‘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.’
‘I’ve got it for two days. We can go to Kastro, and Assos, and Fiskardo. We can sit on a rock and watch for dolphins.’
‘Go back to Athens. Old lunatic.’
‘I’ve brought you a crash-helmet too.’
‘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 clung 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 slid 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 to 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.
Author’s Note
I have tried to be as true to history as possible, although I have, for example, conflated the customs of two religious festivals. As far as Cephallonia is concerned I have had to make the most of what little information there is, and the island badly needs a Dr Iannis or a Pelagia to give it a proper history. Much of what I have written consists of hearsay tempered with myth and hazy memory, which, of course, is what history is. Two further points:
Firstly, the fact that the Acqui Division behaved reasonably well in Ionia does not in any way diminish the horrors perpetrated by the Italian Armed Forces elsewhere.
Secondly, it has long been traditional amongst certain kinds of disconnected intellectual to maintain that the Greek Communists were romantic heroes who were unjustly suppressed by the imperialist and duplicitous British, in order to restore the monarchy against the will of the people. Much as it is pleasant to create illusions and myths that accord with one’s own political prejudice, the slenderest acquaintance with the primary sources makes it completely impossible to believe in this one. I have been unable to conclude otherwise than that, when they were not totally useless, perfidious, and parasitic, they were unspeakably barbaric. Now that the Cold War is over, there is no longer any vested interest in pretending otherwise. Tito himself finally abandoned them, apparently in disgust, even though their tactics were learned from him and the Nazis, and identical to those which he used with such cynicism and success against his own people and the unfortunate Italian soldiers who went in good faith to fight for him. Those who wish to know what the Greek Civil War was like only have to know what was happening in Yugoslavia at the time of writing, except that in those days the British did what was right rather than what was sensible, and helped to bring it to an end.
Acknowledgements
Particular thanks to Anne and Arturo Grant, Iannis Stamiris (the novelist), Alexandros Rallis of the Greek Embassy in London, Helen Cosmetatos of the Corgialenios 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, date unknown.
MARIO CERVI: Storia della Guerra di Grecia, Sugar Editore, 1965.
KAY CICELLIS: The Easy Way, Harvill Press, 1950.
JOHN EVANS: Time After Earthquake, Heinemann, 1954.
NICHOLAS GAGE: Hellas, Collins Harvill, 1987.
RICHARD LAMB: War in Italy 1943–1945, John Murray, 1993.
DENNIS MACK SMITH: Mussolini, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981.
E.C.W. MYERS: Greek Entanglement, Rupert Hart-Davis, 1955.
MARCELLO VENTURI: The White Flag, Blond, 1966.
My apologies to Caroline for so many late meals and neglected duties.
Louis de Bernières, Corelli's Mandolin
(Series: # )
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