It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. Ostracised at first, he proves in time to be peace-loving, humorous – and a consummate musician.
A burgeoning love with the local doctor’s daughter, whose letters to her fiancé – and members of the underground – go unanswered, seems inevitable. But can it survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender?
Louis de Bernières’ works include novels, a short story collection and a radio play. His 2008 novel, The Partisan’s Daughter was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award, and his most recent work, Notwithstanding, was published in 2009. An international bestseller, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Novel in 2004.
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Vintage
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London SW1V 2SA
Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at
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Copyright © Louis de Bernières 1994
The Poem The Soldier from the collection Requiem is reprinted by kind permission of Miss E. A. Wolfe
Louis de Bernières has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Martin Secker and Warburg Limited
Published by Vintage 2011
www.vintage-books.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099553991
To my mother and father, who in different places and in different ways fought against the Fascists and the Nazis, lost many of their closest friends, and were never thanked.
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
1. Dr Iannis Commences his History and is Frustrated
2. The Duce
3. The Strongman
4. L’Omosessuale (1)
5. The Man who Said ‘No’
6. L’Omosessuale (2)
7. Extreme Remedies
8. A Funny Kind of Cat
9. August 15th, 1940
10. L’Omosessuale (3)
11. Pelagia and Mandras
12. All the Saint’s Miracles
13. Delirium
14. Grazzi
15. L’Omosessuale (4)
16. Letters to Mandras at the Front
17. L’Omosessuale (5)
18. The Continuing Literary Travails of Dr Iannis
19. L’Omosessuale (6)
20. The Wild Man of the Ice
21. Pelagia’s First Patient
22. Mandras Behind the Veil
23. April 30th, 1941
24. A Most Ungracious Surrender
25. Resistance
26. Sharp Edges
27. A Discourse on Mandolins and a Concert
28. Liberating the Masses (1)
29. Etiquette
30. The Good Nazi (1)
31. A Problem with Eyes
32. Liberating the Masses (2)
33. A Problem with Hands
34. Liberating the Masses (3)
35. A Pamphlet Distributed on the Island, Entitled with the Fascist Slogan ‘Believe, Fight, and Obey’
36. Education
37. An Episode Confirming Pelagia’s Belief that Men do not Know the Difference Between Bravery and a Lack of Common Sense
38. The Origin of Pelagia’s March
39. Arsenios
40. A Problem with Lips
41. Snails
42. How like a Woman is a Mandolin
43. The Great Big Spiky Rustball
44. Theft
45. A Time of Innocence
46. Bunnios
47. Dr Iannis Counsels his Daughter
48. La Scala
49. The Doctor Advises the Captain
50. A Time of Hiatus
51. Paralysis
52. Developments
53. First Blood
54. Carlo’s Farewell
55. Victory
56. The Good Nazi (2)
57. Fire
58. Surgery and Obsequy
59. The Historical Cachette
60. The Beginning of her Sorrows
61. Every Parting is a Foretaste of Death
62. Of the German Occupation
63. Liberation
64. Antonia
65. 1953
66. Rescue
67. Pelagia’s Lament
68. The Resurrection of the History
69. Bean by Bean the Sack Fills
70. Excavation
71. Antonia Sings Again
72. An Unexpected Lesson
73. Restitution
Acknowledgements
Copyright
The Soldier
Down some cold field in a world unspoken
the young men are walking together, slim and tall,
and though they laugh to one another, silence is not broken;
there is no sound however clear they call.
They are speaking together of what they loved in vain here,
but the air is too thin to carry the thing they say.
They were young and golden, but they came on pain here,
and their youth is age now, their gold is grey.
Yet their hearts are not changed, and they cry to one another,
‘What have they done with the lives we laid aside?
Are they young with our youth, gold with our gold, my brother?
Do they smile in the face of death, because we died?’
Down some cold field in a world uncharted
the young seek each other with questioning eyes.
They question each other, the young, the golden-hearted,
of the world that they were robbed of in their quiet paradise.
HUMBERT WOLFE
DR IANNIS HAD enjoyed a satisfactory day in which none of his patients had died or got any worse. He had attended a surprisingly easy calving, lanced one abscess, extracted a molar, dosed one lady of easy virtue with Salvarsan, performed an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema, and had produced a miracle by a feat of medical prestidigitation.
He chuckled to himself, for no doubt this miracle was already being touted as worthy of St Gerasimos himself. He had gone to old man Stamatis’ house, having been summoned to deal with an earache, and had found himself gazing down into an aural orifice more dank, be-lichened, and stalagmitic even than the Drogarati cave. He had set about cleaning the lichen away with the aid of a little cotton, soaked in alcohol, and wrapped about the end of a long matchstick. He was aware that old man Stamatis had been deaf in that ear since childhood, and that it had been a constant source of pain, but was nonetheless surprised when, deep in that hairy recess, the tip of his matchstick seemed to encounter something hard and unyielding; something, that is to say, which had no physiological or anatomical excuse for its presence. He took the old man over to the window, threw open the shutters, and an explosion of midday heat and light instantaneously threw the room into an effulgent dazzle, as though some importunate and unduly luminous angel had misguidedly picked that place for an epiphany. Old Stamatis’ wife tutted; it was simply bad housekeeping to allow that much light into the house at such an hour. She was sure that it stirred up the dust; she could clearly see the motes rising up from the surfaces.
Dr Iannis tilted the old man’s head and peered into the ear. With his long matchstick he pressed aside the undergrowth of stiff grey hairs embellished with flakes of exfoliated scurf. There was something spherical within. He scraped its surface to remove the hard brown cankerous coating of wax, and beheld a pea. It was undoubtedly a pea; it was light green, its surface was slightly wrinkled, and there could not be any doubt in the matter. ‘Have you ever stuck anything down your ear?’ he demanded.
‘Only my finger,’ replied Stamatis.
‘And how long have you been deaf in this ear?’
‘Since as long as I can remember.’
Dr Iannis found an absurd picture rising up before his imagination. It was Stamatis as a toddler, with the same gnarled face, the same stoop, the same overmeasure of aural hair, reaching up to the kitchen table and taking a dried pea from a wooden bowl. He stuck it into his mouth, found it too hard to bite, and crammed it into his ear. The doctor chuckled, ‘You must have been a very annoying little boy.’
‘He was a devil.’
‘Be quiet, woman, you didn’t even know me in those days.’
‘I have your mother’s word, God rest her soul,’ replied the old woman, pursing her lips and folding her arms, ‘and I have the word of your sisters.’
Dr Iannis considered the problem. It was undoubtedly an obdurate and recalcitrant pea, and it was too tightly packed to lever it out. ‘Do you have a fishhook, about the right size for a mullet, with a long shank? And do you have a light hammer?’
The couple looked at each other with the single thought that their doctor must have lost his mind. ‘What does this have to do with my earache?’ asked Stamatis suspiciously.
‘You have an exorbitant auditory impediment,’ replied the doctor, ever conscious of the necessity for maintaining a certain iatric mystique, and fully aware that ‘a pea in the ear’ was unlikely to earn him any kudos. ‘I can remove it with a fishhook and a small hammer; it’s the ideal way of overcoming un embarras de petit pois.’ He spoke the French words in a mincingly Parisian accent, even though his irony was apparent only to himself.
A hook and a hammer were duly fetched, and the doctor carefully straightened the hook on the stone flags of the floor. He then summoned the old man and told him to lay his head on the sill in the light. Stamatis lay there rolling his eyes, and the old lady put her hands over hers, watching through her fingers. ‘Hurry up, Doctor,’ exclaimed Stamatis, ‘this sill is hotter than hell.’
The doctor carefully inserted the straightened hook into the hirsute orifice and raised the hammer, only to be deflected from his course by a hoarse shriek very reminiscent of that of a raven. Perplexed and horrified, the old wife was wringing her hands and keening, ‘O, o, o, you are going to drive a fishhook into his brain. Christ have mercy, all the saints and Mary protect us.’
This interjection gave the doctor pause; he reflected that if the pea was very hard, there was a good chance that the barb would not penetrate, but would drive the pea deeper into its recess. The drum might even be broken. He straightened up and twirled his white moustache reflectively with one forefinger. ‘Change of plan,’ he announced. ‘I have decided upon further thought that it would be better to fill his ear up with water and mollify the supererogatory occlusion. Kyria, you must keep this ear filled with warm water until I return this evening. Do not allow the patient to move, keep him lying on his side with his ear full. Is that understood?’
Dr Iannis returned at six o’clock and hooked the softened pea successfully without the aid of a hammer, small or otherwise. He worked it out deftly enough, and presented it to the couple for their inspection. Encrusted with thick dark wax, rank and malodorous, it was recognisable to neither of them as anything leguminous. ‘It’s very papilionaceous, is it not?’ enquired the doctor.
The old woman nodded with every semblance of having understood, which she had not, but with an expression of wonder alight in her eyes. Stamatis clapped his hand to the side of his head and exclaimed, ‘It’s cold in there. My God, it’s loud. I mean everything is loud. My own voice is loud.’
‘Your deafness is cured,’ announced Dr Iannis. ‘A very satisfactory operation, I think.’
‘I’ve had an operation,’ said Stamatis complacently. ‘I’m the only person I know who’s had an operation. And now I can hear. It’s a miracle, that’s what it is. My head feels empty, it feels hollow, it feels as though my whole head has filled up with spring water, all cold and clear.’
‘Well, is it empty, or is it full?’ demanded the old lady. ‘Talk some sense when the doctor has been kind enough to cure you.’ She took Iannis’ hand in both of her own and kissed it, and shortly afterwards he found himself walking home with a fat pullet under each arm, a shiny dark aubergine stuffed into each pocket of his jacket, and an ancient pea wrapped up in his handkerchief, to be added to his private medical museum.
It had been a good day for payments; he had also earned two very large and fine crayfish, a pot of whitebait, a basil plant, and an offer of sexual intercourse (to be redeemed at his convenience). He had resolved that he would not be taking up that particular offer, even if the Salvarsan were effective. He was left with a whole evening in which to write his history of Cephallonia, as long as Pelagia had remembered to purchase some more oil for the lamps.
‘The New History of Cephallonia’ was proving to be a problem; it seemed to be impossible to write it without the intrusion of his own feelings and prejudices. Objectivity seemed to be quite unattainable, and he felt that his false starts must have wasted more paper than was normally used on the island in the space of a year. The voice that emerged in his account was intractably his own; it was never historical. It lacked grandeur and impartiality. It was not Olympian.
He sat down and wrote: ‘Cephallonia is a factory that breeds babies for export. There are more Cephallonians abroad or at sea than there are at home. There is no indigenous industry that keeps families together, there is not enough arable land, there is an insufficiency of fish in the ocean. Our men go abroad and return here to die, and so we are an island of children, spinsters, priests, and the very old. The only good thing about it is that only the beautiful women find husbands amongst those men that are left, and so the pressure of natural selection has ensured that we have the most beautiful women in all of Greece, and perhaps in the whole region of the Mediterranean. The unhappy thing about this is that we have beautiful and spirited women married to the most grotesque and inappropriate husbands, who are good for nothing and never could be, and we have some sad and ugly women that nobody wants, who are born to be widows without ever having had a husband.’
The doctor refilled his pipe and read this through. He listened to Pelagia clattering outdoors in the yard, preparing to boil the crayfish. He read what he had written about beautiful women, and remembered his wife, as lovely as her daughter had become, and dead from tuberculosis despite everything he had been able to do. ‘This island betrays its own people in the mere act of existing,’ he wrote, and then he crumpled the sheet of paper and flung it into the corner of the room. This would never do; why could he not write like a writer of histories? Why could he not write without passion? Without anger? Without the sense of betrayal and oppression? He picked up the sheet, already bent at the corners, that he had written first. It was the title page: ‘The New History of Cephallonia’. He crossed out the first two words and substituted ‘A Personal’. Now he could forget about leaving out the loaded adjectives and the ancient historical grudges, now he could be vitriolic about the Romans, the Normans, the Venetians, the Turks, the British, and even the islanders themselves. He wrote:
‘The half-forgotten island of Cephallonia rises improvidently and inadvisedly from the Ionian Sea; it is an island so immense in antiquity that the very rocks themselves exhale nostalgia and the red earth lies stupefied not only by the sun, but by the impossible weight of memory. The ships of Odysseus were built of Cephallonian pine, his bodyguards were Cephallonian giants, and some maintain that his palace was not in Ithaca but in Cephallonia.
‘But even before that wily and itinerant king was favoured by Athene or set adrift through the implacable malice of Poseidon, Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples were chipping knives from obsidian and casting nets for fish. The Mycenean Hellenes arrived, leaving behind the shards of their amphorae and their breast-shaped tombs, bequeathing progeny who, long after the departure of Odysseus, would fight for Athens, be tyrannised by Sparta, and then defeat even the megalomaniac Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander, curiously known as “the Great” and a more preposterous megalomaniac still.
‘It was an island filled with gods. On the summit of Mt Aenos there was a shrine to Zeus, and another upon the tiny islet of Thios. Demeter was worshipped for making the island the breadbasket of Ionia, as was Poseidon, the god who had raped her whilst disguised as a stallion, leaving her to give birth to a black horse and a mystical daughter whose name was lost when the Eleusinian mysteries were suppressed by the Christians. Here was Apollo, slayer of the Python, guardian of the navel of the earth, beautiful, youthful, wise, just, strong, hyperbolically bisexual, and the only god to have had a temple made for him by bees out of wax and feathers. Here Dionysus was worshipped also, the god of wine, pleasure, civilisation, and vegetation, father by Aphrodite of a little boy attached to the most gargantuan penis that ever encumbered man or god. Artemis had her worshippers here, too, the many-breasted virgin huntress, a goddess of such radically feminist convictions that she had Actaeon torn to pieces by dogs for accidentally seeing her naked, and had her paramour Orion stung to death by scorpions for touching her fortuitously. She was such a fastidious stickler for etiquette and summary chastisement that entire dynasties could be disposed of for one word out of place or an oblation five minutes late. There were temples to Athene, too, the perpetual virgin who (with great forbearance, compared to Artemis) blinded Tiresias for seeing her naked, was formidably gifted in those crafts which are indispensable to economic and domestic life, and who was the patron of oxen, horses, and olives.
‘In their choice of gods the people of the island displayed the immense and intransigent common sense that has been the secret of their survival throughout the centuries; it is obvious that the king of the deities should be worshipped, obvious that a seafaring people should placate the god of the sea, obvious that vintners should honour Dionisios (it is still the most common name on the island), obvious that Demeter should be honoured for keeping the island self-sufficient, obvious that Athene should be worshipped for her gifts of wisdom and skill in the tasks of daily life, just as it also fell to her to oversee innumerable military emergencies. Nor should it be wondered at that Artemis should have had her cult, for this was the equivalent of an infallible insurance policy; she was a troublesome gadfly whose mischief should in preference have been made to occur elsewhere.
‘The choice of Apollo as a Cephallonian cult is both the most and the least mysterious. It is the most inexplicable to those who have never been to the island, and the most inevitable to those who know it, for Apollo is a god associated with the power of light. Strangers who land here are blinded for two days.
‘It is a light that seems unmediated either by the air or by the stratosphere. It is completely virgin, it produces overwhelming clarity of focus, it has heroic strength and brilliance. It exposes colours in their original prelapsarian state, as though straight from the imagination of God in His youngest days, when He still believed that all was good. The dark green of the pines is unfathomably and retreatingly deep, the ocean viewed from the top of a cliff is platonic in its presentation of azure and turquoise, emerald, viridian, and lapis lazuli. The eye of a goat is a living semi-precious stone half way between amber and arylide, and the crickets are the fluorescent green of the youngest shoots of grass in the original Eden. Once the eyes have adjusted to the extreme vestal chastity of this light, the light of any other place is miserable and dank by comparison; it is nothing more than something to see by, a disappointment, a blemish. Even the seawater of Cephallonia is easier to see through than the air of any other place; a man may float in the water watching the distant sea bed, and clearly see lugubrious rays that for some reason are always accompanied by diminutive flatfish.’
The learned doctor leaned back and read through what he had just written. It seemed really very poetic to him. He read it through again and relished some of the phrases. In the margin he wrote, ‘Remember; all Cephallonians are poets. Where can I mention this?’
He went out into the yard and relieved himself into the patch of mint. He nitrogenated the herbs in strict rotation, and tomorrow it would be the turn of the oregano. He returned indoors just in time to catch Pelagia’s little goat eating his writings with evident satisfaction. He tore the paper from the animal’s mouth and chased it back outside. It skittered out of the door to bleat indignantly behind the massive trunk of the olive tree.
‘Pelagia,’ remonstrated the doctor, ‘your accursed ruminant has eaten everything I’ve written tonight. How many times do I have to tell you not to let it indoors? Any more incidents like this, and it’ll end up on a spit. That’s my final word. It’s hard enough to stick to the point without that animal sabotaging everything I’ve done.’
Pelagia looked up at her father and smiled: ‘We’ll be eating at about ten o’clock.’
‘Did you hear what I said? I said no more goats inside the house, is that understood?’
She left off slicing a pepper, brushed a stray hair from her face, and replied, ‘You’re as fond of him as I am.’
‘In the first place, I am not fond of the ruminant, and in the second place you will not argue with me. In my day no daughter argued with her father. I will not permit it.’
Pelagia put one hand on her hip and pulled a wry face. ‘Papas,’ she said, ‘it still is your day. You aren’t dead yet, are you? Anyway, the goat is fond of you.’
Dr Iannis turned away, disarmed and defeated. It was a most damnable thing when a daughter pulled feminine wiles upon her own father and reminded him of her mother at the same time. He returned to his table and took a new sheet of paper. He recalled that in his last effort he had somehow managed to stray from the subject of gods to the subject of fish. From a literary point of view it was probably just as well that it had been eaten. He wrote: ‘Only an island as impudent as Cephallonia would have the insouciance to situate itself upon a faultline that exposes it to the recurrent danger of cataclysmic earthquakes. Only an island as lackadaisical as this would allow itself to be infested by such troupes of casual and impertinent goats.’
COME HERE. YES, you. Come here. Now tell me something; which is my best profile, right or left? Really, do you think so? I am not so sure. I think that perhaps the lower lip has a better set on the other side. O, you agree do you? I suppose you agree with everything I say? O, you do. Then how am I supposed to rely on your judgement? What if I say that France is made of bakelite, is that true? Are you going to agree with me? What do you mean, yes sir, no sir, I don’t know sir; what kind of answer is that? Are you a cretin or something? Go and fetch me some mirrors so that I can arrange to see for myself.
Yes, it is very important and also very natural that the people should perceive in me an apotheosis of the Italian ideal. You won’t catch me being filmed in my underwear. You won’t see me in a suit and tie anymore, for that matter. I am not going to be thought of as a businessman, a mere bureaucrat, and in any case this uniform becomes me. I am the embodiment of Italy, possibly even more than the King himself. This is Italy, smart and martial, where everything runs like clockwork. Italy as inflexible as steel. One of the Great Powers, now that I have made it so.
Ah, here are the mirrors. Put it down there. No, there, idiota. Yes, there. Now put the other one there. In the name of God, do I have to do everything myself? What’s the matter with you, man? Hm, I think I like the left profile. Tilt that mirror down a bit. More, more. Stop there. That’s it. Wonderful. We must arrange it so that the people always see me from a lower position. I must always be higher than them. Send somebody round the city to find the best balconies. Make a note of it. Make a note of this, too, whilst I remember it. By order of the Duce, there is to be maximum afforestation of all the mountains in Italy. What do you mean, what for? It’s obvious isn’t it? The more trees, the more snow, everyone knows that. Italy should be colder so that the men it breeds are tougher, more resourceful, more resilient. It’s a sad truth, but it’s true nonetheless, our youngsters don’t make the soldiers that their fathers did. They need to be colder, like the Germans. Ice in the soul, that’s what we need. I swear the country’s got warmer since the Great War. It makes men lazy, it makes them incompetent. It unsuits them to empire. It turns life into a siesta. They don’t call me the Unsleeping Dictator for nothing, you don’t catch me asleep all afternoon. Make a note. This will be a new slogan for us: ‘Libro e Moschetto – Fascisto Perfetto’. I want people to understand that Fascism is not merely a social and political revolution, it’s cultural as well. Every Fascist must have a book in their knapsack, do you understand? We are not going to be philistines. I want Fascist book-clubs even in the smallest towns, and I don’t want the damned squadristi turning up and setting them on fire, is that clear?
And what’s this I hear about a regiment of Alpini marching through Verona singing ‘Vogliamo la pace e non vogliamo la guerra’? I want it investigated. I won’t have élite troops marching around singing pacifist-defeatist songs when we aren’t even properly at war yet. And talking of Alpini, what’s this about them getting in fistfights with the Fascist legionnaires? What else have I got to do to make the military accept the militia? How about this for another slogan; ‘War is to Man what Motherhood is to Woman’? Very good, I think you’ll agree. A fine slogan with a lot of virility to it, much better than ‘Church, Kitchen and Children’ any day of the week. Call Clara and tell her I’ll be coming tonight if I can get away from my wife. How’s this for another slogan: ‘With Daring Prudence’? Are you sure? I don’t remember Benni using it in a speech. Must have been years ago. Perhaps it’s not so good.
Make a note of this. I want it made absolutely clear to our people in Africa that the practice of so-called ‘madamismo’ has to end. I really cannot countenance the idea of men of Italy setting up house with native women and diluting the purity of the blood. No, I don’t care about native prostitutes. The sciarmute are indispensable to the morale of our men over there. I just won’t have love affairs, that’s all. What do you mean, Rome was assimilationist? I know that, and I know we’re reconstructing the empire, but these are different times. These are Fascist times.
And talking of wogs, have you seen my copy of that pamphlet ‘Partito e Impero’? I like that bit where it says ‘In short, we must try to give the Italian people an imperialist and racist mentality.’ Ah yes, the Jews. Well I think it’s been made perfectly clear that Jewish Italians have to decide whether they are Italians first or Jews. It’s as simple as that. It hasn’t escaped my notice that international Jewry is anti-Fascist. I’m not stupid. I know perfectly well that the Zionists are the tools of British foreign policy. As far as I am concerned we must enforce these employment quotas on Jews in public office; I will not tolerate any disproportion and I don’t care if it means that some towns end up with no mayor. We must keep in step with our German comrades. Yes, I know the Pope doesn’t like it, but he has too much to lose to stick his neck out. He knows I can repeal the Lateran pacts. I’ve got a trident up his backside and he knows I can twist it. I gave up atheist materialism for the sake of peace with the Church, and I’m not going any further.
Make a note; I want a salary freeze to keep inflation under control. Increase family subsidies by fifty percent. No I don’t think the latter will cancel out the effects of the former. Do you think I don’t understand economics? How many times do I have to explain, you dolt, that Fascist economics are immune from the cyclic disturbances of capitalism? How dare you contradict me and say it appears that the opposite is true? Why do you think we’ve been going for autarky all these years? We’ve had some teething problems, that’s all, you zuccone, you sciocco, you balordo. Send Farinacci a telegram saying that I’m sorry he’s lost a hand, but what else do you expect when you go fishing with hand-grenades? Tell the press it was because of something heroic. We’ll have an article about it in Il Regime Fascista on Monday. Something like ‘Party Boss Injured in Valiant Action Against Ethiopians’. Which reminds me, how are the experiments with poison gas going? The ones against the wog guerrillas? I hope the rifiuto die slowly that’s all. Maximum agony. Pour encourager les autres. Shall we invade France? How about ‘Fascism Transcends Class Antagonisms’? Is Ciano here yet? I’ve been getting reports from all over the country that the mood is overwhelmingly anti-war. I can’t understand it. Industrialists, bourgeoisie, working classes, even the Army, for God’s sake. Yes, I know there’s a deputation of artists and intellectuals waiting. What? They’re going to present me with an award? Send them straight in.
Good evening, gentlemen. I must say that it is a great pleasure to receive this from some of our, ah, greatest minds. I shall wear it with pride. How is your new novel going? Ah, I’m sorry, I quite forgot. Of course you are a sculptor. A slip of the tongue. A new statue of me? Splendid. Milan needs some monuments, does it not? Let me remind you, although I am sure you have no need of it, that Fascism is fundamentally and at bottom an aesthetic conception, and that it is your function as creators of beautiful things to portray with the greatest efficacy the sublime beauty and inevitable reality of the Fascist ideal. Never forget; if the Armed Forces are the balls of Fascism, and I am its brains, you are its imagination. You have a heavy responsibility. Now if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, affairs of state, you know how it is. I have an audience with His Majesty the King. Yes, indeed, I shall convey your profoundest sentiments of loyalty. He would expect no less. Good evening.
That’s got rid of them. Isn’t this pretty? I might give it to Clara. She is bound to find it amusing. Ah, Ciano is coming is he? About time too. Been hacking his way round a golf-course, no doubt. Damn stupid game, in my opinion. I could understand it if one was trying to hit rabbits or intercept the odd partridge. You can’t eat a hole-in-one, can you? You can’t draw the entrails of a good putt.
Ah, Galeazzo, how good to see you. Do come in. Bene, bene. And how is my dear daughter? How wonderful it is to keep government in the family, so to speak. So good to have someone one can trust. Been playing golf? I thought so. Wonderful game, so fascinating, such a challenge, as much intellectual as physical, I understand. I wish I had time for it myself. One feels so much at sea when talk turns to mashie-niblicks, cleeks, and mid-irons. Quite an Eleusinian mystery. I said ‘Eleusinian’. O never mind. What a splendid suit. Such a good cut. And such distinguished shoes too. They’re called ‘George boots’? I wonder why. Not English are they? Give me an honest military jackboot, Galeazzo; I can’t compete with you in elegance, I’ll be the first to admit. I’m just a man of the soil, and that’s the best thing to be when the soil happens to be Italian, don’t you agree?
Now look, we’ve got to sort out this Greek business once and for all. I think we’re agreed that after all our accomplishments we need a new direction. Think of it, Galeazzo; when I was a journalist Italy had no empire to speak of. Now that I am the Duce we do have one. It’s a great and lasting legacy, of that there can be no doubt. There is more acclaim for a symphony than for a quartet. But can we stop at Africa and a few islands that no one’s ever heard of? Can we rest on our laurels when all about us we see divisions within the party and find that we seem to have no central thrust to our policy? We need dynamite up the arsehole of the nation, do we not? We need a great and unifying enterprise. We need an enemy, and we need to maintain the imperial momentum. This is why I return to the subject of the Greeks.
I’ve been looking through the records. In the first place we have an historic blot to expunge, an outstanding account. I’m referring to the Tellini incident of 1923, as you no doubt realise. Incidentally, my dear Count, I have been becoming increasingly aware that you have been making foreign policy independently of me, and that consequently we have often found ourselves pulling in different directions at once. No, do not protest, I merely mention this as an unfortunate fact. Our ambassador in Athens is very confused, and perhaps it has been in our interest that he should remain so. I don’t want Grazzi dropping hints to Metaxas, and it suits us that they should remain friends. No damage has been done; we’ve taken Albania and I have written to Metaxas to reassure him and to commend his treatment of King Zog, and everything is going very well. Yes, I am aware that the British have contacted Metaxas to say that they will help defend Greece in the event of an invasion. Yes I know Hitler wants Greece in the Axis, but let’s face it, what kind of debt do we owe to Hitler? He stirs up all of Europe, there seems no limit to his greed and irresponsibility, and to cap it all he takes the Romanian oilfields without allowing us any slice of the cake at all. The cheek of it. Who does he think he is? I fear, Galeazzo, that we must base our actions upon a calculation as to which way the dice are falling, and I have to say that it is obvious that Hitler is getting all the sixes. Either we join with him and divide the spoils or else we risk an invasion from Austria as soon as the little man sees fit. It is a question of grasping opportunities and evading perils. It is also a question of expanding the empire. We must continue to stir up liberation movements in Kosovo and irredentism in Tsamouria. We get Yugoslavia and Greece. Imagine it, Galeazzo, the whole Mediterranean littoral rebuilt into a new Roman Empire. We’ve got Libya, and it’s just a question of joining the dots. We’ve got to do this without telling Hitler; I happen to know that the Greeks have been seeking his assurances. Imagine the impression on the Führer when he sees us sweep through Greece in a matter of days. It’ll make him think twice, that’s for sure. Imagine yourself at the head of a Fascist legion as you enter Athens on the turret of a tank. Imagine our colours fluttering on the Parthenon.
Do you remember the Guzzoni plan? Eighteen divisions and a year to prepare? And then I said, ‘Greece does not lie on our path, and we want nothing from her,’ and then I said to Guzzoni, ‘The war with Greece is off. Greece is a bare bone, and is not worth the life of a single Sardinian grenadier’? Well, circumstances have changed, Galeazzo. I said that because I wanted Yugoslavia. But why not take both? Who says that we’ll need a year to prepare? Some stupid old general with old-fashioned ways, that’s who. We could do it in a week with one cohort of legionnaires. There are no soldiers in the world as resolute and valiant as ours.
And the British are provoking us. I’m not talking about De Vecchi’s ravings. That reminds me. De Vecchi told you that the British attacked a submarine at Levkas, two more at Zante, and established a base at Milos. I’ve had a report from Captain Moris that none of this ever happened. You really must remember that De Vecchi is a lunatic and a megalomaniac, and one day when I remember to do so, I will string him up by his copious moustache and remove his testicles without anaesthetic. Thank God he’s in the Aegean and not here or I would be up to my neck in bullshit. The man turns the Aegean brown.
But the British have sunk the Colleoni, and the Greeks flagrantly allow British ships to take port. What do you mean, we accidentally bombed a Greek supply ship and a destroyer? Accidentally? Never mind, it’ll be fewer ships to sink later. Grazzi says there are no British bases at all in Greece, but we’ll let that pass, shall we? There’s no harm in saying that there are. The important thing is that we’ve got Metaxas shitting himself. I hope I can place credence in this report of yours that the Greek generals are with us; if that’s true, how come they’ve arrested Platis? And where has all the money gone that was supposed to bribe the officials? It amounts to millions, precious millions that would have been better spent on rifles. And are you sure that the population of Epirus really wants to be Albanian? How do you know? Ah, I see, Intelligence. I have decided, by the way, not to ask the Bulgarians if they want to invade at the same time. Of course it would make it easier for us, but it’s going to be a walkover anyway, and if the Bulgarians get their corridor to the sea it’s only going to sever our own lines of supply and communication, don’t you think? We don’t in any case want them basking in glory that is properly our own.
Now, I want you to arrange some attacks against ourselves. Our campaign requires legitimacy for reasons of international polity. No, it’s not the Americans I’m worried about; America has no military importance. But remember, we want to invade when we want to invade; I don’t want any single colossal casus belli that commits us before we are ready. Avanti piano, quasi indietro. I think we should select an Albanian patriot for assassination, so that we can blame it on the Greeks, and I think we should sink a Greek battleship in such a way that it’s obvious that we did it, but not so obvious that we can’t blame it on the British. It’s a question of judicious intimidation that will weaken the Greek will.
By the way, Galeazzo, I’ve decided that just before the invasion we’ll demobilise the Army. What do you mean, it sounds perverse? It’s a question of causing the Greeks to lower their guard, getting the harvest in, and maintaining the appearance of normalisation. Think about it, Galeazzo; think what an acute move it would be. The Greeks heave a sigh of relief, and we flatten them promptly with a hammerblow.
I’ve been speaking to the Chiefs-of-Staff, my dear Count, and I’ve asked for plans to be drawn up for the invasion of Corsica, France, and the Ionian islands, and for new campaigns in Tunisia. I’m sure we can manage it. They keep moaning about the lack of transport, and so I’ve given orders that the infantry should be trained to march fifty miles a day. There is a small problem with the Air Force. It’s all in Belgium, so I suppose I must do something about that one of these days. Keep reminding me. I must talk to Pricolo about it; I can’t have the chief of the Air Force being the only one who doesn’t know what’s happening. There are limits even to military secrecy. The Chiefs-of-Staff oppose me, Galeazzo. Badoglio keeps looking at me as though I were mad. One day he’s going to look Nemesis in the face and find that the face is mine. I won’t have it. I think we should take Crete too, and deny it to the British.
Jacomoni has telegraphed me to the effect that we can expect extensive treachery within the Greek ranks, that the Greeks hate Metaxas and the King, are very depressed, and that they are contemplating the abandonment of Tsamouria. God is with us, it seems. Something’s got to be done about the fact that both His Majesty and myself are the First Marshal of the kingdom; one really cannot exist amid such anomalies. Prasca, incidentally, has telegraphed me to say that he requires no reinforcements for the invasion, so how come everybody has been telling me that we can’t possibly do it without them? It’s gutlessness, that’s what. There’s no expert so deluded as a military expert, in my experience. I have to do their job for them, it seems. I get nothing but complaints about the shortage of everything. Why have all the contingency funds gone missing? I want it investigated.
Let me remind you, Galeazzo, that Hitler is opposed to this war because Greece is a totalitarian state that should naturally be on our side. So don’t tell him. We’re going to show him an example of Blitzkrieg that’ll make him green with envy. And I don’t care if it brings the British in against us. We’ll thrash them too.
WHO LET THAT CAT IN HERE? SINCE WHEN HAVE WE HAD A PALACE CAT? IS THAT THE CAT THAT SHAT IN MY HELMET? YOU KNOW I CAN’T STAND CATS. WHAT DO YOU MEAN, IT SAVES ON MOUSETRAPS? DON’T TELL ME WHEN I CAN OR CANNOT USE MY REVOLVER INDOORS. STAND BACK OR YOU’LL CATCH A BULLET TOO. O God, I feel sick. I’m a sensitive man, Galeazzo, I have an artistic temperament, I shouldn’t have to look at all this blood and mess. Get someone to clear it up, I don’t feel well. What do you mean it’s not dead yet? Take it out and wring its neck. NO I DON’T WANT TO DO IT MYSELF. Do you think I’m a barbarian or something? O God. Give me my helmet, quick, I need something to be sick in.
Get rid of this and get me a new helmet. I’m going to go and lie down, it must be way past siesta-time.
THE INSCRUTABLE GOATS of Mt Aenos turned windward, imbibing the damp exhalation of the sea at dawn that served the place of water in that arid, truculent, and indomitable land. Their herder, Alekos, so unaccustomed to human company that he was short of words even in his inner speech, stirred beneath his covering of hides, reached a hand for the reassuring stock of his rifle, and sank once more to sleep. There would be time enough to wake, to eat bread sprinkled with oregano, count his flock, and chivvy them to a place of pasture. His life was timeless, he might have been one of his own forebears, and his goats too would do as Cephallonian goats had always done; they would sleep at noon, concealed from the sun on the vertiginous northern slopes of cliffs, and in the evening their plangent bells might be heard even in Ithaca, carrying across the silent air and causing distant villagers to look up, wondering which herd was passing close. Alekos was a man who at sixty would be the same as he had been at twenty, thin and strong, a prodigy of slow endurance, as incapable of mercurial flight as any of his goats.
Far below him a feather of smoke rose straight into the air as a valley burned. It was uninhabited, and the maquis flamed unchecked, watched with concern only by those who feared that a wind might spring up and carry the sparks to places valuable for their dwellings, their herbs, or their tiny stony fields ringed with the piles of rocks that had been cleared for centuries and opportunely assembled into walls that rocked at the touch of a hand but fell only in times of earthquake. A Greek love of the colour of virginity had caused many of them to be painted white, as though it were not enough to be blinded by the sun alone. An itinerant patriot had daubed ENOSIS on most of them in turquoise paint, and no Cephallonian had seen fit to restore the walls to purity. Every wall, it seemed, reminded them of their membership of a family broken by the aberrant borders of senile rival empires, dispersed by an unruly sea, and victimised by a history that had placed them at the crossroads of the world.
New empires were now lapping against the shores of the old. In a short time it would no longer be a question of the conflagration of a valley and the death by fire of lizards, hedgehogs, and locusts; it would be a question of the incineration of Jews and homosexuals, gypsies and the mentally afflicted. It would be a case of Guernica and Abyssinia writ large across the skies of Europe and North Africa, Singapore and Korea. The self-anointed superior races, drunk on Darwin and nationalist hyperbole, besotted with eugenics and beguiled by myth, were winding up machines of genocide that soon would be unleashed upon a world already weary to the heart of such infinite foolery and contemptible vainglory.
But everyone admires strength and is seduced by it, including Pelagia. When she heard from a neighbour that there was a strongman in the square performing wonders and prodigies worthy of Atlas himself, she put up the broom with which she had been sweeping the yard and hurried out to join the gaggle of the inquisitive and impressionable that had gathered near the well.
Megalo Velisarios, famous all over the islands of Ionia, garbed as a pantomime Turk in pantaloons and curlicued slippers, self-proclaimed as the strongest man who had ever lived, his hair as prodigiously long as that of a Nazarene or Samson himself, was hopping on one leg in time to the clapping of hands. His arms outstretched, he bore, seated upon each stupendous bicep, a full-grown man. One of them clung tightly to his body, and the other, more studied in the virile arts, smoked a cigarette with every semblance of calm. On Velisarios’ head, for good measure, sat an anxious little girl of about six years who was complicating his manoeuvres by clamping her hands firmly across his eyes. ‘Lemoni!’ he roared. ‘Take your hands from my eyes and hold onto my hair, or I’ll have to stop.’
Lemoni was too overwhelmed to move her hands, and Megalo Velisarios stopped. With one graceful movement like that of a swan when it comes in to land, he tossed both men to their feet, and then he lifted Lemoni from his head, flung her high into the air, caught her under her arms, kissed her dramatically upon the tip of the nose, and set her down. Lemoni rolled her eyes with relief and determinedly held out her hand; it was customary that Velisarios should reward his little victims with sweets. Lemoni ate her prize in front of the whole crowd, intelligently prescient of the fact that her brother would take it from her if she tried to save it. The huge man patted her fondly upon the head, stroked her shining black hair, kissed her again, and then raised himself to his full height. ‘I will lift anything that it takes three men to lift,’ he cried, and the villagers joined in with those words that they had heard so many times before, a chorus well-rehearsed. Velisarios may have been strong, but he never varied his patter.
‘Lift the trough.’
Velisarios inspected the trough; it was carved out of one solid mass of rock and was at least two and a half metres long. ‘It’s too long,’ he said, ‘I won’t be able to get a grip on it.’
Some in the crowd made sceptical noises and the strongman advanced upon them glowering, shaking his fists and posturing, mocking himself by this caricature of a giant’s rage. People laughed, knowing that Velisarios was a gentle man who had never even become involved in a fight. With one sudden movement he thrust his arms beneath the belly of a mule, spread his legs, and lifted it up to his chest. The startled animal, its eyes popping with consternation, submitted to this unwonted treatment, but upon being set lightly down threw back its head, brayed with indignation, and cantered away down the street with its owner in close pursuit.
Father Arsenios chose just this moment to emerge from his little house and waddle portentously towards the crowd on his way to the church. He had the intention of counting the money in the wooden box where folk put coins for candles.
Father Arsenios lacked respect not because he was a walking human globe, perpetually perspiring and grunting with the effort of movement, but because he was venial; a glutton, a would-be lecher, a relentless seeker of alms and offerings, an anthropomorphised promissory note. It was said that he had violated the rule that a priest never remarries, and had come all the way from Epirus so that he could get away with it. It was said that he abused his wife. But this was said of most husbands, and often it was the truth.
‘Lift Father Arsenios,’ someone called.
‘Impossible,’ called another.
Father Arsenios quite suddenly found himself grasped beneath the armpits and lifted bodily up onto the wall. He sat there blinking, too astonished to protest, his mouth working like a fish, the sun sparkling off the droplets of sweat upon his forehead.
A few giggled, but then a guilty hush descended. There was a minute of embarrassed silence. The priest flushed crimson, Velisarios began to wish that he could crawl away and hide, and Pelagia felt her heart overflow with indignation and pity. It was a terrible crime to humiliate God’s own mouthpiece in public, however contemptible he might be as a man and as a priest. She stepped forward and extended a hand to help him down. Velisarios proffered another, but neither of them was able to prevent the unfortunate cleric from landing heavily and sprawling in the dust. He picked himself up, brushed himself off, and with a most acute sense of theatre walked away without a word. Inside the darkness of the church, behind the iconostasis, he dropped his face into his hands. It was the worst thing in the world to be a complete failure who had no prospect of any other job.
Outside in the square Pelagia was living up to her reputation as