Captain Corelli's mandolin (43 page)

Corelli did not go back to Casa Nostra before dawn, but stayed with Pelagia in the house by the doctor's consent. If it was at such short notice to be their last day together, then it seemed only humane to tolerate the risk, and in any case Corelli looked exactly like a Greek in his peasant clothes and his splendid beard that yet exposed the livid cicatrice across his cheek. Moreover he now spoke Greek well enough to fool a German who would know no Greek at all, and he even slapped the back of his hand to indicate someone's stupidity, as well as tossing his head back and clicking his tongue to signify a negative. From time to time he dreamed in Greek, a terrible frustration for his sleeping soul because this necessarily slowed the pace of his dreams' narrative, and he discovered that when speaking it his personality was different from when he spoke in Italian. He felt a fiercer man, and, for some extraordinary reason which had nothing to do with his beard, much hairier.

The three of them sat in that familiar kitchen, saddened and apprehensive, talking quietly and shaking their heads over all the memories.

"There are so many things I will never forget,' said Corelli, `like pissing on the herbs. It was when I was invited to piss on them that I knew I had been accepted., 'I wish my father would forget it,' commented Pelagia, 'it makes me anxious when I use them. I waste hours in washing them.'

'I feel guilty about leaving alive, when all my friends are dead, and Carlo is buried out there in the yard.'

`In the Odyssey, Achilles, says, "Put me on earth again and I would rather be a serf in the house of a landless man than king of all these dead men who have done with life," and he was right,' offered the doctor. 'When loved ones die, you have to five on their behalf. See things as though with their eyes. Remember how they used to say things, and use those words oneself. Be thankful that you can do things that they cannot, and also feel the sadness of it. This is how I live without Pelagia's mother. I have no interest in flowers, but for her I will look at a rock-rose or a lily. For her I eat aubergines, because she loved them. For your boys you should make music and enjoy yourself, doing it for them. And anyway,' he added, `you may not survive the voyage to Sicily.'

`Papas,' protested Pelagia, 'don't say that.'

`He's right,' said Corelli philosophically. 'And one can also see things for the living. After so much time with you two, I shall see things and imagine what you would have said. I shall miss you very badly.'

`You'll be back,' affirmed the doctor. 'You've become an islander, like us.'

`In Italy I shall have no home.'

`You must get X-rayed. God knows what I left behind inside you, and you must get the mandolin strings removed.'

`I owe my life to you, Iatre.'

`I am sorry about the scars. It was the best I could do.'

`And I am sorry, Iatre, for the rape of the island. I do not suppose we will ever be forgiven.'

'We forgave the British and the Venetians. Perhaps we won't forgive the Germans. I don't know. And in any case, barbarians have always been convenient; we have usually had someone else to blame for our catastrophes. It will be easy to forgive you, because all of you are dead.'

'Papakis,' protested Pelagia again, `don't talk like that. Do we need to be reminded, with Carlo buried in the yard?'

`It's the truth. Only the living need forgiveness, and, as you know, Captain, I must have forgiven you, or I would not have given you permission to wed my daughter.'

Pelagia and Corelli looked at one another, and the latter said, `I never asked you specifically for permission... it seemed, somehow, an effrontery. And . . .'

`Nonetheless, you have it. Nothing would please me more. But there is one condition. You must allow Pelagia to become a doctor. She is not only my daughter. She is, since I have no son, the nearest to a son that I have fathered. She must have a son's prerogatives, because she will continue my life when I am gone. I have not brought her up to be a domestic slave, for the simple reason that such company would have been tedious in the absence of a son. I confess it was selfish of me; she is now too clever to be a humble wife.'

`Am I then an honorary man?' demanded Pelagia.

'Koritsimou, you are yourself alone, but nonetheless, you are as I made you. You should be grateful. In any other house you would be scrubbing the floor whilst I talked with Antonio.'

`In any other house I would be nagging you. You should be grateful.'

`Koritsimou, I am.'

`Naturally, Pelagia shall be a doctor if she wishes. A musician would never manage on his own income alone,' said Corelli, only to be tapped smartly about the back of his head by his betrothed, who exclaimed, `You are supposed to become rich. If not, I will not marry you.'

`I was joking, I was joking.'

He turned to the doctor. `We have decided that if we have a son, we will name him Iannis.'

The doctor was visibly touched, even though this was exactly what he would have expected under the circumstances. There was a prolonged and sorrowful silence whilst all three of them pondered the imminent destruction of their mutual society, and at last Dr Iannis looked up, his eyes watering, and said simply, `Antonio, if I have ever had a son, it was you. You have a place at this table.'

In lieu of the obvious reply, which by virtue of its obviousness would necessarily have rung hollow, Corelli stood up and approached the older man, who rose from his seat. They embraced, clapping each other on the back, and then the doctor, by dint of having some emotion left to express, also embraced his daughter.

`When the war is over, I shall return,' said Corelli. `Until then I am still in the Army, and it is necessary to get rid of the Germans.'

`They are losing,' said the donor confidently. `It will not be long.'

`Don't go back to fight!' cried Pelagia. `Haven't you done enough? Haven't you had enough of death? And what about me? Don't you think of me at all?'

`Of course he thinks of you. He thinks of getting rid of them so that you can leave the house without being afraid.'

'Carlo would have done it. I can do no less.'

`You men are all so stupid!' she exclaimed. `You should give the world to women, and see how much fighting there is then.'

`Many of the andantes on the mainland are women,' said Corelli, `and many of the partisans in Yugoslavia. There would be fighting just the same, and the world has had its share of bloodthirsty queens. It is important to defeat the Nazis, and nothing could be more obvious.'

She looked up at him reproachfully and replied softly, `It was important to defeat the Fascists, but you fought for them.'

Corelli flushed, and the donor intervened, `Don't let us spoil our last day together. A man makes mistakes, he gets caught up in things, he is sometimes a sheep, and then he learns by experience and-becomes a lion.'

`I don't want you to fight,' she insisted, gazing steadily at Corelli. `You are a musician. In ancient times when there was slaughtering between tribes, the bards were spared.'

The captain aimed for a compromise, `Perhaps it won't be necessary, and perhaps they won't let me. I am sure I will not be considered fit.'

`Do something useful,' said Pelagia. `Join the fire brigade or something.'

`When I get home,' said Corelli, after an embarrassing pause, `I shall have a pot of basil on my sill to remind me of Greece. Perhaps it will bring good luck.'

He paced about the room, reminding himself of everything it held; not only the familiar objects, but its history of emotions. It was a place that still echoed with hopes, with shared confidences and jokes, past antagonisms and resentment, and the saving of a life. There hung about it a residual aroma of music and embraces that mingled with the scent of herbs and soap. Corelli stood, stroking the long flat back of Psipsina where she reclined ,along a shelf that was bare of food, and felt an unspeakable sadness well up in him that competed with the dry mouth and fluttering stomach of a man who was about to escape to sea. 'The doctor saw him standing, as lonely as a man awaiting execution, and then looked at Pelagia, sitting with her hands in her lap and her head bowed. `I'll leave you two children together,' he said. `There is a little girl dying of tuberculosis, and I should visit. It's in the spine and there's nothing to be done, but all the same...'

He left the house, and the two lovers sat opposite each other, lost for words, caressing each other's fingers. Finally the tears began to follow each other silently down her cheeks, and Corelli knelt beside her, put his arms about her, and laid his head against her chest. He was shocked all over again at how thin she was, and closed his eyes tightly, imagining that it was another world. 'I am so afraid,' she said. 'I think you won't come back, and the war goes on and on forever, and there's no safety and no hope, and I'll be left with nothing.'

'We have deep memories,' replied Corelli. 'Whether they make us glad or sad is up to us. I shall not forget you, and I will come back.'

`Promise?'

`I promise. I have given you my ring, and I have left you with Antonia.'

'We never read Carlo's Papers.'

'Too painful. We'll read them when I return, when it's not so . . . so recent.'

She stroked his hair in silence, and said finally, 'Antonio, I wish that we had . . . lain together. As a man and woman.'

`Everything at the right time, koritsimou.'

`There may not be a time.'

Mere will be. There will come a time. You have my word.'

'Psipsina will miss you. And Lemoni.'

Lemoni thinks I am dead, no doubt.'

`After you've gone I'll tell her that Barba C'relli is alive. She will be very happy.'

`You must get Velisarios to throw her into the air for me from time to time.'

And so the conversation continued, circling back upon itself and reaffirming itself, until the doctor returned at curfew, as distressed as always when he had been obliged helplessly to watch a child groping its last blind steps along the path to death. He had walked home thinking the same thoughts that such occasions always provoked: 'Is it any wonder that I lost my faith? What are you doing up there, yo! idle God? Do you think I am so easily fobbed off with one or two miracles at the feast of the saint? Do you think I'm stupid? Do you think I have no eyes?'

In his pocket he turned over the gold sovereign that the child's father had given him in payment. The British had dispensed so many of them in the funding of the andartes that they had lost their value. 'Even gold,' he reflected, 'is worth less than bread.'

That evening they shared a single scrawny leg of an old rooster that Kokolios had killed so that the rapists could not appropriate it, and Pelagia saved the bone for inclusion in a soup that also contained the bones of a hedgehog. If she cooked them long enough, they would be soft enough to chew. Afterwards she made a weak and bitter tea from the hips that she had gathered from the wild roses in the autumn, pleased to have something to do to divert her from her fears, and the three of them sat in the semi-darkness, waiting as the hours passed both too slowly and too fast.

At eleven o'clock Lieutenant Bunny Warren scratched at the window, and the doctor let him in. He entered with an air of decisive self possession that struck Pelagia as quite unlike his usual diffident self, and there was a large and obviously well-honed knife stuck through his belt. She had heard that the British Special Forces had a positively Balkan aptitude for the silent slicing of throats, and she shuddered. It was hard to imagine Bunnios doing such a thing, and the idea that he probably did it quite frequently was discomfiting.

He sat on the edge of the table and spoke in his usual mixture of colloquial Romaic and British jargon, and it was only at this point that Corelli began to wonder how it was that Pelagia and the doctor could possibly have made the acquaintance ,of a British Liaison Officer. In war, so much is bizarre that one sometimes forgets to be surprised or to ask a pertinent question.

`Standard SOPs,' began Warren. `Dark clothing only. Don't want the blighters to see us. No conversation unless absolutely necessary. Stop and listen every twenty seconds. Feet to be placed on the ground flat, ergo less crunch. Feet to descend vertically, ergo no sliding and scraping. I shall go point, doctor and Kyria Pelagia second, Corelli last. Corelli must turn and look behind at every pause.'

He handed the captain a piece of wire, at each end of which was a short stick of dowel. It took some seconds for him to appreciate that this was a garrotte, and that he might be expected to use it. `No shooting unless commanded,' continued Warren. 'In the event of one unexpected Jerry, I shall top the cad myself. In the event of two, Corelli and I shall take one each. In the event of three or more, we lie still, and at my signal we jolly well retrace and circle round.'

He looked from one face to another and asked, `Clear as water or clear as mud?'

The doctor translated these instructions for Corelli's benefit, and it was generally agreed that it was all as clear as water. Warren spoke again, `I've done a recce tonight, and Jerry's lying low. Doesn't like the cold. Warm clothing essential. Understood?'

Pelagia stood up and went into her room, returning with her blankets and something else. `Antonio,' she said, `take this. I want you to have it.'

He unwrapped the soft paper, and saw that it was the embroidered waistcoat that, so many months before, he had offered to buy. He held it up, and the gold thread glistened darkly in the half light. 'O, koritsimou,' he said, feeling the sumptuous velvet beneath his thumb and, with his forefinger, the slippery satin of the lining. He stood up, removed his jerkin, and put the waistcoat on. He buttoned it, shook his shoulders to settle it comfortably, and exclaimed; 'It fits exactly.'

`You will wear it to dance at our wedding,' she said, `but for now it will help to warm you on the boat.'

Beyond the village of Spartia, on Cape Liaka, there is a very steep cliff that falls to the sea, and which in those days was accessible only by a long goatpath that snaked its stony way through the maquis. Its sole human use was as a track for those fishermen who in the summer spread finely meshed nets for the catching of the shoals of whitebait that gathered unsuspectingly in the lee of the 354 great rocks that jutted above the water, and its beach consisted of a strip of sand barely two metres wide in the places which were not occupied by battered stone. As rocky and perilous as it appeared, the sea bed itself consisted almost entirely of fine sand, and it was ideal for the landing of even quite large boats, since it shelved quite sharply to a good draught, and above it the cliffs projected forward, making it difficult to observe from the summit. There were German observation posts at regular intervals from Cape Aghia Pelagia to Lourdas Bay, but they were undermanned and apathetic, especially on cold December nights, and, like the Italians before them, the Germans knew very well that the real war was happening elsewhere. In the absence of officers, the sentinels would play cards and smoke cigarettes in their little wooden huts, occasionally going out to stamp their feet or urinate, looking all the while for the pole star that beckoned the direction home.