The Magus - John Fowles [185]
to be rounded up at dawn. Anton told me all this in my bedroom. He paced up and down, almost in tears, while I sat on the side of my bed, and listened to him say he was ashamed to be German, ashamed to have been born. That he would have killed himself if he did not feel it his duty to try to intercede with the colonel the next day. We talked for a long time. He told me more than he had before about Wimmel. We were so cut off here, and there were many things I had not heard. In the end he said, there is one good thing in this war. It has allowed me to meet you. We shook hands. "Then I went with him back to the school, where I slept under guard. "When I was taken down to the harbour the next morning at nine, all the men and most of the women in the village were there. Anton's troops guarded all the exits. Needless to say, the guerrillas had not been seen. The villagers were in despair. But there was nothing they could do. "At ten _die Raben_ arrived in a landing craft. One could see at once the difference between them and the Austrians. Better drilled, better disciplined, far better insulated against feelings of humanity. And so young. I found that the most terrifying aspect of them--their fanatical youth. Then minutes later a seaplane landed. I remember the shadows of its wings falling on the whitewashed houses. Like a black scythe. A young fisherman near me picked a hibiscus and put the blood-red flower against his heart. We all knew what he meant. "Wimmel came ashore. The first thing be did was to have all of us men herded onto a quay, and for the first time the islanders knew what it was like to be kicked and struck by foreign troops. The women were driven back into the adjoining streets and alleys. Then Wimmel disappeared into a taverna with Anton. Soon after I was called for. All the villagers crossed themselves, and I was roughly marched in to see him by two of his men. He did not stand to greet me, and when he spoke to me, it was as if to a total stranger. He even refused to speak English. He had brought a Greek collaborationist interpreter with him. I could see that Anton was lost. In the shock of the event he did not know what to do. Wimmel's terms were made known. Eighty hostages were to be chosen at once. The rest of the men would comb the island, find the guerrillas, and bring them back--with the stolen weapons. It was not sufficient to produce the corpses of three brave volunteers. If we did this within the next twenty-four hours the hostages would be deported to labour camps. If we did not, they would be shot. "I asked how we were to capture, even if we could find them, three desperate armed men. He simply looked at his watch and said, in German, It is eleven o'clock. You have until noon tomorrow. "At the quay I was made to repeat in Greek what I had been told. The men all began to shout suggestions, to complain, to demand weapons. In the end the colonel fired a shot from his pistol in the air, and there was quiet. The roll of the village men was called. Wimmel himself picked out the hostages as they filed forward. I noticed that he picked the healthiest, the ones between twenty and forty, as if he were thinking of the labour camp. But I think that he was choosing the best specimens for death. He chose seventy-nine like that, and then pointed at me. I was the eightieth hostage. "So the eighty of us were marched off to the school and put under close guard. We were crammed in one classroom, without sanitation, given nothing to eat or drink--_die Raben_ were guarding us--and even worse, no news. It was only much later that I found out what happened during that time. "The remaining men rushed to their homes--poles, sickles, knives, they picked up what they could and then met again on a bill above the village. Men so old they could hardly walk, boys of ten and twelve. Some women tried to join them but they were pushed back. To be guarantors of their men's return. "This sad regiment argued, as Greeks always will. They decided on one plan, then on another. In the end someone took charge and allotted positions and areas