Monkeys in My Garden

by Valerie Pixley

  “Doido is completely harmless,” Dominge assured us the first time we breathed in the terrible scent of manure wafting up our hill and realised it was emanating from a blocky figure lumbering towards us. “Even little children are safe with Doido.”

  Dominge’s reassuring words had no effect on me. One look at Doido’s crafty little pale blue eyes told me that I wouldn’t even leave myself alone with him, let alone a little child.

  O’D, on the other hand, was very impressed with the Algarvean way of treating people who weren’t all there. He went on and on about how humane they were to allow Doido to wander harmlessly around in the fresh country air, caring for his brother Antonio’s animals instead of being incarcerated in an asylum. Even when Doido came onto our land and let his goats eat some of our orange trees right down to a stump, O’D spoke kindly to him at first, explaining that this wasn’t a neighbourly thing to do. Yes, O’D was patient with Doido, very patient until the day we were in the kitchen, drinking tea with O’D’s brother Willy (who, incidentally, at this time looked a lot like the actor Jeremy Irons) when the sound of cowbells alerted us to the fact that something wasn’t quite right.

  Outside, we stood looking down the hill and there was Doido, once again wandering across the stream that divided our land from his brother Antonio’s. This time he was accompanied by about a dozen large black cows and while we watched, he stood idly by as his animals ambled through our bean fields, knocking over the cane supports Francisco had driven into the ground, trampling and squashing tomatoes which were almost ready to pick and crushing and flattening our crisp green Cos lettuce.

  Outraged, O’D ran down the hill and Willy and I saw him talking to Doido and waving his arms around and gesticulating. Then O’D grabbed a cow by the bell hanging around its neck and started walking back across the stream with the animal.

  The sight of O’D walking off with one of his cows was too much for Doido and he raised the thick and heavy wooden staff he always carried with him - raised it high up in the air with both his hands - and brought it down with a powerful blow across O’D’s back. O’D staggered under the blow and then turned around and wrenched the staff out of Doido’s hands and hit him across the legs with it. And Doido threw himself flat on his back on the ground and screamed and kicked his big chunky legs up and down in the air like a child having a tantrum.

  Thinking that Doido had finally got the idea, O’D turned to walk back up to the house, taking Doido’s staff with him. Doido, however, had some ideas of his own and clambered to his feet. He gave O’D’s back a baleful glare and bereft of his staff, bent down to pick up a large rock ...

  “Go and help O’D!” I cried, sensing more violence in the air and looking around for Willy, who had suddenly left my side and for some reason appeared to be sheltering behind a large medronho bush.

  Willy shot an incredulous look at me from his bush. “He’s old enough to look after himself,” he drawled.

  … the rock flew through the air, bowled at O’D with an underarm movement so skilful and forceful that it would definitely have secured Doido a place in the Pakistani cricket team.

  “Look out!” I shouted at O’D.

  My warning came just in time. O’D managed to duck his head but not before the rock skimmed through his hair and scraped his scalp, drawing blood. Completely enraged now, O’D turned towards Doido and Doido, knowing he had gone too far this time, fled across the stream and down the valley until his blocky figure was swallowed up by the cystis bushes.

  “What I can’t understand,” O’D said afterwards, blotting his bloody scalp with a handkerchief, “is how the Algarvean authorities can allow someone as unstable and dangerous as Doido to run around the countryside. Someone like him should be kept locked up in an asylum!”

  News travels fast around the world and Doido’s infamy soon spread far and wide to England, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa and even Zimbabwe. Now, when visitors arrived, they were wary. The snap of a twig or the chirp of a bird in a tree made them jump. “Is that … the Doido?” they would whisper.

  My brother David (who now looks remarkably like the actor Brian Blessed, only shorter) also came to visit and he was nervous too. At bedtime, he closed his windows tight, drew the curtains shut and double-locked himself into his room by not only turning the key in the door but also by pushing a heavy chest of drawers across the floor to reinforce the door and prevent any unauthorised entry.

  “I don’t fancy the thought of being woken up in the middle of the night by a madman hovering over me with an axe,” he told us from behind the door.

  Despite the eccentricities of our neighbours, it was easy to fall into the Algarvean lifestyle and to settle into its slow and relaxing rhythm. Here, time seemed to stand still and everyone did exactly what they wanted to do; drinking wine at any hour of the day and night and sometimes eating restaurant lunches that stretched far into the star-studded evenings with their guitars and fado. There was a certain delightful freedom in living without the social constraints that chained your actions down to what hour of the day it was ... surely this was how humans were supposed to live?

  As O’D had given up working for Zapata when the rig had been decommissioned and towed off to Singapore in 1986, we started a small tourist business on Arrojela to earn a living. It was the obvious thing to do and for a while it looked as if this was going to turn out to be a success. But although we didn’t know it then, of course, our idyllic life in the Algarve was about to end. We had learnt what we were supposed to learn at Arrojela and graduation day was already looming on the horizon.

  One hot summer’s day in June 1991, O’D and I drove over to Faro to visit various tour companies in order to promote our business. Their response was fairly satisfying and after lunch, we made our way back home.

  The afternoon was sweltering and the drive was tedious. We crawled along, caught up in traffic jams and were forced to stop every few minutes. To combat the boredom, I idly flipped through a copy of ‘The Algarve News’ and read the gossip and scandal about the activities of the local ex-pats out aloud to O’D. When our slow progress came to a halt again, just before the bridge over the Portimao River, I looked up from the paper towards the Monchique Mountains and noticed something rather alarming. Enormous and ominous clouds of smoke were billowing up high in the sky, seemingly right over … Arrojela!

  I threw the paper down on the seat. “O’D, look!” I cried, pointing at the smoke. “I hope that’s not our house burning down!”

  “I don’t think so,” he said slowly, examining the sky. “It looks as if that fire’s quite a distance away, beyond the house.”

  Despite his words, as soon as we were able to extricate ourselves from the traffic, O’D put his foot down on the accelerator and we raced home.

  We found Arrojela as calm and peaceful as ever, although the clouds of smoke in the sky seemed much larger and nearer. Later on in the evening, O’D climbed the hill in front of the house to have a better look and when he came back he told me not to worry, as the fire was quite far away from us and in the region of Rasmalho. Even so, I stayed awake late that night, long after O’D had gone to bed and made my last check on the fire at about one o’clock. At that time there was nothing much to see in the black night sky, just a dim red glow behind our hill and I went to sleep, thinking that the danger was past and we were safe.

  It was still dark when I felt O’D shaking my shoulder. I opened my eyes and saw his dim shape standing over me. “Why are you waking me up in the middle of the night?” I mumbled crossly.

  “Get up and go and look out of the front door.”

  Groggily, I climbed out of bed and walked into the sitting room. A weird flickering orange light lit up the room brightly and something outside was making a loud crackling, sizzling, roaring sound. The front door was open and the sight I saw through it was so shocking that my brain stopped working and my mouth went completely dry, leaving my tongue as parched as the Kalahari Desert.

  Fire! Th
e fire I had seen the day before had come to us!

  Speechless, I stood in the open doorway and tried to take in the spectacle of this inferno that was so greedily devouring everything in its path and roaring towards us. A massive sheet of flame had engulfed the entire hill! Hot sap in the trees boiled and spurted. Explosions caused showers of sparks to fly up like fireworks. And although the fire had not yet jumped the stream, fingers of flame were already creeping across from the trees on one side of the stream bank and over into the trees on the land near our house. Soon we would be encircled and cut off from escape!

  Numbly, I assessed our prospects for survival. They appeared to be bleak. Even from the doorway I could feel the fierce heat from the burning hillside blasting my face and body. There was little doubt in my mind as to what was going to happen to us over the next few hours. We were going to be … FRIZZLED!

  I opened my mouth and tried to speak. A hoarse croak like the sound of a frog came out. I tried again.

  “We’re going to die …”

  O’D didn’t even attempt to reassure me or to deny my words.

  As I turned away from the awful sight, I suddenly remembered something that could just possibly bring help to rescue us. The telephone!

  Although the EDP, the Electricity Department of Portugal, had never given us electricity at Arrojela, the TDP, the Telecommunications Department of Portugal, had recently installed a glossy white telephone in our kitchen. This apparently had been a mistake on their part, the disgruntled telephone engineer had told us. A serious bureaucratic blunder, leading to great expense. They had had no idea that they would have to dig 39 holes in the ground in order to plant 39 wooden poles and string three and a half kilometres of telephone line across the hills and valleys to Arrojela, just for one mud brick house in the middle of nowhere. And a house not even boasting the ubiquitous swimming pool!

  I turned back to O’D. “The Fire Brigade … phone the Fire Brigade!”

  The Portimao Fire Brigade told us they knew all about the fire and assured us that the Bombeiros (firemen) were already on their way to us. Amazed but relieved by this unexpected efficiency from a race of people who were not known for their efficiency, we waited for their arrival.

  They never arrived.

  Fortunately, I was married to a man of action and while my mind had been numbed with horrifying visions of everything, including ourselves, being burnt to a crisp, O’D’s mind had made a quick recovery and was now racing with ideas on how to avert this fate.

  Just minutes before the fire consumed the expensive 39 telephone poles and cut Arrojela off from the rest of the country, he made two more phone calls. One call was to his brother, Willy, who was now also living in the Algarve not far from us. The other phone call was to Eddie, a friend who lived in Portimao. When he put the receiver down, he went outside to the workshop and started up the Allen. This was a ferocious petrol powered heavy-duty grass and vegetation mower. He mowed down all the grass and bushes around the house and then he went and sat on top of the water tank and while the fire boiled towards him, he worked frantically, joining water pipes together to make a very long hose.

  Willy was the first to arrive. Clad in his black leathers and black crash helmet, he roared along the burning track to our house on his motorbike. Although he had balked at the thought of tackling the bulky Doido, driving down a dirt road ablaze with a huge fire didn’t faze him one bit.

  Eddie arrived a little while later, on foot and with Stuart, another friend. They had met the Bombeiros at Mrs. Pinto’s blue bar and had been forbidden to drive up to our house in their car. Not only had the Bombeiros no intention at all of coming to our rescue but they had also even closed the road up to our house, telling people it was too dangerous. When Eddie and Stuart heard this, they decided to leave the car at the blue bar and walk up to Arrojela.

  What a welcome sight they were … and how brave!

  The fire rampaged through the hills and valleys of Arrojela all that day. Finally, when it seemed that everything that was going to burn had been burned, we sat down at the table on the verandah. Tired and streaked with black, we drank cold beers to wash out smoke polluted throats and idly watched two small planes in the distance, dumping water on the fire which was now heading off to the north of us.

  “What’s the time?” Willy asked, draining his bottle of Sagres.

  “Almost half past four.”

  He picked up his helmet. “Time I went home.”

  After Willy had roared off on his motorbike, O’D drove Eddie and Stuart down to their car at the blue bar. When he came back, we sat on at the table on the verandah and drank down some more beers. What else was there to do now?

  “When I dropped Ed off at the blue bar, Mrs. Pinto told us that a wood lorry overheated in the Monchique Mountains and started this fire,” O’D told me.

  I stared at the black sooty desolation around us, hideous with the charred, smoking skeletons of leafless trees and the tangled remains of vegetation. It looked as if a bomb had been dropped on top of us. The air smelled sour, acrid. A gust of wind swept across a terrace, turning the hot black ash into a small black whirlwind. There was a tiny explosion nearby and a heap of manure belonging to Old Manel’s plump grey donkey burst into flames.

  “Well,” I said, “this fire has just ruined our business.”

  “It looks like it,” O’D replied.

  “What are we going to do now?” I asked. As well as being ruined, there was a recession going on in the world.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “What a pity you saved the house,” I went on. “If it had burnt down, we would at least have had the insurance money.”

  Another heap of donkey manure exploded and burst into flames … and then another … and another. Unbeknown to us until now, Old Manel’s donkey had been sneaking onto our land under cover of night and trespassing all over it while we slept.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of all this exploding donkey manure setting the house on fire … is there?” I asked, hopefully.

  “No,” O’D told me. “No chance at all.”

  As if one shock wasn’t enough, there were still more shocks in store for me. The first of these happened one evening a couple of weeks after the fire. I opened the telephone book to look for a number and discovered I was completely unable to read the tiny print on its pages! What was going on here?

  A trip to the Opticians in Portimao soon told me what was going on. Inside a huge room, its walls smothered with hundreds of frames for spectacles, a bored, white-coated woman led me over to a grey machine. Ordering me to sit down next to the machine, she told me to look into it and to describe the image I saw. Obediently, I peered into the machine.

  “I see a fat Portuguese farmer with black hair,” I told the woman. “He’s wearing a bright red sweater … he’s sitting on a bright blue tractor … in the middle of a bright green field.”

  Pleased with myself and with the clarity of the image I had seen, I looked up from the machine. There was obviously nothing wrong with my eyesight after all.

  “Wait over there,” the woman told me, pointing to a counter at one end of the room.

  While I waited for the verdict, I examined the large, colourful, advertising posters placed strategically here and there among the frames to persuade us that wearing their brand of glasses would beautify us. These were all giant-sized photographs of beautiful blonde young women wearing glasses and looking thrilled about having bad eyesight and fashionable spectacles attached to their faces. As usual, glamour was being used to sell a product that was far from being glamorous.

  “Who do you think you’re kidding?” I muttered at the larger than life faces, so smoothed and perfected by airbrushing that they hardly looked like real people anymore.

  When the white-coated woman returned, she handed me a slip of paper. It had some writing on it and when I read it, I could not believe what it said.

  My eyesight had deteriorated, it seemed, and I needed
reading glasses. I had old age eyes!

  How was this possible? I’d seen the test picture so clearly. Was there something wrong with the machine?

  “This must be a mistake,” I told the woman.

  She gave me a cold look. “We don’t make mistakes.”

  With plummeting spirits, I let a young man lead me over to a frame-covered wall to choose my new glasses.

  What I didn’t know then and what no one ever told me, was that there was a very simple and inexpensive cure for the deterioration of my eyesight. A cure discovered as long ago as the beginning of the 20th century and which Ophthalmologists and Opticians had totally disregarded and almost, but not quite, buried. The reason for this, of course, is plainly obvious. We live in a money-mad world and the spectacle and lens industry is worth billions.

  Unaware that I was being sent down a path that would almost lead me to blindness, I chose a pair of frames. Frames for the reading glasses I would use for the next ten years until an extraordinary set of circumstances in a Mozambican forest (set in train by a Vervet monkey and the Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe!) introduced me to a long-dead old American Ophthalmologist. Yes, it’s true. Real life IS stranger than fiction.

  Well, it took me quite a while to get adjusted to my new reading glasses. I hated them, of course, and oh, what a nuisance they were! I was always losing them and leaving them in supermarkets or sitting on them or dropping them on the tiled floor.

  Apart from the nuisance factor of having to wear glasses for reading, I soon began to notice something else which was far more disturbing. Within a few months of using my new reading glasses, I discovered that I now not only had a problem reading small print without glasses but I was also finding it difficult to read the normal print in books, magazines and newspapers without glasses. An uneasy suspicion began to form in my mind that the glasses were actually causing my normal eyesight to deteriorate even faster than it had been doing naturally. Something was wrong but I couldn’t find out what this was and anyway, there were far more serious things to think about.