Captain Corelli's mandolin (22 page)

He began visibly to perspire. The doctor shot him a glance that was intended to be, and was, deeply withering. `Pathetic,' he said, and turned on his heel. He went indoors and sat down at his desk, very satisfied with himself. He leaned forward, annoyed Psipsina by tickling her whiskers, and confided to her, `Got him on the run already.'

Outside in the yard Captain Corelli was dumbfounded, and Pelagia was feeling sorry for him. `Your father is . . . ' he said, and the words failed him. `Yes, he is,' confirmed Pelagia.

'Where am I to sleep?' asked Corelli, glad of anything that might be a distraction, all his good humour having dried to dust.

'You will have my bed,' said Pelagia.

Under normal circumstances Antonio Corelli would have asked brightly, 'Are we to share it then? How hospitable,' but now, after the doctor's words, he was appalled by this information. `It's out of the question,' he said briskly. 'Tonight I shall sleep in the yard, and tomorrow I shall request alternative accommodation.'

Pelagia was shocked by the feelings of alarm that arose in her breast. Could it be that there was something inside her that wanted this foreigner, this interloper, to stay? She went inside and relayed the Italian's decision to her father.

'He can't go,' he said. `How am I supposed to browbeat him if he isn't here? And anyway, he seems like a personable boy.'

'Papakis, you made him feel like a flea. I almost felt sorry for him.'

`You did feel sorry for him, koritsimou. I saw it in your face.'

He took his daughter's arm and went back out with her. `Young man,' he said to the captain, `you are staying here, whether you like it or not. It is quite possible that your quartermaster will decide to impose someone even worse.'

'But your daughter's bed, Dottore? It would not be . . . it would be a terrible thing.'

'She will be comfortable in the kitchen, Captain. I don't care how bad you feel, that is not my problem. I am not the aggressor. Do you understand me?'

`Yes,' said the captain, overpowered, and not entirely grasping what was happening to him.

'Kyria Pelagia will bring water, some coffee, and some mezedakia to eat. You will find that we do not lack hospitality. It is our tradition, Captain, to be hospitable even to those who do not merit it. It is a question of honour, a motive which you may find somewhat foreign and unfamiliar. Your sizeable friend is welcome to join us.'

Carlo and the captain uneasily partook of the tiny spinach pies, the fried baby squid and the dolmades stuffed with rice. The doctor glowered at them inwardly delighted with the successful inauguration of his novel project for resistance, and the two soldiers avoided his gaze, commenting politely and inconsequentially upon the beauty of the night, the impossible size of the olive tree, and any and every irrelevance that occurred to them.

Carlo drove gratefully away, and the captain sat on Pelagia's bed miserably. It was the time for an evening meal, and despite the plates of appetisers his stomach growled from force of habit. The thought of more of that wonderful food left him feeling weak. The doctor came in once and told him, `The answer to your problem is to eat a lot of onions, tomatoes, parsley, basil, oregano, and garlic. The garlic will be an antiseptic for the fissures, and the other things, taken together, will soften the stools. It is very important not to strain at all, and if you eat meat, it must always be accompanied by a great deal of fluid and a sideplate of vegetables.'

The captain watched him leave the room, and felt more humiliated than he had ever thought possible. How could the old man possibly have known that he suffered from haemorrhoids? In the kitchen the doctor asked Pelagia whether or not she had noticed that the captain walked very carefully and occasionally winced.

Father and daughter sat down to eat, both of them clattering the cutlery on the plates, and waited until they were sure that the Italian must be dying of hunger and feeling like a ragamuffin boy who has been sent to Coventry at school, and then they invited him to join them. He sat with them and ate in silence.

`This is Cephallonian meat pie,' said the doctor in an informative tone of voice, `except that, thanks to your people, it doesn't have any meat in it.'

Afterwards, when the curfew patrol had already passed, the doctor announced his intention to go for a walk. `But the curfew . . . ' protested Corelli, and the doctor replied, 'I was born here, this is my island.'

He gathered up his hat and his pipe, and swept out.

'I must insist,' he called vainly after the doctor, who prudently circled about the house and waited a quarter of an hour as he sat upon the wall, eavesdropping on the conversation of the two young people.

Pelagia looked at Corelli as he sat at the table, and felt the need to comfort him.

'What is Antonia?' she asked.

He avoided her eyes, `My mandolin. I am a musician.'

`A musician? In the Army?'

`When I joined, Kyria Pelagia, Army life consisted mainly of being paid for sitting about doing nothing. Plenty of time for practice, you see. I had a plan to become the best mandolin player in Italy, and then I would leave the Army and earn a living. I didn't want to be a cafe player, I wanted to play Hummel and Conforto and Giuliani. There's not much demand, so you have to be very good.'

`You mean you're a soldier by mistake?' asked Pelagia, who had never heard of any of these composers.

`It was a plan that went wrong; the Duce got some big ideas.' He looked at her wistfully.

`After the war,' she said.

He nodded and smiled, `After the war.'

`I want to be a doctor,' said Pelagia, who had not even mentioned this idea to her father.

That night, just as she was drifting off to sleep beneath her blankets, she heard a muffled cry, and shortly afterwards the captain appeared in the kitchen, a little wide-eyed, a towel wrapped about his waist. She sat up, clutching the blankets about her breasts.

`Forgive me,' he said, perceiving her alarm, `but here appears to be an enormous weasel on my bed.'

Pelagia laughed, `That's not a weasel, that's Psipsina. She is our pet. She always sleeps on my bed.'

`What is it?'

Pelagia could not resist essaying her father's mode of resistance: `Haven't you heard of Greek cats?'

The captain looked at her suspiciously, shrugged his shoulders, and returned to his room. He approached the pine marten and stroked it on the forehead with a tentative forefinger. It felt very soft and comforting. `Micino, micino,' he cooed speculatively, and fondled her ears. Psipsina sniffed at the wiggling digit, did not recognise it, surmised that it might be edible, and bit it.

Captain Antonio Corelli snatched his hand away, watched the beads of blood well out of his finger, and fought against the shamingly childish tears that were rising unbidden to his eyes. He attempted by force of will to suppress the mounting sting of the bite, and knew for certain that he had been pierced through to the bone. Never, in all his life, had he felt so unloved. These Greeks. When they said `ne' is meant `yes', when they nodded it meant `no', and the more angry they were, the more they smiled. Even the cats were from another planet, and moreover could have no possible motive for such malice. He lay abjectly upon the hard cold floor, unable to sleep, until at last Psipsina missed Pelagia, and went off to look for her. He climbed back into the bed and sank gratefully into the mattress. `Mmm,' he said to himself, and realised that he was savouring a lingering, vanishing smell of young woman. He thought about Pelagia for a while, remembering the clean scoop of white flesh as the neck became the breast and shoulder, and finally fell asleep.

He woke in the night, suffering from the sensation that his neck was abominably hot and that his chin was ticklish. As he emerged into awareness it became horribly evident that the Greek cat had wrapped itself about his neck and was fast asleep. Horrified and afraid, he tried to move a little. The animal growled sleepily.

He lay paralysed for what seemed like hours, sweating, resisting the itching and the unnatural warmth, listening to the owls and the unholy noises of the night. At some point he noticed that the encumbrance across his neck smelled consolingly sweet. It was an aroma that mingled pleasantly with the smell of Pelagia. He drifted away at last, and for some reason dreamed irrelevantly of elephants, Bakelite, and horses.

The hour shortly after dawn found Captain Antonio Corelli waiting in vain at the entrance to the yard for Carlo to come and fetch him away. The latter had broken a shackle on the suspension of his jeep, and was engaged in kicking the tyres and swearing at the profound potholes in the road that had undone his early start. He already possessed a deep horror of letting down the captain, a horror shared by all the men who served under him, and his fractious ill-temper was exacerbated when he tried to light a cigarette, only to find that the desiccated rod of powdery tobacco slid out of its tube of paper and smouldered insolently in the dust, leaving him with a piece of scorchingly hot paper that stuck tenaciously to his lower lip. He pulled the paper away, and it removed a tag of skin. He licked the stinging wound, touched it with his finger, and cursed the Germans for their success in monopolising the supplies of the best tobacco. A thin old peasant mounted side-saddle on a donkey passed him by, saw the broken state of the vehicle as it sagged to one side, smiled with satisfaction, and raised a hand in a gesture of casual greeting. Carlo gritted his teeth and smiled. `Fuck the war,' he said, since one greeting was as good as another to a Greek. It looked as though there would be no La Scala that morning, unless the opera society could manage the Soldiers' Chorus on its own. He abandoned the jeep and began to trudge towards the village.

Velisarios passed him, and the two men looked at one another with something like recognition. However thin and bedraggled he had become since he had gone to the front, Velisarios was still the biggest man that anyone had ever seen, and Carlo, despite his equivalent experiences on the other side of the line, was also the biggest man that anyone had ever seen. Both of these Titans had become accustomed to the saddening suspicion within themselves that they were freaks; to be superhuman was a burden that had seemed impossible to share and impossible to explain to ordinary people, who would have been incredulous.

They were both astonished, and for a moment forgot that they were enemies. `Hey,' exclaimed Velisarios, raising his hands in a gesture of pleasure. Carlo, stumped for an exclamation that would make sense to a Greek, aimed inaccurately for a failed compromise that sounded very like `Ung'. Carlo offered one of his atrocious cigarettes; Velisarios took one, and they gesticulated and made sour faces to each other as they drew on the smoke that was sharp as needles. `Fuck the war,' said Carlo, by way of farewell, and the two went on their opposite ways, Carlo beginning to feel very content. A kilometre away, Velisarios came across the crippled jeep, paused in thought, and went to fetch a friend. He returned, lifted the vehicle at each corner in turn, and his companion removed the wheels. Then he drained the water from the radiator, and refilled it with petrol from the jerrycan strapped to the back.

Corelli continued to wait. The doctor passed by on his way to the kapheneion, in an anticipatory state of annoyance on account of the fact that the coffee being served these days tasted of river mud and tar, and was becoming more expensive by the second. `Boon giorno,' called the captain, and the doctor turned. `I trust that you slept badly,' he said.

The captain smiled resignedly, `For some reason I dreamed about animals made of Bakelite. They were like dolphins with sharp edges, and they were leaping about. It was very disturbing. Also, your cat bit me.'

He held out the wounded finger, and the doctor inspected it. `It's very swollen,' he said, `and it will probably go septic. Pine martens can have a nasty bite. If I were you I would show it to a doctor.'

With that he went on his way, leaving the captain to repeat foolishly, `Pine martens?'

He realised that Pelagia had only made a small joke at his expense, but, curiously, it left him feeling let down and very gullible.

When Pelagia came out she found the usurper of her bed throwing Lemoni up and down in the air by the armpits. The child was whooping and laughing, and it appeared that what was transpiring was a lesson in Italian. `Bells fanciulla,' the captain was saying. He was waiting for Lemoni to repeat it. `Bla fanshla,' she giggled, and the captain threw her up, exclaiming, `No, no, bells fanciulla.'

He dwelt lovingly upon the doubled L, waited for Lemoni to descend, and raised an eyebrow as he awaited her next attempt. `Bla flanshla,' she said triumphantly, only to be launched skyward again.

Pelagia smiled as she watched, and then Lemoni saw her. The captain followed the cast of her glance, and straightened up, a little embarrassed, `Boon giorno, Kyria Pelagia. It seems that my driver has been delayed.'

`What's it mean, what's it mean?' demanded Lemoni, whose faith in the omniscience of adults was such that she was sure that Pelagia would be able to tell her. Pelagia patted her cheek, cleared the strands of hair from her eyes, and told her, `It means "pretty puss", koritsimou. Off you go now, I'm sure that someone is missing you.'

The little girl skipped away in her usual capricious and erratic manner, waving her arms and chanting, `Bla, bla, bla. Bla, bla, bla.'

Corelli reproached Pelagia, `Why did you send her away? We were having a wonderful time.'

`Fraternisation,' answered Pelagia. `It's indecent, even in a child.'

Corelli's face fell, and he scuffed the toe of his boot in the dust.

He looked up the sky, dropped his head, and sighed. Without looking at Pelagia, he said with heartfelt sincerity, 'Signorina, in times like this, in a war, all of us have to make the most of what little innocent pleasure there is.'

Pelagia saw the resignation and weariness in his face, and felt ashamed of herself. In the silence that followed, both of them reflected upon their own unworthiness. Then the captain said, `One day I would like a pretty puss like that, for my own,' and without awaiting a reply he set off in the direction from which he expected Carlo to come.

Pelagia watched him leave, thinking her own thoughts. His retreating back had about it a poignant air of solitude. Then she went inside, took down the two volumes of The Complete and Concise Home Doctor, opened them out on the table, and guiltlessly read the sections about reproduction, venereal infections, parturition, and the scrotum. She proceeded at random to read about cascarilla, furred tongue, the anus and its disorders, and anxiety.

Fearing the return of her father from the kapheneion, she finally replaced the books on their shelf, and began to think of reasons for delaying her necessary trip to the well. She chopped some onions, unclear as to what recipe she was intending them to be a part of, but anxious that her father should be able to perceive some concrete evidence of activity, and then she went outside to brush her oblivious goat. She found two ticks and a small swelling in the loose skin of the haunch. She worried about whether or not she should be worried about this, and then began to think about the captain. Mandras caught her dreaming.

He had climbed out of bed, cursing and completely cured, on the day of the invasion. It was as if the advent of the Italians had been something so important, so weighty, that it precluded the luxury of indulging in his illness. The doctor had affected to be unsurprised, but Drosoula and Pelagia had agreed that there was something suspicious about an affliction that could be switched off with such a virtuoso flourish. Mandras had gone down to the sea and swum with his dolphins as though he had never been away, and had returned refreshed, the salt water drying in his tousled hair, a smile upon his face, the muscles in his torso uncontracted, and had climbed the hill with a mullet to present to Pelagia. He had ruffled Psipsina's ears, swung briefly in the olive tree, and had left the impression on Pelagia of being madder in his new sanity than he had been when he was mad. She felt guilty now, whenever she saw him, and deeply uncomfortable.

She started when he tapped her on the shoulder, and despite the effort to force a radiant smile he did not fail to see the flicker of alarm in her eyes. He ignored it, but would remember it later. `Hello,' he said, `is your father in? I've still got some bad skin on my arm.'

Glad of something objective upon which to focus her attention, she said, `Let me look at it,' whereupon he said brightly, `I was hoping to see the organ-grinder rather than the monkey.'

Mandras had heard this metaphor at the front, had liked it, and had waited a long time for an opportunity to use it. It had struck him as witty, and he had thought that what was witty was also likely to be charming. He wanted nothing so much as to be able to charm Pelagia back into the affection that he unhappily feared that he had lost.

But Pelagia's eyes flashed five, and Mandras' heart sank. `I didn't mean it,' he said; `it was a joke.'

The two young people looked at one another, as though sharing an appreciation of all that was gone, and then Mandras said, `I'm going to join the partisans.'

`Oh,' she said.

He shrugged, `I haven't any choice. I'm leaving tomorrow. I'll take my boat to Manolas.'

Pelagia was horrified, `What about the submarines? And the warships? It's madness.'

`It's worth the risk if I go at night. I can sail by the stars. I was thinking of tomorrow night.'

There was a long silence. Pelagia said, `I won't be able to write.'

`I know.'

Pelagia went inside a moment and came out bearing the waistcoat that she had so devotedly made and embroidered whilst her fiancé had been at the front. She showed it to him diffidently, saying, `This is what I was making for you, to dance at feasts. Do you want to take it now?'

Mandras took it and held it up. He cocked his head to one side and said, `It doesn't quite match up, does it? I mean, the pattern is a little different on each side.'

Pelagia felt a pang of disappointment that tasted of betrayal. `I tried so hard,' she exclaimed piteously, in a rush of emotion, `and I can never please you.'

Mandras smote his forehead with the heel of his palm, screwed up- his face in self-criticism, and said, `O God, I am sorry. I didn't mean it the way it came out.'

He sighed and shook his head. `Ever since I went away, my mouth and my heart and my brain don't seem so well connected. Everything is upside down.'

Pelagia took back the waistcoat and told him, `I'll try to put it right. What does your mother say?'

He looked at her appealingly, `I was hoping that you could tell her. I couldn't bear to hear her weeping and pleading if I tell her myself.'

Pelagia laughed bitterly, `Are you such a coward, then?'