Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘Shoot Pelagia, before she bites somebody’s balls off,’ suggested Nicos, a young man whose advances she had successfully deterred by means of acerbic remarks about his intelligence and general honesty.

  ‘I’ll shoot you,’ said Velisarios. ‘You should mind your tongue when there are respectable people present.’

  ‘I have an old donkey with the spavins. I hate to part with an old friend, but really she’s useless. She just eats, and she falls over when I load her up. She’d make a good target, it would take her off my hands, and it would make a terrific mess.’ It was Stamatis.

  ‘May you have female children and male sheep for even thinking of such a terrible thing,’ exclaimed Velisarios. ‘Do you think I am a Turk? No, I will simply fire the gun down the road, for lack of a better target. Everybody out of the way now. Stand back, all the children put their hands over their ears.’

  With theatrical aplomb the enormous man lit the fuse of the gun where it stood propped against the wall, picked it up as though it were as light as a carbine, and braced himself with one foot forward and the cannon cradled above the hip. Silence fell. The fuse sputtered brightly. Breaths were held. Children clamped their hands over their ears, grimaced, closed one eye, and hopped from one foot to another. There was a moment of excruciating suspense as the flame of the fuse reached the touch-hole and sputtered out. Perhaps the powder hadn’t caught. But then there was a colossal roar, a spout of orange and lilac flame, a formidable cloud of acrid-tasting smoke, a wonderful spitting of dust as the projectiles tore into the surface of the road, and a long moan of pain.

  There was a moment of confusion and hesitation. People looked around at each other to see who might have caught a ricochet. A renewed moan, and Velisarios dropped his cannon and ran forward. He had spotted a huddled form amid the settling dust.

  Mandras was later to thank Velisarios for shooting him with a Turkish culverin as he came round the bend at the entrance of the village. But at the time he had resented being carried in the arms of a giant rather than being allowed to walk with dignity to the doctor’s house, and he had not enjoyed having a bent nail from a donkey shoe extracted from his shoulder without anaesthetic. He had not enjoyed being held down by the giant as the doctor worked, since he had been quite capable of enduring the pain on his own. Nor had it been convenient or economic to have to cease fishing for two weeks whilst the wound healed.

  What he thanked Megalo Velisarios for was that in the doctor’s house he first set eyes on Pelagia, the doctor’s daughter. At some indefinable moment he had become aware that he was being bandaged, that there was a young woman’s long hair tickling his face, and that it smelled of rosemary. He had opened his eyes, and found himself gazing into another pair of eyes that were alight with concern. ‘At that moment,’ he liked to say, ‘I became aware of my destiny.’ It was true that he only said this when somewhat in his cups, but he meant it nonetheless.

  Up on Mt Aenos, on the roof of the world, Alekos had heard the boom of the weapon, and wondered if it meant the start of another war.

  4 L’Omosessuale (1)

  I, Carlo Piero Guercio, write these words with the intention that they should be found after my death, when neither scorn nor loss of reputation may dog my steps nor blemish me. The circumstance of life leaves it impossible that this testament of my nature should find its way into the world before I have drawn my last breath, and until that time I shall be condemned to wear the mask decreed by misfortune.

  I have been reduced to eternal and infinite silence, I have not even told the chaplain in confession. I know in advance what I will be told; that it is a perversion, an abomination in the sight of God, that I must fight the good fight, that I must marry and lead the life of a normal man, that I have a choice.

  I have not told a doctor. I know in advance that I will be called an invert, that I am in some strange way in love with myself, that I am sick and can be cured, that my mother is responsible, that I am an effeminate even though I am as strong as an ox and fully capable of lifting my own weight above my head, that I must marry and lead the life of a normal man, that I have a choice.

  What could I say to such priests and doctors? I would say to the priest that God made me as I am, that I had no choice, that He must have made me like this for a purpose, that He knows the ultimate reasons for all things and that therefore it must be all to the good that I am as I am, even if we cannot know what that good is. I can say to the priest that if God is the reason for all things, then God is to blame and I should not be condemned.

  And the priest will say, ‘This is a matter of the Devil and not of God,’ and I will reply, ‘Did God not make the Devil? Is He not omniscient? How can I be blamed for what He knew would occur from the very commencement of time?’ And the priest will refer me to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and tell me that God’s mysteries are not to be understood by us. He will tell me that we are commanded to be fruitful and multiply.

  I would say to the doctor, ‘I have been like this from the first, it is nature that has moulded me, how am I supposed to change? How can I decide to desire women, any more than I can suddenly decide to enjoy eating anchovies, which I have always detested? I have been to the Casa Rosetta, and I loathed it, and afterwards I felt sick. I felt cheapened. I felt I was a traitor. I had to do it to appear normal.’

  And the doctor will say, ‘How can this be natural? Nature serves its interests by making us reproduce. This is against nature. Nature wants us to be fruitful and multiply.’

  This is a conspiracy of doctors and priests who repeat the same things in different words. It is medicinal theology and theological medicine. I am like a spy who has signed a covenant of perpetual secrecy, I am like someone who is the only person in the world that knows the truth and yet is forbidden to utter it. And this truth weighs more than the universe, so that I am like Atlas bowed down forever beneath a burden that cracks the bones and solidifies the blood. There is no air in this world that I am fated to inhabit, I am a plant suffocated by lack of air and light, I have had my roots clipped and my leaves painted with poison. I am exploding with the fire of love and there is no one to accept it or nourish it. I am a foreigner within my own nation, an alien in my own race, I am as detested as cancer when I am as purely flesh as any priest or doctor.

  According to Dante my like is confined to the third ring of the Seventh Circle of Nether Hell, in the improbable company of usurers. He gives me a desert of naked spirits scourged by flakes of fire, he makes me run in circles, perpetually and in futility, looking for the ones whose bodies I’ve defiled. You see how it is; I have been driven to search everywhere just to find myself mentioned. I am mentioned almost nowhere, but where I find myself, I find myself condemned. And how remarkable it is, you doctors and priests, that Dante pitied us when God did not. Dante said, ‘It makes me heartsick only to think of them.’ And Dante was right, I have always run in circles, futilely, looking for the warmth of bodies, scorned by God who created me, and all my life has been a desert and a rain of flakes of flame.

  Yes, I have read everything, looking for evidence that I exist, that I am a possibility. And do you know where I found myself? Do you know where I found out that I was, in another vanished world, beautiful and true? It was in the writings of a Greek.

  Ironical. I am an Italian soldier oppressing the only people whose ancestors bestowed upon my kind the right to embody a most perfect form of love.

  I joined the Army because the men are young and beautiful, I admit it. And also because I got the idea from Plato. I am probably the only soldier in history who has taken up arms because of a philosopher. You see, I had been searching for a vocation in which my affliction could be of use, and I had been ignorant of the love of Achilles and Patroclus, and other such ancient Greekeries. In short, I read The Symposium, and found Aristophanes explaining that there were three sexes; the men and women who loved each other, the men who loved men, and the women who loved women. It was a revelation to conceive that I was of
a different sex, it was an idea that made some sense. And I found Phaedrus explaining that ‘if there were only some way of contriving that a state or an army should be made up of lovers and their loves, they would be the very best governors of their own city, abstaining from all dishonour, and emulating one another in honour; and when fighting at one another’s side, although a mere handful, they would overcome the world. For what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this. Or who would desert his beloved or fail him in the hour of danger? The veriest coward would become an inspired hero, equal to the bravest, at such a time; Love would inspire him. That courage which, as Homer says, the god breathes into the soul of heroes, Love of his own nature infuses into the lover. Love will make men dare to die for their beloved – Love alone.’

  I knew that in the Army there would be those that I could love, albeit never touch. I would find someone to love, and I would be ennobled by this love. I would not desert him in battle, he would make me an inspired hero. I would have someone to impress, someone whose admiration would give me that which I cannot give myself; esteem, and honour. I would dare to die for him, and if I died I would know that I was dross which some inscrutable alchemy had transmuted into gold.

  It was a wild idea, romantic and implausible, and the odd thing is that it worked. But finally it brought me incalculable grief.

  5 The Man who Said ‘No’

  Prime Minister Metaxas slumped forlornly in his favourite armchair in the Villa Kifisia and reflected bitterly upon the two imponderable problems of his life: ‘What am I going to do about Mussolini?’ and ‘What am I going to do about Lulu?’ It would be difficult to say which one caused him the most bewilderment and pain, for both were in unequal parts personal and political. Metaxas reached for his journal and wrote, ‘This morning I attempted to reach an understanding with Lulu. Up to a certain point it went quite well, but then we argued all over again. She just doesn’t understand me. I know exactly who it is that is egging her on and deceiving her. I even forgot my meeting with the British minister. I stayed with her till noon. I am so sorry for her. And what a tragic girl she is. Lulu, Lulu, my most beloved daughter. We threw ourselves into each other’s embrace and wept together over our fate.’

  With Lulu he never quite knew what the truth was; it seemed that Athens buzzed with more improbable legends about her than it had with stories of Zeus in ancient times. There was the story about the policeman who had lost his trousers and his cap, both of which were found at the top of a lamppost. There was the story about the young man with the Bugatti and the wild trips to Piraeus, and then that account of her playing an English game called ‘sardines’, a kind of hide-and-seek in which the seekers had to cram themselves into the same space as the hunted; it seemed that Lulu had been found inextricably entwined with a young man in a cupboard. Some people said that she smoked opium and became blisteringly drunk. She knew all those fast American dances, like the tango (so inelegant and vulgar, an alleged ‘dance’ from the brothels of Buenos Aires), and the quickstep, and the samba, and dances with untranslatable and idiotic names, like the jitterbug, that involved frenetic flapping of the hands and legs. It was a sort of indecency. It reeked of immodesty and intemperance. Young people were so impressionable, so prone to fads and fashions from immature civilisations like America, so averse to discipline and the dignity that accompanies a natural sense of amour propre. What could one do? She always denied everything, or, worse, dismissed his concerns with a laugh and a wave of the hand. God knows, one is only young once, but in her case it was once too often.

  And she openly disavowed and controverted his policies in public. It was a Judas touch. It was this that hurt so much, this exhibition of filial disloyalty. She loved him, she said. Indeed, he knew that she did, so why did she ridicule his National Youth Organisation? Why did she laugh at jokes about his diminutive stature? Why was she so damned individualist? Did she not realise that to be a kind of female playboy brought into question all those things that he wished for Greece? How could he lambast the plutocrats when his own daughter was consorting, frolicking with the worst of them? How could he commend discipline and self-sacrifice?

  Thank God he had muzzled the press, because every journalist in the land had a pet ‘Lulu’ story. Thank God his ministers were too discreet to mention it, thank God he had not yet lost respect through contagion. But that didn’t prevent people like Grazzi smiling in their oily way and asking, ‘And how is your dear daughter, Lulu? I hear that she is a mischievous little thing. Ah, what we fathers have to suffer!’ Couldn’t he just hear the sniggers and the whispers? That he controlled all of Greece and could not control his own daughter? It seemed that even the secret police were too embarrassed by the whole thing to report her escapades in any detail. It was said that people holding parties would implore their guests, ‘Don’t bring Lulu.’ The grief and shame were too much to take.

  Outside, the tranquillity of the pines and the white glare of the floodlights conspired to exacerbate his sensation of having become a prisoner behind his own iron gates; he had fulfilled the requirements of classical tragedy by creating the circumstances of his own entrapment. All Greece had shrunk to this modest pseudo-Byzantine villa and its bourgeois furniture, for the very simple reason that he held the fate and the honour of his beloved country in the palm of his hand. He looked down at his hands and reflected that they were small, like himself. He wished briefly that he had chosen to retire on a colonel’s pension and live quietly in some anonymous corner, a place in which to live and die blamelessly.

  Dying had much preoccupied him recently, for he had realised that his body was failing him. It was nothing specific, there was no catalogue of tell-tale symptoms, it was merely that he felt exhausted enough to die. He knew that a kind of detached and passive grief overtakes those on the threshold of death, a resigned composure, and it was this detachment and composure which was rising up in him at the same time as circumstances were obliging him to summon up a strength, purpose, and nobility such as he had never required before. Sometimes he wanted to pass the reins of state to other hands, but he knew that fate had selected him as protagonist in the tragedy and that he had no choice but to grip the hilt of the sword and draw it. ‘There are so many things I should have done,’ he thought, and suddenly it was borne in upon him that life could have been sweet if only he had known thirty years ago what the results of the doctors’ analyses would be at this far-distant point of the future that had rolled slowly but maliciously towards him and become the inescapable, arduous, and insupportable present. ‘If I had lived my life in the consciousness of this death, everything would have been different.’

  He cast his mind back over the impossible vicissitudes of his career, and wondered whether history would show him any charity. It had been a long journey from the Prussian Military Academy in Berlin; it seemed that it must have been in another life that he had learned to admire the teutonic sense of order, discipline, and seriousness, the very qualities that he had tried to instil in his native land. He had even commissioned the very first grammar of the demotic tongue and made it compulsory in schools, because of the theory that learning grammar promotes logicality and would therefore curb the wild, irresponsible individualism of the Greeks.

  He recalled the fiasco of the Great War, when Venizelos had wanted to join the Allies and the King had wanted to remain neutral. How he had argued that Bulgaria would take the opportunity to invade if Greece were to join in; how nobly he had resigned his post as Chief-of-Staff, how nobly he had accepted exile. Better forget the attempted coup in 1923. And now it looked as though Bulgaria might invade indeed, grasping the opportunities granted this time by Italy in its attempts to fill the vacuum left by the Turks.

  He remembered his defeat of the striking tobacco workers in Salonica; twelve dead. On the strength of that disorder he had persuaded the King to susp
end the constitution in order to thwart the Communists; he had persuaded the King to appoint him Prime Minister even though he was the leader of the most marginal right-wing party in the country. But why had he done it? ‘Metaxa’,’ he said to himself, ‘history will say that it was opportunism, that you could not succeed by democratic means. There will be no one near to say the truth on my behalf, which is that there was a slump and that our democracy was too effeminate to cope with it. It is easy to say what should have been, harder to acknowledge the inexorable force of necessity. I was the embodiment of necessity, that’s all. If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else. At least I didn’t allow the Germans any influence, though God knows they nearly got the economy. At least I kept up the links with Britain, at least I tried to meld the glories of the mediaeval and the ancient civilisation into a new force. No one can ever say that I acted without regard to Greece. Greece has been my one true wife. Perhaps history will remember me as the man who forbade the reading of the funeral oration of Pericles and who alienated the peasantry by putting limits on the number of goats that ruin our forests. O God, perhaps I have been nothing but an absurd little man.

  ‘But I have done my best, I have done everything to prepare for this war that I still work to avoid. I have built railways and fortifications, I have called up the reserve, I have prepared the people by way of speeches, I have pursued diplomacy to the point of ridicule. Let history say that I was the man who did everything possible to save his native land. Everything ends in death.’

  But there was no doubt that he had been too much obsessed by an historical sense, with the idea that there was a messianic mission which had been chosen for him to fulfil. He had thought that there could have been no other man, that he was the one to take the Greek nation by the neck and drag it, kicking and expostulating, towards the rightful goal. He had felt himself a doctor who inflicts necessary pain, knowing that after the curses and protests of the patient, there would come a time when he would be crowned with the flowers of the grateful. He had always done what he knew to be right, but perhaps in the end it was vanity that had impelled him, something as simple and disgraceful as megalomania.