Captain Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

As for me, I hoist my knapsack on my shoulders and buckle the webbing, I put my arm through the sling of my rifle, and I open the veil to march into the unknown as soldiers always will. Remember me.

‘Our friend,’ he said, ‘who arrived as an enemy, has passed over the meadows of asphodel. We found him fuller of the knowledge of goodness than any other mortal man. We remember that his many decorations were for saving lives, not for destroying them. We remember that he died as nobly as he lived, valiant and strong. We are creatures of a day, but his spirit will not dim. He made an eager grace of life and was arrested in mid-path by blood-boltered men whose name will live in infamy down the passage of the years. These also will pass away, but unlamented and unforgiven; the meed of death is common to us all.

‘I remember also that the poet tells us that surely there is a time for long-speaking and a time for sleep. Sleep long and well. You will not be curbed by age, you will not grow weak, you will not know sorrows nor infirmity. As long as we remember you, you will be remembered fair and young. Cephallonia has no greater honour than to count itself the guardian of your bones.’

Here in this house my mother held me, her brown eyes shining, and in this house she died. And my grieving father gathered in his love and gave it to me only, and he brought me up and made me unpalatable, manly meals, and sat me on his knees, and he made my feet grow into the earth by telling me its stories. He talked to me with so much love, he worked for me, he let me be a child.