The Maze Page 4

  Immediately he entered the enormous round tent he was greeted by the smell of antiseptic. Wounded soldiers lay in the cots, which were arranged in a circle round the edge of the tent and in straight rows in the middle. The medic walked among the beds. One soldier had a bandaged head, another had his leg in a plaster cast, a third had his face buried under layers of compresses. The medic stopped briefly now and then to examine a patient. He pressed his palm on someone’s forehead and nodded with satisfaction. When he held up another’s wrist and felt his pulse, he screwed up his face, lifted a gauze dressing soaked in pus and studied the wound until the nurse came up to him.

  ‘Gangrene,’ the medic said. ‘Amputation first thing in the morning – before we start marching.’

  The nurse nodded. He was a big man with a child’s smile and arms as thick and rippled as the branches of a centenarian oak – he would have seemed more at home in a fairy tale than the field infirmary. Before the war he had been a sponge fisher and had suffered the bends countless times, but had survived thanks to a stubborn constitution. He had hoped to enlist in the navy but had not been given the choice – the infantry had a greater need for men. He often dreamed of the Aegean island he came from, and whether he would ever see it again. His love of his home was equalled by the great respect he had for his superior. He had served under his command from the start of the campaign. The medic had not only taught him the principles of nursing and surgery, but had also unearthed from his nurse’s gigantic calloused fingers a miniaturist’s preciseness the latter had not known he possessed.

  He had used a simple method. At first, the embroidery exercises had seemed ridiculous to the nurse and so embarrassing that he would take the pharmaceutical gauze, the needles and the cotton thread and go and hide in his tent, cursing his superior for the demeaning tasks he was being given. But the medic knew what he was doing. Somewhere under the frustration at the botched designs, the pricked fingers from learning the chain stitch, the blanket stitch and the feather stitch, the sore eyes from mastering the French knot, the satin cross, the cross stitch and, even, petit point, the nurse had turned into an invaluable surgical assistant.

  The mosquitoes fell like bullets against the oil lamps that hung from the beams of the roof. On the earthen floor a small traffic of mice had already started, which no one paid any attention to. A few hours had been enough for the desert rodents to discover the temporary encampment. But instead of being sinister the mice had a bizarre, contrary effect. They reminded the men of their homes – the nibbled cheese in the larder, the torn sheets in the linen closet, the hole in the corner of the kitchen wall: the war had invested an otherwise mundane and foul presence with an almost moving notion of domesticity.

  The medic continued his rounds, giving more orders in a discreet whisper. He indicated which casts could be removed, pointed out the dirty bandages which had not yet been changed, reminded the nurse to place an order with the carpenter for more splints. The nurse followed close behind with his hands in the pockets of his apron and his sleeves rolled up, revealing an uninspiring anchor tattoo on his forearm.

  ‘Some cases are terminal, doctor. Perhaps we could save drugs . . .’

  The medic pursed his lips.

  ‘I’m not in charge of the firing squad.’

  He immediately regretted having reproved his assistant. He turned round, patted him on the shoulder and tried to smile.

  ‘I’ll set up the laboratory,’ he said.

  The announcement made the nurse happy.

  ‘We need sedatives, chloroform and aspirin, doctor.’

  His superior shrugged his rickety shoulders.

  ‘And the philosopher’s stone – I promise to do my best.’

  His quarters were in the next tent. They were furnished with scientific frugality – a black-lacquered desk and chair, and a cot covered with a rough wool blanket. On the desk were an earthenware set of wash-bowl and pitcher, a small mirror, a bar of soap, a shaving brush and a vial of pure spirit, everything arranged like surgical instruments. A wooden cabinet with labelled drawers was the medical archive, while the rest of the space was occupied by crates marked with the emblem of the International Red Cross. The medic put the chessboard on top of the filing cabinet, sat on the chair and no sooner closed his eyes than he was ambushed by sleep.

  And then he dreamed. He was in a vast laboratory, a room with high ceilings and many rows of wooden tables, on which were laid beakers of every size, glass tubes, precision scales and sterilised instruments. He was dressed in a lab coat and he was looking through a microscope. He was alone for a long while and then the door at the far end of the room opened and an old man in a dark suit, starched collar and black bow tie walked towards him. He knew that face – not just the clothes, but also the white beard, the large forehead, the trimmed grey hair. The man looked exactly like the photograph in the academic textbook, the medic thought in his dream: it was Louis Pasteur. The old man approached and leaned over the bench.

  ‘Well?’

  The medic raised his hands in the air and sighed.

  ‘It is impossible, doctor.’

  ‘The germs, my son.’ Doctor Pasteur patted him on the shoulder. ‘Think of the glass of milk. The process of fermentation. Disease develops in a similar way.’

  The medic looked through the microscope again.

  ‘Such a small organism and yet . . .’

  The wise scientist nodded.

  ‘Quite. It could bring down a vastly larger one.’

  ‘How can we beat it?’

  ‘Inoculation. It worked with septicaemia, cholera, diphtheria, tuberculosis, smallpox, hydrophobia . . . And we are only at the start. There are so many other diseases.’

  ‘But what about the war, doctor?’

  ‘The war? You have to discover the vaccine for that.’

  The medic chuckled bitterly.

  ‘There is no vaccine against foolishness, doctor.’

  The old man shrugged and reminded the young man of one of his most notable successes.

  ‘Oh, yes. That was what they said about rabies too.’

  The medic woke up as suddenly as he had fallen asleep. He checked his watch: only a few minutes had passed. For a moment he fixed his eyes on the illusion of his dream, and only after it had totally disappeared did he begin to open the crates. In them was the equipment of a rudimentary laboratory, a benefaction paid for by wealthy expatriates. He unpacked the tubes filled with chemicals and read the label on each before placing it on the desk. He was more careful with the heavy Carl Zeiss microscope. At the bottom of the crate was a wall chart of the periodic table. He spread it over his desk, turned up the lamp and sat down to study it.

  A voice behind him said, ‘The bugle called lights out an hour ago. You are in breach of the regulations.’

  He turned round. In the middle of the tent, with his thumbs hooked in his belt, stood Major Porfirio.

  ‘You are fortunate I’m not the enemy. You could have had your throat slit.’

  The medic gave him a weary glance.

  ‘I can’t remember the last time I set eyes on the enemy. By now I suspect we are a fairy tale to scare their children with.’

  ‘The war is not quite over yet.’

  The medic returned to studying the periodic table.

  ‘They call it the theatre of war,’ he murmured, ‘but I think it rather resembles a circus.’

  Major Porfirio remembered the reason for his visit.

  ‘I need to borrow your razor. I seem to have misplaced mine.’

  ‘Are you losing your beard?’

  ‘The old man disapproves of it.’

  ‘We have one foot in the grave and all he thinks of is personal grooming.’

  The medic leaned over his desk and rolled up the periodic table. But no matter how much he looked for his straight razor he could not find it anywhere. He was perplexed.

  ‘But it was there.’ He pointed his finger. ‘Right there. I always keep it between the shaving brush and th
e surgical spirit.’

  Major Porfirio leaned over the desk and immediately recalled the recent thefts of the sugar and the wine. Surprise but also anger turned his face crimson: the brigadier was like a drowning man crying for help, and all someone did was put stones in his pockets. The medic gave the major a puzzled look.

  ‘Stolen,’ Major Porfirio explained, still looking at the empty spot on the desk where the medic’s razor should have lain. ‘Just when we thought that things could not get any worse we have a thieving spree to stop.’

  As the moon emerged from the ruffled sand and rose above the desert, the wind quietened and the birds went to perch on the barren hills. Caleb walked across the camp at a lazy pace. The air stood like sheets of glass. His breath puffed up from his snout and his sad eyes moved from side to side with instinctive vigilance. Occasionally, one of his pointed ears turned in the direction of some noise and he immediately lifted his muzzle and sniffed the air. His tail had lost its hair and it now seemed as if he was dragging behind him a piece of torn rope.

  His disease was not the only instance of bad luck in his life. The day he was born under a minaret in Istanbul a refuse lorry had run over his mother. He had suckled another dog and grown to be a fierce hunter of rats and cats, until a warden from the Board of Hygiene had caught him in his net. He was thrown in a cargo ship with other strays and carried across the Sea of Marmara to a small island off the Anatolian coast, where he was let loose to die of thirst and starvation. But no sooner had the funnel of the tramp steamer disappeared over the horizon than Caleb had entered the water. The Asian coastline loomed several miles ahead – he did not mind. Behind him the other dogs howled with fear and desperation – he paid no attention. Many days later he entered the town of Bursa all but dead from exhaustion. It was there that Father Simeon had come across him in the first year of the war.

  Caleb stopped and scratched himself for a long time. When he had finished he had added another bald patch to his coat. Someone whistled and the dog walked up to him and let him stroke him. But when the man shook a bone with some meat on it Caleb walked away – he trusted only Father Simeon’s hand to feed him. The stars had come out and he raised his head. He was bored. He whined. If only he had a companion . . . He yawned and let his tongue catch the moisture in the air. One of his incisors had rotted and fallen out. Outside the church he sat down and rested his muzzle on the sand. Under the moonlight a squad of soldiers was heading for sentry duty.

  The night passed slowly in the camp and over the hills. Some time later Caleb heard footsteps and saw a man approach. Immediately, he stood up and began to snarl with a sense of duty, but when the man came closer he recognised his master. He tried to follow him into the tent but the padre forbade it. For a while an incomprehensible murmur came from inside while the shadow of Father Simeon wrapped in a blanket moved about. The candle went out and only the glow of the smouldering brazier remained. A little while later a stormy snoring began inside the tent.

  CHAPTER 3

  Brigadier Nestor emerged from the makeshift church with his mood unchanged. Neither the consolations of the mass commemorating his wife, nor the early-morning shot of morphia had helped him. He put on his cap and shook hands with Father Simeon, thanking him for his services. The sun had not yet appeared, but a line of blue light slowly grew across the horizon, as if the purple sky rose like a heavy curtain. The vultures had not arrived either, the wind had quietened, the earth was still cool – a brief moment of peace administered daily like medication. But it was a medicine that was only intended to soothe rather than cure: the army remained lost. The brigadier stood for a moment and contemplated the horizon with his hands in his pockets, while around him the preparations for the departure of the brigade continued. In any direction he turned, he saw no sign to suggest a way out of the labyrinth. Since Anatolia was east of the Aegean they could go west, of course, and eventually reach the coast. But a journey across land was not a simple problem of plane geometry. What was the condition of the terrain ahead? Perhaps the sea was closer if they travelled south or south-west. Above all: where was the enemy at that moment? One thing was certain: they should not head east.

  Eastwards: not too long ago that had been the direction of their advance. For more than two years the towns of the Asia Minor heartland had surrendered to the Expeditionary Corps one after another . . . Enough of such thoughts, Brigadier Nestor suddenly reprimanded himself. He put his hand in his breast pocket to retrieve his compass, instructed his orderly which direction to follow (one of the latter’s duties was also to drive the brigadier’s lorry) and at last gave the signal to march.

  Slowly the column started: another day of blindfolded marching was beginning. Brigadier Nestor’s lorry led the way, followed by the vehicles carrying the wounded, others with ammunition and food and those loaded with water. Behind the motorcade the soldiers walked in silence, at a funerary pace that had also something of the unsteadiness of a drunk returning home. From the entire brigade at the beginning of the enemy offensive, there remained only two incomplete infantry battalions, a company of evzonesfn1 dressed in filthy skirts and boots with torn pompons, a squadron of horsemen and an artillery battery. Behind the troops came a long train of mules and dromedaries, laden with more provisions.

  Sitting on the edge of his cot the brigadier rubbed his face with both hands. He had slept little the previous night. Following the conversation with the priest, he had taken to bed and spent the night adrift in a sea of abandon. At one time he had seen his wife’s ghost, suspended an inch from the floor, and later, after she was gone, the snake with the crushed head appeared crawling up the chimney of the stove. Worse was to come. A little before dawn he had been enveloped in a phantasmagoria of more dead coming alive: the ashen faces of friends who had passed on long ago, fellow officers in torn uniforms and with rotting skin who had been killed in action, his own soldiers and those of the enemy with blood oozing from their fatal wounds, headless cavalry horses, drowned sailors from sunken battleships . . . As if that were not enough, a constant and chilling clamour of incomprehensible whispers had accompanied the macabre carnival. When Brigadier Nestor had finally returned to the world of the living his body ached as if it were bruised all over.

  During a brief rest to repair a flat tyre, Major Porfirio came to see him. They were in the middle of discussing their route when the brigadier noticed that his subordinate had only clipped his beard; he frowned.

  ‘I thought I made it clear a beard does not befit an army officer. If you are so fond of it you should have joined the navy or the clergy.’

  Before explaining the reason for not having shaved, Major Porfirio reported the disappearance of the wine bottles. Then the theft of the razor from the medic’s quarters made a more dramatic impact. Brigadier Nestor scratched his cheek and pouted – unlike his subordinate’s, his face was closely shaven and rewarded with perfumed lotion. He connected the thefts of the sugar, the wine and the razor in his mind as if joining the dots of a puzzle. The result pointed towards the obvious conclusion. His Chief of Staff articulated it.

  ‘I feel it was taken by the same person who stole your sugar and my wine, brigadier.’

  The brigadier nodded in agreement.

  ‘A repeat offender.’

  He took his handkerchief from his pocket, and while wiping his forehead remembered his discovery under his cot.

  ‘Someone who doesn’t like snakes.’ He stared at his handkerchief. ‘This is turning into a cheap detective novel, major. We have to put a stop to it.’

  Outside, the troops marched past and the day grew hotter. The orderly lifted the wheel of the lorry off the ground with a jack. A long gash ran along the side of the tyre, wide enough to show the deflated inner tube that had to be repaired. There were other cuts on the same tyre, from older accidents, that had been sewn together with leather thread. While the orderly worked, the long column of soldiers continued to pass by, but they neither paid any attention to the lorry nor to the man squattin
g next to its front wheel. As the lorry began to tilt to one side, the two officers inside held on to the steel bars of the roof. The table and the heavy stove started to slide downwards, while the mechanical jack continued to creak. Brigadier Nestor felt seasick – a bitter substance from his stomach rose to his mouth, and he had to swallow several times and keep his lips tight to stop himself from vomiting. At last the jack stopped. With relief, the brigadier heard his orderly undo the wheel nuts. Slowly, his nausea faded and his mind returned to the matter of the thefts.

  ‘I remember a case in the first company under my command,’ he said while the colour was returning to his face. ‘When I caught the thief I had his arm amputated at the elbow. He was grateful I didn’t have him shot.’

  The smell of dung reached their noses. From the back of the lorry the brigadier watched the mules walk by, delving their heads into their nosebags as they went. With the halters round their necks they gave him the impression of a line of innocents on the gallows wearing hoods and nooses. Life, it seemed, was an enormous privilege once bestowed by a ruler, who sought to revoke it as soon as he realised the extravagance of his offer.

  ‘There’s a time and place for everything,’ the brigadier said. ‘And thieving is a peacetime pursuit.’