Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

  Moreover, the captain was possessed of a deep curiosity, so that he could sit with unnerving patience watching Pelagia’s hands doing the formal dance of the crochet, until it seemed to her that his eyes were radiating some strange and potent force that would give her fingers the cramps and cause her to lose a stitch. ‘I’m wondering,’ he said one day, ‘what a piece of music would be like if it sounded the way your fingers look.’ She was deeply puzzled by this apparently nonsensical remark, and when he said that he did not like a certain tune because it was a particularly vile shade of puce, she surmised either that he had an extra sense or that the wires of his brain were connected amiss. The idea that he was slightly mad left her feeling protective towards him, and it was this that probably eroded her scruples of principle. The unfortunate truth was that, Italian invader or not, he made life more various, rich and strange.

  She found a new irritation to replace the old, except that this time it was an irritation against herself. It seemed that she just could not help looking at him, and he was always catching her.

  There was something about him, sitting at the table as he waded through the mountains of paperwork demanded by the Byzantine military bureaucracy of Italy, that made her look up at him regularly, as though by conditioned reflex. No doubt his mind was on sorting out the family problems of his soldiers; no doubt he was tactfully suggesting to a bombardier’s wife that she go to a clinic for a check-up; no doubt he was signing requisition forms in quadruplicate; no doubt he was trying to work out why a consignment of anti-aircraft shells had mysteriously turned up in Parma, and why he had received in their place a crate of government-issue combinations. No doubt; but all the same, every time she looked up his eyes would flick to hers and she would be caught in his steady and ironic gaze as surely as if he had grasped her by the wrists.

  For a few seconds they would look at one another, and then she would grow abashed, her cheeks would flush a little, and she would return her attention to her crochet, knowing that perhaps she had slighted him by so breaking away, but cognisant also of the brazenness of holding his regard for one moment longer. A few seconds later she would look up furtively, and at that exact instant he would return her glance. It was impossible. It was infuriating. It was so embarrassing as to be an humiliation.

  ‘I’ve got to stop doing this,’ she would resolve, and, convinced that he was deep in his tasks, would look up and get caught again. She tried to control herself rigidly, saying to herself, ‘I won’t look at him for another half hour.’ But all to no avail. She would sneak a glimpse, his eyes would flicker, and there she would be again, imprisoned by an amused smile and a raised eyebrow.

  She knew that he was playing a game with her, that she was being teased and taunted so gently that it was impossible to protest or to bring it out into the open in order to make an issue of it. After all, she never caught him looking at her, so it was all her fault, obviously. Nonetheless, it was a game of which he was in absolute command, and in that sense she was its victim. She decided to change her tactics in this war of eyes. She decided that she would not be the one to break the impasse; she would wait for his spirit to fail, she would wait until it was he who broke away. She composed herself, summoned up every last spark of resolution, and looked up.

  They looked at one another for what seemed like hours, and Pelagia wondered absurdly if it was considered technically legitimate to blink. His face fell out of focus, and she concentrated on the bridge of his nose. It too began to blur, and she switched back to his eyes. But which eye? It was like the paradox of Buridan’s ass: an equal choice yields no decision. She concentrated upon his left eye, which seemed to grow into an immense and wavering void, and so she changed to the right eye. Its pupil seemed to transfix her like an awl. How strange, that one eye should be a bottomless chasm and the other a weapon as honed as a lance. She began to feel a terrible vertigo.

  He did not look away. Just as her giddiness was about to confound her, he set himself to pulling faces, all the while holding her in his gaze. He flared his nostrils rhythmically, and then waggled his ears. He bared his teeth like a horse, and started to move the tip of his nose from side to side. He leered horribly, like a satyr, and then grimaced.

  A smile began to tug at the corners of Pelagia’s mouth, and then tugged harder. Finally it pulled irresistibly, and suddenly she laughed aloud and blinked. Corelli sprang dancing to his feet, capering ridiculously and crying, ‘I won, I won,’ and the doctor looked up from his book, exclaiming, ‘What? What? What?’

  ‘You cheated,’ protested Pelagia, laughing. She turned to her father, ‘Papas, he cheated. It’s not fair.’

  The doctor looked from the corybantic captain to his primly smirking daughter, adjusted his spectacles, and sighed. ‘Whatever next?’ he demanded rhetorically, knowing full well what was next, and working out in advance how best to deal with it.

  32 Liberating the Masses (2)

  ‘Hey, hey, what are you doing? Get out of here. Leave my sheep alone.’

  Hector did not drop the young sheep that he had draped across his shoulder. To Mandras he looked just like the pictures of the Good Shepherd in the religious instruction books that the Catholic missionaries used to hand around in Orthodox villages, and like the Jesus of the Bible. Hector was so inspirational, so clear in all his explanations. He was a man who understood everything. He had a book called What Is To Be Done? and he knew exactly where to look in it for guidance. It was an old book, very well-used, falling apart, but it was by a man called Lenin who was even more important than Jesus. Mandras was overwhelmingly impressed by the way that Hector could look at all those contorted black worms of print, and turn them into words. Hector had promised to teach him to read, along with several others who were illiterate, and they were going to be a Workers’ Self-Education Caucus. Mandras had already learned the alphabet, and had given a talk about the art of fishing in the sea. Everyone had applauded. He had learned from Hector that he was not a fisherman, but a worker, and he had learned that what he and a carpenter and a man in a factory had in common was that the capitalists got all the profit from their work. Except that profit was called surplus value. He did not understand yet how it was that any of his surplus value went to someone else, but it was only a matter of time. He felt very angry against the King for making it that way, and he had learned to scowl or laugh sarcastically every time that someone mentioned the British or the Americans. It was what everyone else did. He could make people laugh by calling his rifle ‘bourgeois’ when it wasn’t working properly. Clerks and shipowners, and any farmer who employed other people were bourgeois, and so were doctors. He thought of all the fish he had given to Dr Iannis in payment for treatment, and felt bitter. The doctor was richer than he was, and in a fair world it should be the doctor whose surplus value came to him. What he should have done was to get together with the other fishermen, and refuse to sell any fish at all unless it was a good price. It was all obvious now.

  Mandras was beginning to feel enlightened and knowledgeable, and he worshipped Hector, that stronger and older man who had been in the thick of the fight at Guadalajara and routed the Italian Fascists. Where is Guadalajara? In Spain. Well, where exactly is Spain? We’ll have a geography lesson sometime, don’t worry. A pat on the back. Thank you, Comrade. This was an adult world, here there was no sir or madam, just comrade. Soldierly, reassuring, inclusive, virile. Comrade. A warm word that was full of solidarity.

  Hector smiled at the irate smallholder and said, ‘We’re taking this sheep on the orders of Allied High Command in Cairo.’

  The peasant heaved a sigh of relief, and said, ‘And I thought you were thieves.’

  Hector laughed, and so Mandras laughed also. The man held out his hand. Hector looked at the horny, grimy palm, and a frown crossed his face. ‘One gold sovereign,’ explained the farmer.

  ‘Get lost,’ said Hector. ‘Are you a Fascist yourself, or something?’

  ‘The British always pay one gold sovereign for a sheep,�
�� said the man. ‘It’s the standard payment. Aren’t you with EDES? Surely you know that?’

  ‘We’re ELAS, and we don’t consider the loss of a sheep much of a hardship when you consider what we’re trying to do on your behalf. We’ll pay you later. Now do as I say and get lost. The new order from the British is that we take the sheep, and they pay you later.’

  The peasant looked down at his boots, ‘EDES gave me a gold sovereign this morning for another sheep.’

  ‘If I hear you’ve been selling supplies to EDES, you’re dead,’ said Hector, ‘so just shut your mouth. Don’t you know they’ve been collaborating with the Fascists?’

  ‘They blew up a bridge yesterday,’ persisted the unfortunate man.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ exploded Hector, ‘are you so stupid that you don’t know a cover operation when you see one?’

  As they walked away, the appropriated sheep bleating in distress across the andarte’s shoulders, and the man scratching his head in bewilderment, Mandras giggled and said, ‘That showed him.’ He paused, regretted the silence, however comradely, and added a little hesitantly but with suitable contempt, ‘Fascist stooge.’

  33 A Problem with Hands

  It was a Stygian night. Outside the rain drifted in drapes and an east wind was gusting, causing unknown objects to clatter past in the road and leaving the doctor anxious for the health of the roof, whose pantiles could be heard scraping against each other as they lifted and settled and moved. The three of them were sitting in the kitchen, Pelagia unravelling her ever-diminishing blanket, the doctor reading a book of poems, and the captain composing a sonata in the style of Scarlatti. Pelagia was fascinated by the way in which he seemed to be able to hear the music in his head, and now and then she went to inspect the progress of the incomprehensible squiggles on the page. At one moment she stood with her hand on his shoulder because it seemed the most natural and inevitable pose, and it was only after a couple of minutes that she realised what she was doing.

  She looked at her hand in surprise where it rested on the man’s body, as though remonstrating with it for behaving so wilfully in the absence of proper adult supervision. She wondered what to do. If she plucked it away, it would seem rude, perhaps. Perhaps it would betray the fact that she had put it there unconsciously, and he would surmise that it bespoke feelings on her part that she would not like to have avowed either to him or to herself. Perhaps if she just left it there as though it belonged to someone else she would be able to disown responsibility for its actions. But what if he suddenly noticed where it was? If she moved it, he would instantly realise by virtue of where it had been that it had in fact been upon his shoulder; and if she did not move it, then he might realise that it was there, and make something of the fact that it had not been moved. She scowled at her hand, and felt anxiety obstructing her understanding of his explanatory monologue about phrasing and harmony. She decided on balance that the best thing to do was to leave her hand where it was and pretend that it belonged to someone else. She leaned forward and adorned her face with an expression intended to convey the most extreme intellectual seriousness that had in it not a trace of natural affection or physical attraction. ‘Mmm, how interesting,’ she said.

  Psipsina scratched at the door, squeaking plaintively, and with relief Pelagia ran to let her in, at which point the captain became aware that a hand had been lightly resting for some minutes upon his shoulder. The absence of its weight was quite palpable, and its former presence most retrospectively pleasant and consoling. He smiled with discreet pleasure, and a note of triumph would have entered his voice if he had had occasion to speak.

  His pleasant musings were most horribly interrupted by Psipsina, whose soggy weight in his lap entirely displaced any pleasure or triumph that he might have been entertaining. Psipsina’s policy in rainstorms was always to get as wet as was feasible and then leap into the nearest and warmest lap so as to dry herself as efficiently as possible, and this time the captain had fallen victim, since the doctor had very wisely and presciently stood up to prevent it from happening to him. Corelli looked down in horror at the sodden bundle of fur, and felt the water soaking into his groin. ‘Aaah,’ he cried, throwing his hands into the air.

  Pelagia laughed in malicious glee, and swept the bedraggled animal from his lap. He felt the swift brush of her fingers on his thighs, and knew a momentary thrill of surprise, which was augmented almost to infinity when she started to sweep at his breeches with her hands, saying, ‘O what a mess, you poor thing, look at all this grit and muck …’ He looked down in astonishment as the hands worked, and then realised that she had noticed his expression. She stood up quickly, shot him a withering and accusing look, and returned haughtily to her unravelling, whereupon the persistent Psipsina leapt once more into his lap. As the water in his groin warmed up beneath the weight of the pine marten, he felt that odd glow of satisfaction that he had once experienced as a little boy when he had urinated by mistake in his sleep, imagining that he was doing it against a wall. It was the same comforting warmth that one had before waking up in horror and shame. He forgot Scarlatti and thought about Pelagia’s hands. Such slender fingers, such pink nails. He imagined them engaged upon amorous and nocturnal things, and realised that he was disturbing Psipsina. He tried to suppress his lubricious imagination by thinking about Vivaldi.

  This was a mistake, because he immediately recalled that Vivaldi had taught young girls in a convent. His wayward brain conjured up images of a whole class full of winsome little Pelagias, all of them licking the tips of their pencils suggestively and luring him with their glowing dark eyes. It was a lovely image. He imagined all of them standing at his desk, bending over him as he explained something, with his finger moving along the lines of a text whilst their black hair tickled his cheeks and filled his nostrils with the scent of rosemary.

  One of them put her hand inside his shirt, and another one began to stroke his hair and the nape of his neck. Very soon there were dozens of identical slender hands, and in a flash his mind pictured himself stark naked on a vast table, with every one of the miraculously unclothed Pelagias crawling all over him, engaged upon a delicious assault of breasts, hands, and hot, wet, nuzzling lips. He began to breathe heavily and perspire.

  Psipsina decided that she could stand no more of this pressing disturbance from below, and jumped off his lap. His beautiful reverie turned to panic. If Pelagia happened to look up, she would see only too clearly that he had a pyramidal protuberance at a particular spot in his breeches, for which only one explanation could have been adequate or convincing.

  He tried desperately to think of something deeply unpleasant, and meanwhile he swivelled in his chair to face away from her a little more. He put his papers in his lap and pretended to study them in that position. In safety now, his thoughts returned to all the Pelagias on the table, their many hands running up and down his body, their many ripe breasts pressing to his mouth like cool and succulent fruit.

  The real Pelagia sighed, realising that she was tired of crochet. At her feet lay a tangled heap of unravelled wool that had kinked and interwound upon itself in an attempt to resume the knotted configurations of its former state. Pelagia did not understand why wool should be nostalgic in this way, but it was certainly irritating. She began to gather it up, and became confounded by its intransigence. ‘Captain,’ she said, ‘could you spare me a moment? I need a pair of hands to wind this wool on.’

  It was a supreme moment of crisis; the captain had been so far lost in fairyland that he was at that precise moment making love to each of his naked Pelagias in turn. Her voice cut through his dream of Elysium like a knife through a melon. He almost physically heard the susurration of the knife as it sliced, and the hollow knock as it struck the chopping board below and the melon fell in two. ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Lend me a hand,’ she said, ‘I’m all tangled up in wool.’

  ‘I can’t. I mean I’ve just got to a crucial point. In the sonata. Could you hang on a mi
nute?’ It was a desperate situation; he could not possibly stand up now without betraying his tumescent state. He disciplined himself to think about his grandmother, a freezing swim in the sea, a fly-blown horse dead at the side of the road after a battle. The erection dipped its head a little, but not enough.

  There was nothing for it; it was very lucky that she was so used to him behaving idiotically from time to time. He dropped to his knees and went over to her on all fours. He wagged his backside like a dog, lolled his tongue, and looked up at her with an expression of extreme canine loyalty. With any luck he would be able to gain some time with this charade, until he was ready to straighten up. She looked down at him and pulled a wry expression. ‘You are a very silly man,’ she said.

  ‘Wuf,’ he said, and waggled his backside again. He presented his two hands as though they were begging paws, and Pelagia straightened them authoritatively, placing them a few centimetres apart, so that she could begin to use them to wind her wool. She was desperately trying not to smile.

  The captain lolled his tongue with even greater exaggeration, and gazed up into her face with such doggy adoration that she stopped her winding and said, ‘Look, how am I supposed to do this properly if you keep making me laugh? Lunatic.’

  ‘Wuf,’ he said again, so embroiled by now in his comic masquerade that he had already forgotten why he had had to embark upon it, the problem having disappeared. He whined, as though asking to be let out, and then began to bark sharply at the wool as though convinced that it was a dangerous and incomprehensible enemy. ‘Stupid dog,’ said Pelagia, smacking him gently on the nose.