26 Sharp Edges
The hour shortly after dawn found Captain Antonio Corelli waiting in vain at the entrance to the yard for Carlo to come and fetch him away. The latter had broken a shackle on the suspension of his jeep, and was engaged in kicking the tyres and swearing at the profound potholes in the road that had undone his early start. He already possessed a deep horror of letting down the captain, a horror shared by all the men who served under him, and his fractious ill-temper was exacerbated when he tried to light a cigarette, only to find that the desiccated rod of powdery tobacco slid out of its tube of paper and smouldered insolently in the dust, leaving him with a piece of scorchingly hot paper that stuck tenaciously to his lower lip. He pulled the paper away, and it removed a tag of skin. He licked the stinging wound, touched it with his finger, and cursed the Germans for their success in monopolising the supplies of the best tobacco. A thin old peasant mounted side-saddle on a donkey passed him by, saw the broken state of the vehicle as it sagged to one side, smiled with satisfaction, and raised a hand in a gesture of casual greeting. Carlo gritted his teeth and smiled. `Fuck the war,' he said, since one greeting was as good as another to a Greek. It looked as though there would be no La Scala that morning, unless the opera society could manage the Soldiers' Chorus on its own. He abandoned the jeep and began to trudge towards the village.
Velisarios passed him, and the two men looked at one another with something like recognition. However thin and bedraggled he had become since he had gone to the front, Velisarios was still the biggest man that anyone had ever seen, and Carlo, despite his equivalent experiences on the other side of the line, was also the biggest man that anyone had ever seen. Both of these Titans had become accustomed to the saddening suspicion within themselves that they were freaks; to be superhuman was a burden that had seemed impossible to share and impossible to explain to ordinary people, who would have been incredulous.
They were both astonished, and for a moment forgot that they were enemies. `Hey,' exclaimed Velisarios, raising his hands in a gesture of pleasure. Carlo, stumped for an exclamation that would make sense to a Greek, aimed inaccurately for a failed compromise that sounded very like `Ung'. Carlo offered one of his atrocious cigarettes; Velisarios took one, and they gesticulated and made sour faces to each other as they drew on the smoke that was sharp as needles. `Fuck the war,' said Carlo, by way of farewell, and the two went on their opposite ways, Carlo beginning to feel very content. A kilometre away, Velisarios came across the crippled jeep, paused in thought, and went to fetch a
friend. He returned, lifted the vehicle at each corner in turn, and his companion removed the wheels. Then he drained the water from the radiator, and refilled it with petrol from the jerrycan strapped to the back.
Corelli continued to wait. The doctor passed by on his way to the kapheneion, in an anticipatory state of annoyance on account of the fact that the coffee being served these days tasted of river mud and tar, and was becoming more expensive by the second. `Boon giorno,' called the captain, and the doctor turned. `I trust that you slept badly,' he said.
The captain smiled resignedly, `For some reason I dreamed about animals made of Bakelite. They were like dolphins with sharp edges, and they were leaping about. It was very disturbing. Also, your cat bit me.'
He held out the wounded finger, and the doctor inspected it. `It's very swollen,' he said, `and it will probably go septic. Pine martens can have a nasty bite. If I were you I would show it to a doctor.'
With that he went on his way, leaving the captain to repeat foolishly, `Pine martens?'
He realised that Pelagia had only made a small joke at his expense, but, curiously, it left him feeling let down and very gullible.
When Pelagia came out she found the usurper of her bed throwing Lemoni up and down in the air by the armpits. The child was whooping and laughing, and it appeared that what was transpiring was a lesson in Italian. `Bells fanciulla,' the captain was saying. He was waiting for Lemoni to repeat it. `Bla fanshla,' she giggled, and the captain threw her up, exclaiming, `No, no, bells fanciulla.'
He dwelt lovingly upon the doubled L, waited for Lemoni to descend, and raised an eyebrow as he awaited her next attempt. `Bla flanshla,' she said triumphantly, only to be launched skyward again.
Pelagia smiled as she watched, and then Lemoni saw her. The captain followed
the cast of her glance, and straightened up, a little embarrassed, `Boon giorno, Kyria Pelagia. It seems that my driver has been delayed.'
`What's it mean, what's it mean?' demanded Lemoni, whose faith in the omniscience of adults was such that she was sure that Pelagia would be able to tell her. Pelagia patted her cheek, cleared the strands of hair from her eyes, and told her, `It means "pretty puss", koritsimou. Off you go now, I'm sure that someone is missing you.'
The little girl skipped away in her usual capricious and erratic manner, waving her arms and chanting, `Bla, bla, bla. Bla, bla, bla.'
Corelli reproached Pelagia, `Why did you send her away? We were having a wonderful time.'
`Fraternisation,' answered Pelagia. `It's indecent, even in a child.'
Corelli's face fell, and he scuffed the toe of his boot in the dust.
He looked up the sky, dropped his head, and sighed. Without looking at Pelagia, he said with heartfelt sincerity, 'Signorina, in times like this, in a war, all of us have to make the most of what little innocent pleasure there is.'
Pelagia saw the resignation and weariness in his face, and felt ashamed of herself. In the silence that followed, both of them reflected upon their own unworthiness. Then the captain said, `One day I would like a pretty puss like that, for my own,' and without awaiting a reply he set off in the direction from which he expected Carlo to come.
Pelagia watched him leave, thinking her own thoughts. His retreating back had about it a poignant air of solitude. Then she went inside, took down the two volumes of The Complete and Concise Home Doctor, opened them out on the table, and guiltlessly read the sections about reproduction, venereal infections, parturition, and the scrotum. She proceeded at random to read about cascarilla, furred tongue, the anus and its disorders, and anxiety.
Fearing the return of her father from the kapheneion, she finally replaced the books on their shelf, and began to think of reasons for delaying her necessary trip to the well. She chopped some onions, unclear as to what recipe she was intending them to be a part of, but anxious that her father should be able to perceive some concrete evidence of activity, and then she went outside to brush her oblivious goat. She found two ticks and a small swelling in the loose skin of the haunch. She worried about whether or not she should be worried about this, and then began to think about the captain. Mandras caught her dreaming.
He had climbed out of bed, cursing and completely cured, on the day of the invasion. It was as if the advent of the Italians had been something so important, so weighty, that it precluded the luxury of indulging in his illness. The doctor had affected to be unsurprised, but Drosoula and Pelagia had agreed that there was something suspicious about an affliction that could be switched off with such a virtuoso flourish. Mandras had gone down to the sea and swum with his dolphins as though he had never been away, and had returned refreshed, the salt water drying in his tousled hair, a smile upon his face, the muscles in his torso uncontracted, and had climbed the hill with a mullet to present to Pelagia. He had ruffled Psipsina's ears, swung briefly in the olive tree, and had left the impression on Pelagia of being madder in his new sanity than he had been when he was mad. She felt guilty now, whenever she saw him, and deeply uncomfortable.
She started when he tapped her on the shoulder, and despite the effort to force a radiant smile he did not fail to see the flicker of alarm in her eyes. He ignored it, but would remember it later. `Hello,' he said, `is your father in? I've still got some bad skin on my arm.'
Glad of something objective upon which to focus her attention, she said, `Let me look at it,' whereupon he said brightly, `I was hoping to see the organ-grinder rather than the monkey.'
Mandras had heard this metaphor at the front, had liked it, and had waited a long time for an opportunity to use it. It had struck him as witty, and he had thought that what was witty was also likely to be charming. He wanted nothing so much as to be able to charm Pelagia back into the affection that he unhappily feared that he had lost.
But Pelagia's eyes flashed five, and Mandras' heart sank. `I didn't mean it,' he said; `it was a joke.'
The two young people looked at one another, as though sharing an appreciation of all that was gone, and then Mandras said, `I'm going to join the partisans.'
`Oh,' she said.
He shrugged, `I haven't any choice. I'm leaving tomorrow. I'll take my boat to Manolas.'
Pelagia was horrified, `What about the submarines? And the warships? It's madness.'
`It's worth the risk if I go at night. I can sail by the stars. I was thinking of tomorrow night.'
There was a long silence. Pelagia said, `I won't be able to write.'
`I know.'
Pelagia went inside a moment and came out bearing the waistcoat that she had so devotedly made and embroidered whilst her fiancé had been at the front. She showed it to him diffidently, saying, `This is what I was making for you, to dance at feasts. Do you want to take it now?'
Mandras took it and held it up. He cocked his head to one side and said, `It doesn't quite match up, does it? I mean, the pattern is a little different on each side.'
Pelagia felt a pang of disappointment that tasted of betrayal. `I tried so hard,' she
exclaimed piteously, in a rush of emotion, `and I can never please you.'
Mandras smote his forehead with the heel of his palm, screwed up- his face in self-criticism, and said, `O God, I am sorry. I didn't mean it the way it came out.'
He sighed and shook his head. `Ever since I went away, my mouth and my heart and my brain don't seem so well connected. Everything is upside down.'
Pelagia took back the waistcoat and told him, `I'll try to put it right. What does your mother say?'
He looked at her appealingly, `I was hoping that you could tell her. I couldn't bear to hear her weeping and pleading if I tell her myself.'
Pelagia laughed bitterly, `Are you such a coward, then?'
`I am with my mother,' he confessed. `Please tell her.'
`All right. All right, I will. She has lost a husband and now she loses a son.'
`I'll be back,' he said.
She shook her head slowly, and sighed, `Promise me one thing.'
He nodded, and she continued, `Whenever you are about to do something terrible, think of me, and then don't do it.'
`I'm a Greek,' he said gently, `not a Fascist. And I will think of you every minute.'
She heard the touching sincerity in his voice, and felt herself wanting to cry.
Spontaneously they embraced, as though they were brother and sister rather than two betrothed, and then they gazed for a moment into each other's eyes. `God go with you,' said Pelagia, and he smiled sadly, `And with you.'
`I shall always remember you swinging in the tree.'
`And me falling on the pot.'
They laughed together a moment, and then he looked at her longingly for one last moment, and began to leave. A few paces away he paused, turned, and said softly, with a catch in his voice, `I shall always love you.'
A long way down the road, Carlo and the captain, both of them covered in fine beige dust, ruefully inspected their vehicle. It had no wheels and the interior was piled high with a smoking stack of manure.
That evening the captain noticed an exquisitely embroidered waistcoat hanging over the back of a chair in the kitchen. He picked is up and held it against the tight; the velvet was richly scarlet, and the satin lining was sewn in with tiny conscientious threads that looked as though they could only have been done by the fingers of a diminutive sylph. In gold and yellow thread he saw languid flowers, soaring eagles, and leaping fish. He ran his finger over the embroidery and felt the density of the designs. He closed his eyes and realised that each figure recapitulated in relief the curies of the creature it portrayed.
Pelagia came in and caught him. She felt a rush of embarrassment, perhaps because she did not want him to know why she had made the article, perhaps because she had been rendered ashamed of its imperfections.. He opened his eyes and held out the waistcoat to her. `This is so beautiful,' he said, `I have never seen anything as good as this that wasn't in a museum. Where does it come from?'
`I made it. And it's not so good.'
`Not so good?' he repeated disbelievingly. `It's a masterpiece.'
Pelagia shook her head, `It doesn't match up properly on both sides. They're supposed to be mirror images of each other, and if you look, this eagle is at a different angle to that one, and this flower is supposed to be the same size as that one, but it's bigger.'
The captain clicked his tongue disapprovingly, `Symmetry is only a property of dead things. Did you ever see a tree or a mountain that was symmetrical? It's fine for buildings, but if you ever see a symmetrical human face, you will have the impression that you ought to think it beautiful, but that in fact you find it cold. The human heart likes a little disorder in its geometry, Kyria Pelagia. Look at your face in a mirror, Signorina, and you will see that one eyebrow is a little higher than the other, that the set of the lid of your left eye is such that the eye is a fraction more open than the other. It is these things that make you both attractive and beautiful, whereas . . . otherwise you would be a statue. Symmetry is for God, not for us.'
Pelagia pulled a sceptical expression, and prepared impatiently to dismiss his allegation that she was beautiful, but at that point she noticed that his nose was not perfectly straight.
`What is this?' asked the captain, pointing to an eagle, `I mean, how is it done?'
Pelagia pointed with her finger, `This is fil-tire, and that is feston.'
He was able to appreciate the articulateness of her forefinger and the smell of rosemary in her hair, but he shook his head, `I'm none the wiser. Will you sell it to me? How much do you want for it?'
`It's not for sale,' she said.
`O please, Kyria Pelagia, I will pay you in anything you want. Drachmas, lire, tins of ham, bottled olives, tobacco. Name a price. I have some British gold sovereigns.'
Pelagia shook her head; there was little reason now why she should not sell it, but the captain had made her proud enough of it to induce her to want to keep it, and besides, selling it to him would have been, in some indefinable way, quite wrong.
`I am very sorry,' said the captain, `but that reminds me; how much rent do you want?'
`Rent?' said Pelagia, almost dumbfounded.
`Did you think I intended to live here for nothing?'
He reached into his pocket and produced a large chunk of salami, saying, `I thought you might like to borrow this from the Officers' Mess. I have already given a slice to the "cat", and I think that now we are friends.'
`You've turned Psipsina and Lemoni into collaborators,' observed Pelagia wryly, `and you'd better ask my father about the rent.'
A week later, after it had been reclaimed and given a new set of wheels, the engine of the jeep would explode spectacularly as it was being driven up the hairpin bends of the hill to Kastro. The driver was a very young lance- bombardier who had been a tenor in Corelli's opera society, and had been waiting for the war to end so that he could marry his childhood love in Palermo.
By that time Mandras was in the heart of Peloponnisos, widow making and rebuilding his dream of Pelagia.