Barry Unsworth - Pascali's Island

When we reached a level roughly similar to that at which the two lower troops had been stationed, Mahmoud despatched a man to alert them. They were some three hundred metres to the west of us, in the direction of the town, where they could overlook the approach by sea.

'It is odd', Izzet whispered to me, 'that they have seen nothing.' His face was pinched and white in the moonlight, looking narrower, more bird-like than ever below the dark turban he was wearing. 'The pigs must have been drinking,' he whispered.

We waited for perhaps ten minutes there. Then we saw the man returning, walking carefully across the slope, just above us. He was holding both hands extended before him a little, in what even at that distance seemed a stiff and unnatural manner. This was the beginning of the nightmare, Excellency, up till then merely the approaches, the moonlight reaches of the dream. As in nightmare the man was hampered, he could only approach slowly for fear of noise – he had to contain his news until he could whisper it. Slowly he clambered down towards us. He held out his hands towards Mahmoud. His broad Mongolian face was expressionless with shock. His hands were darker than his face, much darker – the blood was still moist. 'They are dead,' he said, in a harsh whisper. He raised one hand and made a sharp gesture inwards, towards his chest. 'I thought at first they were sleeping,' he said.

Mahmoud Pasha looked at the man's hands, then up towards the slope, towards the way we were going. He nodded once. 'Gelde, cochuklar,' he said. 'Come, my children, let us continue.'

There was death in the air now – I think from that moment Mister Bowles's death was inevitable. We went on in silence. From time to time we had to climb up along the sides, holding to the low branches of pines. But always we followed the line of the stream. We were now not far below the ruins, though these were not visible to us here. The cold radiance of the moon lay on the hills around and above us. The plunges of granite in the gorge beyond the headland were like streams immobilised by a thickening solution of alkali, divided into deltas by the darker scrub. Threading the slopes, the silver lines of goat tracks.

I led them up, sick at heart, thinking of nothing now but coming to the end. We quitted the track at a point well above the hollow, and very slowly, very cautiously now, came obliquely downwards across the slope. He had posted no lookout, Excellency. He would have had the confidence of his destiny upon him; but he must have known the soldiers were dead, otherwise he would surely have taken this precaution -we would have been visible as we took up our positions above them, there would have been time for them to get clear. Of course, he needed all the men for the work, perhaps even Lydia too…

Now the long claw of the headland was before us, beyond it we could see the great brimming expanse of the bay, the glimmering of the ancient jetty, the shadowed caique at rest on the calm surface. We worked our way round to a rocky terrace on the slope, some three or four yards deep. To our right the land plunged down again in a torrent of silvered rock and scrub. Slowly we worked along the terrace. Suddenly Mahmoud held up his hand, halted us. There they were, Excellency, working full in the moonlight. There were six of them, not five as I had been expecting: two below, in the hollow itself, four at the top of the slope. The statue dangled, still upright, just clear of the bank.

Mahmoud gestured us into position along the terrace, spaced at intervals, concealed among the rocks. Me he kept beside him. It was a perfect field of fire, Excellency: they had no chance, none whatever. And still they worked on, absorbed, totally heedless. Even when his men were settled in position, Mahmoud gave no order. He uttered a hiss of indrawn breath, and when I glanced at him, I saw that he was smiling. I will not forget that smile of his big white face. He waited there, withholding the order, savouring his triumph; waiting while we crouched and watched them at their work.

One of the men below was Mister Bowles, I recognised the angular figure, the smooth hair – he was bareheaded, curiously boyish looking. The other with him was much shorter and slighter. They were holding the statue steady as it hung there. Three of the men above were at the rope, some dozen feet to the right, along the crest of the hollow. The fourth, who was facing us, I knew at once for Mister Smith. They had rigged up a scaffold by means of three oars lashed together, and he was standing against this, using his weight as a wedge.

We could hear and see everything. The creak of the ropes, the winching sound of the pulley wheels below the scaffold, the scrape and setting of the men's feet and their grunts of exertion as they heaved together on the rope, the glinting fibres of the rope itself as it descended from the oar overhanging the slope to the slings at the statue's shoulders-they had fashioned a rope harness for him. Everything was as clear as if it had been daylight-I could even see the brass buckle on Mister Smith's belt. The statue gazed serenely across the moonwashed spaces between us, walking on air now.

So for the space of perhaps five or six minutes we crouched there and watched: watched as the statue rose foot by foot with the pulls on the rope, beyond the reaching hands of those below, slowly upwards until he was clear of the bankside, hanging free. I could see nothing of Mister Bowles except his back, but I could imagine the anxiety on his face as he watched his darling's progress upward. His helper below had stepped back from the bank and stood behind him a little.

There was a dreadful fascination in the spectacle, in this purposeful, doomed activity, in their absorption and helplessness, Mister Bowles and his helper trapped like flies in that bowl of light, the others outlined there, only the exposed slope below to escape by. Dramatic, Excellency. But it was the bronze youth himself, as they hauled him clear, that held my attention, and aroused my superstitious awe. He hung there, his head just below the top of the slope, swaying very slightly. And his ropes creaked. Excellency, I was looking at the crucified man of my childhood, but transformed it seemed, ecstatic – that raised face, that dreaming smile – triumphant in the hands of his persecutors. The moon threw his brows into prominence, shadowed the sockets of his eyes. He held out his hand towards us.

Then, abruptly, the tableau was broken by Mister Bowles. He bent down, took up a length of rope lying beside him, began to clamber up towards the statue's feet. I think he was going to rope the feet, Excellency, so that the others could draw him in horizontally the rest of the way, bring him flat on to the crest of the slope. But he was given no time. It was now, with the statue suspended there, the men above taking the strain, Mister Bowles climbing awkwardly, hampered by the rope, it was now that Mahmoud whispered the firing order, left of him to those above, right of him to those below. If the men before us heard the click of the bolts, they had no time to move, barely time to look up, even. Perhaps they saw the glimmer of a face, the glint of a gun barrel. But the shots crashed out, and continued without pause, for what seemed long enough to destroy the world. Mister Smith dropped at once, straight down into the hollow, diving past the statue, to end quite still at the foot of the slope. He was killed outright, I think. My eye went from him to Mister Bowles's assistant, who had turned to face the shots. It was Lydia. She ran three steps forward, then fell, but she was still moving. The statue, released, dropped with a rattle of wheels, like clockwork, feet first, straight on to Mister Bowles who made or seemed to make, at the last moment, some embracing or protective gesture towards it, before it struck him on head and chest and bore him beneath it down to the floor of the hollow, where the shots masked the crash of its fall. Lydia, on one knee, the other leg trailing, crawled a little way towards the statue and the inert form lying half under it. She was shot again, lowered herself on to her face, writhed briefly as if trying to turn over on to her side, to a more comfortable position. But she couldn't manage this, and after a moment lay still.