Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

  Do you remember the Guzzoni plan? Eighteen divisions and a year to prepare? And then I said, ‘Greece does not lie on our path, and we want nothing from her,’ and then I said to Guzzoni, ‘The war with Greece is off. Greece is a bare bone, and is not worth the life of a single Sardinian grenadier’? Well, circumstances have changed, Galeazzo. I said that because I wanted Yugoslavia. But why not take both? Who says that we’ll need a year to prepare? Some stupid old general with old-fashioned ways, that’s who. We could do it in a week with one cohort of legionnaires. There are no soldiers in the world as resolute and valiant as ours.

  And the British are provoking us. I’m not talking about De Vecchi’s ravings. That reminds me. De Vecchi told you that the British attacked a submarine at Levkas, two more at Zante, and established a base at Milos. I’ve had a report from Captain Moris that none of this ever happened. You really must remember that De Vecchi is a lunatic and a megalomaniac, and one day when I remember to do so, I will string him up by his copious moustache and remove his testicles without anaesthetic. Thank God he’s in the Aegean and not here or I would be up to my neck in bullshit. The man turns the Aegean brown.

  But the British have sunk the Colleoni, and the Greeks flagrantly allow British ships to take port. What do you mean, we accidentally bombed a Greek supply ship and a destroyer? Accidentally? Never mind, it’ll be fewer ships to sink later. Grazzi says there are no British bases at all in Greece, but we’ll let that pass, shall we? There’s no harm in saying that there are. The important thing is that we’ve got Metaxas shitting himself. I hope I can place credence in this report of yours that the Greek generals are with us; if that’s true, how come they’ve arrested Platis? And where has all the money gone that was supposed to bribe the officials? It amounts to millions, precious millions that would have been better spent on rifles. And are you sure that the population of Epirus really wants to be Albanian? How do you know? Ah, I see, Intelligence. I have decided, by the way, not to ask the Bulgarians if they want to invade at the same time. Of course it would make it easier for us, but it’s going to be a walkover anyway, and if the Bulgarians get their corridor to the sea it’s only going to sever our own lines of supply and communication, don’t you think? We don’t in any case want them basking in glory that is properly our own.

  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 casus belli that commits us before we are ready. Avanti 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 to march fifty miles 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 the 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.

  3 The Strongman

  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 short 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 and 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 that 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 sweeping 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 Ionia, 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 the 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 well-rehearsed. Velisarios may have been strong, but he never varied his patter.

  ‘Lift the trough.’

  Velisarios inspected the trough; 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 back 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 cruel 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 then allowed the little boys to scoop handfuls of the accumulated ammuniti
on 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 kapheneia to criticising the dictator and the King. Some people laughed, others scowled, and some thought ‘There goes Kokolios again.’