— It wasn’t the fatigue, Grandmother It was the isolation that I wasn’t used to. Why, from the day I was drafted until that night, I never had a moment to myself. I was surrounded all the time by the wolf pack, wherever I went I marched in line under some officer’s watchful eye, if it wasn’t one set of orders or superiors it was another, day in and day out, in the end I was even dreaming other people’s dreams… and now, all of a sudden, without the slightest warning, I was totally alone, in a strange landscape, without a single German in sight, and worst of all, Grandmother, without an officer to tell me what to do. And so my first task was to find myself a CO, which I did, for lack of anyone better, by commissioning myself, a promotion that was so successful that I bowed to its authority immediately and ordered myself to prepare a strategic position behind those huge urns that could double as a hideout and a lookout. And since without my glasses my combat capabilities were inevitably restricted, I opened my stretcher, Grandmother, lay down on my back, and ate my first battle rations to the song of the crickets while staring in a trance at the sky, which was full of glorious new stars that you’ll soon be seeing for yourself. And thus, at the end of the first day of battle, on the night between the twentieth and twenty-first of May, 1941, I fell into a deep, almost prehistoric sleep, from which I was awakened in the morning by the whinny of a mule that had been led into the palace by two Greek civilians — whom, on the spur of the moment, I took prisoner at once, jumping out of my hiding place.
— Yes, I had to take them prisoner, and in a minute you’ll understand why. But first, if you’re rested, why don’t we go on to the next station. I promise that from here on the trail is much easier going. We’ll swing around now to the western side of the hill and look down on the city… here, let me help you up…
— No, it won’t get dark for quite a while. We started out at four, and we’ll be back at seven sharp, untouched by darkness and in time for Bruno Schmelling’s dinner…
— Don’t worry… I’ll send one of the Italians tomorrow to fetch it…
— It’s all right… it really is…
— No, I won’t forget. But really, Grandmother, instead of worrying about that wretched chair, why don’t you look at the fabulous view now coming into sight in the special light this place has whose clarity is so great that it sometimes stretches my mind almost painfully. And listen, Grandmother, to some poetry that I memorized: There is a land called Crete amid the wine-red sea,/ Beauteous, fertile and girdled by water,/ Settled by peoples innumerable and boasting of ninety cities / Many are the tongues there spoken,/ And on it is Knossos, citadel of royal Minos,/ Friend of mighty Zeus Nine years did he rule there… etcetera, etcetera… ha ha…
— Maybe…
— Maybe.
— Just like that… I felt like it. But hold on to my belt now and listen to that Greek ship tooting away down there as it enters the harbor. When I hear those ships’ horns in my sleep at night, I sometimes think that I’ve managed after all to board one of Father’s warships…
— I mean, Grandfather… I was thinking of Opapa…
— Perhaps you’re right and I’m purposely dragging out the story. And it may well be, Grandmother, that already then the first seed was sown of what you call my “vanishing” and Schmelling calls my “entanglement,” although I simply call it my POWer play. Because the minute I saw those two Greek civilians, the truth about whom I couldn’t have imagined then in my wildest dreams, coming into that big room…
— I’ll get to that… in a minute…
— No, that’s a surprise… I have to keep you in suspense to make sure you’ll stay with me to the end…
— Soon… soon. Anyway, these two men were leading a mule loaded with two or three saddlebags that they meant to hide up there for a rainy day, because they, Grandmother, hadn’t the least doubt that we Germans would win the battle that was still going on. And knowing the place well, they realized immediately, by the way the urns had been moved, that someone was hiding there. They froze… and before they could run off to tell the English — who, because of the silence, I thought had won the battle — I decided to take them prisoner rather than be taken one myself, and so I jumped out of my hiding place with my schmeisser pointed straight at them, at least as far as my vision permitted, and yelled at them in English to surrender
— Hands up! That’s what they taught us in Athens to say to any Englishman trying to strike up a conversation…
— Kill them?
— But what for, Grandmother? They were civilians, and in May ‘41 killing civilians wasn’t standard procedure yet. No one knew at the time that they were our worst enemies…
— Two, a father and son. And of the two of them it was the son, who was only a few years older than me and looked like one of us, well built and blond with a rather pleasant face, who panicked at the sight of my schmeisser, while the father remained cool and collected, perhaps because in any case he looked like a ghost who had just stepped out of a grave in the palace. He had on a dusty black suit and a thin, striped tie that was knotted around his neck like a rope, and he was bald and wore glasses… which, to tell you the truth, Grandmother, was reason enough in itself for my preemptive strike…
— Of course… although as soon as I snatched them off his nose and put them on my own I saw that I needn’t have bothered, because the same world that had been all big and blurry now became as tiny and far-off as if I were looking through a telescope. Not that I returned them to him, because I confiscated them and stuck them in my pocket for further examination. I could tell from the glimmer of a smile on his face that he realized at once that the black scorpion that had fallen on him was a German paratrooper with the bad luck to get lost and lose his glasses, which seemed so perfectly natural to him that right away, without waiting to be asked any questions, he began chatting politely in simple but quite understandable German. He began by introducing himself as a tour guide to the old palace who had come up there that morning to see if the fighting hadn’t ruined his ruins, to which he added that he would be glad to take me home with him to look for a better pair of glasses… and seeing that I looked doubtful, because I suspected a trap…
— Exactly.
— Exactly… and so right away, no less calmly than before, he suggested sending his son for the glasses and remaining with me as a hostage, which was far too logical and fair an offer for me to turn down, Grandmother… at which precise point my odd relationship with those two men began…
— In a minute… I’m getting to it…
— No, they’re not around anymore… but wait… just wait…
— No, you’re wrong. It wasn’t a trap, and it was no fault of their own that the battle was over by the time I got back to the battlefield. You see, I still was convinced that the island was swarming with English, and although I was determined to put up a fight and not be taken prisoner, how could I fight without my glasses? And so, as I said, I gladly accepted that German-speaking ghost’s offer to be my hostage, although I took every precaution and made him descend to an inner room of the palace, where I tied his hands and legs thoroughly with first-aid gauze and then, seeing as how he was very small and slender, helped him to climb into one of those giant urns, in which I could be sure he would stay put. As for his son, who was white as a sheet and too frightened to move at the spectacle of his father being trussed up so efficiently, I sent him off to fetch the promised glasses, although not before ordering him to bring his mule to a oack room too and to leave it tethered there as an additional deposit…