Captain Corelli's mandolin (6 page)

`The papilionaceous and exorbitant auditory impediment?'

`That's the one, Iatre. Well, what I want to know, is . . . I mean, can you put it back?'

`Put it back, Kyrie Stamatis?'

`It's my wife, you see.'

`I see,' said the doctor, releasing a rank cloud from his pipe. `Actually I don't see. Perhaps you would explain.'

`Well, when I was deaf in that ear I couldn't hear her. Where I sit, you see, I had my good ear on the other side, and I could sort of take it.'

`Take it?'

`The nagging. I mean before it was sort of like the murmuring of the sea. I liked it. It helped me to doze off. But now it's so loud, and it won't stop. It just goes on and on.'

The man waggles his shoulders in imitation of an irritated woman, and mimicked his wife: `You're no good for anything, why don't you bring in the wood, why haven't we ever got any money, why do I have to do everything round here, why didn't I marry a man, how come you only ever gave me daughters, what happened to the man I married? All that stuff, it's driving me crazy: `Have you tried beating her?'

`No, Iatre. Last time I struck her she broke a plate across my head. I still have the scar. Look.'

The old man leaned forward and indicated something invisible upon his forehead.

`Well, you shouldn't beat her anyway,' said the doctor. `They just find more subversive ways of getting at you. Like oversalting the food. My advice is to be nice to her.'

Stamatis was shocked. It was a course of action so inconceivable that he had never even conceived of conceiving it. Iatre . . .' he protested, but could find no other words.

`Just bring in the wood before she asks for it, and bring her a flower every time you come back from the field. If it's cold put a shawl around her shoulders, and if it's hot, bring her a glass of water. It's simple. Women only nag when they feel unappreciated. Think of her as your mother who has fallen ill, and treat her accordingly.'

`Then you won't put back the . . . the, er . . . disputatious and pugnacious extraordinary embodiment?'

`Certainly not. It would be against the Hippocratic oath. I can't allow that. It was Hippocrates, incidentally, who said that "extreme remedies are most appropriate for extreme diseases."

Stamatis appeared downcast: 'Hippocrates says so? So I've got to be nice to her?'

The doctor nodded paternally, and Stamatis replaced his hat. `O God,' he said.

The doctor watched the old man from his window. Stamatis went out into the road and began to walk away. He paused and looked down at a small purple flower in the embankment. He leaned down to pick it, but immediately straightened up. He peered about himself to ensure that no one was watching. He pulled at his belt in the manner of girding up his loins, glared at the flower, and turned on his heel. He began to stroll away, but then stopped. Like a little boy involved in a petty theft he darted back, snapped the stem of the flower, concealed it within his coat, and sauntered away with an exaggeratedly insouciant and casual air. The doctor leaned out of the window and called after him, `Bravo Stamatis,' just for the simple but malicious pleasure of witnessing his embarrassment and shame.

Lemoni ran into the courtyard of Dr Iannis' house just as he was departing for the kapheneion for breakfast; he had been planning to meet all the mangas there and argue about the problems of the world. Yesterday he had been disputing vehemently with Kokolios about Communism, and during the night he had come up with a splendid argument which he had been rehearsing in his head so much that it had prevented sleep, obliging him to get up and write a little more of his history, a little diatribe about the Orsini family. This was his speech to Kokolios: `Listen, if everybody is employed by the state, it's obvious that everyone gets paid by the state, yes? So all the tax that comes back to the state is money that came from the state in the first place, yes? So the state only ever gets back maybe one third of what it paid out last week. So this week the only way to pay everyone is to print more money, no? So it follows that in a Communist state the money very soon becomes imaginary, because the state has nothing for that money to represent.'

He envisaged Kokolios riposting thus: 'Ah, Iatre, the missing money comes from profits,' and then, quick as a flash, he would come back with, `But look, Kokolio', the only way the state can get a profit is by selling the goods abroad, and the only way that this can happen is if the foreign states are capitalist and have a surplus from their taxes to buy things with. Or else you've got to sell to capitalist companies. So it's obvious that Communism cannot survive without capitalism, and this makes it self-contradictory, because Communism is supposed to be the end of capitalism, and moreover it is supposed to be internationalist. It follows from my argument that if the whole world went Communist, the entire economy of the globe would grind to a halt within the space of a week. What do you say to that?'

The doctor was practising the dramatic gesture with which he would conclude this peroration (the return of his pipe to the clenched position between the teeth) when Lemoni caught at his sleeve and said, 'Please, Iatre, I've found a funny kind of cat.'

He looked down at the diminutive girl, caught her earnest expression, and said, `Oh, hello, koritsimou. What was that you said?'

`A funny kind of cat.'

`Hmm, yes, what about a funny kind of cat?'

The little girl rolled her eyes in exasperation and wiped a filthy hand across her forehead, leaving a grimy streak. `I've found a funny kind of cat.'

`How clever of you. Why don't you go and tell your Papa?'

`It's ill.'

`What kind of ill?'

`It's tired. It might have a headache.'

The doctor hesitated. A cup of coffee was calling him, and he had a conclusive refutation of Communism to deliver to the assembly. He felt a twinge of childish disappointment at the thought of having to forgo their admiration and applause. He looked down at the consternation on the face of the little girl, smiled with noble resignation, and took her hand. `Show it to me,' he said, `and bear in mind that I don't like cats. Also I don't know anything about curing headaches in cats. Especially funny ones.'

Lemoni led him impatiently down the road, urging him to make haste at every step. She obliged him to climb over a low wall and duck beneath the branches of the olives. `Can't we go round the trees?' he demanded. `Remember I'm taller than you.'

`Straight is quicker.'

She took him to a patch of briar and scrub, fell to her knees, and began to crawl on all fours through a tunnel that had been forged by some wild animal for its, own use. `I can't go through there,' protested the doctor, `I'm much too big.'

He beat his way through with his cane, following the retreating backside as best he could. Painfully he imagined Pelagia's displeasure at being asked to repair the rents in his trousers and do something about the tangled loops of thread. He felt his scratches beginning to itch already. `What on earth were you doing in here?' he asked.

`Looking for snails.'

`Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected?' asked the doctor rhetorically. `If I went crawling around for snails I would be taken to Piraeus and locked up.'

`Lots of big snails,' observed Lemoni.

Just when the doctor was feeling exasperation and heat overcome him, they came into a small clearing that had been divided at some distant time into two by a sorry and sagging barbed-wire fence. Lemoni jumped to her feet and ran to the wire, pointing. It took some moments for the doctor to realise that he was supposed to follow, not the line of the mucky forger (which was directed obtusely towards the sky) but the general line of her arm. `There it is,' she proclaimed, `it's the funny cat, and it's still tired.'

'It's not tired, koritsimou, it's got caught on the wire. God knows how long it's been hanging there.'

He went down on his knees and peered at the animal. A small pair of very bright black eyes blinked back at him with an expression that bespoke an infinity of despair and exhaustion. He felt moved in a manner that struck him as quite strange and illogical.

It had a flat, triangular head, a sharp snout, a bushy tail. It was a deep chestnut colour, except for the throat and breast, which was of a shade that had settled at some indefinable point between yellow and creamy white. The ears were rounded and broad. The doctor peered into the eyes; the suspended creature was quite obviously near to death. `It's not a cat,' he said to Lemoni, `it's a pine marten. It could have been hanging here for ages. I think it would be best to kill it, because it's going to die anyway.'

Lemoni was overcome with indignation. Tears rose to her eyes, she stamped, she jumped up and down, and, in short, forbade the doctor to kill it. She stroked the head of the animal and stood between it and the man to whom she had entrusted its salvation. `Don't touch it, Lemoni. Remember that King Alexander died of a monkey bite.'

`It's not a monkey.'

`It might have rabies. It might give you tetanus. Just don't touch it.'

`I stroked it before and it didn't bite. It's tired.'

`Lemoni, it's got a barb through the skin of its stomach, and it could have been there for hours. Days. It's not tired, it's dying.'

`It was tightrope walking,' she said. `I've seen them. They walk along the wire and they go up that tree, and they eat the eggs in the nests. I've seen them.'

`I didn't know we had any down here at all. I thought they stayed in the trees on the mountains. It just goes to show.'

`Show what?'

`Children see more than we do.'

The doctor knelt down again and examined the marten. It was very young, and he imagined that it had only opened its eyes a few days before. It was exceedingly pretty. He decided, for Lemoni's sake, to rescue it and then kill it when he got home. No one would thank him for saving an animal that killed chickens and geese, stole eggs, ate garden berries, and even rifled beehives; he could tell the little girl that it had died on its own, and perhaps he could give it to her to bury. He peered round and saw that it had not only impaled itself on a barb, but that it had actually managed to wind itself around the wire twice. It must have struggled relentlessly, and it must have endured an excruciating torment.

Very carefully he grasped it behind its neck and rotated the body. Hand over hand he unwound it from the wire, conscious of Lemoni's head right next to his own as intently she watched him. `Careful,' she advised.

The doctor winced at the thought of the lethal bite that might leave him foaming at the mouth or lying in bed with his jaw locked.

Imagine it, risking one's own life for the sake of vermin. The things that a child could make one do. He must be mad or stupid or both.

He held the animal belly upwards and inspected the wound. It was solely in the loose akin of the groin and would have done no muscular damage. It was probably merely a question of acute dehydration. He noted that it was a female and that its smell was sweet and musky. It reminded him of a woman sometime during his maritime days, a smell to which he could not fit a face. He showed it to Lemoni and said, `It's a girl,' to which she replied, inevitably, `Why?'

The doctor put the kitten in the pocket of his coat and took Lemoni home, promising to do his best. He then proceeded to his own house, only to find that Mandras was in the yard, engaging Pelagia in animated conversation as she attempted to sweep it. The fisherman looked up shamefacedly and said, `O, kalimera, Iatre. I was just coming to see you, and as you weren't here, I have been talking to Pelagia, as you see. I have been having some trouble with the wound.'

Dr Iannis eyed him sceptically and experienced a surge of annoyance; no doubt the suffering of the little animal had upset him. `There's nothing wrong with your wound. I suppose you are going to tell me that it has been itching.'

Mandras smiled ingratiatingly and said, `That's exactly it, Iatre. You must be a magician. How did you know?'

The doctor twisted his mouth laconically and heaved a mock sigh. `Mandras, you know perfectly well that wounds always itch when they are in the process of healing. You also know perfectly well that I know perfectly well that you have only come here to flirt with Pelagia.'

`Flirt?' repeated the young man, affecting both innocence and horror.

`Yes. Flirt. There's no other word for it. Yesterday you brought us another fish and then flirted with Pelagia for one hour and ten minutes. Well, you'd better get on with it, because I'm not wasting time on a perfectly healthy wound, I haven't had breakfast, and I've got a funny kind of cat in my pocket that I have to look at indoors.'

Mandras attempted not to appear bemused, and was inspired by unwonted boldness: `Then I have your permission to talk to your daughter?'

`Talk, talk, talk,' said Dr Iannis, waving his hands with irritation. He turned on his heel and went inside the house. Mandras looked at Pelagia and remarked, `Your dad's a funny fellow.'

`There's nothing wrong with my father,' she exclaimed, `and anyone who says otherwise gets a broom in the face.'

She prodded at him playfully with the implement and he caught it and twisted it out of her grasp. `Give it back,' she said, laughing.

`I'll give it back . . . in return for a kiss.'

Dr Iannis placed the expiring animal carefully on the kitchen table and contemplated it. He took off one of his boots, grasped it by the toe, and raised it above his head. Such a small and fragile skull would be very easy to crush. There would be no suffering involved. It would be the best thing to do.

He hesitated. He couldn't give it back to Lemoni for burial with a smashed skull. Perhaps he should break the neck. He picked it up with his right hand, placing the fingers behind the neck and the thumb under the chin. It was simply a question of pressing back with the thumb.

He contemplated the deed for a few moments, exhorted himself to the act, and felt his thumb begin to move. The marten was not only very pretty, but also charming and inconceivably pathetic. It had barely lived as yet. He put it down on the table and went to fetch a bottle of alcohol. He bathed the wound carefully and put a single stitch in it. He called Pelagia.

She entered, convinced that her father had seen her kissing Mandras. She was preparing an obdurate defence, her face was flushed, and she fully expected an explosion. She was entirely amazed when her father did not even look up. He demanded, `Did we get any mice in the traps today?'

`We got two, Papakis.'

`Well, go and dig them out of wherever you threw them, and grind them up.'

`Grind them up?'

`Yes. Mince them. And bring me some straw.'

Pelagia hurried out, both perplexed and relieved. She said to Mandras, who had been nervously kicking stones round the olive tree, `It's all right, he only wants me to mince some mice and find him some straw.'

`Jesus, I said he was a funny fellow.'

She laughed: `It only means he's got some new project. He's not really a madman. You can go and find the straw if you like.'

`Thanks,' he said, `I just love looking for straw.'

She smiled archly, "There might be recompense.'

`For a kiss,' he said, `I would lick a pigsty clean.'

`You don't honestly think I'd kiss you after you'd licked a pigsty?'

'I'd kiss you even if you'd licked the slime from the bottom of my boat.'

`I believe you. You're a lot madder than my father.'

Inside, the doctor filled an eyedropper with goat milk and began to drip it into the back of the marten's throat. It filled him with immense medical satisfaction when eventually it urinated on the knee of his trousers. This indicated healthy renal functioning. `I'll kill it when I come back from the kapheneion,' he decided, stroking the rich brown fur of its forehead with one finger.

Half an hour later his patient was fast asleep on a bed of straw and Pelagia was in the yard chopping the mice with an hachoir. Inexplicably, Mandras was perched on a branch of the olive tree. Dr Iannis swept past them on his way to the kapheneion, once more rehearsing his devastating critique of Communist economics and imagining the confounded expression that was shortly to appear on the face of Kokolios. Pelagia ran to catch her father up and tugged at his sleeve just as Lemoni had done. `Papakis,' she said, `don't you know you're going out with only one boot on?'