by Robert Crisp
I rolled out of the danger zone and examined my leg carefully. There was a lump the size of an apple and about the same colour but I could wiggle my toes and, painfully, bend my knee. So nothing was broken.
I contemplated various acts of revenge on the donkey but as anything effective would probably end up with my baggage being deposited in the river, I concentrated on the practical propositions like what the hell did I do now.
That was when I heard the tinkling of distant bells and as a perfect accompaniment, the thin pure music of a flute. The pipes of Pan. This Pan turned out to be a dark figure standing on the edge of what looked like a cluster of moving white rocks. He was a long way away and high up, but I reckoned if I could hear his gentle music, he could hear my violent shouts.
So I yelled as loudly as I could: “Vo… eee… theeea!” It is a word that I had made a point of learning. It means “Help!”
The fluted notes ceased abruptly. I yelled again and waved a white handkerchief. The dark figure detached itself from the mobile boulders and came down the mountainside. It was a great sight to watch these shepherds moving over rough country, up or down. They sort of flowed like liquid. In a very few minutes, a young Cretan was bending over me muttering his distressed “Po, Po, Po!” when he saw my leg.
After that he took the matter in hand. He more or less carried me 200 yards to a derelict and roofless stone hut, fetched and unpacked the donkey, set up my bed and bedding, put me into it and lit a fire.
He left me for a while and when he came back he had a handful of leaves which he bound round the swelling on my leg. “It is good for the sheep,” he said, enigmatically, and set about making supper for us both.
It must have been those leaves. In the morning the swelling was down and I could move quite freely if a little painfully. The shepherd insisted on escorting me to the top of the ravine where the path joined a wider track. In another half an hour I was on a good dirt road and encountering trucks and cars. I would very much have liked a lift into town. But how could you hitch with a donkey?
Chapter 28
I Had Seldom Felt More Alive
It was now a good deal more than six months since my doctor in Athens, having removed a malignant tumour from somewhere inside me, had given me a fifty-fifty chance (“or maybe a little less”) of staying alive for another six months. I could say truthfully that I had seldom felt more alive or enjoyed each moment of life more continuously. I had no objective other than one day walking back into the town of Matala from the opposite direction to that whence I started, having walked round the entire perimeter of Crete.
I had had, and still had, no idea of how long that was going to take. I was even prepared to think in terms of two years. What I was worried about now was that it was not going to take as long as I wanted it to. This was not because I had hurried – I stayed in one delightful village by the sea for four days – but because, not for the first time, I had underestimated the distances you could travel and the heights you could climb by the simple process of putting one foot in front of the other. The secret of this process, as every hiker through rugged terrain must have discovered, was not to think of your feet at all unless some urgent physical reason like a fractured big toe compelled your attention.
My mind soared off easily enough on its own flights of fancy in search perhaps of the proper definition of infinity or the first moment in past time. Or I could send my thoughts in search of the perfect sentence to describe perfectly the nature and atmosphere of the country through which I was passing. This could occupy at least a whole morning and the chances were I wouldn’t find it.
It had been chiefly in this subconscious state of mind – though vividly aware of my surroundings – that I found at time of writing that I averaged fourteen miles a day, which was more than I had intended to do. It was also, as I said earlier, more than I wanted to do.
Towns posed special problems for the donkey, and the bigger the town, the bigger the problem. There was no grazing for her in that concrete and asphalt wilderness, no green field in which to tether her for the night. Once or twice I had been offered a stable, but Gaithuri refused to enter them even when the manger was full of hay and barley for her.
There was one memorable evening in a large village called Vasiliki when I was trying to pull her through a narrow doorway into a dark stall. I couldn’t budge her. The owner of the stable went behind to push. I saw Gaithuri’s back arch in what was now a favourite prelude to those lashing hind legs.
“Look out!” I shouted. “It is dangerous.”
“Bah!” said the man, and just as Gaithuri began her kick he went into those hind legs like a lock forward going into the back of a loose scrum. I nearly went over backwards as the rope slackened suddenly, and there we all three were, more or less on top of each other. I instinctively covered up against imminent attack, but fortunately her head had ended up in the manger and she was too hungry to bother about any form of retaliation.
But this undignified treatment had had a positive psychological reaction. For three days the donkey was as subdued as a well-trained spaniel. She looked miserable, as though something vital had left her character and she had become what she was – an old woman. I almost wished she would try to kick me or bite me or indulge in some other capriciousness with which she usually demonstrated her superior position in the partnership. The new Gaithuri was a stranger and I didn’t like her half as well.
One evening, after a long, hard day in the mountains, we came down to the sea at a white beach with its cluster of white houses. Even better, there was a field of the sort of tufty grass which the donkey seemed to like so much and for which I was always seeking along the roads and paths. Also, without my asking, the owner of the one taverna provided a bundle of chopped hay or straw and a kilo of barley grain.
The next morning when I went to release Gaithuri and take her for a walk on the sand she lay down and rolled around like a puppy for a good five minutes and then leaped to her feet and set off along the beach buck-jumping like a wild mustang with me hanging on to the rope grimly but still having to run much faster than I ever expected to at my time of life.
A few minutes later, hitched to a pole, she gave me a friendly kick on the backside as I walked round her with the saddle and I knew we were back to the old relationship.
Chapter 29
No Place to Take a Donkey for a Walk
For weeks, Heraklion, the capital of Crete, had lain ahead of me like a fortress barring my westward march – as it had impeded the progress of so many other marchers through centuries of invasion and conflict. The sprawl of buildings, of offices and shops and taverns, of warehouses, docks, streets, vehicles, old Venetian walls and modern suburbs was a physical obstacle which I pondered long in advance in an effort to find a safe way through or a convenient way round.
Forced to wait four days at Malia, east of the capital, I approached the problem of Heraklion in the same way as those earlier military commanders must have done: I carried out a series of reconnaissances. The first of these was to try to find a way round the outskirts of the city. It proved impossible. The countryside was carved into great ravines running south to north compelling all the roads to run between them in the same direction. Even the new national road, running east to west along the length of the island, came to an abrupt end at the suburban perimeter to resume its westward journey on the other side of the town. So unless I was to go by boat there was no alternative to a march through the town centre. Heraklion, with its narrow streets, hustling traffic and crowded pavements was a risky enough experience even for the cautious pedestrian. It is certainly no place to take a donkey for a walk.
I came to the conclusion that there was only one course open – to go through the town while it was still asleep. This involved getting as near to it as possible the previous evening and starting the next morning between four and five o’clock. There was also the need for donkey and man to rest and eat after a day’s walking and this implied, in the donkey’s
case, that I must get as near to Heraklion as the nearest bit of grazing would allow.
Another reconnaissance gave me the answer. Heraklion airport was three kilometres out, there was plenty of space round about for tethering Gaithuri and, with a bit of luck and some cool effrontery, maybe I could spend the night in warmth and comfort in an airport armchair. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the last flight of the day, or night, was a 7.30pm Olympic Airways plane to Athens. After that they closed up.
A little sadly I joined Gaithuri in the cold open spaces alongside an army barracks and unfolded my bed and sleeping bag. I did succeed in wasting a couple of hours in a restaurant along the road over a long drawn-out supper. Back at my camping place I kept tripping over a long piece of wire which seemed to be everywhere I put my feet. Finally I gave it an irritated kick, which achieved the desired effect.
Twenty minutes later, while I was still trying to adjust to the flashing of the airport beacon before sleep would come, I saw Gaithuri wheel round with alert head and ears. She was an excellent watchdog and I looked quickly in the direction in which she was pointing. Two figures were approaching in the darkness, silhouetted intermittently against the beacon light. I reached for my walking stick. And my trousers.
As the two figures drew nearer I saw that they were soldiers and, to my shock, that one of them was advancing on me with fixed bayonet. The other seemed to be pulling something along with his hand. Immediate action was obviously called for.
I sat up on my bed with my hands in the air and said in rapid Greek: “Good evening. I am an English tourist.”
I sensed some of the tension going out of the situation but the end of the bayonet was uncomfortably close. I also sensed the ridiculousness of my own situation and put my arms back under the blanket.
“It is cold,” I explained.
The second man came closer and flashed a torch. I did not look like a desperado and he seemed satisfied. He switched the beam of his torch to his hand and revealed the end of a piece of wire which trailed behind him in the darkness.
“Our telephone,” he told. “You have broken it.”
He offered a lot of other information, from which I gleaned, though I was not sure how correctly, that it was a field line from one guard post to another some distance away. It was this that I had kicked in half. I was as profuse in my apologies as my Greek enabled me to be, and they wandered off into the night along the course of the wire talking volubly.
By 4.30am the next morning I was out of the sleeping bag and astonished Gaithuri by proceeding to saddle and load her. But, as always, as soon as the bit was in her mouth, she resigned herself to her fate. Before five we were going clippety-clop through the dark and silent streets, only an occasional cafe neon, with the day’s first coffee-sippers, casting a square of light across the pavements, while the occupants lowered their cups to watch this apparition pass across their narrow world.
Two hours later, I was through the maze of Heraklion and on the high road to Chania, huddling Gaithuri to the edge of the road as the first buses began to thunder by with their daily freight of eight-to-five workers.
Chapter 30
Heraklion Lay Behind Me and All of Summer Lay Ahead
This was the day I broke my walking stick into three pieces. In a fury. It was a beautiful morning as mornings can only be when the sun comes up clear and warm after a rain-filled night. There may have been just a little too much wind, but when that wind was full of the smell of mown hay and fresh-turned earth where the peasants were tilling their vineyards and when the sun was hot on your back, then wind was welcome.
I was walking along what might in England be called a country lane. But there was no country lane in England like the one I was walking along the day after passing through Heraklion. On either side were vineyards.
In between the vineyards were rectangles of artichoke and onion and more familiar wheat and barley. These latter were grown in this locality chiefly as animal feed; that is, the animals grazed on them while it was still green and growing. Sheens of apparent water lay everywhere, turning, on closer inspection, into polythene protection for acres of tomatoes and cucumbers.
Something else un-English was the Mediterranean and the sun-drenched sand 100 yards away on my right with the mountains rising steeply on my left to the peak of Psiloritis, 7,500 feet above my lane.
It was the snow that was giving the keen edge to the wind but not cold enough to discourage millions of wild flowers and the bees and butterflies that fluttered among them.
There was also the first snake I had seen in Crete, but it was much too nice a morning to kill anything, and I let it slither away into the grass. Gaithuri seemed quite unconcerned about it.
The fields about me were dotted with cows and goats, and the donkeys on which the labourers had ridden to their fields. One particular black donkey obviously took a great fancy to Gaithuri and pranced and leaped at the end of his tether in an attempt to break loose.
He was secured by a rope round one ankle and as I had a habit of talking to animals encountered en route, I shouted some derisory brays at him and his amorous inclinations.
Well, I hope I have conveyed the peace and tranquillity and beauty with which I was enveloped. I was totally immersed in it. The road was soft underfoot – in itself a major blessing after all those miles of tarmac; Gaithuri was well-fed and cooperative; the problem of Heraklion was behind me; and all of summer lay ahead.
Twelve paces breathing in, twelve paces breathing out… that was something you could only do (if you could do it at all) when the air was unpolluted.
There were three choices of road before me. One of them went up and over the mountain in the now familiar Z-shaped scar; one disappeared into a gorge heading west; the third was the fresh disfigurement of the still incomplete national road, hugging the coastline, corner-cutting, easily graded and many miles shorter than the twisting mountain road.
It was a decision which could be postponed until it had to be made, which would be when I reached the corner of the bay and the direction posts at the crossroads half an hour later.
I was happily singing a Gracie Fields song from the twenties about waking up in the morning to hear the birdies say good morning and similar references to clover and new mown hay when Gaithuri with a rush went past me kicking madly. And alongside her was that bloody black donkey. I never even heard him coming.
The weight of baggage on the saddle plus the leather strappings round her hind legs made all Gaithuri’s effort at self-defence futile and before I could get round to her other side to deal with the attack that beast literally had her by the scruff of the neck in his jaws. That was when I broke my walking stick.
I hit that donkey as hard as I could on the rump. The bottom two feet of the stick snapped off. I reversed it and hit him again. The crook and another foot of wood disintegrated. I was left with eighteen inches of useless wood in my hand.
By this time, what with the burden on her back and the mauling she was getting, Gaithuri was down on the ground, the baggage still intact on the saddle and those horrible jaws still clamped on the top of her neck. That monster was ravishing my rucksack.
I grabbed his halter and jerked back with all my weight. The leather snapped and sent me sprawling.
Suddenly, we were back a million years in evolution. Not fang and claw but teeth and hooves and bare hands. Not two but three primitive animals.
I knew I was going to kill that donkey before it killed Gaithuri. I looked wildly round for a weapon and found it in a jagged rock at the roadside. I grabbed one black ear and raised the rock above my head. No doubt about it, in another second I would have bashed that brute between the eyes as hard as I could.
The shouting came from behind me and I looked round to see three men running down the road towards me. One of them was waving his hands frantically and yelling.
I lowered my hands and stepped back, feeling intensely relieved at such a timely intervention. I found myself almost panting, not with
exertion but something like blood lust.
As the men rushed up one of them grabbed the black donkey by the nose just above the nostril and squeezed hard. At the same time he yelled a few unintelligible words into the animal’s ear. But the donkey understood them.
Also it couldn’t breathe.
In another moment the action was over. The owner, for such he was, led his donkey away and gave it a brutal thrashing which I was in no mood to disapprove. The other men lifted Gaithuri to her feet, where she stood a little wobbly-kneed but otherwise intact.
I noted with a good deal of satisfaction that all my bits and pieces and the big rucksack were still where I had tied them when loading. If they could withstand that onslaught I needn’t worry in the future about anything coming adrift on the march.
I examined poor Gaithuri carefully for injuries. Fortunately I keep the tethering rope around her neck at all times, and those lustful teeth had clamped on the rope. She seemed strangely unperturbed as though it was something that happened to her every other day. With my own nostrils still slightly aquiver with rage, she was not even breathing hard.
Everything that had happened suddenly began to appear in a slightly different light. I even thought I could detect a small gleam of gratification in her eye. I suppose at her age even such an assault could have been considered flattering. You never knew with dames.
I myself learned a good deal from the experience, including the lesson that when passing strange donkeys on the road, you should keep your flipping mouth shut.