Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘Thank you, Iatre,’ said the priest. ‘I never thought I would hear such praise from such a notoriously godless man. I have never seen you in church.’

  ‘Empedocles said that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. If that is true, then I don’t need to go to church. And I don’t need to believe the same things as you to see that you have a purpose. Now let’s smoke and drink our coffee in peace. If we can’t stop arguing in here, then I am going to start having breakfast at home.’

  ‘The doctor is thinking of becoming a heretic indeed, though I agree with him that our priest is a great comforter of widows,’ said Kokolios, grinning. ‘I couldn’t have some of your tobacco, could I? I am running out.’

  ‘Kokolio’, since you maintain that all property is theft, it follows that you should give us all a fair share of what little you have. Pass over your tin and I shall finish it for you. Fair’s fair. Be a good Communist. Or is it only other people who have to share their property in utopia?’

  ‘When the revolution comes, Iatre, there will be a sufficiency for everyone. In the meantime, pass me your pouch, and I shall return the favour another time.’

  The doctor passed over his tobacco and Kokolios stuffed his nargiles contentedly. ‘What’s the news of the war?’

  The doctor twisted the ends of his moustache and said, ‘Germany is taking everything, the Italians are playing the fool, the French have run away, the Belgians have been overrun whilst they were looking the other way, the Poles have been charging tanks with cavalry, the Americans have been playing baseball, the British have been drinking tea and adjusting their monocles, the Russians have been sitting on their hands except when voting unanimously to do whatever they are told. Thank God we are out of it. Why don’t we turn on the radio?’

  The large British radio in the corner of the kapheneia was switched on, its valves began to glow through the brass mesh, its whistles, crackles and hisses were reduced to a minimum by the judicious twiddling of knobs and the careful turning back and forth of the set, and the company settled down to listen to the broadcast from Athens. They were fully expecting to hear about the latest parade of the National Youth Organisation before Prime Minister Metaxas; there might be something about the King, and perhaps something about the most recent Nazi conquest.

  There was an item about Churchill’s new alliance with the Free French, another about a revolt in Albania against Italian occupation, another about the annexation of Luxemburg and Alsace-Lorraine, and at that point Pelagia appeared at the door of the kapheneia, beckoning urgently to her father, and embarrassed by the knowledge that the presence of a female anywhere near to such a place was a worse sacrilege than spitting on the tomb of a saint.

  Dr Iannis stuffed his pipe into his pocket, sighed, and went reluctantly to the door. ‘What is it, kori, what is it?’

  ‘It’s Mandras, Papakis. He’s fallen out of the olive tree and he fell on a pot, and he’s got some shards of it … you know … in his seat.’

  ‘In his backside? What was he doing up the tree? Showing off again? Monkey impressions? The boy’s a lunatic.’

  Pelagia was both disappointed and strangely relieved when her father forbade her to enter the kitchen whilst he extracted crumbs and morsels of terracotta from the smooth and muscular backside of her suitor. She stood outside, her back to the door, and shuddered in sympathy every time that Mandras yelled. Inside, the doctor had the fisherman lying face down on the table with his trousers about his knees, and was reflecting on the general idiocy of love. How could Pelagia fall for a whippersnapper as accident-prone, charming, and unformed as this? He remembered the things he had done to show off to his own wife before they were affianced: he had climbed onto her roof, lifted a tile, and told her every Turkish joke he knew; he had pinned ‘anonymous’ verses to the jamb of her door at night, detailing her loveliness; just like Mandras, he had made exceptional efforts to court her father. ‘You’re an idiot,’ he told the patient.

  ‘I know,’ said Mandras, wincing as another shard came out.

  ‘First of all you get shot accidentally, and now you fall out of a tree.’

  ‘I saw a Tarzan film when I was in Athens,’ explained Mandras, ‘and I was just giving Pelagia an idea of what it was about. Ow. With respect, Iatre, be careful.’

  ‘Wounded in the cause of culture, eh? Young fool.’

  ‘Yes, Iatre.’

  ‘Stop being so polite. I know what you’re up to. Are you going to ask her to marry you, or not? I warn you, I’m not giving away a dowry.’

  ‘No dowry?’

  ‘Does that put you off? Would that be too novel for your family? No one is going to marry my daughter just for the expectation of wealth. Pelagia deserves better than that.’

  ‘No, Iatre, it’s not a question of wealth.’

  ‘Well, that’s good. Are you going to ask my permission?’

  ‘Not yet, Iatre.’

  The doctor adjusted his spectacles: ‘Best to be cautious. You have too many high spirits, altogether too much kefi, to be a good husband.’

  ‘Yes, Iatre. Everyone says there’s going to be a war, and I don’t want to leave a widow, that’s all. You know how everyone treats a widow.’

  ‘They end up as whores,’ said the doctor.

  Mandras was shocked: ‘Pelagia would never come to that, I trust to God.’

  The doctor swabbed away a trickle of blood, and wondered whether his own buttocks had ever been that beautiful. ‘You shouldn’t trust to God for anything. These things are ours to ensure.’

  ‘Yes, Iatre.’

  ‘Stop being so polite. I take it that you will be replacing the pot that you have so liberally redistributed about your own flesh?’

  ‘Would a fish be acceptable, Iatre? I could bring you a bucket of whitebait.’

  It was six hours before the doctor returned to the kapheneia, because, quite apart from the performance of surgery, he had had to reassure his daughter that Mandras would be all right apart from some bruising and some permanent terracotta spots in his backside, he had had to help her catch her goat, which had somehow found its way onto the roof of a neighbour’s shed, he had had to feed minced mice to Psipsina, and, above all, he had had to take refuge from the insufferable heat of August. He had taken a siesta, and had been awakened by the evening concert of the crickets and sparrows, and by the gathering of the villagers for the celebration of the Feast of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. He set out on his peripato, the evening walk that was broken inevitably by a stop in the kapheneia and then was resumed in the expectation that Pelagia would have cooked something by the time that he returned. He was hoping that she would have prepared an unseasonable kokoretsi, as he had noted the presence of liver and intestines on the table where previously he had been performing his surgery. It had occurred to him that some spots of Mandras’ blood might end up in the meal, and he wondered idly if that might amount to cannibalism. This had prompted the further speculation as to whether or not a Muslim might consider the taking of Holy Communion to be anthropophagous.

  As soon as he entered the kapheneia he knew that something was amiss. Solemn martial music was emanating from the radio, and the boys were sitting in a grim and ominous silence, clutching their tumblers, their brows furrowed. Dr Iannis noted with astonishment that both Stamatis and Kokolios had the glistening tracks of tears down their cheeks. To his astonishment, he saw Father Arsenios stride by outside, his arms raised prophetically, his patriarchal beard thrust forward, crying, ‘Sacrilege, sacrilege, howl ye ships of Tarshish, behold, I will raise up against Babylon, and against them that dwell in the midst of them that rise up against me, a destroying wind. Cry ye daughters of Rabbah, clothe ye with sackcloth, woe, woe, woe …’

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  ‘The bastards have sunk the Elli,’ said Kokolios, ‘and they’ve torpedoed the wharf at Tinos.’ ‘What? What?’

  ‘The Elli. The battleship. The Italians sank it at Tinos,
just when all the pilgrims were setting off to the church to see the miracles.’

  ‘The icon wasn’t on board was it? What’s going on? I mean why? Is the icon all right?’

  ‘We don’t know, we don’t know,’ said Stamatis. ‘I wish I was still deaf so that I could not have heard it. Nobody knows how many were killed, I don’t know if the icon’s all right. The Italians attacked us, that’s all, I don’t know why. On the Feast of the Dormition, it’s an unholy thing.’

  ‘It’s an outrage, all those sick pilgrims. What is Metaxas going to do?’

  Kokolios shrugged; ‘The Italians say it wasn’t them, but they’ve already found bits of Italian torpedo. Do they think that we have no balls? The bastards say it was the British, and no one saw the submarine. No one knows what will happen.’

  The doctor put his hands to his face and felt his own tears fighting to appear. He was possessed by all the furious and impotent rage of the little man who has been bound and gagged, and forced to watch whilst his own wife is raped and mutilated. He did not stop to try to understand why he and Kokolios should both be sick with horror over the violation of an icon and a holy day, when one was a Communist and the other a secularist. He did not stop to question whether or not war was inevitable. These were not things that needed to be examined. Kokolios and Stamatis stood up and came out together when he said, ‘Come on boys, we’re all going to the church. It’s a question of solidarity.’

  10 L’Omosessuale (3)

  A guilty man wishes only to be understood, because to be understood is to appear to be forgiven. Perhaps in his own eyes he is guiltless, but it is enough for him to know that others consider him culpable and he feels the need to be explained. In my case, however, no one knows that I am guilty, and nonetheless I wish to be understood.

  I was picked for the mission because I am a big man, because I had acquired a reputation for endurance, because I am reasonably intelligent (Francisco used to say that in the Army ‘intelligent’ means ‘doesn’t usually fuck anything up’), and because I was ‘soldierly’, which means that I kept my men in order, polished my boots when they were not too wet, and knew the meaning of most of the acronyms that customarily reduce our military documents to impenetrable code.

  I received an order by motorcycle messenger asking me to report to Colonel Rivolta, bringing with me one other reliable man. Naturally I chose Francisco; I think I have already explained that it was my intention to use my vice as a means to becoming a good soldier. With him at my side I felt that I was capable of anything. As we were not at war it did not occur to me that I would be leading him into danger by taking him with me, and little was I to know that very soon I was to have the opportunity to demonstrate to him the quality of my heroism.

  To receive an order is one thing and to obey it is another. At that time we had only about twenty-four lorries per ten thousand troops. Colonel Rivolta was fifteen miles away. To reach him we had to run five miles, ride a pair of mules for another five, and finally hitch a lift on the back of a tank that was going for repair with only the reverse gear operating. We went by going backwards, a veritable motto for the whole of the impending campaign.

  Rivolta was an exorbitantly portly man who had clearly risen in the ranks by knowing the right people. He was a prodigal mine of fashionable slogans like ‘A book in one hand and a gun in the other’, and he displayed the consummate heroism of one who sites his HQ fifteen miles away from his troops in an abandoned villa so that he can use the lawns for receptions. We in the Alpini are notorious for having fisticuffs with the Blackshirts, and this may have been a reason why I was picked for the mission; it would not have mattered very much if I was killed, since I was not automatically in line for preferral. Those who wonder why our soldiers have been ineffective compared to their fathers in the 1914 war should bear in mind that this time around it was impossible to become a senior officer by merit alone; it was done by browning the tongue.

  Rivolta was short, fat, bored, and the owner of several medals from the Abyssinian campaign even though everybody knew that he and his men had stayed in one place and done nothing at all; this had not prevented him from sending home lurid reports of successful operations. They were fabulous and highly imaginative works of fiction and it was commonly said by the soldiers that his medals were for literary prowess. Also, his tongue was busy and almost perfectly brown.

  When we marched into that noble, high-ceilinged room and saluted, Rivolta responded with the Roman salute. It occurred to both of us that perhaps he was mimicking the Duce, and Francisco giggled. Rivolta glared at him and probably made a mental note to have him transferred to latrine duty.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Rivolta dramatically, ‘I trust that your courage can be relied upon and that your discretion is complete.’

  Francisco raised an eyebrow and glanced at me sideways. I said, ‘Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir,’ and Francisco made an unmistakable gesture with his tongue that fortunately was not observed.

  Rivolta beckoned us over to a map that was spread upon a large and exquisitely polished antique table, and leaned over it. He pointed with a fat finger to a spot that was in the valley next to the one where we were bivouacked, and said, ‘At 0200 hours tomorrow night you two will go under cover of darkness to this point here and …’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ interrupted Francisco, ‘but that is in Greek territory.’

  ‘I know, I know. I am not stupid. That is beside the point. There are no Greeks there and so they will not know.’

  Francisco raised his eyebrows again and the colonel said, sarcastically, ‘I presume you have heard of such a thing as operational necessity?’

  ‘Are we at war, then?’ asked Francisco, and the colonel probably made a mental note to double the length of the latrine duty. The mouse Mario took the opportunity at that point to emerge from Francisco’s breast pocket, and had to be pushed back down before Rivolta noticed. This added to the irreverence of my friend’s mood, and he smiled idiotically whilst the colonel continued:

  ‘There is a watchtower there, a wooden one, and it has been taken over by a band of local brigands who have killed the guards and adopted their uniforms. They look like our soldiers but are not.’ He paused to let this information sink in, and continued, ‘It will be your task to take this tower. You will be armed and equipped by our quartermaster here, who has special supplies for you. Any questions?’

  ‘We have two companies of Bersaglieri in that valley, sir,’ I said. ‘Why can’t they do it?’

  Francisco chipped in with, ‘If they are merely brigands then this is a matter for the carabinieri, is it not?’

  The colonel puffed himself up with indignation, demanded, ‘Are you questioning my orders?’ and, quick as a flash, Francisco came back with, ‘You did ask for questions, sir.’

  ‘Operational questions, not questions of policy. I have had quite enough of your impertinent attitude, and I must warn you to give respect where it is due.’

  ‘Where it is due,’ repeated Francisco, nodding his head vigorously, and thereby courting further reproof. The colonel said, ‘Good luck lads, and I wish I was coming with you.’ Sotto voce, but clearly audible to me, Francisco muttered, ‘I bet you do, shithead.’

  Rivolta sent us packing with the promise of medals in the event of success and a thick packet of orders that also contained maps, a precise horary, and a photograph of Mussolini taken from low profile in order to emphasise the jut of his chin. I think that this was intended to fire us up and lend rigidity to our moral backbone.

  Outside the villa we sat on a wall and went through the papers. ‘This is fishy business,’ said Francisco, ‘What do you think it’s really about?’

  I looked into his beautiful dark eyes and said, ‘I don’t care what it is. It’s just orders, and we have to assume that someone knows what it’s all about, don’t we?’

  ‘You assume too much,’ he said. ‘I think it’s not only fishy, but dirty.’ He took his pet from his pocket and said to it, ‘Mario, thi
s is not a good thing for you to be involved in.’

  We could hardly believe it when the stores that we drew from the quartermaster turned out to consist of British military uniforms and Greek weapons. It seemed to make no sense at all, and there were no instructions for using the Hotchkiss light machine-gun. We worked it out for ourselves, but later on we concluded that perhaps we were not intended to have done so.

  Francisco and I were saved by the weather in a most curious fashion. We were well prepared in advance, and crept out of our own lines at ten o’clock in the evening. Across the border we changed into our British uniforms as instructed, and then found our way over the escarpment into the next valley. At this point Francisco and I were caught up in a turmoil of conflicting moods.

  I do not think that a person who has never seen action can truly understand what whirlwinds revolve inside the head of a soldier in the hours of combat, but I shall try to explain. In this case we were both proud to have been chosen for a serious military mission. It made us feel very special and important. But neither of us had ever done anything like this before, and so we were deeply afraid, not only of the physical danger but of the heavy responsibility and the possibility that we would make a mess of it. We kept making foolish jokes to conceal this fear. The soldier also always has the fear that the authorities know more than he does and that he does not know what is really happening. He knows that sometimes the High Command will sacrifice him for some greater interest without informing him of the fact, and this makes him contemptuous and suspicious of authority. It also augments his fear.

  The uncertainty of outcome makes him superstitious and he will cross himself continually or kiss his lucky charm, or put his cigarette case in his breast pocket in order to deflect bullets. Francisco and I developed the superstition that neither of us should employ the word ‘certamente’. We never said it once either on that mission or during the war afterwards. Francisco seemed to feel the constant necessity for confiding in his mouse, and he would cradle it in his hands and talk nonsense to it whilst the rest of us were chainsmoking, pacing up and down, gazing at dogeared photographs of our loved ones, or rushing off to the latrines every five minutes.