Mr. Mani (13 page)

—Exactly.

—Right. From up there to down there...

—In a second. Just be careful, because this step is a little high for you. Here, give me your hand...

—By that olive tree, because that's our first station. Now look carefully at what you see and think of me, jumping with a great shout from the churning belly of that plane and carried off by my own private wind, which was waiting as though just for me, first to wildly snatch away my glasses and then to pull a white chute out of me while tugging at the stretcher that was now sticking straight out like the big, single wing of a strange bird. In no time I was whisked over that very coastline that you see there, floating among my comrades' cries of pain and surprise, the howls of the wolf pack pinned down by enemy fire between the sky and the earth, and flung sideways over that hill, toward those white houses scattered on the hillsides, those over there, Grandmother, which look like the sugar cubes that Opapa liked to suck in bed at night, and right smack into the branches of an olive tree surrounded by goats that greeted me with an indifferent silence...

—There ... over there, Grandmother ... those black dots out there...

—Exactly. That same flock of goats, so help me, has been standing there for the last three years. Day and night, summer and winter, it keeps reduplicating itself from the bushes...

—Yes, Grandmother, many men were shot dead in the air, thus saving their souls the return trip to heaven ... most of my company, Grandmother, was wiped out in less than two minutes...

—You'd be surprised, Grandmother, what two beastly Australians with one machine gun can do. And where do you think they were, Grandmother? Come on, guess!

—Nevertheless, take a look around you and guess ... after all, you're the widow of a famous fighting man...

—Nevertheless, try to guess...

—Wrong, Grandmother. The answer is: right where you're standing this minute! Here, their position was right by this rock. If we were to dig a little in the ground, we'd still find three-year-old cartridges. And now you see why I insisted on taking you up here, so that you could understand the whole story, right from the beginning.

—But why should they have told you about losses? It would only have spoiled your good mood and made the Austrian Genius look bad. Just remember, though, Grandmother, that a whole lot of men were killed in the operation. Months went by before we realized the full extent of it—gliders that crashed with all their occupants, dozens of men drowned at sea, parachutes that never opened, or that caught fire, or that got tangled up with each other. It was a miracle that I survived, and maybe I should thank the stretcher, Grandmother, which carried me far away from the rest of them, back behind that hill over there. In fact, if I hadn't wound up with my parachute straps caught in the branches of that olive tree, bruised all over, half-unconscious, and worst of all, without my glasses, I too, Grandmother, would probably have gone running off to look for some Englishman or Australian to put a bullet in me. But instead I stayed trapped in that thicket of branches, looking out at a soft, round world of bearded black goats whose shepherd had taken to his heels. They lifted their heads to look at me too, with a quiet tinkle of their bells—and I, Grandmother, who had never seen such black goats in my life, was more afraid of them than I was of an Englishman's bullet or some Greek's knife, because how did I know they weren't about to climb that tree and take a little bite out of me, eh, Grandmother?

—No, they weren't the least bit friendly. They were just stupid animals without the slightest curiosity. Even when I managed to free myself by cutting all the straps and strings with my medic's knife and climbed down among them, they didn't pay me any attention. They just went on grazing as if I were some kind of stone that had fallen from the sky—which is indeed how I lay there, Grandmother, like a stone, without moving. My hand was hurting me badly, and worse yet, my vision was as blurred as it was in the fifth grade, that year that you insisted I didn't need glasses...

—No, I didn't lose consciousness. I was just in such a state of shock from all that quiet around me that the only conclusion I could reach, Grandmother, as desperate as it was, was that the assault had failed and everyone was already dead or taken prisoner.

—Yes, that's what I thought, Grandmother. It was getting on toward dusk, and I felt an odd calm, quite resigned to the fact that the Führer had sent his best sons to bleed to death on this distant, rocky island simply to let Europe know that his long arm could reach the roots it grew from. And because I remembered the Ten Commandments we had been given before taking off from Athens, and especially, the sixth one, which Baron Friedrich von Heidte in person had drilled us in,
Thou shalt not surrender, thy badge of honor is victory or death,
I quickly bandaged my hand, spread my stretcher out between two rocks in a little fortified position I prepared, and, while waiting for someone I could challenge to a fight, an enemy who would be worthy of killing me, I lay down among the grazing goats and listened to the chirping of the crickets, which ever since then, Grandmother, for the last three years, has followed me around day and night without my being able to decide if it's a sound that I hate or am attracted to...

—Yes. Listen. It's as though this great cricketing were fanning out across the island, even though, oddly enough, it only makes the silence greater.

—They're everywhere, here too, among the leaves on the branches of the trees. You can't see them, but if you stick your head into these branches, you'll hear them sawing away...

—Exactly...

—It never changes. Just the same monotonous thrumming that saws the silence into dry little chips. And maybe that's what so hypnotized me, Grandmother, that I couldn't hear the shots and explosions coming from the airport in Heraklion, which was not exactly, as I later found out, blanketed by the deathly silence I thought it was...

—Later ... in prison, when I sat going over and over what I had done that day...

—Yes, for a while ... I'll get to it...

—I didn't want to distress you.

—Yes. That was one reason you didn't hear from me...

—But ... just a minute ... look here, Grandmother, this is
my
story, it's the only way I know of getting you to picture what I've been trying to tell you since starting up this trail—along which, Grandmother, if you're not too tired, I'll have to ask you to continue, so that you can see for yourself, not only the far end of the airport, which was finally captured after several days of bloody fighting by fresh forces that were landed from the sea, but the jump-off point for the private trek of Private Egon Bruner, who was temporarily cut off from history, Grandmother, in order to stumble into prehistory and into the great fan of cricket song that went on all night in deeper and deeper darkness—cut off from my olive tree too, beneath which I buried my white chute, and from the flock of goats, which I dispatched with my schmeisser to keep it from tinkling conspicuously after me ... because I had made up my mind, Grandmother, I really had, to follow the sixth commandment and not be taken prisoner if only I could find someone worthy of killing me. And so I began to head south, Grandmother ... there, take a good look at those two lovely hills over there, which the Australians, or so the Greeks told us, referred to as “Charlies,” which is a term of endearment they have for a woman's breasts, although we Germans, having noticed at once that they were not the same size, changed their hames to “Friedrich the Great” and “Friedrich the Small.” And now just picture your Egon the Second, Grandmother, advancing nearsightedly between those two Charlies on the night of May 20, 1941, fully armed and toting a big knapsack with first-aid supplies, three days' battle rations, and his stretcher, on which no doubt he intended to carry himself once he was wounded or killed, heading south on a moonless night amid the smell of fires burning under a sky like none I had ever seen back home, all fantastically lit up with stars whose names I didn't know, moving warily through vineyards whose sour grapes I picked and ate, scrambling over stone fences, keeping away from the dark, shuttered huts and avoiding the roads, on which now and then I heard the sound of some speeding car, heading steadily south in my search for a hero from one of Koch's Greek myths whom I could challenge...

—Don't rush me, Grandmother Please, I beg you, give me time, let me tell the story in my own way and at my own speed, and above all, trust me to guide you through it. Tomorrow we'll say good-bye, who knows for how long, who knows if not forever—and believe me, Grandmother, you're getting the shortest and quickest possible version I can give you, I even have it outlined here on my palm, station by station ... so please, be patient with me, because now that we're starting up the trail again you'll see that the direction I took that night, which certain individuals insisted on interpreting as a cowardly flight from battle, or at the very least, as a panic-stricken error, was from my point of view a deep penetration, a nocturnal sally into the bright womb that Koch lectured me so brilliantly about. Because now I know that if someday we're called upon to justify this horrible war that we started with the clearest premeditation, to justify the blood, the suffering, the conflagration that we've spread everywhere, we'll know what to answer and won't just have to stand there mumbling sheepishly like after the last beastly war, when we were accused of invading France to force our blood on the French and English without anyone, not even us, realizing what we were up to, which was to drive south as we've finally done, to ancient Hellas, to this island of Crete, this most wonderful place that has been from the start, Grandmother, in my own humble opinion, the true grail of our German soul, whose deepest desire, to put it most simply, is
to exit from history
by hook or by crook, if not forward then backward, so that if the French, back then, in the first war, hadn't insisted on stopping us at the frontier, we would have rushed through their country without damaging it in the least, just like, yes, like tourists of sorts, because deep down we Germans are nothing but the most passionate tourists who sometimes must conquer the countries we dream of in order to tour them unhindered, with the thoroughness to which we're accustomed...

—No, I'm not joking ... certainly not now...

—That could be. Perhaps it's just a fantasy of mine. And perhaps it's not. At least let me finish explaining myself before you judge me ... Here, hold onto me tight while you take this step. The trail gets narrower here...

—I am not stalling...

—I'm getting to that ... just a few more steps, there's a chair waiting for you up there ... this is the second station, Grandmother...

—I brought it up here this morning, just for you.

—Why not? Don't you think you deserve it?

—Of course I'll return it. But now sit down, please, yes, right over here, and take these binoculars and focus them as is best for you on that broad valley down there ... yes, there, on that little woods and the hill behind it ... exactly...

—To the right of that village, Grandmother, where the hill grows slightly darker...

—Perfect.

—They're not rocks. It's an archaeological site.

—Exactly. Exactly. That's ancient Knossos you're looking at, Grandmother, Knossos in all its glory...

—How can you not remember? The legendary Labyrinth ... the palace of King Minos ...
Then did Zeus first father of Minos, protector of Crete

—Homer.

—From the books you sent me. And thanks again for going to the trouble.

—Of course I read them.

—I know, you can't see much from here, but I wanted you at least to get a glimpse of it. I can't tell you how much I'd love to take you on a tour of that wonderful place, which I've become a student and a patron of these past three years, but Schmelling strictly forbade it. He's afraid to risk you in a partisan attack, and I couldn't get him to relent. You have no idea how worried he is about your safety—he almost wouldn't allow me to take you up this hill. He didn't rest easy until he had posted those five half-prisoners down there, those ex-Italian soldiers whom you see sitting at the bottom of the hill and keeping an eye on our little excursion.

—Yes, just for us. Why not? What else do they have to do? When we were winning the war, they were too lazy to fight it with us, and now that we're losing it, they're too lazy to run away. But enough of them, Grandmother. From here you have a clear view of the route I took that night. South! But I wasn't, perish the thought, deserting the field of battle, I was simply taking a leave of absence from it until the dead wolves in their chutes were reinforced by some living ones. And in the meantime, Grandmother, having honestly sworn by Opapa's memory not to be taken prisoner, I decided to penetrate even further, just as I was, all bruised and scratched and aching, and above all, keep in mind, exceedingly nearsighted, into the mountains, to look for some private battlefield of my own that might do until I obtained new glasses. I walked blindly on in the darkness, guided perhaps by the spirit of old Koch, which may have heard itself invoked when I jumped from the plane, making my way over fences and through orchards with the crickets sawing all around me. I must have walked a good five kilometers, although it seemed like thirty to me. And then all at once, without any warning, I found myself in the ruins of that wonderful palace of the Labyrinth, whose immense significance, Grandmother, I sensed immediately even though it was built three thousand five hundred years ago and I couldn't see it very well, so that I plunged into it faint with excitement, climbing up and down the chipped marble stairs from hall to hall and passing through the reddish columns that divided the rooms, in whose corners, by the dim, flitting starlight, I saw huge clay urns glazed with colors so magnificent that I could make them out even in the darkness. And painted on the walls, Grandmother, were slender-waisted youths and maidens in a long line that followed a beautiful, enormous red bull, whose huge V-shaped horns I already had seen on the roof of some ruin. And it was then, Grandmother, walking as though in a dream in that dark silence, that I suddenly felt very close, but unbelievably close, to the Führer, to our own Hitler, because although I still had no idea where I was, I already had guessed the secret purpose of the bloody expedition he had sent us on from afar. He was not looking to decimate the English in Crete, or for a jumping-off point to Suez—those were just excuses for his generals, so that they would order their army to this place. No, Grandmother, the Führer was obeying old Gustav Koch's imperative to look for that most ancient source at which, Grandmother, I, Private Egon Bruner, had arrived all by myself, the first German arrow to be shot from that great bow, a one-man conqueror in the night. Which was why, Grandmother, in the spirit of the sixth commandment, I decided right then and there that this was the place I was going to fight and die for...