The Magus - John Fowles [84]
�e and the Germans allowed a certain amount of coastal traffic. One of the guerrillas was a cousin of these girls--probably in love with the elder one. "The guerrillas came to the cottage unseen, before anyone in the village knew of the catastrophe. They were no doubt counting on using the family ca�e. But it was away. Later a weeping neighbour arrived to tell the sisters the news of the killing and all that I had told the village men. By then the guerrillas were in hiding. We do not know where they spent that night. Probably in a cistern. Parties of hastily constituted vigilantes searched every cottage and villa, empty and lived-in, in the village, including the Tsatsoses', and found nothing. Whether the girls were simply frightened or unusually patriotic we shall never know. But they had no blood relations in the village--and of course the father and brother were safely out of it. "The guerrillas must that next day have decided to split up. At any rate the girls started baking bread. A sharp-eyed neighbour noticed it, and remembered that they had been baking only two days before. Bread for the brother and father to take on the voyage. Apparently she did not suspect anything at once. But about five o'clock she went to the school and told the Germans. She had three relations among the hostages. "A squad of _die Raben_ arrived at the cottage. Only the cousin was there. He threw himself into a cupboard. He heard the two girls being struck, and screaming. He knew his time was up, so he leapt out, pistol in hand, fired before the Germans could move--and nothing happened. The pistol had jammed. "They took the three to the school, where they were interrogated. The girls were tortured, the cousin was quickly made to cooperate. Two hours later--when night had come--he led the way down the coast road to an empty villa, knocked on the shutter and whispered to his two comrades that the sisters had managed to find a boat. As they came through the gate the Germans pounced. The leader was shot in the arm, but no one else was hurt." I interrupted. "And he was a Cretan?" "Yes. Quite like the man you saw. Only shorter and broader. "All that time we hostages had been up in the classroom. It faced over the pine forest, so we could not see any of the comings and goings. But about nine we heard two terrible screams of pain and a fraction later a tremendous cry. The one Greek word: _eleutheria_. You may think that we cried in return, but we did not. Instead we felt hope--that the guerrillas had been caught. Not long after that there were two bursts of automatic fire. And some time after that the door of our room was thrown open. I was called out, and another man: the local butcher. "We were marched downstairs and out in front of the school to the wing where I believe you masters live now--the western. Wimmel was standing at the entrance there with one of his lieutenants. "On the side of the steps behind them the collaborationist interpreter was sitting, with his head in his hands. He looked white, in a state of shock. Some twenty yards away, by the wall, I saw two dead bodies. Soldiers rolled them onto stretchers as we approached. The lieutenant stepped forward and signalled to the butcher to follow him. "Wimmel turned and went into the building. I saw his back going down the dark stone corridor and then I was pushed forward after him. He stood outside a door at the far end and waited for me. Light poured from it. When I got there he gestured for me to go in. "I think anyone but a doctor would have fainted. I should have liked to have fainted. The room was bare. In the middle was a table. Roped to the table was a young man. The cousin. He was naked except for a bloodstained singlet, and he had been badly burnt about the mouth and eyes. But I could see only one thing. Where his genitals should have been, there was nothing but a black-red hole. They had cut off his penis and scrotal sac. With a pair of wire-cutting shears. "In one of the far corners another naked man lay on the floor. His face was to the ground and I could not see what they had done to him. He too was apparently unconscious. I shall never forget the stillness of that room. There were three or four soldiers--soldiers! of course torturers, psychopathic sadists--in the room. One of them held a long iron stake. An electric fire was burning, lying on its back. Three of the men wore leather aprons like blacksmith's aprons, to keep their uniforms clean. There was a disgusting smell of excrement and urine. "And there was one other man, bound to a chair in the corner. He was also gagged. A great bull of a man. Badly bruised and wounded in one arm, but evidently not tortured yet. Wimmel had started first on the ones most likely to break. "I have seen several films--like Rossellini's films--of the good human's reactions to such scenes. How he turns on the Fascist monsters and delivers himself of some terse yet magnificent condemnation. How he speaks for history and humanity and forever puts them in their place. My own feelings were of immediate and intense personal fear. You see, Nicholas, I thought, and Wimmel left a long silence to let me think, that I was now going to be tortured as well. I did not know why. But there was no reason left in the world. When human beings could do such things to one another... "I turned round and looked at Wimmel. The extraordinary thing was that he seemed the most human other person in the room. He looked tired and angry. Even a little disgusted. Ashamed at the mess his men had created. "He said in English, These men do this for pleasure. I do not. I wish, before they start on that murderer there, that you will speak to him." Conchis spoke with quite a good imitation of a German accent. Pauses, to mark the dialogue. "I said, What must I say? "I want the names of his friends. I want the names of the people who help him. I want the positions of hiding places and arms places. If he gives me these I give to him my word he will be executed in a correct military manner. "I said, Did _they_ not tell you enough? Wimmel said, All they knew. But he knows more. He is a man I have long wished to meet. His friends could not make him speak. I do not think we shall make him speak. Perhaps you can. You will say this. The truth. You do not like us Germans. You are an educated man. You wish only to stop this... procedures. You will advise him to speak what he knows. It is no guilt now that he is caught to speak. You understand? Come with me. "We went into another bare room next door. A few moments later the wounded man was dragged in, still tied to his chair, and set in the centre of the room. I was given a chair facing him. The colonel sat in the background and waved the torturers outside. I began to talk. "I did exactly as the colonel had ordered. That is, I begged the man to give all the information he could. You will say it was dishonourable of me, because you are thinking of the families and men he could have betrayed. But that night I lived in those two rooms. They were the only reality. The outside world did not exist. I felt passionately that it was my duty to stop any more of this atrocious degradation of human intelligence. And that Cretan's obsessive obstinacy seemed to contribute so directly to the degradation that it in part constituted it. "I told him I was not a collaborationist, that I was a doctor, that my enemy was human suffering. That I spoke for Greece when I said that God would forgive him if he spoke now--his friends had suffered enough. There was a point beyond which no man could be expected to suffer... and so on. Every argument I could think of. "But his expression was one of unchanging hostility to me. Hatred of me. I doubt if he even listened to what I was saying. He must have assumed that I was a collaborationist, that all the things I told him were lies. "In the end I fell silent and looked back at the colonel. I could not hide the fact that I thought I had failed. He must have signalled to the guards outside, because one of them came in, went behind the Cretan and unfastened the bandage. At once the man roared, all the chords in his throat standing out, that same word, that one word: _eleutheria_. There was nothing noble in it. It was pure savagery, as if he was throwing a can of lighted petrol over us. The guard brutally twisted the gag back over his mouth and retied it. "Of course the word was not for him a concept or an ideal. It was simply his last weapon, and he used it as a weapon. "The colonel said, Take him back and await my orders. The man was dragged away again into that sinister room. The colonel walked to the shuttered window, opened it onto darkness and stood there for a minute, then turned to me. He said, Now you see why I must speak the language that I do. "I said, I see nothing any more. Wimmel replied: Perhaps I should make you watch the dialogue between my men and that animal. I said, I beg you not to. He asked me if I thought he enjoyed such scenes. I did not answer. Then he said, I should be very happy to sit at my headquarters. To have nothing to do but sign papers and enjoy the beautiful classical monuments. You do not believe me. You think I am a sadist. I am not. I am a realist. "Still I sat in silence. He planted himself in front of me, and said, You will be placed under guard in a separate room. I will give orders that you have something to eat and drink. As one civilised man to another, I regret the incidents of today and the incidents in the next room. You will not, of course, be one of the hostages. "I looked up at him, I suppose with a shocked gratitude. "He said, You will remember that like every other officer I have one supreme purpose in my life, the German historical purpose--to do my duty, which is to bring order into the chaos of Europe. Nothing--nothing!--stands between me and that duty. "I cannot tell you how, but I knew he was lying. One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true--they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the superego, what you will. They said, You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love. They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. "Unlike most Germans, I believe Wimmel knew, had always known, this. Exactly what he was. Exactly what he was doing. And that he was playing with me. It did not seem so at first. He gave me one last look and then went out, and I heard him speak to one of the guards who had brought me. I was taken to a room on another floor and given something to eat and a bottle of German beer. At this point the experience seemed to me something like that at Neuve Chapelle. I had many feelings, but the dominant one was that I was going to survive. I was still going to see the sun shining. To breathe, to eat bread, to touch a keyboard. "The night passed. I was brought more food in the morning, allowed to wash. Then at half-past ten I was made to go out. I found all the other hostages waiting. They had not been given anything to drink or eat and I was forbidden to speak to them. There was no sign of Wimmel or of Anton. "We came to the harbour. The entire village was there, some four or five hundred people, black and grey and faded blue, crammed onto the quays with a line of _die Raben_ watching them. The village priests, the women, even little boys and girls. They screamed as we came into sight. Like some amorphous protoplasm. Trying to break bounds, but unable to. "We went on marching. There is a large house with huge Attic acroteria facing the harbour--you know it?--in those days there was a taverna on the ground floor. On the balcony above I saw Wimmel and behind him Anton, flanked by men with machine guns. I was made to stand against the wall under the balcony, among the chairs and tables. The hostages went marching on. Up a street and out of sight. "It was very hot. A perfect blue day. The villagers were driven from the quay to the terrace with the old cannons in front of the taverna. They stood crowded there. Brown faces upturned in the sunlight, black kerchiefs of the women fluttering in the breeze. I could not see the balcony, but the colonel waited above, impressing his silence on them, his presence. And gradually they fell absolutely quiet, a wall of expectant faces. Up in the sky I saw swallows and martins. Like children playing in a house where some tragedy is taking place among the adults. Strange, to see so many Greeks... and not a sound. Only the tranquil cries of little birds. "Wimmel began to speak. The collaborationist interpreted. "_You will now see what happens to those_... _those who are the enemies of Germany_... _and to those who help the enemies of Germany_... _by order of a court-martial of the German High Command held last night_... _three have been executed_... _two more will now be executed_... "All the brown hands darted up, made the four taps of the Cross. Wimmel paused. German is to death what Latin is to ritual religion--entirely appropriate. "_Following that_... _the eighty hostages_... _taken under Occupation law_... _in retaliation for the brutal murder_... _of four innocent members of the German Armed Forces_... and yet again he paused... _will be executed_. "When the interpreter interpreted the last phrase, there was an exhaled groan, as if they had all been struck in the stomach. Many of the women, some of the men, fell to their knees, imploring the balcony. Humanity groping for the nonexistent pity of a _deus vindicans_. Wimmel must have withdrawn, because the beseechings turned to lamentations. "Now I was forced out from the wall and marched after the hostages. Soldiers, the Austrians, stood at every entrance to the harbour and forced the villagers back. It horrified me that they could help _die Raben_, could obey Wimmel, could stand there with impassive faces and roughly force back people that I knew, only a day or two before, they did not hate. "The alley curved up between the houses to the square beside the village school. It is a natural stage, inclined slightly with the slope to the north, with the sea and the mainland over the lower roofs, with the wall of the village school on the uphill side, and high walls to east and west. If you remember, there is a large plane tree in the garden of the house to the west. The branches come over the wall. As I came to the square that was the first thing I saw. Three bodies hung from the branches, pale in the shadow, as monstrous as Goya etchings. There was the naked body of the cousin with its terrible wound. And there were the naked bodies of the two girls. They had been disembowelled. A slit cut from their breastbone down to their pubic hair and the intestines pulled out. Halfgutted carcasses, swaying slightly in the noon wind. "Beyond those three atrocious shapes I saw the hostages. They had been herded against the school in a pen of barbed wire. The men at the back were just in the shadow of the wall, the front ones in sunlight. As soon as they saw me they began to shout. There were insults of the obvious kind to me, confused cries of appeal--as if anything I could say then would have touched the colonel. He was there, in the centre of the square, with Anton and some twenty of _die Raben_. On the third side of the square, to the east, there is a long wall. You know it? In the middle a gate. Iron grilles. The two guerrillas were lashed to the bars. Not with rope--with barbed wire. "I was halted behind the two lines of men, some twenty yards away from where Wimmel was standing. Anton would not look at me, though Wimmel turned briefly. Anton--staring into space, as if he had hypnotised himself into believing that none of what he saw existed. As if he no longer existed himself. The colonel beckoned the collaborationist to him. I suppose he wanted to know what the hostages were shouting. He appeared to think for a moment and then he went towards them. They fell silent. Of course they did not know he had already pronounced sentence on them. He said something that was translated to them. What, I could not hear, except that it reduced the villagers to silence. So it was not the death sentence. The colonel marched back to me. "He said, I have made an offer to these peasants. I looked at his face. It was absolutely without nervousness, excitation; a man in complete command of himself. He went on, I will permit them not to be executed. To go to a labour camp. On one condition. That is that you, as mayor of this village, carry out in front of them the execution of the two murderers. "I said, I am not an executioner. "The village men began to shout frantically at me. "He looked at his watch, and said, You have thirty seconds to decide. "Of course in such situations one cannot think. All coherence is crowded out of one's mind. You must remember this. From this point on I acted without reason. Beyond reason. "I said, I have no choice. "He went to the end of one of the ranks of men in front of me. He took a submachine gun from a man's shoulder, appeared to make sure that it was correctly loaded, then came back with it and presented it to me with both hands. As if it was a prize I had won. The hostages cheered, crossed themselves. And then were silent. The colonel watched me. I had a wild idea that I might turn the gun on him. But of course the massacre of the entire village would then have been inevitable. "I walked towards the men wired to the iron gates. I knew why he had done this. It would be widely publicised by the Germancontrolled newspapers. The pressure on me would not be mentioned, and I would be presented as a Greek who cooperated in the German theory of order. A warning to other mayors. An example to other frightened Greeks everywhere. But those eighty men--how could I condemn them? "I came within about fifteen feet of the two guerrillas. So close, because I had not fired a gun since those far-off days of 1915. For some reason I had not looked them in the face till then. I had looked at the high wall with its tiled top, at a pair of vulgar ornamental urns on top of the pillars that flanked the gate, at the fronds of a pepper tree beyond. But then I had to look at them. The younger of the two might have been dead. His head had fallen forward. They had done something to his hands, I could not see what, but there was blood all over the fingers. He was not dead. I heard him groan. Mutter something. He was delirious. "And the other. His mouth had been struck or kicked. The lips were severely contused, reddened. As I stood there and raised the gun he drew back what remained of those lips. All his teeth had been smashed in. The inside of his mouth was like a blackened vulva. But I was too desperate to finish to realise the real cause. He too had had his fingers crushed, or his nails torn out, and I could see multiple burns on his body. But the Germans had made one terrible error. They had not gouged out his eyes. "I raised the gun blindly and pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. A click. I pressed it again. And again, an empty click. "I turned and looked round. Wimmel and my two guards were standing thirty feet or so away, watching. The hostages suddenly began to call. They thought I had lost the wifi to shoot. I turned back and tried once more. Again, nothing. I turned to the colonel, and gestured with the gun, to show that it would not fire. I felt faint in the heat. Nausea. Yet unable to faint. "He said, Is something wrong? "I answered, The gun will not fire. "It is a Schmeisser. An excellent weapon. "I have tried three times. "It will not fire because it is not loaded. It is strictly forbidden for the civilian population to possess loaded weapons. "I stared at him, then at the gun. Still not understanding. The hostages were silent again. "I said, very helplessly, How can I kill them? "He smiled, a smile as thin as a sabre slash. Then he said, Your imagination has... two minutes in which to act. "I understood then. I was to club them to death. I understood many things. His real self, his real position. And from that came the realisation that he was mad, and that he was therefore innocent, as all mad people, even the most cruel, are innocent. He was what life could do if it wanted--an extreme possibility made hideously mind and flesh. Perhaps that was why he could impose himself so strongly, like a black divinity. For there was something superhuman in the spell he cast. And therefore the real evil, the real monstrosity in the situation lay in the other Germans, those less than mad lieutenants and corporals and privates who stood silently there watching this exchange. "I walked towards him. The two guards thought I was going to attack him because they sharply raised their guns. But he said something to them and stood perfectly still. I stopped some six feet from him. We stared at each other. "I beg you in the name of European civilization to stop this barbarity. "And I command you to continue this punishment. "Without looking down he said, You now have thirty seconds. Refusal to carry out this order will result in your own immediate execution. "I walked back over the dry earth to that gate. I stood in front of those two men. I was going to say to the one who seemed capable of understanding that I had no choice, I must do this terrible thing to him. But I left a fatal pause of a second to elapse. Perhaps because I realised, close to him, what had happened to his mouth. It had been burnt, not simply bludgeoned or kicked. I remembered that man with the iron stake, the electric fire. They had broken in his teeth and branded his tongue, burnt his tongue right down to the roots with red-hot iron. That word he shouted must finally have driven them beyond endurance. And in those astounding five seconds, the most momentous of my life, I understood this guerrilla. I mean that I understood far better than he did himself what he was. Very simply. He helped me. Because he managed to stretch his head towards me and say the word he could not say. It was almost not a sound, but a contortion in his throat, a five-syllabled choking. But once again, one last time, it was unmistakably that word. And the word was in his eyes, in his being, totally in his being. What did Christ say on the cross? Why hast thou forsaken me? What this man said was something far less sympathetic, far less pitiful, even far less human, but far profounder. He spoke out of a world the very opposite of mine. In mine life had no price. It was so valuable that it was literally priceless. In his, only one thing had that quality of pricelessness. It was _eleutheria_: freedom. He was the immalleable, the essence, the beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond civilization, beyond history. He was not God, because there is no God we can know. But he was a proof that there is a God that we can never know. He was the final right to deny. To be free to choose. He, or what manifested itself through him, even included the insane Wimmel, the despicable German and Austrian troops. He was every freedom, from the very worst to the very best. The freedom to desert on the battlefield of Neuve Chapelle. The freedom to confront a primitive God at Seidevarre. The freedom to disembowel peasant girls and castrate with wire cutters. I mean he was something that passed beyond morality but sprang out of the very essence of things--that comprehended all, the freedom to do all, and stood against only one thing--the prohibition not to do all. "All this takes many words to say to you. And I have said nothing about how I felt this immalleability, this refusal to cohere, was essentially Greek. That is, I finally assumed my Greekness. All I saw I saw in a matter of seconds, perhaps not in time at all. I saw that I was the only person left in that square who had the freedom left to choose, and that the annunciation and defence of that freedom was more important than common sense, self-preservation, yes, than my own life, than the lives of the eighty hostages. Again and again, since then, those eighty men have risen in the night and accused me. You must remember that I was certain I was going to die too. But all I have to set against their crucified faces are those few transcendent seconds of knowledge. But knowledge like a white heat. My reason has repeatedly told me I was wrong. Yet my total being still tells me I was right. "I stood there perhaps fifteen seconds--I could not tell you, time means nothing in such situations--and then I dropped the gun and stepped beside the guerrilla leader. I saw the colonel watching me, and I said, for him and so also for the remnant of a man beside me to hear, the one word that remained to be said. "Somewhere beyond Wimmel I saw Anton moving, walking quickly towards him. But it was too late. The colonel spoke, the submachine guns flashed and I closed my eyes at exactly the moment the first bullets hit me."