The Donkey Rustlers

by Gerald Malcolm Durrell

  Amanda and David walked the half mile or so down the hillside to the beach. It was curious that though both brother and sister were devoted to each other, they very rarely spoke when they were alone together. It was only when they were out with Yani that they became exuberant and loquacious. They walked slowly down the rough track that led to the beach, happy in each other’s company and busy with their own thoughts. Amanda’s eyes darted everywhere as she made mental notes of the various wild flowers she saw and which she would collect on the return journey to take back to her mother. David watched the brown and blue lizards that scuttled everywhere under their sandalled feet and wondered how many lizards it would take — if all were suitably harnessed — to pull a cart. The air was warm and full of the scent of thyme and myrtle. They deposited their belongings on the beach, took off their clothes and plunged into the blue, lukewarm water.

  Both in their different ways enjoyed their first day in Melissa; David found a baby octopus under a stone and they teased it very gently with a stick so that it would blush pink and iridescent green with annoyance and finally shoot off into deeper waters, like a balloon trailing its ropes behind it, leaving a smoke screen of black ink that hung and drifted in the still waters. Amanda found a contorted olive branch that had been washed clean and sandpapered by the sea and then bleached astonishingly white by the sun.

  “I wonder why it is,” she said musingly to David, “that when nature produces something like this, it looks beautiful. And yet when Father tries to draw the same sort of tree, it looks so awful.”

  “That’s because Father can’t draw as well as nature can,” said David, very seriously.

  The two children stared at each other for a moment and then were convulsed with laughter and rolled giggling hysterically on the sand. Exhausted by their mirth they lay and drowsed in the sun for a bit, then ate their food, and swam a little more and then drowsed once again.

  “Don’t forget we’ve got to meet Yani,” said Amanda, suddenly sitting up.

  “Did he say what time?” asked David sleepily.

  “No,” said Amanda, “but I suppose he means round about firefly time.”

  “Well, we’d better be getting back then,” said David, squinting at the sun.

  They trudged back up the hill slowly, sun-drugged, their bodies feeling rough from the salt as it dried on their skin. By the time they reached the villa, Amanda had gathered a large bunch of flowers for her mother and David had worked out, as well as he could without the aid of pencil and paper, that it would take 6,842,000 lizards to pull a cart He was a bit worried as to the exact number for, as he confessed to himself, he was not sure exactly of the pulling power of one lizard. He made a note that he would have to catch one and experiment.

  “Oh, there you are,” said Mrs Finchberry-White. “I was just coming to look for you.”

  The fact that she had not the faintest idea as to where the children had gone and that she would have had to search the entire island of Melissa in order to find them had apparently not occurred to her.

  “What lovely flowers, dear. Thank you so much,” she went on. “I have had such a good day to-day. I found three new species just down below the terrace there.”

  What did you have for lunch?” inquired Amanda.

  “Lunch!” asked Mrs Finchberry-White, bewildered. “Oh, lunch. Well, we had something or other.”

  “Did you have any lunch!” inquired Amanda ominously.

  “I can’t quite remember, dear,” said Mrs Finchberry-White, contritely. “Ask your father.”

  The General was out on the terrace putting the finishing touches to his painting by adding a virulent sunset behind badly drawn cypress trees.

  “Did Mother give you any lunch!” inquired Amanda.

  “Oh, there you are, my dear,” said the General. He stepped back and pointed at the canvas.

  “What do you think of that, then?” he asked. “Powerful, don’t you think! Powerful.”

  “Over powerful,” said Amanda callously. “Did you have any lunch!”

  “Yes, they did,” said David, quietly materialising. “I checked with Agathi.”

  “Well now,” said the General, splashing turpentine in vast quantities all over himself. “Did you have a good day?”

  “Very good,” said Amanda. She glanced down at the olive grove and saw the first greeny, pulsating lights of the fireflies starting.

  “It’s time we went to meet Yani,” she whispered to David. “Just go and make sure Agathi’s cooked us something for supper.”

  “Why don’t you do it!” asked David.

  “No,” said Amanda, with a certain self-consciousness. “I simply must comb my hair. It’s full of salt.”

  So while Amanda combed her long golden hair and put on a frock which she thought suited her rather well, David gravely organised the menu with Mama Agathi; then, shouting to their oblivious parents that they were just going out for a minute, they made their way down through the darkening olive groves where the trees leaned in contorted attitudes as though gossiping to each other, and where every dark corner contained the friendly green light of a firefly passing by.

  CHAPTER 3

  Malevolence of a Mayor

  Under the olive trees it was nearly dark and the children could hear the musical calls of the Scops owls.

  “I wonder what it is Yani wants to tell us!” said Amanda.

  “I think it’s about his father,” said David.

  “But his father died last year. It can’t be that.”

  “I still think it’s something to do with his father,” said David stubbornly.

  They made their way deeper and deeper into the dark olive groves where the trees crouched weirdly. their leaves whispering surreptitiously in the evening breeze. But there was no sign of Yani and so presently the children paused and stared about them.

  “Where d’you think he is?” asked Amanda.

  “Oh. I expect he’ll be along soon,” said David.

  At that moment from behind the bole of a gigantic olive Yani leapt out at them suddenly.

  “Watch out!” he hissed. “I’m the Devil!”

  He grinned at the fright he had given them and then said to Amanda, holding out his cupped hands: “Turn round, I’ve got a present for you.”

  She turned round and Yani scattered from his hands several dozen fireflies on to her golden hair, where they gleamed like emeralds.

  “You are a fool, Yani,” said Amanda. impatiently shaking her head. “It’ll take me ages to get them out without killing them.”

  “Leave them in, then,” suggested Yani. “They suit you.”

  Who’s that behind that tree? asked David suddenly. Yani looked quickly over his shoulder.

  “Oh, that’s all right, that’s only Coocos,” he said and then called to the boy to come and join them.

  Coocos shambled forward, removed his bowler hat and bowed to Amanda, placed the little cage containing his goldfinch on the ground and then squatted happily down with the children.

  What have you got to tell us? asked Amanda.

  “Well,” said Yani, “it’s about my father.”

  “There you are,” said David in triumph, “I knew it was.” “Oh, be quiet,” said Amanda impatiently, “and let Yani tell us.”

  “You see, it was not until after my father died,” Yani explained, “that I discovered he had borrowed eighteen thousand drachma from Niko Oizus.”

  “What! The Mayor! Old oily Oizus?” said Amanda horrified. “I wouldn’t have trusted him in any business deal?

  “Yes, but then he is the richest man in the village and the only man who could have lent my father that sum of money,” said Yani. “Now, as you know, my father left me the vineyards and the fields and the little house we had. This is all I possess. I have been working it, with the help of Coocos here, for the past year. It doesn’t make me a profit, but it makes me enough to live on. But now the Mayor is insisting that I pay him back the eighteen thousand drachma or else he will
take my vineyards and my fields and my house away from me as repayment of the debt. And where am Ito find eighteen thousand drachmM I have a cousin in Athens, and I wrote to him asking if he could help, but he is a poor man himself and he has also been ill. So, unless I can do something very quickly, I am going to be completely ruined.”

  Amanda had been bristling like an angry cat while Yani told this story and now she exploded.

  “That filthy, misbegotten toad,” she exclaimed furiously. “That oily, slimy old hypocrite with his pot belly. I have never liked him and I like him even less now. Why don’t we go and burn his house down? It would serve him right.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said David placidly. “It’s no good getting excited like that We have got to think things out sensibly.”

  “I know,” said Amanda excitedly, “we could ask Father for the money.”

  “That’s no good,” said David scornfully. “You know Father’s motto is ‘never a borrower or a lender be’.”

  “Yes, but he’d do it for Yani,” said Amanda. “After all, Yani’s our Mend.”

  “If he won’t lend any money to me,” said David bitterly, “he’s certainly not going to lend it to Yani. So that idea’s no good.”

  “We must think of something,” said Amanda.

  “Well, why don’t you shut up and stop shouting and think?” inquired David.

  They sat in a group and watched the fireflies winking in Amanda’s golden hair and thought and thought.

  “The thing to do,” said David at length, “is to get some sort of hold over the Mayor so that we can make him see sense. So he’ll realise that it’s impossible for Yani to pay back the eighteen thousand drachma all at once, though he might be able to do it gradually over the years.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Amanda, “but what sort of hold?”

  “I know, his third cousin on his wife’s side is supposed to have had an affair with a married man,” said Yani helpfully. “Would that be any good?”

  “Not with a man like Oizus,” said Amanda, scornfully. “I shouldn’t think he cares what his cousins do.”

  “No, it’s got to be something better than that,” said David, “and it’s got to be something foolproof because if we don’t pull it off, we’ll muck up the whole thing and make it even worse for Yani.”

  “I know,” exclaimed Amanda suddenly. “Let’s kidnap his wife.”

  “What’s kidnap?” inquired Yani, puzzled.

  “She means,” David explained, “to catch the Mayor’s wife and take her and hold her somewhere and then ask for money before we return her. I think it’s a stupid idea.”

  “Well, you haven’t put up any ideas yet,” said Amanda, “and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible.”

  “I don’t think it would work, Amanda,” said Yani sorrowfully. “For one thing, she’s very big and fat and it would be difficult for us to carry her, and for another thing, I think the Mayor would be only too happy to get rid of her. And if we have got the Mayor’s wife and he doesn’t want her back, it’s going to be a great problem, because it’s a well-known fact that she eats more than anybody else in the village.”

  “Anyway, you just can’t go round kidnapping people,” David pointed out. “It’s against the law.”

  “Bother the law,” said Amanda. “Anyway, isn’t what Oizus is doing to Yani against the law?”

  “No,” said David, “it’s called foreclosing and it’s quite legal.”

  “Oh,” said Amanda, somewhat dampened by her brother’s erudition. “Well, anyway, I don’t see why we can’t kidnap the Mayor’s wife. After all, there’s practically no law up here anyway.”

  “There’s Menelous Stafili,” said David.

  Amanda gave a little crow of laughter in which Yani joined, for it was a well-known fact that the local policeman was far too kind-hearted to arrest anybody, and in any case over the years he had worked with methodical intensity on the art of being lazy, so that it was with great difficulty one could get him out of bed should there be any dire emergency that required the enforcement of law and order.

  “Well, if he’s the only law we’ve got to worry about,” Amanda giggled, “I should think we could kidnap the whole village and get away with it.”

  “Yes, but I don’t think the Mayor’s wife is a suitable sort of thing,” David said gravely.

  “I know,” said Amanda. “We’ll ask Father.”

  “We won’t do anything of the sort. You know he would immediately put a stop to anything like that.”

  “I don’t mean tell him, you chump,” said Amanda impatiently. “Just find out his views generally.”

  “I don’t see how you are going to do that,” said David, “without telling him.”

  “You leave it to me,” said Amanda. “I am more subtle than you are. Anyway, we’d better be getting home to supper now, Yani. Can you come out to Hesperides with us to-morrow morning and we’ll discuss the matter further? In the meantime I’ll try and find out what my father thinks.”

  “All right,” said Yani, “I’ll meet you down on the beach in the morning.”

  The children walked back to the villa arguing vehemently, in undertones, about the pros and cons of kidnapping. When they got back they found the big brass oil lamps had been lighted and were casting a pool of golden light through the windows and on to the terrace where the supper table had been laid.

  “Ah, there you are, dears,” said Mrs Finchberry-White. “I was just coming to look for you Agathi says supper’s ready. At least, that’s what I think she says, because your father refused to come into the kitchen and discuss it with her.”

  “With two women in the house,” rumbled the General, puffing meditatively at his pipe. “I really don’t see why it is incumbent upon me to go into the kitchen and discuss the sordid details of what we are going to eat.”

  “Quite right, Father,” said Amanda, smiling at him sweetly. “you just sit there. I’ll go and attend to everything.”

  “You are an idiot,” whispered David, following her into the kitchen where she was supervising Agathi.

  “Why?” asked Amanda.

  “Well, you are overdoing the sweet-little-woman stuff,” said David. “If you’re not careful Father will smell a rat.”

  “Nonsense,” said Amanda. “You just wait and see.”

  They sat down to their meal on the terrace and ate for some moments in contented silence.

  “Did you paint well to-day, dear?” inquired Mrs Finchberry-White of her husband; she had long ago given up all ideas of her husband becoming a true painter and so now discussed his painting rather as though it was an ailment.

  “Another masterpiece,” admitted the General, “This, by the way, is a remarkably good stew.”

  “Thank you, dear,”said Mrs Finchberry-White, delighted, though she had played absolutely no part in the organisation of the food.

  “Tell me, Father,” asked Amanda, “if you could paint as well as Rembrandt, what would you do?”

  “I should be exceptionally pleased,” said the General.

  “No. What I mean is, if you suddenly found you could paint as well as Rembrandt, would you sell your pictures?”

  “Of course,” said the General in astonishment.

  “Yes, but would you pretend that they were Rembrandts that you had discovered in the attic?” asked Amanda,

  David was getting increasingly alarmed and mystified by his sister’s somewhat bizarre approach to the problem in hand.

  “If I pretended they were real Rembrandts,” said the General thoughtfully, “it would be illegal, so I should have to sell them under my own name. I might, of course, do it under a pseudonym such as Rembranta, for example. But otherwise the whole thing would seem like fraudulent conspiracy.”

  “Why are some things considered crimes and other things not?” asked Amanda.

  “That, my dear,” said the General, “is a problem that has been confusing both religious sects and philosophers throughout the a
ges, so I find myself at this juncture, full of stew, unable to give you a quick answer.”

  “I know,” said Amanda, “the crimes which hurt people, you can understand why they are bad, but there are other things which don’t necessarily hurt people, but yet are still considered to be crimes.”

  “There are times,” said the General resignedly, “when you sound almost as incomprehensible as your mother.”