short stories, allowing him to resign from the civil service in 1963 and devote himself fulltime to writing. Samarakis’s masterpiece, To Lathos (The Flaw, 1965), proved prophetic of the military dictatorship that soon was established in Greece. The novel, translated into English by Peter Mansfield and Richard Burns in 1969, was awarded the coveted Prize of the Twelve in Greece in 1966 and the Grand Prix de la Littèrature Policière in France in 1970. It was also turned into a successful film by Peter Fleischmann in 1974. In 1982, Samarakis won the Europalia Prize for his collective work. His work has been translated into more than 30 languages. Samarakis represented Greece at conferences of Unesco and the International Labour Organisation. He was a Unicef goodwill ambassador, organised an annual youth parliament in Greece, and, in 1991, was designated his country’s cultural ambassador for Mèdecins sans Frontières. He passed away in 2003.

Andrew Horton is the Jeanne H Smith Professor of Film and Video Studies at the University of Oklahoma, an award winning screenwriter, and the author of thirty books on film, screenwriting and cultural studies including, Screenwriting for a Global Market (U of California Press 2004), Henry Bumstead and the World of Hollywood Art Direction (U of Texas Press, 2003), Writing the Character Centered Screenplay (U. of California Press, 2000, 2nd Edition), The Films of Theo Angelopoulos (Princeton U Press, 2nd edition, 1999), and Laughing Out Loud: Writing the Comedy Centered Screenplay (U. of California Press, l999). His films include Brad Pitt’s first feature film, The Dark Side of the Sun, and much awarded Something In Between (l983, Yugoslavia, directed by Srdjan Karanovic). He has given screenwriting workshops around the world including Norway, Germany, England, the Czech Republic, Greece, New Zealand, Switzerland, and throughout the United States.