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disconnected shortly thereafter. But the first contact between Manólis and Samir was recorded. Özcan listened to it on the cell phone’s loudspeaker and joined in.
    Samir: “Are you Greek?”
    Manólis: “I’m a Finn.”
    Samir: “You don’t sound like a Finn.”
    Manólis: “I’m a Finn.”
    Samir: “You sound like a Greek.”
    Manólis: “So what. Just because my mother and my father and my grandmothers and my grandfathers and everyone in my family are Greeks doesn’t mean I have to run around my whole life being a Greek. I hate olive trees and tzatziki and that idiotic dance. I’m Finnish. Every particle of me is Finnish. I’m an inner Finn.”
    Özcan to Samir: “He also looks like a Greek.”
    Samir to Özcan: “Let him be a Finn if he wants to be a Finn.”
    Özcan to Samir: “He doesn’t even look Swedish.” (Özcan knew a Swede from school.)
    Samir: “Why are you a Finn?”
    Manólis: “Because of the thing with the Greeks.”
    Samir: “Huh?”
    Özcan: “Huh?”
    Manólis: “It’s been going on for hundreds of years with the Greeks. Imagine there’s a ship going down.”
    Özcan: “Why?”
    Manólis: “Because it’s sprung a leak or the captain’s drunk.”
    Özcan: “But why has the ship sprung a leak?”
    Manólis: “Shit, it’s only an example.”
    Özcan: “Hmm.”
    Manólis: “The ship’s just sinking, okay?”
    Özcan: “Hmm.”
    Manólis: “Everyone drowns. Everyone. Got it? Only one Greek survives. He swims and swims and swims and eventually makes it to shore. He pukes all the salt water out of his throat. He pukes out of his mouth. Out of his nose. Out of every pore. He spits it all out, until he eventually falls asleep, half-dead. The guy is the only survivor. All the rest of them are dead. He lies on the beach and sleeps. When he wakes up, he realizes he’s the only one who’s survived. So he stands up and slays the next person he meets who’s out for a walk. Just like that. Only when the other guy is dead is everything evened out.”
    Samir: “Huh?”
    Özcan: “Huh?”
    Manólis: “D’you understand? He has to kill someone else, so that the one who didn’t drown is dead, too. The other guy has to stand in for him. Minus one, plus one. Get it?”
    Samir: “No.”
    Özcan: “Where was the leak?”
    Samir: “When are we going to meet?”

The Cello

    Tackler’s dinner jacket was light blue, his shirt pink. His double chin overflowed both collar and bow tie; his jacket strained over his stomach and made folds across his chest. He stood between his daughter, Theresa, and his fourth wife, both of whom towered over him. The black-haired fingers of his left hand clutched his daughter’s hip. They lay there like a dark animal.
    The reception had cost him a lot of money, but he felt it had been worth it, because they had all come: the first minister of the state, the bankers, the powerful and the beautiful, and, most important of all, the famous music critic. That was all he wanted to think about right now. It was Theresa’s party.
    Theresa was twenty at the time, a classical slender beauty with an almost perfectly symmetrical face. She seemed calm and composed, and only a little vein in her neck betrayed how fast her heart was beating.
    After a short speech by her father, she took her seat on the red-carpeted stage and tuned her cello. Her brother, Leonhard, sat next to her on a stool to turn the pages of the sheet music. The contrast between the two of them could not have been greater. Leonhard was a head shorter than Theresa; he had inherited his father’s features and physique but not his toughness. Sweat ran down his red face into his shirt; the edge of his collar had darkened with it. He smiled out at the audience, friendly and softhearted.
    The guests sat on tiny chairs. They gradually fell silent, and the lights were dimmed. And while I was still deciding whether, in fact, I was going to leave the garden and go back into the salon, she began to play. She