The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

by Gerald Malcolm Durrell

  I began to lose my bearings slightly as one always seemed to do when confused by the Greeks. I had just taken an unwisely deep breath to embark on an elaboration for my Mother, when I was mercifully stopped by the arrival of three fellow passengers, all large, big-bosomed, thick-legged peasant ladies, with heavy moustaches and black bombazine dresses three times too small, smelling of garlic, some sickly scent, and perspiration in equal quantities. They elbowed their way between Mother and myself and entered the lavatory. Seeing the Purser still dancing with rage and pounding on the door, they paused like massive war-horses that have scented battle.

  Any other nationality would have complained about the Purser’s presence in this shrine to womanhood, let alone mine as a foreigner’s, but this is where the Greeks so delightfully differ from other races. They knew it was a SITUATION with capital letters, and this above all is what Greeks love. The presence of three men (if you include the invisible one closeted with Margo) in their lavatory was as nothing compared to the SITUATION.

  Their eyes glittered, their moustaches wiffled and, a solid wall of eager flesh, they enveloped the Purser and demanded to know what was afoot. As usual in a SITUATION, everyone spoke at once. The temperature in the Ladies’ went up to something like seventy degrees and the volume of sound made one’s head spin, like playing the noisier bits of the Ride of the Valkyries in an iron barrel.

  Having grasped the elements of the SITUATION from the harassed Purser, the three powerful ladies, each built on the lines of a professional wrestler, swept him out of the way with scarlet-tipped spade-shaped hands and proceeded to lift up their skirts. With deafening cries of “Oopah, oopah” they charged the lavatory door. Their combined weights must have amounted to some sixty stone of flesh and bone, but the door was stalwart and the three ladies fell in a tangle of limbs on the floor. They got to their feet with some difficulty and then argued among themselves as to the best way to break down a lavatory door.

  One of them, the least heavy of the three, demonstrated her idea — an ideal method — against one of the other lavatory doors. This, unfortunately, was not on the latch and so she crashed through at surprising speed and received a nasty contusion upon her thigh by crashing full tilt into the lavatory pan. Although it had not proved her point, she was very good-natured about it, especially as at that moment Larry arrived accompanied by the barman carrying a tray of drinks.

  For a time we all sipped ouzo companionably, toasted each other, and asked if we were all married and how many children we had. Fresh interest in the SITUATION was aroused by the arrival of Leslie with what appeared to be the ship’s carpenter for whom he had gone in search. Everyone now forgot their drinks and expounded their theories to the carpenter, all of which he disagreed with, with the air of one who knows. He then, like a magician, rolled up his sleeves and approached the door. Silence fell. He produced a minute screwdriver from his pocket and inserted it into a minute hole. There was a click and a gasp of admiration, and the door flew open. He stood back and spread his hands like a conjuror.

  The first little man and Margo emerged like survivors from the Black Hole of Calcutta. The poor little man was seized by the Purser and pounded and pummelled and shaken, while being roundly abused. The carpenter, at this stage, took over. After all, he had opened the door. We listened to him with respect as he expounded the cunning mechanism of locks in general and this one in particular. He drained an ouzo and waxed poetic on locks, which were his hobby it appeared. With his little screwdriver or a hairpin or a bent nail or, indeed, a piece of plastic, he could open any lock. He took the first little man and the Purser by the wrist and led them into the lavatory like lambs to the slaughter. Before we could stop them, he had slammed the door shut. My family and the three fat ladies waited with bated breath. There were strange scrapings and clickings, then a long pause. This was followed by a torrent of vituperation from the Purser and the Steward, mixed with confused excuses and explanations from the lock expert. As we furtively crept away, the three ladies were preparing to charge the door again.

  So ended scene one of the maiden voyage.

  I draw a veil over the increasing irritability of my family that evening because, for some strange Greek reason of protocol, dinner could not be served until the Purser had been released. This took a considerable time since the constant assaults to which the door had been subjected had irretrievably damaged the lock and they had to wait until the Bosun could be retrieved, from some carousal ashore, to saw through the hinges. We eventually gave up waiting, went ashore, had a quick snack, and then retired to our respective cabins in a morbid state of mind.

  The following morning, we went down to the dining-room and tried to partake of breakfast. The years had mercifully obliterated our memories of the average Greek’s approach to cuisine. There are, of course, places in Greece where one can eat well, but they have to be searched for and are as rare as unicorns. Greece provides most of the ingredients for good cooking but the inhabitants are generally so busy arguing that they have no time left to pursue the effete paths of haute cuisine .

  The four young waiters in the dining saloon were no exception and kept up an incessant and noisy warfare with each other like a troupe of angry magpies disputing a titbit. The decor, if that is not too strong a word, followed that of the bar, which we had now discovered was called the Night-Cloob. Fumed oak pervaded all. The brasswork had not been polished with more than a superficial interest in its brightness and the tables were covered with off-white table-cloths covered with the ghosts of stains that some remote laundry in Piraeus had not quite succeeded in exorcising. Mother surreptitiously but determinedly polished all her cutlery on her handkerchief and exhorted us to do the same. The waiters, since we were the only people there for breakfast, saw no reason to disturb their bickering until Larry, tried beyond endurance, bellowed, “Se parakalo !” in such vibrant tones that Mother dropped three pieces of Margo’s cutlery on the floor. The waiters ceased their cacophony immediately and surrounded our table with the most healthy obsequiousness. Mother, to her delight, found that one of the waiters, an ingratiating young man, had spent some time in Australia and had a rudimentary knowledge of English.

  “Now,” she said, beaming at her protégé, “what I would like is a nice, large pot of hot tea. Make sure the pot is warmed and the water is boiling, and none of those tea-bag things that make one shudder when one refills the pot.”

  “I’m always reminded of the Bramaputra after an epidemic,” said Larry.

  “Larry, dear, please, not at breakfast,” remonstrated Mother, and continued to the waiter, “and then I shall have some grilled tomatoes on toast.”

  We sat back expectantly. After years of experience, Mother had never given up a pathetic hope that she would one day find a Greek who would understand her requirements. As was to be expected, the waiter had let Mother’s instructions regarding the tea pass unnoticed. Tea grew in tea-bags, and any attempt to tamper with nature would, he felt, involve dire consequences for all concerned. However, Mother had now introduced into his life a complication, a species of food unknown to him.

  “Gill-ed tomatoes?” he queried uncomfortably. “What is?”

  “Gilled tomatoes,” echoed Mother, “I mean grilled tomatoes. You know, tomatoes grilled on toast.”

  The waiter clung to the one sane thing in the world, toast.

  “Madam want toast,” he said firmly, trying to keep Mother on the right track, “tea and toast.”

  “And tomatoes,” said Mother, enunciating dearly, “grilled tomatoes.”

  A faint bead of perspiration made itself apparent upon the waiter’s brow.

  “What is ‘gill-ed tomatoes’, Madam?” he asked, thus bringing the thing full circle.

  We had all relaxed around the table having ordered our breakfast, sotto voce, and now we watched Mother launch herself into battle.

  “Well,” she explained. “You know, um, tomatoes . . . those, those red things, like apples. No, no, I mean plums.”
<
br />   “Madam want plums?” asked the boy, puzzled.

  “No, no, tomatoes,” said Mother. “Surely you know tomatoes?”

  The gloom on the young Greek’s face lightened. She wanted tomatoes.

  “Yes, Madam,” he answered, smiling.

  “There,” said Mother, triumphantly, “well then, tomatoes grilled on toast.”

  “Yes, Madam,” he said dutifully, and went away into the corner and communed with the Purser.

  Greek gesticulations are remarkable for their force and expressiveness. Behind Mother’s back we watched the shadow-play between the waiter and the Purser. The Purser obviously told him in no uncertain manner that if he didn’t know what grilled tomatoes were he must go and ask. Disconsolately, the waiter approached to encounter Mother once again.

  “Madam,” he said mournfully, “how you make gill-ed?”

  Mother, until then, bad been under the impression that she had made a major breakthrough in the barriers that the Greeks kept putting up against her. She suddenly felt deflated.

  “What is ‘gill-ed’?” she asked the waiter. “I don’t speak Greek.”

  He looked flabbergasted. It had, after all, been Madam’s idea in the first place. He felt that she was being unfair in now trying to lay the blame at his door. She had asked for “gill-ed”; if she didn’t know what “gill-ed” was, who the hell did?

  “Tomatoes Madam wants,” he said, starting all over again.

  “On toast,” repeated Mother.

  He wandered away moodily and had another altercation with the Purser, which ended in the Purser ordering him sternly to the kitchen.

  “Really,” said Mother, “one knows one’s back in Greece because one can’t get anything done properly.”

  We waited for the next round. Basically, the rule in Greece is to expect everything to go wrong and to try to enjoy it whether it does or doesn’t.

  After a long interval, the waiter came bath with the things we had ordered and plonked a pot of tea in front of Mother and a plate upon which there was a piece of bread and two raw tomatoes cut in half.

  “But this is not what I ordered,” she complained. “They’re raw, and it’s bread.”

  “Tomatoes, Madam,” said the boy stubbornly. “Madam say tomatoes.”

  “But grilled,” protested Mother. “You know, cooked.”

  The boy just stared at her.

  “Look,” said Mother, as one explaining to an idiot child, “you make toast first, you understand? You make the toast.”

  “Yes,” replied the boy dismally.

  “All right, then,” said Mother. “Then you put the tomatoes on the toast and you grill them. Understand?”

  “Yes, Madam. You no want this?” he asked, gesturing at the plate of bread and tomatoes.

  “No, not like that. Grilled,” said Mother.

  The boy wandered off carrying the plate, and had another sharp altercation with the Purser, who was now harassed by the arrival of a lot of Greek passengers, including our fat ladies, all of whom were demanding attention.

  We watched the waiter, fascinated, as he put the plate of tomatoes and bread on a table and then spread out a paper napkin with the air of a conjuror about to perform a very complicated trick. Our hypnotized gaze attracted the attention of Mother and Margo and they looked round in time to see the waiter place the bread and the tomatoes carefully in the middle of the napkin.

  “What on earth is he doing?” asked Mother.

  “Performing some ancient Greek rite,” explained Larry.

  The waiter now folded up the napkin with the bread and tomatoes inside, and started across the saloon.

  “He’s not bringing them to me like that, is he?” asked Mother in amazement.

  We watched entranced as he solemnly made his way across the saloon and laid his burden upon the big oil stove in the centre of it. Although it was spring, the weather was chilly, and so the stove had been lit and was, indeed, almost red hot and giving out a comforting heat. I think we all divined what he was going to do but could not quite conceive such an action being possible. Before our fascinated eyes he placed napkin, bread and tomatoes carefully on the glowing lid of the stove and then stepped back to watch. There was a moment’s pause and the napkin burst into flames to be followed, almost immediately, by the bread. The waiter, alarmed that his novel form of cookery was not being effective, seized another napkin from a nearby table and tried to extinguish the blaze by throwing it over the top of the stove. The napkin, not unnaturally, caught fire too.

  “I don’t know what Greek delicacy that is,” said Larry, “but it looks delicious, and cooked almost by the table, too.”

  “The boy must be mad,” exclaimed Mother.

  “I hope you’re not going to eat them after all that,” said Margo. “It doesn’t look very hygienic.”

  “It’s the only really piquant way of doing tomatoes,” insisted Larry. “And think what fun you’ll have picking the bits of charred napkin out of your teeth afterwards.”

  “Don’t be so disgusting, Larry,” protested Mother. “I’m certainly not eating that.”

  Two other waiters had joined the first and all three were trying to beat out the flames with napkins. Bits of tomato and flaming toast flew in all directions, landing indiscriminately on tables and customers alike. One of our fat ladies of the night before was blotched with a succulent section of tomato, and an old gentleman, who had just sat down, had his tie pinned to him with a piece of flaming toast like a red hot Indian arrow. The Purser, emerging from the kitchen, took in the situation at a glance. He seized a large jug of water and running forward, threw it over the stove. It certainly had the effect of extinguishing the flames, but all the closer tables were immediately enveloped in steam, and clouds spread over the dining saloon containing the blended scents of tomato, burnt bread and charred napkin.

  “It smells just like minestrone,” said Larry. “I do think after all the boy’s efforts you ought to try just a little, Mother.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Larry,” cried Mother. “They’ve all gone mad.”

  “No,” said Leslie, “they’ve all gone Greek.”

  “The terms are synonymous,” observed Larry.

  One waiter had now hit another for some inexplicable reason, the Purser was shaking the original waiter by his lapels and shouting in his face. The scene was further enlivened by vociferous cries of complaint and annoyance from the surrounding tables. The threatening gestures, the pushing, the rich invective, were fascinating to watch but, like all good things, they eventually ended with the Purser slapping the original waiter over the back of his head and the waiter ripping off his badge of office, his dingy white coat, and hurling it at the Purser, who threw it back at him and ordered him out of the saloon. He curtly told the other waiters to clean up the mess and made placating noises to all and sundry as he made his way over to our table. He stopped, drew himself up to his full height beside us, plucked a fresh carnation from his buttonhole and put it in Mother’s left hand, while seizing her right hand and kissing it gracefully.

  “Madam,” he said, “I am apologetic. We cannot give you grillid tomatoes. Anything else you want, we do, but grillid tomatoes, no.”

  “Why not?” asked Larry, in a spirit of curiosity.

  “Because the grill in the kitchen it is broken. You see,” he added by way of explanation, “it is the maiden voyage.”

  “It seems the most unmaidenly voyage to me,” commented Leslie.

  “Tell me,” enquired Larry, “why was the waiter trying to grill on that stove?”

  “The boy very stupid,” said the Purser. “We have only experienced personnel on this ship. He will be dismantled in Piraeus .”

  “How do you dismantle a waiter?” asked Larry, fascinated.

  “Larry, dear, the Purser is a very busy man, so don’t let’s keep him,” said Mother hastily. “I’ll just have a boiled egg.”

  “Thank you,” replied the Purser with dignity and he bowed and disappeared i
nto the kitchen.

  “I would have settled for raw tomatoes if I’d been you,” said Larry. “You saw what they did with the grilled tomatoes. I dread to think what they are going to do with the boiled eggs.”

  “Nonsense, Larry,” answered Mother. “There isn’t anything they can do to spoil a boiled egg.”

  She was wrong. When the eggs arrived (two of them, which were put before her ten minutes later), not only were they hard but they had been carefully deprived of their shells by loving but unwashed fingers.

  “There!” exclaimed Larry. “What a treat? Cooked to a turn and covered with fingerprints that Sherlock Holmes would have found irresistible.”

  Mother had to conceal these strange avian relics in her bag and then throw them overboard after breakfast when she was sure no one was looking, for, as she observed, we didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

  “There’s one thing to be said for it,” said Larry, watching Mother casting the eggs upon the waters. “Three days on a diet of nothing but red-hot ouzo will render us slim as minnows and we’ll all be as convivial as Bacchus by the time we land.”

  But he was wrong too.

  The evening meal was, by Greek standards, almost epicurean. There were three courses, the first of which was cold by intention, being an hors d’oeuvre, and the other two cold because they were served on cold plates accompanied by the usual altercation between the waiters. However, everything was edible and the only imbroglio was caused by Margo discovering a baby cuttlefish’s eye in her hors d’oeuvre . We unwisely drank far too many bottles of Domestika and arose from the table unsteadily and benignly.

  “You go night-cloob?” asked the Purser, as he bowed us out.

  “Why not,” said Larry, struck by the idea. “Let’s go and have an orgy among the palms. Do you remember how to do the Lancers, Mother?”

  “I’m not going to make an exhibition of myself,” replied Mother with dignity. “But I will have a coffee and perhaps a small brandy.”

  “To the evil depths of the palm enshrouded night-cloob, then,” said Larry, steering Mother rather unsteadily along the deck, “where who knows what opium titillated oriental maidens await us. Did we bring a jewel for Margo’s navel?”