Free Captain Corelli's mandolin by Louis De Bernières Page A

as though it were a hot caress, fording that it had the disconcerting effect of making her trip over her own feet, and that it seemed to cause her hips to sway more than usual. In truth it was the attempt to control her hips that had caused the difficulty with her feet.
    Inside the house the doctor forced the priest to drink jar upon jar of water, this being the only sensible cure for alcoholic poisoning of which he was aware. He found himself waxing unbecomingly censorial with respect to his patient, for he was unravelling in his mind an internal monologue along the lines of: `Surely a priest should set a teeter example than this? Surely it is shameful to become inebriated so long before evening? How can this man hope to retain any stature in these parts when he is greedy and drunken? I do not remember any priest as bad as this, and we've had some bad ones, God knows . . .'
    He frowned and rutted as he swabbed the vomit from the man's robes, and transferred his irritation to Pelagia's goat, which had entered the room and leapt up onto the table. `Stupid brute,' he shouted at it, and it looked at him impudently with its slotted eyes, as if to say, `I, at least, am not drunk. I am merely mischievous.'
    The doctor left the patient to his stupor and sat at his desk. He tapped his pen on the table and wrote, `In 1082 an infamous Norman baron named Robert Guiscard attempted to conquer the island and was resisted with extreme determination by bands of guerrillas. The world was relieved of his obnoxious presence by a fever that killed him in 1085, and the sole trace of him on earth is the fact that Fiskardo is named after him, although history does not relate how the G transformed itself into an F. Another Norman, Bohemund, whilst flaunting the piety freshly culled from a recent crusade, sacked the island with the most extreme and inexcusable cruelty. The reader should be reminded that it was crusaders and not the Muslims who originally sacked Constantinople, which should have caused perpetual scepticism about the value of noble causes. Apparently it has not, as the human race is incapable of learning anything from history.'
    He leaned back in his chair and twirled his moustache, and then he lit his pipe. He saw Lemoni pass the window and called her in. The tiny girl listened with wide-eyed seriousness as the donor asked her to go and fetch the priest's wife. He patted her on the head, called her his `little koritsimou' and smiled as he watched her skipping erratically away along the street. Pelagia had been just as sweet when she was small, and it made him feel nostalgic. He felt a tear rise to his eye, and he banished it forthwith by writing another sentence excoriating the Normans. He leaned back again and was interrupted by the entrance of Stamatis, who was holding his hat in his hands and kneading the brim. `Kalispera, Kyrie Stamatis,' he said, `what can I do for you?'
    Stamatis shuffled his feet, looked with concern at the round mound of priest upon the floor, and said, `You know that . . , that thing in my ear?'
    `The papilionaceous and exorbitant auditory impediment?'
    `That's the one, Iatre. Well, what I want to know, is . . . I mean, can you put it back?'
    `Put it back, Kyrie Stamatis?'
    `It's my wife, you see.'
    `I see,' said the doctor, releasing a rank cloud from his pipe. `Actually I don't see. Perhaps you would explain.'
    `Well, when I was deaf in that ear I couldn't hear her. Where I sit, you see, I had my good ear on the other side, and I could sort of take it.'
    `Take it?'
    `The nagging. I mean before it was sort of like the murmuring of the sea. I liked it. It helped me to doze off. But now it's so loud, and it won't stop. It just goes on and on.'
    The man waggles his shoulders in imitation of an irritated woman, and mimicked his wife: `You're no good for anything, why don't you bring in the wood, why haven't we ever got any money, why do I have to do everything round here, why didn't I marry a man, how come you