The Magus - John Fowles [181]
the maintenance of this observation point was the real reason we had a garrison at all. Fortunately I had a house in the village. The Germans were not unpleasant. They carried all my portable possessions over there for me. And even paid me a small billeting rent for Bourani. Then just when things were settling down, it happened that the _proedros_, the mayor of the village that year, had a fatal thrombosis. Two days later I was summoned to meet the newly arrived commandant of the island. He and his men were installed in your school, which had been closed since Christmas. I was expecting to meet some promoted quartermaster type of officer. Instead I found myself with a very handsome young man of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, who said, in excellent French, that he understood I could speak the language fluently. He was extremely polite, more than a little apologetic, and inasmuch as one can in such circumstances we took to each other. He soon came to the point. He wanted me to be the new mayor of the village. I refused at once: I wanted no involvement in the war. He then sent out for two or three of the leading villagers. When they came he left me alone with them, and I discovered that it was they who had proposed my name. Of course the fact was that none of them wanted the job, the odium of collaboration, and I was the ideal _bouc �ssaire_. They put the matter to me in highly moral and complimentary terms, and I still refused. Then they were frank--promised their tacit support... in short, in the end I said, very well, I will do it. "My new but dubious glory meant that I came into frequent contact with Lieutenant Kiuber. Five or six weeks after our first meeting he said one evening that he would like me to call him Anton when we were alone. That will tell you that we often were alone and that we had confirmed our liking of each other. Our first link was through music. He had a fine tenor voice. Like many really gifted amateurs, he sang Schubert and Wolf better--in some way more feelingly--than any but the very greatest professional _lieder_ singers. That is, to my ear. On his very first visit to my house he saw my harpsichord. And rather maliciously I played him the _Goldberg Variations_. If one wishes to reduce a sensitive German to tears there is no surer lachrymatory. I must not suggest that Anton was a hard subject to conquer. He was more than disposed to be ashamed of his role and to find a convenient anti-Nazi figure to worship. The next time I visited the school he begged me to accompany him at the school piano, which he had had moved to his quarters. Then it was my turn to be sentimentally impressed. Not to tears, of course. But he sang very well. And I have always had a softness for Schubert. "One of the first things I wanted to know was why Anton, with his excellent French, was not in occupied France. But 'certain compatriots' considered him not sufficiently 'German' in his attitude to the French. No doubt he had spoken once too often in the mess in defence of Gallic culture. And that was why he had been relegated to this backwater. I forgot to say he had been shot in the kneecap during the 1940 invasion and had a limp, unfitting him for active military duties. He was German, not Austrian. His family was rich, and he had spent a year before the war studying at the Sorbonne. Finally be had decided that he would become an architect. But of course his training was interrupted by the war." He stopped and turned up the lamp; then opening the file, unfolded a large plan. Two or three sketches--perspectives and elevations, all glass and glittering concrete. "He was very rude about this house. And he promised he would come back after the war and build me something new. After the best Bauhaus principles." All the notes were written in French; not a word of German anywhere. The plan was signed. _Anton Kiuber, le sept juin, ran 4 de la Grande Folie_. I noticed one of the sketches was of a theatre, a small amphitheatre. An exotic sickle-shaped apron stage, a canopied proscenium. "And your theatre." "Yes. He was going to come