— Of course. It was the first thing I did. Don’t think I had forgotten where I was. Mani Senior translated thè news that the young lady and her husband had gathered, because meanwhile, Mani Junior, looking very confused and frightened, had stepped slowly out of hiding too and had joined us shivering all over, holding a child in one hand, a little boy of about three, and a small sack of barley for the mule in his other hand. He was wearing a faded old overcoat, which he took off and gave to his father.
— They indeed had brought me their whole family, perhaps because they thought it best to die together…
— I’ll get to that in a minute… Because Mani Junior was quite beside himself. He began hugging and kissing his father and actually sobbing quite shamelessly in strange spasms, like some sort of mental defective, so that his wife and father had to grab him and hold him to protect him from his worry at seeing the old man stuck in an urn for safekeeping. I myself had no idea then, Grandmother, that this was but my first taste of the sweet-and-sour dish known as Fear-of-the-Conqueror that we’ve been eating ever since then until it’s coming out of our ears. I’m talking about the terror that each of us creates even when he’s just taking an innocent walk and thinking the most humane of thoughts — the stares that follow your every movement as a soldier, though you yourself may be sick of your own self. I could feel it beginning that summer evening, standing there without my glasses but with my cocked schmeisser gun aimed at that family of civilians that kept trying to calm me with all kinds of promises to ward off any sudden desperation that my finger might feel on the trigger, because I had already told them about my firm commitment to the sixth commandment. And so, even though, looking back on it now, the situation of the German forces in Heraklion that evening was far from good, Mani Senior, who stood glimmering like a ghost in the darkness, quite extravagantly promised me an imminent German victory even though his family had just seen English reinforcements moving up a nearby road, because he was confident that the English would never recover from the shock of the German attack. The English, he assured me with a wry touch of Anglophobia, were only in their element when fighting Asiatics or Africans, against whom their Englishness gave them strength, just as barbarism did the barbarians. He knew them well — and against real Europeans, and especially real Europeans with air superiority, they were on much shakier ground. And yet the fact was, Grandmother, that even though I was greatly cheered by what he said, which turned out to be perfectly correct, I was still in a hopeless situation. After all, I could hardly have asked that young lady to take me by the hand and bring me back without my glasses, like a schoolboy who fled, to my platoon…
— Did I say that?
— I meant a schoolboy who failed.
— Perhaps…
— Well, even if it was more than just a slip of the tongue, Grandmother, and the truth of the matter is that I really did flee a little, there’s no need to shed any tears over it, because the story has a happy end…
— First of all, that here I am, standing in front of you, happy and alive myself. And secondly, that I’ve put these three years to use preparing the summation of the defense for the terrible Judgment Day that our poor Germany is in for, compared to which, dear Grandmother, the judgment of Versailles will seem child’s play.
— Soon… that’s a surprise… there’ll be a time to tell you everything…
— But even if you’re right again, Grandmother, and I really did overinvolve myself with that family by capturing it a bit too personally, it was collaborating with me for reasons that I didn’t understand yet, though at the time I attributed it either to its fear of an armed enemy soldier falling myopically out of the sky, or else to, its pity for the same soldier, who was really quite lonely and frightened and in need of some family warmth after many long months without leave, to say nothing of being all scratched and bitten by the wolf pack….
— I don’t follow you, Grandmother.
— But how?
— Killed them? There you go again…
— And the little boy?
— But how could I?
— Maybe…
— Maybe…
— Maybe. Maybe. And again, Grandmother, and only tentatively, for the sake of the argument, I’m prepared to admit that my inexperience with occupied civilians may have made me act irresponsibly, and that I should have stopped such sentimental conduct immediately, nipped it in the bud. I should have accepted a cup of coffee from the jug young Mani’s wife brought and ridden away on my commandeered mule, putting that ruined Labyrinth behind me and galloping blindly off into the night until its silence was broken by a fatal Australian bullet, or better yet, by the longed-for shout of a German officer. But it seemed that Mr. Mani, and perhaps not unjustifiedly, was worried that I might lose my head and come back to kill him as I had killed the flock of goats — and so, believe it or not, O most clever and astute Grandmother, even though he was falling off his feet, the ghost offered his services as a hostage once again, and after eating a bit of his daughter-in-law’s food, embracing his son and grandchild, and even handing me a little tourist’s brochure in German about the antiquities of Knossos, he went back and lay down by his urn, thus taking himself prisoner again, and roundaboutly, Grandmother, according to your logic, me too. Before I could even think, he had signaled his son and daughter-in-law to cover him with that warm old winter coat and beat a hasty retreat — and in no time, Grandmother, they had vanished into one of the anterooms of that ruined palace, which the darkness had turned back into an ancient maze.
— Supposedly, Grandmother, for the same purpose as before, that is, to find me some suitable glasses. And thus began Round 2, which commenced with the man’s taking a candle from his pocket and lighting it without so much as a by-your-leave so that I might have a better view of his jail cell and not, God forbid, do anything rash in the dark…
— Yes, Grandmother, a glum, inscrutable type, but so decisive and efficient that I began to suspect him of having German blood. Right away, with that quiet, submissive cunning that becomes the second nature of all conquered civilians, he tried maneuvering me into spending a peaceful night with him — which he did, Grandmother, just imagine, by suggesting that I wrap him in gauze again so that the two of us could get a good night’s sleep, all in a spirit of mutual trust. It was then that it first dawned on me, although by now I’ve had three years to consider it, that the whole episode of my lost glasses was simply a pretext for him to satisfy a suddenly surfaced whim to be a prisoner or hostage, bound hand and foot, before he died. Perhaps he needed to atone for some old feeling of guilt, or perhaps to pass it on to me, so that I would have pity on his family…
— Yes, Grandmother. Are you ready for the surprise?