37 An Episode Confirming Pelagia's Belief that Men do not Know the Difference Between Bravery and a Lack of Common Sense
A great voice boomed out behind him, and Captain Corelli, absorbed in reading the pamphlet, nearly died of shock.
`Those that seek my soul to destroy it shall go to the lower parts of the earth, they shall fall by the sword, they shall be a portion for foxes, God shall shoot at them with an arrow and suddenly they shall be wounded.'
Corelli leapt up and found himself face to face with the patriarchal beard and flaming eyes of Father Arsenios, who was glaring at him over the wall, having lately taken to startling unsuspecting Italian soldiers by means of thunderous improvisations upon Greek biblical texts. The two men stared at one another, Corelli with his hand over his heart and Arsenios waving his home-made crozier. `Kalispera, Patir,' said Corelli, whose grasp of Greek etiquette was improving, whereupon Arsenios spat into the dust and declared, 'Thou shale make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger, thou shall swallow them up in the time of thy wrath, and the fire shall devour them. Their fruit shall thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men, for they have imagined a mischievous device which they are not able to perform.'
The priest's eyes rolled prophetically, and Corelli said placatingly, `Quite so, quite so,' despite not having understood any of it. Arsenios spat again, rubbed the saliva into the ground with his foot, and pointed at the captain to signify that he would be milled into the dust in the same way. `Quite so,' repeated Corelli, smiling politely, whereupon Arsenios waddled away in a manner intended to convey disgust and absolute certainty.
The captain returned to his reading, only to be disturbed by the doctor and Pelagia returning from a medical expedition, and Carlo Guercio arriving in the jeep. Hastily he hid the document in his jacket, but not before the doctor had caught a glimpse of it.
`Ah,' said the donor, `I see that you've got a copy too. Amusing, isn't it?'
'Fuck the war,' said Carlo gaily as he came through the entrance to the yard with his customary greeting. He struck his forehead on a lower branch of the olive where Mandras had used to swing, and momentarily stunned himself. He grinned sheepishly, 'I'm always doing that. You'd think I'd know it was there by now.'
`You shouldn't be so tall,' said the doctor, 'it shows lack of foresight and good judgement. There was a king of France who died from doing something like that.'
'I appear to be alive,' said Carlo, touching the incipient bruise with an index finger. `Have you seen the pamphlet?'
Corelli shot him an angry glance, but Pelagia said, 'It seems to have appeared all over the island during the night.'
'In fact the captain is trying to conceal one at this very moment,' said the doctor gleefully.
`British propaganda,' said the captain, feigning a great lack of interest.
`There weren't any planes last night,' said Carlo. 'When they come over everything rumbles and shakes, but there was nothing.'
'Can't be British then,' said the doctor happily, 'I think you've got someone herewith access to a press and an excellent delivery service.'
He saw Carlo flushing and looking at him angrily, and realised that it was better not to talk. 'As you say, just British propaganda,' he added lamely, shrugging his shoulders.
'It must be somebody who knows a lot,' said Pelagia, `because everything in it is true.'
Corelli flushed with anger and stood up abruptly. She feared for a second that he was tempted to strike her. He removed the leaflet from his jacket and dramatically tore it in half, throwing the pieces to the goat. `It's nothing but a heap of shit,' he declared, and strode into the house.
The remaining three exchanged glances, and Carlo made a grimace that mockingly expressed fear and trembling. Then he became very serious and said to Pelagia, `Please excuse the captain, and do not tell him that I said this, but you must understand that in his position . . . he is an officer, after all.'
'I understand, Carlo. He wouldn't admit it was true even if he wrote it himself. Do you think it could have been written by a Greek?'
The doctor scowled. `What a stupid idea.'
'I just thought . . .I'
'How many Greeks could know all that, and how many Greeks here can write Italian, and how many Greeks have transport, that they can leave it lying about the whole island? Don't be silly.'
But Pelagia warmed to her hypothesis, `Lots of the Rs were written as Ps, and that's a natural Greek mistake, so an Italian could have given all the information to a Greek, they could have composed it and printed it, and then the Italian could have delivered it everywhere on a motorcycle or something.'
She smiled triumphantly, and raised her hands to show how simple it all was. `And anyway, everyone knows that people listen to the BBC.'
In the presence of Carlo she deemed it imprudent to mention that the men of the village listened to it, smoking furiously as they crammed themselves together inside a large cupboard in the kapheneion, and then emerged choking and spluttering, to bring the news home to their wives, who in turn passed it on to
each other at the well and in their kitchens. She was not to know that the Italian soldiers did much the same thing in their barracks and billets, which would have explained why everybody on the island knew the same jokes about Mussolini.
Carlo and the doctor looked at one another, fearing that if Pelagia could work it out, someone else might. `Don't get too clever,' said the doctor, `or your brains might squeeze out of your ears.'
It was a childhood formula.
Pelagia saw the unease of her father and Carlo, remembered that before the war Kokolios had been given a small hand-turned press by the Communist Party, for the purpose of turning out party propaganda, and recalled that Carlo had access to a jeep. She shook her head as if to drive these speculations out of her mind, and then it occurred to her to wonder where they might have got hold of sets of Roman letters. Her momentary sense of relief was vanquished when she recalled that her father had some quid pro quo arrangements with the fat hypochondriac quartermaster with the intractable corns. She looked from Carlo to her father and felt a pang of anger strike her in the throat; if it was them, and it was a conspiracy, then just how stupid and irresponsible could they get? Did they not know the danger? `The trouble with men . . .' she began, and followed the captain into the house, without completing the sentence. She swept Psipsina from the kitchen table, as though cuddling the animal might abate her sense of peril.
Carlo and the doctor raised their hands, and let them fall, standing together in a moment of self-conscious and eloquent silence. '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.'