49 The Doctor Advises the Captain
The doctor and the captain were sitting indoors at the kitchen cable, the latter removing a broken swing from his mandolin, and lamenting the fact that new strings were impossible to obtain.
`How about surgical wire?' enquired the doctor, leaning forward and inspecting the defunct string through his spectacles, `I think I've got some of the same gauge.'
`It's got to be right,' replied Corelli. `If it's too thick, you have to tighten the string beyond the capacity of the instrument, and it just folds in half. If it's too thin, then it's too slack to have a decent tone and it rattles on the frets.'
The donor leaned back and sighed. Suddenly he asked, `Are you and Pelagia planning to be married? As her father I think I have a right to know.'
The captain was so taken aback by the frankness of the question that he was utterly stumped for an answer. Things had only been able to proceed on the basis that no one ever brought the issue out into the open; things could only work at all on the understanding that it was a dark secret that everybody knew. He looked at the doctor in dismay, his mouth working wordlessly like an improvident fish that a wave has tossed unsuspectingly upon a spit of sand.
`You can't live here,' said the doctor. He pointed at the mandolin. `If you want to be a musician this is the last place to be. You would have to go home, or to America. And I don't think that Pelagia could live in Italy. She is a Greek. She would die like a flower deprived of light.'
`Ah,' said the captain, for the lack of any intelligent remark that came immediately to mind.
`It's true,' said the doctor. `I know you have not thought about it. 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. Anyway, Pelagia is Greek, that's my point. So can it work? Even disregarding the obvious impracticalities?'
The captain unwound the tangle of wire at the tuning pegs, and replied, `It's not the point, with respect. It is a more personal thing. Let me confide in you, Dottore. Pelagia has said to me that you and I are very alike. I am obsessed by my music, and you are obsessed with your medicine. We are both men who have created a purpose for ourselves, and neither of us cares very much for what
anyone else may think of us. She has only been able to love me because she learned first how to love another man who is like me. And that man is you. So, being a Greek or an Italian is incidental.'
The doctor was so touched by this hypothesis that a lump arose in his throat. He quelled it and said, `You don't understand us.'
`Of course I do.'
Dr Iannis became a little riled, and therefore a little vehement, `But you don't. Do you think you're going to get a nice amenable girl and that every path will be strewn with petals? Don't you remember asking me why it is that Greeks smile when they are angry? Well, let me tell you something, young man. Every Greek, man, woman, and child, has two Greeks inside. We even have technical terms for them. They are a part of us, as inevitable as the fact that we all write poetry and the fact that every one of us thinks that he knows everything that there is to know. We are alt hospitable to strangers, we all are nostalgic for something, our mothers all treat their grown sons like babies, our sons all treat their mothers as sacred and beat their wives, we all hate solitude, we all try to find out from a stranger whether or not we are related, we all use every long word that we know as often as we possibly can, we all go out for a walk in the evening so that we can look over each others' fences, we all think that we are equal to the best. Do you understand?'
The captain was perplexed, `You didn't tell me about the two Greeks inside every Greek.'
'I didn't? Well, I must have wandered off the point.'
The doctor stood up and began to walk about, gesturing eloquently with his right hand and clutching his pipe with his left. `Look, I've been all over the world. I've seen Santiago de Chile, Shanghai, Stockholm, Addis Ababa, Sydney, all of them. And all the time I've been learning to be a doctor, and I can tell you that no one is more truly themselves than when they are sick or injured. That's when the qualities come out. And I've nearly always been on ships whose crews were mainly Greek. Do you understand? We are a race of exiles and sailors. I'm saying that I know more than most people what a Greek is like.
`I'll tell you about the Hellene first. The Hellene has a quality that we call "sophrosune". This Greek avoids excess, he knows his limits, he represses the violence within himself, he seeks harmony and cultivates a sense of proportion. He believes in reason, he is the spiritual heir of Plato and Pythagoras. These Greeks are suspicious of their own natural impulsiveness and love of change for the sake of change, and they assert discipline over themselves in order to avoid spontaneously going out of control. They love education for its own sake, do not take power and money into consideration when assessing someone's worth, scrupulously obey the law, suspect that Athens is the only important place in the world, detest dishonourable compromise, and consider themselves to be quintessentially European. This is from the blood of our ancient ancestors that still flows in us.'
He paused, puffed on his pipe, and then continued: 'But side by side with the Hellene we have to live with the Romoi. Perhaps I can point out to you, Captain, that this word originally meant "Roman", and these are the qualities that we learned from your ancestors, who never made a single technological advance in hundreds of years of dominion, and who enslaved entire nations with the utmost disregard for morals. 'The Romoi are people very like your Fascists, so that you should feel at home with them, except that it seems to me that you personally share none of their vices. The Romoi are improvisers, they seek power and money, they aren't rational because they act on intuition and instinct, so that they make a mess of everything. They don't pay taxes and only obey the law when there is no alternative, they look on education as a way of getting ahead, will always compromise an ideal for self-interest, and they like getting drunk, and dancing and singing, and breaking bottles over each others' heads. And they have a viciousness and brutality that I can only convey to you by saying that it compares very unfavourably with your gassing the natives in Ethiopia and your bombing of the field hospitals of the Red Cross. The only point of contact between the two sides of a Greek is the place that bears the label "patriotism". Romoi and Hellene alike will die gladly for Greece, but the Hellene will fight wisely and humanely, and the Romoi will use every subterfuge and barbarity, and happily throw away the lives of their own men, rather like your Mussolini. In fact they calculate their glory by the number that were sent to their death, and a bloodless victory is a disappointment.'
The captain was very sceptical, 'So what are you saying? Are you saying that Pelagia has a side that I don't know and which would be very shocking to me if I knew it?'
The doctor leaned forward and stabbed the air with his finger, 'That is exactly it. And another thing; I have that side too. You've never seen it, but I have it.'
'With respect, Dottore, I don't believe it.'
'I'm very glad that you don't. But in my better moments I know what the truth is.'
There was a silence between the two men, and the doctor sat down at the table to relight his uncooperative pipe, with its repellent mixture of coltsfoot, rose petals, and other herbs that failed even to approximate to tobacco. He coughed and spluttered violently.
'I love her,' said Corelli at last, as though this were the answer to the problem, which to him it was. A suspicion struck him: 'You wouldn't be reluctant to lose her, would you? Are you trying to discourage me?'
'You'd have to live here, that's all. If she went to Italy she would die of the homesickness. I know my daughter. You might have to choose between loving her and becoming a musician.'
The doctor left the room, more for rhetorical effect than for any other purpose, and then came back in. 'And another thing. This is a very ancient land, and we've had nothing but slaughter for two thousand years. Sacrifices, wars, murders, nothing but bad deaths. We've got so many places full of bitter ghosts that anyone who goes near them or lives in them becomes heartless or insane. I don't believe in God, Captain, and I'm not superstitious, but I do believe in ghosts. On this island we've had massacres at Sami and Fiskardo and God knows where else. There'll be more. It's only a question of time. So don't make any plans.'