Corelli's Mandolin

by Louis de Bernières

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.