Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

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 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.

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.

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.

It was the worst thing in the world to be a complete failure who had no prospect of any other job.

The reader should be reminded that it was crusaders and not the Muslims who originally sacked Constantinople, which should have caused perpetual scepticism about the value of noble causes. Apparently it has not, as the human race is incapable of learning anything from history.’

We found that there is also a wild excitement when the tension of waiting is done with, and that sometimes this transforms itself into a kind of demented sadism once an action is commenced. You cannot always blame soldiers for their atrocities, because I can tell you from experience that they are the natural consequence of the inferno of relief that comes from not having to think any more. Atrocities are sometimes nothing less than the vengeance of the tormented. Catharsis is the word I was looking for. A Greek word.

PELAGIA (drawing water from the well): Papakis says that Mandras is going to have specks of terracotta in his backside for the rest of his life, and it’s going to look as though someone’s sprinkled it with red pepper. I like his backside, God forgive me, even though I’ve never seen it. I can just tell that I like it. That I would like it. It’s very small. When he bends down I can see that it’s like two halves of a melon. I mean, the curves seem to be in a proportion according to God’s original design for fruit. When he kisses me I want to reach round him and take a buttock in each hand. I never have. I wouldn’t. What would he say if I did? I have such sluttish thoughts. Thank God no one reads my mind, I’d be locked up and all the old women would throw stones at me and call me a whore. When I think of Mandras I get a picture of his face, grinning, and then I get a picture of him bending over. Sometimes I wonder if I’m normal, but the things the women say when we’re all together and the men are in the kapheneia. If the men only knew, what a shock! Every woman in the village knows that Kokolios’ penis is curved sideways like a banana and that the priest has a rash on his scrotum, and the men don’t know. They don’t have a clue what we talk about, they think we talk about cooking and babies and sewing up rents in our clothes. And when we find a potato that looks like a set of men’s equipment we pass it round and laugh about it.

I can’t see myself saying, ‘Come on Pelagia, let’s talk about politics.’ Women aren’t interested in that sort of thing, they want you to entertain them.

Our commander refused reinforcements because he would get more credit for a victory with a small army.

22 Mandras Behind the Veil They talk about me as if I were not there, Pelagia, the doctor, and my mother. They talk about me as though I were senile or unconscious, as though I were a body without a mind. I am too tired and too sad to resist the indignity. Pelagia has seen me naked and my mother washes me intimately as though I were a baby, and they cover me with unguents and lotions that sting and soothe and stink, so that I am like a piece of furniture that is treated with oil and wax, whose worm-holes are filled, and whose cushions are plumped up and repaired. My mother inspects my stools and talks about them to my betrothed, and they feed me with a spoon because they have no patience to see me struggle with the trembling of my hands, and I ask myself if there is any sense in which I can be considered to exist. I suppose that I don’t. Everything has become a dream. There is a veil between me and them, so that they are shadows and I am dead, and the veil is perhaps a shroud that dims the light and blurs the vision. I have been to war, and it has created a chasm between me and those who have not; what do they know about anything? Since I encountered death, met death on every mountain path, conversed with death in my sleep, wrestled with death in the snow, gambled at dice with death, I have come to the conclusion that death is not an enemy but a brother. Death is a beautiful naked man who looks like Apollo, and he is not satisfied with those who wither away in old age. Dea...

...th is a perfectionist, he likes the young and beautiful, he wants to stroke our hair and caress the sinew that binds our muscle to the bone. He does all he can to meet us, our faces gladden his heart, and he stands in our path to challenge us because he likes a clean fair fight, and after the fight he likes to befriend us, clap us on the shoulder, and make us laugh at all the pettiness and folly of the living. At the conclusion of a battle he wanders amongst the dead, raising them up, placing laurels upon the brows of those most comely, and he gathers them together as his own children and takes them away to drink wine that tastes of honey and gives them the sense of proportion that they never had in life. But he didn’t take me and I don’t know why.

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.

‘But I gave up the violin because, however much I tried, it just came out sounding like cats. I’d look up and the yard would be full of them, all yowling. No, seriously, it was like a tribe of cats or even worse, and the neighbours kept complaining. One day my uncle gave me Antonia, which used to belong to his own uncle, and I discovered that with frets on the fingerboard I could be a good musician. So there you are.’ Pelagia smiled, ‘So do cats like the mandolin?’ ‘This is a little known fact,’ he said in a confidential manner, ‘but cats like anything in the soprano range. They don’t like things that are alto, so you can’t play a guitar or a viola to a cat. They just walk out with their tails in the air. But they do like a mandolin.’

That evening the doctor himself demanded a concert, and he and Pelagia found themselves outdoors in the yard whilst the captain spread a sheet of music upon the table, and both illuminated it and prevented it from being carried away by the breeze by placing a lantern on its upper edge. Solemnly he sat down and began to tap the striking plate with the plectrum. The doctor raised his eyebrows in perplexity. This tapping seemed to go on for a very long time. Perhaps the captain was trying to establish a rhythm. Perhaps this was one of those minimalist pieces he had heard about, which was all squawks and squeaks and no melody, and perhaps this was the introduction. He looked at Pelagia, and she caught his glance and raised her hands in incomprehension. There was more tapping. The doctor peered at the captain’s face, which was rapt in deep concentration. The doctor always found that in incomprehensible artistic situations like this his backside inevitably began to itch. He shifted his seat, and then lost patience, ‘Excuse me, young man, but what on earth are you doing? This is not quite what my daughter led me to expect.’ ‘Damn,’ exclaimed the captain, his concentration utterly destroyed, ‘I was just about to start playing.’ ‘Well, about time too, I should think. What on earth were you doing? What is it? Some ghastly modern twaddle called “Two Tin Cans, a Carrot, and Dead Harlot”?’ Corelli was offended, and spoke with a distinct tone of lofty disdain, ‘I am playing one of Humme...

...l’s Concertos for Mandolin.’ The first forty-five and half bars are for the orchestra, allegro moderato e graciozo. You have to imagine the orchestra. Now I’ve got to begin all over again.‘

Their legs and armpits were shaven, they smelled of a greenhouse crammed with hyacinth, and they trimmed and shaped their pubic hair so religiously that soldiers who liked to burrow and disappear into a good, abundant, honest muff would come away feeling flat and cheated, as though penetration had not occurred.

There was a difficult silence, which Corelli broke by handing him a bottle of red wine. ‘Drink,’ he said, ‘and be happy.’ Günter Weber drank, and was happy.

It was like the paradox of Buridan’s ass: an equal choice yields no decision.

37 An Episode Confirming Pelagia’s Belief that Men do not Know the Difference Between Bravery and a Lack of Common Sense

‘I should have brought her up stupid,’ said the doctor at last. ‘When women acquire powers of deduction there’s no knowing where trouble can end.’

He felt infinitely oppressed by intimations of mortality, and wondered whether it might not be better to die than to suffer.

‘Yes. And then you woke up and you knelt down in front of me and waved your arms about and sang “Io sono ricco e tu sei bella”, at the top of your voice and completely out of tune, and you forgot the words. Then you tried to kiss my feet.’ The captain was completely appalled, ‘Out of tune? I never forget the words of anything, I am a musician. What did you do?’

she detested the feeling of insecurity engendered by her own confusion;

Prodding at the snails, she was saddened by the cruelty of a world in which the living can only live by predation on creatures weaker than themselves; it seemed a poor way to order a universe.

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don’t blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being “in love”, which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two. But sometimes the petals fall away and the roots have not entwined. Imagine giving up your home and your people, only to discover after six months, a year, three years, that the trees have had no roots and have fallen over. Imagine the desolation. Imagine the imprisonment.

Italians always act without thinking, it’s the glory and the downfall of your civilisation. A German plans a month in advance what his bowel movements will be at Easter, and the British plan everything in retrospect, so it always looks as though everything occurred as they intended. The French plan everything whilst appearing to be having a party, and the Spanish … well, God knows.

Lovers who had been procrastinating got married immediately, and longstanding couples in unsatisfactory marriages looked at one another in wonder at such a waste of years and immediately got divorced.

By the time that he was five years old and Christos Sartzetakis was elected in place of Karamanlis, Iannis already knew how to say ‘Hello’ and ‘Isn’t he adorable?’ in six different languages. This was because he spent nearly all his time at the taverna in his grandmother’s care, being cooed over by pink and sentimental foreigners who loved olive-skinned little boys with black fringes over their ebony eyes, just as long as they did not grow older and come to their own countries looking for employment.

Iannis’ secret desire was to become a harpoon, as soon as he was old enough. These ‘kamakia’ were the young Greek boys who lived on a diet of perpetual sex, entertaining the unchaperoned and romantic foreign girls who arrived on the island in search of true love and multiple orgasms in the arms of any latter-day Adonis who agreed to sweep them off their feet. They considered themselves so indispensable to the tourist industry that there was even talk of forming a union to represent their interests. Charmingly and chivalrously they doled out beautiful memories and broken hearts, waiting at the airport after one girl had flown out in order to acquire another as she flew in. They hung about on their mopeds in fallow times, discussing the sexual hierarchy of merit amongst the different nationalities. Italian girls were best, and English girls were useless unless inebriated. German girls were technicians, Spanish girls uncontrollable and melodramatic, and French girls were so vain that you had to pretend to be in love with them from the very first. Iannis used to inspect his diminutive rod with its unpredictable and painful erections, and wonder if he would ever have an orgasm, whatever that was, and whether and when his particular harpoon would waken from its humid dreams and grow.

Most curiously, even though he had wanted it in order to be able to impress girls when he was older, by the time he was thirteen, and already quite a good player, he had discovered that girls were a complete dead loss. Their intractable mission in life was to frustrate, annoy, and have things that you wanted but that they would not bestow. In fact they were spiteful and capricious little aliens. It was not until he was seventeen and Grandma had begun her wild and frivolous second youth that he met one who made him burst with longing, and who had stopped nearby to listen when he was making Antonia sing.