Corelli's Mandolin Read online

  It was very dark because a heavy cloud had interposed itself between earth and moon, and the noise was atrocious because the crickets had caught the contagion of excitement from the chickens and were sawing at double forte. Kokolios squinted into the darkness, and distinctly heard the sound of muttered oaths. Perplexed, he peered even harder. He saw two small Italian soldiers scurrying about the pen, desperately trying to grab at the poultry.

  Seized by rage, he acted without thinking. Despite the rifles slung across their backs, Kokolios uttered a fearful war-cry and threw himself into combat.

  The two men had endured the Albanian campaign and had acquitted themselves with courage, but they were no match in the dark for some ferocious, naked, and demonic creature that rained blows about their backs and heads, kicked at their legs, and uttered unearthly shrieks. ‘Puttana!’ they cried, and shielded their heads with their hands, only to find their knuckles and elbows cracked by further crushing blows. They fell to their knees and with pitiful cries held out their hands and implored him to stop.

  Kokolios knew not one word of Italian, but he knew a defeated enemy when he saw one. Throwing down his cudgel he seized the two thieves by the collar and dragged them to their feet. Kicking their backsides at every step, he frogmarched the both of them towards the doctor’s house, periodically cracking their skulls together like a demented schoolmaster.

  Outside the doctor’s house, still shaking and kicking them, he set himself to yelling, ‘Iatre! Iatre!’

  Dr Iannis appeared shortly, clad in his nightgown, as did the captain and Pelagia. They beheld, by the newly disclosed illumination of the moon, Kokolios, stark naked apart from his heavy boots, shaking with rage, with one vanquished soldier dangling from each hand. Most curiously, both soldiers still had their carbines slung across their backs. ‘Go inside at once,’ said Dr Iannis to his daughter, concerned for her modesty in the presence of that enraged and unclothed man with bandy legs and barrel chest. Obediently she retreated to the kitchen in order to enjoy the spectacle from the shadow of the window.

  Kokolios pointed at Corelli but shouted at the doctor, ‘Tell that wop son of a bitch officer that his men are chicken-thieves, nothing but chicken-thieves, do you understand?’

  Dr Iannis relayed this information to Corelli, who stood for a moment as though making up his mind. He disappeared back into the house, and the doctor said to Kokolios, ‘I think it would help if you calmed down a little.’ Whilst the officer was inside, Dr Iannis took the opportunity to tease his neighbour. ‘I thought that you were a Communist,’ he observed.

  ‘Of course I’m a Communist,’ retorted Kokolios shortly.

  ‘Forgive me,’ said the doctor, ‘but if I remember rightly, all property is theft. So, if you own the chickens, you too are a thief.’

  Kokolios spat into the dust, ‘The property of the rich is theft, not the property of the poor.’

  This philosophical debate was cut short when the captain reappeared with his revolver, and for one awful moment both Pelagia and her father thought that he was intending to shoot Kokolios down. She wondered desperately whether she ought to go and find her derringer, but could not move. Kokolios looked at the captain with an expression that combined horror, defiance, and righteous rage. He held out his chest proudly, as though willing to die for the right of Greek chickens to live unmolested even in occupied territory.

  To everyone’s surprise the captain pointed his pistol straight into the face of one of the culprits and commanded him to lie down in the dust. The thief smiled ingratiatingly, and Corelli clicked back the hammer. The man dropped to the ground with comical promptitude and began to whine his excuses, which Corelli ignored. He motioned to the other man to do the same.

  Corelli took Kokolios’ arm and moved him a metre or so. He nudged both of the supine men with his foot, and commanded, ‘Now crawl.’

  The men looked at one another in surmise. ‘I said “crawl,” ’ shouted the captain, exploding from calm anger to disgusted fury. One of the men rose to his hands and knees, and the captain put one foot in the small of his back and brutally forced him down, ‘On your bellies, you sons of whores.’

  They writhed forward with the motion of snakes, until they were level with Kokolios’ boots. ‘Lick them,’ ordered the captain.

  It was useless to protest. The captain whipped one of them across the side of the head, and the doctor closed his eyes, wincing for the bodily damage that he feared was about to ensue. Pelagia put her hand to her mouth in shock, and her heart went out to the grovelling crooks; she had never dreamed that her captain could have been so cruel, so remorseless. Perhaps a musician could be a soldier after all.

  The two men licked Kokolios’ boots. The latter stared down at them in mute amazement, and it was not until his eye caught the fleshy protuberances of his private parts glimmering palely in the light of the moon that he remembered that he was without his clothes. His mouth fell open, he placed both hands rapidly over his most precious possessions, and he scampered away back to his house.

  Inside her kitchen, Pelagia could not help but laugh, but the captain was in no mood for levity when he came back in. ‘Southerners!’ he shouted. ‘Camorra and mafiosi! Renegades!’ The thieves sat at the table whilst the captain slapped them about the head at each epithet. They looked very small and pathetic, and the doctor moved his hand to stay the captain’s blows. The latter lifted them by the collar as Kokolios had done, dragged them to the door, and propelled them out into the night. They sprawled on the paving stones, picked themselves up, and ran.

  He re-entered, his eyes blazing with fury. He glared at Pelagia and her father as if something had been their fault, and shouted, ‘We’re all hungry!’ He raised his hands into the air as though appealing to God, shook his head, beat his fist on his chest, and exclaimed incredulously, ‘The dishonour!’ before striding into his room and slamming the door.

  Two days later Pelagia went out into the yard and was struck by the absence of something familiar. She looked around but could not see anything. And then she realised. The captain came out and found her weeping into her hands.

  ‘They’ve taken my goat,’ she wailed, ‘my beautiful goat.’ She could imagine its slaughter, its being dismembered for meat, and it was too appalling to bear.

  The captain put his hand on the shoulder of the sobbing girl; she shook it off and continued to sob. ‘You’re all bastards, all of you, thieves and bastards!’

  The captain stood up stiffly, ‘Tesoro mio, I swear on the life of my mother, I will find you another goat.’

  ‘Don’t!’ she shouted at him, turning her tear-streaked face towards him. ‘I wouldn’t accept anything from you.’

  He turned and walked away, the bitterness of shame eating like a worm at the muscles of his heart.

  45 A Time of Innocence

  They became lovers in the old-fashioned sense, and made love in the old-fashioned sense. Their idea of making love was to kiss in the dark under the olive tree after curfew, or sit on a rock watching for dolphins through his binoculars. He loved her too much to jeopardise her happiness, and she in turn had too much sense to throw her caution to the winds. She had seen again and again the misery of girls with an unreckoned child, and again and again she had seen the septicaemia, the protracted poisoned deaths of girls who underwent the lethal curettage of crochet hooks and wires. She attended them with her father, and later attended them with priests, and she knew that the captain understood that they did not lie together, not because it was undesired, but because in fact there was no choice.

  They made the most of stolen time, and it became easier when Günter Weber organised a motorcycle for Corelli, ‘borrowed’ from the Wehrmacht in return for Parma ham, Chianti, and mozzarella cheese. It had been officially written off in a spurious accident, and Weber had simply had it repaired and delivered to his friend.

  The first that Pelagia knew of it was when, outside the yard, there came the sound of a popping exhaust, an engine throbbing, a backf
ire, and a silence. Psipsina came running in and hid under the table. Pelagia went outside and found Corelli, complete with flying hat and goggles, his face dark with dirt, coughing up dust on the seat of a black machine. He saw her coming and raised his goggles. She laughed at him because he had two pale rings about his eyes, set in a grey and grimy face, and his lips looked unnaturally pink, as though he had been applying a cosmetic. He grinned, believing that she was merely glad to see him, and said, ‘Vuole fare un giro?’

  She crossed her arms and shook her head, ‘I’ve never been on one. In fact I’ve never been in a car either, and I’m not starting now.’

  ‘I’ve never been on one either,’ he said, ‘but it’s very easy. And isn’t she a beautiful machine?’

  ‘It’s only got two wheels, it’s bound to fall over. It’s obvious. You’ve got to be mad to go around on that.’

  He looked up at her, ‘I agree that it ought to fall over, but it doesn’t. It just doesn’t go in a straight line all the time. But I’m getting the hang of it. And just listen to this.’ He clambered off, jumped on the kickstart, revved the engine, and then fiddled with the advance-retard until it was ticking over happily. ‘Just listen,’ he cried, ‘it’s metronomic. And you could play a tune to it. That tempo, it’s perfect, not a beat missed, not a hesitation. It’s a musical machine, bubble, bubble bubble, and the exhaust, it sings. Look, it’s a BMW vertical single-cylinder shaft drive. No chain to break or fall off, and it pulls up these mountains as though they don’t exist. Come for a ride. It’s the best feeling there is. Wind in your hair.’

  ‘Muck all over your face,’ said Pelagia sceptically. ‘You look like a monkey. Anyway, somebody might see us.’

  The captain considered this problem, ‘OK, tomorrow I’ll bring you a helmet and goggles and a big leather coat, and then you won’t be recognised. Is that a deal?’

  ‘No.’

  But the next day they met around the bend of the road, and Pelagia hurriedly put on her disguise. The captain found it almost impossible to control the machine with the extra weight, and to begin with they wove about and went into the stony grass verges. They fell off twice, without injury, and then they established that she should try not to move about when she was seated behind him. She clung to his waist, white-knuckled with terror, her face buried between his shoulder-blades, the machine thundering in her groin with a sensation that was at once deeply pleasant and thoroughly disturbing. After they had arrived at Fiskardo she had clambered off, shaking, and realised that she couldn’t wait to get back on. He was right, it was glorious to ride a motorcycle. The captain was exhilarated.

  They went to places where Pelagia could not have been known, and to places that were deserted. She would thread her arm through his and walk beside him, leaning her weight upon his shoulder, always laughing. With him she would always remember that she laughed. Sometimes they took a bottle of Robola, and that would make her laugh much more, though it left the coming home a hazardous adventure; he did not drive very straight even when sober, and more than once they took an unintended fork for lack of time for slowing down to turn. That was how they discovered the ruined shepherd’s hut.

  It was so old that the floor had sunk into the earth, and there was nothing in there but a rusty pan and two green bottles. The laths had cracked and slipped, and the tiles bowed dangerously. It smelt of moss and honeysuckle and old men’s clothes, and the light fragmented between the stones in places where the mortar had long since disappeared. They referred to it as ‘Casa Nostra’, and sometimes swept its floor with sheaves of twigs, happy to share it with a small colony of discreet bats and three families of swallows. In this secret house they would spread a rug and lie embracing, kissing and talking, and now and then he would play his mandolin.

  He played her sentimental songs from forgotten times, usually in a melodramatic and ironic style; he was conscious that his voice was not a strong one, and he wanted merely to make her laugh:

  ‘Alma del core, spirito dell’alma,

  Sempre constante, t’adorero.

  Saro contento nel mio tormento,

  Se quel bel labro baciar potro …’

  When she was feeling frivolous and light with wine he would sing:

  ‘Danza, danza, fanciulla, al mio cantar;

  Danza, danza, fanciulla gentile, al mio cantar.

  Gira legera, sotile al suono, al suono del’onde del mar …’

  And indeed in the distance came the sound of the sea, and Pelagia waltzed satirically about the hut, pirouetting and giggling, throwing pouts at him to burlesque the military whores she had seen so often, making faces and blowing kisses at the men as they rattled by in their truck.

  Sometimes Corelli became depressed and sentimental, reflecting upon the eternal impossibility of their devotion, and his light tenor voice would take on a tragic mien that brought tears to his own eyes, if not to Pelagia’s. It would be a time to make lament, and he would sing ‘Donna non vidi mai …’ not because it was sad, which it was not, but because it was sung andante lento and had plenty of scope for maximum expression con anima in that refrain of ‘Manon Lescaut me chiamo’.

  All their lovers’ talk began with the phrase ‘After the war’.

  After the war, when we are married, shall we live in Italy? There are nice places. My father thinks I wouldn’t like it, but I would. As long as I’m with you. After the war, if we have a girl, can we call her Lemoni? After the war, if we have a son, we’ve got to call him Iannis. After the war, I’ll speak to the children in Greek, and you can speak to them in Italian, and that way they’ll grow bilingual. After the war I’m going to write a concerto, and I’ll dedicate it to you. After the war I’m going to train to be a doctor, and I don’t care if they don’t let women in, I’m still going to do it. After the war I’ll get a job in a convent, like Vivaldi, teaching music, and all the little girls will fall in love with me, and you’ll be jealous. After the war, let’s go to America, I’ve got relatives in Chicago. After the war we won’t bring up our children with any religion, they can make their own minds up when they’re older. After the war, we’ll get our own motorbike, and we’ll go all over Europe, and you can give concerts in hotels, and that’s how we’ll live, and I’ll start writing poems. After the war I’ll get a mandola so that I can play viola music. After the war I’ll love you, after the war I’ll love you, I’ll love you forever, after the war.

  46 Bunnios

  At the summit of Mt Aenos, Alekos rose from his bed of skins at dawn, and reminded himself that he had better milk a few nanny goats if he was going to make any cheese. But first of all it was time to go out with his rifle and check if all of his charges were still there. Just recently there had been people who called themselves ‘andartes’, who appeared from nowhere and tried to steal his goats. He had already shot two of them and left their flesh for the Egyptian vultures.

  He did not understand it. This kind of thing had not happened since his great-grandfather’s time, in the days when these andartes were called klefts. Well, never mind, he had acquired two new rifles and a lot of ammunition thanks to the goat-thieves, and he doubted very much if they would ever return. It took a man of incredible tenacity and stamina to climb that mountain, and he had probably shot the only two who had been sufficiently strong in leg and lung.

  Perhaps it was something to do with the war. He had noticed early on that there must be a war, because sometimes at night the whole sky was lit up with distant searchlights, and very often he saw flashes of gunfire followed by distant rumbles. It was a lovely and entertaining thing to sit outside his hut at night, watching the fireworks and eating cheese dunked in olive oil and thyme. It made him feel very much less alone, and he hoped wistfully that the war would not end before the festival of the saint. When the doctor had come up the mountain, he had confirmed that indeed there was a war, saying that some people were starving so pitifully that tiny children had grown straight into little old men with wispy beards and stooping backs. It seemed that their s
tomachs had told them that there was no point in bothering to be young, and it seemed that before long Mother Nature would see to it that babies came out of their mothers already nailed into a box.

  When the Liberator growled overhead, he did not pay very much attention, because they flew frequently and in pairs or threes, disappearing like noisy bats in the general direction of the mainland.

  But this time he looked up, perhaps from instinct, and beheld a particularly pretty sight. A sort of white mushroom was drifting down with a tiny man suspended underneath, and what was marvellous about it was that the rising sun was glinting from the silk before it had had time to become more than a suspicion of a glow upon the horizon. Alekos stood up and watched it with fascination. Perhaps it was an angel. It was certainly garbed in white. He crossed himself and struggled to remember a prayer. He had never heard of an angel that floated about below a mushroom, but you never know. And it seemed that the angel had a big rock, perhaps a package, hanging from his feet on a rope.

  The angel tugged hard at one side of the strings that attached it to the mushroom, and at the last minute it seemed to be coming down so fast that it was bound to crash. Alekos felt some satisfaction in having been right when indeed the angel came down with a thud, fell over sideways, cracked its head on a rock, and was dragged along the ground, the crosswind billowing out the silk. He seized one of his rifles and ran over to it; it was best to be sure, and perhaps even the angels were so famished nowadays that they had taken to stealing goats.