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Kalianesis had been transferred from our area two months before my mother’s execution, so he couldn’t provide any firsthand details of her trial. He made it clear that such civilian trials were not within his purview; he directed the military side, while the administration of guerrilla justice was the responsibility of the political commissar in Epiros, Kostas Koliyiannis, who had died in exile in 1979. But there was a judge still living who presided over many such trials, he said, “a man named Lykas, although everyone called him Katis.”
    I tried to maintain an expression of scholarly interest as I said I would very much like to talk to this Lykas, if only I knew where to find him. I had heard he lived in Athens. Kalianesis’ jowls arranged themselves into a grin; he was delighted to be of service. “He’s not in Athens, he lives right here in Yannina,” he said. “I see him walking around sometimes. In fact, Lykas lives only a few blocks away. I don’t know the exact address, but he has an apartment on Napoleon Zervas Street.”
    I could hardly absorb this new revelation. The hunt that was at a standstill only two days before had climaxed so suddenly that I wasn’t prepared. I thanked Kalianesis and hurried out into the fragrant summer night. Walking over toward the busy thoroughfare Kalianesis had mentioned, I considered the irony of Katis’ address: he lived on a street named for the greatest enemy of the guerrillas during the occupation: Napoleon Zervas.
    I began going from door to door, reading the names posted beside the bells at each apartment house, looking for the one I wanted. Finally I found it in a modern six-story building. Lykas lived on the fourth floor of 46 Napoleon Zervas Street.
    I retreated to the edge of the pavement and stared up at his apartment, where a lamp was burning behind curtained windows. I imagined Katis sitting there in the security of his living room, sleek and complacent like the other judge I had just interviewed, confident that his war crimes were buried in the past. I wanted to knock on his door, push my way inside and show him that someone still remembered what he had done in Lia.
    My rational side reminded me that I had no idea who lived up there withhim. I could hardly burst in, without even a weapon, and attack him. Everything I had learned so far suggested that Katis was the one person still alive who held the greatest guilt for my mother’s murder, but as an investigative reporter I had to learn the exact degree of Katis’ culpability. Was he the initiator of her torture and execution or an involuntary agent of others? I had to decide what punishment would be commensurate with his crimes and at the same time sufficient to appease my own need for revenge. I needed to gather more evidence and form a plan of attack. That’s why I stood on the sidewalk and watched the window until it went dark; then I turned away and walked off through Yannina to take a hotel room, where I sat up most of the night, trying to decide what to do.
    By morning only one thing was clear: I was going back to my village. I had to return to the places where my mother lived and died, to think things through. Heading out of Yannina, I came to a fork in the highway and impulsively turned north. The road on the left led toward my village, but I remembered that the right-hand one led to the village of Mavronoron, the home of the young woman, Despo, who tried to kill herself in the cellar prison by driving a nail into her abdomen. I felt a compulsion to learn if anyone remembered Despo and could tell me at least her full name.
    Past ever smaller villages, where storks nested on chimneys and telephone poles, I continued north on a dirt road until I reached a jumble of houses and a large church. I asked a group of women in the churchyard if they knew the name of someone called Despo who disappeared from the village during the war. They clucked and sighed as if it had been yesterday. Her name was Despina