The Corfu Trilogy (the corfu trilogy)

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked in a hushed voice.

  I repeated the offending phrase. Mr Kralefsky closed his eyes, his nostrils quivered, and he shuddered.

  ‘Where did you hear that?’ he asked.

  I said I had learned it from a Count who was staying with us.

  ‘Oh. Well, you must never say it again, do you understand,’ Mr Kralefsky said, ‘never again! You… you must learn that in this life sometimes even aristocrats let slip an unfortunate phrase in moments of stress. It does not behove us to imitate them.’

  I did see what Kralefsky meant. Falling into a canal, for a Count, could be called a moment of stress, I supposed.

  But the saga of the Count was not yet over. A week or so after he had departed, Larry, one morning at breakfast, confessed to feeling unwell. Mother put on her glasses and stared at him critically.

  ‘How do you mean, unwell?’ she asked.

  ‘Not my normal, manly, vigorous self.’

  ‘Have you got any pains?’

  ‘No,’ Larry admitted, ‘no actual pains. Just a sort of lassitude, a feeling of ennui, a debilitated, drained feeling, as if I had spent the night with Count Dracula, and I feel that, for all his faults, our late guest was not a vampire.’

  ‘Well, you look all right,’ said Mother, ‘though we’d better get you looked at. Dr Androuchelli is on holiday, so I’ll have to get Spiro to bring Theodore.’

  ‘All right,’ said Larry listlessly, ‘and you’d better tell Spiro to nip in and alert the British cemetery.’

  ‘Larry, don’t say things like that,’ said Mother, getting alarmed. ‘Now, you go up to bed and, for heaven’s sake, stop there.’

  If Spiro could be classified as our guardian angel to whom no request was impossible of fulfilment, Dr Theodore Stephanides was our oracle and guide to all things. He arrived, sitting sedately in the back of Spiro’s Dodge, immaculately dressed in a tweed suit, his Homburg at just the correct angle, his beard twinkling in the sun.

  ‘Yes, it was really… um… very curious,’ said Theodore, having greeted us all, ‘I was just thinking to myself how nice a trip… er… was an especially beautiful day… um… not too hot, and that sort of thing, you know… er… and suddenly Spiro turned up at the laboratory. Most fortuitous.’

  ‘I’m so glad that my agony is of benefit to someone,’ said Larry.

  ‘Aha! What… er… you know… seems to be the trouble?’ asked Theodore, eyeing Larry with interest.

  ‘Nothing concrete,’ Larry admitted. ‘Just a general feeling of death being imminent. All my strength seems to have drained away. I’ve probably, as usual, been giving too much of myself to my family.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s what’s wrong with you,’ said Mother decisively.

  ‘I think you’ve been eating too much,’ said Margo; ‘what you want is a good diet.’

  ‘What he wants is a little fresh air and exercise,’ contributed Leslie. ‘If he took the boat out a bit…’

  ‘Yes, well, Theodore will tell us what’s wrong,’ said Mother.

  ‘I can’t find anything… er… you know… organically wrong,’ said Theodore judiciously, rising and falling on his tiptoes, ‘except that he is perhaps a trifle overweight.’

  ‘There you are! I told you he needed a diet,’ said Margo triumphantly.

  ‘Hush, dear,’ said Mother. ‘So what do you advise, Theodore?’

  ‘I should keep him in bed for a day or so,’ said Theodore. ‘Give him a light diet, you know, nothing very oily, and I’ll send out some medicine… er… that is to say… a tonic for him. I’ll come out the day after tomorrow and see how he is.’

  Spiro drove Theodore back to town and in due course reappeared with the medicine.

  ‘I won’t drink it,’ said Larry eyeing the bottle askance. ‘It looks like essence of bat’s ovaries.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ said Mother, pouring some into a spoon, ‘it will do you good.’

  ‘It won’t. It’s the same stuff as my friend Dr Jekyll took, and look what happened to him.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Mother, unthinkingly.

  ‘They found him hanging from the chandelier, scratching himself and saying he was Mr Hyde.’

  ‘Come on now, Larry, stop fooling about,’ said Mother firmly.

  With much fussing, Larry was prevailed upon to take the medicine and retire to bed.

  The following morning we were all woken at an inordinately early hour by roars of rage coming from Larry’s room.

  ‘Mother! Mother!’ he was roaring. ‘Come and look what you’ve done!’

  We found him prancing round his room, naked, a large mirror in one hand. He turned on Mother belligerently and she gasped at the sight of him. His face was swollen up to about twice normal size and was the approximate colour of a tomato.

  ‘What have you been doing dear?’ asked Mother faintly.

  ‘Doing? It’s what you’ve done,’ he shouted, articulating with difficulty. ‘You and bloody Theodore and your damned medicine – it’s affected my pituitary. Look at me! It’s worse than Jekyll and Hyde.’

  Mother put on her spectacles and gazed at Larry.

  ‘It looks to me as though you’ve got mumps,’ she said puzzled.

  ‘Nonsense! That’s a child’s disease,’ said Larry impatiently. ‘No, it’s that damned medicine of Theodore’s, I tell you, it’s affected my pituitary. If you don’t get the antidote straight away I shall grow into a giant.’

  ‘Nonsense, dear, I’m sure it’s mumps,’ said Mother. ‘But it’s very funny because I’m sure you’ve had mumps. Let’s see, Margo had measles in Darjeeling in 1920… Leslie had sprue in Rangoon – no, I’m wrong, that was 1900 in Rangoon and you had sprue, then Leslie had chickenpox in Bombay in 1911… or was it 12? I can’t quite remember, and then you had your tonsils out in Rajputana in 1922, or it may have been 1923, I can’t remember exactly, and then after that, Margo got…’

  ‘I hate to interrupt this Old Moore’s Almanac of Family Ailments,’ said Larry coldly, ‘but would somebody like to send for the antidote before I get so big that I can’t leave the room?’

  Theodore, when he appeared, agreed with Mother’s diagnosis.

  ‘Yes… er… clearly a case of mumps,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean, clearly, you charlatan?’ said Larry, glaring at him from watering and swollen eyes. ‘Why didn’t you know what it was yesterday? And anyhow, I can’t get mumps, it’s a child’s disease.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Theodore. ‘Children generally get it but quite often adults get it too.’

  ‘Why didn’t you recognize a common disease like that when you saw it?’ demanded Larry. ‘Can’t you even recognize a mump? You ought to bedrummed out of the medical council or whatever it is that they do for malpractice.’

  ‘Mumps are very difficult to diagnose in the… er… early stages,’ said Theodore, ‘until the swellings appear.’

  ‘Typical of the medical profession,’ said Larry bitterly. ‘They can’t even spot a disease until the patient is twice life size. It’s a scandal.’

  ‘As long as it doesn’t affect your… um… you know… um… your… er… lower quarters,’ said Theodore thoughtfully, ‘you should be all right in a few days.’

  ‘Lower quarters?’ Larry asked, mystified, ‘what lower quarters?’

  ‘Well, er… you know… mumps causes swelling of the glands,’ explained Theodore, ‘and so if it travels down the body and affects the glands in your… um… lower quarters it can be very painful indeed.’

  ‘You mean I’ll swell up and start looking like a bull elephant?’ asked Larry in horror.

  ‘Mmm, er… yes,’ said Theodore, finding he could not better this description.

  ‘It’s a plot to make me sterile!’ shouted Larry. ‘You and your bloody tincture of bat’s blood! You’re jealous of my virility.’

  To say that Larry was a bad patient was putting it mildly. He had an enormous hand-bell by the bed whi
ch he rang incessantly for attention and Mother had to examine his nether regions about twenty times a day to assure him that he was not in any way affected. When it was discovered that it was Leonora’s baby that had given him mumps he threatened to excommunicate it!

  ‘I’m its godfather,’ he said. ‘Why can’t I excommunicate the ungrateful little bastard?’

  By the fourth day, we were all beginning to feel the strain. Captain Creech then appeared to see Larry. Captain Creech, a retired mariner of lecherous habits, was mother’s bête noire. His determined pursuit of anything female, and Mother in particular, in spite of his seventy-odd years, was a constant source of annoyance to her, as was the captain’s completely uninhibited behaviour and one-track mind.

  ‘Ahoy!’ he shouted, staggering into the bedroom, his lopsided jaw waggling, his wispy beard and hair standing on end, his rheumy eyes watering. ‘Ahoy, there! Bring out your dead!’

  Mother, who was examining Larry for the fourth time that day, straightened up and glared at him.

  ‘Do you mind, captain?’ she said coldly. ‘This is supposed to be a sick-room, not a bar parlour.’

  ‘Got you in the bedroom at last!’ said Creech, beaming, taking no notice of Mother’s expression. ‘Now, if the boy moves over we can have a little cuddle.’

  ‘I’m far too busy to cuddle, thank you,’ said Mother frostily.

  ‘Well, well,’ said the captain, seating himself on the bed, ‘what’s this namby-pamby mumps thing you’ve got, huh, boy? Child stuff! If you want to be ill, be ill properly, like a man. Why, when I was your age nothing but a dose of clap would have done for me.’

  ‘Captain, I would be glad if you would not reminisce in front of Gerry,’ said Mother firmly.

  ‘It hasn’t affected the old manhood, has it?’ asked the captain with concern. ‘Terrible when it gets you in the crutch. Can ruin a man’s sex life, mumps in the crutch.’

  ‘Larry is perfectly all right, thank you,’ said Mother with dignity.

  ‘Talking of crutches,’ said the captain, ‘have you heard about the young Hindu virgin from Kutch, who kept two tame snakes in her crutch, she said when they wriggle, it’s a bit of a giggle, but my boyfriends don’t like my crutch much. Ha ha ha!’

  ‘Really, captain!’ said Mother, outraged, ‘I do wish you wouldn’t recite poetry in front of Gerry.’

  ‘Got your mail when I was passing the post office,’ the captain went on, oblivious of Mother’s strictures, pulling some letters and cards out of his pocket and tossing them on to the bed. ‘My, they’ve got a nice little bit serving in there now. She’d win a prize for the best marrows in any horticultural show.’

  But Larry was not listening; he had extracted a postcard from the mail Captain Creech had brought. Having read it, he started to laugh uproariously.

  ‘What is it, dear?’ asked Mother.

  ‘A postcard from the Count,’ said Larry, wiping his eyes.

  ‘Oh, him,’ sniffed Mother, ‘well, I don’t want to know about him.’

  ‘Oh yes you will,’ said Larry. ‘It’s worth being ill just to be able to get this. I’m starting to feel better already.’

  He picked up the postcard and read it out to us. The Count had obviously got someone to write the card for him whose command of English was fragile but inventive.

  ‘I have reeching Rome,’ it began. ‘I am in clinic inflicted by disease called moops. Have inflicted all over. I finding I cannot arrange myself. I have no hunger and impossible I am sitting. Beware yourself the moops. Count Rossignol.’

  ‘Poor man,’ said Mother without conviction when we had all stopped laughing. ‘We shouldn’t laugh really.’

  ‘No,’ said Larry. ‘I’m going to write and ask him if Greek moops are inferior in virulence to French moops.’

  4

  The Elements of Spring

  A habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.

  ISAIAH 34:13

  Spring, in its season, came like a fever; it was as though the island shifted and turned uneasily in the warm, wet bed of winter and then, suddenly and vibrantly, was fully awake, stirring with life under a sky as blue as a hyacinth bud into which a sun would rise, wrapped in mist as fragile and as delicately yellow as a newly completed silkworm cocoon. For me, spring was one of the best times, for all the animal life of the island was astir and the air full of hope. Maybe today I would catch the biggest terrapin I had ever seen or fathom the mystery of how a baby tortoise, emerging from its egg as crushed and wrinkled as a walnut, would, within an hour, have swelled to twice its size and have smoothed out most of its wrinkles in consequence. The whole island was a-bustle and ringing with sound. I would awake early, breakfast hurriedly under the tangerine trees already fragrant with the warmth of the early sun, gather my nets and collecting boxes, whistle for Roger, Widdle, and Puke, and set off to explore my kingdom.

  Up in the hills, in the miniature forests of heather and broom, where the sun-warmed rocks were embossed with strange lichens like ancient seals, the tortoises would be emerging from their winter sleep, pushing aside the earth under which they had slept and jerking slowly out into the sun, blinking and gulping. They would rest until the sun had warmed them, and then would move slowly off towards the first meal of clover or dandelion, or maybe a fat, white puff-ball. Like other parts of my territory, I had the tortoise hills well organized; each tortoise possessed a number of distinguishing marks so that I could follow its progress. Each nest of stonechats or black-caps was carefully marked so that I could watch progress, as was each papery mound of mantis eggs, each spider’s web, and each rock under which lurked some beast dear to me.

  But it was the heavy emergence of the tortoises that would really tell me that spring had started, for it was not until winter was truly over that they lumbered forth in search of mates, cumbersome and heavily armoured as any medieval knight in search of a damsel to succour. Having once satisfied their hunger, they became more alert – if such a word can be used to describe a tortoise. The males walked on their toes, their necks stretched out to the fullest extent, and at intervals they would pause and utter an astonishing, loud, and imperative yap. I never heard a female answer this ringing, Pekinese-like cry, but by some means the male would track her down and then, still yapping, do battle with her, crashing his shell against hers, trying to bludgeon her into submission, while she, undeterred, would try to go on feeding in between the bouts of buffeting. So the hills would resound to the yaps and slithering crashes of the mating tortoises and the stonechats’ steady ‘tak tak’ like a miniature quarry at work, the cries of pink-breasted chaffinches like tiny, rhythmic drops of water falling into a pool, and the gay, wheezing song of the goldfinches as they tumbled through the yellow broom like multi-coloured clowns.

  Down below the tortoise hills, below the old olive groves filled with wine-red anemones, asphodels, and pink cyclamen, where the magpies made their nests and the jays would startle you with their sudden harsh, despairing scream, lay the old Venetian salt pans, spread out like a chessboard. Each field, some only the size of a small room, was bounded by wide, shallow, muddy canals of brackish water. It consisted of a little jungle of vines, maize, fig trees, tomatoes as acrid-smelling as stinkbugs, watermelons like the huge green eggs of some mythical bird, trees of cherry, plum, apricot, and loquat, strawberry plants, and sweet potatoes, all forming the larder of the island. On the seaward side, each brackish canal was fringed with cane breaks and reed beds sharply pointed as an army of pikes; but inland, where the streams fell from the olive groves into the canals and the water was sweet, you got lush plant growth and the placid canals were emblazoned with water lilies and fringed with golden king-cups.

  It was here that in the spring the two species of terrapin – one black with gold spots and one pin-striped delicately with grey – would whistle shrilly, almost like birds, as they pursued their mates. The frogs, green and brown, with leopard-patched thighs, looked as though they were freshly varnished. They would clasp each other wi
th passionate, pop-eyed fervour or gurk an endless chorus and lay great cumulus clouds of grey spawn in the water. In places where the canals were bordered by shade-giving cane breaks, fig and other fruit trees, the diminutive tree frogs, vivid green, with skin as soft as a damp chamois leather, would puff up their little yellow throat pouches to the size of walnuts and croak in a monotonous tenor voice. In the water, where the pigtails of weed moved and undulated gently in the baby currents, the tree frogs’ spawn would be laid in yellowish lumps the size of a small plum.

  Along one side of the fields lay a flat grassland area which, with the spring rains, would be inundated and turn into a large shallow lake some four inches deep, lined with grass. Here, in this warm water, the newts would assemble, hazelnut-brown with yellow bellies. A male would take up his station facing the female, tail curved round, and then, with a look of almost laughable concentration on his face, he would wag his tail ferociously, ejaculating sperm and wafting it towards the female. She, in her turn, would place the fertilized egg, white and almost as transparent as the water, yolk black and shining as an ant, onto a leaf and then, with her hind legs, bend the leaf and stick it so that the egg was encased.

  In spring the herds of strange cattle would appear to graze on this drowned lake. Huge, chocolate-coloured animals with massive, backward-slanting horns as white as mushrooms, they looked like the Ankole cattle from the centre of Africa but they must have been brought from somewhere nearer, Persia or Egypt perhaps. They were tended by strange, wild, gypsy-like bands who in long, low, horse-drawn wagons would camp by the grazing area: the savage-looking men, dusky as crows, and the handsome women and girls with velvet black eyes and hair like mole-skin would sit gossiping or basket-making round the fire, speaking a language I could not understand, while the raggedly dressed boys, thin and brown, jay-shrill and jackal suspicious, would act as herdsmen. The great beasts’ horns would clack and rattle together like musketry as they barged each other out of the way in their eagerness to feed. The sweet cattle-smell of their brown coats lingered in the warm air after them like the scent of flowers. One day the grazing area would be empty; the next day, as if they had always been there, there would be the jumbled encampment caught in a perpetual spider’s web of smoke from its pink, glittering fires and the herds of cattle moving slowly through the shallow water, their probing, tearing mouths and splashing hooves frightening the newts and sending the frogs and baby terrapins off in panic-stricken flight at this mammoth invasion.