My Family and Other Animals

by Gerald Durrell

  Presently we came to the Countess’s villa, lying deep in the olive groves, approached by a drive lined with tall green-and-pink-trunked eucalyptus trees. The entrance to the drive was guarded by two columns on which were perched a pair of white-winged lions who stared scornfully at Sally and me as we trotted down the drive. The house was immense, built in a hollow square. It had at one time been a lovely, rich, Venetian red, but this had now faded to a rose-pink, the plaster bulged and cracked in places by the damp, and I noticed that a number of brown tiles were missing from the roof. The eaves had slung under them more swallows’ nests - now empty, like small, forgotten, brown ovens - than I had ever seen congregated in one spot before.

  I tied Sally up under a convenient tree and made my way to the archway that led into the central patio. Here a rusty chain hung down and when I pulled it I heard a bell jangle faintly somewhere in the depths of the house. I waited patiently for some time and was just about to ring the bell again when the massive wooden doors were opened. There stood a man who looked to me exactly like a bandit. He was tall and powerful, with a great jutting hawk-nose, sweeping flamboyant white moustaches, and a mane of curling white hair. He was wearing a scarlet tarboosh, a loose white blouse beautifully embroidered with scarlet-and-gold thread, baggy pleated black pants, and on his feet upturned charukias decorated with enormous red-and-white pom-poms. His brown face cracked into a grin and I saw that all his teeth were gold. It was like looking into a mint.

  ‘Kyrié Durrell?’ he inquired. ‘Welcome.’

  I followed him through the patio, full of magnolia trees and forlorn winter flower-beds, and into the house. He led me down a long corridor tiled in scarlet and blue, threw open a door, and ushered me into a great, gloomy room lined from ceiling to floor with bookshelves. At one end was a large fire-place in which a blaze flapped and hissed and crackled. Over the fire-place was an enormous gold-framed mirror, nearly black, with age. Sitting by the fire on a long couch, almost obliterated by coloured shawls and cushions, was the Countess.

  She was not a bit what I had expected. I had visualized her as being tall, gaunt, and rather forbidding, but as she rose to her feet and danced across the room to me I saw she was tiny, very fat, and as pink and dimpled as a rosebud. Her honey-coloured hair was piled high on her head in a pompadour style and her eyes, under permanently arched and surprised eyebrows, were as green and shiny as unripe olives. She took my hand in both her warm little pudgy ones and clasped it to her ample breast.

  ‘How kind, how kind of you to come,’ she exclaimed in a musical, little girl’s voice, exuding an overpowering odour of Parma violets and brandy in equal quantities. ‘How very, very kind. May I call you Gerry? Of course I may. My friends call me Matilda… it isn’t my real name, of course. That’s Stephani Zinia… so uncouth – like a patent medicine. I much prefer Matilda, don’t you?’

  I said, cautiously, that I thought Matilda a very nice name.

  ‘Yes, a comforting old-fashioned name. Names are so important, don’t you think? Now he there,’ she said, gesturing at the man who had shown me in, ‘he calls himself Demetrios. I call him Mustapha.’

  She glanced at the man and then leaned forward, nearly asphyxiating me with brandy and Parma violets, and hissed suddenly, in Greek, ‘He’s a misbegotten Turk.’

  The man’s face grew red and his moustache bristled, making him look more like a bandit than ever. ‘I am not a Turk,’ he snarled. ‘You lie.’

  ‘You are a Turk and your name’s Mustapha,’ she retorted.

  ‘It isn’t… I’m not… It isn’t… I’m not,’ said the man, almost incoherent with rage. ‘You are lying.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You’re a damned elderly liar.’

  ‘Elderly,’ she squeaked, her face growing red. ‘You dare to call me elderly… you… you Turk you.’

  ‘You are elderly and you’re fat,’ said Demetrios-Mustapha coldly.

  ‘That’s too much,’ she screamed. ‘Elderly… fat… that’s too much. You’re sacked. Take a month’s notice. No, leave this instant, you son of a misbegotten Turk.’

  Demetrios-Mustapha drew himself up regally.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Do you wish me to serve the drinks and lunch before I go?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said.

  In silence he crossed the room and extracted a bottle of champagne from an ice bucket behind the sofa. He opened it and poured equal quantities of brandy and champagne into three large glasses. He handed us one each and lifted the third himself.

  ‘I give you a toast,’ he said to me solemnly. ‘We will drink to the health of a fat, elderly liar.’

  I was in a quandary. If I drank the toast it would seem that I was concurring in his opinion of the Countess, and that would scarcely seem polite; and yet, if I did not drink the toast, he looked quite capable of doing me an injury. As I hesitated, the Countess, to my astonishment, burst into delighted giggles, her smooth fat cheeks dimpling charmingly.

  ‘You mustn’t tease our guest, Mustapha. But I must admit the toast was a good touch,’ she said, gulping at her drink.

  Demetrios-Mustapha grinned at me, his teeth glittering and winking in the fire-light.

  ‘Drink, kyrié,’ he said. ‘Take no notice of us. She lives for food, drink, and fighting, and it is my job to provide all three.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said the Countess, seizing my hand and leading me to the sofa, so that I felt as though I were hitched to a small, fat, pink cloud. ‘Nonsense, I live for a lot of things, a lot of things. Now, don’t stand there drinking my drink, you drunkard. Go and see to the food.’

  Demetrios-Mustapha drained his glass and left the room, while the Countess seated herself on the sofa, clasping my hand in hers, and beamed at me.

  ‘This is cosy,’ she said delightedly. ‘Just you and I. Tell me, do you always wear mud all over your clothes?’

  I hastily and embarrassedly explained about Sally.

  ‘So you came by donkey,’ she said, making it sound a very exotic form of transport. ‘How wise of you. I distrust motorcars myself, noisy, uncontrollable things. Unreliable.

  ‘I remember we had one when my husband was alive, a big yellow one. But my dear, it was a brute. It would obey my husband, but it would not do a thing I told it to do. One day it deliberately backed into a large stall containing fruit and vegetables - in spite of all I was trying to do to stop it - and then went over the edge of the harbour into the sea. When I came out of hospital, I said to my husband, “Henri,” I said - that was his name - such a nice, bourgeois name, don’t you think? Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, “Henri,” I said, “that car’s malevolent,” I said. “It’s possessed of an evil spirit. You must sell it.” And so he did.’

  Brandy and champagne on an empty stomach combined with the fire to make me feel extremely mellow. My head whirled pleasantly and I nodded and smiled as the Countess chattered on eagerly.

  ‘My husband was a very cultured man, very cultured indeed. He collected books, you know. Books, paintings, stamps, beer-bottle tops, anything cultural appealed to him. Just before he died, he started collecting busts of Napoleon. You would be surprised how many busts they had made of that horrible little Corsican. Myhusband had five hundred and eighty-two. “Henri,” I said to him. “Henri, this must stop. Either you give up collecting busts of Napoleon or I will leave you and go to St Helena.” I said it as a joke, though, only as a joke, and you know what he said? He said he had been thinking about going to St Helena for a holiday – with all his busts. My God, what dedication! It was not to be borne! I believe in a little bit of culture in its place, but not to become obsessed with it.’

  Demetrios-Mustapha came into the room, refilled our glasses and said, ‘Lunch in five minutes,’ and departed again.

  ‘He was what you might call a compulsive collector, my dear. The times that I trembled when I
saw that fanatical gleam in his eye. At a state fair once he saw a combine harvester, simply immense it was, and I could see the gleam in his eye, but I put my foot down. “Henri,” I said to him. “Henri, we are not going to have combine harvesters all over the place. If you must collect, why not something sensible? Jewels or furs or something?” It may seem harsh, my dear, but what could I do? If I had relaxed for an instant he would have had the whole house full of farm machinery.’

  Demetrios-Mustapha came into the room again. ‘Lunch is ready,’ he said.

  Still chattering, the Countess led me by the hand out of the room, down the tiled corridor, then down some creaking wooden stairs into a huge kitchen in the cellars. The kitchen at our villa was enormous enough, but this kitchen simply dwarfed it. It was stone-flagged and at one end a positive battery of charcoal fires glowed and winked under the bubbling pots. The walls were covered with a great variety of copper pots, kettles, platters, coffee pots, huge serving dishes, and soup tureens. They all glowed with a pinky-red gleam in the fire-light, glinting and winking like tiger beetles. In the centre of the floor was a twelve-foot-long dining-table of beautiful polished walnut. This was carefully set for two with snowy-white serviettes and gleaming cutlery. In the centre of the table two giant silver candelabras each held a white forest of lighted candles. The whole effect of a kitchen and a state dining-room combined was very odd. It was very hot and so redolent with delicious smells they almost suffocated the Countess’s scent.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind eating in the kitchen,’ said the Countess, making it sound as though it were really the most degrading thing to eat food in such humble surroundings.

  I said I thought eating in the kitchen was a most sensible idea, especially in winter, as it was warmer.

  ‘Quite right,’ said the Countess, seating herself as Demetrios-Mustapha held her chair for her. ‘And, you see, if we eat upstairs I get complaints from this elderly Turk about how far he has to walk.’

  ‘It isn’t the distance I complain of, it’s the weight of the food,’ said Demetrios-Mustapha, pouring a pale green-gold wine into our glasses. ‘If you didn’t eat so much, it wouldn’t be so bad.’

  ‘Oh, stop complaining and get on with serving,’ said the Countess plaintively, tucking her serviette carefully under her dimpled chin.

  I, filled with champagne and brandy, was now more than a little drunk and ravenously hungry. I viewed with alarm the number of eating utensils that were flanking my plate, for I was not quite sure which to use first. I remembered Mother’s maxim that you started on the outside and worked in, but there were so many utensils that I was uneasy. I decided to wait and see what the Countess used and then follow suit. It was an unwise decision for I soon discovered that she used any and every knife, fork, or spoon with a fine lack of discrimination and so, before long, I became so muddled I was doing the same.

  The first course that Demetrios-Mustapha set before us was a fine, clear soup, sequinned with tiny golden bubbles of fat, with fingernail-sized croutons floating like crisp little rafts on an amber sea. It was delicious, and the Countess had two helpings, scrunching up the croutons, the noise like someone walking over crisp leaves. Demetrios-Mustapha filled our glasses with more of the pale, musky wine and placed before us a platter of minute baby fish, each one fried a golden brown. Slices of yellow-green lemons in a large dish and a brimming sauce-boat of some exotic sauce unknown to me accompanied it. The Countess piled her plate high with fish, added a lava flow of sauce, and then squeezed lemon juice lavishly over the fish, the table, and herself. She beamed at me, her face now a bright rose-pink, her forehead slightly beaded with sweat. Her prodigious appetite did not appear to impair her conversational powers one jot, for she talked incessantly.

  ‘Don’t you love these little fish? Heavenly! Of course, it’s such a pity that they should die so young, but there we are. So nice to be able to eat all of them without worrying about the bones. Such a relief! Henri, my husband, you know, started to collect skeletons once. My dear, the house looked and smelt like a mortuary. “Henri,” I said to him. “Henri, this must stop. This is an unhealthy death-wish you have developed. You must go and see a psychiatrist.” ’

  Demetrios-Mustapha removed our empty plates, poured for us a red wine, dark as the heart of a dragon, and then placed before us a dish in which lay snipe, the heads twisted round so that their long beaks could skewer themselves and their empty eye-sockets look at us accusingly. They were plump and brown with cooking, each having its own little square of toast. They were surrounded by thin wafers of fried potatoes like drifts of autumn leaves, pale greeny-white candles of asparagus and small peas.

  ‘I simply cannot understand people who are vegetarians,’ said the Countess, banging vigorously at a snipe’s skull with her fork so that she might crack it and get to the brain. ‘Henri once tried to be a vegetarian. Would you believe it? But I couldn’t endure it. “Henri,” I said to him, “this must stop. We have enough food in the larder to feed an army, and I can’t eat it single-handed.” Imagine, my dear, I had just ordered two dozen hares. “Henri,” I said, “you will have to give up this foolish fad.” ’

  It struck me that Henri, although obviously a bit of a trial as a husband, had nevertheless led a very frustrated existence.

  Demetrios-Mustapha cleared away the debris of the snipe and poured out more wine. I was beginning to feel bloated with food and I hoped that there was not too much more to come. But there was still an army of knives and forks and spoons, unused, beside my plate, so it was with alarm I saw Demetrios-Mustapha approaching through the gloomy kitchen bearing a huge dish.

  ‘Ah!’ said the Countess, holding up her plump hands in excitement. ‘The main dish! What is it, Mustapha, what is it?’

  ‘The wild boar that Makroyannis sent,’ said Demetrios-Mustapha.

  ‘Oh, the boar! The boar!’ squeaked the Countess, clasping her fat cheeks in her hands. ‘Oh, lovely! I had forgotten all about it. You do like wild boar, I hope?’

  I said that it was one of my favourite meats, which was true, but could I have a very small helping, please?

  ‘But of course you shall,’ she said, leaning over the great, brown, gravy-glistening haunch and starting to cut thick pink slabs of it. She placed three of these on a plate – obviously under the impression that this was, by anyone’s standards, a small portion – and then proceeded to surround them with the accoutrements. There were piles of the lovely little golden wild mushrooms, chanterelles, with their delicate, almost winy flavour; tiny marrows stuffed with sour cream and capers; potatoes baked in their skins, neatly split and anointed with butter; carrots red as a frosty winter sun, and great tree trunks of white leeks, poached in cream. I surveyed this dish of food and surreptitiously undid the top three buttons of my shorts.

  ‘We used to get wild boar such a lot when Henri was alive. He used to go to Albania and shoot them, you know. But now we seldom have it. What a treat! Will you have some more mushrooms? No? So good for one. After this, I think we will have a pause. A pause is essential, I always think, for a good digestion,’ said the Countess, adding naïvely, ‘and it enables you to eat so much more.’

  The wild boar was fragrant and succulent, having been marinaded well with herb-scented wine and stuffed with garlic cloves, but even so I only just managed to finish it. The Countess had two helpings, both identical in size, and then leaned back, her face congested to a pale puce colour, and mopped the sweat from her brow with an inadequate lace handkerchief.

  ‘A pause, eh?’ she said thickly, smiling at me. ‘A pause to marshal our resources.’

  I felt that I had not any resources to marshal, but I did not like to say so. I nodded and smiled and undid all the rest of the buttons on my shorts.

  During the pause, the Countess smoked a long thin cheroot and ate salted peanuts, chatting on interminably about her husband. The pause did me good. I felt a little less solid and somnolent with food. When the Countess eventually decided that we had rested our inte
rnal organs sufficiently, she called for the next course, and Demetrios-Mustapha produced two mercifully small omelets, crispy brown on the outside and liquid and succulent on the inside, stuffed with tiny pink shrimps.

  ‘What have you got for a sweet?’ inquired the Countess, her mouth full of omelet.

  ‘I didn’t make one,’ said Demetrios-Mustapha.

  The Countess’s eyes grew round and fixed.

  ‘You didn’t make a sweet?’ she said, in tones of horror, as though he were confessing to some heinous crime.

  ‘I didn’t have time,’ said Demetrios-Mustapha. ‘You can’t expect me to do all this cooking and all the housework.’

  ‘But no sweet,’ said the Countess despairingly. ‘You can’t have a lunch without a sweet.’

  ‘Well, I bought you some meringues,’ said Mustapha. ‘You’ll have to make do with those.’

  ‘Oh, lovely!’ said the Countess glowing and happy again. ‘Just what’s needed.’

  It was the last thing I needed. The meringues were large and white and brittle as coral and stuffed to overflowing with cream. I wished fervently that I had brought Roger with me, as he could have sat under the table and accepted half my food, since the Countess was far too occupied with her own plate and her reminiscences really to concentrate on me.

  ‘Now,’ she said at last, swallowing the last mouthful of meringue and brushing the white crumbs from her chin. ‘Now, do you feel replete? Or would you care for a little something more? Some fruit perhaps? Not that there’s very much at this time of the year.’