In the Shape of a Boar

by Lawrence Norfolk

  The first months had been spent carrying buckets of stones. Large piles had been deposited by the side of an unmetalled road which climbed from the head of the lagoon up a long slope to a dip in the ridge three or four kilometres away. Teams of prisoners carried the stones from these piles to the road, where other teams raked them level. One day a team of German engineers had arrived with surveying instruments. There had been a fierce argument with the overseer and the work had come to an abrupt end. After that his work detail had been set to clearing brush-wood, which was harder than carrying stones. The gnarled bushes had sent their roots deep into the soil in search of water and the spiny oak scrub cut their hands as they bent and twisted the woody stems until they split and broke. They grew back as quickly as they could be removed. Their guards seemed to acknowledge the pointlessness of the work by standing about in groups, sharing cigarettes, rather than driving their charges to greater effort. They laboured through a mild winter. Then they were moved along the coast to the valley of Kurtaga where a network of lines had been marked out with posts and white twine. There they were told to dig trenches.

  Not Eisinger, he thought. And not Kittner. The column of oily smoke had cleared and the vista beyond it was clear and bright, as though the memory were his own.

  Warm winds blew in off the gulf some kilometres to the south, sometimes bringing rain. The trenches filled with water. At night, when the winds abated, cold air rolled down the valley and the men shivered and caught chills. April brought a period of drier weather followed by meridian storms, the clouds gathering inland over the mountains each morning and either receding by midday or breaking overhead to send down torrential showers. The men drove their shovels through the thin turf into clay, snapping off old roots and grubbing up stones. Sol's Greek workmates affected not to notice the weather, which could not be changed or guarded against.

  He understood little or nothing of the men who worked around him and they, in turn, viewed him with wary incomprehension. The disparate words and phrases which simple repetition lodged in his memory would not cohere. Their arguments and chatter were so much noise. He drove his shovel into the earth, stepped back and leaned his weight on the blade, levered, lifted and tipped out the load. This was his rhythm and that of every member of the work detail. But the lines unfurling themselves before his mind's eye were his, their music his. Not Klabund's. Not Hauff's. Not anyone's but his own. They had belonged to this place once, long ago, and might do again. But the men toiling to either side of him were not the ones to enact them. Their names had no place among the words he muttered, only to himself, from daybreak to sunset.

  The men dug trenches which were one metre and sixty centimetres deep and half as wide. One of the guards carried a stick marked with these measurements which he would drop into the excavation, then lay widthways across the top. By summer, Sol noticed, he would drop his measure into the deepest part of the trench and drive it into the bottom, giving the man leaning on his shovel below a conspiratorial wink, which was not returned. The trenches were intended as a line of defence against attack from the coast. But there was nothing to defend here, the men grumbled to each other, sitting outside the fly-infested huts with their bare wooden bunks. Nothing to defend but a farmhouse and some old ruins. That, at least, was what Sol assumed was said. He tried to follow their words. These were not just any old ruins, one man broke in. And then another began to tell the story, but in a purer, more elevated Greek, because it was an old story which had taken place here in the vale of Kalydon. Someone tried to interrupt, but the man continued despite this, and then Sol listened, realising that the fragments he understood belonged to a story he had once known, which he had perhaps read. The old tale peeled back its freshly inked page leaving alien characters on the opposite leaf of his waiting memory.

  Summer advanced and the sun rolled overhead, pressing down on the sweating men who shovelled earth. The trench stretched arms towards Varassova and Zygos without ever reaching the havens of their shade. The wooded heights shimmered and narrowed to a hairline crack of imagined cool in a baking haze. The waters of the gulf shielded themselves in glare. Long lines of transport planes began to appear, travelling in single file across the cloudless blue of the sky to the west. They hummed and buzzed through the mornings and then, as the weeks went by, their lines grew longer and sometimes stretched into the afternoon, when the air itself seemed to turn to heat. Convoys of military trucks rumbled over the bridge below, never stopping or slowing. The woods, the shade, the ruins of Kalydon, the water, the heights which rose around them: these were the places denied to Sol. Beyond their horizons was the darkness into which Thyella had disappeared.

  The guards drank more heavily. Their laughter reached the ears of the men in the huts, more often their angry shouts as they argued or even brawled. One night three of them appeared in the doorway of the hut where Sol slept, shouted incomprehensibly, then staggered out again. They were older men, those who could be spared for a defensive line which, all knew, would never be defended. There were hushed discussions among the other prisoners in which Sol was not included. The Germans were pulling out. The Allies had landed in Epirus, or Thessaloniki, or were sure to land soon.

  Then, late in August, they were marched back to the camp outside Messolonghi to find that the grey uniforms of their German captors had been replaced by the civilian clothes and green armbands of Greek ones. A ring of sandbagged gun emplacements had been thrown up around the perimeter. Sol's workmates eyed the new guards cautiously. They were marched into the crowded camp at rifle-point.

  Sol looked further up the hillside to the Upper Compound, where the politicals were held. Nothing moved behind the double fence of barbed wire. The guard towers were now manned by Greeks.

  ‘Be ready.’

  A foot hooked around his ankles as he was nudged in the small of his back. He fell forward. He scrambled to his feet but his assailant had already disappeared into the mass of men behind him. He searched the faces nearest him, wondering why Miguel should wish to deliver his message in so enigmatic a manner. Sol had recognised the voice.

  He did not set eyes on the man in the following weeks, although he looked for him. Rumours ran through the camp like fevers. A skeleton force of German troops was still garrisoned in the monastery building. The main camp was guarded by Security Battalion men. The barracks grew crowded as more contingents of men were marched up the dusty road to the camp. For several nights running the inmates heard gunfire in the far distance. There was no water for a day and most of a night. A man was shot on the wire.

  The heat increased. Men wandered aimlessly looking either up at the heights of the Zygos or down to the tantalising waters of the lagoon below. Columns of grey trucks moved along the road which followed the shoreline. The guards now patrolled inside the wire in groups. A man started shouting from the roof of one of the barracks and a large crowd gathered and cheered. The guards manning the watch-towers of the Upper Compound loosed volleys of machine-gun fire into the air. Then, one morning, Sol was woken by angry shouts. Men were running to the northern fence. A crowd had already gathered and were shouting through the wire at a line of Security Battalion men who faced them through the sights of their rifles. A line of men was being escorted from the Upper Compound by a mixture of Greek and German troops, the latter armed with machine-guns which they trained on their prisoners, although many of these walked with difficulty and had to be supported. Pressed in among the crowd, Sol craned his neck, scanning the faces for the one he sought. The mob shouted louder as the men were led past. A man standing beside Sol saluted. There was a truck waiting further down the hillside and when the prisoners reached it the mob, which had now grown to include almost all the men in the camp, fell quiet. The men were pushed into the back. Sol found him then.

  Xanthos's left arm hung limply at his side and he wore the same fatigues as when Sol had last seen him, blindfolded and injured that time, at the camp by the lake. The partisan was pulled up into the truck. The German
troops left with their prisoners and, that afternoon, Sol watched the machine-guns being lowered from the Upper Compound's watch-towers. He felt drained of energy and returned to the barracks, where he fell into an uneasy sleep.

  That night was the first in which he dreamed himself climbing. The rock was rotten with frost and crumbled under his feet. Fragments tumbled and bounced down the mountainside, setting off small avalanches of stones and boulders. Great crashes thundered up from the bottom of the gorge far below, where tiny figures cowered from the debris smashing down around them. How could he see them, he wondered? No matter how carefully he proceeded he could not help but send down a deadly rain. And he had to proceed. Their courses were bound to one another's.

  He was awoken by the sound of rifle fire. Someone's footsteps thudded on the planks of the floor. The door of the barracks opened and banged shut again. It was night. He rose, his legs shaky and his head throbbing.

  Be ready.

  Outside, groups of men ran past. Others crouched behind the barracks. Sol smelt smoke. A barracks lower down the hillside was on fire. As he watched, the roof buckled and split, sending a tongue of red flame high into the sky. The camp was bathed in the light. More gunfire sounded then, from a position high on the hillside. A heavy machine-gun answered from below. Men were shouting to one another. There was no sign of the Security Battalion troops, or their assailants, only the sounds of their gunfire and answering fire from somewhere beyond the flames.

  Sol began to make his way across the camp, darting between the buildings. Crouching men looked up at him. The gunfire came and went.

  On the southern side of the camp half a dozen men were pulling at the concrete posts of the fence. They threw themselves to the ground as small-arms fire crackled nearby. There was no sign of the combatants, whose fates were being settled beyond the reach of the red flames and faint moonlight. The uprooted posts hung between those still standing, dangling from the uncut wire. Shadows shaped as men moved around him. Something glinted at the edge of his vision, two red reflections of the firelight. When he found their source, Miguel's bespectacled face had turned away again. He was kneeling by the corner of the last barracks, pointing up the hillside to half a dozen men. Several nodded and the group set off up the hillside. Sol followed.

  The fence at the top of the camp had been cut. Miguel pointed again and the men split up. Miguel alone made for the Upper Compound, whose gates stood open. When he reached the first of the brick buildings he turned quickly and beckoned to Sol, who had thought himself unobserved; he ran forward a few paces then stumbled on the uneven ground. When he got to his feet Miguel had drawn back around the corner. Sol advanced cautiously. The fighting seemed to have moved further down the hillside. There was the man, a dark shape close against the wall.

  ‘Where is he?’ asked Miguel.

  Sol stopped. ‘Who?’

  Miguel said nothing. He shifted position, fumbling with his jacket.

  ‘Who?’ Sol repeated. ‘Who do you mean?’

  Miguel raised a pistol to Sol's chest. Then, before Sol could speak, Miguel's silhouette disappeared within a greater one, which appeared to wrap itself about the man, then detach itself with a sound like a boot being pulled out of wet clay. The figure stepped back. For a second Miguel did not move, then he rolled around to face the wall and slid slowly to the ground.

  Sol began to back away, but Miguel's assailant ignored him, hunched over his victim and reaching into his jacket. Then he moved with surprising speed. Sol staggered backwards. Why could he not run? It was if the strength in his legs had drained into the soil.

  A familiar, untroubled face emerged from shadow. The man glanced at Sol, then looked around the deserted compound and nodded, satisfied.

  ‘Take,’ said Uncle America, handing him Miguel's weapon. He mimed the action to pull the trigger. ‘Pauff!’

  Sol began to shiver as they descended the hillside. They stopped at one point and Uncle America whistled softly. They waited in silence. Then three andartes appeared. Uncle America took out his knife and had Sol show them the pistol, then the five continued down the hillside. They heard machine-gun fire below and behind them, but distant.

  Twenty or thirty andartes were gathered by the shore, near the head of the lagoon. A burning smell reached Sol's nostrils. He sat and hugged his knees to his chest. Behind him a second group of partisans were at work setting up a gun emplacement at the entrance to a canyon which seemed to have been cut from solid limestone. The moonlight was stronger, or seemed so, reflecting off the white stone. He asked himself, What must happen here? An engine fired and there was a thin cheer. Uncle America emerged from a crowd of men and walked towards him.

  ‘Where?’ asked Sol, pointing first into the canyon, then across the lagoon. He was cold and yet soaked in sweat. Cold meant the mountains; his sweat Kalydon. He had fallen behind.

  Uncle America nodded amiably. ‘We find Eberhardt,’ he said, and turned away to wave to someone. Men moved aside and a small truck inched forward, its windscreen smashed. Sol rose at Uncle America's insistence and the two of them made their way through the crowd of partisans which had closed behind the vehicle.

  Sol heard a crash and another, louder cheer. A little way down the road, a truck lay on its side. Partisans were trying to push it off the thoroughfare. The back of the transport had been blown off; charred fragments lay scattered over the ground. The burning smell had come from there. Another group surrounded a smaller piece of wreckage, which might once have been a car. Other, less identifiable debris littered the area, which was cratered where shells had fallen or mines had gone off. A line of bodies lay by the side of the road.

  Geraxos was standing over the corpses. He held his long rifle in both hands, letting its muzzle roam over them. At Uncle America's approach, he looked up and his blue eyes swept over Sol, who thought he saw regret in the man's face. But the moonlight was weak and the blue of his eyes too must have been remembered from an earlier time. The boar does not die here, thought Sol. Not here and not yet. Where was Thyella?

  Geraxos and Uncle America spoke together in an undertone. Sol looked down at the dead men. They wore grey combat uniforms or the civilian clothes and armbands of the Security Battalion. A number of andartes had gathered around a corpse which was set apart from the others. Men would walk up, work their way through their murmuring comrades, then look down. As Sol waited his turn, he caught her name, confirmed between two of the partisans. Thyella? Thyella. The partisan in front of him stepped aside and Sol looked down at the corpse of a tall man in his late forties with thinning hair, dressed in full uniform. He seemed untouched. Only his cap was missing. Sol felt a hand on his shoulder. Uncle America appeared at his side. He too glanced at the dead man, then drew a finger across his own throat and grinned.

  ‘Thyella,’ said Uncle America. He pointed at the corpse. ‘Eberhardt.’

  Sol looked at the dead man's face and shook his head. ‘This is not Eberhardt.’

  In the pre-dawn light the lake appeared as a field of slate. The truck emerged from the wooded country into which it had plunged after the ghostly canyon and climbed a short steep rise to a road which hugged the shoreline. The camp was visible as a collection of blockhouses, oddly regular against the curve of the shore and the mountains behind. The first sunlight touched the tops of the highest peaks as the truck and its human cargo approached.

  Sol sat braced against the tailgate surrounded by wounded men. They had been lifted in and settled together at the canyon's entrance. The jarring of the truck had drawn low grunts of pain as it rumbled slowly over the broken road. They had passed checkpoints manned by partisans. At each stop the driver had shouted ahead, been answered, and then they had been waved through. The passenger seat was occupied by a man whose head was almost completely wrapped in bandages. Uncle America rode on the footplate beside the driver. Sol watched the little buildings grow in definition. There were the rows of barracks, there the open square with its flagpole, although no flag flew now,
and there the large hut from which a radio mast had risen. The mast he could not see, nor the cell-block, which was shielded from his view. He clutched the heavy pistol. His shivering seemed to have stopped.

  As they pulled up in front of the communications hut, men ran towards the truck and began to carry out the wounded. Uncle America swung down from the footplate and the two of them walked inside.

  A man dressed in faded fatigues looked up from a map that was spread over a large table. Behind him, someone was kneeling on the floor, attempting to repair a field radio, which hissed and crackled from time to time. Three others stood around the table, talking urgently. The commander nodded to the two of them, then resumed his discussion. Sol occupied himself from the far side of the room by trying to pick out their position on the map. He followed the coast to the lagoon of Messolonghi. He fancied he could make out the canyon through which they had driven. The lake was obvious and the camp was here at its eastern end. His eye wandered north, into the mountains, but that region was unrepresented. The centre of the map was blank.

  An hour passed. Now and again the air over the lake carried the faint sound of gunfire from the town on the far shore. The sun rose and glowed off the distant roofs. Eventually the three partisans grunted their assent to whatever had been resolved, saluted their commander, and left. The man looked over at them and Uncle America began to speak. Soon the officer was shaking his head in exasperation, as though a request were being made which he could only refuse. He barked a few words in reply and Uncle America fell silent, neither angry nor disappointed. Instead he leaned over the map on the desk, then slapped his palm down on the centre.

  As they emerged from the hut, two trucks were drawing up from which more wounded men were lifted out. Others arrived during the course of the morning, either on foot or in the battered trucks which drew up to disgorge their passengers then set off again. Sol walked around the communications hut to the cell block. A patch of new brickwork formed a red scar in the centre of the wall. The roof had been patched with corrugated iron. He continued around to the lakeward side and lay down in the shade.