Free The Dark Labyrinth by Lawrence Durrell Page B

the death of everything we believe in. Even the excuse that Hitler is at our throats can’t blind us to the fact that we have quite a number of our own Hitlers, and our own organized Fascio,” Baird sighed.
    â€œWait a minute,” he said, wallowing in the wake of Campion’s divagations. “How is it that you are a major?” Campion’s snort of laughter could be heard over the whole room. “My dear Baird,” he said reprovingly, as if his companion was demanding the answer to a question he should know only too well. “My dear fellow, when war broke out I made the supreme sacrifice. I joined the Ministry of Political War. Later on I found that if my choice was to lie between having my brains blown out, and having them permanently awash with the dirty bilge of political work, I would rather choose the former.” He drank some more wine. “I tell you quite firmly that I do not intend to get killed in this nonsensical business. It is to this end that I have succeeded in getting myself this handsome job on the War Graves Commission. It is the only really academic job left in this world today. We are still investigating the sites of graves left over from the last war. The work is so slow and the pay so high that we do not expect to finish our researches into this war before Armistice Day, 1999. Of course, once or twice I have been in a tight spot. We were almost captured in that Libyan show owing to curiosity about seventeen heroes who got themselves buried on a dune near Siwa during 1917. All the fun of the fair, Baird.”
    Baird looked at him narrowly and wondered why it was that he must be permanently in revolt. He missed one of the common pleasures of community—that of participation. “Well,” he said slowly, “I suppose you would defend yourself by saying that you were a coward but not a complete imbecile. But apart from the moral justification for the war—and partial as it is—I think it justified within the narrow frame of reference. People will be happier if we win—in the long run. Apart from that, perhaps the difference between you and other people is that you have a sensibility to look after and work to do with it, while a great number of us are still looking for ourselves, and some of us might even find ourselves in this war, through it.…” He broke off in some confusion, for Campion’s cynical impertinent eyes were upon him. “So you’ve sold out,” he said. “The English artist, with the load of sentiment, as ever.…” For a moment he seemed to be looking for a phrase. “You ought to do well,” he said. “They are looking for war-poets to help me to justify their messy little rodent-conception of life. The how-bravely-we-are-suffering-school. What a shameful disgusting business. One can only hope the whole lot of them meet in the obituary columns of The Times Literary Supplement. ”
    â€œWell,” said Baird, angered by this sally, “that is neither here nor there. I dare say most people’s behaviour is pretty questionable even in peace-time. The test is whether you are happy.” Campion folded his arms. “Ah, yes,” he said in a small voice, “Ah, yes. And I have never been happy, I don’t think. Not once in my life. Or perhaps only when I was a child.”
    It was odd the next morning to find oneself struggling on the wet grass of a Cretan hillside with a parachute harness. Baird thought of Campion often during the first few days of his mission in Crete. He had forgotten to ask him about Alice; but perhaps it was just as well.
    Baird found himself sharing the command of a small group of guerillas with one other young officer and the Abbot John, that venerable old figure, whose resistance to the Germans during their occupation of Crete was widely written-up in the Press of two continents. The Abbot John was an imposing figure, with his massive patriarchal