The Donkey Rustlers

by Gerald Malcolm Durrell

  “Isn’t it wonderful!” said Amanda. her eyes shining. “We’ve saved you, Yani! We’ve saved you!”

  “Don’t speak too soon,” said David.

  “Oh, you are such a pessimist,” said Amanda. “Of course we’ve saved him. All he’s got to do is to tell them where the donkeys are and he can claim the reward.”

  “Do you think for one minute that they wouldn’t think that he’d pinched the donkeys if he went to claim the reward?”

  “That’s true, Amanda.” said Yani, “for all the village knows that Mayor Oizus is threatening me.”

  “I don’t think it matters,” said Amanda. “We can claim the reward and then give it to Yani. I think the villagers’ll be so glad to get their donkeys back that they won’t care who took them.”

  “Well, don’t let’s get too excited about it,” said David. “I wouldn’t trust that Mayor for all the tea in China. He might try and back out of it.”

  “I don’t think he would be able to do that,” said Yani. “I think he’s too frightened of what the villagers would do to him if he did that.”

  “Well, we’ll wait and see,” said David.

  The following morning the police car once more returned from Melissa and from the back of it, with great pride, the Inspector produced a huge pile of posters tastefully printed in scarlet on a white ground, and with the sum of twenty thousand drachma written extra large (both in words and figures) in case, as he pointed out, it should be a Communist who could not read.

  The posters were an immediate success. Apart from anything else, they were so pretty to look at. The Inspector’s cousin was not a very expert printer and so the lines of writing went up and down like the waves of the sea, but everybody agreed that this enhanced rather than detracted from the charm of the posters and, in fact, as Mama Agathi pointed out, they were so beautiful it was really a shame to hang them up in places where only Communists could see them. The villagers all agreed, so they set one aside which they pinned up carefully on the café door. Then the posters were distributed with much arguing and shouting, for they were so beautiful that even those people of Kalanero who had no donkeys and therefore had had no donkeys stolen, wanted to have a poster.

  The children watched with glee as the villagers spent the morning carefully and proudly tacking up their posters on olive trees, vine supports and to the little bamboo fences that divided all their fields. Mama Agathi was so entranced by her two posters that she even went to Mrs Finchberry-White and borrowed a feather duster so that she could go out periodically and dust them, to make sure not a speck of dust marred their pristine brilliance. Amanda and David were almost hysterical with laughter by the time they got back to the villa for lunch.

  “Oh, there you are, dears,” said Mrs Finchberry-White. “I was just coming to look for you. Lunch will be a little late. We had a slight accident over the soup. I asked Agathi to serve it and for some obscure reason she poured it down the sink. She was very upset, poor thing.”

  The children made their way out on to the terrace where the General was standing squinting malevolently through his monocle at his latest masterpiece.

  “Mother says lunch will be a little late,” reported Amanda. “She says that for some obscure reason Mama Agathi poured the soup down the sink.”

  “The reason,” said the General, “is not obscure at all. It’s just simply that your mother, with her gift for tongues, told her to throw it away instead of to bring it out here. with the not unnatural result that she poured it down the sink.”

  “Oh,” said Amanda, giggling, “I didn’t realise it was that.”

  “By the way,” said the General, leaning forward and adding a touch of colour to his picture, “I trust you are giving those donkeys enough to eat.”

  Amanda and David, who had just spread-eagled themselves on the warm flagstones, sat up as though they had been shot.

  “What donkeys!” asked Amanda cautiously.

  The General added another touch of colour to his picture.

  “Donkeys,” he said. “You know, quadrupeds, beasts of burden; those things with long ears that bray.”

  David and Amanda glanced at each other.

  “I . . . I don’t know what you mean,” said Amanda.

  “I mean,” said the General patiently, “all the donkeys of Kalanero which you have got carefully hidden on Hesperides.”

  The children looked at each other in horror.

  “How on earth did you know about that?” asked Amanda.

  The General put down his palette and brush, took out his pipe and lit it.

  “I told you the other day.” he said, “that I don’t disclose my sources of information as a rule. However, on this particular occasion I will tell you. Coocos was my informant.”

  “Coocos?” chorused the children incredulously. “Coocos told you?”

  “Yes,” said the General. “He has kept me informed of the matter from the very start.”

  “But, he couldn’t have,” said Amanda, “Not Coocos! Why, he can’t even talk.”

  “On the contrary,” said the General, “Coocos can talk very well, It is an impediment of speech, not of mind, that he suffers from. It’s just that everybody is so impatient they won’t stop to let him talk. Coocos loves talking, but nobody ever lets him.”

  “Poor Coocos,” said Amanda slowly, “I’d never thought of that.”

  “I, however,” continued the General, “have the patience to listen to him and so, whenever he can, he comes up here and I paint and he talks. You needn’t think, however, that he let you down by telling me. He was under the impression that I was master-minding the whole plot, as a matter of fact, since you had said something about asking my advice.”

  “Oh, yes.” said Amanda, “that was about the kidnapping.”

  “Yes, I thought it was that,” said the General. “However, I didn’t disillusion him, but I received, with interest, a constant stream of reports from him as to how the plot was going.”

  “But why didn’t you stop us?” asked David.

  “My dear David,” said the General, “you are quite old enough and have a sufficient quantity of brain to be able to organise your own lives. If you wanted to get yourselves into trouble it was your affair, not mine. In any case, as you were doing it for the best possible motives, I saw absolutely no reason to interfere.”

  “But then, what did you tell the Inspector?” asked Amanda.

  “Ah,” said the General, puffing at his pipe. “there I must say I did interfere slightly. It struck me that you had committed no grave criminal offence by stealing the donkeys, since you intended to return them. However, if you had sent a ransom note (which I presumed was going to be your next step) then I am afraid I would not have been able to save you from the wrath of the law. So I suggested to the Inspector that his best method was to offer a reward.”

  “Father, you are clever!” said Amanda admiringly.

  “I am frequently dazzled by my own brilliance,” said the General modestly.

  “Well, what do you think we ought to do now?” asked Amanda.

  “I would suggest that you wait until to-morrow,” said the General, “discover the whereabouts of the donkeys and then claim the reward.”

  He tapped out his pipe on the edge of the terrace and hummed a few bars of “The Road to Mandalay” to himself.

  “I might even,” he remarked, “walk as far as the village square for the sake of seeing Oizus pay up. You see, I don’t like him any more than you do and I happen to like Yani very much.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Payment

  After lunch the children went down to have their last council of war with Yani.

  “I really think,” said David as they made their way through the olive groves, “that we should tick Coocos off.”

  “You will do no such thing,” said Amanda indignantly. “After all, he was only trying to help.”

  “Yes, but he could have ruined everything if Father had put his foot down,” David point
ed out.

  “You are not to say anything to him,” said Amanda firmly. “How would you like to go through life wanting to talk and nobody letting you?”

  “All right,” said David resignedly, “but that is just the sort of thing that makes first-class plans come unstuck.”

  When they told Yani, he was as horrified as they had been, but he, too, sided with Amanda and agreed that they should say nothing to Coocos about the matter.

  “Now,” said Amanda briskly, “it’s merely a question of claiming the reward. I suggest this evening would be a suitable time to discover the donkeys.”

  “Now, let’s get this quite clear,” said David. “Yani must not be implicated in discovering the donkeys. If he is, the Mayor will know that he took part in pinching them. It’s got to be done by us.”

  “All right,” said Amanda. “We’ll swim across to Hesperides about four o’clock and discover them on the island. Surprise! Surprise!”

  “Yes,” said David, “because by the time we get back to the village with the news everyone will have had their siestas.”

  “I wonder what their reactions are going to be?” mused Amanda.

  “They’ll be grateful beyond belief,” said Yani, chuckling. “I don’t think they ever realised before how much they needed their donkeys.”

  “It’s very unlikely that the Mayor is going to have twenty thousand drachma in his house,” observed David shrewdly, “which means that be will have to go into Melissa for it, which means that we really can’t get the reward until tomorrow.”

  “Well, that’s all right,” said Amanda. “It doesn’t matter whether we get it to-day or to-morrow.”

  “No. But if he sleeps on it,” David pointed out, “he might change his mind.”

  “Well, he can’t go into Melissa this evening,” said Yani, “because the bank will be closed.”

  David frowned and sighed.

  “Yes. I can’t see any other way of doing it,” he said. “We’ll just have to risk it.”

  So that afternoon Yani and Coocos made it patently obvious to those villagers they met that they were going to have a siesta and, as it grew towards four o’clock, Amanda and David swam out through the warm blue water to Hesperides.

  “You must admit,” said Amanda, shaking her wet hair and surveying the donkeys and the Mayor’s little horse, “that they look worlds better for their rest.”

  “Yes, they do,” agreed David. “In fact, I think it would be a good idea if this happened to them once a year.”

  “What, you mean that they were brought out to Hesperides?” asked Amanda.

  “Yes,” said David, “a sort of holiday camp for donkeys.”

  “It would be a good idea,” said Amanda, musingly, “but I doubt whether we could get the villagers to adopt it.”

  “Well,” said David, “the thing for you to do is to swim back and rush up to the village. Round about now the Mayor will be awake and having his first cup of coffee and everyone else will be around too. Remember to make it as dramatic as you can, and don’t for heaven’s sake giggle.”

  “I never giggle,” said Amanda austerely.

  “You do, you giggle incessantly.”

  “I don’t giggle,” said Amanda. “I laugh.”

  “Well, whatever it is you do, don’t do it,” said David.

  So, after patting the furry rumps of the donkeys, Amanda ran down the stone steps from the church and plunged once more into the water. In order to give an air of authenticity to her part, she ran up the hill so that by the time she arrived in the village square, she was panting and exhausted.

  As they had anticipated, Mayor Oizus, Papa Nikos and many other members of the village had just come from their siestas and had gathered round the tables at the café to discuss the burning question — when they would get information from the Communists as to the whereabouts of their donkeys. They were having a long and very complicated argument as to whether Communists could read or not when Amanda, perspiring profusely, came running into the village square.

  “Mayor Oizus, Mayor Oizus,” she gasped, “we’ve found them.” She flung herself panting and exhausted into the Mayor’s lap.

  “Found what, my golden one?” inquired the Mayor, startled.

  It was obvious, however, from Amanda’s incoherence that she was in no condition to answer him, so they plied her with glasses of wine and patted her back and made reassuring noises until she had regained her breath.

  “The donkeys,” gulped Amanda at last. “We’ve found them.”

  The effect of this statement was electric. The Mayor rose to his feet spilling Amanda on to the floor and knocking over the table which held twelve ouzos and five cups of coffee.

  “What?” he asked of the prostrate Amanda. “You have found them?”

  “Where? Where?” shouted Papa Nikos.

  “Where have you found them?”

  “Tell us, tell us quickly,” said Papa Yorgo.

  Amanda, who liked to have her dramatic effects just as the villagers did, rose to her feet and leaned tragically on the upturned table.

  “We have found them,” she repeated with a sob in her voice.

  “They have been found!” shouted the Mayor. “The donkeys have been found!”

  Immediately the word was shouted from house to house and as if by magic the little square filled with villagers, all clamouring to know the truth.

  “Where are they? Where are they?” asked Papa Nikos. Amanda drew a long shuddering breath and lifted up her head nobly.

  “David and I,” she said in a trembling voice, “went for a swim this afternoon. We swam out to Hesperides. I think you all know it?”

  There was a mutter of acknowledgment from the villagers, hastily stilled so that they would not miss a word of her story.

  “We climbed up the steps to the little terrace by the church,” Amanda continued, dragging out the story as long as she could.

  “Yes, yes,” said the villagers, “we know it, we know it.”

  “And there,” said Amanda dramatically, “to our astonishment, we found all the donkeys and the Mayor’s little horse.”

  “Saint Polycarpos preserve us,” shouted the Mayor. “It is a miracle.”

  “Were there any Communists with them?” asked Papa Yorgo.

  “No,” said Amanda. “No Communists and it seems as though they have been well looked after.”

  “God be praised,” exclaimed Papa Nikos. “If you two golden ones had run into the band of Communists, there is no knowing what they would have done to you.”

  “But we ought to go and fetch them,” said the Mayor. “Fetch them quickly before the Communists return.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” said Amanda, “I’ve left David there. He’ll make sure that nothing happens.”

  “The quicker we have them back the better,” said Papa Nikos.

  “Down to the boats!” cried Papa Yorgo. “Down to the boats to row across and fetch them!”

  So the villagers of Kalanero, led by Amanda, ran and scrambled and tripped and fell down the stony hillside to the tiny port of Kalanero where the small fishing boats were anchored; it lay not far along the coast from Hesperides.

  Here, complete pandemonium ensued; people got their anchor chains entwined, hit each other by accident with oars and, to Amanda’s delight, the Mayor stepped into a boat that was just pushing off and fell into the shallow water. But eventually all the little fishing boats, overloaded with eager villagers, were plying their way across the blue waters towards Hesperides. David, watching them approach the island, was vividly reminded of some pleasure boats that he had seen once at Swanage, bulging with holiday-makers being taken for a trip round the bay. The first boat to grind to a standstill on the shores of Hesperides was the one containing the extremely wet Mayor, and the others were not long in following. The villagers leaped ashore and ran up the steps where they paused dramatically to utter shouts of joy at the sight of their line of donkeys and the Mayor’s little horse, all munching placi
dly.

  “My little horse, my little horse,” wailed the Mayor, tears running down his cheeks.

  He took the unprecedented step of actually throwing his arms round the neck of his biggest donkey and kissing it on the nose. Even Kouzos, who was not noted for his kindness to animals, was observed patting his donkeys surreptitiously, with a broad grin of pleasure on his face.

  “But how did the Communists get them over here? asked Papa Nikos when the excitement had died down a bit. “They must have had a huge vessel to carry all these animals.”