The Brigadier
The Way of the Arpha: 7 of 12
A chronicle of Cypriot boot camp.
Intro HERE and last section HERE
7. THE BRIGADIER
The highest-ranking officer who came to the army camp on a regular basis was the brigadier. He was a towering man with a great curling mustache that was all the rage in the 50s. He was often in buoyant spirits but could storm over as ferociously as a Greco-Turkish dogfight over the Aegean.
The army camp was a fine place for him to indulge his mood swings, which in any other work environment would have been compassionately treated with pills. When he raged, he would thrust his open paw out in front of him as if demanding alms for the disgraceful state of the camp. Without retracting his extended arm and before an answer was given, he would launch into another question with an emphatic twirl of his hand that would have also been effective for spinning basketballs.
But it wasn’t the conscripts that he yelled at. For us, he was full of advice. “When you walk, you keep your head tall. You are slaves of no one,” he told us one afternoon after a corporal had forced us out of out of our barrack rooms during rest period and ordered us to hastily line up outside. Rather, it was the conscript officers who suffered his foul moods. The brigadier would come stomping through the camp bellowing out questions and twirling his interrogative hand at any corporal, sergeant or cadet officer he encountered. Grivas would always be at his side, docile as a lamb, relinquishing all authority in his superior’s presence. The army hierarchy and the dictatorial privileges conferred upon every officer in relation to those under him ensured that ever officer, although a slave driver to many, was also a slave to some. It was like a family tree of abuse, passed on, fathers to sons, down through the generations. Of course, unlike the family tree, these relatives never died. It was a very democratic totalitarian structure and a pedagogical one, as it cultivated an existential awareness of the variable and absurd nature of the human condition.
News of the brigadier’s approach would always send the officers into a state of panic, like on the first Saturday afternoon when a corporal came rushing into our barracks room.
“The brigadier is coming for an inspection!” he hissed. “Stand by your beds!” We leapt up and took our positions. “If he looks at you directly, say your name!” The corporal dashed out of the room.
Moments later a sergeant rushed in. “Why are you all standing by your beds? You’re not supposed to know the brigadier is coming. Look like you’re talking!” We all fell back onto our beds and pretended to talk.
The brigadier soon walked in, and we all stood up. “What are you all doing here?” he demanded. “Why are you inside? It’s not prohibited to be outside, you know. Do you know that?”
“We know,” a three-monther replied. “We’re relaxing. Discussing.”
“Discussing what? How to solve the Cyprus problem?” The brigadier grinned, evidently pleased with his joke, and walked out into the other barracks room across the hall.
A sergeant came into our room moments after the brigadier left the company barracks. “Go outside,” he urged. “It’s still free time. The brigadier should see you relaxing out there.”
We went outside. The brigadier’s car was gone.
“Oh, I guess he’s gone,” the sergeant said. “You can go back inside if you want.”
I can see him. You painted him well. And you're hilarious. This should become a book.
This one made be giggle as if I were watching an old Monty Python skit. Besides being a great novel, this would also be fodder for a TV comedy series.