— I am not stalling…
— I’m getting to that… just a few more steps, there’s a chair waiting for you up there… this is the second station, Grandmother…
— I brought it up here this morning, just for you.
— Why not? Don’t you think you deserve it?
— Of course I’ll return it. But now sit down, please, yes, right over here, and take these binoculars and focus them as is best for you on that broad valley down there… yes, there, on that little woods and the hill behind it… exactly…
— To the right of that village, Grandmother, where the hill grows slightly darker…
— Perfect.
— They’re not rocks. It’s an archaeological site.
— Exactly. Exactly. That’s ancient Knossos you’re looking at, Grandmother, Knossos in all its glory…
— How can you not remember? The legendary Labyrinth… the palace of King Minos… Then did Zeus first father of Minos, protector of Crete
— Homer.
— From the books you sent me. And thanks again for going to the trouble.
— Of course I read them.
— I know, you can’t see much from here, but I wanted you at least to get a glimpse of it. I can’t tell you how much I’d love to take you on a tour of that wonderful place, which I’ve become a student and a patron of these past three years, but Schmelling strictly forbade it. He’s afraid to risk you in a partisan attack, and I couldn’t get him to relent. You have no idea how worried he is about your safety — he almost wouldn’t allow me to take you up this hill. He didn’t rest easy until he had posted those five half-prisoners down there, those ex-Italian soldiers whom you see sitting at the bottom of the hill and keeping an eye on our little excursion.
— Yes, just for us. Why not? What else do they have to do? When we were winning the war, they were too lazy to fight it with us, and now that we’re losing it, they’re too lazy to run away. But enough of them, Grandmother. From here you have a clear view of the route I took that night. South! But I wasn’t, perish the thought, deserting the field of battle, I was simply taking a leave of absence from it until the dead wolves in their chutes were reinforced by some living ones. And in the meantime, Grandmother, having honestly sworn by Opapa’s memory not to be taken prisoner, I decided to penetrate even further, just as I was, all bruised and scratched and aching, and above all, keep in mind, exceedingly nearsighted, into the mountains, to look for some private battlefield of my own that might do until I obtained new glasses. I walked blindly on in the darkness, guided perhaps by the spirit of old Koch, which may have heard itself invoked when I jumped from the plane, making my way over fences and through orchards with the crickets sawing all around me. I must have walked a good five kilometers, although it seemed like thirty to me. And then all at once, without any warning, I found myself in the ruins of that wonderful palace of the Labyrinth, whose immense significance, Grandmother, I sensed immediately even though it was built three thousand five hundred years ago and I couldn’t see it very well, so that I plunged into it faint with excitement, climbing up and down the chipped marble stairs from hall to hall and passing through the reddish columns that divided the rooms, in whose corners, by the dim, flitting starlight, I saw huge clay urns glazed with colors so magnificent that I could make them out even in the darkness. And painted on the walls, Grandmother, were slender-waisted youths and maidens in a long line that followed a beautiful, enormous red bull, whose huge V-shaped horns I already had seen on the roof of some ruin. And it was then, Grandmother, walking as though in a dream in that dark silence, that I suddenly felt very close, but unbelievably close, to the Führer, to our own Hitler, because although I still had no idea where I was, I already had guessed the secret purpose of the bloody expedition he had sent us on from afar. He was not looking to decimate the English in Crete, or for a jumping-off point to Suez — those were just excuses for his generals, so that they would order their army to this place. No, Grandmother, the Führer was obeying old Gustav Koch’s imperative to look for that most ancient source at which, Grandmother, I, Private Egon Bruner, had arrived all by myself, the first German arrow to be shot from that great bow, a one-man conqueror in the night. Which was why, Grandmother, in the spirit of the sixth commandment, I decided right then and there that this was the place I was going to fight and die for…
— No, not to fight for those ruins, Grandmother, but for what might be resurrected from them, for the new man we talked and thought about so much on those long winter evenings back in ‘39 when I was studying for my German history exams. You already knew for sure then, Grandmother, that a world war was unavoidable, and you were worried about being blamed for it as we were for the last one and left without justification while the fruits of victory rotted in our hands… And so I thought that perhaps here, on this island of all places, the rationale that my grandmother was looking for might be found, which is a thought that I’ve been gnawing away at for the last three years…
— I swear.
— But what makes you say I vanished? I never did… how did I?
— But I was simply cut off… I had lost my glasses… and I misread the battle, because I confused south with north…
— How can you say such a thing, Grandmother? You, who pushed for the transfer of a nearsighted person like me to a unit of tigers and wolves…
— Not at all! If I really had deserted, I would have been court-martialed and shot at once… It’s unimaginable that you should judge me more harshly than the general staff of the 7th Paratrooper Division. Why can’t you see that I was saved by a miracle, and that it’s a miracle that I’m standing before you right now? From a purely military point of view, it would have been far easier to die with the thirteen hundred other pack wolves who were killed in the first twenty-four hours on that triangular battlefield you see down below you…
— Yes. One thousand three hundred. It’s a number I happen to know by heart, and you’ll soon see why…
— Soon… if you let me tell my whole story. I’m beginning to think you’d be happier if I were one thousand three hundred and one…
— Because you’d finally think I had something in common with the real Egon…
— I meant…
— Never mind…
— I’m sorry, Grandmother… I really am…
— I’m sorry…
— Because I know that deep down you’ve never come to terms with the basic fact of my existence…
— Sometimes I can’t help thinking that…
— Well, then, I was wrong, and I have to ask you once more for forgiveness, Grandmother. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry: I’ll say it a thousand times before I let this day with you be spoiled…
— How? Why? On the contrary, on the contrary, Grandmother, I never dreamed of dishonoring Egon, far from it, I was acting for the glory of Germany. Who if not I, Grandmother, shared your anguish from the time I was a child over the unfair blame put on Germany for that pointlessly beastly first war, a blame so great that I even imagined it weighing on the soil of his grave in France, in that field full of crosses…
— Of course I remember that visit. I even remember how awful those French peasants were in that village of Mericur, when they saw Opapa standing in his white uniform and saluting his son’s grave.
— But I do… why shouldn’t I? How old was I?
— That’s all? Really?
— You see? And I really do remember it, honor-bright as only a child can be when dreaming of the day when someone in white uniform will come to salute his grave… so that not only haven’t I forgotten Egon’s death, I’ve done everything to make it more meaningful…