— Yes, indeed, Grandmother, I was full of grand notions of honor… although for someone who had just met the enemy for the first time, you can see I behaved very sensibly. Since then I’ve arrested and tied many more people on this island, but I can remember my hands shaking as I wrapped gauze around that wrinkled ghost, who actually smiled at me most considerately, as if he couldn’t have agreed more with what I was doing…
— But I really needed them. Because whatever you may think, Grandmother, I have definitely been nearsighted since the fifth grade….
— I wish to reiterate, dear Grandmother Andrea, as patiently as I can, that I did not hear any sounds of battle. That’s one reason I took you up this hill, so that you could see for yourself how far it was from the isolated valley I landed in to where the fighting was going on. The actual battle took place down there, along the coast and right outside Heraklion, which you can see directly beneath you…
— Perhaps I didn’t believe it.
— Perhaps I couldn’t believe it. Don’t forget, in those first few days the whole brilliant operation was hanging by a hair…
— Perhaps I didn’t want to believe it, either… I don’t deny that you have a point there, Grandmother…
— That’s so. I admit it. Sometimes I despair prematurely to avoid disappointment later. I admit it.
— But look here, the minute I try to be nice and take part of the blame on myself, you want to lay it all on me… just like you’ve always done…
— As usual? Automatically, Grandmother? Have I been to blame from the minute I was born? In that case, there’s really no point in going on with my story…
— No, I’ve had enough! Let’s stop this, then… let’s go back down… what’s the point of even trying to explain… let’s stop this right here and now…
— Yes. Of course. I’m angry at you for not wanting to listen to me, Grandmother, because you’ve already passed judgment on me and decided that I ran away from the battle when I didn’t at all and was simply trying to understand it. From the minute I was thrown out of the belly of that airplane, all by myself into the world, with all those bullets whizzing by me and the screams of dying men, I realized that getting killed was easy but that understanding was hard, and I made up my mind to do things the hard way. That’s why, having disentangled myself from that tree, I headed south toward solitude, Grandmother, trusting in the power of the pure reason within me to issue the proper commands, or at least, commands as proper and responsible as any of the general staff’s. And so great was the command for solitude, Grandmother, that I even about-faced and killed a flock of goats to keep from being followed, or from being distracted by the human expression on their dumb faces. And thus, Grandmother, as solitary as could be, I stumbled in the dead of night on the remains of an ancient civilization that stirred and enchanted my soul. But I still had no idea how to connect with it, which made it only natural, Grandmother, that, finding myself with a Greek tour guide in my clutches, I decided to make the most of him. And in fact, he was most generous with his time despite the humiliating position I had put him in and began talking to me not as my foe or captured prisoner, but as a potential intellectual companion, trying his best to converse in the slow, simple German that, so he said, he had acquired leading tours. You have to realize that, although as soon as he saw the sky full of German parachutes he was convinced of our victory and even assumed that there would be among the invaders a few culture-loving humanists who would want a guided tour of the famous Labyrinth once the fighting was over, he had never dreamed that, already on the first morning, he would be facing his first humanist while bound hand and foot…
— Me, naturally.
— At first just to pass the time until his son came back with some glasses. Little by little, though, I began to be fascinated by the story that he was telling me so wonderfully well. His bald head was sticking out of that old urn like the head of some wise snake, and even though his German, Grandmother, was very basic, you could see he had a way with words the minute he began telling me about the men who dug and were dug up at Knossos, whom he described as though they were all one big family, Sir Arthur Evans and his English archaeologists who came here at the turn of the century and King Minos and his royal court who lived here three and a half millennia ago. In fact, I was so impressed that it occurred to me at once that, if all went well, old Koch might get to see at least part of his dream come true, and that Germans would come to the ruins of the Labyrinth from all over the Reich to study their own history and be solaced by another, ancient civilization for the sorrow and disillusionment of our own, which we take so seriously, Grandmother, that it turns to a dragon in our hands. Just imagine, Grandmother, even then I began…
— Yes, while the battle was still raging all around me.
— I plead guilty to that too… Anyway, I jotted down some notes, and I was so carried away that in the end I couldn’t restrain myself, and as evening began setting in and the young man still hadn’t returned, I decided to let my hostage out of his urn before killing him for his son’s absconding, although I was careful then too not to give him his glasses back, so that he couldn’t run away. And so, as nearsighted as I was, he began leading me from room to room and wall painting to wall painting, pointing out all the things he had already told me about. I was determined to pump him for all he was worth, because the more he told me about that ancient world, the more it excited me…
— Because it bore no guilt, Grandmother, and therefore had no fear…
— That’s how he explained it.
— For example, for example, Grandmother, even such details as no fortifications having been found around the palace, which itself is eloquent testimony not only to the inhabitants’ basic peacefulness, but to their taking peace for granted. And the paintings on the walls really do radiate such happiness and calm… even the great bull was so loved by everyone that the young men held tournaments in which they leaped over its back… and except for one double-bladed ax, not a single weapon was found anywhere…
— No. That’s the opinion of all the scholars, whom my guide was merely quoting…
— What?
— What did you say?
— You’re astonishing, Grandmother!
— I’ll get to that in a minute… aren’t you a shrewd one, though!
— In a minute… in a minute… just wait…
— Jewish scholars… how odd…
— I’m getting to it… in a minute you’ll understand everything… although permit me, wisest Grandmother, to congratulate you right now, even though, historically speaking, there were no Jews in the world at the time…
— Not a blessed one.
— They simply hadn’t invented themselves yet.
— Well, then, Grandmother, it would seem that they’re not quite as old as they think.
— I understand… I understand…
— He said the same thing to me that first night while describing the island and the people who lived on it… which was why…
— Of course he did.
— Mani.
— Yes. Perfectly simple.
— Mani nothing. Just plain Mani.
— I don’t think it’s a shortened form of anything… but…
— Maybe of mania…
— Josef.
— Killed him, Grandmother?
— Wait… wait a minute… why are you in such a rush…
— But he did keep his promise. His son was just waiting for it to get dark before slipping out of town unseen, because the Greeks were sure that the English were successfully repelling our attack and might have endangered his father in their rush to get at me, which was the reason he waited. As soon as the first stars came out, though, there was a rustle in the underbrush, and before I could reach for my schmeisser, Grandmother, a short, delicate girl of about my age was standing there, the son’s wife and my ghost’s daughter-in-law, who had come to get the lay of the land. She had brought a pot of hot food and a jug of coffee for the night, and also, as if I had an insatiable lust for glasses, five pairs of them wrapped in a towel. The only problem was that they were all old folks’ reading glasses that must have belonged to the young Manis’ grandparents. They looked just like your glasses, Grandmother, which only used to make me see worse when I tried them on as a child…