Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

  ‘No, Signor Dottore, you seem to have worked it out for yourself. I am a quartermaster. Why?’

  ‘So do you have access to medical supplies?’

  ‘Naturally,’ replied the officer, ‘I have access to everything.’ The two men exchanged glances, divining perfectly the train of the other’s thought. Dr Iannis said, ‘I am short of many things, and the war has made it worse.’

  ‘And I am short of accommodation. So?’

  ‘So it’s a deal,’ said the doctor.

  ‘A deal,’ repeated the quartermaster. ‘Anything you want, you send me a message via Captain Corelli. I am sure you will find him very charming. By the way, do you know anything about corns? Our doctors are useless.’

  ‘For your corns I would probably need morphia, hypodermic syringes, sulphur ointment and iodine, neosalvarsan, bandages and lint, surgical spirit, salicylic acid, scalpels, and collodion,’ said the doctor, ‘but I will need a great deal, if you understand me. In the meantime get a pair of boots that fits you.’

  When the quartermaster had gone, taking with him the details of the doctor’s requirements, Pelagia took her father’s elbow anxiously and asked, ‘But Papas, where is he to sleep? Am I to cook for him? And what with? There is almost no food.’

  ‘He will have my bed,’ said the doctor, knowing perfectly well that Pelagia would protest.

  ‘O no, Papas, he will have mine. I will sleep in the kitchen.’

  ‘Since you insist, koritsimou. Just think of all the medicine and equipment it will mean for us.’ He rubbed his hands together and added, ‘The secret of being occupied is to exploit the exploiters. It is also knowing how to resist. I think we shall be very horrible to this captain.’

  In the early evening Captain Corelli arrived, driven by his new baritone, Bombardier Carlo Piero Guercio. The jeep skidded to a halt outside, generating clouds of dust and much noisy alarm amongst the chickens that were scratching in the road, and the two men came in by the entrance of the yard. Carlo looked at the olive tree, amazed by its size, and the captain looked around, appreciating the signs of a quiet domestic life. There was a goat tied to the tree, washing hanging on a line from the tree to the house, a vivid bougainvillaea and a trailing vine, an old table upon which there lay a small heap of chopped onions. There was also a young woman with dark eyes, a scarf tied around her head, and in her hand was a large cooking knife. The captain fell to his knees before her and exclaimed dramatically, ‘Please don’t kill me, I am innocent.’

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Carlo, ‘he is always being foolish. He can’t help it.’

  Pelagia smiled, against her will and against her resolutions, and caught Carlo’s eye. He was huge, as big as Velisarios. Two ordinary men might have fitted inside one leg of his breeches, and she could have made two shirts for her father from the one that he wore. The captain sprang to his feet. ‘I am Captain Antonio Corelli, but you may call me maestro if you wish, and this …’ he took Carlo by the arm ‘… is one of our heroes. He has a hundred medals for saving life, and none for taking it.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Carlo, smiling diffidently. Pelagia looked up at the towering soldier, and knew intuitively that, despite his size, despite his enormous hands that might fit about the neck of an ox, he was a soft and saddened man. ‘A brave Italian is a freak of nature,’ she said sourly, remembering her father’s instructions to be as unaccommodating as possible.

  Corelli protested. ‘He rescued a fallen comrade in the open field, under fire. He is famous all over the Army, and he refused promotion too. He is a one-man ambulance. What a man he is. He has a Greek bullet in his leg to show for it. And this …’ he tapped a case in his hand ‘… is Antonia. Perhaps we will make more formal introductions later on. She is very anxious to meet you, as am I. By what name do men know you, may I ask?’

  Pelagia looked at him properly for the first time, and realised with a start that this was the very same officer who had commanded his platoon of comedians to march past at the eyes left. She blushed. At the same moment Corelli recognised her, and he bit his lower lip in mockery of himself. ‘Ah,’ he exclaimed, and slapped himself on the wrist. He fell to his knees once more, hung his head in sly penitence, and said softly, ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.’ He beat his breast and wiped away an imaginary tear.

  Carlo exchanged glances with Pelagia, and shrugged his shoulders. ‘He’s always like this.’

  Dr Iannis came out, saw the captain on his knees before his daughter, caught her bemused expression, and said, ‘Captain Corelli? I want a word with you. Now.’

  Startled by the authority in the older man’s voice, Corelli stood up, abashed, and held out his hand. The doctor withheld his own, and said crisply, ‘I want an explanation.’

  ‘Of what? I have done nothing. You must excuse me, I was only joking with your daughter.’ He shifted nervously, unhappily conscious of the possibility that he had made a bad start.

  ‘I want to know why you have defaced the monument.’

  ‘The monument? Forgive me, but …’

  The monument, the one in the middle of the bridge that de Bosset built. It has been defaced.’

  The captain knitted his brows in perplexity, and then his face lightened, ‘Ah, you mean the one across the bay at Argostoli. Why, what has happened to it?’

  ‘It had “To The Glory Of The British People” inscribed on the obelisk. I have heard that some of your soldiers have chipped away the letters. Do you think you can so easily erase our history? Are you so stupid that you think that we will forget what it said? Is this how you wage war, by the chipping away of letters? What kind of heroism is this?’ The doctor raised his voice to a new note of vehemence, ‘Tell me how you would like it if we defaced the tombstones in the Italian cemetery, Captain.’

  ‘I had nothing to do with it, Signor. You are blaming the wrong man. I apologise for the offence, but …’ he shrugged his shoulders ‘… the decision was not mine, and neither were the soldiers.’

  The doctor scowled and raised his finger, stabbing the air, ‘There would be no tyranny, Captain, and no wars, if minions did not ignore their conscience.’

  The captain looked to Pelagia, as though in expectation of support, and suffered the unbearable sensation of having been sent back to school. ‘I must protest,’ he said feebly.

  ‘You cannot protest, because there is no excuse. And why, will you tell me, has the teaching of Greek history been prohibited in our schools? Why is everyone being obliged to learn Italian, eh?’

  Pelagia smiled to herself; she could not have calculated how often she had heard her father divagating upon the absolute necessity and perfect reasonableness of having compulsory Italian in schools.

  The captain felt himself wanting to squirm like a little boy who has been caught stealing sweets from the tin reserved for Sundays. ‘In the Italian Empire,’ he said, the words tasting bitter on his tongue, ‘it is logical that everyone should learn Italian … I believe that that is the reason. I am not responsible for it, I repeat.’ He began visibly to perspire. The doctor shot him a glance that was intended to be, and was, deeply withering. ‘Pathetic,’ he said, and turned on his heel. He went indoors and sat down at his desk, very satisfied with himself. He leaned forward, annoyed Psipsina by tickling her whiskers, and confided to her, ‘Got him on the run already.’

  Outside in the yard Captain Corelli was dumbfounded, and Pelagia was feeling sorry for him. ‘Your father is …’ he said, and the words failed him. ‘Yes, he is,’ confirmed Pelagia.

  ‘Where am I to sleep?’ asked Corelli, glad of anything that might be a distraction, all his good humour having dried to dust.

  ‘You will have my bed,’ said Pelagia.

  Under normal circumstances Antonio Corelli would have asked brightly, ‘Are we to share it then? How hospitable,’ but now, after the doctor’s words, he was appalled by this information. ‘It’s out of the question,’ he said briskly. ‘Tonight I
shall sleep in the yard, and tomorrow I shall request alternative accommodation.’

  Pelagia was shocked by the feelings of alarm that arose in her breast. Could it be that there was something inside her that wanted this foreigner, this interloper, to stay? She went inside and relayed the Italian’s decision to her father. ‘He can’t go,’ he said. ‘How am I supposed to browbeat him if he isn’t here? And anyway, he seems like a personable boy.’

  ‘Papakis, you made him feel like a flea. I almost felt sorry for him.’

  ‘You did feel sorry for him, koritsimou. I saw it in your face.’ He took his daughter’s arm and went back out with her. ‘Young man,’ he said to the captain, ‘you are staying here, whether you like it or not. It is quite possible that your quartermaster will decide to impose someone even worse.’

  ‘But your daughter’s bed, Dottore? It would not be … it would be a terrible thing.’

  ‘She will be comfortable in the kitchen, Captain. I don’t care how bad you feel, that is not my problem. I am not the aggressor. Do you understand me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the captain, overpowered, and not entirely grasping what was happening to him.

  ‘Kyria Pelagia will bring water, some coffee, and some mezedakia to eat. You will find that we do not lack hospitality. It is our tradition, Captain, to be hospitable even to those who do not merit it. It is a question of honour, a motive which you may find somewhat foreign and unfamiliar. Your sizeable friend is welcome to join us.’

  Carlo and the captain uneasily partook of the tiny spinach pies, the fried baby squid and the dolmades stuffed with rice. The doctor glowered at them, inwardly delighted with the successful inauguration of his novel project for resistance, and the two soldiers avoided his gaze, commenting politely and inconsequentially upon the beauty of the night, the impossible size of the olive tree, and any and every irrelevance that occurred to them.

  Carlo drove gratefully away, and the captain sat on Pelagia’s bed miserably. It was the time for an evening meal, and despite the plates of appetisers his stomach growled from force of habit. The thought of more of that wonderful food left him feeling weak. The doctor came in once and told him, ‘The answer to your problem is to eat a lot of onions, tomatoes, parsley, basil, oregano, and garlic. The garlic will be an antiseptic for the fissures, and the other things, taken together, will soften the stools. It is very important not to strain at all, and if you eat meat, it must always be accompanied by a great deal of fluid and a sideplate of vegetables.’

  The captain watched him leave the room, and felt more humiliated than he had ever thought possible. How could the old man possibly have known that he suffered from haemorrhoids?

  In the kitchen the doctor asked Pelagia whether or not she had noticed that the captain walked very carefully and occasionally winced.

  Father and daughter sat down to eat, both of them clattering the cutlery on the plates, and waited until they were sure that the Italian must be dying of hunger and feeling like a ragamuffin boy who has been sent to Coventry at school, and then they invited him to join them. He sat with them and ate in silence.

  ‘This is Cephallonian meat pie,’ said the doctor in an informative tone of voice, ‘except that, thanks to your people, it doesn’t have any meat in it.’

  Afterwards, when the curfew patrol had already passed, the doctor announced his intention to go for a walk. ‘But the curfew …’ protested Corelli, and the doctor replied, ‘I was born here, this is my island.’ He gathered up his hat and his pipe, and swept out.

  ‘I must insist,’ he called vainly after the doctor, who prudently circled about the house and waited a quarter of an hour as he sat upon the wall, eavesdropping on the conversation of the two young people.

  Pelagia looked at Corelli as he sat at the table, and felt the need to comfort him. ‘What is Antonia?’ she asked. He avoided her eyes, ‘My mandolin. I am a musician.’

  ‘A musician? In the Army?’

  ‘When I joined, Kyria Pelagia, Army life consisted mainly of being paid for sitting about doing nothing. Plenty of time for practice, you see. I had a plan to become the best mandolin player in Italy, and then I would leave the Army and earn a living. I didn’t want to be a café player, I wanted to play Hummel and Conforto and Giuliani. There’s not much demand, so you have to be very good.’

  ‘You mean you’re a soldier by mistake?’ asked Pelagia, who had never heard of any of these composers.

  ‘It was a plan that went wrong; the Duce got some big ideas.’ He looked at her wistfully.

  ‘After the war,’ she said.

  He nodded and smiled, ‘After the war.’

  ‘I want to be a doctor,’ said Pelagia, who had not even mentioned this idea to her father.

  That night, just as she was drifting off to sleep beneath her blankets, she heard a muffled cry, and shortly afterwards the captain appeared in the kitchen, a little wide-eyed, a towel wrapped about his waist. She sat up, clutching the blankets about her breasts.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, perceiving her alarm, ‘but there appears to be an enormous weasel on my bed.’

  Pelagia laughed, ‘That’s not a weasel, that’s Psipsina. She is our pet. She always sleeps on my bed.’

  ‘What is it?’

  Pelagia could not resist essaying her father’s mode of resistance: ‘Haven’t you heard of Greek cats?’

  The captain looked at her suspiciously, shrugged his shoulders, and returned to his room. He approached the pine marten and stroked it on the forehead with a tentative forefinger. It felt very soft and comforting. ‘Micino, micino,’ he cooed speculatively, and fondled her ears. Psipsina sniffed at the wiggling digit, did not recognise it, surmised that it might be edible, and bit it.

  Captain Antonio Corelli snatched his hand away, watched the beads of blood well out of his finger, and fought against the shamingly childish tears that were rising unbidden to his eyes. He attempted by force of will to suppress the mounting sting of the bite, and knew for certain that he had been pierced through to the bone. Never, in all his life, had he felt so unloved. These Greeks. When they said ‘ne’ it meant ‘yes’, when they nodded it meant ‘no’, and the more angry they were, the more they smiled. Even the cats were from another planet, and moreover could have no possible motive for such malice.

  He lay abjectly upon the hard cold floor, unable to sleep, until at last Psipsina missed Pelagia, and went off to look for her. He climbed back into the bed and sank gratefully into the mattress. ‘Mmm,’ he said to himself, and realised that he was savouring a lingering, vanishing smell of young woman. He thought about Pelagia for a while, remembering the clean scoop of white flesh as the neck became the breast and shoulder, and finally fell asleep.

  He woke in the night, suffering from the sensation that his neck was abominably hot and that his chin was ticklish. As he emerged into awareness it became horribly evident that the Greek cat had wrapped itself about his neck and was fast asleep. Horrified and afraid, he tried to move a little. The animal growled sleepily.

  He lay paralysed for what seemed like hours, sweating, resisting the itching and the unnatural warmth, listening to the owls and the unholy noises of the night. At some point he noticed that the encumbrance across his neck smelled consolingly sweet. It was an aroma that mingled pleasantly with the smell of Pelagia. He drifted away at last, and for some reason dreamed irrelevantly of elephants, bakelite, and horses.

  26 Sharp Edges

  The hour shortly after dawn found Captain Antonio Corelli waiting in vain at the entrance to the yard for Carlo to come and fetch him away. The latter had broken a shackle on the suspension of his jeep, and was engaged in kicking the tyres and swearing at the profound potholes in the road that had undone his early start. He already possessed a deep horror of letting down the captain, a horror shared by all the men who served under him, and his fractious ill-temper was exacerbated when he tried to light a cigarette, only to find that the desiccated rod of powdery tobacco slid out of its tube of paper and
smouldered insolently in the dust, leaving him with a piece of scorchingly hot paper that stuck tenaciously to his lower lip. He pulled the paper away, and it removed a tag of skin. He licked the stinging wound, touched it with his finger, and cursed the Germans for their success in monopolising the supplies of the best tobacco. A thin old peasant mounted sidesaddle on a donkey passed him by, saw the broken state of the vehicle as it sagged to one side, smiled with satisfaction, and raised a hand in a gesture of casual greeting. Carlo gritted his teeth and smiled. ‘Fuck the war,’ he said, since one greeting was as good as another to a Greek. It looked as though there would be no La Scala that morning, unless the opera society could manage the Soldiers’ Chorus on its own. He abandoned the jeep and began to trudge towards the village.

  Velisarios passed him, and the two men looked at one another with something like recognition. However thin and bedraggled he had become since he had gone to the front, Velisarios was still the biggest man that anyone had ever seen, and Carlo, despite his equivalent experiences on the other side of the line, was also the biggest man that anyone had ever seen. Both of these Titans had become accustomed to the saddening suspicion within themselves that they were freaks; to be superhuman was a burden that had seemed impossible to share and impossible to explain to ordinary people, who would have been incredulous.

  They were both astonished, and for a moment forgot that they were enemies. ‘Hey,’ exclaimed Velisarios, raising his hands in a gesture of pleasure. Carlo, stumped for an exclamation that would make sense to a Greek, aimed inaccurately for a failed compromise that sounded very like ‘Ung’. Carlo offered one of his atrocious cigarettes, Velisarios took one, and they gesticulated and made sour faces to each other as they drew on the smoke that was sharp as needles. ‘Fuck the war,’ said Carlo, by way of farewell, and the two went on their opposite ways, Carlo beginning to feel very content. A kilometre away, Velisarios came across the crippled jeep, paused in thought, and went to fetch a friend. He returned, lifted the vehicle at each corner in turn, and his companion removed the wheels. Then he drained the water from the radiator, and refilled it with petrol from the jerrycan strapped to the back.