The Donkey Rustlers

by Gerald Malcolm Durrell

  “Well,” said Amanda, waving her fork about, “take. Um . . . take kidnapping, for example. Providing you don’t hurt the victim, would you consider kidnapping a crime?”

  The General took a large mouthful of food and chewed it thoughtfully while turning the question over in his mind. “In my considered opinion,” he said eventually, “next to murder, rape, torture and voting for the Labour Party, there is no worse crime.”

  David looked at his sister with a self-satisfied air. “Anyway,” said the General, pushing his chair back from the table and pulling his pipe out of his pocket, “why this sudden interest in the more unseemly activities of the human race? You don’t, I trust, intend to take up cat burglary or some similar occupation in the near future?”

  “No,” said Amanda, “I was just interested. You always told us that when in doubt we were to ask you.”

  “The trouble is,” explained the General, “that whenever you ask me I find myself in some doubt too.”

  With his empty pipe, he beat out a rapid and complicated rhythm on his aluminium leg.

  “Henry, dear, must you do that?” inquired Mrs Finchberry-White.

  “Wattusi drum rhythm,” explained the General. “They always play it before they attack.”

  “It’s very interesting,” said Mrs Finchberry-White doubtfully, “but I don’t think you ought to do it at table. It sets a bad example to the children.”

  “I see absolutely no connection whatsoever,” said the General, “since neither of them smokes and neither of them possesses an aluminium leg.”

  “Yes, but when I was a gal,” said Mrs Finchberry-White, “gentlemen did not do those sort of things at table.”

  “I,” said the General firmly, “am no gentleman. You knew that when you married me and you have spent twenty unsuccessful years endeavouring to convert me into one. I beg that you will desist from this Sisyphus-like struggle.”

  The children left their parents wrangling amicably at the table and made their way up to bed.

  “I told you kidnapping would be no good,” said David as they climbed the creaking wooden stairs, bent and warped with the arthritis of many winters.

  “Well, we’ll think of something,” said Amanda firmly. “We’ve simply got to solve this problem. We can’t let that horrible fat Oizus take all Yani’s land away from him. After all, he’s only got about two acres and it’s barely enough to support him.”

  “I know that,” said David. “But I keep telling you, it will have to be a good idea because if we muck it up it will make it worse for Yani,”

  “I,” said Amanda with great dignity, “will think of something in the morning.”

  She carried her oil lamp into her bedroom as regally and as beautifully as a princess and closed the door.

  “I don’t envy the man who marries you,” David shouted as he made his way down the corridor to his own room. Amanda opened her door.

  “I shouldn’t think you would get anybody to marry you,” she replied and then closed it. David tried to think up a suitably cutting answer to this, but could not, so he decided to go to bed and work on his lizard and cart problem.

  The following morning the children met Yani down on the golden beach and together they swam slowly out to Hesperides, pausing now and then to dive down to the sea bottom to examine a strange fish or a black sea-urchin that lay curled like a hibernating hedgehog in a rock crevice in the shallow water. They landed on the tiny island and made their way up the steps, leaving black, wet footprints that were soon dried by the sun. On the terrace at the top they spread themselves like starfish round the small well, and then concentrated once more on Yani’s problem.

  “My father says,” explained Amanda, “that kidnapping is a very bad crime and so therefore we cannot kidnap the Mayor’s wife.”

  “This gives me great joy,” said Yani, “for, as I told you, she would be very heavy to carry, and she eats like three pigs.”

  “I was thinking last night,” said David, “that none of the village really like Oizus, do they?”

  “No,” said Yani, “as a matter of fact they all dislike him very much. But he’s in as Mayor for four years, and so they have got to put up with him. What can one do?”

  “If we could do something,” said David, “that would turn the village against him, this might make him see reason.”

  “Yes, but what?” asked Yani.

  The children lay and racked their brains. Presently Yani rose to his feet and grinned down at Amanda, lying golden and beautiful in the sun.

  “Would you like a drink?” he inquired.

  “A drink?” she asked. “From where?”

  “From the well,” said Yani, his eyes sparkling with laughter.

  “I don’t think so,” said Amanda grimly. “I’ve no particular desire to get typhoid.”

  “Ah, no,” said Yani. “Look, I’ll show you.”

  He went to the well and threw back the great iron lid that covered it. Then he hauled on the rope. There was a splashing and a gurgling and a clanking noise and out of the cool depths of the well he pulled a bucket in which reposed some bottles of lemonade, From under a stone at the side of the well he pulled out an opener, removed the metal cap from a bottle and handed it to Amanda with a flourish.

  “But how did these get here?” asked Amanda, bewildered.

  Yani grinned his broad and attractive grin.

  “I swam over with them this morning,” he said, “very early and put them down the well so that they should be cool. So now you won’t get typhoid, eh?”

  “You are sweet, Yani,” said Amanda and her eyes filled with tears. “I wish we could think of something to do to help you.”

  Yani shrugged philosophically.

  “If you can’t, you can’t,” he said, “But at least you have tried, That shows that you are my friends.”

  Amanda drank her cool think and then lay back in the sun, her mind busy with Yani’s problem, while David and Yani wrangled over the problems of lizards pulling a cart.

  Distant sounds were wafted out to the tiny island from the mainland of Melissa: the tinny voice of one old peasant woman greeting another; the sound of a young rooster practising, rather ineffectually, his first attempts at crowing; the barking of a dog and then the familiar, lugubrious sounds of a donkey braying.

  Amanda sat up suddenly.

  “Shut up,” she hissed at the two boys. “Listen.”

  They stopped their conversation and listened patiently for a second or so, but all that could be heard was the mournful braying of the donkey.

  “What are we supposed to be listening to?” asked David at length.

  “That,” said Amanda, with a beatific smile spreading over her face as the last mournful notes of the braying ceased.

  “But that was only a donkey,” said Yani, puzzled.

  “Only a donkey,” said Amanda. “You say only a donkey? That is the solution to your problem.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked David irritably. “How can a braying donkey solve his problems?”

  Amanda swung round on them, her face flushed, her eyes almost black.

  “Don’t you see, you fish brains?” she said. “We have been trying to think of something that will turn the village against the Mayor, and that’s it.”

  “But how,” said Yani, bewildered, “can a donkey turn the village against the Mayor?”

  Amanda sighed the short exasperated sigh of a woman who is dealing with the foolishness of men.

  “Listen,” she said. “All the fields of the village lie down below the hillside on the flat country. Now, how do people work those fields and gather their crops and then carry them to the village?”

  “By donkey, of course,” said Yani, puzzled.

  “Well, there you are,” said Amanda triumphantly. “Remove the donkeys and you paralyse the entire village and you cannot call it kidnapping, because it’s donkeys that you are taking.”

  “What a beautiful idea,” said Yani, starting to laugh.<
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  “I don’t know that it’s a very sensible one,” said David, “We will have to think about it.”

  “I don’t know why you always have to think about things,” said Amanda, “Why don’t you do them?”

  “But what is your idea, anyway?” asked David.

  “I will tell you,” said Amanda and she leaned forward with her eyes sparkling.

  CHAPTER 4

  Reconnaissance

  “The first thing,” said Amanda, “is to find out how many donkeys there are in the village. Do you know how many there are, Yani?”

  Yani shrugged.

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “I’ve never counted them. Maybe twenty.”

  “Well, we’ve got to be absolutely certain,” said Amanda, “because there’s no sense in our only taking half of them.”

  “I still don’t see how you are going to work this,” David said doubtfully.

  “Shut up and listen,” said Amanda. “As soon as we have found out how many donkeys there are, we then organise a gigantic raid so that we can get them all at once.”

  “I think you’re mad,” said David with conviction. “Look, if we take them one at a time,” said Amanda, “by the time we’ve taken three or four, the rest of the villagers will have become worried and put their donkeys under lock and key. We have to get them all at once, or else it’s useless.”

  “I still don’t see how we can get twenty donkeys all at once,” said David, “and then, when you’ve got them, what are you going to do with them?”

  “Put them up in the hills somewhere,” said Amanda airily.

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” said Yani. “because there’s practically nowhere around here where you could hide twenty donkeys without somebody finding them. It would have to be a place which nobody would think of.”

  “I know,” said Amanda, her eyes shining, “we’ll bring them out here.”

  “What, to Hesperides?” asked David. “I really think you have gone mad. How could we get them out here?”

  “Well, how do we get out here?” said Amanda. “We swim.”

  “Yes, but can donkeys swim?” asked David.

  Roth children looked expectantly at Yani; Yani shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never thought about it. We don’t use them for swimming. But certainly, if we hid the donkeys here, nobody would ever dream of looking for them on this island. That is a very good idea.”

  “I think it’s an absolutely hair-brained scheme from beginning to end,” said David.

  “Why don’t you try it?” said Amanda.

  David turned the idea over in his mind. The more he thought about the scheme the more pitfalls it seemed to possess, and the thought of his father’s wrath if they were caught made him feel slightly sick. But, try as he would, he could not think of any alternative to Amanda’s idea.

  “All right,” he said reluctantly. “But on one condition, that you leave the organising side of things to me and don’t go doing anything stupid. It will have to be conducted like a military operation and the first thing to do is to find out how many donkeys there are in the village. The second thing to do is to find out whether donkeys can swim, because, if they can’t swim, the whole scheme is useless.”

  “Well, horses swim,” Amanda pointed out.

  “I know. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that donkeys can,” said David. “Now, we must each have our own job to do so that we can spread out. First of all you and Yani and Coocos, if you can get hold of him, will go round the village and count the donkeys. While you are doing that I will work out a plan so that we can discover whether they can swim or not.”

  “Why can’t we just take one down to the beach and push him into the sea?” asked Amanda.

  “You can’t do that,” said David, “because if somebody saw us it would give the whole game away. I’ll think up something. Let’s swim back now and you and Yani and Coocos can start counting.”

  Excitedly the children swam back to the shore and climbed up the hillside towards the village.

  Now that he had accepted Amanda’s basic idea, David was really getting quite intrigued by the whole thing. It was, he confessed to himself, infinitely more interesting to organise this than to work out complicated sums about lizards and carts. So for the rest of the day David thought and thought of a way of finding out whether donkeys could swim, while Amanda, Yani and Coocos, armed with a pad and pencil, solemnly went round the village making a list of people’s donkeys; the interest with which they inquired after everybody’s beasts of burden quite touched the villagers.

  “It’s a good thing,” said Yani, when they had almost completed their task, “none of the donkeys have babies, for I think it would be very troublesome to get the baby ones over to the island.”

  “Bah!” said Amanda, dismissing that with an airy wave of her hand, “you could always row them over in a boat.”

  By the time they had finished, the children had discovered that the village contained eighteen donkeys and one small horse. Five of the donkeys and the horse — they were delighted to discover — belonged to Mayor Oizus.

  “Jolly well serve him right when we pinch his,” said Amanda. “I bet that’ll make him sweat even more than he sweats now.”

  At firefly time the children held another council of war down in the olive groves. Amanda reported to David the number of donkeys and also, what was more important. where each one was stabled overnight.

  “It’s going to be a bit difficult,” said David gravely, studying the list. “I think we could probably get away with nine or ten of them in one night, but how we are going to manage the rest I am not quite sure.”

  “Well, next to Mayor Oizus,” said Amanda, “the one who has the most is Papa Nikos.”

  “And he always gets up very, very early and goes down to the fields,” said Yani. “We might stand a chance of getting them there.”

  “Anyway,” said Amanda impatiently, “have you thought out how we can find out whether they can swim?”

  “Yes,” admitted David, with a certain amount of smugness. “I have thought up a very good idea. You know that river just before you get to the fields, with the little wooden bridge?”

  “Yes,” said Amanda.

  “Well, if we could sabotage that in some way so that when they lead a donkey across it it would collapse, we would find out whether the donkey could swim and, at the same time, it is not so deep that we couldn’t rescue it if it couldn’t swim.”

  “David, that is a clever idea,” said Amanda, her eyes sparkling.

  “But, how are you going to sabotage the bridge?” inquired Yani.

  “Well, I went down and inspected it this afternoon,” said David. “Actually it is so rickety that it doesn’t require very much at all. I think if you just saw through the two centre supports, anything getting into the middle of it will push the whole thing into the water.”

  Amanda gave a delighted crow of laughter.

  “You are clever, David,” she said admiringly. “I can’t wait to do this. When shall we do it?”

  “Well, the sooner the better,” said David. “I thought we’d go down to-night, as there’s no moon, and do it then. Then we can get up very early in the morning and go down there and watch. The trouble is we don’t seem to have a saw in the house.”

  “I’ve got a saw,” said Yani excitedly. “I’ll bring that.”

  “Now remember, Coocos,” said David, pointing his finger sternly at the bowler-hatted boy, “you are not to say a word to anybody about this.”

  Coocos shook his head vigorously and crossed himself. “No, Coocos won’t say anything,” said Yani, “because he’s my friend.”

  That night the children slipped quietly out of their bedrooms and down the stairs. Each creak made them start nervously for fear it would wake the General and bring his wrath down upon them. They finally got out of the house without disturbing their parents and made their way, together with Yani and Coocos, taking i
nfinite and quite unnecessary precautions against being seen, to the little bridge that spanned the rather muddy canal on the edge of the corn fields. David stripped off his clothes and slipped into the brown water and disappeared under the bridge, having posted the rest of them at strategic points so that should the sound of sawing be heard by anyone who might come to investigate, they could all warn him. Then he set to work. In a very short time — for he found the wood was soft and semi-rotten — he succeeded in sawing through the two uprights that supported the centre of the bridge. He then uprooted them and replanted them in the mud so that, at a casual glance, they looked as if they were still supporting the bridge although in actual fact they were useless. He then climbed out on to the bank, carefully washing the mud from his legs, dressed himself, and then the children made their way back to their respective homes.