The Jealousy Man and Other Stories

I saw a slight twitch pass across Franz Schmid’s face. Was it because I reminded him that the last words that had passed between the brothers had been hard?

‘As I told you, we weren’t exactly sober,’ he said quietly. ‘But we were friends by the time we fell asleep.’

‘What were you quarrelling about?’

‘Just some nonsense.’

‘Tell me.’

He took hold of the glass of water in front of him as though it were a lifebelt. Drank. A postponement that gave him time to work out how much he should tell me, and what he should leave out. I folded my arms and waited. I knew of course what he was thinking, but he seemed sharp enough to know that if I didn’t get the information from him then I would get it from witnesses to the quarrel. What he didn’t know was that George Kostopoulos already had this from the one of the witnesses. That this was what caused George to ring the Homicide Department in Athens. And why it had ended up on my desk. The Jealousy Man’s desk.

‘A dame,’ said Franz.

I tried to work out the significance — if any — the use of this word had for him. In British English dame was an honorary form of address, an aristocratic title. But in America, dame was Chandleresque slang, as in a chick, a broad, a bird, not exactly derogatory, but then not a hundred per cent respectful either. Meaning someone a guy could have, or someone he better watch out for. But in Franz’s native language dame had an entirely neutral ring, like the way I interpret it in Heinrich Böll’s Gruppenbild mit Dame.

‘Whose dame?’ I asked to get to the heart of the thing as quickly as possible.

Again that slight smile, a flicker and then gone. ‘That’s exactly what the discussion was about.’

‘I understand, Franz. Can you give me the details there too?’

Franz looked at me. Hesitated. I had already used his forename, which is an obvious and yet surprisingly efficient way of creating intimacy with someone you’re interrogating. And now I gave him the look and the body language that gets murder suspects to open their hearts to the Jealousy Man, Phthonus.

The murder rate in Greece is low. So low that a lot of people wonder how it’s possible in a crisis-ridden country with high unemployment, corruption and social unrest. The smart answer is that rather than kill someone they hate, Greeks allow the victim to go on living in Greece. Another that we don’t have organised crime because we’re incapable of the organisation required. But of course we have blood that is capable of boiling. We have crime passionnel. And I’m the man they call in when there’s a suggestion that jealousy is the motive behind a murder. They say I can smell jealousy. That’s not true of course. Jealousy has no distinct smell, colour or sound. But it has a story. And it’s listening to this story, what is told as well as what is left out, that enables me to know whether I am sitting in the presence of a desperate, wounded animal. I listen and know. Know because it is me, Nikos Balli, I am listening for. Know, because I am myself a wounded animal.

And Franz told me his story. He told it because this — this bit of the truth — is always good to tell. To get it out, to air the unjust defeat and the hate that are the story’s natural consequences. For there is, of course, nothing perverse in wanting to kill whatever might stand in the way of our primary function as biological creations; to mate, in order to propagate our unique genes. It is the opposite that is perverse; to allow ourselves to be hindered in this by a morality that we have been indoctrinated to believe is natural or divine in origin but which is, in the final analysis, merely a matter of practical rules dictated by what are, at any given time, the needs of the community at large.

On one of their rest days from climbing Franz had rented a moped and ridden to the northern side of Kalymnos. In the country village of Emporio he met Helena, who waited tables in her father’s restaurant. He fell hard for her, overcame his natural shyness and got her phone number. Three dates and six days later they became lovers in the cloister ruins of Palechora. Because she was under strict instructions from home not to get involved with guests, and foreign tourists in particular, Helena insisted their meetings be kept secret and involve just the two of them, because on the northern side of Kalymnos everyone knew her father. So they were discreet; but of course, Franz kept his brother informed of events from the moment of that first meeting at the restaurant; every word they exchanged, every look, every touch, the first kiss. Franz showed Julian pictures of her, a video of her sitting on the castle wall and looking down at the sunset.

They had done this ever since childhood, shared every tiny detail, so that all experiences became shared experiences. For example, Julian — who was, according to Franz, the more extrovert of the two — had shown Franz a video he had made in secret a few days earlier of himself having sex with a girl in her apartment in Pothia.