“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 center 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 dishonorable 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 signaled 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 civilized 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 harbor. The entire village was there, some four or five hundred people, black and gray 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 harbor—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 harbor 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 disemboweled. A slit cut from their breastbone down to their pubic hair and the intestines pulled out. Half-gutted carcasses, swaying slightly in the noon wind.