50 A Time of Hiatus

50 A Time of Hiatus

The Allies invaded Sicily for strategic reasons, and in doing so betrayed their

most longstanding and gallant ally, Greece. They left the Communists a year for preparing a coup, and a year for civil war. ELAS destroyed EKKA, and drove EDES into a corner so far from the centres of power that Zervas, their leader, would feel betrayed by the British for the rest of his life. The Allies had gone for a jugular vein in Italy, and had set on one side the little nation that had given Europe its culture, its impetus, and its heart. The angry Greeks heard from the BBC all about the destruction of Fascism in Italy, and demanded to know why they had been ignored. The British Liaison Officers, impotent and frustrated, wrung their hands and watched the country fall apart. Communists in the Greek Army in Syria fomented a mutiny that further delayed the victory in Italy, and it was at that point that the Cold War started and the Iron Curtain began to descend. In the West the admiration and respect for the heroism of the Soviets began to be eroded, and it became abysmally dear that one kind of Fascism was about to be replaced by another. In Britain and America no one would believe at first that the Communists in Greece were committing atrocities on an unimaginable scale; journalists put it down to right-wing propaganda, and the disbelieving Greeks put it down to renegade Bulgarians.

But in some seas at least, if not in Ionia, the time of miracles and singularities returned. Operation 'Noah's Ark' found the British harassing the Axis withdrawal with Beaufighters and canoes, transforming the Iron Ring into an Iron Cage. In Lesbos the Communists took over and declared an independent republic. At Khios a Gestapo house was discovered where people had been forced to spend a night with a skeleton in a cellar. The German commander had been strafed to death whilst making love to his mistress. At Inousia the British found an island where every single person spoke fluent English, and where everyone was called either Lemmos or Pateras. Raiders killed the commanders at Nisiro, Simi, and Piscopi, and Patrick Leigh-Fermor and Billy Moss abducted the commander of Crete. At Thira the raiders killed two-thirds of the garrison for the loss of two men. In Crete, again, they destroyed two hundred thousand gallons of fuel. On Mikonos and Amorgos the wireless stations were destroyed, and seven prisoners taken by five men. On Khios a few Royal Marines destroyed two destroyers, even though the local andartes failed to turn up as agreed, having 'lost interest'. They hated to join attacks that anyone else had planned, and refused to take part if even another of their number had had the idea. On Samos one thousand Italians surrendered to Maurice Cardiff and twenty-three men, and then sat down to have breakfast; Cardiff discovered that for some inexplicable reason all the local doctors spoke French. At Naxos the German commander surrendered by mistake; he had rowed out to greet a boat that he thought was flying the red flag of the swastika, but was in fact flying the Red Ensign. He fell into such a deep depression and wept so bitterly that the crew had to cheer him up by teaching him to play ludo. At that time one pound sterling was worth two

thousand million drachmas, and one cigarette cost seven and a half million. The people of Lesbos enterprisingly offered an advantageous rate of exchange, and every single coin and note from the whole region flew there, seemingly of its own accord, leaving no money at all in any other place. At Siros a party of Germans was seen running away without any trousers. The Communists got into the habit of demanding twenty-five percent of everything as tax, and in many places the people resigned from the party. Later on in Crete, and Samos, they would turn on the Communists and defeat them. There is a story that the Cretans demanded British rule, but that the latter turned them down on the grounds that it was bad enough trying to govern Cyprus. All in all, for the loss of nineteen dead, four hundred men of the special forces held down forty thousand Axis troops, paying three hundred and eighty-one visits to seventy separate islands. The German sense of the proper way of doing things was so confounded by such randomised plagues of sliced throats and inexplicable explosions that they became completely helpless, and the Italians, who had never seen any sense in fighting in the first place, surrendered courteously and with pleasure.

On Cephallonia the Italian soldiers listened to their radios and charted the course of Allied progress up the spine of their homeland, whilst the German garrison seethed with disgust. Corelli and his brother officers sensed ice in the air, and fraternal visits between the bases of the two allies diminished. When Weber turned up at the meetings of La Scala, he seemed very quiet and distant, and his regard was interpreted as reproachful.

One day, in the midst of these events, Pelagia found Corelli absently stroking Psipsina on the wall, and when he turned to face her, his look was troubled. `What happens,' he asked her, `when we have to surrender before the Germans do?'

`We'll get married.'

He shook his head sadly, `It's going to be a complete mess. There's no chance of the British coming. They're going straight for Rome. No one will save us unless we save ourselves. All the boys think we should disarm the Germans now, whilst their garrison is small. We've sent deputations to Gandin, but he doesn't do anything. He says we should trust them.'

`Don't you trust them?'

`I'm not stupid. And Gandin is one of those officers who has risen to the top by obeying orders. He doesn't know how to give them. He's just another of our typical donkey generals who's got no brains and no balls.'

`Come inside,' she said, `my father's out, and we can have a cuddle. He's got lots of tuberculosis to deal with these days.'

Father Arsenios passed by, accompanied by Bunny Warren, both of them battered, tattered, and dusty, and Pelagia said quickly, `Antonio, I must go and ask them something, I'll be right back.'

Arsenios stood by the well and waved his crozier. His abject little dog slumped on the shady side of the stones, and began to lick itself. It had blood on the pads of its paws.

`How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! The tongue of the sucking child cleaveth to the roof of his mouth for thirst; the children ask bread, and no man breaketh it unto them. They that did feed delicately are desolate in the streets, and they that were brought up in scarlet embrace dunghills . . . ' began Arsenios, and Pelagia took Warren's elbow and led him to one side.

`Bunnio', when are the British coming? I've got to know. What's going to happen to the Italians when they surrender? Please tell me.'

`That I cannot tell,' he said. `For I know it not myself, and neither doth any man.'

`Your Greek has improved an awful lot,' she said, amazed, `but your accent is still . . . strange. Please tell me. I'm worried. Have the Germans brought in any more soldiers? It's important.'

`Nay, I think not.'

Pelagia left him, and heard him exclaiming `Amen' at intervals. Perhaps the British were really a nation of actors and impostors. She returned to Corelli and said, `Don't worry, everything will be all right.'

`Are you serious? You go and ask the opinion of a religious madman, and you expect me to believe it?'

`O ye of little faith. Come on, come inside. Psipsina caught a mouse and let it go under the table. I think you ought to catch it for me. It was last seen running behind the cupboard.'

`After the war, when we're married, you can catch the mice yourself. I'm not going to be chivalrous after I'm thirty.'

Whilst Corelli poked behind the cupboard with a broomstick, Arsenios' mantic voice and Bunny Warren's wild amens drifted musically through the window:

`That priest has a wonderful bass voice,' remarked Corelli, releasing out of the window the mouse he had caught by the tail. `And that reminds me, I went down to the harbour to listen to the fishermen. They had some really strange instruments I've never seen before, and the singing, it was fantastic. I wrote down some of the tunes.'

`They make them up as they go along, you know. Never the same twice.'

`Incredible. And there was one tune they sang a few times. I made them teach it to me . . . ' he hummed a solemn and martial air, waving his fingers to conduct it, and only stopped when he saw Pelagia laughing. `What's so funny?? 'It's our national anthem,' she said.