73 Restitution

73 Restitution

Antonio Corelli, although in his seventies, rediscovered a certain amount of youthful agility in his old limbs. He dodged a cast-iron frying pan, and winced as it smashed the window behind him. `Sporcaccione! Figlio d'un culo!' Pelagia shrieked. 'Pezzo di merda! All my life waiting, all my life mourning, all my life thinking you were dead. Cazzo d'un cane! And you alive, and me a fool. How dare you break such promises? Betrayer!' Corelli backed against the wall, retreating before the sharp prods of the broomstick in his ribs, his hands raised in surrender.

`I told you,' be cried. `I thought that you were married.'

`Married!' she exclaimed bitterly. `Married? No such luck! Thanks to you, bastardo.'

She prodded him again and moved to swipe him across the head with the broom handle.

`Your father was right. He said you had a savage side.'

`Savage? Don't I have the right, porco? Don't I have the right?'

`I came back for you. 1946. I came round the bend, and there you were with your little baby and your finger in its mouth, looking so happy.'

`Please, stop hitting me. I came back every year, you know I did. You saw me. I always saw you with the child. I was so bitter I couldn't speak. But I had to see you.'

`For ten years,' said Corelli, `for ten years I was so bitter that I even wanted to kill you. And then I thought, well, OK, I was away for three years, perhaps she thought I wasn't coming back, perhaps she thought I was dead, perhaps she thought I'd forgotten, perhaps she ma someone else and fell in love. As long as she's happy. But I still came back, every year, just to see you were all right. Is that betrayal?.

`And did you ever see a husband? And did you think what it did to me when I ran to you and you disappeared? Did you think about my heart?'

`OK, so I jumped the wall and hid. I had to. I thought you were married, I've told you. I was being considerate. I didn't even ask for Antonia.'

`Pelagia, please, this is a terrible embarrassment for the customers. Can't we go for a walk and talk about it on the beach?'

She looked around at all the faces, some of them grinning, some of them pretending to be looking the other way. Everywhere there were overturned chairs and tables that Pelagia had flung from her wake in the extremity of her wrath. `You should have died,' she yelled, `and left me with my fantasies. You never loved me.'

She flounced out of the door, leaving Corelli to tip his hat to the customers, bowing repeatedly and saying, `Please excuse us.'

Two hours later they were sitting together on a familiar rock, gazing out over the sea as the yellow lights of the harbour reflected in the blackened waters. `I see you got my postcards, then,' he said.

`In Greek. Why did you learn Greek?'

`After the war all the facts came out. Abyssinia, Libya, persecution of Jews, atrocities, untried poetical prisoners by the thousand, everything. I was ashamed of being an invader. I was so ashamed that I didn't want to be Italian any more. I've been living in Athens for about twenty-five years. I'm a Greek citizen. But I go home to Italy quite a lot. I go to Tuscany in the summer.'

`And there's me, so ashamed that I wanted to be Italian. Did you ever write your concertos?'

`Three. I've played them all over the world, too. The first one's dedicated to you, and the main theme is "Pelagia's March". Do you remember it?'

He hummed a few bars, until he noticed that she was trying not to cry. She seemed to have become very volatile in her old age, veering between passionate tears and assault. She had actually knocked out his false teeth, so that they had fallen in the sand and had to be washed in the sea. Even now he had a brackish but not unpleasant taste in his mouth.

`Of course I remember it.'

She let her head sink, and she wiped her eyes wearily. Suddenly, apropos of nothing in particular, she said, `I feel like an unfinished poem.'

Corelli felt a sting of shame, and avoided a reply, `Everything's changed. Everything here used to be so pretty, and now everything is concrete.'

`And we have electricity and telephones and buses and running water and sewers and refrigerators. And the houses are earthquake-proof. Is that so bad?'

`It was a terrible earthquake. I was here. It took me a long time to locate you and find that you were all right.'

He caught her look of astonishment, and said, `I did what you told me to. I joined the fire brigade. In Milan. You said, "Don't fight. Why don't you do something useful, like join the fire brigade?" so I did. It was just like the Army. Plenty of time for practice in between emergencies. When they asked for volunteers, I came straight away. It broke my heart to see it. I worked so hard. And I had a terrible experience. I saw Carlo's grave open and close, and his body down there. Little scraps of uniform, and the bones smashed, and the two coins in his eyes- She shuddered, and wondered whether or not to tell him about the secret that Carlo had so perfectly concealed. Instead she asked, `Did you know that it was Carlo and my father who wrote that pamphlet about Mussolini? Kokolios printed it.'

`I had my suspicions. I decided to let it pass. We all needed some amusement in those days, didn't we? I see you still have my ring.'

She looked down at the demi-falcon rising, with the olive branch in its mouth, and 'Semper fidelis' inscribed underneath. She hesitated; `So did you ever get married? I suppose you did.'

`Me? No. As I said, I was very bitter for years and years. I was horrible to everyone, especially women, and then the music took off, and I was all over the world, flying from one place to another. I had to leave the fire brigade. And anyway, you were always my Beatrice. My Laura. I thought, who wants second best? Who wants to be with someone, dreaming of someone else?'

`Antonio Corelli, I can see that you still tell lies with your silver tongue. And how can you beat to look at me now? I'm an old woman. When you look at me I don't like it, because I remember what I wan. I feel ashamed to be so old and ugly. It's all right for you. Men don't degenerate as we do. You look the same, but old and thin. I look like someone else, I know it. I wanted you to remember me properly. Now I'm just a lump.'

He placed his hand on hers, squeezed it gently, and said, `Don't worry. I'm with you for only a little while, and it's still Pelagia. Pelagia with a bad temper, but still Pelagia.'

`Did it occur to you that my baby might have been a bastard? I could have been raped. I nearly was.'

`It occurred to me. With the Germans and the civil war . . . '

`And?'

He looked at her incredulously, `Vacca cane! You shot him?'

`I was never dishonoured. He was the fiancé I had before you.'

`You never said anything about a fiancé.'

`You're jealous.'

`Of course I'm jealous. I thought I was the first.'

`Well, you weren't. And don't try to tell me that I was the first, either.'

`The best.'

The emotion was beginning to stir him a little too much, and he tried to check himself. `We're getting sentimental. Two sentimental old fools. Look . . . ' He reached into his pocket and brought out something white, wrapped in a plastic bag. He unfolded it and drew out an old handkerchief, which he shook in order to spread it. It had dark, yellow-edged brown streaks upon its fabric. ` . . . your blood, Pelagia, do you remember? Looking for snails, and your face was cut by thorns? I kept it. A sentimental old fool. But who cares? There's no one to impress. After all this time, we have the right. It's a beautiful evening. Let's be sentimental. No one's watching.'

`The little devil. Perhaps he thinks you need protecting. There never was any such thing as a secret on this island, was there?'

`I want to show you something. You never read Carlo's papers, did you? There was a secret. Come back to the taverns and eat, and I'll give you his writing. We do an excellent snails pilaf.'

`Snails!' he exclaimed. `Snails. Now that's something. I remember all about snails.'

`Don't get any ideas. I'm too old for all that.'

Corelli sat at the table with its chequered plastic cloth, and read through the stiff old sheets that had curled up at the corners. The handwriting was familiar, and the tone of voice and turn of phrase, but it was a Carlo he had never known: `Antonio, my Captain, we find ourselves in bad times, and I have the strongest feelings that I shall not survive than. You know how it is . . . ' As he read, his brow furrowed, exaggerating its wrinkles and lines, and once or twice he blinked as though in disbelief. When he had finished, he shuffled the papers into order, set than before him on the table, and realised that his snails had gone cold. He began to eat them anyway, but did not taste them. Pelagia came to sit opposite him, `Well?'

He tapped the sheaf of papers. `I wish that you hadn't shown me these. I've just realised that I'm more old-fashioned than I thought. I had no idea.'

`He loved you. Are you disgusted?'

`Sad. A man like that should have had children. It's going to take me a while . . . It's a shock. I can't help it.'

`He wasn't just another hero, was he? He was more complicated. Poor Carlo.'

`He wanted to do something to compensate. Poor man, I feel so sorry. I feel guilty. The boys used to make him go to the brothel. What torture. It's terrible.'

He paused for reflection, and a thought struck him. `I traced Gunter Weber. It wasn't difficult - he used to talk about his village all the time - he actually thought I was tracing him for revenge, for the War Crimes Commission or something. He was pleading with me. Down on his knees. It was so pathetic that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. And guess what? He'd followed his father into the Church. There he was, all dressed up as a pastor, grovelling and whining. I couldn't stand it. I wanted to thank him and hit him at the same time.

I just walked out and never went back. He's probably in the madhouse by now. Or perhaps he's a bishop.'

Pelagia sighed, `I still have trouble being pleasant to Germans. I keep wanting to blame them for what their grandfathers did. They're so polite, and the girls are so pretty. Such good mothers. I feel guilty for wanting to kick them.'

`The poor bastards will be doing penance for ever. That's why they're so courteous. Every single one of them has a complex. But I hear that the Nazis are coming back.'

`Everyone's doing penance. We've got the civil war, you've got Mussolini and the Mafia and all these corruption scandals, the British come in and apologise for the Empire and Cyprus, the Americans for Vietnam and Hiroshima. Everyone's apologising.'

`And I apologise.'

She ignored him. She intended to hold out - a little - as long as possible, to get her money's worth. She changed the subject artfully, `Iannis wants you to teach him to read music properly, and he says why don't you come back next summer and play with him and Spiro. Spiro's gone home to Corfu, but he's very good.'

`Yes. How did you know? You've been spying that much?'

`He's the best mandolinist in Greece. I met him years ago. He only plays popular bozouki for tourists. In the winter he comes to Athens sometimes. I went to one of his classes in classical bozouki, because, after all, it's only a big mandolin, and I thought, why not? And we got talking, and he knows some of my pieces. In fact he plays them better than I do. It's old age. It slows the fingers. I have played with him many times. Iannis is going to be good, too, I can tell.'

`He wants to join the Patras Mandolinates Band.'

`Nice happy stuff. Why not? It's a good place to start. We used to have lots of bands like that in Italy, except that we had all the instruments in the shape of mandolins. Can you imagine it? Mandolin basses and cellos? It was funny to see.'

`Are you very famous then?'

`Only in the sense that other musicians have heard of me. I get lots of silly reviews comparing me to the other Corelli. I play up to it. I'm quite cynical. I tried to write all sorts of modern stuff. You know, chromatic scales and microtones, and all sorts of crashes and bangs and squeaks and noises from lawnmowers, but it's only the experts and critics who don't realise what dreadful rubbish it is. My idea of hell; Schoenberg and Stockhausen.'

He pulled a grimace. `To tell the truth I don't even like Bartok, but don't tell anyone, and I even disapprove of Brahms jumping from one key to another without crossing by respectable stages. I realised that I was completely old- fashioned, so I had to find another way to be innovative. Do you know what I did? I took old folk tunes, like some Greek ones, and I set them for unusual instruments. My second concerto has Irish pipes and a banjo in it, and guess what? The critics loved it. Actually it's in exactly the same form, with the same kind of development, as you'd find in Mozart or Haydn or whatever. It sounds good too. I'm just a trickster waiting to be found out. I specialise in finding new ways to be an anachronism. What do you think of that?'

Pelagia regarded him a little wearily, `Antonio, you haven't changed. You just babble away, assuming that I know what you're talking about. Your eyes light up, and you're off. You might as well be talking Turkish for all the sense I can make of it.'

`I'm sorry, it's enthusiasm that keeps me alive. I forget. I even wrote lots of fake Greek music, for films. When they couldn't get Markopoulos or Theodorakis or Eleni Karaindrou, they asked me instead. Fraud is such a great pleasure, don't you think? Anyway, I've retired now . . . In fact, I was thinking . . . I don't know what you'll think of this, but . . . ' She narrowed her eyes suspiciously, `Yes? What? You want to defraud me? Again?'

He held her gaze, `No. I want to rebuild the old house. I've retired, and I want to live in a nice place. A place with memories.'

`Without water and electricity?'

`A pump from the old well, a little filtration plant. I'm sure I can get a power line if I slip a few coins to someone appropriate. Would you sell me the site?'

`You're completely mad. I don't even know if we own it. There aren't any deeds. You'll probably have to bribe everyone.'

`Then you don't mind? Isn't your son-in-law a builder? You know, keep it in the family.'

`You know that if you put a proper roof on you have to pay tax?'

`Merda, is that why all the houses have rusty reinforcing rods sticking out of the top? To look unfinished?'

`Yes. And what makes you think that I'd want an old goat like you living in my old house?'

`I'd pay you to come and clean it,' he said mischievously.

She took the bait by taking him at his word, `What? Do I need money? With this taverns? And the richest son-in-law anyone ever had? Do you think I'm as mad as you are? Go home to Athens. Anyway, Lemoni would do it.'

`Little Lemoni? She's still here?'

`She's as big as a ship and she's a grandmother. She remembers you, though. Barba C'relli. She never forgot the explosion of the mine, either. She still talks about it.'

`Barba C'relli,' he repeated nostalgically. Time was a complete bastard, no doubt of that. Weak old arms cannot throw grandmother ships up and down in the air. `I still have tinnitus from that explosion,' he said, and then fell silent for a moment. `So do I have your permission to rebuild the house?'

`No,' she said, still holding out.

`Oh.'

He looked at her doubtfully. He would return to the topic at a later date, he decided. `I'm going to come and see you tomorrow evening,' he said, `with a present.'

`I don't want any presents. I'm too old for presents. Go to hell with your presents.'

`Not exactly a present. A debt.'

`You owe me a life.'

`Ah. I'll bring you a life then.'

`Stupid old man.'

He fumbled in his pockets and produced a personal stereo. More fumbling produced a cassette in a very distinguished kind of packaging, which he opened out. He placed the cassette in the stereo and offered her the headphones. She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, waving it in his face as though fending off a mosquito, `Go away, I wouldn't be seen dead in one of those. I'm an old

woman, not some silly. girl. Do you think I'm a teenager, to be nodding around with one of those on my head?'

`You don't know what you're missing. They're wonderful. I'm going now. Get Iannis to show you how it works, and listen. I'll see you tomorrow evening.'

After he had gone Pelagia picked up the cassette's container, and extracted the information sheet. It was in Italian, English, French, and German. She was impressed. The picture on the front showed Antonio Corelli, a decade younger, in tails and bow-tie, perhaps at the age of sixty, grinning smugly, with a mandolin clutched at an unrealistic angle in his right hand. She fetched herself a glass of wine for the purposes of general fortification, and began to read the notes. They were by someone called Richard Usborne, an Englishman who, according to yet another note, was a famous critic and expert on Rossini. She began to read: 'This is the long-awaited reissue of Antonio Corelli's first concerto for mandolin and small orchestra, was first published in 1954, and premiered in Milan, with the composer playing the soloist's part. It was inspired by, and dedicated to, a woman named in the score only as "Pelagia". The main theme, scored in 2/2 time, is stated very clearly and emphatically on the solo instrument after a brief flourish on woodwind. It is a simple and martial melody that was described by one of its earliest reviewers as "artfully naive". In the first movement it is developed in sonata form and . . . ' Pelagia skimmed through the rest. It was all nonsense shout fugal elaboration and such stuff. She scrutinised the small row of buttons embellished with arrows going in different directions, gingerly plugged the phones into her ears, and pressed the little button that said `play'. There was a hissing noise, and then, to her astonishment, music began to play right in the centre of her head instead of in her ears.

As the music flooded her mind, a maelstrom of memories was awakened. She heard 'Pelagia's March', not once, but many times. Snatches appeared out of the blue in curiously distorted and whimsical forms on different instruments. It became so complicated that it was hardly discernible inside such a torrent of notes in different rhythms. At one point it came out as a waltz ( `How did he do that?'

she thought), and just towards the end there was a thunderous rolling of kettledrums that made her pluck off the phones in panic, believing that there had been another earthquake. Hastily she replaced them, and realised that indeed it was the earthquake, a musical portrait, and it was followed by a long lament on a plaintive instrument that was, although she did not know it, a cor anglais. It was

interrupted by single blows on the kettledrum that must be aftershocks. Each one came so suddenly and unpredictably that she jumped in her seat, her heart leaping to her mouth. And then the mandolin broke in and marched confidently through a recapitulation of the theme, eventually becoming quieter and quieter. So quiet that it faded out to nothing. She shook the machine, wondering whether the batteries had run out. This kind of music was supposed to end with barrages of crashing chords, surety? She pressed one of the winding buttons, and the machine clicked. It was the wrong one, so she pressed the other and waited for it to get back to the beginning. This time she heard more than she had before, even some rattles that were just like the machine-pistols on the days of the massacres. 'There was a slightly frivolous part that might have been crawling about, looking for snails. But there was still the same unsatisfying conclusion that just faded away to silence. She sat, puzzling over it, even a little angry, until she became aware that her adolescent grandson was standing before her, his mouth open in surprise. `Grandma,' he said, `you've got a Walkman.'

She eyed him ironically, `It's Antonio's. He lent it to me. And if you think that I look stupid wearing one, what makes you think that you don't? Nodding about with your mouth open, singing out of tune. If it's all right for you, it's all right for me.'

He did not dare to say, `It looks silly on an old woman,' and so he smiled instead and shrugged his shoulders. His grandmother knew exactly what he was thinking, and slapped him softly across the cheek, a blow that was almost a caress.

`Guess what?' she said. `Antonio's going to rebuild the old house. And, by the way, Lemoni told me that your mother told her that you told your mother that I've got a new boyfriend. Well, I haven't. And in future, mind your own business.'

Corelli had the greatest difficulty in proceeding along the quay to the Taverns Drosoula the next night. He was hardly as strong as he used to be, and besides, he had no experience with this kind of thing. It really was no use tugging and pulling, and barking out commands in the best artillery manner did not seem to work either. He had had an exhausting day.

When finally he lurched and strained into the taverns and collapsed in a seat,

Pelagia detached herself from the Walkman, switched it expertly to rewind, and demanded, `And what are you doing here with that?'

`It's a goat. As you see, I've brought you a life.'

`I can see it's a goat. Do you think I don't know a goat when I see one? What's it doing here?'

He glared at her a little balefully, `You said I don't keep my promises. I promised you a goat, remember? So here's a goat. And I'm sorry the old one was stolen. As you see, this one looks exactly the same.'

Pelagia resisted; she had almost forgotten how enjoyable it was. `Who says I needed a goat? At my age? In a taverns?'

`I don't care if you don't want it. I promised it, and here it is. One goat the same as the other. Sell it if you want. But if you saw how difficult it was to get it in the taxi, you wouldn't be so hard.'

`In a taxi? Where did you get it?'

`On Mt Aenos. I asked a driver, "Where can I get a good old-fashioned goat?"

and he said, "Get in," and we drove up past the Nato base on the mountain. It took hours. And there was this old man called Alekos, and he sold me this goat. I was swindled, I can tell you, and then I had to pay the driver two fares to bring it back. And how it stank. That's how I've suffered, and now you just shout at me and squawk like an old crow.'

She bent down and clamped the goat's nose firmly in one hand. With the other she lifted its lips and peered at the yellow teeth. Then she burrowed through the hair of its haunches with her fingers, and straightened up. `It's a very good goat.

It's got ticks, but otherwise it's good. Thank you.'

`What are we going to call it?' asked lanais.

`We'll call it Apodosis,' said Pelagia, already warming to the idea of having a goat again, `and we can tie it to a tree and feed it on the leftovers.'

`Apodosis,' repeated Corelli, nodding his head. `A very appropriate name. "Restitution". Couldn't be better. Do you think you'll get much milk from it? You could make yoghurt.'

Pelagia smiled, her face shining with condescension, `You milk it if you like, Corelli. Personally I only try to milk the females.'

She pointed down towards the capacious pink scrotum with its twin tapered oblongs within. `Udders are they?'

`O coglione,' he said appropriately, burying his face in his hands. Iannis admired people who could swear, especially in foreign tongues, but it was strange in an old man. Old people were always trying to reprove you for it. This Corelli was obviously as strange as his grandmother was becoming, skipping about with a personal stereo lodged in her thin grey locks, and smiling coyly when unaware of being observed. This very morning he had caught her before the mirror, posing with different sets of earrings from Antonia's Emporium, and tossing her head into attitudes that could only be described as coquettish.

`Tomorrow, another surprise,' said Corelli, and he raised his battered hat and left.

`O dear;' said Pelagia, her heart full of premonitory misgivings. It occurred to her that she ought to show him her updated 'Personal History of Cephallonia'; he would probably be interested to know that the real reason for the massacres was that Eisenhower had perversely overruled all of Churchill's plans to liberate the islands, and sent the Italian Air Force uselessly to Tunisia instead of Cephallonia. She supposed that he knew that the orders for the atrocities came directly from

Hitler himself, but perhaps he did not.

`Is he your boyfriend?' enquired Iannis pertinaciously, having had this same proposition denied repeatedly at every asking.

`Go and do the washing-up, or you don't get paid,' riposted his grandmother, and she went to fetch a comb so that she could groom the goat, as in the old days. She wondered where she might find a pine marten's kitten these days.

But, she thought, the captain had really surpassed himself when he turned up outside the door with a squeak of brakes, a roaring and retying of pistons, and a cloud of aromatic blue smoke. Pelagia stood with her hands on her hips and shook her head slowly as he clambered carefully off the motorcycle. It was bright red, very high, had thick and knobbly tyres, and looked as though it had been designed for racing. The captain turned the key and shut off the clamour. He kicked out the stand, and propped it. `Do you know where we're going? We're going to see if Casa Nostra is still there. Just like in the old days . . . ' he tapped the handlebars `. . . on a motorbike.'

Pelagia shook her head, `Do you really think it survived the earthquake? And do you really think I'm going on a thing like that? At my age? Just go away and leave me in peace. Don't give me any more of your harebrained schemes.'

`I hired it specially. It's not as nice as the old one and it makes a horrible noise, like a can of nails, but it goes very well.'

She looked into the old man's face, and fought to suppress a smile. He was wearing a ridiculous blue crash-helmet with a little peak, and a pair of reflective sunglasses that were so new that he had forgotten to remove the label, which dangled down upon one cheek like a small autumnal leaf caught on a filament of cobweb. She saw her own reproving face reflected stereoscopically in the lenses of the sunglasses, and watched herself as she held up her hands, palms outspread, `Not a chance. I'm too old, and you couldn't even drive straight when you were young. Don't you remember all the crashes? You were mad then, and now you're even madder.'

He defended himself, `On the old machine we wobbled about because I had to keep fiddling with the advance-retard lever. On this it's all automatic.'

He raised his hands and let them drop, as though to signify `No problem', and then beckoned to her.

`No,' she said. `My knees are stiff and I can't even raise my legs high enough.'

She noticed suddenly that over his shirt he was wearing a bright garment that made him look exactly like the hippies who had appeared on the island in the late sixties. She squinted a little for better focus, and realised that he was wearing the red velvet waistcoat embroidered with flowers, eagles; and fish that she had given him fifty years before. She pretended not to have seen it, and made no comment, but it astounded her that he should have kept it so carefully all this time. She was touched.

`Koritsimou,' he said, aware that she had noticed, and calculating that her opposition might have softened.

`Absolutely not.'

`Don't you want to see Casa Nostra?'

`Not with a madman.'

`You don't want me to have hired it for nothing?'

`Yes.'

`Go bade to Athens. Old lunatic.'

`I don't wear red. Have you ever seen me in red?'

`I'll go on my own.'

`Go then.'

It took an eternity of time to persuade her. As they veered perilously along the stony roads, she dung to his waist, white knuckled with terror, her face buried between his shoulder-blades, the machine thundering in her groin with a sensation that was at once deeply pleasant and thoroughly disturbing. Corelli noticed that she clutched him even more desperately than in the old days, and cynically he inserted some deliberate swerves into the series of those which were alarmingly accidental.

Pelagia clasped his waist tenaciously. She realised that over the years he had shrunk as much as she had expanded. He swerved suddenly towards the verge of the road, skidding a little and sending up a spray of chippings. 'Gerasimos save me,' she thought, and in search of safety put her arms right about his waist and linked her fingers together.

A venerable grey moped chugged and popped its way past them. It was adorned not with one but with three girls, all dressed identically in the briefest of white dresses. Corelli caught a glimpse of slender golden thighs, new-grown breasts, arching eyebrows over black eyes, and long loose hair so dark that it was almost blue. He heard a melody begin in rise up in his heart, something joyful that captured the eternal spirit of Greece, a Greek concerto. In composing it he would only have to think of driving along with Pelagia in search of Casa Nostra, and passing three young girls in the most exquisite first flowering of their liberty and beauty. The one driving the moped had her feet up on the fuel tank, the second one was touching up her make-up with painterly gestures and the aid of a small pink mirror, and the third one was facing backwards, her sandalled feet barely skimming above the surface of the road. She had a deeply serious

expression on her face as she immersed herself in the newspaper and with elegant fingers tried to prevent the pages from flapping in the breeze.

Acknowledgements Particular thanks to Anne and Arturo Grant, Iannis Stamiris (the novelist), Alexandros Rallis of the Greek Embassy in London, Helen CosmMatos of the Corgialaiios Historical And Cultural Museum in Argostoli, Cephallonia, Giovanni Camisa, and the staff of Earlsfield Public Library in London. None of them, of course, are responsible in any way for my interpretation of the information that they gave.

I am very indebted to innumerable books, but in particular to the following: RICHARD CAPELL: Simiomata, Macdonald and Co, daft unknown.

MARIO CERVI: Storia delta Guerra di Grecia, Sugar Editore, 1965.

KAY CICELLIS: The Easy Way, Harvill Press, 1950.

JOHN Everest: Time After Earthquake, Heinemann, 1954.

NICHOLAS GAGE: Hellas, Collins Harvill,1987.

RICHARD IATRE B: Was in Italy 1943-1945, John Murray, 1993.

DENNIS Mwc>c SMITH: Mussolini, Weidenfeld and NirnLson, 1981.

E.C.W. MYERS: Greek Entanglement, Rupert Hart-Davis, 19SS.

MARCELLO VENTURE The White Flag, Blond, 1%6.

My apologies to Caroline for so many late meals and neglected duties.

A real struggle this one. Sorry about the delay. First of all de Bernieres tendency to 'make up' words threw 'word's spellchecker into a loop. Then after finishing the proofing last Friday I needed to rescan 6 pages - and the scanner conked out! I've played with the wires, the drivers, everything I could think of all week. Finally tonight after a full week of solid resistance, the old thing gave up and started working again. The next FatBastard Release will be The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth on Satuday 14th April, then another Cornwell (assuming the scanner behaves itself!)...Algernon

A FatBastard production. Scanned with Omnipage Pro 10. Completed and Posted 7th April 2001. Proofed (in UK English!) in Word 97. Reproofed for lit version 12thMay 2001. Some formatting may be altered slightly. If you find any other errors, either let me know at [email protected] or update the version no and repost. Not to be reposted without the FatBastard 'Logo' below.

FATBASTARD PRODUCTIONS 2001 - Quality as well as Quantity. Good Books, Properly Scanned, Carefully Proofed, Simply Formatted, Available to all! For personal use only. Not to be sold or used for personal profit.

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