Michael Dobbs
The Final Cut
'That we shall die, we know; 'tis but the time And drawing days out, that men stand upon,'
PROLOGUE
Troodos Mountains, Cyprus – 1956
It was late on an afternoon in May, the sweetest of seasons in the Troodos, beyond the time when the mountains are muffled beneath a blanket of snow but before the days when they serve as an anvil for the Levantine sun. The spring air was filled with the heavy tang of resin and the sound of the breeze being shredded on the branches of great pines, like the noise of the sea being broken upon a pebbled shore. But this was many miles from the Mediterranean, almost as far as is possible to get from the sea on the small island of Cyprus.
A colony of martins tumbled through the trees like acrobats, driven desperate by the demands of the nestlings. These were good times, a season of abundance even in the mountains. For a few weeks in spring the dust of crumbling rock chippings which passes for soil becomes a treasury of wild flowers -erupting bushes of purple-flowered sword lily, blood-dipped poppies, alyssum, the leaves and golden heads of which in ancient times were supposed to effect a cure for madness.
Yet nothing would cure the madness that was about to burst forth on the side of the mountain.
George, fifteen and almost three-quarters, prodded the donkey further up the mountain path, oblivious to the beauty. His mind had turned once again to breasts, it was a topic which seemed to demand most of his time nowadays, depriving him of sleep, causing him not to hear a word his mother said, making him blush whenever he looked at a woman, which he always did straight between her breasts. They had an energy source all their own which dragged his eyes towards them, like magnets, no matter how hard he tried to be polite. He never seemed to remember what their faces looked like, his eyes rarely strayed that far; he'd marry a toothless old hag one day. So long as she had breasts.
If he were to avoid insanity or, even worse, the monastery, somehow he would have to do it, he decided. Do IT. Before he was fifteen and three-quarters. In two weeks' time.
He was also hungry. On the way up he and his younger brother, Eurypides, thirteen and practically one half, had stopped to plunder honey from the hives owned by the old crone Chlorides, who had mean eyes like a bird and horribly gnarled fingers -she always accused them with that noxious breath of hers of robbing her, whether they had or not, so a little larceny used up some of their extensive credit. Local justice. George had subdued the bees with the smoke from a cigarette he had brought along specifically for the purpose. He'd almost gagged – he hadn't taken to cigarettes yet, but would, he promised himself. Soon. As soon as he had had IT. Then, maybe, he could get to sleep at nights.
Not far to go. The terraced ledges where a few wizened olive trees clung to the rock face were now far behind, they were already two kilometres above the village, less than another two to climb. The light had started to soften, it would be dark in a couple of hours and George wanted to be home by then. His mother was preparing stifado with the tiny onions he liked; George decided he would also ask for a glass of her black wine, so thick he could still taste the mud. He'd've earned it.
He gave the donkey another fierce prod. The animal, beneath its burden of rough-hewn wooden saddle and bulging cloth panniers, was finding difficulty in negotiating the boulder-strewn trail and cared nothing for such encouragement. The beast expressed its objection in the traditional manner.
'Not over my school uniform, dog meat!' Eurypides sprang back in alarm and, too late, cursed. There was a beating if he did not attend school in uniform, though school was no more than a crumbling one-room shack stuck behind the church. Even in a poor mountain village they had standards. And guns.
Like the two Sten guns wrapped in sacking at the bottom of one of the panniers which they were delivering, along with the rest of the supplies, to their older brother. George envied his older brother, hiding out with five other EOKA fighters in a mountain lair, descending to do damage to the British and their informants before disappearing once more like the mountain mist.
EOKA. Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston -the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters – who for a year had been trying to blast open the closed colonial minds of their British rulers and force them to grant the island independence. They were terrorists to some, liberation fighters to others. To George, great patriots. With every part of him that was not concerned with sex he wanted to join them, to be one of them, to fight the enemies of his country and his people and to be able to regard himself as a real man. But frustration piled upon youthful frustration, for the High Command was emphatic that no one under the age of eighteen could take up arms. He would have lied, but there was no point, not in a village where everyone knew even the night of his conception. Just before Christmas 1939. The war against the Germans was only a few months old and his father's brother George had volunteered for the Cyprus Regiment of the British Army. Like many young Cypriots he had wanted to join the fight for freedom and liberty in Europe which, once won, would surely bring their own release. Or so they had thought. His uncle's farewell celebration had been a long night of feasting and loving, and he had been conceived. And Uncle George never came back.
It had been impressed upon the younger George that he had much to live up to, to honour the memory of a brave, long-lost uncle, brother, friend, a memory grown more glorious with time. George idolized the uncle he had never known, but he was only fifteen and almost three-quarters and instead of marching in heroic footsteps was reduced to delivering messages and supplies.
'Did you really do it with Vasso? Seriously, George.'
'Course, stupid. Several times!' George lied, filling his chest with wind. He was beginning to discover that one lie piled upon another, and each time the subject of their second cousin Vasso was raised he was forced to clamber still higher up his rickety edifice of falsehoods.
'What was it like?' Eurypides wriggled inside his soiled school uniform, anxious not to display too much ignorance yet unable to resist the voyage of discovery.
'They were like peponia, soft melons of flesh,' George exclaimed, gyrating his hands in demonstration. He wanted to expand but couldn't; Vasso had taken him no further than the buttons of her blouse where he had found not the soft fruits he had anticipated but small, hard breasts with nipples like plum stones. He was sure it was her fault. Next time would be better.
Eurypides giggled in anticipation, but didn't believe. 'You didn't, did you?' he accused. George felt his carefully constructed edifice wobbling beneath him. 'Did.' 'Didn't.' 'Psefti.' 'Malaka!'
Eurypides threw a stone and George jumped, stumbling on a loose rock and falling flat on his rump, fragments of his dream scattered around him. Eurypides' squeals of laughter, by turns childishly high pitched and pubescent gruff, filled the valley and cascaded like acid over his brother's pride. George felt humiliated, he needed something to restore his flagging esteem. Perhaps he would inflict some form of great physical peril on his younger brother, or devise some other means of establishing his seniority. Suddenly he knew exactly how.
George loosened the string neck of one of the panniers and reached deep inside, beneath the oranges and side of smoked pork, until his fingers grasped a cylindrical parcel of sacking. Carefully he withdrew it, then a second slightly smaller bundle. In the shadow of a large boulder he lay both on the carpet of soft pine needles, gently removed the wrappings, and Eurypides gasped. It was his first trip on the supply run, he hadn't been told what they were carrying, and his eyes grew large with the knowledge. Staring up at him from the sacking was the dull grey metal of a Sten gun, modified with a folding butt to make it more compact for smuggling. Alongside it were three ammunition mags.