Birds Without Wings (72 page)

The eight doctors issue daily bulletins that are accurate but optimistic. The King has a local infection, but the situation is not unduly grave. Dr. Savas, the eminent microbiologist, takes a culture from the leg wound and detects the presence of streptococcus. The swelling becomes greatly
worse, and the wound enlarges. The King’s temperature reaches forty degrees. The surgeon, Gerasimos Fokas, pronounces that the swelling is not just a phlegmon, it is septicaemia. He is a formidable expert in war wounds, and he states that the only solution is amputation, for only amputation will save the royal life. In this he is undoubtedly correct, but the rest of the committee are horrified, and veto it, most probably because they cannot conceive of cutting off the leg of a king, even though others in the past have been but little bequalmed about cutting off their heads.

Zalokostas goes to Prime Minister Venizelos, who has taken to his bed with influenza, and for the first time the politician finds out exactly how serious the situation is. He masters his fever sufficiently to summon a specialist from Paris. George Ferdinand Widal, expert in intractable inflammations, will find a Greek warship waiting for him at Brindisi, and he will arrive on the thirteenth day, three days after the infection reaches Alexander’s stomach, causing him to vomit and to lose weight.

Her beloved begins to turn yellow, and the lovely Aspasia dutifully, but perhaps unimaginatively, dons a nurse’s uniform. She is in attendance always, she holds his hands, and between them there pass the most intense and touching scenes of connubial devotion.

The whole country now knows the truth, and services take place in the churches. Telegrams begin to arrive from all over the world. Wild rumours begin to circulate, to the effect that the different doctors are treating the King according to their own political inclinations, with the royalist ones trying to save him (apart from Savas, who, on account of having been Queen Sophia’s physician, is still loyal to the old King), and the Venizelist ones trying to kill him.

Venizelos and the exiled royal family are at loggerheads. He sends them a telegram every day, but he heartlessly refuses Queen Sophia’s pleas to let her come to her son’s bedside, bizarrely advising her to address her requests to the Greek embassy in Zurich. Venizelos is surprised that she sends only two telegrams in eighteen days, but Prince Christopher is to recall that she was heartbroken at ever having been separated from her son, and that Venizelos deliberately blocked her attempts to communicate with him. Sophia disapproves of Aspasia, and so it is unlikely that her presence would in any case soothe her son. Venizelos permits Olga, the Queen Dowager, to come instead of Sophia, but she arrives two days too late, on account of rough seas. In the meantime, Venizelos goes to the Tatoi Palace every other day to chat with the King, but does not discuss politics, since it is indecent to discuss politics with a dying man.

The newspaper
New Day
reports that Prime Minister Venizelos had
ordered Moritz the monkey to be infected with rabies, in order that he might fatally bite the King, and the Prime Minister initiates litigation against it, for libel.

On the twelfth day Alexander becomes delirious at night, but improves slightly during the day. All remain optimistic, except for the cleaning lady, Kyria Eleni. She has read dire and ominous portents in the coffee grounds, and she understands the significance of Fritz breaking the mirror. She tells Aspasia, the doctors and the Prime Minister that she can, if they are willing, and even though she is only a cleaning lady, perform an act of iatrosophia for them. All she needs them to do is kill Fritz the dog, and bring her his liver so that she can make an ointment with it. They express gratitude for her advice, but her offer is declined by the doctors, who place more confidence in the efficaciousness of their own iatrosophia.

That night King Alexander begins to call out, “Oh Father, oh Father,” and “Mother, Mother, save me.” In a moment of clarity he tells the desolate Aspasia to go and take some rest.

Dr. Widal administers a vaccine to the King, and estimates that he has four more days to live. A new doctor arrives. He is Pierre Delbet, whose ship has deposited him near the Corinth Canal. He is driven to the palace at stupendous speed, in a Panhard racing car which the stricken King would have loved to have driven himself, had the patient been someone other than himself. Dr. Delbet finds the patient coughing blood, and a new lethal microbe is found. The doctors return to the subject of amputation, but they know that at this stage it is too late. Alexander falls into a coma, and when he finally wakes he asks to embrace the beautiful Aspasia.

The King is delirious again, and he tries to speak. He dreams that he is standing at the edge of a great river, and on the opposite bank there stands the familiar figure of his beloved grandfather, the late King George, who calls to him, saying, “Come, my child, the time has come for me to take you.”

Alexander cries out, “Yes, Grandfather, I am coming, but first I want you to meet Aspasia.” Hearing this, Aspasia swoons away.

A priest is called, and he is placed behind a screen. Aspasia does not want to perturb her husband, so she has the priest recite
sotto voce
, and she serves the communion wine to Alexander on a spoon, telling him that it is medicine. He sleeps heroically, dreaming of victory in Thrace. He calls, “We are winning, we are winning!” He asks, “Where is Melas? Bring me the latest reports.”

Melas, his aide-de-camp, is summoned, and instructed to make something
up for the sake of the King’s peace of mind. The King’s breathing becomes stertorous, and he is clearly about to die. He calls Aspasia by her pet name. “Bika,” he says, “I want to see Mitsos.”

The royal chauffeur is called, and he heaves his vast bulk into the chamber. The giant is grief-stricken and unsure of himself. Aspasia bends down and tells her husband: “Mitsos is here.”

“Mitsos,” says Alexander, “is my car ready?”

“It’s always ready, Your Majesty,” replies Mitsos with a certain professional pride in his voice, which implies that, were the circumstances otherwise, he would have been wounded at the suggestion that he was not always perfectly prepared.

“Mitsos, are the lights working properly?”

Mitsos looks at Aspasia in puzzlement, and she indicates that he should say that the lights are fine.

“Mitsos, prepare the car for a long journey. You drive. I’m exhausted.”

At three thirty the young King says, “Bika,” and dies. He is buried next to the tomb of his grandfather, King George, who has so recently appeared in his dreams in order to summon him to the other side of the Styx.

Thus the headstrong German shepherd dog, Fritz, and Moritz, the Barbary ape, innocently and gallantly defending his mate, plunge Greece into a political void. The country is at war, the King is dead and new elections are due. Some people wonder whether Venizelos is going to proclaim a republic.

Instead, he asks Prince Paul if he would be King, but Paul is still very young and has an older brother and a father with better claim than he, and he refuses. Venizelos summons parliament, and Admiral Koundouriotis is appointed temporary viceroy.

Venizelos waits confidently for the elections of November, and is astounded when he loses heavily. Perhaps the Greeks are weary after so much war, or perhaps they are simply capricious. Certainly they have suddenly forgotten their relief when King Constantine was disgraced and deposed after obstinately and unpopularly supporting the losers in the Great War. The presence of the venerable Queen Olga reminds them suddenly that they loved the old set-up all along. The equally venerable new Prime Minister goes to the Tatoi Palace to beg the old Queen to accept the regency. He weeps with joy as he kneels before her, and when he refuses to rise, she kneels with him so that they can weep together, and then they struggle to rise with mutual aid.

King Constantine is asked to return to the throne, but sour experience has left him suspicious, and he asks for a plebiscite, which he wins overwhelmingly.

The return of the royal family is accomplished amid scenes of some chaos. Princes Andrew and Christopher arrive with Princess Mary, and they are deposited near the Corinth Canal by an Italian ship from Brindisi. They are awakened at dawn by a startling volley of gunfire, and emerge on deck to find a torpedo boat coming to fetch them. It is commanded by Admiral Ioannides and a crew of sailors who are lachrymose with joy. Princess Mary and the admiral eye each other with discreet interest, and are married some time later.

The Corinthians turn out with flowers and flags, waving pictures of King Constantine that they must previously have kept hidden in drawers. The royals are pelted with flowers by people running alongside the banks of the canal. The harbour of Piraeus is filled with boats of all descriptions, crammed to the gunwhales with enthusiastic plebeians who are shouting themselves hoarse whilst factory sirens wail and church bells ring. Queen Olga appears in the royal launch, then, when they all get ashore, it takes them three-quarters of an hour to reach their car, which is a mere forty metres away. Their hands are shaken until they are bruised, they are kissed on the cheeks, and there is a hyperbolical babble of laughing, crying and shouting. Queen Olga has to be surrounded by bodyguards to prevent her from being crushed. The crowd tears the running boards and the mudguards from the royal car, and somehow the clutch is disenabled. A rescue car is sent in by the army.

The car inches its way towards Athens, but there the people throw themselves to the ground before it, calling on the occupants to get out. Prince Christopher turns to Prince Andrew and says, “I think we’re going to have to make the sacrifice.”

Each of them is carried the four miles to the palace on the shoulders of the populace. Their royal flesh, unaccustomed to public adoration and the rough treatment that it entails, is so bruised that none of them can walk for a week afterwards. Prince Christopher finds one of his legs being pulled in one direction by a woman in a mauve suit, and the other being pulled in another direction by a mechanic clad in his work overalls. He has a fanatical hairstyle. “Bring my legs back!” cries Prince Christopher. Prince Andrew struggles valiantly to prevent his garters being purloined by his souvenir-seeking admirers, and fails.

It is very like riding all day on a camel. Prince Christopher is set down
at the palace by his bearers, but the titanic and fanatic mechanic will not release him, and picks him up again to carry him indoors on his back, despite the struggles and howls of his cargo. The mechanic tries to carry the Prince upstairs, but the ancient Prime Minister intervenes, thrashing the mechanic with his walking stick, and crying, “Let His Royal Highness down at once!” The mechanic fanatic drops the Prince and hurls the Prime Minister into a corner, enabling two soldiers to frogmarch the Prince away whilst the mechanic is distracted.

Unable to go out because of the crowds, the remainder of the royal party wait until dark and then steal out like spies, in order to go to the Tatoi Palace. They drive through villages festooned with flags, flowers and pictures of the King. The entourage has gifts of vegetables and game heaped upon it. In their cars rabbits and aubergines pile up around their feet. The bells peal, and the people shout, “Erxetai! Erxetai!”

When the King does arrive at last, the scenes are even wilder. Of the one million who voted in the referendum, only ten thousand have voted against his return. Venizelos has fled the country, and the new old King is welcomed at the railway station by ecstatic crowds who clamber all over the carriages. He is carried straight to the cathedral, where the archbishop offers up prayers of thanksgiving.

Fritz bit Moritz and Moritz bit the King and the King died, and so there is a new king, who happens to be a previously deposed one who is detested vehemently by all the Allies. The loss of Allied support means the loss of the war.

Moritz, the Barbary ape, and Fritz, the German shepherd dog, will have successfully altered the entire course of Greek and Turkish history, but they themselves will retire modestly into oblivion and obscurity. They will leave neither simian nor canine memoirs explaining their side of the story. No one will know what happened to either of them in the end, or what would have happened if Moritz had not bitten the King.

CHAPTER 82

Mustafa Kemal (20)

The Allies are disgusted by the re-enthronement of the old King. There had been a national schism in Greece because of his determination to keep Greece out of the Great War. He is Kaiser Wilhelm’s brother-in-law, and he is universally thought to be Germanophile. France and Italy withdraw all support for Greece. These days they are both selling arms to Mustafa Kemal, effectively having changed sides. Even Britain notifies Greece that there will be no further financial assistance. In Greece, the war is already creating desperate economic problems.

Prime Minister Venizelos has flown into exile, and the war was, after all, Venizelos’s pet project. This is an ideal opportunity to take Greece out of the war with dignity. King Constantine simply takes it over, however, and royalist officers are appointed to replace the Venizelist ones. The new general, Papoulas, scores a victory at Inönü, but retreats because he thinks the Turks are more numerous than they really are. Colonel Ismet, who will later take the surname “Inönü” when Mustafa Kemal takes that of “Atatirk,” is mightily surprised by the Greek withdrawal, and reoccupies his old positions. He is promoted to brigadier general and is entitled to be addressed as “Pasha.”