The Dark Labyrinth (8 page)

He saw a short fierce action in Libya, and the retreat across Crete; phenomena more exhilarating than frightening to a temperament as equably based in common-sense. But the first signs of discontent were already there. It was becoming difficult to stand the restricted, stupefying, idiotic system of Army life, which excluded every privacy and every comfort. Seeking for something with more freedom, he happened upon an embryonic department of counter-espionage in need of linguists.

Axelos, in the course of an exhausting interview, examined his claim to a knowledge of Greek, German and French, with penetration and care. He looked more like a Turkish brigand than a British colonel as he sat behind the shaded light, with his large hands spread before him on the green baize table. He was to found the little section in whose service Baird was so singularly successful. Axelos's small eye, deep-set and angry like the rhinoceros, could, he found, be persuaded to shine with laughter. Once he actually saw him open his mouth and expel a little soundless air in laughter. But, in general, it was a consistent picture he took away with him, of a large man with a vulture's profile and perfect teeth, seated over a table that was too small for him, on a chair without space enough between its legs to accommodate his fat and hairy calves. He was cynical about everything from the British character, which he found fatuous and boring, to the policy of the Foreign Office, which he considered frivolous and unimaginative.

It was due to Axelos, however, that Baird found himself grappling with a blowing parachute on a windy hillside in Crete early in 1942—struggling with the rearing and plunging silk like a man trying to put out a fire. The night before he left he had run into Campion of all people; a small stern-looking Campion dressed in a major's uniform which came through the barbed-wire enclosure at G.H.Q. with an almost affected military stiffness. “Baird,” cried Campion with delight, catching his arm. “At last someone I can talk to.” They made their way down to a Syrian restaurant in the centre of Cairo. There appeared to be a great deal Campion wished to get off his chest, and for some reason or other, he seemed to consider Baird a suitable recipient for his confidence. “Now it's going hell's bells,” he said as they attacked their quails and rice. “A million imbeciles blowing each other's arms and legs off with incredible gallantry, and decorating each other with whatever members they have left. The pot hunting, the
laissez faire
, the idiocy.” He was speechless with rage and disgust. “What on earth have you or I to do with a war?” It was a question Baird had never asked himself. Campion pressed him. “You, for example? It's the death of everything we believe in. Even the excuse that Hitler is at our throats can't blind us to the fact that we have quite a number of our own Hitlers, and our own organized Fascio,” Baird sighed.

“Wait a minute,” he said, wallowing in the wake of Campion's divagations. “How is it that you are a major?” Campion's snort of laughter could be heard over the whole room. “My dear Baird,” he said reprovingly, as if his companion was demanding the answer to a question he should know only too well. “My dear fellow, when war broke out I made the supreme sacrifice. I joined the Ministry of Political War. Later on I found that if my choice was to lie between having my brains blown out, and having them permanently awash with the dirty bilge of political work, I would rather choose the former.” He drank some more wine. “I tell you quite firmly that I do not intend to get killed in this nonsensical business. It is to this end that I have succeeded in getting myself this handsome job on the War Graves Commission. It is the only really academic job left in this world today. We are still investigating the sites of graves left over from the last war. The work is so slow and the pay so high that we do not expect to finish our researches into this war before Armistice Day, 1999. Of course, once or twice I have been in a tight spot. We were almost captured in that Libyan show owing to curiosity about seventeen heroes who got themselves buried on a dune near Siwa during 1917. All the fun of the fair, Baird.”

Baird looked at him narrowly and wondered why it was that he must be permanently in revolt. He missed one of the common pleasures of community—that of participation. “Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose you would defend yourself by saying that you were a coward but not a complete imbecile. But apart from the moral justification for the war—and partial as it is—I think it justified within the narrow frame of reference. People will be happier if we win—in the long run. Apart from that, perhaps the difference between you and other people is that you have a sensibility to look after and work to do with it, while a great number of us are still looking for ourselves, and some of us might even find ourselves in this war, through it.…” He broke off in some confusion, for Campion's cynical impertinent eyes were upon him. “So you've sold out,” he said. “The English artist, with the load of sentiment, as ever.…” For a moment he seemed to be looking for a phrase. “You ought to do well,” he said. “They are looking for war-poets to help me to justify their messy little rodent-conception of life. The how-bravely-we-are-suffering-school. What a shameful disgusting business. One can only hope the whole lot of them meet in the obituary columns of
The Times Literary Supplement.
”

“Well,” said Baird, angered by this sally, “that is neither here nor there. I dare say most people's behaviour is pretty questionable even in peace-time. The test is whether you are happy.” Campion folded his arms. “Ah, yes,” he said in a small voice, “Ah, yes. And I have never been happy, I don't think. Not once in my life. Or perhaps only when I was a child.”

It was odd the next morning to find oneself struggling on the wet grass of a Cretan hillside with a parachute harness. Baird thought of Campion often during the first few days of his mission in Crete. He had forgotten to ask him about Alice; but perhaps it was just as well.

Baird found himself sharing the command of a small group of guerillas with one other young officer and the Abbot John, that venerable old figure, whose resistance to the Germans during their occupation of Crete was widely written-up in the Press of two continents. The Abbot John was an imposing figure, with his massive patriarchal head and its tufted eyebrows, curly beard and ear-rings. Having renounced brigandage in 1923 and retired to the Monastery of St. Luke, he found a sudden invasion of the island not entirely uninteresting. It enabled him to revert to something of his old life. Things had been very quiet of late, and he welcomed a diversion from the relentless quest for holiness. Like all Greeks, he was without difficulty able to combine the mystic and the man of action. In his Byzantine belt, with its square iron studs, he carried not only several hand-grenades and a pistol, but also a tiny prayer-book attached to the buckle by a chain. He was at first so gruff as to be almost rude, and Baird was beginning to repent of his decision to accept the Cretan assignment, when a small incident suddenly made them firm friends. The Abbot John had a tame raven, an amusing and impertinent old bird called “Koax”. It was the life and soul of the headquarters in which the Abbot lived when the weather was too bad or the omens unpropitious for a sortie into German-held territory; “Koax” hopped about all day in the large caves which marked the entrance of the labyrinth, making itself as much of a privileged nuisance as any court jester. It could swear mildly in Greek, and was now learning to do the same in English. It was always picking up scraps and hopping off into the shadows with them, and even managed to build itself a ramshackle nest high up in the roof above the natural vent which served them as a smoke-stack. “Koax”, however, suddenly became extremely ill, due no doubt to something it had eaten in a greedy moment, and was only nursed back to life by the united devotion of the company; but to Baird fell the happy thought, when the bird seemed about to die, to feed it on brandy in a teaspoon. After one dose “Koax” rallied, and after a couple of days was back in his old form. This made the Abbot a firm friend. “Say ‘thank you',” he would tell the bird as it flew up on to his shoulder, “Say ‘thank you' to the officer,” And “Koax” would give a little shriek and clap his wings.

The little group of saboteurs lived for almost two years in a comradeship and humour that was never tested. Baird learned the Cretan dances, and studied the particularities of the Cretan wines. His particular task was to build a small guerilla army, and to this end he devoted all his energies, backed by the hard-swearing Abbot. They operated from the mouth of the labyrinth, above the village of Cefalû, where later Axelos was to make his discoveries, and where the darkness was to dose down on Fearmax, Campion and poor Miss Dombey. Despite its uglier moments, the life was at first merely tiring in the physical sense, in every other way there was the exhilaration to be enjoyed of freedom (the solitude of these immense white mountains in winter and autumn) and remoteness of control over his own actions. War, in terms of ambush and bluff, was something new and it taught him concentration and spareness without touching the springs of a nature already formed in an unreflective soldierly automatism. It was only after a considerable length of time that the strain began to tell. “I'm fed up,” he told the old man one day, “my ten days in Cairo did me no good at all. I'm going to find another job. I'm getting numb.” The Abbot John regarded him keenly from under his bushy eyebrows. He nodded. “I know how you feel. It is always the same. After a long time one gets sick of the killing. One feels nothing—neither hate nor pity. It's like the soul getting pins and needles.”

It was indeed something like the failure of experience itself to register; he killed now with a numbness and abstraction that passed for strength of mind; but it was as if he were acting in his sleep. As if he were a somnambulist leading his small parties out to ambush patrols or to examine installations. Now it was out of all this that Böcklin's death arose; and yet at first it was simply a term in a crowded life based on animal values—fear, cunning, lice, damp blankets, snow.

Böcklin was the remaining survivor of a German mission visiting the island, which had strayed into an ambush laid for them by the Abbot. He was a rather self-conscious, almost effeminate figure, and he showed a quixotic expectancy of death when he was captured that made the Abbot, who was usually merciless to Germans, stay his hand. His English was almost perfect, and Baird discovered that he had been educated partly in England and partly in France. A Bavarian, his gentleness of manner and politeness completely won over the old man. “Since we did not kill him at the first rush,” said the Abbot looking slowly round the little group of huddled figures which had fallen among the stacked leaves round the olive-boles, “we cannot kill him now, eh?” It was not a decision to be approved easily. If he should escape.…

It was, however, becoming increasingly difficult to remind the Abbot that he came under the orders of H.Q. Cairo, and that military decisions affecting the whole guerilla group should come from the British officers present. The Abbot had never been to Cairo. He thought it was somewhere near Singapore. While he liked the British and accepted their help, he showed no desire to be ordered about in his own country. Baird opened his mouth to protest against Böcklin being alive when he saw that he had fallen in with the baggage donkeys, his young slight figure shivering in the thin field-grey uniform. They began the long trek back to the mouth of the labyrinth.

During the brief fortnight that Böcklin was with them, he proved to be a quiet and good-natured addition to the band. He took his turn at the cooking and sweeping, ran errands, played with “Koax”, and became very friendly with the dour Cretan mountaineers; indeed they liked him so much that once they even set him on guard with a loaded rifle while they slept. Baird, returning to the network of caves, saw the shadow of an armed German on guard and very nearly shot him. Böcklin handed over his rifle and retired to his corner without a word. The next day he said: “Captain, do not scold the guard. They accepted me as one of them, and by the laws of hospitality I was bound not to escape or to harm them.”

On another occasion he brought them food to a little observation post overlooking the plain from which Baird was watching the movements of a German patrol through glasses. “Who sent you up here?” he cried irritably, realizing that a prisoner should not be allowed to know too much. “The Abbot,” said Böcklin. Baird gave a sigh and turned back to watch the group of small grey-blue figures crossing the plain in open order. The mad Greeks, with their irrepressible friendliness and
naïvéti
, would be the. death of them all. They liked Böcklin and immediately accepted him as one of them. Well, come to think of it, why not?

He looked at the keen features and yellow hair of the German, who was sitting behind a bush, arms clasped round his knees. “Böcklin,” he said, “what did you do before you joined up?” Böcklin hung his head for a moment and looked confused. “I was going to be a priest, Captain,” he said with a clumsy attempt to bring his heels smartly together in the manner of the approved salute accorded to officers by the common soldier. Baird said nothing for a long time. The patrol in the valley moved slowly across the sodden field combing the copses. They had obviously been sent out after the Abbot. “Did you”, he said, lighting a cigarette, “believe in this war?” Böcklin, who had relapsed into reverie once more, went rigid at the knees and produced the faint simulacrum of a salute. “I did not believe either in the peace or the war, Captain,” he said. His face flushed again. He was obviously afraid of appearing impertinent. Baird grunted. “I suppose the German people will be as pleased when it's over as we will,” he said, and, to his surprise, Böcklin shook his head slowly. “You are still fresh,” he said, “you can enjoy. We have had years now, and there is only—I do not know how to say it in English.” Baird turned to him and said in German: “Say it in German.” It was then that he heard from Böcklin's lips the word which was afterwards to sum up, far more accurately than any other in French or English, his feeling for the world—
Gleichgultigkeit
.