Antonis Samarakis (translated by Andrew Horton)
The arrests were made last night. After midnight. That’s only natural: arrests which are intended to be “quality,” the most impressive arrests on record around the world, are made late at night or early in the morning because the trick is to get you out of bed unexpectedly, at the moment that you are plunged into a long deserved deep sleep or in an equally deserved embrace in which you wish to make love, not war. And, of course, it adds color to the arrest to surprise you while you’re in your pajamas or nightgown or “baby-doll” or nothing. To drag you out unshaven, uncombed, drowsy, in your worst humor.
The truth is that last night things happened somewhat differently. All of the arrested men, women, children (and even babies), seemed to be innocent. All were arrested fully dressed, freshly pressed, with freshly combed hair styles with straight partings. For all that, they were arrested and that is the truth.
The Secret Service for the Healthy Programming of the Consumers’ Society easily broke into locked doors, easily forcing their way past double-locked windows, easily broke into houses, shops, factories, workshops, warehouses, hospitals and clinics; broke into basements, ground floors, penthouse apartments, terraces, not forgetting, of course, the floors in between. In a word, they broke in everywhere they were sure of confidential information about traitors or simply suspicions that they would find those that should be arrested… arrested in any manner, at all costs, during the one and only night, the night of the 17th to 18th of January.
All over the city, the total number of arrests was about 34,150. No other official announcement has been made, but one should not exclude the possibility that there could have been. In addition, there do not exist complete statistics on the number of arrests which were made simultaneously in the capital and in all of the other cities, towns, villages and homes.
It should be emphasized that the arrests this time were carried out with exemplary precision both from the point of view of the arrests as from that of the protectors of public order with their well-known conscientiousness who worked for the Secret Service for the Healthy Programming of the Consumers’ Society… No resistance on the part of the arrested, no acts of violence from the others (it was, of course, unavoidable to punch the suspects in the chest or stomach, often with great force, in order to determine whether or not they had caught the right persons). It is characteristic of the exemplary precision that with each arrest, the protectors of public order presented the relatives with a warrant for arrest, numbered and signed on the spot.
However, the whole spectacle, on that freezing January night, was melancholy. The 34,150 (approximately) arrested in our small city were loaded haphazardly into cars, trucks, vans, pickup trucks and were taken to an unknown destination. Wild screaming and strangled cries and a river of tears and handkerchiefs and hands which waved from far away, grieving for those who were so unexpectedly arrested, and all of this mixed with the barking of dogs at full volume, entangled with people’s feet and marches and the exhaust fumes of cars and three-wheelers which would not start easily in the great cold.
In this way the 34,150 men, women, children (and babies), ballerinas, cleaning ladies, dukes and duchesses, astronauts, fishermen, jumbo jet pilots, models, male yodelers, female yodelers, secretaries, stenographers, ladies with lorgnettes, ladies without lorgnettes, clowns, pirates, matadors, auto mechanics, aircraft mechanics, Cossacks, every kind of knight, and a trail of other professions and occupations; the 34,150 were dumped into trucks, vans and pick-ups without class distinction, for example, all had to stand and all were led to an unknown fate. When they arrested them, they told them nothing, they gave them no explanation. Clearly these 34,150 arrests were not made for their own good.
***
But things became clear after a while that same night. At 4:12 a.m. the Central Radio Station in the capital, which could be heard in our city as throughout all the country, began to broadcast a special news bulletin (it broadcast this message continuously until morning when the newspapers came out carrying it on the last page):
“Headquarters of the Healthy Programming of the Consumers’ Society announces the following:
Executing the decision of the Chief of Headquarters of the Healthy Programming of the Consumers’ Society, which was made unexpectedly during the midnight hours between the 17th and 18th of January, arrests were carried out throughout the state of all speaking dolls so that, during the next 24 hours, surgery will be performed to remove the poorly adjusted speaking mechanisms and to substitute new ones which respond faithfully to the goals of the Healthy Programming of the Consumers’ Society, so that finally, beginning with childhood, a respect for the state is built in and also a blind devotion to the highest consumers ideal; consequently beginning with childhood, a healthy basis for the consumers guidance of the citizen will be established and developed.
The above decision was carried out with complete success. All the objective aims were achieved.
During each arrest, numbered and signed arrest warrants were given to those from whom the dolls were temporarily removed, and in regard to those shops, factories, galleries, warehouses which were closed for business because of the late hour, the above warrants were given to the Business Bureau office or other appropriate agents.
Not a single individual had any doubts about the alteration of the dolls to coincide with the rhythm of the growth of our Healthy Consumers’ Society. It was no longer possible to accept the outdated type of immoral speech mechanisms, for public or private speech, or to accept the speech of prophesying dolls representing philosophies which might misguide the Healthy Consumers’ Society, for instance, the following examples of speech from prophesying dolls:
“I’m wild about tricks… Do you want to play tricks with me?”
“I only like to play. I don’t want to grow up… I want to be the way I am, a kid…”
“I saw where Mommy hides the key to the cookie cabinet. Let’s eat some cherry jam!”
“I hid Dad’s glove and he’s still looking for it…” These revolutionary speeches, recorded on tape, are erased by the Secret Service and replaced with tapes from the Healthy Consumers’ line of thought.
In any case, those who happen to possess dolls with the outdated system of speech, which have escaped arrest anywhere in the state, are hereby ordered to appear immediately and turn over the above mentioned dolls to the nearest shop of the Directors of the Healthy Programming of the Consumers’ Society. Those who do not comply with this present decision will have immediate and drastic measures taken against them.”
***
Within 24 hours the routine of dolls throughout the whole country was completely reversed. Homes, shops, factories, workshops and warehouses and the children who were sick in hospitals and clinics, all found their dolls again. They found them again, yes… but how different! A new epoch began for speaking dolls, here in our small city, in the capital and in all the other cities, towns, villages, houses. Now the new speeches and “prophesying” dialogues were like a crossfire:
“I’m as happy as can be! A new rise in the level of national income! And what a rise! 9 1/2 %!”
“Good morning, little girl! Today I have important news! The interest rates at the banks quad… quadrupled! You see, I can’t even speak well because of my joy!”
“Come on, what are you saying!… If you build another oil refinery, we’ll be flooded with refineries. We have so many… Do you want me to give you one?”
“Do you have a blast furnace? We have dozens!”
“I want to grow-up in a hurry so I can contribute to the increase in productivity.”
***
“Helen, dear, why don’t you shape up? Come here, darling!… Do you want them to throw me out of my job for the sake of your doll? Do you understand me?”
Silent little six year-old Helen has chestnut eyes open soooooooo wide…
After her father, whom she adores, finishes, her mother continues:
“My dear little Helen, my sweet little girl, what will happen if they discover us? Sooner or later they will discover us, they will find us… They have those machines which hunt down all law-breakers… all the illegal dolls. My dear little Helen, do you understand us?”
Silent little Helen has chestnut eyes open sooo wide… And her father again:
“Be very careful, Helen! Why don’t you want to give us your doll, so we can get her a new voice… a beautiful, totally new voice… which will speak beautiful, totally new ideas… just like those beautiful totally new ladies on tv… Are you listening to me?”
Silent little six year-old Helen has chestnut eyes open sooooo wide….
And her mother again:
“They’ll find us, they’ll catch us… They’ll come here, my dear little Helen, and what will happen then?”
Silent little six year-old Helen has chestnut eyes open sooooo wide…
And her father again.
“Give me your doll, my little Helen, so they can straighten her out… so she will be straightened out and so you will be straightened out, Helen… people, dolls, everyone must be straightened out. Do you hear me?”
It is night, the 22nd of January. Silent little six year-old Helen has chestnut eyes open soooo wide… Instead of speaking herself, she takes her doll which has chestnut eyes like hers and blond hair just like hers and a sweet name just like hers, and makes her little Helen doll say: “I’m wild about tricks… Do you want to play tricks with me?”
***
It’s the same night, January 22nd. Outside is a downpour. Chilled by the fear that has bitten them for five straight days, the father and mother stare with despair at their little Helen, their uncompromising little six year-old Helen who “doesn’t want to be reasonable,” who doesn’t want to be “straightened out,” and who does not allow them to put her little Helen “in line”… That’s how the little Helens were whose shoulders held only six or about six years. You see, the “mind,” all this sort of “alignment,” all those important things come much later, when your years have multiplied irrevocably and without you knowing it they have given you the incurable sickness: growing up. Then you are no longer a child, then you no longer dare to remain continuously faithful to your doll and to all the things your doll by herself feels, thinks and says, and not because they have “straightened her out”…
The night between the 17th and 18th of January, the little Helen doll escaped the round-up of the other dolls. It happened that the agents of the Secret Service of the Healthy Programming of the Consumers’ Society did not find her doll which means that the Secret Service sometimes makes mistakes… But how long could she continue to hide her doll? Her mother speaks on and on about some mechanism with which they are discovering all of the illegal ones, all the illegal dolls… and about some sinister people who are always willing to help the mechanism by betraying others.
For three weeks, three weeks and some days, little six year-old Helen has kept her doll as a companion. New Year’s Eve, her father and mother, after great sacrifices and much effort were able to buy it as a gift for their little Helen.
Five days tonight since the night the dolls were arrested in order to be “straightened out,” to change voices… to change souls… The Secret Service of the Healthy, etc. has in the meantime seized several lawbreakers: first of all, the kind of dolls that insist on speaking the old “uncivilized” language; at the same time, however, they arrested the children who had the old dolls and didn’t rush to turn them in but hid them instead. Aren’t they just children? With the innocence of the years counted on one hand or, if you wish, both hands, they thought that they would manage to escape, dolls and children, from the grip of the Secret Service of Healthy etc. If only they knew!…
The parents of the children also paid for such a crime. They were considered guilty, the moral accomplices, the charge against them being that they brought up their children lawlessly or that they didn’t prevent them from their action or that they didn’t rush to turn over the dolls themselves. Ugly rumors spread about the terrible misfortunes that befell all of the illegal dolls, children and their parents… The dolls caused great harm to everyone.
As for little six year-old Helen, no, she won’t turn in her doll.
She wants it as it is, the way she met her for the first time, as a complete image of herself, a child and a little Helen doll, a little girl who loves to play tricks just as the doll shouts to the other children to play tricks.
There are two other six year-old girls in the apartment building. One on the fourth floor, the other in the roof-top studio apartment. Their dolls have learned all the new speeches. The day before yesterday in the morning, little six year-old Helen heard them speak. What a shock! What disturbing words! They spoke about “the rise of national income,” another about “the interest rate of the banks quad… quad… quad… quad…” The fear, however, that this “blast furnace” gave her is unbelievable. What a nightmare the “blast furnace” is, what a horror…
Yesterday afternoon, her father, beside himself with fear, unnerved by her refusal to turn over the little Helen doll, tried to take it by a trick…. The result? Little six year-old Helen turned yellow, then white as a sheet, tried to say something but nothing came out: she collapsed on the tile floor. They had a hard time reviving her. Her father made the decision that his little Helen would not be “straightened out” through violence by anybody.
Yesterday afternoon and all of last night and all of today and this evening, the 22nd of January, her fever is 99, 101, 102, 103… No, they wouldn’t take his little Helen’s doll and operate on her to remove her own genuine voice and switch voices and souls and “straighten her out” … Isn’t it enough to straighten out adults? Leave dolls and children, children and dolls alone without “straightening them out!”
In her humid little room on the basement of the apartment building, trembling from a scientifically inexplicable but humanly understandable fever, trembling from the struggle for the fate of her little Helen doll’s voice, and, without knowing it, from the struggle for her own voice, her own soul, that of little six year-old Helen…
Now and then while she is burning up with fever, she sees her father, sees her mother, and they both appear as in a fog… First of all, they think of their child, their only child who is suffering in bed clutching her doll, the other little Helen. They also think, however, about their own bitter fate: her father will lose his job as a clerk, fourth class in the Political Ministry, her mother will lose her job as a cleaning woman, second class, in the Ministry… But what importance do Ministries have at such an hour?…
Now and then the little six year-old Helene squeezes her little Helen doll to her chest and the room fills with her musical voice:
“I’m wild about tricks… Do you want to play tricks with me?”
***
It’s amazing how fast they descended the twenty-five steps of the basement, how fast they went directly to the door they wanted, how fast they broke down the door that was blocking their way, how fast they rushed into the small hall, how fast that same night – January 22nd – they became so sinister and totally without mercy… All in all, there were only two – did they need more? One, the gentle one, spoke automatically. The other, the nervous one, carried a snub-nosed pistol.
“Where’s the illegal doll you’re hiding here?” the nervous one asked the father and mother who came running from their room next to little six-year old Helen’s room.
But how fast little six-year old Helen heard them, how fast she understood, how fast she managed to lock her door and shove her bed behind the door, and using all her strength she put her plastic rose mirror which she used to comb her blond hair and her doll’s as well, how fast she placed the mirror behind the bed to make it even heavier and thus more difficult for those two to open the door; she runs quickly to take her two animal paintings and places them on the bed to make it even more heavy, heavier… Then, kneeling on her bed and wrapped in a blanket, she trembles… she trembles…
“Where the hell is that illegal doll you’ve got in there?” the gentle one says fiercely to the mother.
“Give us the doll immediately!” yells the nervous one with the snub-nosed pistol in his hand as he stands in front of the locked door.
“My doll… my doll doesn’t talk… mine doesn’t speak… nope!”
Little six year-old Helen said no more as she took the tape and batteries from her little Helen’s chest. Her father had once done the same when he changed batteries – and as fast as lightning, she hid the tape and batteries in her own chest, inside her slip. Yes, if they now manage to smash the door, she will give them her doll which doesn’t talk… doesn’t talk, nope… and therefore the law can’t touch her, her little Helen, nope!… nope!… nope!…
The gentle one gives a kick and the door opens a little, a blow from the nervous one and the fake lock breaks, a second kick from the gentle one and the door opens more, a second blow from the nervous one and the door moves again, a third from the gentle one and his foot goes through, the nervous one gives a third kick and he sticks his hand with the snub-nosed pistol into the room and shouts to little six year-old Helen who kneels on her bed, “Give me your doll immediately!”, little six year-old Helen tightens her grip on the other little Helen, a fourth kick from the gentle one and he stumbles and accidentally falls on the hand of the nervous one with the snub-nosed pistol and without wanting to, the nervous one accidentally allows one small bullet to pass directly into the chest of little six year-old Helen, only one small bullet – did they need a second? – and while little six year-old Helen with chestnut eyes as never before opened soooo wide bends over, more and more and still more, and as soon as the bullet, before it reached the tape and ricocheted to pierce deeply into her chest completing its unalterable course, as soon as this small bullet touched and crushed the tape, the whole room, the whole basement, the whole apartment building, the whole neighborhood and the whole city and the whole country and the whole universe filled with the illegal lively voice:
“I’m wild about tricks…. Do you want to play tricks with me?”
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 Littérature 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 Médecins 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.