by Robert Crisp
Xenophon was agreeable to taking her but was not keen on paying the price I knew she was worth – chiefly because he was short of cash. But if Xenophon was short of money he still had a taverna.
I sold Gaithuri to him for a plate of moussaka and a carafe of red wine every day I was in Matala.
This suited Xenophon. It suited me too. For I was more anxious to ensure that Gaithuri would be well treated than to exchange her for hard cash.
I led Gaithuri to her new home reflecting sadly that this was probably our last walk together. Reflecting too on the hundreds of miles we had walked together through some of the loveliest scenery in the world over some of the roughest going in the world.
It was astonishing to me that apart from normal wear and tear neither of us had suffered a single disability in circumstances that could have produced a sprained ankle or broken leg at almost any time. In a year of exposure to all the seasons I had not even had a runny nose. Nor had the donkey.
It had been perhaps the happiest and most rewarding year of my life. And it was supposed to be my last year. I had learnt many things, chiefly about myself and, of course, about donkeys.
It was no reflection on Gaithuri to say that when I resumed my odyssey – as I fully intended to do when it stopped raining – it would not be in the company of a donkey. At least, not that year…
It was simply that my feet and legs were showing signs of wear and tear after carrying a burden averaging about 200 pounds around Crete.
So I’d give them a rest for a while and give my arms some exercise. This didn’t mean that I was about to walk round an island on my hands.
I’d decided that a rowing boat would provide good and comfortable opportunities for movement and variety.
Maybe I should have traded Gaithuri in for a boat.
Chapter 40
Dammit, I Wanted to Be Recognised
You couldn’t turn your back on them for a minute, could you? On my returning to Crete and Matala after an absence of some three months, Xenophon broke the news to me as soon as he had stopped shaking my hand.
“Gaithuri is going to have a baby.”
I gaped at him.
“It’s not possible. She’s much too old.”
“No, no! You will see for yourself in the morning.”
The bus from Heraklion had dropped me at my destination at sunset and it was rapidly getting too dark to risk clambering up the mountainside above Xenophon’s small farmhouse where the donkey was tethered. Also his taverna in the village offered an immediate welcome.
In the first light of the new day I was wakened by a noise that was at first strange to ears attuned, during my absence, to more civilised sounds, yet disturbingly familiar.
Suddenly I sat upright in bed. It was Gaithuri. There was no other donkey in all Crete that could fill a bray with such deep and long-drawn-out poignancy and mournfulness – and with no reason that I could ever discover except perhaps despair at the lot of donkeys in general…
I got up immediately and took the half-loaf of bread with which I had provided myself the previous night for just this moment. And headed in the general direction of the bray.
I had dressed myself carefully in clothes which she knew and which would give her a better chance of recognising me – because dammit, I wanted to be recognised.
So I wore my blue woollen jersey and blue jeans that she had followed through so many hundreds of miles of winter marching and which was probably the last impression she had of me before I left Matala.
There was no knowing, of course, whether it was the chunk of bread in my hand or the blue jersey or even genuine pleasure at seeing me again, but when I was still 100 meters away she jerked her head up from grazing and her ears snapped from horizontal to vertical.
I shouted the familiar greeting to her: “Hela gaithuraki mu!” (Here, my little donkey) and her reaction left no doubt of recognition and joy.
She trotted out as far as the rope would allow her and then pranced to and fro in obvious eagerness to get to me. If those snuffles and snorts and miniature braying I could hear didn’t mean: “It’s good to see you. Where the hell have you been? Did you bring me a present?” I knew less about donkey talk and female behaviour than I thought I did.
She nuzzled me briefly and permitted a couple of tickles behind the ears before concentrating her interest on the bread.
I examined her closely. She looked only slightly plumper than usual, but there were other indications, known to vets and any contemporary kindergarten biology class, that she was in an interesting condition. I sought out Xenophon.
There were a number of things I felt I had a right to know.
“Who is the father?” I demanded.
Xenophon gave a Mediterranean shrug and laughed.
“Nobody will ever know. One who came in the night.”
“Well then, when did it happen?”
“That we will only be able to tell when the small one arrives and we can count back from nine to zero. Maybe another two or three months.”
I suspected his arithmetic but obviously Gaithuri was the only one who could give me the information I was seeking and Gaithuri wasn’t talking. For all I knew she might end up with a mule.
All I could do was leave strict instructions with Xenophon that, wherever I was at the time, he would write and let me know when the birth occurred and the sex of the offspring.
In the meantime, though she was no longer strictly my responsibility, I determined to see that her diet was suitably embellished in keeping with the needs of an expectant mother. I hoped she didn’t acquire a taste for strawberries and cream and caviar. It looked, in fact, that I would be in a position to supply those extra needs for a good deal longer than I had expected.
By now I had hoped to be in Corfu (which the Greeks call Kerkyra) scanning the harbours and beaches for a rowing boat suitable for my next odyssey.
Unfortunately I broke a wrist in a football match against a Greek team after a foul tackle by a boy of ten and as I knew no way of rowing in a straight line with only one hand I had to await recovery.
The description of odyssey was not inapt for my new venture. Without delving too deeply into the truth or otherwise of the exploits of Homer’s hero it would have been true to say that in my selection of an island to row around (I was tired of walking) thoughts of Ulysses had occupied my mind.
One part of the legend was that Mouse Island in Corfu was – no doubt because of its shape – the petrified remains of Ulysses’ boat turned to stone as a punishment for having taken him home.
I could not remember who ordered or executed such punishment, nor why. I had no wish to be so immortalised.
If there were any petrified remains of me or my rowing boat to be found, I hoped they’d be happily immured on some sunlit beach or, preferably under an olive tree where I would, at least, feel productive for a few hundred years.
My intentions for the foreseeable future could be put in one sentence: I was going to buy a rowing boat, ten foot or twelve foot long, equip it as bed-living-room (and possibly kitchen) and row around Corfu, never venturing more than ten yards from the shore and, whenever more than a Force One gale sprang up, tying up to the nearest taverna until it subsided. I had no idea what distance was involved in the circumnavigation of Corfu nor how long it would take. I hoped it would be at least two years.
Tolstoy and Hemingway had been ejected from my travelling library to make room for an Admiralty Pilot of the eastern Mediterranean and a chart of the coast of Corfu and the adjacent coasts of Greece and Albania. The latter publications were full of marvellous knowledge for mariners but both were ominously silent about what was likely to happen to me if I got blown – or washed – ashore on the coast of Albania which was ominously close to that of my island.
But that was only a situation which had to be dealt with if and when it arose. My present preoccupation, apart from finding a rowing boat and having two good hands to row it with, was to determine whether I would ro
w around Corfu clockwise or anti-clockwise. There were more ponderables in this question than you might think.
Chapter 41
I Was on This Small Floating Paradise
I was on this small floating paradise of Corfu, suspended between Greece and Italy in space and history, for no other reason than that I was going to row around it.
The last time I’d rowed anything was in 1947 when, concerned about a developing waistline, I used to take a small boy out before breakfast and row around the Serpentine.
I was still concerned about a developing waistline, but that was not the purpose of my present venture.
Having been the first sexagenarian with cancer to complete the circumperambulation of Crete – assisted by a donkey – I thought it would be an added achievement to be the first ditto to complete the circumnavigation of Corfu in a rowing boat – unassisted, as Ulysses was, by anything.
But first one must find his rowing boat. This was an easy matter in places like the Serpentine at so much an hour but I had no intention of hiring a rowing boat at so much an hour to row around Corfu, a journey that I hoped would occupy me for the next year or two.
There are 8,760 hours in a year, including Sundays. So it was necessary to buy a boat.
This had not proved altogether easy. There were a lot of rowing boats in Corfu and a good proportion of them were clustered in the moat of the Old Fort in the capital.
I had been there every morning and every evening of the first three days of my stay and had been unable to find one owner nor anybody who knew an owner.
So I did what I should have done as soon as I arrived and walked the two kilometres of beautiful but slightly smelly esplanade that separates the main town from the fishing suburb of Anemomilos.
There were three men in the taverna excluding the staff. I simply announced in Greek: “I want to buy a rowing boat,” ordered a half-litre of krasi, sat down and prepared for a lengthy wait.
The results were more immediate than I had hoped for. Two of the men stood up and walked silently out. In the next ten minutes I had three propositions put to me.
A man came in and said: “You want a rowing boat? I have one.”
“How much?”
“12,000 drachmas.” (About 170 pounds)
“Po po po,” I said, which is Greek for exactly what it sounds like.
This conversation was more or less repeated with the man who came in two minutes later with a price of 10,000. A third man appeared who said 6,000. It was time to go and have a look.
Six thousand drachmas was a lot more than I had expected to pay for a second-hand rowing boat. A year before I had watched a brand new boat being built in a yard at Chania which would have cost me 10,000 drachmas but in that year the raging inflation that had hit the whole world had nearly doubled the prices of many things in Greece. So I did not, on reflection, consider 6,000 exorbitant especially when it was pointed out to me that the Chania price did not include the paintwork.
When I saw the rowing boat moored to the retaining wall of the esplanade I tried hard to conceal my delight. It was almost a replica of the image I had been carrying in my mind since soon after I had ended my walk with Gaithuri.
Just over four metres (about fifteen feet) in length it (she?) was comfortably broad in the beam. It was a three-seater affair with facilities for rowing from each seat.
I didn’t know yet how much water it drew but that was clearly something I should have found out the easy way instead of the hard way.
When I first saw her she was covered in mats against the sun but these were soon stripped off to reveal a clean green-and-white striped motif pleasing to the eye and harmonious with the environment.
Also revealed was the name in black capitals on each side of the bow and prominent on the backrest of the rearmost seat: NIKH. That was the Greek word for victory.
I could think of no good reason for changing it except perhaps to Nicky, which I thought of as more friendly and feminine and therefore, from then on, it would be “she”.
There was, for the sake of custom and my reputation, a little haggling to be done.
“Five thousand,” I said.
“No, six.”
“Look, kirios, you want six thousand. I want five thousand. How about five thousand, five hundred?”
The logic of this argument must have seemed to him irrefutable. His shrug meant acceptance.
This was, of course, nearly four times as much as I paid for Gaithuri, but there were compensating economic and other factors. A boat did not require food and water every day and this one didn’t require petrol and oil. I could leave it out in the wet for free and I could leave it tethered to a tree for days or weeks while I was away without having to pay a farmer ten drachmas a day to look after it.
Something else I could do on the boat that I couldn’t do on the donkey was sleep. It shared with Gaithuri the great advantage of not being able to answer back. And it couldn’t kick.
She, the boat, no doubt had her own characteristics and some anti-human vices but these were still to be discovered. Something I discovered in two minutes was what a landlubber I was.
The old man who was selling it (he was sixty-seven) went aboard like a gazelle by placing one foot on the gunwale or the thwart or whatever it was and leaping nimbly into the bottom of the boat.
If I had attempted it I was absolutely sure I would have ended up in the sea. I went aboard like a walrus encountering an escalator for the first time.
I had no difficulty rowing in the conventional (Serpentine) fashion even though the oars were completely different and had a strange feel in the water. But when I stood up and rowed in the Mediterranean fashion, facing forward, I got an aching back in something less than ten seconds.
This method may have been fine for gondoliers but it was not a posture I would have recommended for anybody taller than four feet eleven inches. Nevertheless, it was something that I had to learn to cope with as I could already foresee plenty of occasions when I would have to look where I was going.
So another adventure began. The sun, I fancied, was going to prove a crueller enemy than the sea. I hoped to defeat him by installing one of those multi-coloured beach umbrellas. It would serve a dual purpose because whenever there was a following breeze I would tilt it into a spinnaker.
Enemies like wind and wave I intended to avoid altogether though there are many ancient mariners around only too ready to tell me that you can never anticipate all their whimsies. They gave you the impression of hoping that you’d hit a typhoon on your first day out. But I did not intend to go further from the shore than I could easily swim back from and, for most of the time, than I could walk back from.
I must also confess to having been vaguely frightened with that pit-of-the-stomach feeling that comes to those who wait for the referee to say “Seconds out!” or the starter to say “On your marks!” It was not a wholly unpleasant sensation.
I was sure it was because the sea was not my element. Though I didn’t expect the feeling to survive the first week or so.
Humanity, including this human, had an amazing capacity for getting used to anything and there was probably no more true saying in the whole of Mr Benham’s Book of Quotations than familiarity breeds contempt. As if to ensure that I didn’t get too familiar there was a letter in an abandoned air edition of the Daily Express lying on the cafe table beside which I was writing.
“When will people learn that they should not venture to sea without a sound knowledge of seamanship, navigation and emergency procedures and without proper safety equipment…”
The writer also suggested that coastguards should prevent people leaving port who were not thus instructed and equipped. I could only hope that the Corfu coastguard would not get round to acting on such advice.
I supposed the inflatable ring I had acquired could be considered safety equipment, but that was much more concerned with my posterior than with my future.
Gaithuri? Xenophon in Matala had promised to
keep me fully informed of any major developments in her pregnancy – or should I say minor?
He even suggested before I left that should the offspring be a male it should be called Petros, and if female, Petra. Thus we achieve intimations of immortality.
Chapter 42
I Took the First Strokes of My Odyssey
It wasn’t exactly the sort of day I would have chosen to begin my row around Corfu.
Thunder had rumbled around the twin peaks of Pantokrator all morning and across the narrow waters the rain was soaking the mainland.
By mid-afternoon, the clouds had rolled away to be survived by what was known, I believed, as good sailing wind. But it was no use for rowing.
“Tomorrow it will be better,” said Christos, the previous owner of Nicky, my boat. “Why don’t you wait?”
I had been waiting too long already. Anyway I wouldn’t be going far that evening. Just around the corner.
With the shrug that I was expecting and which said plainly: “Well, it’s your boat now, not mine,” he helped me load my gear. It was just about all I possessed in the world and after I had distributed it around the place, it looked as though I had been living there for years.
It had not taken much thought to decide which way I was going to row around Corfu. A brief study of the Admiralty chart and The Channels of Corfu with the Adjacent Coasts of Albania and Greece indicated that it would be sensible to go clockwise.
Saint Spyridon, as everybody who had ever been to Corfu knew, was the long-established and revered protector of the island and its inhabitants and was particularly potent in the matter of protecting sailors and fishermen. A visit, I thought, would be prudent.
The saint lay in permanent state in his own church in the centre of town. The morning I called he was having a very busy time with the mothers and the relatives of the young men recently mobilised against the ancient enemy, all pleading tearfully for his intervention.