Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

  It occurred to him that he should acquire a large dog and train it to bite Italians, and to this end he bought an animal from Stamatis that was guaranteed to be patriotic, since its own sire already had achieved a long and honourable record of biting at the calves of soldiers. His own mongrel however, misinterpreting his teaching as commands to bite the tyres of passing military trucks, passed prematurely beyond the veil, and Arsenios adopted another, less excitable dog. He set out on foot, laden with nothing but a scrip and an olivewood cross that would serve him as a staff.

  Arsenios walked and preached. His blubbery thighs chafed against each other, bringing rashes and sores to his groin; in the height of summer the perspiration poured from his brow and the pits of his arms so that his black robes blossomed with sodden darker rings whose circumference was marked by wide irregular rims of fine white salt, and his beard glistened and dripped like the Arethusa spring. The leather soles of his black boots abraded away into contiguous holes until he walked on bare feet shod only by the uppers, trailing long strands of cobbler’s thread behind him that left tracks in the pale dust like the marks of hair-thin snakes. In winter Arsenios discovered that any man will be warm who preserves himself in motion, and he leaned his weight against the callous wind and the inordinate rain whilst his abject dog followed behind him, soaked to the skin, its tail between its legs, its head hanging dolefully, the very picture of unwise and unquestioning fealty.

  From the lentisk bushes and the cypress of the north to the shingle sands of Skala in the south, from the underground lakes of Sami in the east to the vertiginous slopes of Petani in the west, Arsenios trudged and sermonised. As he walked, his head as lowered as that of his dog, he constructed phrases of righteous rage that would emerge as wild tirades outside the encampments of Italians. At the German garrisons he was ignored or rudely driven away with the butts of rifles, not because they were cruel, but because they did not share their ally’s love of drama. To the Teutons he was an irritation rather than an entertainment, but to the Italians he was welcome relief from interminable card games and watching out for British bombers. They looked forward to his visitations with as much anticipation as they awaited the truck of whores, Arsenios being all the more welcome for the unpredictability of his arrivals and departures.

  When he came the soldiers would gather round him, mesmerised by the operatic gestures of the weatherbeaten priest and the thunderous roll of biblical Greek, of which they understood not one word. Arsenios would look from one smiling and delighted face to another, knowing that their incomprehension was absolute, but would still persist because it seemed to him that he had no choice. There were words piling up inside him, words of supernatural strength, and it seemed to him that the hand of the Virgin pushed him on, that the grief of Christ had been poured into him, that it overflowed his soul and must be given to the land:

  ‘Schismatics of Rome, brothers lost to us, children of Christ who weeps for thee, sacrificial lambs, pawns of tyrants, ye who are unjust, ye who are filthy, ye who are unrighteous, ye who are dogs and whoremongers, sorcerers and idolaters, ye whose hearts are unlit by the sun, ye that have no temple within, ye of a nation that shall not be saved, ye who work abominations, ye who defile the Virgin, ye that thirst for truth and cannot drink it; ye are corrupt and have done nothing good, ye have done iniquity, ye have eaten my people as they eat bread, ye have not called upon God, ye have encamped against our cities, ye have been put to shame and God has despised thee and scattered thy bones. Behold, the Lord shall give ear to the words of my mouth, for He is my helper, He is with them who uphold my soul, He shall reward evils unto mine enemies, he shall cut them off in His truth, for strangers are risen up against my people, oppressors seek after our trees of olive and our maidens, wickedness is in the midst of them. My soul is amongst lions, and I lie even with them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.

  ‘Yea, in heart ye work wickedness, ye weigh the violence of your hands upon the earth, ye are estranged from the womb, ye go astray as soon as ye be born, speaking lies, thy poison is like the poison of the serpent, ye are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear.

  ‘But we are like the green olive in the House of God, and we shall trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever, for God has stretched forth His hand and God has spoken with the word of His mouth and behold I have heard him speaking in a great wind and in the midst of storms, in the stones of Assos and the caves of mountains. He hath strewn His salt in the lake of Melissani, He hath stored up iron in the skies of Lixouri.

  ‘Schismatics of Rome, the Lord hath prepared a pit, He hath laid up a net for thy steps, and calamities shall overpass thee, for Satan shall be loosed from his prison, and Gog and Magog shall go out to deceive the nations that are in the four quarters of the earth, to gather them together in battle; the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And fire shall come out of heaven above the beloved city, and devour thee, and thou shalt be cast, yea, even the innocent and those as pure as babes, into the lake of oil and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and thy flesh shall be divided from thy bones, for ye have not been found written in the book of life and shall be cast into the flame.

  ‘And the Lord God shall wipe away all tears from the eyes of my people, and there shall be no more tears nor crying, and neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things shall pass away, and He that sits upon the Throne shall make all things new, and He shall give to my people that are athirst to drink of the water of the fountain of life freely. For He shall take the Beast and the false prophet and the armies gathered together against us that wrought miracles before them, and He shall smite them, and the fowls of the air shall be filled with their flesh, and they shall be cast alive into the lake of fire burning with brimstone, and the remnant shall be slain.’

  The soldiers provided Arsenios and his dog with bread and water, scraps and olives, and in monasteries as far apart as those of Agrilion and Kipoureon he was cared for by nuns and monks. But the hard nights in caves, the meagre diet, the two years of relentless tramping, caused his ample flesh to fall away until his vast black robes flapped about a body that had become a skeleton stretched with skin and burned with sores. His vivid eyes burned forth from above hollow cheeks, the parchment of his hands and face grew dark as teak, and for the first time in his life he found peace within himself and was happy. It is true that he neglected his parish completely, but it is probable that, had he lived, Arsenios might have become a saint.

  40 A Problem with Lips

  They passed each other at the door, she going out, and he returning from work. Unselfconsciously she put one hand up to his left cheek and, in passing, kissed him on the other.

  He was astonished, and, by the time that she reached the entrance to the yard, so was she, because it was not until then that she suddenly realised what she had done. She stopped dead, as though having walked straight into a metaphysical but palpable stone wall. She felt her blood rising to the roots of her hair, and realised that she did not dare look back at him. Undoubtedly he too would be rooted to the spot. She could almost feel his eyes travelling from her feet to her head, finally settling upon the back of her head in the expectation that she would turn around. He called out, as she knew he would, ‘Kyria Pelagia.’

  ‘What?’ she demanded curtly, as though an effort to be short with him could cancel out the hideously simple way in which she had betrayed her affection without even thinking about it.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’

  ‘Don’t tease me.’

  ‘Would I tease you?’

  ‘Don’t make anything of it. I thought you were my father. I always kiss him like that when he comes in.’

  ‘Very understandable. We are both old and small.’

  ‘If you are going to tease me, I shall never speak to you again.’

  He came up behind her and around her, and threw himself upon his knees before her. ‘O no,’ he crie
d, ‘anything but that.’ He bowed his head to the ground and moaned piteously, ‘Have mercy. Shoot me, flog me, but don’t say you’ll never speak to me.’ He grasped her about the knees and pretended to weep.

  ‘The whole village is looking,’ she protested, ‘stop it at once. You are so embarrassing, get off me.’

  ‘My heart is broken,’ he wailed, and he grasped her hand and began to smatter it with kisses.

  ‘Stupid goat, you are deranged.’

  ‘I am tormented, I am burning, I am broken into pieces, my eyes spout forth with tears.’ He leaned back and gestured poetically with his fingers to portray the extraordinary cascade of invisible tears that he intended her to envisage. ‘Don’t laugh at me,’ he continued, having struck upon a new tack. ‘O, light of my eyes, do not mock poor Antonio in his affliction.’

  ‘Are you drunk again?’

  ‘Drunk with sorrow, drunk with agony. Speak to me.’

  ‘Did your battery win another football match?’

  Corelli leapt to his feet and spread his arms with delight, ‘Yes. We beat Günter’s company by four goals to one, and we injured three of them, and then I came in and you kissed me. A glorious day for Italy.’

  ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘A significant mistake.’

  ‘An insignificant mistake. I am very sorry.’

  ‘Come inside,’ he said, ‘I’ve got something very interesting to show you.’

  Relieved by this abrupt change of subject, she followed him through the door, only to find that he was passing her on his way out again. He clamped his hands upon either side of her head, kissed her lingeringly and flamboyantly on the forehead, exclaimed, ‘Mi scusi, I thought it was the doctor, don’t make anything of it,’ and then sprinted away across the yard and down the street. She put her hands on her hips and stared after him in amazement, shaking her head and making every effort not to laugh or smile.

  41 Snails

  The doctor glanced out of the window and saw Captain Corelli creeping up on Lemoni in order to give her a surprise. At the same time Psipsina leapt foursquare onto the page he was writing about the French occupation, and this combination of circumstances inspired him with a wonderful idea. He set down his pipe and his pen, and ventured out into the incandescent sunlight of the early afternoon.

  ‘Fischio!’ exclaimed the captain, and Lemoni squealed.

  ‘Excuse me, children,’ said the doctor.

  ‘Ah,’ said Corelli, straightening up sheepishly, ‘kalispera, Iatre. I was just …’

  ‘Playing?’ He turned to the small girl, ‘Koritsimou, do you remember when you found Psipsina when she was very little and was hanging on the fence? And you made me come along to rescue her?’

  Lemoni nodded importantly, and the doctor asked, ‘Are all the snails still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Lots. Big ones.’ She pointed at Corelli, ‘Bigger than him, even.’

  ‘When is the best time to find them?’

  ‘Early and late.’

  ‘I see. Can you come round this evening and show me again where they were?’

  ‘After dark’s best.’

  ‘We can’t go out after dark, there’s a curfew.’

  ‘Before dark,’ she agreed.

  ‘What was all that about?’ asked the captain, when Lemoni had departed.

  Stiffly the doctor said, ‘Thanks to you there’s almost no food. We’re going out this evening to find snails.’

  The captain bridled, ‘The blockade is British. They have the idea that they can best help you by starving you. As you know very well, I have done my best to help.’

  ‘Your borrowings at the expense of the Army are very much appreciated, but it’s a pity that the situation even arises. We need the protein. You can see what we’ve been reduced to.’

  ‘At home snails are an expensive luxury.’

  ‘And here they are a regrettable necessity.’

  The captain wiped the perspiration from his forehead and said, ‘Permit me to come and help.’

  So it was that in the evening, an hour before the setting of the sun and shortly after the cooling of the day, Pelagia and her father, Lemoni and the captain, found themselves crawling through the impossible tangle of animal runs and briars, having climbed the crumbling wall and negotiated their way beneath the branches of ancient and neglected olives.

  The doctor was crawling behind Lemoni, and suddenly she stopped and looked round at him. ‘You said,’ she reproached him, ‘you said that if you went round looking for snails, you’d be taken somewhere and locked up.’

  ‘Piraeus,’ said the doctor. ‘I said I’d be taken to Piraeus. Anyway, we’re all locked up nowadays.’

  It became apparent in that dingy light that upon the undersides of the lower leaves there were legions of fat snails, competing with each other for variegation of design. There were tawny snails with almost invisible markings, there were light snails with whorls of stripes, there were snails of ochre yellow and bright lemon, and snails of red speckles and black dots. In the upper branches the Sicilian warblers cocked their heads and flitted about, listening to the dull clacks and pings as the harvest was gathered and dropped into the buckets.

  The child and the three adults became so absorbed in their task that they did not notice themselves becoming separated. The doctor and Lemoni vanished down one tunnel, and the captain and Pelagia down another. At some point the captain found himself on his own, and paused for a second to reflect upon the curious fact that he could not remember ever having felt so contented. He carelessly deplored the state of the knees of his breeches, and squinted up at the reddening sun as its crimson light softened amongst the twigs and leaves. He breathed deeply and sighed, relaxing back upon his heels. He poked with a forefinger at a snail that was attempting to crawl out of the bucket. ‘Bad snail,’ he said, and was relieved that there was no one near to hear him utter such inanities. In the distance an anti-aircraft gun cracked, and he shrugged his shoulders. It probably was nothing.

  ‘Ow, o no,’ came a voice nearby that was undoubtedly Pelagia’s. ‘O, for God’s sake.’

  Horrified by the terrible thought that perhaps she had been struck by falling shrapnel, the captain fell to his hands and knees, and crawled quickly back along his tunnel towards the place from which the exclamations had come.

  He found Pelagia, apparently paralysed into a contorted posture that had left her neck ricked backwards. She was on her hands and knees, a long thin streak of blood was beading diagonally across her cheek, and she was clearly in a state of extreme irritation. ‘Che succede?’ he asked, crawling towards her. ‘Che succede?’

  ‘I’ve got my hair caught,’ she replied indignantly. ‘A thorn scraped my cheek, and I jerked my head away, and I caught my hair on these briars, and I can’t untangle it. And don’t laugh.’

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ he said, laughing. ‘I was afraid you’d been wounded.’

  ‘I am wounded. My cheek stings.’

  Corelli reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, and dabbed at the graze. He showed her the blood and said lightly, ‘I’ll treasure this forever.’

  ‘If you don’t untangle me, I’ll murder you. Just stop laughing.’

  ‘If I don’t untangle you, you’ll never catch me to murder me, will you? Just hold still.’ He was obliged to reach his hands over her shoulders and peer past her ear in order to see what he was doing. She found her face pressing into his chest, and she took in the rough texture and dusty aroma of his uniform. ‘You’re squashing my nose,’ she protested.

  Corelli sniffed appreciatively; Pelagia always smelled of rosemary. It was a young, fresh scent, and it reminded him of festive meals at home. ‘I might have to cut this,’ he said, pulling futilely at the black strands that had wound themselves about the thorns.

  ‘Ow, ow, stop pulling it about, just be careful. And you’re not cutting it.’

  ‘You’re in a very vulnerable position,’ he remarked, ‘so just try to appear grateful.
’ He tugged it out, piece by piece, ensuring that he let no hairs slide between his fingers to cause her any pain. His arms began to ache from being held so much in a stretched and horizontal position, and he rested his elbows on her shoulders. ‘I’ve done it,’ he said, pleased with himself, and began to draw back. She shook her head with relief, and as the captain’s lips passed by her cheek, he kissed it gently, before the ear, where there was an almost invisible, soft down.

  She touched her fingertips to the site of the kiss, and reproached him, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  He knelt back and held her gaze with his own. ‘I couldn’t help it.’

  ‘It was taking advantage.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ They looked at one another for a long moment, and then, for reasons that even she could not fathom, Pelagia began to cry.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s the matter?’ asked Corelli, his face furrowing in consternation. Pelagia’s tears rolled down her cheeks and fell into the bucket amongst the snails. ‘You’re drowning them,’ he said, pointing. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She smiled pitifully, and set once more to crying. He took her in his arms and patted her back. She felt her nose begin to run, and became anxious that she might leave mucus on the epaulette of his uniform. She sniffed hard in order to preclude this eventuality. Suddenly she blurted out, ‘I can’t stand it any more, not any of it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Everything is lousy,’ agreed the captain, wondering if he too might yield to the temptation to cry. He took her head gently in his hands and touched at the tears with his lips. She gazed at him wonderingly, and suddenly they found themselves, underneath the briars, in the sunset, flanked by two buckets of escaping snails, their knees sore and filthy, infinitely enclosed in their first unpatriotic and secret kiss. Hungry and desperate, filled with light, they could not draw away from each other, and when finally they returned home at dusk, their combined booty shamefully and accusingly failed to reach the quota reached by Lemoni on her own.