by John Fowles
‘I have seen films – like Rossellini’s – of the good human’s reactions to such scenes. How he turns on the Fascist monsters and delivers himself of some terse yet magnificent condemnation. How he speaks for history and humanity and for ever puts them in their place. I confess my own feelings were of immediate and intense personal fear. You see, Nicholas, I thought, and Wimmel left a long silence to let me think, that I was now going to be tortured as well. I did not know why. But there was no reason left in the world. When human beings could do such things to one another …
‘I turned round and looked at Wimmel. The extraordinary thing was that he seemed the most human other person in the room. He looked tired and angry. Even a little disgusted. Ashamed at the mess his men had created.
‘He said in English, “These men do this for pleasure. I do not. I wish, before they start on that murderer there, that you will speak to mm.
‘I said, “What must I say?”
‘ “I want the names of his friends. I want the names of the people who help him. I want the positions ofhiding-places and arms places. If he gives me these I give him my word he will be executed in a correct military manner.”
‘I said, “Did they not tell you enough?”
‘Wimmel said, “All they knew. But he knows more. He is a man I have long wished to meet. His friends could not make him speak. I do not think we shall make him speak. Perhaps you can. You will say this. The truth. You do not like us Germans. You are an educated man. You wish only to stop these … procedures. You will advise him to speak what he knows. It is no guilt now that he is caught to speak. You understand? Come with me.”
‘We went into another bare room next door. A few moments later the wounded man was dragged in, still tied to his chair, and set in the centre of the room. I was given a chair facing him. The colonel sat in the background and waved the torturers outside. I began to talk.
‘I did exactly as the colonel had ordered. That is, I begged the man to give all the information he could. You will say it was dishonourable of me, because you are thinking of the families and other men he could have betrayed. But that night I lived in those two rooms. They were the only reality. The outside world did not exist. I felt passionately that it was my duty to stop any more of this atrocious degradation of human intelligence. And that the Cretan’s obsessive obstinacy seemed to contribute so directly to the degradation that it in part constituted it.
‘I told him I was not a collaborationist, that I was a doctor, that my enemy was human suffering. That I spoke for Greece when I said that God would forgive him if he spoke now – his friends had suffered enough. There was a point beyond which no man could be expected to suffer … and so on. Every argument I could think of.
‘But his expression was one of unchanging hostility to me. Hatred of me. I doubt if he even listened to what I was saying. He must have assumed that I was a collaborationist, that all the things I told him were lies.
‘In the end I fell silent and looked back at the colonel. I could not hide the fact that I thought I had failed. He must have signalled to the guards outside, because one of them came in, went behind the Cretan and unfastened the gag. At once the man roared, all the chords in his throat standing out, that same word, that one word: eleutheria. There was nothing noble in it. It was pure savagery, as if he was throwing a can of lighted petrol over us. The guard brutally twisted the gag back over his mouth and retied it.
‘Of course the word was not for him a concept or an ideal. It was simply his last weapon, and he used it as a weapon.
‘The colonel said, “Take him back and await my orders.” The man was dragged away again into that sinister room. The colonel walked to the shuttered window, opened it on to darkness and stood there for a minute, then turned to me. He said, “Now you see why I must speak the language that I do.”
‘I said, “I see nothing any more.” Wimmel replied: “Perhaps I should make you watch the dialogue between my men and that animal.” I said, “I beg you not to.” He asked me if I thought he enjoyed such scenes. I did not answer. Then he said, “I should be very happy to sit at my headquarters. To have nothing to do but sign papers and enjoy the beautiful classical monuments. You do not believe me. You think I am a sadist. I am not. I am a realist.”
‘Still I sat in silence. He planted himself in front of me, and said, “You will be placed under guard in a separate room. I will give orders that you have something to eat and drink. As one civilized man to another, I regret the incidents of today and the incidents in the next room. You will not, of course, be one of the hostages.”
‘I looked up at him, I suppose with a shocked gratitude.
‘He said, “You will please remember that like every other officer I have only one supreme purpose in my life, the German historical purpose – to bring order into the chaos of Europe. When that is done -then is the time for lieder-singing.”
‘I cannot tell you how, but I knew he was lying. One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true – they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, “You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love.” They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
‘I believe that unlike most Germans, Wimmel knew, had always known, this. What he was. What he was doing. And that he was playing with me. It did not seem so at first. He gave me one last look and then went out, and I heard him speak to one of the guards who had brought me. I was taken to a room on another floor and given something to eat and a bottle of German beer. I had many feelings, but the dominant one was that I was going to survive. I was still going to see the sun shining. To breathe, to eat bread, to touch a keyboard.
‘The night passed. I was brought coffee in the morning, allowed to wash. Then at half past ten I was made to go out. I found all the other hostages waiting. They had not been given anything to drink or eat and I was forbidden to speak to them. There was no sign of Wimmel or of Anton.
‘We were marched to the harbour. The entire village was there, some four or five hundred people, black and grey and faded blue, crammed on to the quays with a line of die Raben watching them. The village priests, the women, even little boys and girls. They screamed as we came into sight. Like some amorphous protoplasm. Trying to break bounds, but unable to.
‘We went on marching. There is a large house with huge Attic acroteria facing the harbour – you know it? – in those days there was a taverna on the ground-floor. On the balcony above I saw Wimmel and behind him Anton, flanked by men with machine-guns. I was taken from the column and made to stand against the wall under the balcony, among the chairs and tables. The hostages went marching on. Up a street and out of sight.
‘It was very hot. A perfect blue day. The villagers were driven from the quay to the terrace with the old cannons in front of the taverna. They stood crowded there. Brown faces upturned in the sunlight, black kerchiefs of the women fluttering in the breeze. I could not see the balcony, but the colonel waited above, impressing his silence on them, his presence. And gradually they fell absolutely quiet, a wall of expectant faces. Up in the sky I saw swallows and martins. Like children playing in a house where some tragedy is taking place among the adults. Strange, to see so many Greeks … and not a sound. Only the tranquil cries of little birds.
‘Wimmel began to speak. The collaborationist interpreted. “You will now see what happens to those … those who are the enemies of Germany … and to those who help the enemies of Germany … by order of a court martial of the German High Command held last night … three have been executed … two more will now be executed…”
‘All the brown hands darted up, made the four taps of the Cross. Wimmel paused. German is to death what Latin is to ritual religion – entirely appropriate.
‘“Following that …
the eighty hostages … taken under Occupation law … in retaliation for the brutal murder … of four innocent members of the German Armed Forces …” and yet again he paused … “will be executed.”
‘When the interpreter interpreted the last phrase, there was an exhaled groan, as if they had all been struck in the stomach. Many of the women, some of the men, fell to their knees, imploring the balcony. Humanity groping for the non-existent pity of a deus vindicans. Wimmel must have withdrawn, because the beseechings turned to lamentations.
‘Now I was forced out from the wall and marched after the hostages. Soldiers, the Austrians, stood at every entrance to the harbour and forced the villagers back. It horrified me that they could help die Raben, could obey Wimmel, could stand there with impassive faces and roughly force back people that I knew, only a day or two before, they did not hate.
‘The alley curved up between the houses to the square beside the village school. It is a natural stage, inclined slightly to the north, with the sea and the mainland over the lower roofs. With the wall of the village school on the uphill side, and high walls to east and west. If you remember, there is a large plane tree in the garden of the house to the west. The branches come over the wall. As I came to the square that was the first thing I saw. Three bodies hung from the branches, pale in the shadow, as monstrous as Goya etchings. There was the naked body of the cousin with its terrible wound. And there were the naked bodies of the two girls. They had been disembowelled. A slit cut from their breastbones down to their pubic hair and the intestines pulled out. Half-gutted carcasses, swaying slightly in the noon wind.
‘Beyond those three atrocious shapes I saw the hostages. They had been herded against the school in a pen of barbed wire. The men at the back were just in the shadow of the wall, the front ones in sunlight. As soon as they saw me they began to shout. There were insults of the obvious kind to me, confused cries of appeal – as if anything I could say then would have touched the colonel. He was there, in the centre of the square, with Anton and some twenty of die Raben. On the third side of the square, to the east, there is a long wall. You know it? In the middle a gate. Iron grilles. The two surviving guerillas were lashed to the bars. Not with rope – with barbed wire.
‘I was halted behind the two lines of men, some twenty yards away from where Wimmel was standing. Anton would not look at me, though Wimmel turned briefly. Anton – staring into space, as if he had hypnotized himself into believing that none of what he saw existed. As if he no longer existed himself. The colonel beckoned the collaborationist to him. I suppose he wanted to know what the hostages were shouting. He appeared to think for a moment and then he went towards them. They fell silent. Of course they did not know he had already pronounced sentence on them. He said something that was translated to them. What, I could not hear, except that it reduced the villagers to silence. So it was not the death sentence. The colonel marched back to me.
‘He said, “I have made an offer to these peasants.” I looked at his face. It was absolutely without nervousness, excitation; a man in complete command of himself. He went on, “I will permit them not to be executed. To go to a labour camp. On one condition. That is that you, as mayor of this village, carry out in front of them the execution of the two murderers.”
‘I said, “I am not an executioner.”
‘The village men began to shout frantically at me.
‘He looked at his watch, and said, “You have thirty seconds to decide.”
‘Of course in such situations one cannot think. All coherence is crowded out of one’s mind. You must remember this. From this point on I acted without reason. Beyond reason.
‘I said, “I have no choice.”
‘He went to the end of one of the ranks of men in front of me. He took a submachine-gun from a man’s shoulder, appeared to make sure that it was correctly loaded, then came back with it and presented it to me with both hands. As if it was a prize I had won. The hostages cheered, crossed themselves. And then were silent. The colonel watched me. I had a wild idea that I might turn the gun on him. But of course the massacre of the entire village would then have been inevitable.
‘I walked towards the men wired to the iron gates. I knew why he had done this. It would be widely publicized by the German-controlled newspapers. The pressure on me would not be mentioned, and I would be presented as a Greek who co-operated in the German theory of order. A warning to other mayors. An example to other frightened Greeks everywhere. But those eighty men – how could I condemn them?
‘I came within about fifteen feet of the two guerillas. So close, because I had not fired a gun for very many years. For some reason I had not looked them in the face till then. I had looked at the high wall with its tiled top, at a pair of vulgar ornamental urns on top of the pillars that flanked the gate, at the fronds of a pepper tree beyond. But then I had to look at them. The younger of the two might have been dead. His head had fallen forward. They had done something to his hands, I could not see what, but there was blood all over the fingers. He was not dead. I heard him groan. Mutter something. He was delirious.
‘And the other. His mouth had been struck or kicked. The lips were severely contused, reddened. As I stood there and raised the gun he drew back what remained of those lips. All his teeth had been smashed in. The inside of his mouth was like a blackened vulva. But I was too desperate to finish to realize the real cause. He too had had his fingers crushed, or his nails torn out, and I could see multiple burns on his body. But the Germans had made one terrible error. They had not gouged out his eyes.
‘I raised the gun blindly and pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. A click. I pressed it again. And again, an empty click.
‘I turned and looked round. Wimmel and my two guards were standing thirty feet or so away, watching. The hostages suddenly began to call. They thought I had lost the will to shoot. I turned back and tried once more. Again, nothing. I turned to the colonel, and gestured ‘with the gun, to show that it would not fire. I felt faint in the heat. Nausea. Yet unable to faint.
‘He said, “Is something wrong?”
‘I answered, “The gun will not fire.”
‘ “It is a Schmeisser. An excellent weapon.”
‘ “I have tried three times.’’
‘ “It will not fire because it is not loaded. It is strictly forbidden for the civilian population to possess loaded weapons.”
‘I stared at him, then at the gun. Still not understanding. The hostages were silent again.
‘I said, very helplessly, “How can I kill them?”
‘He smiled, a smile as thin as a sabre-slash. Then he said, “I am waiting.”
‘I understood then. I was to club them to death. I understood many things. His real self, his real position. And from that came the realization that he was mad, and that he was therefore innocent, as all mad people, even the most cruel, are innocent. He was what life could do if it wanted – an extreme possibility made hideously mind and flesh. Perhaps that was why he could impose himself so strongly, like a black divinity. For there was something superhuman in the spell he cast. And therefore the real evil, the real monstrosity in the situation lay in the other Germans, those less-than-mad lieutenants and corporals and privates who stood silently there watching this exchange.
‘I walked towards him. The two guards thought I was going to attack him because they sharply raised their guns. But he said something to them and stood perfectly still. I stopped some six feet from him. We stared at each other.
‘“I beg you in the name of European civilization to stop this barbarity.”
‘ “And I command you to continue this punishment.”
‘Without looking down he said, “Refusal to carry out this order will result in your own immediate execution.”
‘I walked back over the dry earth to that gate. I stood in front of those two men. I was going to say to the one who seemed capable of understanding that I had no choice, I must do this terrible thing to him. But I left a fatal
pause of a second to elapse. Perhaps because I realized, close to him, what had happened to his mouth. It had been burnt, not simply bludgeoned or kicked. I remembered that man with the iron stake, the electric fire. They had broken in his teeth and branded his tongue, burnt his tongue right down to the roots with red-hot iron. That word he shouted must finally have driven them beyond endurance. And in those astounding five seconds, the most momentous of my life, I understood this guerilla. I mean that I understood far better than he did himself what he was. He helped me. He managed to stretch his head towards me and say the word he could not say. It was almost not a sound, but a contortion in his throat, a five-syllabled choking. But once again, one last time, it was unmistakably that word. And the word was in his eyes, in his being, totally in his being. What did Christ say on the cross? Why hast thou forsaken me? What this man said was something far less sympathetic, far less pitiful, even far less human, but far profounder. He spoke out of a world the very opposite of mine. In mine life had no price. It was so valuable that it was literally priceless. In his, only one thing had that quality of pricelessness. It was eleutheria: freedom. He was the immalleable, the essence, the beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond civilization, beyond history. He was not God, because there is no God we can know. But he was a proof that there is a God that we can never know. He was the final right to deny. To be free to choose. He, or what manifested itself through him, even included the insane Wimmel, the despicable German and Austrian troops. He was every freedom, from the very worst to the very best. The freedom to desert on the battlefield of Neuve Chapelle. The freedom to confront a primitive God at Seidevarre. The freedom to disembowel peasant girls and castrate with wire-cutters. He was something that passed beyond morality but sprang out of the very essence of things -that comprehended all, the freedom to do all, and stood against only one thing – the prohibition not to do all.