The Corfu Trilogy (the corfu trilogy)

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘She was indeed. She was indeed,’ said Kralefsky, pleased. ‘She even went so far as to say that I gave a better performance than the lion-tamer himself.’

  Had he, I wondered, during his circus days, ever had anything to do with dancing bears?

  ‘All sorts of animals,’ said Kralefsky lavishly. ‘Elephants, seals, performing dogs, bears. They were all there.’

  In that case, I said tentatively, would he not like to come and see the dancing bear. It was only just down the road, and although it was not exactly a circus, I felt it might interest him.

  ‘By Jove, that’s an idea,’ said Kralefsky. He pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. ‘Ten minutes, eh? It’ll help blow the cobwebs away.’

  He got his hat and stick and together we made our way eagerly through the narrow, crowded streets of the town, redolent with the smell of fruits and vegetables, drains, and freshly baked bread. By dint of questioning several small boys, we discovered where Pavlo’s owner was holding his show. It was a large, dim barn at the back of a shop in the centre of town. On the way there I had borrowed some money from Kralefsky and purchased a bar of sticky nougat, for I felt I could not go to see Pavlo without taking him a present.

  ‘Ah, Pavlo’s friend! Welcome,’ said the gypsy as we appeared in the doorway of the barn.

  To my delight, Pavlo recognized me and came shuffling forward, uttering little grunts, and then reared up on his hind legs in front of me. Kralefsky backed away, rather hurriedly, I thought, for one of his circus training, and took a firmer grip on his stick.

  ‘Do be careful, my boy,’ he said.

  I fed the nougat to Pavlo and when finally he had squelched the last sticky lump off his back teeth and swallowed it, he gave a contented sigh and lay down with his head between his paws.

  ‘Do you want to see the Head?’ asked the gypsy. He gestured towards the back of the barn where there was a plain deal table on which was a square box, apparently made out of cloth.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘and I’ll light the candles.’

  He had a dozen or so large candles soldered to the top of a box in their own wax, and these he now lit so they flickered and quivered and made the shadows dance. Then he went forward to the table and rapped on it with his bear stick.

  ‘Head, are you ready?’ he asked.

  I waited with a delicate prickle of apprehension in my spine. Then from the interior of the cloth box a clear treble voice said, ‘Yes, I’m ready.’

  The man lifted the cloth at one side of the box and I saw that the box was formed of slender lathes on which thin cloth had been loosely tacked. The box was about three feet square. In the centre of it was a small pedestal with a flattened top and on it, looking macabre in the flickering light of the candles, was the head of a seven-year-old boy.

  ‘By Jove!’ said Kralefsky in admiration. ‘That is clever!’

  What astonished me was that the head was alive. It was obviously the head of a young gypsy lad, made up rather crudely with black grease paint to look like a Negro. It stared at us and blinked its eyes.

  ‘Are you ready to answer questions now?’ asked the gypsy, looking, with obvious satisfaction, at the entranced Kralefsky. The Head licked its lips and then said, ‘Yes, I am ready.’

  ‘How old are you?’ asked the gypsy.

  ‘Over a thousand years old,’ said the Head.

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘I come from Africa and my name is Ngo.’

  The gypsy droned on with his questions and the Head answered them, but I was not interested in that. What I wanted to know was how the trick was done. When he first told me about the Head, I had expected something carved out of wood or plaster which, by ventriloquism, could be made to speak, but this was a living head perched on a little wooden pedestal, the circumference of a candle. I had no doubt that the Head was alive for its eyes wandered to and fro as it answered the questions automatically, and once, when Pavlo got up and shook himself, a look of apprehension came over its face.

  ‘There,’ said the gypsy proudly when he had finished his questioning. ‘I told you, didn’t I? It’s the most remarkable thing in the world.’

  I asked him whether I could examine the whole thing more closely. I had suddenly remembered that Theodore had told me of a similar illusion which was created with the aid of mirrors. I did not see where it was possible to conceal the body that obviously belonged to the Head, but I felt that the table and the box needed investigation.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the gypsy, somewhat to my surprise. ‘Here, take my stick. But all I ask is that you don’t touch the Head itself.’

  Carefully, with the aid of the stick, I poked all round the pedestal to see if there were any concealed mirrors or wires, and the Head watched me with a slightly amused expression in its black eyes. The sides of the box were definitely only of cloth and the floor of the box was, in fact, the top of the table on which it stood. I walked round the back of it and I could see nothing. I even crawled under the table, but there was nothing there and certainly no room to conceal a body. I was completely mystified.

  ‘Ah,’ said the gypsy in triumph. ‘You didn’t expect that, did you? You thought I had a boy concealed in there, didn’t you?’

  I admitted the charge humbly and begged him to tell me how it was done.

  ‘Oh, no. I can’t tell you,’ he said. ‘It’s magic. If I told you, the head would disappear in a puff of smoke.’

  I examined both the box and the table for a second time, but, even bringing a candle closer to aid my investigations, I still could not see how it was possible.

  ‘Come,’ said the gypsy. ‘Enough of the Head. Come and dance with Pavlo.’

  He hooked the stick into the bear’s muzzle and Pavlo rose on his hind legs. The gypsy handed the stick to me and then picked up a small wooden flute and started to play, and Pavlo and I did a solemn dance together.

  ‘Excellent, by Jove! Excellent!’ said Kralefsky, clapping his hands with enthusiasm. I suggested that he might like to dance with Pavlo too, since he had such vast circus experience.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Kralefsky. ‘I wonder whether it would be altogether wise? The animal, you see, is not familiar with me.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be all right,’ said the gypsy. ‘He’s tame with anyone.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kralefsky reluctantly, ‘if you’re sure. If you insist.’

  He took the bear stick gingerly from me and stood facing Pavlo, looking extremely apprehensive.

  ‘And now,’ said the gypsy, ‘you will dance.’

  And he started to play a lilting little tune on his pipe.

  I stood enchanted by the sight. The yellow, flickering light of the candles showed the shadows of Kralefsky’s little humpbacked figure and the shaggy form of the bear on the wall as they pirouetted round and round, and squatting on its pedestal in the box, the Head watched them, grinning and chuckling to itself.

  10

  The Angry Barrels

  At the tail-end of the summer came the grape harvest. Throughout the year you had been aware of the vineyards as part of the scenery, but it was only when the grape harvest came that you remembered the sequence of events that led up to it: the vineyards in winter, when the vines looked dead, like so many pieces of driftwood stuck in lines in the soil; and then the day in spring when you first noticed a green sheen on each vine as the delicate, frilly little leaves uncurled. And then the leaves grew larger and hung on the vines, like green hands warming themselves in the heat of the sun. After that the grapes started to appear, tiny nodules on a branched stem, which gradually grew and plumped themselves in the sunlight until they looked like the jade eggs of some strange sea-monster. Then was the time for the washing of the vines. The lime and copper sulphate in big barrels would be dragged to the vineyards in little wooden carts pulled by the ever-patient donkeys. The sprayers would appear in their uniforms that made them look like visitors from another planet: goggles and masks, a great canister
strapped on their backs from which led a rubber pipe, as mobile as an elephant’s trunk, through which the liquid would run. This mixture was of a blue that put the sky and the sea to shame. It was the distilled blueness of everything blue in the world. Tanks would be filled and the sprayers would move through the frilly groves of vine, covering each leaf, wrapping each bunch of green grapes in a delicate web of Madonna blue. Under this protective blue mantle, the grapes swelled and ripened until at last, in the hot dog-days of summer, they were ready to be plucked and eased of their juice.

  The grape harvest was so important that it naturally became a time of visiting, a time of picnics and of celebrations, a time when you brought out last year’s wine and mused over it.

  We had been invited to attend a wine harvest by a Mr Stavrodakis, a tiny, kindly, wizened little man with a face like that of a half-starved tortoise, who owned a villa and some big vineyards towards the north of the island. He was a man who lived for his wine, who thought that was the most important thing in the world; and so his invitation was delivered with all the solemnity befitting such an occasion and was received with equal solemnity by the family. In his note of invitation, written in bold copper plate, embellished with little frills and flourishes so that it looked like a wrought-iron tracery, he had said, ‘Do please feel free to bring those of your friends that you think might enjoy this.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Larry. ‘He’s supposed to have the best cellar in Corfu.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we can go if you want to,’ said Mother doubtfully.

  ‘Of course I want to,’ said Larry. ‘Think of all that wine. I tell you what, we’ll hire a benzina and make up a party.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Margo eagerly. ‘He’s got that marvellous beach on his estate. We must get in some more swimming before the summer ends.’

  ‘We can invite Sven,’ said Larry. ‘He should be back by then. And we’ll ask Donald and Max to come along.’

  ‘And Theodore,’ said Leslie.

  ‘Larry dear,’ said Mother, ‘the man’s only invited us to watch his grapes being pressed or whatever it is they do; you can’t take a whole assortment of people along with you.’

  ‘He says in his letter to bring any of our friends we want to,’ said Larry.

  ‘Yes, but you can’t take a whole circus,’ said Mother. ‘How’s the poor man going to feed us all?’

  ‘Well, that’s easily solved,’ said Larry. ‘Write and tell him that we’ll bring our own food.’

  ‘I suppose that means I’ll have to cook it,’ said Mother.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Larry vaguely. ‘We’ll just take a few chops or something and grill them over an open fire.’

  ‘I know what that means,’ said Mother.

  ‘Well, surely you can organize it somehow,’ said Larry. ‘After all, it seems to me a perfectly simple thing to do.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mother reluctantly, ‘I’ll have a word with Spiro in the morning and see what can be done.’

  The result was that Mother penned a careful note to Mr Stavrodakis saying that we would be delighted to accept his invitation and bring a few friends. We would bring our own food and picnic on the beach, if we might. Mr Stavrodakis sent back another piece of copper-plate topiary expressing himself overwhelmed at our kindness in accepting his invitation and saying that he looked forward to seeing us. He added, ‘Do please come undressed as we are in the family way.’ The phrase puzzled us all considerably – since he was a bachelor of long standing – until we realized he had translated it literally from the French.

  The party finally consisted of Donald and Max, Theodore, Kralefsky, Sven, who had turned up in the nick of time from Athens, Spiro, and the family. We assembled at six thirty in the morning at the sunken steps behind the king’s palace in the town, where a dumpy, freshly painted benzina waited, bobbing a greeting to us on the tiny ripples. Getting on board took us quite some time. There were the numerous hampers of food and wine, the cooking utensils, and Mother’s enormous umbrella which she refused to travel without during the summer months. Then Kralefsky, bowing and beaming, had to go through the performance of handing Mother and Margo on board.

  ‘Gently now. Don’t stumble. That’s the ticket!’ he said as he escorted them both onto the boat with all the courtesy of a doge handing his latest mistress into a gondola.

  ‘Fortunately,’ said Theodore, peering up at the blue sky penetratingly from under the brim of his Homburg, ‘fortunately it looks as though it’s going to be er… um… you know, a fine day. I’m glad of that, for, as you know, the slightest motion upsets me.’

  Sven missed his footing as he was getting on board and almost dropped his precious accordion into the sea, but it was retrieved from a watery death by Max’s long arm. Eventually we were all on board. The benzina was pushed out, the engine was started, and we were off. In the pale, pearly, early morning haze, the town looked like a child’s town, built of toppling bricks. The façades of tall, elderly Venetian houses of the town, crumbling gently, coloured in pale shades of cream and brown and white and cyclamen pink, were blurred by the haze so they looked like a smudged pastel drawing.

  ‘A life on the ocean wave!’ said Kralefsky, inhaling the warm, still air dramatically. ‘That’s the ticket!’

  ‘Although the sea looks so calm,’ observed Theodore, ‘there is, I think, a slight – almost imperceptible – motion.’

  ‘What rubbish, Theodore,’ said Larry. ‘You could lay a spirit level on this sea and you wouldn’t get a wink out of the bubble.’

  ‘Is Muzzer comfortable?’ inquired Max lovingly of Mother.

  ‘Oh, yes, dear, thank you, quite comfortable,’ she said, ‘but I’m a little bit worried. I’m not sure whether Spiro remembered the garlic.’

  ‘Don’t you worries Mrs Durrells,’ said Spiro, who had overheard the remark. ‘I gots all the things that you tells me to get.’

  Sven, having examined his accordion with the utmost care to make sure that it had come to no harm, now lashed it round himself and ran an experimental series of fingers up its keyboard.

  ‘A rousing sea-shanty,’ said Donald. ‘That’s what we need. Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum.’

  I left them and made my way up into the bow of the benzina where I lay, staring down over the prow as it sheared its way through the glassy blue sea. Occasionally little flocks of flying fish would break the surface ahead of us, glittering blue and moon silver in the sun, as they burst from the water and skimmed along the surface, like insect-gleaning summer swallows across a blue meadow.

  At eight o’clock we reached our destination, a half-mile-long beach that lay under the flanks of Pandokrator. Here the olive grove came almost to the sea, separated from it only by a wide strip of shingle. As we approached the shore, the engine was switched off and we drifted in gently under our own momentum. Now that there was no engine noise we could hear the cries of the cicadas welcoming us to land. The benzina, with an enormous sigh, pressed its bow into the pebbles of the shallows. The lithe, brown boy, whose boat it was, came forward from the engine and leaped from the bow with the anchor, which he lodged firmly in the shingle. Then he piled a collection of boxes alongside the bow of the benzina in a sort of tottering staircase down which Mother and Margo were escorted by Kralefsky, who bowed elegantly as each reached the shingle, but somewhat marred the effect by inadvertently stepping backwards into six inches of sea-water and irretrievably ruining the crease of his elegant trousering. Eventually we and all our goods and chattels were ashore, and leaving our possessions under the olive trees, strewn haphazardly like something from a wrecked ship that had been disgorged by the sea, we made our way up the hill to Stavrodakis’ villa.

  The villa was large and square, faded red with green shutters and built up high so that the lower floor formed a spacious cellar. Streams of peasant girls were walking up the drive carrying baskets of grapes on their heads, moving with the lithe gracefulness of cats. Stavrodakis came scuttling among them to greet us.


  ‘So kind, so kind! Really so kind!’ he kept repeating as each introduction was made.

  He seated us all on his veranda under a great carnival-red wig of bougainvillæa and opened several bottles of his best wine. It was heavy and sharp and glowed a sullen red as though he were pouring garnets into our glasses. When we were fortified and slightly light-headed with this brew, he led us, skittering ahead like an amiable black beetle, down to his cellars.

  The cellars were so big that their dimmest recesses had to be lit by oil lamps, little flickering wicks floating in pots of amber oil. The cellar was divided into two parts, and he led us first to where the treading was taking place. Looming over everything else in the dim light were three gigantic barrels. One of them was being filled with grapes by a constant procession of peasant women. The other two were occupied by the treaders. In the corner, seated on an upturned keg, was a grey, fragile-looking old man who, with great solemnity, was playing on a fiddle.

  ‘That’s Taki and that’s Yani,’ said Stavrodakis, pointing to the two wine-treaders.

  Taki’s head could only just be seen above the rim of the barrel, whereas Yani’s head and shoulders were still visible.

  ‘Taki’s been treading since last night,’ said Stavrodakis, glancing nervously at Mother and Margo, ‘so I’m afraid he’s a little bit inebriated.’

  Indeed, from where we stood we could smell the heady fumes of the grape pulp and they were intoxicating enough, so their force must have been trebled when concentrated in the warm depths of the barrel. From the base of the barrel the crude young wine dribbled out into a trough, where it lay smouldering with patches of froth on top as pink as almond blossom. From here it was syphoned off into barrels.

  ‘This is, of course, the end of the harvest,’ Stavrodakis was explaining. ‘These are the last of the red grapes. They come from a little vineyard high up and produce, I venture to think, one of the better wines of Corfu.’

  Taki momentarily stopped his jig on the grapes, hooked arms over the side of the barrel and hung there like a drunken swallow on its nest, his arms and hands stained with wine and covered with a crust of grape skins and seeds.