The Magus

by John Robert Fowles

  The trees thinned out where the ground rose steeply to the small bluff that marked the south side of the main ridge. I paused a moment for breath and turned to look back down towards Bourani; glanced at my watch. It was just after midnight. The whole island was asleep. Somewhere Lily was, like me, staring at the silver nail-paring of a moon, perhaps feeling that same sense of existential solitude, the being and being alone in a universe, that still nights sometimes give.

  Then from behind me, from somewhere up on the ridge, I heard a sound. A very small sound, but enough to make me step swiftly off the path into the cover of a pine. Someone or something up there had overturned a stone. A pause of fifteen seconds or more. Then I froze; both with shock and as a precaution.

  A man was standing on top of the bluff, ashily silhouetted against the night sky. Then a second man, and a third. I could hear the faint noise of their feet on the rock, the muffled clink of something metallic. Then, like magic, there were six. Six gray shadows standing along the skyline. One of them raised an arm and pointed; but I heard no sound of voices. Islanders? But they hardly ever used the central ridge in summer; and never at that time of night. In any case I suddenly realized what they were. They were soldiers. I could just see the indistinct outlines of guns, the dull sheen of a helmet.

  There had been Greek army maneuvers on the mainland a month before, and a coming and going of landing craft in the strait. These men must be on some similar commando-type exercise. But I didn’t move.

  One of the men turned back, and the others followed. I thought I knew what had happened. They had come along the central ridge and overshot the transverse path that led down to Bourani and Moutsa. As if to confirm my guess there was a distant pop, like a firework. I saw, from somewhere west of Bourani, a shimmering Very light hanging in the sky. It was one of the star-shell variety and fell in a slow parabola. I had fired dozens myself, on night exercises. The six were evidently on their way to “attack” some point on the other side of Moutsa.

  For all that, I looked round. Twenty yards away there was a group of rocks with enough small shrubs to give cover. I ran silently under the trees and, forgetting my clean trousers and shirt, dropped down in a natural trough between two of the rocks. They were still warm from the sun. I watched the cleft in the skyline down which the path lay.

  In a few seconds a pale movement told me I was right. The men were coming down. They were probably just a group of friendly lads from the Epirus or somewhere. But I pressed myself as flat as I could. When I could hear that they had come abreast, about thirty yards away, I sneaked a facedown look through the twigs that shielded me.

  My heart jumped. They were in German uniforms. For a moment I thought that perhaps they were dressed up to be the “enemy” on the maneuvers; but it was unthinkable, after the atrocities of the Occupation, that any Greek soldier would put on German uniform, even for an exercise; and from then on I knew. The masque had moved outside the domaine.

  The last man was carrying a much bulkier pack than the others; a pack with a thin, just visible rod rising from it. The truth flashed in on me. Wireless! In an instant I knew who the “spy” really was at the school. He was a very Turkish-looking Greek, a compact, taciturn man with a close-cropped head, one of the science masters. He never came into the common room; lived in his laboratory. His colleagues nicknamed him o aichemikos, the alchemist. With a grim realization of new depths of treachery, I remembered that he was one of Patarescu’s closest cronies. But what I had remembered first was that there was a transmitter in his laboratory, since some of the boys wanted to become radio officers. The school even had a ham radio station sign. I hit the ground with my fist. It had all been so obvious. That was why I normally never heard the boat leaving Bourani. They lay low until the message was radioed back that I was safely in the school again. There was only the one gate in; the old gatekeeper was always on duty.

  The men had gone. They must have been wearing rubber boots; and they must have wadded their equipment well to make so little noise. For some reason they had been waiting there to catch me. But the fact that I had waited to hear the boat leave, and then not walked very fast, must have made them think I had gone another way back; or perhaps that I was still hanging about Bourani. That explained the flare. They had been recalled.

  I grinned to myself. Conchis was certainly still on the island; this was why he had been away. Julie would have been kept innocent; he could not have risked her telling me, though he might have hoped I would suspect her of leading me into whatever trap I had just escaped. But this time the fox was through the net. I was even half tempted to follow the men down to see where they went, but I remembered old lessons from my own military training. Never patrol on a windless night if you can avoid it; remember the man nearer the moon sees you better than you see him. Already, within thirty seconds of their passing, I could hardly hear them. One stone was loudly kicked, then silence; then another, very faintly. I gave them another thirty seconds, then I pushed myself up and began to climb the path as fast as I could.

  At the top of the cleft where the ridge flattened out, I had to cross fifty yards or so of open space before the ground dipped down to the northern side. It was a windswept area littered with stones, a few lone bushes. On the far side lay a large patch, an acre or so, of high tamarisk. I could see the black opening in the feathery branches where my path went in. I stood and listened. Silence. I began to lope across the open space.

  I had got about halfway across when I heard a bang. A second later a Very flare burst open some two hundred yards to the right. It flooded the ridge with light. I dropped, my face averted. The light died down. The moment it hissed into darkness I was on my feet and racing, careless of noise, for the tamarisks. I got into them safely, stopped a moment, trying to work out what insane new trick Conchis was playing. Then I heard footsteps running along the ridge, from the direction in which the flare had come. I began to sprint down the path between the seven-foot bushes.

  I came to a flat, wider curve in the path, where I could run faster. Meteorically, without any warning, my foot was caught and I was plunging headlong forward. A searing jab as my flung-out hand hit the sharp edge of a stone. An agonizing bang in the ribs. I heard my breath blasted out of my lungs with the impact and my shocked voice saying “Oh Christ.” I was too dazed for a moment to realize what had happened. Then came a sharp low command from behind the tamarisks to the right. I spoke only a word or two of the language. But the voice sounded authentically German.

  There were sounds all around me, on both sides of the path. I was surrounded by men dressed as German soldiers. There were seven of them.

  “What the bloody hell’s the game?”

  I scrambled onto my knees, rubbing the grit off the palms of my hands. I could feel blood on one. Two men came behind me and seized me by the arms, jerked me up. Another man stood in the center of the path. He was apparently in charge. He had no rifle or submachine gun, like the others, but only a revolver. I looked sideways at the rifle the man to my left had slung over his shoulder. It looked real; not a stage property. He looked really German; not Greek.

  The man with the revolver, evidently some kind of NCO, spoke again in German. Two men bent, one on either side of the path, and fiddled by tamarisk stems: a tripwire. The man with the revolver blew a whistle. I looked at the two men beside me.

  “You speak English? Sprechen Sie Englisch?”

  They took not the slightest notice, except to jerk my arms for silence. I thought, Christ, wait till I see Conchis again. The NCO stood in the path with his back to me, and the other four men gathered beyond him. Two of them sat down.

  One evidently asked if they could smoke. The NCO gave permission.

  They lit up, helmeted faces in match-flares, and began to talk in a low murmur of voices. They seemed all German. Not just Greeks who knew a few words of German; but Germans. I spoke to the sergeant.

  “When you’ve finished the clowning perhaps you’ll tell me what we’re waiting
for.”

  The man pivoted round and came up to me. He was a man of about forty-five, long-cheeked. He stood with his face about two feet from mine. He did not look particularly brutal but he looked his part. I expected another spit routine, but he simply said quietly, “Was sagen Sie?”

  “Oh go to hell.”

  He remained staring at me, as if he did not understand, but was interested to see me at last; then expressionlessly turned away. The grip of the soldiers relaxed a little. If I had felt less battered, I might have run for it. But then I heard footsteps from the ridge above. A few seconds later the six men I had first seen came marching down the path in a loose single file. But before they came to us, they fell out by the group of smoking men. The boy who was holding me on the right was only about twenty. He began siss-whistling under his breath; and in what had been, in spite of my remark about clowning, a pretty convincing performance until then, he struck a rather obvious note, for the tune was the most famous of all, “Lili Marlene.” Or was it a very bad pun? He had a huge acne-covered jaw and small eyelashless eyes; specially chosen, I suppose, because he appeared so Teutonic, with a curious machinelike indifference, as if he didn’t know why he was there, who I was; and didn’t care; just carried out orders.

  I calculated: thirteen men, at least half of whom were German. Cost of getting them to Greece, from Athens to the island. Equipment. Training-rehearsing. Cost of getting them off the island, back to Germany. It couldn’t be done under five hundred pounds. And for what? To frighten—or perhaps to impress—one unimportant person. At the same time, now that the first panic had subsided, my attitude changed. This scene was so well organized, so elaborate. I fell under the spell of Conchis the magician again. Frightened, but fascinated; not really wanting it not to have happened as it did; and then there were more footsteps.

  Two more men appeared. One was short and slim. He came striding down the path with a taller man behind him. Both had the peaked hats of officers. Eagle badges. The soldiers he passed stood hurriedly, but he made a brisk movement of his hand to put them at ease. He came straight to me. He was obviously an actor who had specialized in German colonel roles; a hard face, a thin mouth; all he lacked were spectacles with oblong lenses and steel frames.

  “Hello.”

  He did not answer, but looked at me rather as the sergeant, who was now standing stiffly some way behind him, had. The other officer was apparently a lieutenant, an aide. I noticed he had a slight limp; an Italian-looking face, very dark eyebrows, round tanned cheeks; handsome.

  “Where’s the producer?”

  The colonel took a cigarette case out of his inside pocket and selected a cigarette. The lieutenant reached forward with a light. Beyond them I saw one of the soldiers cross the path with something in loose paper—food of some sort. They were eating.

  “I must say you look the part.”

  He said one word, carefully pursed in his mouth, spat out like a grape pip.

  “Gut.”

  He turned away; said something in German. The sergeant went up the path and came back with a hurricane lamp, which he lit, then set behind me.

  The colonel moved up the path to where the sergeant was standing, and I was left staring at the lieutenant. There was something strange in his look, as if he would have liked to tell me something, but couldn’t; searching my face for some answer. His eyes flicked away, and he turned abruptly, though awkwardly, on his heel and rejoined the colonel. I heard low German voices, then the sergeant’s laconic command.

  The men stood to, and for some reason I couldn’t understand lined up on both sides of the path, facing inwards, irregularly, not standing to attention, as if waiting for someone to pass. I thought they were going to take me somewhere, I had to pass through them. But I was pulled back by my two guards in line with the others. Only the sergeant and the two officers stood in the center of the path. The lamp threw a circle of light round me. I realized it had a dramatic function.

  There was a tense silence. I was cast as a spectator in some way, not as the protagonist. At last I heard more people coming. A different, unmilitary figure came into sight. For a second I thought he was drunk. But then I realized he had his hands tied behind his back; like me, a prisoner. He wore dark trousers, but was bare above the waist. Behind him came two more soldiers. One of them seemed to prod him, and he groaned. As he came closer to me I saw, with a sharp sense that the masque was running out of control, that he was barefoot. His stumbling, ginger walk was real, not acted.

  He came abreast of me. A young man, evidently Greek, rather short. His face was atrociously bruised, puffed, the whole of one side covered in blood from a gash near the right eye. He appeared stunned, hardly able to walk. He didn’t notice me until the last moment, when he stopped, looked at me wildly. I had a swift acrid stab of terror, that this really was some village boy they had got hold of and beaten up—not someone to look the part, but be the part. Without warning the soldier behind him jabbed him in the small of the back—something that could not be faked. I saw it, I saw his spasmic jerk forward, and the—or so it sounded—absolutely authentic gasp of pain the jab caused. He stumbled on another five or six yards. Then the colonel spat one word. The guards reached roughly out and brought him to a halt. The three men stood there in the path, facing downhill. The colonel moved down to just in front of me, his lieutenant limping beside him; both backs to me.

  Another silence; the panting of the man. Then almost at once came another figure, exactly the same, hands tied behind his back, two soldiers behind him. I knew by then where I was. I was back in 1943, ten years before; I was looking at captured Resistance fighters.

  The second man was obviously the kapetan, the leader—heavily built, about forty, some six feet tall. He had one naked arm in a rope sling, a rough bandage covered in blood round his upper arm. It seemed to have been made from the sleeve torn off his shirt; was too thin to staunch the blood. He came down the path towards me; a magnificent Klepht face with a heavy black moustache, an accipitral nose. I had seen such faces once or twice in the Peloponnesus, but I knew where this man came from, because over his forehead he still wore the fringed black headband of the Cretan mountaineer. I could see him standing in some early nineteenth-century print, in folk costume, silver-handled yataghan and pistols in his belt, the noble brigand of the Byronic myth. He was actually wearing what looked like British Army battle-dress trousers, a khaki shirt. And he too was barefoot. But he seemed to refuse to stumble. He was less battered than the other man, perhaps because of the wound.

  As he came up level with me, he stopped and then looked past the colonel and the lieutenant straight at me. I understood that he was meant to know me, that I had once known him. It was a look of the most violent loathing. Contempt. At the same time of a raging despair. He said nothing for a moment. Then he hissed in Greek one word.

  “Prodotis.” His lips snarled on the v-sounding demotic Greek delta.

  Traitor.

  He had great power, he was completely in his role; and in a barely conscious way, as if I sensed that I must be an actor too, I did not come out with another flip remark but took his look and his hatred in silence. For a moment I was the traitor.

  He was kicked on, but he turned and gave me one last burning look back across the ten feet of lamplight. Then again that word, as if I might not have heard it the first time.

  “Prodotis.”

  As he did so there was a cry, an exclamation. The colonel’s rapped command: Nicht schiessen! My guards gripped me vice-tight. The first man had bolted, diving headlong sideways into the tamarisks. His two guards plunged after him, then three or four of the soldiers lining the path. He can’t have got more than ten yards. There was a cry, German words, then a sickening scream of pain and another. The sound of a body being kicked, butt-ended.

  At the second cry the lieutenant, who had been standing watching just in front of me, turned and looked past me into the night. I was meant to understand he was revolted by this, by brutality; h
is other first look at me was explained. The colonel was aware that he had turned away. He gave the lieutenant a quick stare round, flicked a look at the guards holding me, then spoke—in French; so that the guards could not understand.

  “Mon lieutenant, voilà pour moi la plus belle musique dans le monde.”

  His French was heavily German; and he gave a sort of mincing lip-grimacing sarcasm to the word musique that explained the situation. He was a stock German sadist; the lieutenant, a stock good German.

  The lieutenant seemed about to say something, but suddenly the night was torn open by a tremendous cry. It came from the other man, the noble brigand, from the very depth of his lungs and it must have been heard, if anyone had been awake to hear it, from one side of the island to the other. It was just one word, but the most Greek of all words.

  I knew it was acting, but it was magnificent acting. It came out harsh as fire, more a diabolical howl than anything else, but electrifying, right from the very inmost core.

  It jagged into the colonel like a rowel of a spur. He must have understood Greek. He spun round like a steel spring. In three strides he was in front of the Cretan and had delivered a savage smashing slap across his face. It knocked the man’s head sideways, but he straightened up at once. Again it shocked me almost as if I was the one hit. The beating-up, the bloody arm could be faked, but not that blow.

  Lower down the path they came dragging the other man out of the bushes. He could not stand and they were pulling him by the arms. They dropped him in mid-path and he lay on his side, groaning. The sergeant went down, took a water bottle from one of the soldiers and poured it over his face. The man made an attempt to stand. The sergeant said something and the original guards hauled him to his feet.

  The colonel spoke.

  The soldiers split into two sections, the prisoners in the middle, and began to move off. In under a minute the last back disappeared. I was alone with my two guards, the colonel and the lieutenant.