The Corfu Trilogy Part 21

He cut me a short stick and once again I mounted Sally. This time I wrapped my legs tightly round her barrel body and gave her a sharp tap with my switch. She bucked several times, indignantly, but I clung on like a limpet, and to my delight, within half an hour, I had her trotting to and fro between the olive trees, responding neatly to tugs on the rein. Larry had been lying under the olives smoking and watching my progress. Now, as I appeared to have mastered the equestrian art, he rose to his feet and took a penknife out of his pocket.

'Now,' he said, as I dismounted, 'I'll show you how to look after her. First of all, you must brush her down every morning. We'll get a brush for you in town. Then you must make sure her hooves are clean. You must do that every day.'

I inquired, puzzled, how did one clean donkeys' hooves?

'I'll show you,' said Larry nonchalantly.

He walked up to Sally, bent down, and picked up her hind leg.

'In here,' he said, pointing with the blade of the knife at Sally's hoof, 'an awful lot of muck gets trapped. This can lead to all sorts of things. Foot-rot and so forth, and it's very important to keep them clean.'

So saying, he dug his penknife blade into Sally's hoof. What Larry had not realized was that donkeys in Corfu were unshod and that a baby donkey's hoof is still, comparatively speaking, soft and very delicate. So, not unnaturally, Sally reacted as though Larry had jabbed her with a red-hot skewer. She wrenched her hoof out of his hands and as he straightened up and turned in astonishment, she did a pretty pirouette and kicked him neatly in the pit of the stomach with both hind legs. Larry sat down heavily, his face went white, and he doubled up, clasping his stomach and making strange rattling noises. The alarm I felt was not for Larry but for Sally, for I was quite sure that he would extract the most terrible retribution when he recovered. Hastily I undid Sally's rope and flicked her on the rump with the stick and watched her canter off into the olives. Then I ran into the house and informed Mother that Larry had had an accident. The entire family, including Spiro, who had just arrived, came running out into the olive grove where Larry was still writhing about uttering great sobbing, wheezing noises.

'Larry, dear,' said Mother distraught, 'what have have you been doing?' you been doing?'

'Attacked,' gasped Larry between wheezes. 'Unprovoked... Creature mad... Probably rabies... Ruptured appendix.'

With Leslie on one side of him and Spiro on the other they carted Larry slowly back to the villa, with Mother and Margo fluttering commiseratingly and ineffectually around him. In a crisis of this magnitude, involving my family, one had to keep one's wits about one or all was lost. I ran swiftly round to the kitchen door where, panting but innocent, I informed our maid that I was going to spend the day out and could she give me some food to eat. She put half a loaf of bread, some onions, some olives, and a hunk of cold meat into a paper bag and gave it to me. Fruit I knew I could obtain from any of my peasant friends. Then I raced through the olive groves, carrying this provender, in search of Sally.

I eventually found her half a mile away, grazing on a succulent patch of gra.s.s. After several ineffectual attempts, I managed to scramble up onto her back and then, belabouring her behind with a stick, I urged her to a brisk trot as far away from the villa as possible.

I had to return to the villa for tea because Theodore was coming. When I got back I found Larry, swathed in blankets, lying on the sofa giving Theodore a graphic description of the incident.

'And then, absolutely unprovoked, it suddenly turned on me with slavering jaws, like the charge of the Light Brigade.' He broke off to glare at me as I entered the room. 'Oh, so you decided to come back. And what, may I inquire, have you done with that equine menace?'

I replied that Sally was safely bedded down in her stable and had, fortunately, suffered no ill effects from the incident. Larry glared at me.

'Well, I'm delighted to hear that,' he said caustically. 'The fact that I am lying here with my spleen ruptured in three places is of apparently little or no moment.'

'I have brought you... um... a little, you know... er... gift,' said Theodore, and he presented me with a replica of his own collecting box, complete with tubes and a fine muslin net. I could not have asked for anything nicer and I thanked him volubly.

'You had better go and thank Katerina too, dear,' said Mother. 'She didn't really want to part with Sally, you know.'

'I am surprised,' said Larry. 'I'd have thought she'd have been only too glad glad to get rid of her.' to get rid of her.'

'You'd better not go and see Katerina now,' said Margo. 'She's getting near her time.'

Intrigued by this unusual phrase, I asked what 'getting near her time' meant.

'She's going to have a baby, dear,' said Mother.

'The wonder of it is,' said Larry, 'as I thought when we went to the wedding, she didn't have it in the vestry.'

'Larry, dear,' said Mother. 'Not in front of Gerry.'

'Well, it's true,' said Larry. 'I've never seen such a pregnant bride in white.'

I said I thought it would be a good idea if I went to thank Katerina before before she had the baby because after she had it she would probably be very busy. Reluctantly, Mother agreed to this, and so the following morning I mounted Sally and rode off through the olive trees in the direction of Gastouri, Roger trotting behind and indulging in a game which he and Sally had invented between them, which consisted of Roger darting in at intervals and nibbling her heels gently, growling furiously, whereupon Sally would give a skittish little buck and attempt to kick him in the ribs. she had the baby because after she had it she would probably be very busy. Reluctantly, Mother agreed to this, and so the following morning I mounted Sally and rode off through the olive trees in the direction of Gastouri, Roger trotting behind and indulging in a game which he and Sally had invented between them, which consisted of Roger darting in at intervals and nibbling her heels gently, growling furiously, whereupon Sally would give a skittish little buck and attempt to kick him in the ribs.

Presently we came to the little low white house, with the flattened area outside its front door neatly ringed with old rusty cans filled with flowers. To my astonishment I saw that we were not the only visitors that day. There were several elderly gentlemen sitting round a small table, hunched over gla.s.ses of wine, their enormous, swooping, nicotine-stained moustaches flapping up and down as they talked to each other. Cl.u.s.tered in the doorway of the house and peering eagerly through the one small window that illuminated its interior, there was a solid wedge of female relatives, all chattering and gesticulating at once.

From inside the house came a series of piercing shrieks, interspersed with cries for help from the Almighty, the Virgin Mary, and St Spiridion. I gathered from all this uproar and activity that I had arrived in the middle of a family row. This interfamily warfare was quite a common thing among the peasants and something I always found very enjoyable, for any quarrel, however trivial, was carried on with grim determination until it was sucked dry of the very last juices of drama, with people shouting abuse at one another through the olive trees and the men periodically chasing each other with bamboos.

I tethered Sally and made my way to the front door of the house, wondering, as I did so, what this particular row was about. The last one in this area that I remembered had lasted for a prodigious length of time (three weeks) and had all been started by a small boy who told his cousin that his grandfather cheated at cards. I wriggled and pushed my way determinedly through the knot of people who blocked the doorway and finally got inside, only to find the entire room seemed to be filled with Katerina's relatives, packed shoulder to shoulder like a football crowd. I had, quite early in life, discovered that the only way of dealing with a situation like this was to get down on one's hands and knees and crawl. This I did and by this means successfully achieved the front row in the circle of relatives that surrounded the great double bed.

Now I could see that something much more interesting than a family row was taking place. Katerina was lying on the bed with her cheap print frock rolled right up above her great, swollen b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her hands were tightly clasping the head of the big bra.s.s bedstead, her white mound of a stomach quivered and strained with what appeared to be a life of its own, and she kept drawing her legs up and screaming, rolling her head from side to side, the sweat pouring down her face. Near her by the bedside, and obviously in charge of the proceedings, was a tiny, dirty, wizened little witch of a woman holding a bucket in one hand full of well water. Periodically she would dip a bundle of filthy rags into this and mop Katerina's face and her thighs with it. On the table by the bedstead a jug full of wine and a gla.s.s stood, and every time the old crone had finished the ablutions, she would put a drop of wine in the gla.s.s and force it into Katerina's mouth; then she would fill the gla.s.s and drain it herself, for presumably, in her capacity as midwife, she needed to keep up her strength as much as Katerina.

I congratulated myself warmly on the fact that I had not been deviated on my ride up to Katerina's house by several interesting things I had seen. If, for example, I had stopped to climb up to what I was pretty certain was a magpie's nest, I would probably have missed this whole exciting scene. Curiously enough, I was so used to the shrill indignation of the peasants over the most trivial circ.u.mstances that I did not really, consciously, a.s.sociate Katerina's falsetto screams with pain. It was obvious that she was in some pain. Her face was white, crumpled, and old-looking, but I automatically subtracted ninety per cent of the screaming as exaggeration. Now and then, when she uttered a particularly loud scream and implored St Spiridion for his aid, all the relatives would scream in sympathy and also implore the Saint's intervention. The resulting cacophony in that tiny s.p.a.ce had to be heard to be believed.

Suddenly Katerina clasped the bed-head still more tightly, the muscles in her brown arms showing taut. She writhed, drew up her legs and spread them wide apart.

'It is coming. It is coming. Praised be Saint Spiridion,' shouted all the relatives in chorus, and I noticed in the middle of the tangled, matted ma.s.s of Katerina's pubic hairs a round white object appear, rather like the top of an egg. There was a moment's pause and Katerina strained again and uttered a moaning gasp. Then, to my entranced delight, the baby's head suddenly popped out of her like a rabbit out of a hat, to be quickly followed by its pink, twitching body. Its face and its limbs were as crumpled and as delicate as a rose's petals. But it was its minuteness and the fact that it was so perfectly formed that intrigued me. The midwife shuffled forward shouting prayers and instructions to Katerina and seized the baby from between her blood-stained thighs. At that moment, to my intense annoyance, the ring of relatives all moved forward a pace in their eagerness to see the s.e.x of the child, so that I missed the next piece of the drama, for all I could see were the large and extremely well-padded rumps of two of Katerina's larger aunts.

By the time I had burrowed between their legs and voluminous skirts and got to the front of the circle again, the midwife at shouts of delight from everybody declared the baby to be a boy and had severed the umbilical cord with a large and very ancient penknife she had extracted from a pocket in her skirt. One of the aunts surged forward and together she and the midwife tied the cord. Then, while the aunt held the squalling, twitching, pink blob of life, the midwife dipped her bundle of rags into the bucket and proceeded to swab the baby down. This done, she then filled a gla.s.s with wine and gave a couple of sips to Katerina and then filled her mouth with wine and proceeded to spit it from her toothless gums all over the baby's head, making the sign of the cross over its little body as she did so. Then she clasped the baby to her bosom and turned fiercely on the crowd of relatives.

'Come now, come now,' she shrilled. 'It is done. He has arrived. Go now, go now.'

Laughing and chattering excitedly, the relatives poured out of the little house and immediately started drinking wine and congratulating each other as though they had all personally been responsible for the successful birth of the baby. In the airless little room, smelling so strongly of sweat and garlic, Katerina lay exhausted on the bed, making feeble attempts to pull her dress down to cover her nakedness. I went to the edge of the bed and looked down at her.

'Yasu, Gerry mine,' she said and sketched a white travesty of her normal brilliant smile. She looked incredibly old, lying there. I congratulated her politely on the birth of her first son and then thanked her for the donkey. She smiled again.

'Go outside,' she said. 'They will give you some wine.'

I left the little room and hurried after the midwife, for I was anxious to see what the next stage was in her treatment of the baby. Out at the back of the house she had spread a white linen cloth over a small table and placed the child on it. Then she picked up great rolls of previously prepared cloth, like very wide bandage, and with the aid of one of the more nimble and sober aunts, she proceeded to wind this round and round the baby's tiny body, pausing frequently to make sure its arms lay flat by its sides and its legs were together. Slowly and methodically she bound it up as straight as a guardsman. It lay there with only its head sticking out from this coc.o.o.n of webbing. Greatly intrigued by this, I asked the midwife why she was binding the baby up.

'Why? Why?' she said, her grizzled grey eyebrows flapping over her eyes, milky with cataracts, that peered at me fiercely. 'Because, if you don't bind up the baby, its limbs won't grow straight. Its bones are as soft as an egg. If you don't bind it up, its limbs will grow crooked or when it kicks and waves its arms about, it will break its bones, like little sticks of charcoal.'

I knew that babies in England were not bound up in this way, and I wondered whether this was because the British were in some way tougher-boned. Otherwise, it seemed to me, there would have been an awful lot of deformities inhabiting the British Isles. I made a mental note to discuss this medical problem with Theodore at the first opportunity.

After I had drunk several gla.s.ses of wine to honour the baby and eaten a large bunch of grapes, I got on Sally's back and rode slowly home. I would not have missed that morning for anything, I decided. But, thinking about it as we jogged through the dappled shade of the olives, the thing that amazed me was that anything so perfect and so beautiful should have matured and come forth from the interior of what, to me, was an old woman. It was like, I reflected, breaking open the old, brown, p.r.i.c.kly husk of a chestnut and finding the lovely gleaming trophy inside.

PART TWO.

Kontokali Hospitality is, indeed, now no less than in cla.s.sical times, a sacred duty in these islands, and it is a duty most conscientiously performed.

PROFESSOR ANSTEAD

4.

The Pygmy Jungle It was a warm spring day, as blue as a jay's wing, and I waited impatiently for Theodore to arrive, for we were going to take a picnic lunch and walk two or three miles to a small lake that was one of our happiest hunting grounds. These days spent with Theodore, these 'excursions' as he called them, were of absorbing interest to me, but they must have been very exhausting for Theodore, for, from the moment of his arrival till his departure, I would ply him with a ceaseless string of questions.

Eventually, Theodore's cab clopped and tinkled its way up the drive and Theodore dismounted, clad, as always, in the most unsuitable attire for collecting: a neat tweed suit, respectable, highly polished boots, and a grey Homburg perched squarely on his head. The only ungracious note in this city gentleman's outfit was his collecting box, full of tubes and bottles, slung over one shoulder, and a small net with a bottle dangling from the end, attached to the end of his walking-stick.

'Ah, um,' he said, shaking me gravely by the hand. 'How are you? I see that we have got, um... a nice day for our excursion.'

As at that time of year one got weeks on end of nice days, this was scarcely surprising, but Theodore always insisted on mentioning it as though it was some special privilege that had been granted us by the G.o.ds of collecting. Quickly we gathered up the bag of food and the little stone bottles of ginger beer Mother had prepared for us, and slung these on our backs, together with my collecting equipment, which was slightly more extensive than Theodore's, since everything was grist to my mill and I had to be prepared for any eventuality.

Then, whistling for Roger, we went off through the sunlit olive groves, striped with shade, the whole island, spring-fresh and brilliant, lying before us. At this time of the year the olive groves would be full of flowers. Pale anemones with the tips of their petals dyed red as though they had been sipping wine, pyramid orchids that looked as though they had been made of pink icing, and yellow crocuses so fat, glossy, and waxy-looking you felt they would light like a candle if you set a match to their stamens. We would tramp through the rough stone paths among the olives, then for a mile or so follow the road lined with tall and ancient cypresses, each covered in a layer of white dust, like a hundred dark paint brushes loaded with chalk white. Presently we would strike off from the road and make our way over the crest of a small hill and there, lying below us, would be the lake, perhaps four acres in extent, its rim s.h.a.ggy with reeds and its water green with plants.

On this particular day, as we made our way down the hillside towards the lake, I was walking a little ahead of Theodore and I suddenly came to an abrupt halt and stared with amazement at the path ahead of me. Alongside the edge of the path was the bed of a tiny stream which meandered its way down to join the lake. The stream was such a tiny one that even the early spring sun had succeeded in drying it up, so that there was only the smallest trickle of water. Through the bed of the stream and then up across the path and into the stream again lay what at first sight appeared to be a thick cable which seemed to be mysteriously possessed of a life of its own. When I looked closely I could see that the cable was made up of what looked like hundreds of small, dusty snakes. I shouted eagerly to Theodore and when he came I pointed this phenomenon out to him.

'Aha!' he said, his beard bristling and a keen light of interest in his eyes. 'Um, yes. Very interesting. Elvers.'

What kind of snake was an elver, I inquired, and why were they all travelling in a procession?

'No, no,' said Theodore. 'They are not snakes. They are baby eels and they appear to be, um... you know, making their way down to the lake.'

Fascinated, I crouched over the long column of baby eels, wriggling determinedly through the stone and gra.s.s and p.r.i.c.kly thistles, their skins dry and dusty. There seemed to be millions of them. Who, in this dry, dusty place, would expect to find eels wriggling about?

'The whole, um... history of the eel,' said Theodore, putting his collecting box on the ground and seating himself on a convenient rock, 'is very curious. You see, at certain times the adult eels leave the ponds or rivers where they have been living and, er... make their way down to the sea. All the European eels do this and so do the North American eels. Where they went to was, for a long time, a mystery. The only thing, um... you know... scientists knew was that they never came back back, but that eventually these baby eels would return and repopulate the same rivers and streams. It was not until after quite a number of years that people discovered what really happened.'

He paused and scratched his beard thoughtfully.

'All the eels made their way down to the sea and then swam through the Mediterranean, across the Atlantic, until they reached the Sarga.s.so Sea, which is, as you know, off the northeastern coast of South America. The... um... North American eels, of course, didn't have so far to travel, but they made their way to the same place. Here they mated, laid their eggs, and died. The eel larva, when it hatches out, is a very curious, um... you know... leaf-shaped creature and transparent, so unlike the adult eel that for a long time it was cla.s.sified in a separate genus. Well, these larvae make their way slowly backwards to the place where their parents have come from and by the time they reach the Mediterranean or the North American sh.o.r.e, they look like these.'

Here Theodore paused and rasped his beard again and delicately inserted the end of his cane into the moving column of elvers so that they writhed indignantly.

'They seem to have a very um... you know... strong homing instinct,' said Theodore. 'We must be some two miles from the sea, I suppose, and yet all these little elvers are making their way across this countryside in order to get back to the same lake that their parents left.'

He paused and glanced about him keenly and then pointed with his stick.

'It's quite a hazardous journey,' he observed, and I saw what he meant, for a kestrel was flying like a little black cross just above the line of baby eels, and as we watched he swooped and flew away with his claws firmly gripping a writhing ma.s.s of them.

As we walked on, following the line of eels, since they were going in the same direction, we saw other predators at work. Groups of magpies and jackdaws and a couple of jays flew up at our approach and we caught, out of the corner of our eye, the red glint of a fox disappearing into the myrtle bushes.

When we reached the lake-side, we had a set pattern of behaviour. First we would have a prolonged discussion as to which olive tree would be the best to put some of our equipment and our food under which one would cast the deepest and the best shade at noon. Having decided on this, we would make a little pile of our possessions under it and then, armed with our nets and collecting boxes, we would approach the lake. Here we would potter happily for the rest of the morning, pacing with the slow concentration of a pair of fishing herons, dipping our nets into the weed-filigreed water. Here Theodore came into his own more than anywhere else. From the depths of the lake, as he stood there with the big scarlet dragon-flies zooming like arrows round him, he would extract magic that Merlin would have envied.

Here in the still, wine-gold waters, lay a pygmy jungle. On the lake bottom prowled the deadly dragon-fly larvae, as cunning predators as the tiger, inching their way through the debris of a million last year's leaves. Here the black tadpoles, sleek and shiny as licorice drops, disported in the shallows like plump herds of hippo in some African river. Through green forests of weed the multi-coloured swarms of microscopic creatures twitched and fluttered like flocks of exotic birds, while among the roots of the forests the newts, the leeches uncoiled like great snakes in the gloom, stretching out beseechingly, ever hungry. And here the caddis larvae, in their s.h.a.ggy coats of twigs and debris, crawled dimly like bears fresh from hibernation across the sun-ringed hills and valleys of soft black mud.

'Aha, now, this is rather interesting. You see this, um... little maggot-like thing? Now this is the larva of the China-mark moth. I think, as a matter of fact, you have got one in your collection. What? Well, they're called China-mark moths because of the markings on the wing, which are said to resemble very closely marks that potters put on the base of, er... you know, very good good china. Spode and so forth. Now the China-mark is interesting because it is one of the few moths that have aquatic larvae. The larvae live under water until they are... um... ready to pupate. The interesting thing about this particular species is that they have, er... um... you know, two forms of female. The male, of course, is fully winged and flies about when it hatches and er... so does one of the females. But the other female when it hatches out has, um... no wings and continues to live under the water, using its legs to swim with.' china. Spode and so forth. Now the China-mark is interesting because it is one of the few moths that have aquatic larvae. The larvae live under water until they are... um... ready to pupate. The interesting thing about this particular species is that they have, er... um... you know, two forms of female. The male, of course, is fully winged and flies about when it hatches and er... so does one of the females. But the other female when it hatches out has, um... no wings and continues to live under the water, using its legs to swim with.'

Theodore paced a little farther along the bank on the mud that was already dried and jigsawed by the spring sun. A kingfisher exploded like a blue firework from the small willow, and out on the centre of the lake a tern swooped and glided on graceful, sickle-shaped wings. Theodore dipped his net into the weedy water, sweeping it to and fro gently, as though he were stroking a cat. Then the net was lifted and held aloft, while the tiny bottle that dangled from it would be subjected to a minute scrutiny through a magnifying gla.s.s.

'Um, yes. Some cyclopes. Two mosquito larvae. Aha, that's interesting. You see this caddis Iarva has made his case entirely out of baby ram's-horn snail sh.e.l.ls. It is... you know... remarkably pretty. Ah now! Here we have, I think, yes, yes, here we have some rotifers.'

In a desperate attempt to keep pace with this flood of knowledge, I asked what rotifers were and peered into the little bottle through the magnifying gla.s.s at the twitching, wriggling creatures, as Theodore told me.

'The early naturalists used to call them wheel-animalcules, because of their curious limbs, you know. They wave them about in a very curious fashion, so that they almost look like, um... you know, um... er... like the wheels wheels of a watch. When you next come to see me I'll put some of these under the microscope for you. They are really extraordinarily beautiful creatures. These are, of course, all females.' of a watch. When you next come to see me I'll put some of these under the microscope for you. They are really extraordinarily beautiful creatures. These are, of course, all females.'

I asked why, of course, they should be females?

'This is one of the interesting things about the rotifer. The females produce virgin eggs. Um... that is to say, they produce eggs without having come into contact with a male. Um... er... somewhat like a chicken, you know. But the difference is that the rotifer rotifer eggs hatch out into other females which in turn are capable of laying more eggs which... um... again hatch out into females. But at certain times, the females lay eggs hatch out into other females which in turn are capable of laying more eggs which... um... again hatch out into females. But at certain times, the females lay smaller smaller eggs, which hatch out into males. Now, as you will see when I put these under the microscope, the female has a how shall one say? a quite eggs, which hatch out into males. Now, as you will see when I put these under the microscope, the female has a how shall one say? a quite complex complex body, an alimentary tract, and so on. The male has nothing at all. He is really just, er... um... a swimming bag of sperm.' body, an alimentary tract, and so on. The male has nothing at all. He is really just, er... um... a swimming bag of sperm.'

I was bereft of speech at the complexities of the private life of the rotifer.

'Another curious thing about them,' Theodore continued, happily piling miracle upon miracle, 'is that at certain times, er... you know, if it is a hot summer or something like that and the pond is liable to dry up, they go down to the bottom and form a sort of hard sh.e.l.l round themselves. It's a sort of suspended animation suspended animation, for the pond can dry up for, er... um... let us say seven or eight years, and they will just lie there in the dust. But as soon as the first rain falls and fills the pond, they come to life again.'

Again we moved forward, sweeping our nets through the balloon-like ma.s.ses of frogs' sp.a.w.n and the trailing necklace-like strings of the toad sp.a.w.n.

'Here is, er... if you just take the gla.s.s a minute and look... an exceptionally fine hydra.'

Through the gla.s.s there sprang to life a tiny fragment of weed to which was attached a long slender coffee-coloured column, at the top of which was a writhing ma.s.s of elegant tentacles. As I watched, a rotund and earnest cyclops, carrying two large and apparently heavy sacks containing pink eggs, swam in a series of breathless jerks too close to the writhing arms of the hydra. In a moment it was engulfed. It gave a couple of violent twitches before it was stung to death. I knew, if you watched long enough, you could watch the cyclops being slowly and steadily engulfed and pa.s.sing, in the shape of a bulge, down the column of the hydra.

Presently the height and the heat of the sun would tell us that it was lunch-time, and we would make our way back to our olive trees and sit there eating our food and drinking our ginger beer to the accompaniment of the sleepy zithering of the first-hatched cicadas of the year and the gentle, questioning coos of the collared doves.

'In Greek,' Theodore said, munching his sandwich methodically, 'the name for collared dove is dekaoctur dekaoctur "eighteener," you know. The story goes that when Christ was... um... carrying the cross to Calvary, a Roman soldier, seeing that He was exhausted, took pity on Him. By the side of the road there was an old woman selling... um... you know... "eighteener," you know. The story goes that when Christ was... um... carrying the cross to Calvary, a Roman soldier, seeing that He was exhausted, took pity on Him. By the side of the road there was an old woman selling... um... you know... milk milk, and so the Roman soldier went to her and asked her how much a cupful would cost. She replied that it would cost eighteen coins. But the soldier had only seventeen. He... er... you know... pleaded with the woman to let him have a cupful of milk for Christ for seventeen coins, but the woman avariciously held out for eighteen. So, when Christ was crucified, the old woman was turned into a turtle dove and condemned to go about for the rest of her days repeating dekaocto dekaocto, dekaocto dekaocto "eighteen, eighteen." If ever she agrees to say "eighteen, eighteen." If ever she agrees to say deka-epta deka-epta, seventeen, she will regain her human form. If, out of obstinacy, she says deka-ennaea deka-ennaea, nineteen, the world will come to an end.'

In the cool olive shade the tiny ants, black and shiny as caviare, would be foraging for our left-overs among last year's discarded olive leaves that the past summer's sun had dried and coloured a nut-brown and banana-yellow. They lay there as curled and as crisp as brandy-snaps. On the hillside behind us a herd of goats pa.s.sed, the leader's bell clonking mournfully. We could hear the tearing sound of their jaws as they ate, indiscriminately, any foliage that came within their reach. The leader paced up to us and gazed for a minute with baleful, yellow eyes, snorting clouds of thyme-laden breath at us.

'They should not, er... you know, be left unattended,' said Theodore, prodding the goat gently with his stick. 'Goats do more damage to the countryside than practically anything else.'

The leader uttered a short sardonic 'bah' and then moved away, with his destructive troop following him.

We would lie for an hour or so, drowsing, and digesting our food, staring up through the tangled olive branches at a sky that was patterned with tiny white clouds like a child's finger-prints on a blue, frosty, winter window.

'Well,' Theodore would say at last, getting to his feet, 'I think perhaps we ought to... you know... just see what the other other side of the lake has to offer.' side of the lake has to offer.'

So once more we would commence our slow pacing of the rim of the sh.o.r.e. Steadily our test tubes, bottles, and jars would fill with a shimmer of microscopic life, and my boxes and tins and bags would be stuffed with frogs, baby terrapins, and a host of beetles.

'I suppose,' Theodore would say at last, reluctantly, glancing up at the sinking sun, 'I suppose... you know... we ought to be getting along home.'

And so we would laboriously hoist our now extremely heavy collecting boxes onto our shoulders and trudge homeward on weary feet, Roger, his tongue hanging out like a pink flag, trotting soberly ahead of us. Reaching the villa, our catches would be moved to more capacious quarters. Then Theodore and I would relax and discuss the day's work, drinking gallons of hot, stimulating tea and gorging ourselves on golden scones, bubbling with b.u.t.ter, fresh from Mother's oven.

It was when I paid a visit to this lake without Theodore that I caught, quite by chance, a creature that I had long wanted to meet. As I drew my net up out of the waters and examined the tangled weed ma.s.s it contained, I found crouching there, of all unlikely things, a spider. I was delighted, for I had read about this curious beast, which must be one of the most unusual species of spider in the world, for it lives a very strange aquatic existence. It was about half an inch long and marked in a rather vague sort of way with silver and brown. I put it triumphantly into one of my collecting tins and carried it home tenderly.

Here I set up an aquarium with a sandy floor and decorated it with some small dead branches and fronds of water-weed. Putting the spider on one of the twigs that stuck up above the water-level, I watched to see what it would do. It immediately ran down the twig and plunged into the water, where it turned a bright and beautiful silver, owing to the numerous minute air bubbles trapped in the hairs on its body. It spent five minutes or so running about below the surface of the water, investigating all the twigs and water-weed before it finally settled on a spot in which to construct its home.

Now the water-spider was the original inventor of the diving-bell, and sitting absorbed in front of the aquarium, I watched how it was done. First the spider attached several lengthy strands of silk from the weeds to the twigs. These were to act as guy ropes. Then, taking up a position roughly in the centre of these guy ropes, it proceeded to spin an irregular oval-shaped flat web of a more or less conventional type, but of a finer mesh, so that it looked more like a cobweb. This occupied the greater part of two hours. Having got the structure of its home built to its satisfaction, it now had to give it an air supply. This it did by making numerous trips to the surface of the water and into the air. When it returned to the water its body would be silvery with air bubbles. It would then run down and take up its position underneath the web and, by stroking itself with its legs, rid itself of the air bubbles, which rose and were immediately trapped underneath the web. After it had done this five or six times, all the tiny bubbles under the web had amalgamated into one big bubble. As the spider added more and more air to this bubble and the bubble grew bigger and bigger, its strength started to push the web up until eventually the spider had achieved success. Firmly anch.o.r.ed by the guy ropes between the weed and the twigs was suspended a bell-shaped structure full of air. This was now the spider's home in which it could live quite comfortably without even having to pay frequent visits to the surface, for the air in the bell would, I knew, be replenished by the oxygen given up by the weeds, and the carbon monoxide given out by the spider would soak through the silky walls of its house.

Sitting and watching this miraculous piece of craftsmanship, I wondered how on earth the very first water-spider (who wanted to become become a water-spider) had managed to work out this ingenious method of living below the surface. But the habit of living in its own home-made submarine is not the only peculiar thing about this spider. Unlike the greater majority of species, the male is about twice the size of the female, and once they have mated, the male is not devoured by his wife, as happens so frequently in the married life of the spider. I could tell from her size that my spider was a female and I thought that her abdomen looked rather swollen. It seemed to me she might be expecting a happy event, so I took great pains to make sure that she got plenty of good food. She liked fat green daphnia, which she was extraordinarily adept at catching as they swam past; but probably her favourite food of all was the tiny, newly hatched newt efts which, although they were a bulky prey for her, she never hesitated to tackle. Having captured whatever t.i.tbit happened to be pa.s.sing, she would then carry it up into her bell and eat it there in comfort. a water-spider) had managed to work out this ingenious method of living below the surface. But the habit of living in its own home-made submarine is not the only peculiar thing about this spider. Unlike the greater majority of species, the male is about twice the size of the female, and once they have mated, the male is not devoured by his wife, as happens so frequently in the married life of the spider. I could tell from her size that my spider was a female and I thought that her abdomen looked rather swollen. It seemed to me she might be expecting a happy event, so I took great pains to make sure that she got plenty of good food. She liked fat green daphnia, which she was extraordinarily adept at catching as they swam past; but probably her favourite food of all was the tiny, newly hatched newt efts which, although they were a bulky prey for her, she never hesitated to tackle. Having captured whatever t.i.tbit happened to be pa.s.sing, she would then carry it up into her bell and eat it there in comfort.

Then came the great day when I saw that she was adding an extension to the bell. She did not hurry over this and it took her two days to complete. Then one morning, on peering into her tank, I saw to my delight that the nursery contained a round ball of eggs. In due course these hatched out into miniature replicas of the mother. I soon had more water-spiders than I knew what to do with and I found, to my annoyance, that the mother, with complete lack of parental feeling, was happily feeding off her own progeny. So I was forced to move the babies into another aquarium, but as they grew they took to feeding upon each other and so in the end I just kept the two most intelligent-looking ones and took all the rest down to the lake and let them go.

It was at this time, when I was deeply involved with the water-spiders, that Sven Olson at last turned up. Larry, to Mother's consternation, had developed the habit of inviting hordes of painters, poets, and authors to stay without any reference to her. Sven Olson was a sculptor, and we had had some warning of his impending arrival, for he had been bombarding us for several weeks with contradictory telegrams about his movements, which had driven Mother to distraction because she kept having to make and unmake his bed. Mother and I were having a quiet cup of tea on the veranda when a cab made its appearance, wound its way up the drive, and came to a stop in front of the house. In the back was seated an enormous man who bore a remarkable facial resemblance to the reconstructions of Neanderthal man. He was clad in a white singlet, a pair of voluminous brightly checked plus fours, and sandals. On his ma.s.sive head was a broad-brimmed straw hat. The two holes situated one each side of the crown argued that this hat had been designed for the use of a horse. He got ponderously out of the cab, carrying a very large and battered Gladstone bag and an accordion. Mother and I went down to greet him. As he saw us approaching, he swept off his hat and bowed, revealing that his enormous cranium was completely devoid of hair except for a strange, grey, tattered duck's tail on the nape of his neck.

'Mrs Durrell?' he inquired, fixing Mother with large and childlike blue eyes. 'I am enchanted to meet you. My name is Sven.'

His English was impeccable, with scarcely any trace of an accent, but his voice was quite extraordinary, for it wavered between a deep rich baritone and a quavering falsetto, as though, in spite of his age, his voice was only just breaking. He extended a very large, white, spade-shaped hand to Mother and bowed once again.