The Corfu Trilogy (the corfu trilogy)

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘Theodore,’ Larry would ask, ‘there’s a painting up in the monastery at Paleocastritsa that the monks say was done by Panioti Dokseras. D’you think it is?’

  ‘Well,’ Theodore would say cautiously, ‘I’m afraid it’s a subject about which I know very little. But I believe I’m right in saying that it’s more likely to be the work of Tsadzanis… er… he did that most interesting little picture… in the Patera Monastery… you know, the one on the upper road leading north of Corfu. Now, he of course…’

  During the next half-hour he would give an all-embracing and succinct lecture on the history of painting in the Ionian Islands since about 1242 and then end by saying: ‘But if you want an expert opinion, there’s Doctor Paramythiotis who’d give you much more information than I can.’

  It was small wonder that we treated him like an oracle. The phrase ‘Theo says’ set the seal of authenticity on whatever item of information the person was going to vouchsafe; it was the touchstone for getting Mother’s agreement to anything from the advisability of living entirely on fruit to the innocuousness of keeping scorpions in one’s bedroom. Theodore was everything to everyone. With Mother he could discuss plants, particularly herbs and recipes, while keeping her supplied with reading matter from his capacious library of detective novels. With Margo he could talk of diets, exercises, and the various unguents supposed to have a miraculous effect on spots, pimples, and acne. He could keep pace effortlessly with any idea that entered the mercurial mind of my brother Larry, from Freud to peasant belief in vampires; while Leslie he could enlighten on the history of firearms in Greece or the winter habits of the hare. As far as I was concerned, with a hungry, questing, and ignorant mind, Theodore represented a fountain of knowledge on every subject from which I drank greedily.

  On Thursday, Theodore would generally arrive at about ten, sitting sedately in the back of the horse-drawn cab, silver Homburg on his head, his collecting box on his knees, his walking-stick with its little gauze net on the end by his side. I, who had been up since six and peering down through the olive groves to see if he were coming, would by now have decided in despair that he had forgotten what day it was or that he had fallen down and broken his leg or that some other catastrophe had overtaken him. My relief at seeing him, grave, sedate, and intact in the back of the cab, would be considerable. The sun, up until then suffering from an eclipse, would start to shine again. Having shaken me by the hand courteously, Theodore would pay the cab-man and remind him to return at the appropriate hour in the evening. Then, hoisting his collecting bag onto his shoulders, he would contemplate the ground, rising and falling on his well-polished boots.

  ‘I think… er… you know…’ he would say, ‘we might investigate those little ponds near… er… Kontokali. That is to say, unless there is somewhere else… er… you know… that you would prefer to go.’

  I would say happily that the little ponds near Kontokali would suit me fine.

  ‘Good,’ Theodore would say. ‘One of the reasons I particularly want to go… er… that way… is because the path takes us past a very good ditch… er… you know… that is to say, a ditch in which I have found a number of rewarding specimens.’

  Talking cheerfully, we would set out, and the dogs, tongues lolling, tails wagging, would leave the shade of the tangerine trees and follow us. Presently, a panting Lugaretzia would catch up with us, carrying the bag containing our lunch which we had both forgotten.

  We would make our way through the olive groves, chattering together, stopping periodically to examine a flower or a tree, bird or caterpillar; everything was grist to our mill, and Theodore knew something about everything.

  ‘No I don’t know of any way you could preserve mushrooms for your collection; whatever you use, they would… um… er … you know… shrivel up. The best way would be to draw or paint them, or, perhaps, you know, photograph them. You could collect the spore patterns, though, and they are remarkably pretty. What…? Well, you remove the cup of the… er… you know… the mushroom or toadstool and place it on a white card. The fungus must be ripe, of course, or it won’t drop its spores. After a time, you remove the cap carefully from the card… that is to say, you take care not to smudge the spores, and you will find an attractive… er… sort of pattern is left.’

  The dogs would fan out ahead of us, cocking their legs, snuffling in the dark holes that honeycombed the great, ancient olive trees, and dashing off in noisy and futile pursuit of the swallows that skimmed millimetres high over the ground down the long meandering avenues of trees. Presently, we would reach more open country where the olive groves would give way to small fields of fruit trees and maize or vineyards.

  ‘Aha!’ Theodore would say, stopping by a weedy, water-filled ditch and peering into it, his eyes gleaming, his beard bristling with enthusiasm. ‘Now here’s something interesting. There, do you see? Just by the end of my stick.’

  I would strain my eyes but see nothing. Theodore, attaching his net to the end of his walking-stick, would make a neat dipping motion, like a man taking a fly out of his soup, and would then haul in the net.

  ‘There, you see? It’s the egg sac of the Hydrophilus piceus… er… that is to say, the great silver water beetle. It’s the female, as you know, that spins… er… makes this sac. It may have up to fifty eggs in it; the curious thing is… Just a minute, while I get my forceps… Um… there… you see? Now, this… um… you might say, chimney, though perhaps “mast” would be better, is filled with air so the whole thing is rather like a little boat which can’t capsize. The… er… air-filled mast prevents it… Yes, if you put it in your aquarium it should hatch out, though I must warn you that the larvae are very… er… you know… very fierce and will probably eat your other specimens. Let’s see if we can catch an adult.’

  Patiently as any wading bird, Theodore would pace the edge of the ditch, dipping his net in at intervals and sweeping it to and fro.

  ‘Aha! Success!’ he would exclaim at last, and carefully place a large black beetle, legs thrashing indignantly, into my eager hands.

  I would admire the strong, ribbed wing cases, the bristly legs, the whole body with a faint olive green sheen.

  ‘It’s a rather slow swimmer compared with the other… er… you know… aquatic beetles, and it has a very curious method of swimming. Um… um… instead of using the legs together, like any other aquatic species, it uses them alternately. It gives it a… you know… very jerky appearance.’

  The dogs, on these occasions, were somewhat of a mixed blessing. Sometimes they would distract us by rushing into a peasant’s farmyard and attacking all his chickens, the ensuing altercation with the chicken owner wasting at least half an hour; at other times they would be quite useful, surrounding a snake so that it could not escape and barking prodigiously until we came to investigate. For me, at any rate, they were comforting to have around; Roger, like a stocky, unclipped black lamb; Widdle, elegant in his silky coat of fox-red and black; and Puke, looking like a miniature liver and white-spotted bull terrier. Occasionally they would get bored if we stopped for too long, but generally they lay patiently in the shade, pink tongues flicking, lolling, tails wagging amicably whenever they caught our eye.

  It was Roger that first introduced me to one of the most beautiful spiders in the world, with the elegant sounding name of Eresus niger. We had walked a considerable distance and at noon, when the sun was at its hottest, decided to stop and eat our picnic in the shade. We sat down at the edge of an olive grove and started feasting on sandwiches and ginger beer. Normally, when Theodore and I had our meal the dogs would sit around, panting and gazing at us imploringly, since they were always of the opinion that our food was in some way superior to theirs, and so having finished their rations would try to obtain largesse from us, using all the wiles of an Asiatic beggar. On this particular occasion, Widdle and Puke rolled their eyes, panted and gasped, and tried by every means possible to show us that they were at death’s door from starvation. Unusually, Roger di
d not join in. Instead he was sitting out in the sunshine in front of a patch of brambles watching something with great intentness. I went over to see what was intriguing him to such an extent that he was ignoring my sandwich crusts. At first I could not see what it was; then suddenly I saw something so startlingly beautiful that I could hardly believe my eyes. It was a tiny spider, the size of a pea, and at first glance it looked like an animated ruby or a moving drop of blood. Uttering a whoop of joyous enthusiasm, I rushed to my collecting bag and got a glass-topped pill box in which to catch this brilliant creature. He was not easily caught however, for he could take prodigious jumps for his size, and I had to pursue him round and round the bramble bush for some time before I had him safely locked in my pill box. Triumphantly I carried this gorgeous spider over to Theodore.

  ‘Aha!’ said Theodore, taking a swig of ginger beer, before producing his magnifying glass the better to examine my capture. ‘Yes an Eresus niger… um… yes… this is of course the male, such a pretty creature, the female is… er… you know… all black, but the male is very brightly coloured.’

  On close examination through a magnifying glass, the spider turned out to be even more beautiful than I had thought. Its forequarters, or cephalo-thorax, were velvety black with little specks of scarlet at the edges. Its rather stocky legs were ringed with white bands, so that it looked ridiculously as though it was wearing striped pants. But it was its abdomen that was really eye-catching; this was vivid huntsman’s red, marked with three round black spots rimmed with white hairs. It was the most spectacular spider that I had ever seen and I was determined to try to get it a mate and see if I could breed them. I subjected the bramble bush and the terrain around it to a minute scrutiny, but with no success. Theodore explained to me that the female spider digs a burrow about three inches long, lined with tough silk. ‘You can distinguish it from other spiders’ burrows,’ he said, ‘because the silk at one point is protruded like an apron and this forms a sort of roof over the mouth of the tunnel. Moreover, the outside is covered with bits and pieces of the female spider’s past meals, in the shape of grasshopper legs and wing cases and the remains of beetles.’

  Armed with this knowledge I went the following day and combed the entire area round the bramble bush once again. After spending the whole afternoon on it, I still did not meet with success. Irritably I started on my way home to tea. I took a short cut that led me over some small hills covered with the giant Mediterranean heath which seemed particularly to flourish in this sandy and rather desiccated terrain. It was the sort of wild, dry country, favoured by ant lions, fritillaries and other sun-loving butterflies, lizards and snakes. As I walked along I suddenly came upon the ancient skull of a sheep. In one of its empty eye sockets a praying mantis had laid its curious egg cases, which to me always looked like an oval pudding of some sort, made out of ribbed sponge cake. I was squatting down examining this and wondering whether to take it to the villa to add it to my collection, when I suddenly saw a burrow of a female spider, just as Theodore had described it.

  I pulled out my knife and with great care excavated a large wedge of soil, which when levered out, contained not only the spider, but her burrow as well. Delighted with my success, I placed it carefully in my collecting bag and hurried back to the villa. I had already got the male installed in a small aquarium, but I felt that the female was worthy of better things. I unceremoniously evicted two frogs and a baby tortoise from my largest aquarium, and made it ready for her. When it was finished, decorated with bits of heather and interesting branches of moss, I carefully placed the wedge of earth containing her and her nest on the bottom and left her to recover from this sudden and unexpected house move.

  Three days later I introduced the male. At first it was very dull, because he did nothing more romantic than rush about like an animated hot ember, trying to catch the various insects I had put in the aquarium as provender. But then, early one morning when I went to look, I discovered that he had found the lair of the female. He was walking to and fro around it, in a curious jerky fashion, his striped legs stiff, his body trembling with what one could only conclude was passion. He strutted about in great excitement for a minute or so, then approached the burrow and disappeared under the roof. Here to my annoyance I could no longer observe him, but I presumed that he must be mating with the female. He was in the burrow for about an hour, and then he emerged jauntily and continued his carefree pursuit of the bluebottles and grasshoppers that I had provided for him. However, I removed him to another aquarium as a precautionary measure since I knew that in some species, the female had cannibalistic habits and was not averse to making a light snack of her husband.

  The rest of the drama I could not witness in detail, but I saw bits of it. The female eventually laid a bunch of eggs which she carefully encapsulated in a web. This balloon of eggs she stored down her tunnel, but brought up each day to hang under the roof. Whether she did this so that the eggs could get more heat from the sun, or to allow them access to more fresh air I was not certain. The egg case was disguised by having small morsels of beetle and grasshopper remains attached to the outside.

  As the days passed she proceeded to add to the roof over the tunnel and finally constructed a silken roof above ground. I watched this architectural achievement for some considerable time and then, as I could see nothing, I grew impatient. With the aid of a scalpel and a long darning needle I carefully opened up the silken room. To my astonishment I found that it was surrounded by cells in which all the young spiders sat, while in the central hall lay the corpse of their mother. It was a macabre, yet touching sight; the babies all sitting round the mortal remains of their mother, in a sort of spiders’ wake. When the babies hatched, however, I was forced to let them all go. Providing food for some eighty minute spiders was a problem in catering which even I, enthusiastic though I was, could not solve.

  Among the numerous friends that Larry saw fit to inflict us with was a strange pair of painters called Lumis Bean and Harry Bunny. They were both American and deeply devoted to each other, so much so that within twenty-four hours they were known privately to the family as Lumy Lover and Harry Honey. They were young, very good looking, with the fluid boneless grace of movement that you expect from coloured people but rarely get in Europeans. They wore perhaps a shade too many gold bangles and a soupçon too much scent and hair cream, but they were nice and, what was unusual in the painters who came to stay, hard-working. Like so many Americans, they were possessed of a charming naïveté and earnestness and these qualities, as far as Leslie was concerned at any rate, made them ideal subjects for practical jokes. I used to participate in these and then relate the results to Theodore, who used to get as much innocent pleasure as Leslie and I did out of the result. Every Thursday I had to report progress and I sometimes got the feeling that Theodore looked forward to the jokes with more interest than he did the news of my menagerie.

  Leslie had a genius for practical jokes and the child-like innocence of our two guests inspired him to new heights. It was shortly after their arrival that he got them to congratulate Spiro most prettily on his final success in taking out Turkish naturalization papers. Spiro, who, like most Greeks, considered the Turks to be slightly more malevolent than Satan himself and who had spent several years fighting them, exploded like a volcano. Fortunately, Mother was near at hand and moved swiftly between the white-faced protesting, bewildered Lumy and Harry and Spiro’s barrel-shaped, muscular bulk. She looked not unlike a diminutive Victorian missionary facing a charging rhino.

  ‘Gollys, Mrs Durrells,’ Spiro roared, his gargoyle features purple with rage, his ham-like hands clenched. ‘Lets me pokes them one.’

  ‘Now, now, Spiro,’ said Mother, ‘I’m sure it’s all a mistake. I’m sure there’s an explanation.’

  ‘They calls me a bastard Turks!’ roared Spiro. ‘I’m Greeks. I’m no bastard Turks.’

  ‘Of course you’re not,’ said Mother soothingly, ‘I’m sure it was just a mistake.’


  ‘Mistakes!’ bellowed Spiro, his plurals coming thick and fast with rage. ‘Mistakes! I’m nots goings to be called a bastards Turks by these bloody fairies, if you’ll excuse my language, Mrs Durrells.’

  It was some considerable time before Mother could calm Spiro and get a coherent story out of the terrified Lumy Lover and Harry Honey. The episode gave her a severe headache and she was very cross with Leslie.

  Some time later Mother had to move them out of the bedroom we had given them because it was going to be decorated. She put them temporarily into one of our large, gloomy attics. This gave Leslie the opportunity of telling them the story of the headless bell-ringer of Kontokali who died in the attic. He was the fiend who in 1604, or thereabouts, was official executioner and torturer to Corfu. First he would torture his victims and then he would ring his bell before they were finally beheaded. Getting slightly fed up with him, the villagers of Kontokali broke into the villa one night and beheaded him. Now, as a prelude to seeing his ghost, headless and with a gory stump, you would hear him frantically ringing his bell.

  Having convinced our earnest couple of the authenticity of this fable by getting it vouched for by Theodore, Leslie borrowed fifty-two alarm clocks from a friendly clock-maker in town, prised up two floor boards in the attic, and placed the clocks, all set to go off at three in the morning, carefully between the joists.

  The effect of fifty-two alarm clocks all going off simultaneously was most gratifying. Not only did Lumy and Harry vacate the attic with all speed, uttering cries of terror, but in their haste they tripped each other up and, clasped in each other’s arms, fell heavily down the attic stairs. The resulting turmoil woke the whole house and it was some time before we could convince them that it was a joke and soothe them with brandy. Mother, together with our guests, once again had a severe headache next day and would hardly talk to Leslie at all.