Captain Corelli's mandolin (3 page)
Now, I want you to arrange some attacks against ourselves. Our campaign requires legitimacy for reasons of international polity. No, it's not the Americans I'm worried about; America has no military importance. But remember, we want to invade when we want to invade; I don't want any single colossal cases belli that commits us before we are ready. Avann piano, quasi indietro. I think we should select an Albanian patriot for assassination, so that we can blame it on the Greeks, and I think we should sink a Greek battleship in such a way that it's obvious that we did it, but not so obvious that we can't blame it on the British. It's a question of judicious intimidation that will weaken the Greek will.
By the way, Galeazzo, I've decided that just before the invasion we'll demobilise the Army. What do you mean, it sounds perverse? It's a question of causing the Greeks to lower their guard, getting the harvest in, and maintaining the appearance of normalisation. Think about it, Galeazzo; think what an acute move it would be. The Greeks heave a sigh of relief, and we flatten them promptly with a hammerblow.
I've been speaking to the Chiefs-of-Staff, my dear Count, and I've asked for plans to be drawn up for the invasion of Corsica, France, and the Ionian islands, and for new campaigns in Tunisia. I'm sure we can manage it. They keep moaning about the lack of transport, and so. I've given orders that the infantry should be trained in match fifty mike a day. There is a small problem with the Air Force. It's all in Belgium, so I suppose I must do something about that one of these days. Keep reminding me. I must talk to Pricolo about it; I can't have die chief of the Air Force being the only one who doesn't know what's happening. There are limits even to military secrecy. The Chiefs-of-Staff oppose me, Galeazzo. Badoglio, keeps looking at me as though I were mad. One day he's going to look Nemesis in the face and find that the face is mine. I won't have it. I think we should take Crete too, and deny it to the British.
Jacomoni has telegraphed me to the effect that we can expect extensive treachery within the Greek ranks, that the Greeks hate Metaxas and the King, are very depressed, and that they are contemplating the abandonment of Tsamouria. God is with us, it seems. Something's got to be done about the fact that both His Majesty and myself are the First Marshal of the kingdom; one -really cannot exist amid such anomalies. Prasca, incidentally, has telegraphed me to say that he requires no reinforcements for the invasion, so how come everybody has been telling me that we can't possibly do it without them? It's gutlessness, that's what. There's no expert so deluded as a military expert, in my experience. I have to do their job for them, it seems. I get nothing but complaints about the shortage of everything. Why have all the contingency funds gone missing? I want it investigated.
Let me remind you, Galeazzo, that Hitler is opposed to this war because Greece is a totalitarian state that should naturally be on our side. So don't tell him. We're going to show him an example of Blitzkrieg that'll make him green with envy. And I don't care if it brings the British in against us. We'll thrash them too.
WHO LET THAT CAT IN HERE? SINCE WHEN HAVE WE HAD A PALACE CAT? IS THAT THE CAT THAT SHAT IN MY HELMET? YOU KNOW I CAN'T STAND CATS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT SAVES ON MOUSETRAPS? DON'T TELL ME WHEN I CAN OR CANNOT USE MY REVOLVER INDOORS. STAND BACK OR YOU'LL CATCH A BULLET TOO. O God, I feel sick. I'm a sensitive man, Galeazzo, I have an artistic temperament, I shouldn't have to look at all this blood and mess. Get someone to clear it up, I don't feel well. What do you mean it's not dead yet? Take it out and wring its neck. NO I DON'T WANT TO DO IT MYSELF. Do you think I'm a barbarian or something? O God. Give me my helmet, quick, I need something to be sick in.
Get rid of this and get me a new helmet. I'm going to go and lie down, it must be way past siesta-time.
The inscrutable goats of Mt Aenos turned windward, imbibing the damp exhalation of the sea at dawn that served the place of water in that arid, truculent, and indomitable land. Their herder, Alekos, so unaccustomed to human company that he was short of words even in his inner speech, stirred beneath his covering of hides, reached a hand for the reassuring stock of his rifle, and sank once more to sleep. There would be time enough to wake, to eat bread sprinkled with oregano, count his flock, and chivvy them to a place of pasture. His life was timeless, he might have been one of his own forebears, and his goats too would do as Cephallonian goats had always done; they would sleep at noon, concealed from the sun on the vertiginous northern slopes of cliffs, and in the evening their plangent bells might be heard even in Ithaca, carrying across the silent air and causing distant villagers to look up, wondering which herd was passing close. Alekos was a man who at sixty would be the same as he had been at twenty, thin and strong, a prodigy of slow endurance, as incapable of mercurial flight as any of his goats.
Far below him a feather of smoke rose straight into the air as a valley burned. It was uninhabited, and the maquis flamed unchecked, watched with concern only by those who feared that a wind might spring up and carry the sparks to places valuable for their dwellings, their herbs, or their tiny stony fields ringed with the piles of rocks that had been cleared for centuries and opportunely assembled into walls that rocked at the touch of a hand but fell only in times of earthquake. A Greek love of the colour of virginity had caused many of them to be painted white, as though it were not enough to be blinded by the sun alone. An itinerant patriot had daubed ENOSIS on most of them in turquoise paint, and no Cephallonian had seen fit to restore the walls to purity. Every wall, it seemed, reminded them of their membership of a family broken by the aberrant borders of senile rival empires, dispersed by an unruly sea, and victimised by a history that had placed them at the crossroads of the world.
New empires were now lapping against the shores of the old. In a abort time it would no longer be a question of the conflagration of a valley and the death by fire of lizards, hedgehogs, and locusts; it would be a question of the incineration of Jews and homosexuals, gypsies and the mentally afflicted. It would be a case of Guernica sad Abyssinia writ large across the skies of Europe and North Africa, Singapore and Korea. The self-anointed superior races, drunk on Darwin and nationalist hyperbole, besotted with eugenics and beguiled by myth, were winding up machines of genocide drat soon would be unleashed upon a world already weary to the heart of such infinite foolery and contemptible vainglory.
But everyone admires strength and is seduced by it, including Pelagia. When she heard from a neighbour that there was a strongman in the square performing wonders and prodigies worthy of Atlas himself, she put up the broom with which she had been swooping the yard and hurried out to join the gaggle of the inquisitive and impressionable that had gathered near the well.
Megalo Velisarios, famous all over the islands of Ionic, garbed as a pantomime Turk in pantaloons and curlicued slippers, self-proclaimed as the strongest man who had ever lived, his hair as prodigiously long as that of a Nazarene or Samson himself, was hopping on one leg in time to the clapping of hands. His arms outstretched, he bore, seated upon each stupendous bicep, a full-grown man. One of them clung tightly to his body, and the other, more studied in the virile arts, smoked a cigarette with every semblance of calm. On Velisarios' head, for good measure, sat an anxious little girl of about six years who was complicating his manoeuvres by clamping her hands firmly across his eyes.
`Lemoni!' he roared. `Take your hands from my eyes and hold onto my hair, or I'll have to stop.'
Lemoni was too overwhelmed to move her hands, and Megalo Velisarios stopped. With one graceful movement like that of a swan when it comes in to land, he tossed both men to their feet, and then he lifted Lemoni from his head, flung her high into the air, caught her under her arms, kissed her dramatically upon the tip of her nose, and set her down. Lemoni rolled her eyes with relief and determinedly held out her hand; it was customary that Velisarios should reward his little victims with sweets. Lemoni ate her prize in front of the whole crowd, intelligently prescient of the fact that her brother would take it from her if she tried to save it. The huge man patted her fondly upon the head, stroked her shining black hair, kissed her again, and then raised himself to his full height. `I will lift anything that it takes three men to lift,' he cried, and the villagers joined in with those words that they had heard so many times before, a chorus welt-rehearsed. Velisarios may have been strong, but he never varied his patter.
`Lift the trough.'
Velisarios inspected the cough; it was carved out of one solid mass of rock and was at least two and a half metres long. `It's too long,' he said, `I won't be able to get a grip on it.'
Some in the crowd made sceptical noises and the strongman advanced upon them glowering, shaking his fists and posturing, mocking himself by this caricature of a giant's rage. People laughed, knowing that Velisarios was a gentle man who had never even become involved in a fight. With one sudden movement he thrust his arms beneath the belly of a mule, spread his legs, and lifted it up to his chest. The startled animal, its eyes popping with consternation, submitted to this unwonted treatment, but upon being set lightly down threw bade its head, brayed with indignation, and cantered away down the street with its owner in close pursuit.
Father Arsenios chose just this moment to emerge from his little house and waddle portentously towards the crowd on his way to the church. He had the intention of counting the money in the wooden box where folk put coins for candles.
Father Arsenios lacked respect not because he was a walking human globe, perpetually perspiring and grunting with the effort of movement, but because he was venial; a glutton, a would-be lecher, a relentless seeker of alms and offerings, an anthropomorphised promissory note. It was said that he had violated the rule that a priest never remarries, and had come all the way from Epirus so that he could get away with it. It was said that he abused his wife. But this was said of most husbands, and often it was the truth.
`Lift Father Arsenios,' someone called.
`Impossible,' called another.
Father Arsenios quite suddenly found himself grasped beneath the armpits and lifted bodily up onto the wall. He sat there blinking, too astonished to protest, his mouth working like a fish, the sun sparkling off the droplets of sweat upon his forehead.
A few giggled, but then a guilty hush descended. There was a minute of embarrassed silence. The priest flushed crimson, Velisarios began to wish that he could crawl away and hide, and Pelagia felt her heart overflow with indignation and pity. It was a terrible crime to humiliate God's own mouthpiece in public, however contemptible he might be as a man and as a priest. She stepped forward and extended a hand to help him down. Velisarios proffered another, but neither of them was able to prevent the unfortunate cleric from landing heavily and sprawling in the dust. He picked himself up, brushed himself off, and with a most acute sense of theatre walked away without a word. Inside the darkness of the church, behind the iconostasis, he dropped his face into his hands. It was the worst thing in the world to be a complete failure who had no prospect of any other job.
Outside in the square Pelagia was living up to her reputation as a scold. She was only seventeen years old, but she was proud and wilful, and the fact that her father was the doctor gave her the kind of status that even the men were forced to respect.
`You shouldn't have done that, Velisario', she was saying. `It was cruet and horrible. Think how the poor man must be feeling. You must go straight into the church and apologise.'
He looked down at her from his great height. This was without doubt a difficult situation. He thought of lifting her above his head. Perhaps he should put her up a tree; it would certainly get some laughs from the crowd. He knew that assuredly he should go and mend his fences with the priest. He could tell from the sudden antipathy of the people that at this rate he would never be able to collect much money from them for his act. What should he do? `The act's over,' he said, waving his hands in the gesture that signified a finish, `I'll come back this evening.'
The atmosphere of hostility changed immediately into one of disappointment. After all, the priest deserved it, didn't he? And how often does a good act like this come to the village? `We want to see the cannon,' called an old lady, and this was confirmed by another, and then another: `We want the cannon, we want the cannon.'
Velisarios was immensely proud of his cannon. It was an old Turkish culverin, just too heavy for anyone else to lift. It was made of solid brass, with a Damascus barrel bound with riveted iron hoops, and it was engraved with the date 1739 and some swirling characters that no one could decipher. It was a most mysterious, untranslatable cannon that generated copious verdigris no matter how often it was polished. Part of the secret of Velisarios' titanic strength was that he had been carrying it around with him for so long.
He looked down at Pelagia, who was still awaiting a response to her demand that he apologise to the priest, said to her, `I'll go later, pretty one,' and then raised his arms to announce, `Good people of the village, to see the cannon, all you must do is give me your old rusty nails, your broken bolts, your shards of pots, and the stones of your streets. Find me these things whilst I pack the gun with powder. Oh, and somebody bring me a rag, a nice big one.'
Little boys scuffed the dust of the streets for stones, old men searched their sheds, the women ran for the one shirt of their husband that they had been trying to make him discard, and shortly all were reassembled for the great explosion. Velisarios poured a generous dole of powder down into the magazine, tamped it ceremoniously in the full consciousness of the need to prolong the drama, tamped down one of the rags, and teen allowed the little boys to scoop handfuls of the accumulated ammunition into the barrel. He followed this with another tattered rag, and then demanded, `What do you want me to shoot?'
`Prime Minister Metaxas,' cried Kokolios, who was unashamed of his Communist convictions and devoted much time in the kapheneion to criticising the dictator and the King. Some people laughed, others scowled, and some thought `There goes Kokolios again.'
`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.