Birds Without Wings (68 page)

More of a problem from Granitola’s point of view was that the patient Turkish method was too boring. He ached with tedium as he and Rustem Bey waited motionless, often prone upon the ground, covered over with brush, for hours at a time. One day he proposed to Rustem Bey that they should try the Italian method.

“Et qu’est-ce que c’est, la méthode italieng?”
asked Rustem Bey in his egregious Provençal accent.

“We walk about, keeping ourselves fairly well concealed, and when the birds fly overhead, we shoot them down.”

“It isn’t possible to shoot flying birds,” said Rustem Bey firmly. “Nobody does that.”

“In Italy, that’s how we do it.”

“I find it impossible to believe. Why would anyone choose a method so difficult?”

“But it isn’t difficult. It’s just a technique.”

“I would like to see it,” said Rustem Bey sceptically.

Rustem Bey did see it shortly afterwards. Lieutenant Granitola spotted a duck flying towards them, and dropped it out of the sky with such precision that it landed at their feet, stone dead.

Rustem Bey’s reaction was initially a curious one. He became angry. It seemed to him to be very bad manners to controvert one’s host so curtly. He felt that Granitola should have had the good manners to miss a couple of times first. He also felt a childish fury at having been proved wrong at all; since he was the aga, he did not inhabit a world where it was possible for him to be wrong with any great frequency, and being wrong was not something he was ever likely to have to get used to. He walked away suddenly, and vehemently smoked a cigarette with his back turned to Granitola, who was by now feeling frightened and disturbed. All that Granitola could think was “Holy Maria, I’ve offended a Turk.” He knew that one can fight with Turks, but one seldom gets away with offending them.

When the cigarette was finished, Rustem Bey ground the stub into the stones with his foot, paused a minute, and turned about. He was clearly still angry, because his face was glassy with hostility, and his eyes were glittering. He had managed to conquer himself, however, and said curtly, “I would like you to instruct me.”

“You were a soldier, weren’t you?” asked Granitola.

“Yes, but a bird moves faster than a running man, and more often than not you miss a running man in any case.”

“The principle is the same,” said Granitola, “but with birdshot it is much easier, because the shot spreads out as it flies. You aim in front of the bird, and experience teaches you how far in front it should be. You have to remember to keep the gun swinging at the same pace as the bird, until after you’ve fired. It’s no good keeping the gun still and hoping to pull the trigger at the right time. It never works.”

“How far in front should you shoot? I need to have an idea.”

“Well, really it depends on the speed and distance. I can assure you it becomes instinctive.”

Rustem Bey did not risk losing further face. He waited until he could go out on his own, and eventually succeeded in bagging two pigeons. Thereafter he shot a partridge, a duck and another pigeon. He shot three seagulls just for the practice, and then resumed his trips with Granitola, acquitting himself so well that the latter was astonished by his proficiency at something which only shortly before he had deemed impossible. In his turn, Rustem Bey found himself in a position to educate the Italian in the art of stalking deer and wild goat, and how to ride a horse with a Turkish saddle,
and so it came about that they achieved and maintained that equality of authority and esteem that is essential to the friendship of two proud men, perhaps especially when those men may have a twenty-five-year discrepancy in their ages.

As for the rest of the soldiers, Granitola ensured that Sergeant Oliva kept them very busy, believing that idleness is disastrous for morale and performance. They marched hither and thither, staged high-spirited section and platoon attacks, and charged with wild screams and bayonets fixed at ranks of hostile sandbags suspended from the branches of olive trees. Those of peasant origin were detailed to grow vegetables, the sergeant carefully checking the straightness of the drills with pieces of string. Those who could not swim were taught to do so by those who could, and the chickens were removed to the ruins of the ancient Greek amphitheatre. There also were staged entertainments that repeated the same acts that the soldiers had put on for each other a hundred times before, and which always concluded with the singing of patriotic anthems and the unstopping of flasks of wine. The locals regarded them with a mixture of admiration and perplexity, and they in their turn developed a taste for raki, and for roasting and steaming in the hamam. Fortunately for their own health, they never made the discovery that the town had its own brothel, whose sick and pathetic inhabitants were by now on the verge of starvation from lack of clientele, so that it had become more like a convent of Poor Clares than a house of licence.

What consolidated the relationship between the soldiers and the populace was the determination of the two gendarmes to teach the former how to play backgammon. Sergeant Oliva began the downward spiral into addiction as he had become fascinated by watching the gendarmes playing it in the meydan. He was the first to be taught the game, and consequently the first to become addicted, to be followed hierarchically by the corporals and then the privates, so that it spread through the ranks like one of the diseases that they might have acquired in the brothel, had they known of its existence. Extra backgammon boards were sent for from Telmessos. Each evening the meydan rattled to the sound of dice and counter, and cries either of despair or triumph could be heard until well after dark. Backgammon is a game in which the first half consists of skill, and the second half of luck, so it appeals both to the cunning and the reckless, but it is always skill that wins. Tournaments and championships were inaugurated, with prizes being presented either by Rustem Bey or Lieutenant Granitola, and contestants including more and more of the townsmen, so that eventually
even Iskander the Potter and Ali the Broken-Nosed were participants, but no one was ever able to beat the two gendarmes, who had devoted a lifetime to playing it whilst waiting for something to happen.

Few of the Christian men joined in, however, and it is a curious fact that still puzzles and vexes Greeks to this day, that the Italians got on much better with the Muslims than with the Orthodox Christians, and tended to side with them. This they hold to be evidence that the Italians cannot be proper Christians and are perfidious and unreasonable. It is true that Italian government policy at that time was explicitly to frustrate Greek aspirations, but it is also true that in the occupied territory the mutual dislike on the ground came about because of the attitude of the Orthodox clergy, whose power over their congregations was absolute.

Kristoforos was still plagued by his grotesque dreams of the funeral of God, and he and Lydia had had their share of suffering in the war. Most of the younger males in his congregation had disappeared into the labour battalions, never to reappear, and consequently the tillage was left entirely to desperate widows and unmarriageable daughters. On his weekly round to collect the offerings of his flock, he found that he was necessarily receiving less and less as time passed, and by and by he and Lydia ever more had to resort to practical measures. Lydia stayed out all day collecting wild greens, and Kristoforos even learned to lay lines from the rocks, thus achieving a neat reversal of Christ’s project to convert fishermen into fishers of men. He became more like an imam in his style of life.

The Italians had brought no chaplain with them, and found no Roman Catholic church in the town. Naturally they assumed that they could use the Orthodox ones, of which there were two. It was not that they had any intention of attending services, it was simply that a church was where one went for moments of prayer or solitude, and to indulge those occasions when a fit of religiousness descends upon the psyche.

There was much in the churches that was strange, such as the unreadable Greek lettering, the Byzantine style of decoration, and the depiction of saints such as St. Menas, of whom they had never heard, but there was much that was absolutely familiar, such as the candles, the incense and the fact that there was so much iconography. There were even the same mass-produced pious old ladies dressed from toe to head in black, crossing themselves, lighting tapers and finding things that needed tidying.

Sergeant Pietro Oliva was a good Catholic. He liked to go into a church and cross himself, genuflect to the altar, and then settle down to a little prayer and contemplation, savouring the coolness, the heavy odours, the
darkness, and the sensation of being soaked in the atmosphere of centuries’ worth of devotion that hung in the tenebrous and golden air of churches. He liked to request the Virgin to watch over his wife and two little children, and to check the well-being of his parents in Florence. He took a particular liking to the icon of the Virgin Glykophilousa, and wished that somewhere he could find a copy of it to take home.

He was crossing himself before it one day early in the occupation, when he had the astonishing experience of being assaulted from behind by what seemed at first to be a very large and infuriated bat. As he put his arms up to protect his head, he realised that he was being attacked by a very angry Orthodox priest, who was battering him about the head with a holy book, and cursing him in language that he did not understand, but which was undoubtedly vehement and picturesque. Kristoforos’s eyes were glittering, he was so enraged that he spat with each curse, and his beard was quivering.

Sergeant Oliva ran swiftly out of the church with his hands protecting his head, with Father Kristoforos in full hue and cry, still cursing and denouncing him, and that was the last time that he or any of the other Italians went into either of the churches.

The dramatic pursuit of Sergeant Oliva through the alleyways by Father Kristoforos soon became the talk of the town, as did his subsequent visits to the homes of Christians.

It was initially a relief to these Christians that Kristoforos was not asking for alms, but they were subjected instead to what amounted to a strict set of orders. His first port of call was the house of Charitos and Polyxeni. After they had kissed his hand, he said, “I have come to tell you strictly that you must have nothing to do with the Italians.”

“Nothing, Patir?” repeated Charitos.

“Nothing at all. If one of them touches you, you must go and wash immediately. If one of them talks to you, you must ignore him. You must avoid all contamination.”

“But why, Father, if I may respectfully ask?”

Kristoforos drew a deep breath, almost unable to conceptualise the loathing and disgust that was overwhelming him. “They are agents of the Devil,” he said at last.

“Aren’t they Christians, Father?” asked Polyxeni. “I’ve seen them crossing themselves.”

“They are the Devil’s Christians. They don’t even cross themselves correctly. You must avoid them at all costs.”

“Does the Devil have Christians?” asked Charitos, genuinely perplexed.

“The Devil disguises himself as a Christian whenever it suits him,” said Kristoforos, with authority. “These people are schismatics and heretics.”

“Yes?” said Charitos, and he exchanged glances with his wife, since neither of them understood these terms with any clarity. Kristoforos perceived their puzzlement, and explained, “They split away from the true Church. It was the worst crime against God.”

“Worse than murder?” asked Charitos, slightly awed by the concept of a worst crime against God.

“Worse than murder,” confirmed Kristoforos. “It was like a murder of the faith.”

“What did they do, Father?” asked Polyxeni.

The priest drew himself up to his full height, and inhaled portentously: “They put ‘and from the Son’ into the Nicene Creed.” His eyes sparkled once again with disdain and disgust. “And they use unleavened bread for the Eucharist!”

The heinousness of these offences was quite lost on the two Christians, and Charitos said very hesitantly, “And this is very serious, Father?”

“It couldn’t be more serious. This is the reason that we are irreconcilable. They will burn for it when God sends fire down the rivers at the Last Day. This is why you must take it on my authority that you shall have nothing to do with them at any time, to preserve yourself from the same danger of burning at the Last Day. These Roman Catholics have a false patriarch in Rome who is nothing but an Antichrist.”

The word “Antichrist” held no particular meaning for Polyxeni and her husband, but they were nonetheless very impressed by it. It rang in their heads with truly satanic resonance.

Father Kristoforos gave similar warnings to the inhabitants of every Christian household, and even interrupted his services to repeat them before the congregation. Every Friday he went down to the meydan to pronounce anathemas upon any Italians who might be there playing backgammon with the gendarmes, and as time went by perfected a reliable tirade in fairly inaccurate biblical Greek. Whilst the backgammon players raised their eyebrows, sighed and shook their heads, Kristoforos boomed out prophecies and curses along the lines of:

“Schismatics of Rome, children of Christ who weeps for thee, pawns of tyrants, ye who are unjust, ye who are filthy, ye who are unrighteous, ye who are dogs and whoremongers, sorcerers and idolaters, ye whose hearts
are unlit by the sun, ye that have no temple within, ye that shall not be saved, ye that work abominations, ye that defile the Virgin, ye that cannot drink the truth whatever thy thirst; ye are corrupt and have done nothing good, ye have done iniquity, ye have eaten my people like bread, ye have not called upon God, ye have encamped against our cities, ye have been put to shame and God hath despised thee and scattered thy bones. Behold the Lord shall give ear to the words of my mouth, for He is my helper, He is with them who uphold my soul, He shall reward evils unto mine enemies, He shall cut them off in His truth, for strangers are risen up against my people, oppressors seek after our trees of olive and our maidens, wickedness is in the midst of them. My soul is among lions, and I lie even with them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.