Corelli's Mandolin Read online

  I first met him in the encampment outside Argostoli, in the days before the quartermasters had arranged billets with local Greeks. It was the middle of spring, when the island is at its most serene and beautiful. Earlier in the year the weather can be most tempestuous, and later on it can become quite insufferably hot, but in spring the weather is balmy, there is a light breeze and gentle rain in the night, and there are wild flowers blooming in impossible places. After the torments of war it seemed that I had stepped off a boat into Arcadia; the impression of peace was so overwhelming that it left me feeling tearful, grateful and incredulous. It was an island where it was physically impossible to be morose, where vicious emotions could not exist. By the time that I arrived the Acqui Division had already surrendered to its charms, had sunk back into its cushions, closed its eyes, and become enclosed in a gentle dream. We forgot to be soldiers.

  The first thing that struck me was the painful clarity of the light. I suppose that it would be ridiculous to maintain that the air in Cephallonia has no density, but the light is so pellucid, so pure, that one is temporarily blinded and overwhelmed, and yet one feels no pain. I walked about for two or three days with my eyes screwed up against it. I found that in Cephallonia the night falls without the intervention of twilight, and that before it rains the light is like mother-of-pearl. After it rains, the island smells of pines, warm earth, and the dark sea.

  The second thing that struck me, curiously enough, was the incredible size and antiquity of the olive trees. They were blackened and gnarled, twisted and stout, they made me feel strangely ephemeral, as though they had seen people like us a thousand times, and had watched us depart. They had a quality of patient omniscience. In Italy we cut down our old trees and plant fresh ones, but here it was possible to place one’s hand on that antique bark, look up at the fragments of sky that glittered through the canopy, and feel dwarfed by the sensation that others might have done this very thing under this very tree a millennium before. The Greeks keep them alive by judicious pruning, generation upon generation, and perhaps the trees become accustomed to a family in the same way as a house or a flock of sheep.

  The third thing that struck me was the quiet, resolute dignity of the islanders, and I was to discover that our soldiers had also been impressed by this. Many of our boys were the rowdy and uncouth sort that you find in any kind of army, the criminal type who have serendipitously happened upon a legitimate way of being a bastard, and some of them were drunken and base enough to act as though conquest had given them rights over the populace, but the fact is that the islanders made it quite clear from the start that they were not going to take any nonsense, whether we had weapons or not. Fortunately the officers of the division were honourable men, and if it were not for this fact, I am quite sure that the islanders would soon have gone into insurrection, as they very quickly did in those places occupied by the Germans.

  I will illustrate the pride of the populace by retailing what happened when we asked them to surrender. I had this story from Captain Corelli. He was prone to dramatic exaggeration in the telling of a story because everything about him was original, he was always larger than his circumstance, and he would say things for the sake of their value as amusement, with an ironic disregard for the truth. Generally he observed life with raised eyebrows, and he had none of that fragile self-pride that prevents a man from telling a joke against himself. There were some people who thought him a little mad, but I see him as a man who loved life so much that he did not care what kind of impression he made. He adored children, and I saw him kiss a little girl on the head and whirl her in his arms whilst his whole battery was standing at attention, awaiting his inspection, and he loved to make pretty women giggle by snapping his heels together and saluting them with a military precision so consummate that it came over as a mockery of everything soldierly. When saluting General Gandin the action was sloppy to the point of insolence, so you can see what kind of man he was.

  I first came across him in the latrines of the encampment. His battery had a latrine known as ‘La Scala’ because he had a little opera club that shat together there at the same time every morning, sitting in a row on the wooden plank with their trousers about their ankles. He had two baritones, three tenors, a bass, and a countertenor who was much mocked on account of having to sing all the women’s parts, and the idea was that each man should expel either a turd or a fart during the crescendos, when they could not be heard above the singing. In this way the indignity of communal defecation was minimised, and the whole encampment would begin the day humming a rousing tune that they had heard wafting out of the heads. My first experience of La Scala was hearing the Anvil Chorus at 7.30 a.m., accompanied by a very prodigious and resonant timpani. Naturally I could not resist going to investigate, and I approached a canvas enclosure that had ‘La Scala’ painted on it in splashes of blanco. I noticed an appalling and very rank stench, but I went in, only to see a row of soldiers shitting at their perches, red in the face, singing at full heart, hammering at their steel helmets with spoons. I was both confused and amazed, especially when I saw that there was an officer sitting there amongst the men, insouciantly conducting the concert with the aid of a feather in his right hand. Generally one salutes an officer in uniform, especially when he is wearing his cap. My salute was a hurried and incomplete gesture that accompanied my departure – I did not know the regulation that governs the saluting of an officer in uniform who has his breeches at half-mast during a drill that consists of choral elimination in occupied territory.

  Subsequently I was to join the opera society, ‘volunteered’ by the captain after he had heard me singing as I polished my boots, and had realised that I was another baritone. He handed me a piece of paper filched from General Gandin’s own order-pad, and on it was written:

  TOP SECRET

  By Order of HQ, Supergreccia, Bombadier Carlo Piero Guercio is to report for operatic duty at every and any whim of Captain Antonio Corelli of the 33rd Regiment of Artillery, Acqui Division.

  Rules of engagement:

  1) All those called to regular musical fatigues shall be obliged to play a musical instrument (spoons, tin helmet, comb-and-paper, etc.).

  2) Anyone failing persistently to reach high notes shall be emasculated, his testicles to be donated to charitable causes.

  3) Anyone maintaining that Donizetti is better than Verdi shall be dressed as a woman, mocked openly before the battery and its guns, shall wear a cooking pot upon his head, and, in extreme cases, shall be required to sing ‘Funiculi Funicula’ and any other songs about railways that Captain Antonio Corelli shall from time to time see fit to determine.

  4) All aficionados of Wagner shall be shot peremptorily, without trial, and without leave of appeal.

  5) Drunkenness shall be mandatory only at those times when Captain Antonio Corelli is not buying the drinks.

  Signed; General Vecchiarelli, Supreme Commander, Supergreccia, on behalf of His Majesty, King Victor Emmanuel.

  The captain’s story about the capitulation of Cephallonia was that the commanders at the time of the landing had gone to the town hall of Argostoli in order to receive the surrender of the town’s authorities.

  They had stood outside, accompanied by a squad of armed troops, and sent in a message requiring the handing over of the building and of authority. Out comes a message that simply says ‘Va fanculo’. Much consternation and shock amongst our officers. This is not the language of diplomacy, and hardly an appropriate response from those who are supposedly cowering under the heel of conquest. They send in another message, threatening the storming of the building. Out comes a note stating that any Italian demanding surrender will be shot forthwith. Additional consternation caused by speculation as to whether or not those inside really have any arms. The officers are embarrassed by the idea that they might actually have to plan a siege. They send in another message, demanding clarification, and out comes another that says ‘If you don’t know what “fuck off” means, then come in here
and we’ll show you.’ ‘O shit,’ say the officers, standing about in the sunlight. There is a delay of about half an hour whilst the confusion mounts, and then another note comes from inside that says ‘We refuse categorically to surrender to a nation that we have utterly routed, and we demand the right to surrender to a German officer of significant rank’. Eventually a German officer is flown in from Zante or Corfu or somewhere, and the authorities emerge triumphantly from the town hall, having humiliated and vanquished us on our first day of conquest.

  That is what Corelli told me, and I am sure that in some of the details it is somewhat embellished. But it is true that the authorities flatly refused to surrender to us, and eventually we did have to fly in a German. Corelli thought that this story was hilariously amusing, and he liked to relate it over and over again, multiplying the number of messages and insults, whilst the rest of us sat listening to him with our ears burning.

  I think that Corelli was able to find it so funny because music was the only thing he considered serious, until he met Pelagia. As for me, I grew to love him as much as I had loved Francisco, but in an entirely different way. He was like one of those saprophytic orchids that can create harmony and wonder even as it grows and blossoms on a pile of shit, in a place of skulls and bones. He let his rifle rust, and even lost it once or twice, but he won battles armed with nothing but a mandolin.

  25 Resistance

  All over the island there was a burgeoning of graffiti that took merry or malicious advantage of the fact that the Italians could not decipher the Cyrillic script. They mistook Rs for Ps, did not know that Gs can look like Ys or inverted Ls, had no idea what the triangle was, thought that an E was an H, construed theta as a kind of O, did not appreciate that the letter in the shape of a tent was the same as the one that looked like an inverted Y, were baffled by the three horizontal strokes that could also be written as a squiggle, knew from mathematics that pi meant 22 divided by 7, were unaware that E the wrong way round was an S, that the Y could also be written as a V and was in fact an E, were confused by the existence of an O with a vertical stroke that was actually an F, did not understand that the X was a K, failed utterly to find anything that might be meant by the elegant trident, and found that the omega reminded them of an earring. Ergo, conditions were ideal for the nocturnal splashing of white paint in huge letters on all available walls, especially as the quirks of an individual’s handwriting could render the letters even more completely inscrutable. ENOSIS fought for space with ELEPHTHERIA, ‘Long Live The King’ cohabited without apparent anomaly with ‘Workers Of The World Unite’, ‘Wops fuck off’ abutted with ‘Duce, Eat My Shit’. An admirer of Lord Byron wrote, ‘I dream’d that Greece might still be free’ in wobbly Roman letters, and General Tsolakoglou, the new quisling leader of the Greek people, appeared everywhere as a cartoon figure, committing various obscene and unpleasant acts with the Duce.

  In the kapheneias and fields the men related Italian jokes: How many gears does an Italian tank have? One forward and four in reverse. What is the shortest book in the world? The Italian Book of War Heroes. How many Italians does it take to put in a light-bulb? One to hold the bulb and two hundred to rotate the room. What is the name of Hitler’s dog? Benito Mussolini. Why do Italians wear moustaches? To be reminded of their mothers. In the encampments the Italian soldiers in their turn asked, ‘How do you know when a Greek girl is having a period?’ And the answer would be ‘She is wearing only one sock.’ It was a long interlude during which the two populations stood off from each other, defusing by means of jokes the guilty suspicion on the one side and the livid resentment on the other. The Greeks talked fierily in secret about the partisans, about forming a resistance, and the Italians confined themselves to camp, the only signs of activity being the setting up of batteries, a daily reconnaissance by amphibious aircraft, and a mounted curfew patrol that jogged about at dusk, its members more anxious to exercise charm on females than to enforce an early night. Then a decision was made to billet officers upon suitable members of the local population.

  The first thing about it that Pelagia knew was when she returned from the well, only to find a rotund Italian officer, accompanied by a sergeant and a private, standing in the kitchen, looking around with an appraising expression, and making notes with a pencil so blunt that he was obliged to read what he had written by casting the indentations against the light.

  Pelagia had already stopped fearing that she was going to be raped, and had become accustomed to scowling at leers and slapping at the hands that made exploratory pinches of the backside; the Italians had turned out to be the modest kind of Romeo that is resigned to being rebuffed, but does not abandon hope. Nonetheless, she felt a momentary leap of fear when she came in and found the soldiers, and, but for a moment of indecision, she would have turned tail and fled. The plump officer smiled expansively, raised his arms in a gesture that signified, ‘I would explain if I could, but I don’t speak Greek,’ and said, ‘Ah,’ in a manner that signified, ‘How delightful to see you, since you are so pretty, and I am embarrassed to be in your kitchen, but what else can I do?’ Pelagia said, ‘Aspettami, vengo,’ and ran to fetch her father from the kapheneia.

  The soldiers waited, as requested, and soon Pelagia reappeared with her father, who was anticipating the encounter with some trepidation. There was a lurch of dread waiting to surge into his heart and weaken it, but also a cold and detached courage that comes to those who are determined to resist oppression with dignity; he remembered his advice to the boys in the kapheneia – ‘Let us use our anger wisely’ – and squared his shoulders. He wished that he had retained his moustache with the waxed tips, so that he might twist its extremities balefully and censoriously.

  ‘Buon giorno,’ said the officer, holding out his hand hopefully. The doctor perceived the conciliatory nature of the gesture and its lack of conqueror’s hubris, and much to his own surprise he reached out and shook the proffered hand.

  ‘Buon giorno,’ he replied. ‘I do hope that you enjoy your regrettably short stay on our island.’

  The officer raised his eyebrows, ‘Short?’

  ‘You have been expelled from Libya and Ethiopia,’ the doctor said, leaving the Italian to extrapolate his meaning.

  ‘You speak Italian very well,’ said the officer, ‘you are the first one I have come across. We are very badly in need of translators to work with the populace. There would be privileges. It seems that no one here speaks Italian.’

  ‘I think you mean that none of you speak Greek.’

  ‘Just so, as you say. It was only an idea.’

  ‘You are very kind,’ said Dr Iannis acidly, ‘but I think you will find that those of us who do speak Italian will suddenly lose our memory when required to do so.’

  The officer laughed, ‘Understandable under the circumstances. I meant no offence.’

  ‘There is Pasquale Lacerba, the photographer. He is an Italian who lives in Argostoli, but perhaps even he would not like to co-operate. But he is young enough not to know better. As for me, I am a doctor, and I have enough to do without becoming a collaborator.’

  ‘It’s worth a try,’ said the quartermaster, ‘most of the time we don’t understand anything.’

  ‘It’s just as well,’ observed the doctor. ‘Perhaps you could tell me why you’re here?’

  ‘Ah,’ said the man, shifting uneasily, aware of the unpleasantness of his position, ‘the fact is, I am sorry to say, and with great regret, that … we shall be obliged to billet an officer on these premises.’

  ‘There are only two rooms, my daughter’s and my own. This is quite impossible, and it is also, as you probably realise, an outrage. I must refuse.’ The doctor bristled like an angry cat, and the officer scratched his head with his pencil. It was really very awkward that the doctor spoke Italian; in other houses he had avoided this kind of scene and left it to the unfortunate guests to explain the situation, by means of grunts and gesticulations, when they turned up unannounced with their kitb
ags and drivers. The two men looked at one another, the doctor tilting his chin at a proud angle, and the Italian searching for a form of words that was both firm and mollifying. Suddenly the doctor’s expression changed, and he asked, ‘Did you say that you are a quartermaster?’