The Magus - John Fowles

by John Fowles

  Conchis stopped speaking, then clapped his hands twice.

  "I should like you to see Anton."

  "I think I've seen him already."

  Up on the terrace a petrol engine suddenly sputtered into life. A generator. "No. Anton is dead. You have seen an actor who looks like him. But this is the real Anton. During the war I had a small ciné-camera and two reels of film. Which I kept until 1944, when I could get them developed. The quality is very poor."

  I heard the faint whir of a projector. A beam of light came from above, was adjusted, centered on the screen. A blur, hasty focusing.

  I saw a handsome young man of about my own age. He was not the one I had seen the week before, though in one feature, the heavy dark eyebrows, they were very similar. But this was unmistakably a wartime officer. He didn't look particularly soft; but more like a Battle of Britain pilot; stylishly insouciant. He was walking down a path beside a high wall, the wall of Hermes Ambelas's house, perhaps. Smiling. He struck a sort of heroic tenor attitude, laughed self-consciously; and abruptly the ten-second sequence was over. In the next he was drinking coffee, playing with a cat at his feet; looked sideways up at the camera, a serious, shy look, as if someone had told him not to smile. The film was very fuzzy, jerky, amateurish. Another sequence. A file of men marching round the island harbor; apparently shot from above, out of some upper-story window.

  "That is Anton in the rear."

  He had a slight limp. And I also knew that I was for a moment watching the unfakable truth. Beyond the men I could see a broad quay, on which in 1953 stood the little island customs and coastguard house. I knew it had been built since the war. On this film the quay was bare. The beam was extinguished, the engine stopped.

  "There. I took other scenes, but one reel deteriorated. Those were all I could salvage." He paused, then went on. "The officer responsible for 'stiffening morale' in this area of Greece was an S.S. colonel called Wimmel. Wilhelm Dietrich Wimmel. By the time I am now speaking of, Resistance movements had begun in Greece. Wherever the terrain permitted. Among the islands, of course, only Crete allowed maquis operations. But up in the north and over there in the Peloponnesus ELAS and the other groups had begun to organize themselves. Arms were dropped to them. Trained saboteurs. Wimmel was brought to Nauplia, late in 1942, from Poland, where he had had a great deal of success. He was responsible for the southwest of Greece, in which we were included. His technique was simple. He had a price list. For every German wounded, ten hostages were executed; for every German killed, twenty. As you may imagine, it was a system that worked.

  "He had a handpicked company of Teutonic monsters under him, who did the interrogating, torturing, executing, and the rest. They were known, after the badge they wore, as die Raben. The ravens.

  "I met him before his infamies had become widely known. I heard one winter morning that a German motor launch had unexpectedly brought an important officer to the island. Later that day, Anton sent for me. In his office I was introduced to a small, thin man. My own height, my own age. Immaculately neat. Scrupulously polite. He stood to shake my hand. He spoke some English, enough to know that I spoke it much better than he did. And when I confessed that I was half English by birth, he said, The great tragedy of our time is that England and Germany should have quarreled. Anton explained that he had told the colonel about our musical evenings and that the colonel hoped that I would join them for lunch and afterwards accompany Anton in one or two songs. Of course I had, a titre d'office, to accept.

  "I did not like the colonel at all. He had eyes like razors. I think the most unpleasant eyes I have ever seen in a human being. They were without a grain of sympathy for what they saw. Nothing but assessment and calculation. If they had been brutal, or lecherous, or sadistic, they would have been better. But they were the eyes of a machine.

  "An educated machine. The colonel had brought some bottles of hock with him and we had the best lunch I had eaten for many months. We discussed the war very briefly, rather as one might discuss the weather. It was the colonel himself who changed the subject to literature. He was obviously a well-read man. Knew Shakespeare well, and Goethe and Schiller extremely well. He even drew some interesting parallels between English and German literature, and not all in Germany's favor. I realized that he was drinking less than we were. Also that Anton was careless with his tongue. We were both in fact being watched. I knew that halfway through the meal; and the colonel knew I knew it. We two older men polarized the situation. Anton became an irrelevance. The colonel would have had nothing but contempt for the ordinary Greek official, and I was highly honored to be treated by him as a gentleman and equal. But I was not misled.

  "After lunch we performed a few lieder for him, and he was full of compliments. He then announced that he wished to inspect the lookout post on the far side of the island, and invited me to accompany him — the place was of no great military importance. So I traveled round with them to Moutsa and we climbed up to the house here. There was a great deal of military paraphernalia about — wire everywhere and one or two pillboxes. But I was happy to find that the house had not been damaged at all. The men were paraded and briefly addressed by the colonel in my presence — in German. He referred to me as 'this English gentleman' and insisted that my property should be respected. But I remember this. As we left he stopped to correct some minor fault in the way the man on guard at the gate was wearing his equipment. He pointed it out to Anton and said to him, Schlamperei, Herr Leutnant. Sehen Sie? Now Schlamperei means something like sloppiness. It is the kind of word Prussians use of Bavarians. And of Austrians. He was evidently referring to some previous conversation. But it gave me a key to his character.

  "We did not see him again for nine months. The autumn of 1943.

  "It was the end of September. I was in my house one beautiful late afternoon when Anton strode in. I knew that something terrible had happened. He had just come back from Bourani. About twelve men were stationed there at a time. That morning four who were not on duty had gone down to Moutsa to swim. They must have grown careless, more Schlamperei, because they all got into the water together. They came out, one by one, and sat throwing a ball and sunning on the beach. Then three men stood out of the trees behind them. One had a submachine gun. The Germans had no chance. The Unteroffizier in charge heard the shots from here, wirelessed Anton, then came down to look. He found three corpses, and one man who lived long enough to say what had happened. The guerrillas had disappeared — and with the soldiers' guns. Anton immediately set out round the island in a launch.

  "Poor Anton. He was torn between doing his duty and trying to delay the news from reaching the dreaded Colonel Wimmel. Of course he knew that he had to report the incident. He did so, but not until that evening, after he had seen me. He told me that that morning he had reasoned that he had to deal with andarte from the mainland, who must have slipped over by night and who would certainly not risk going back again before darkness. He therefore went round the island very slowly, searching every place where a boat might be hidden. And he found one, drawn up in the trees over there at the end of the island facing Petrocaravi. He had no alternative. The guerrillas must have heard and seen him searching. There were strict High Command instructions in such a contingency. One destroyed the means of retreat. He set the boat on fire. The mice were trapped.

  "He had come to explain all this to me; by this time Wimmel's Price list was well known. We owed him eighty men. Anton thought we had one chance. To capture the guerrillas and have them waiting for Wimmel when he arrived, as he was almost certain to, the following day. At least we should thus prove that they were not islanders, but agents provocateurs. We knew they must be Communists, ELAS men, because their policy was the deliberate instigation of German reprisals — in order to stiffen morale on the Greek side. The eighteenth-century Klephts used exactly the same tactics to raise the passive peasantry against the Turks.

  "At eight that evening I called all the leading villagers together and explained t
he situation to them. It was too late to do anything that night. Our only chance was to cooperate with Anton's troops in combing the island the next day. Of course they were passionately angry at having their peace — and their lives — put into such jeopardy. They promised to stand guard all night over their boats and cisterns and to be out at dawn to track the guerrillas down.

  "But at midnight I was woken by the sound of marching feet and a knocking at the outside gates. Once again it was Anton. He came to tell me that it was too late. He had received orders. He was to take no more action on his own initiative. Wimmel would arrive with a company of die Raben in the morning. I was to be placed under immediate arrest. Every male in the village between the ages of fourteen and seventy-five was to be rounded up at dawn. Anton told me all this in my bedroom. He paced up and down, almost in tears, while I sat on the side of my bed, and listened to him say he was ashamed to be German, ashamed to have been born. That he would have killed himself if he did not feel it his duty to try to intercede with the colonel the next day. We talked for a long time. He told me more than he had before about Wimmel. We were so cut off here, and there were many things I had not heard. In the end he said, there is one good thing in this war. It has allowed me to meet you. We shook hands.

  "Then I went with him back to the school, where I slept under guard.

  "When I was taken down to the harbor the next morning at nine, all the men and most of the women in the village were there. Anton's troops guarded all the exits. Needless to say, the guerrillas had not been seen. The villagers were in despair. But there was nothing they could do. "At ten die Raben arrived in a landing craft. One could see at once the difference between them and the Austrians. Better drilled, better disciplined, far better insulated against feelings of humanity. And so young. I found that the most terrifying aspect of them — their fanatical youth. Then minutes later a seaplane landed. I remember the shadows of its wings falling on the whitewashed houses. Like a black scythe. A young fisherman near me picked a hibiscus and put the blood-red flower against his heart. We all knew what he meant.

  "Wimmel came ashore. The first thing be did was to have all of us men herded onto a quay, and for the first time the islanders knew what it was like to be kicked and struck by foreign troops. The women were driven back into the adjoining streets and alleys. Then Wimmel disappeared into a taverna with Anton. Soon after I was called for. All the villagers crossed themselves, and I was roughly marched in to see him by two of his men. He did not stand to greet me, and when he spoke to me, it was as if to a total stranger. He even refused to speak English. He had brought a Greek collaborationist interpreter with him. I could see that Anton was lost. In the shock of the event he did not know what to do.

  Wimmel's terms were made known. Eighty hostages were to be chosen at once. The rest of the men would comb the island, find the guerrillas, and bring them back — with the stolen weapons. It was not sufficient to produce the corpses of three brave volunteers. If we did this within the next twenty-four hours the hostages would be deported to labor camps. If we did not, they would be shot.

  "I asked how we were to capture, even if we could find them, three desperate armed men. He simply looked at his watch and said, in German, It is eleven o'clock. You have until noon tomorrow.

  "At the quay I was made to repeat in Greek what I had been told. The men all began to shout suggestions, to complain, to demand weapons. In the end the colonel fired a shot from his pistol in the air, and there was quiet. The roll of the village men was called. Wimmel himself picked out the hostages as they filed forward. I noticed that he picked the healthiest, the ones between twenty and forty, as if he were thinking of the labor camp. But I think that he was choosing the best specimens for death. He chose seventy-nine like that, and then pointed at me. I was the eightieth hostage.

  "So the eighty of us were marched off to the school and put under close guard. We were crammed in one classroom, without sanitation, given nothing to eat or drink — die Raben were guarding us — and even worse, no news. It was only much later that I found out what happened during that time.

  "The remaining men rushed to their homes — poles, sickles, knives, they picked up what they could and then met again on a bill above the village. Men so old they could hardly walk, boys of ten and twelve. Some women tried to join them but they were pushed back. To be guarantors of their men's return.

  "This sad regiment argued, as Greeks always will. They decided on one plan, then on another. In the end someone took charge and allotted positions and areas to search. They set out — one hundred and twenty of them. They were not to know that they were searching in vain even before they began. But even if the guerrillas had been in the pine forest I do not think they would have found them — let alone captured them. So many trees, so many ravines, so many rocks. "They stayed out all night on the hills in a loose cordon across the island, hoping that the guerrillas might try and break through to the village. They searched wildly the next morning. At ten they met and tried to make up their minds to launch a desperate attack on the troops down in the village. But the wiser heads knew it could only end in an even greater tragedy. There was a village in the Maui where two months before the Germans had killed every man, woman and child for far less provocation.

  "At noon, they came, carrying a cross and ikons, down to the village. Wimmel was waiting for them. Their spokesman, an old sailor, in a last vain lie told him they had seen the guerrillas escape in a small boat. Wimmel smiled, shook his head and had the old man put under arrest — an eighty-first hostage. What had happened was simple. The German themselves had already captured the guerrillas. In the village. But let us look at Wimmel."

  Conchis clapped his hands again.

  "This is him, in Athens. One of the Resistance groups took it so that we should have his face recorded."

  The generator sputted to life again, the screen lived. A town street. A German jeeplike vehicle drew up in the shade on the opposite side of the street. Three officers got out and walked in the hard sunlight diagonally across the camera, which must have been in the groundfloor room of the house next to the one they were entering. The head of someone passing blocked the view. A shorter, trimmer man led the way. I could see he had an air of curt, invincible authority. The other two men existed in his wake. Something, a shutter or a screen, obscured the view. Darkness. Then came a still of a man in civilian clothes.

  "That is the only known photograph of him before the war."

  An unexceptional face; but a mean mouth. I remembered there were other sorts of humorlessness and fixed stare besides Conchis's; and much more unpleasant ones. There was a certain similarity with the face of the "colonel" on the central ridge; but they were different men. "And these are excerpts from newsreels taken in Poland."

  As they came on, Conchis said, "That is him, behind the general"; or "Wimmel is on the extreme left." Though I could see the film was genuine, I had the same feeling that films of the Nazis had always given me; of unreality, of the distance, enormous, between a Europe that could breed such monsters and an England that could not. And I saw that Conchis was trying to enweb me, to make me feel too innocent, too historically green. Yet when I glanced at his face reflected in the light from the screen, he seemed even more absorbed in what he saw than I was myself; more a victim of the past.

  "What the guerrillas must have done is this. As soon as they realized their boat had been burned they doubled back towards the village. They were probably already only just outside it when Anton came to see me. What we did not know was that one of them had relations on the outskirts of the village — a family called Tsatsos. It consisted of two sisters of eighteen and twenty, a father and a brother. But the men happened to have left two days before for the Piraeus with a cargo of olive oil — they had a small caϊque and the Germans allowed a certain amount of coastal traffic. One of the guerrillas was a cousin of these girls — probably in love with the elder one. "The guerrillas came to the cottage unseen, before anyone in the vill
age knew of the catastrophe. They were no doubt counting on using the family caϊque. But it was away. Later a weeping neighbor arrived to tell the sisters the news of the killing and all that I had told the village men. By then the guerrillas were in hiding. We do not know where they spent that night. Probably in a cistern. Parties of hastily constituted vigilantes searched every cottage and villa, empty and lived-in, in the village, including the Tsatsoses', and found nothing. Whether the girls were simply frightened or unusually patriotic we shall never know. But they had no blood relations in the village — and of course the father and brother were safely out of it.

  "The guerrillas must that next day have decided to split up. At any rate the girls started baking bread. A sharp-eyed neighbor noticed it, and remembered that they had been baking only two days before. Bread for the brother and father to take on the voyage. Apparently she did not suspect anything at once. But about five o'clock she went to the school and told the Germans. She had three relations among the hostages.

  "A squad of die Raben arrived at the cottage. Only the cousin was there. He threw himself into a cupboard. He heard the two girls being struck, and screaming. He knew his time was up, so he leapt out, pistol in hand, fired before the Germans could move — and nothing happened. The pistol had jammed.

  "They took the three to the school, where they were interrogated. The girls were tortured, the cousin was quickly made to cooperate. Two hours later — when night had come — he led the way down the coast road to an empty villa, knocked on the shutter and whispered to his two comrades that the sisters had managed to find a boat. As they came through the gate the Germans pounced. The leader was shot in the arm, but no one else was hurt."

  I interrupted. "And he was a Cretan?"

  "Yes. Quite like the man you saw. Only shorter and broader.

  "All that time we hostages had been up in the classroom. It faced over the pine forest, so we could not see any of the comings and goings. But about nine we heard two terrible screams of pain and a fraction later a tremendous cry. The one Greek word: eleutheria. You may think that we cried in return, but we did not. Instead we felt hope — that the guerrillas had been caught. Not long after that there were two bursts of automatic fire. And some time after that the door of our room was thrown open. I was called out, and another man: the local butcher.