It was, however, becoming increasingly difficult to remind the Abbot that he came under the orders of H.Q. Cairo, and that military decisions affecting the whole guerilla group should come from the British officers present. The Abbot had never been to Cairo. He thought it was somewhere near Singapore. While he liked the British and accepted their help, he showed no desire to be ordered about in his own country. Baird opened his mouth to protest against Böcklin being alive when he saw that he had fallen in with the baggage donkeys, his young slight figure shivering in the thin field-grey uniform. They began the long trek back to the mouth of the labyrinth.
During the brief fortnight that Böcklin was with them, he proved to be a quiet and good-natured addition to the band. He took his turn at the cooking and sweeping, ran errands, played with “Koax”, and became very friendly with the dour Cretan mountaineers; indeed they liked him so much that once they even set him on guard with a loaded rifle while they slept. Baird, returning to the network of caves, saw the shadow of an armed German on guard and very nearly shot him. Böcklin handed over his rifle and retired to his corner without a word. The next day he said: “Captain, do not scold the guard. They accepted me as one of them, and by the laws of hospitality I was bound not to escape or to harm them.”
On another occasion he brought them food to a little observation post overlooking the plain from which Baird was watching the movements of a German patrol through glasses. “Who sent you up here?” he cried irritably, realizing that a prisoner should not be allowed to know too much. “The Abbot,” said Böcklin. Baird gave a sigh and turned back to watch the group of small grey-blue figures crossing the plain in open order. The mad Greeks, with their irrepressible friendliness and naïvéti, would be the. death of them all. They liked Böcklin and immediately accepted him as one of them. Well, come to think of it, why not?
He looked at the keen features and yellow hair of the German, who was sitting behind a bush, arms clasped round his knees. “Böcklin,” he said, “what did you do before you joined up?” Böcklin hung his head for a moment and looked confused. “I was going to be a priest, Captain,” he said with a clumsy attempt to bring his heels smartly together in the manner of the approved salute accorded to officers by the common soldier. Baird said nothing for a long time. The patrol in the valley moved slowly across the sodden field combing the copses. They had obviously been sent out after the Abbot. “Did you”, he said, lighting a cigarette, “believe in this war?” Böcklin, who had relapsed into reverie once more, went rigid at the knees and produced the faint simulacrum of a salute. “I did not believe either in the peace or the war, Captain,” he said. His face flushed again. He was obviously afraid of appearing impertinent. Baird grunted. “I suppose the German people will be as pleased when it’s over as we will,” he said, and, to his surprise, Böcklin shook his head slowly. “You are still fresh,” he said, “you can enjoy. We have had years now, and there is only — I do not know how to say it in English.” Baird turned to him and said in German: “Say it in German.” It was then that he heard from Böcklin’s lips the word which was afterwards to sum up, far more accurately than any other in French or English, his feeling for the world—Gleichgultigkeit.
The next day the Abbot received a present of a whole lamb, and, despite Baird’s protests, the mountaineers set to work to spit it and set it to turn on the huge fire which blazed in the fireplace. “German patrols?” said the Abbot loftily. It would take more than that to keep him from having some real meat to eat for a change. It was perhaps the smoke that gave them away.
At dawn a German patrol opened fire on the guard who was manning the light machine-gun on the outer rock-face. Wakened by the sharp scream of lead thrown off the rock-face and the hoarse winnowing noise of tommy-guns, the whole party awoke and found that their secret headquarters — not to mention the whole plan of operations — was in danger.
The only hope was to retreat further into the labyrinth along the main tunnel, which was known to two of the men who were shepherds. In a small rock chamber, too, was housed the transmitting set which kept Cairo informed of their activities. Böcklin could not go with them. In the confusion and the shouting Baird made his decision.
Böcklin must have followed his reasoning perfectly, for he sat at the entrance of one of the caves, trying to register a pathetic indifference, his thin hands in trouser-pockets. Laird came up to him at a run. In his hand he held a heavy captured Luger. Pressing the muzzle to the head of the boy he fired. The report was deafening in that confined space. The body, knocked from the old ammunition box on which it had been sitting, was thrown against the side of the rock, and fell back artfully like a character in a play, upon its back. His thick blond hair hid the wound. As Baird looked down at him he heard him draw one long and perfectly calm breath.
Now the hunt was up, and the whole party raced into the labyrinth, the Abbot holding a large leg of lamb in his left hand as he uttered terrible threats against the “cuckold bastards” who had interrupted their sleep. He was also laughing, for excitement always made him a little hysterical.
Later in the day the enemy patrol withdrew and they were able to return to their headquarters. Nothing had been touched and it seemed as if by some chance the enemy had missed the narrow entrance to the grotto. Böcklin’s body lay where it had fallen and they set about burying it in a shallow grave under the single cypress tree. The Abbot was angry that the German had had to be killed, but he said nothing. Two days later a signal recalled Baird to Cairo to prepare for another theatre of war, and the whole incident passed from his mind. He was glad to leave Crete. He had become stale.
The war unrolled itself gradually; an infinity of boredom settled down over him which even the goads of action could not make him forget. He became more than tired now. He was losing his nerve. He felt around him the gathering unrest of armies which had realized at last that this war was only to be a foundation-stone for a yet bigger and more boring war — the atomic war. Peace came so late as to be an anti-climax. Baird found himself once more at home in the dirty constricted industrial suburb that England had become. His father was very old and very worn. He was glad to see him again, but their long estrangement had widened their common interests. They had nothing to say to each other.
It was during the ice-bound January that followed the year of the peace that Baird began to dream of Böcklin. He saw him one night holding a lighted match to his cigarette. He saw himself place the revolver to his temple and press the trigger. For a time it took quite an effort of memory to disinter Böcklin from among his other memories of dead friends and enemies. Then he remembered. After that he dreamed of him frequently. Sometimes he had just fired the shot and Böcklin was falling away from him towards the rock — almost as if he had taken flight. At others he simply saw the white face detached from its surroundings and, as he watched, the nostrils slowly brim with blood from the shattered brain-case, and noiselessly spill over into the surrounding darkness. He awoke always in great anguish of mind and could not go to sleep again. As a conscious recollection it meant nothing to him — he had seen plenty of uglier scenes. Why, then, should his memory select this particular scene with which to trouble his sleep?
This is why he found himself one day in Hogarth’s consulting-room, facing not only the problem of Böcklin’s dream, but also the other — the pre-occupation which seemed somehow bound up with it — his Gleichgultigkeit: that feeling of dreadful moral insensibility and detachment which is the peculiar legacy of wars. It seemed then bizarre to imagine that psycho-analysis should have anything to say to him, but he liked Hogarth, with his massive Baconian cranium and his blunt hands. And he felt that at least the insomnia might have a mechanical reason.