24 A Most Ungracious Surrender

24 A Most Ungracious Surrender

I did not arrive in Cephallonia until the middle of May, and I was only transferred there, to the 33rd Regiment of Artillery, Acqui Division, because the damage to the muscles in my thigh left me temporarily useless for anything except garrison duty. By that time I was so disillusioned by the Army that I would have gone anywhere just for a tranquil life where I could revolve my memories and scratch my wounds. I was experiencing the kind of abject depression that comes to soldiers who have realised that they have been fighting on the wrong side, expending an infinity of effort and draining the sources of courage and sanity until it seems that there is nothing inside; in truth I was feeling that my head was hollow and that the cavity of my chest was a vacuum. I was still dumb with sorrow about the death of Francesco, and I was still shocked by my own stupidity in failing to foresee that my dreams of turning my vice to advantage had rested on an incomplete assumption; it was true that my love for Francesco had inspired me to great things, but I had forgotten the possibility that he would be killed. I had gone into the war a romantic, and had come out of it desolate, dismal and forlorn. The word 'heartbroken' occurs to me, except that this is inadequate to describe the sensation of being utterly broken in both body and soul. I knew that I wanted to escape - I felt envious of our soldiers in Yugoslavia who had changed sides and joined the Garibaldi Division - but finally it is impossible to escape those monsters that devour from the inner depths, and the only ways to vanquish them are either to wrestle with them like Jacob with his angel or Hercules with his serpents, or else ignore them until they

give up and disappear. I did the latter, and this was made more easy by a small miracle whose name was Captain Antonio Corelli. He became my source of optimism, a clear fountain, a kind of saint who had no repellent trace of piety, a kind of saint who thought of temptation as something to play with rather than something to be opposed, but who remained a man of honour because he knew no other way to be.

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 chat 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 fife 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 halfmast 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.'

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 Francesco, 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.