My Family and Other Animals

by Gerald Durrell

  ‘My dear boy, you simply aren’t concentrating this morning,’ he said earnestly. ‘You don’t seem able to grasp the simplest fact. Perhaps you are a trifle overtired? We’ll have a short rest from it, shall we?’

  Kralefsky enjoyed these short rests as much as I did. He would potter about in the kitchen and bring back two cups of coffee and some biscuits, and we would sit companionably while he told me highly coloured stories of his imaginary adventures. But this particular morning he did not get a chance. As soon as we were sitting comfortably, sipping our coffee, I told him all about Pavlo and the man with the talking head and the bear.

  ‘Quite extraordinary!’ he said. ‘Not the sort of thing one expects to find in an olive grove. It must have surprised you, I’ll be bound.’

  Then his eyes glazed and he fell into a reverie, staring at the ceiling, tipping his cup of coffee so that it slopped into the saucer. It was obvious that my interest in the bear had set off a train of thought in his mind. It had been several days since I had had an instalment of his memoirs, and so I waited eagerly to see what the result would be.

  ‘When I was a young man,’ began Kralefsky, glancing at me earnestly to see whether I was listening, ‘when I was a young man, I’m afraid I was a bit of a harum-scarum. Always getting into trouble, you know.’

  He chuckled reminiscently and brushed a few biscuit crumbs from his waistcoat. With his delicately manicured hands and his large, gentle eyes it was difficult to imagine him as a harum-scarum, but I tried dutifully.

  ‘I thought at one time I would even join a circus,’ he said, with the air of one confessing to infanticide. ‘I remember a large circus came to the village where we were living and I attended every performance. Every single performance. I got to know the circus folk quite well, and they even taught me some of their tricks. They said I was excellent on the trapeze.’ He glanced at me, shyly, to see how I would take this. I nodded seriously, as though there were nothing ludicrous in the thought of Kralefsky, in a pair of spangled tights, on a trapeze.

  ‘Have another biscuit?’ he inquired. ‘Yes? That’s the ticket! I think I’ll have one, too.’

  Munching my biscuit I waited patiently for him to resume.

  ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘the week simply flew past and the evening came for the final performance. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I was accompanied by a lady, a young friend of mine, who was desirous of seeing the performance. How she laughed at the clowns! And admired the horses. She little knew of the horror that was soon to strike.’

  He took out his delicately scented handkerchief and patted his moist brow with it. He always tended to get a trifle overexcited as he reached the climax of a story.

  ‘The final act,’ he said, ‘was the lion-tamer.’ He paused so that the full portent of this statement could sink in. ‘Five beasts he had. Huge Nubian lions with black manes, fresh from the jungle, so he told me. The lady and I were sitting in the front row where we could obtain the best possible view of the ring. You know the sort of cage affair that they put up in the ring for the lion act? Well, in the middle of the act, one of the sections, which had not been securely bolted, fell inwards. To our horror, we saw it fall on the lion-tamer, knocking him unconscious instantly.’ He paused, took a nervous sip of coffee and then wiped his brow once more.

  ‘What was to be done?’ he inquired rhetorically. ‘There were five huge, snarling lions and I had a lady by my side. My thoughts worked fast. If the lady was to be saved, there was only one thing I could think of. Seizing my walking-stick, I leaped into the ring and marched into the cage.’

  I made just audible sounds, indicative of admiration.

  ‘During the week when I had been visiting the circus, I had studied the lion-tamer’s method with great care, and now I thanked my lucky stars for it. The snarling beasts on their pedestals towered over me, but I looked them straight in the eye. The human eye, you know, has great power over the animal world. Slowly, fixing them with a piercing gaze and pointing my walking-stick at them, I got them under control and drove them inch by inch out of the ring and back into their cage. A dreadful tragedy had been averted.’

  I said that the lady must have been grateful to him.

  ‘She was indeed. She was indeed,’ said Kralefsky, pleased. ‘She even went so far as to say that I gave a better performance than the lion-tamer himself.’

  Had he, I wondered, during his circus days, ever had anything to do with dancing bears?

  ‘All sorts of animals,’ said Kralefsky lavishly. ‘Elephants, seals, performing dogs, bears. They were all there.’

  In that case, I said tentatively, would he not like to come and see the dancing bear. It was only just down the road, and although it was not exactly a circus, I felt it might interest him.

  ‘By Jove, that’s an idea,’ said Kralefsky. He pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. ‘Ten minutes, eh? It’ll help blow the cobwebs away.’

  He got his hat and stick and together we made our way eagerly through the narrow, crowded streets of the town, redolent with the smell of fruits and vegetables, drains, and freshly baked bread. By dint of questioning several small boys, we discovered where Pavlo’s owner was holding his show. It was a large, dim barn at the back of a shop in the centre of town. On the way there I had borrowed some money from Kralefsky and purchased a bar of sticky nougat, for I felt I could not go to see Pavlo without taking him a present.

  ‘Ah, Pavlo’s friend! Welcome,’ said the gypsy as we appeared in the doorway of the barn.

  To my delight, Pavlo recognized me and came shuffling forward, uttering little grunts, and then reared up on his hind legs in front of me. Kralefsky backed away, rather hurriedly, I thought, for one of his circus training, and took a firmer grip on his stick.

  ‘Do be careful, my boy,’ he said.

  I fed the nougat to Pavlo and when finally he had squelched the last sticky lump off his back teeth and swallowed it, he gave a contented sigh and lay down with his head between his paws.

  ‘Do you want to see the Head?’ asked the gypsy. He gestured towards the back of the barn where there was a plain deal table on which was a square box, apparently made out of cloth.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘and I’ll light the candles.’

  He had a dozen or so large candles soldered to the top of a box in their own wax, and these he now lit so they flickered and quivered and made the shadows dance. Then he went forward to the table and rapped on it with his bear stick.

  ‘Head, are you ready?’ he asked.

  I waited with a delicate prickle of apprehension in my spine. Then from the interior of the cloth box a clear treble voice said, ‘Yes, I’m ready.’

  The man lifted the cloth at one side of the box and I saw that the box was formed of slender lathes on which thin cloth had been loosely tacked. The box was about three feet square. In the centre of it was a small pedestal with a flattened top and on it, looking macabre in the flickering light of the candles, was the head of a seven-year-old boy.

  ‘By Jove!’ said Kralefsky in admiration. ‘That is clever!’

  What astonished me was that the head was alive. It was obviously the head of a young gypsy lad, made up rather crudely with black grease paint to look like a Negro. It stared at us and blinked its eyes.

  ‘Are you ready to answer questions now?’ asked the gypsy, looking, with obvious satisfaction, at the entranced Kralefsky. The Head licked its lips and then said, ‘Yes, I am ready.’

  ‘How old are you?’ asked the gypsy.

  ‘Over a thousand years old,’ said the Head.

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘I come from Africa and my name is Ngo.’

  The gypsy droned on with his questions and the Head answered them, but I was not interested in that. What I wanted to know was how the trick was done. When he first told me about the Head, I had expected something carved out of wood or plaster which, by ventriloquism, could be made to speak, but this was a living head
perched on a little wooden pedestal, the circumference of a candle. I had no doubt that the Head was alive for its eyes wandered to and fro as it answered the questions automatically, and once, when Pavlo got up and shook himself, a look of apprehension came over its face.

  ‘There,’ said the gypsy proudly when he had finished his questioning. ‘I told you, didn’t I? It’s the most remarkable thing in the world.’

  I asked him whether I could examine the whole thing more closely. I had suddenly remembered that Theodore had told me of a similar illusion which was created with the aid of mirrors. I did not see where it was possible to conceal the body that obviously belonged to the Head, but I felt that the table and the box needed investigation.

  ‘Certainly,’ said the gypsy, somewhat to my surprise. ‘Here, take my stick. But all I ask is that you don’t touch the Head itself.’

  Carefully, with the aid of the stick, I poked all round the pedestal to see if there were any concealed mirrors or wires, and the Head watched me with a slightly amused expression in its black eyes. The sides of the box were definitely only of cloth and the floor of the box was, in fact, the top of the table on which it stood. I walked round the back of it and I could see nothing. I even crawled under the table, but there was nothing there and certainly no room to conceal a body. I was completely mystified.

  ‘Ah,’ said the gypsy in triumph. ‘You didn’t expect that, did you? You thought I had a boy concealed in there, didn’t you?’

  I admitted the charge humbly and begged him to tell me how it was done.

  ‘Oh, no. I can’t tell you,’ he said. ‘It’s magic. If I told you, the head would disappear in a puff of smoke.’

  I examined both the box and the table for a second time, but, even bringing a candle closer to aid my investigations, I still could not see how it was possible.

  ‘Come,’ said the gypsy. ‘Enough of the Head. Come and dance with Pavlo.’

  He hooked the stick into the bear’s muzzle and Pavlo rose on his hind legs. The gypsy handed the stick to me and then picked up a small wooden flute and started to play, and Pavlo and I did a solemn dance together.

  ‘Excellent, by Jove! Excellent!’ said Kralefsky, clapping his hands with enthusiasm. I suggested that he might like to dance with Pavlo too, since he had such vast circus experience.

  ‘Well, now,’ said Kralefsky. ‘I wonder whether it would be altogether wise? The animal, you see, is not familiar with me.’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be all right,’ said the gypsy. ‘He’s tame with anyone.’

  ‘Well,’ said Kralefsky reluctantly, ‘if you’re sure. If you insist.’

  He took the bear stick gingerly from me and stood facing Pavlo, looking extremely apprehensive.

  ‘And now,’ said the gypsy, ‘you will dance.’

  And he started to play a lilting little tune on his pipe.

  I stood enchanted by the sight. The yellow, flickering light of the candles showed the shadows of Kralefsky’s little humpbacked figure and the shaggy form of the bear on the wall as they pirouetted round and round, and squatting on its pedestal in the box, the Head watched them, grinning and chuckling to itself.

  10

  The Angry Barrels

  At the tail-end of the summer came the grape harvest. Throughout the year you had been aware of the vineyards as part of the scenery, but it was only when the grape harvest came that you remembered the sequence of events that led up to it: the vineyards in winter, when the vines looked dead, like so many pieces of driftwood stuck in lines in the soil; and then the day in spring when you first noticed a green sheen on each vine as the delicate, frilly little leaves uncurled. And then the leaves grew larger and hung on the vines, like green hands warming themselves in the heat of the sun. After that the grapes started to appear, tiny nodules on a branched stem, which gradually grew and plumped themselves in the sunlight until they looked like the jade eggs of some strange sea-monster. Then was the time for the washing of the vines. The lime and copper sulphate in big barrels would be dragged to the vineyards in little wooden carts pulled by the ever-patient donkeys. The sprayers would appear in their uniforms that made them look like visitors from another planet: goggles and masks, a great canister strapped on their backs from which led a rubber pipe, as mobile as an elephant’s trunk, through which the liquid would run. This mixture was of a blue that put the sky and the sea to shame. It was the distilled blueness of everything blue in the world. Tanks would be filled and the sprayers would move through the frilly groves of vine, covering each leaf, wrapping each bunch of green grapes in a delicate web of Madonna blue. Under this protective blue mantle, the grapes swelled and ripened until at last, in the hot dog-days of summer, they were ready to be plucked and eased of their juice.

  The grape harvest was so important that it naturally became a time of visiting, a time of picnics and of celebrations, a time when you brought out last year’s wine and mused over it.

  We had been invited to attend a wine harvest by a Mr Stavrodakis, a tiny, kindly, wizened little man with a face like that of a half-starved tortoise, who owned a villa and some big vineyards towards the north of the island. He was a man who lived for his wine, who thought that was the most important thing in the world; and so his invitation was delivered with all the solemnity befitting such an occasion and was received with equal solemnity by the family. In his note of invitation, written in bold copper plate, embellished with little frills and flourishes so that it looked like a wrought-iron tracery, he had said, ‘Do please feel free to bring those of your friends that you think might enjoy this.’

  ‘Wonderful,’ said Larry. ‘He’s supposed to have the best cellar in Corfu.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we can go if you want to,’ said Mother doubtfully.

  ‘Of course I want to,’ said Larry. ‘Think of all that wine. I tell you what, we’ll hire a benzina and make up a party.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Margo eagerly. ‘He’s got that marvellous beach on his estate. We must get in some more swimming before the summer ends.’

  ‘We can invite Sven,’ said Larry. ‘He should be back by then. And we’ll ask Donald and Max to come along.’

  ‘And Theodore,’ said Leslie.

  ‘Larry dear,’ said Mother, ‘the man’s only invited us to watch his grapes being pressed or whatever it is they do; you can’t take a whole assortment of people along with you.’

  ‘He says in his letter to bring any of our friends we want to,’ said Larry.

  ‘Yes, but you can’t take a whole circus,’ said Mother. ‘How’s the poor man going to feed us all?’

  ‘Well, that’s easily solved,’ said Larry. ‘Write and tell him that we’ll bring our own food.’

  ‘I suppose that means I’ll have to cook it,’ said Mother.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Larry vaguely. ‘We’ll just take a few chops or something and grill them over an open fire.’

  ‘I know what that means,’ said Mother.

  ‘Well, surely you can organize it somehow,’ said Larry. ‘After all, it seems to me a perfectly simple thing to do.’

  ‘Well,’ said Mother reluctantly, ‘I’ll have a word with Spiro in the morning and see what can be done.’

  The result was that Mother penned a careful note to Mr Stavrodakis saying that we would be delighted to accept his invitation and bring a few friends. We would bring our own food and picnic on the beach, if we might. Mr Stavrodakis sent back another piece of copper-plate topiary expressing himself overwhelmed at our kindness in accepting his invitation and saying that he looked forward to seeing us. He added, ‘Do please come undressed as we are in the family way.’ The phrase puzzled us all considerably – since he was a bachelor of long standing – until we realized he had translated it literally from the French.

  The party finally consisted of Donald and Max, Theodore, Kralefsky, Sven, who had turned up in the nick of time from Athens, Spiro, and the family. We assembled at six thirty in the morning at the sunken steps behind the king’s palace in the
town, where a dumpy, freshly painted benzina waited, bobbing a greeting to us on the tiny ripples. Getting on board took us quite some time. There were the numerous hampers of food and wine, the cooking utensils, and Mother’s enormous umbrella which she refused to travel without during the summer months. Then Kralefsky, bowing and beaming, had to go through the performance of handing Mother and Margo on board.

  ‘Gently now. Don’t stumble. That’s the ticket!’ he said as he escorted them both onto the boat with all the courtesy of a doge handing his latest mistress into a gondola.

  ‘Fortunately,’ said Theodore, peering up at the blue sky penetratingly from under the brim of his Homburg, ‘fortunately it looks as though it’s going to be er… um… you know, a fine day. I’m glad of that, for, as you know, the slightest motion upsets me.’

  Sven missed his footing as he was getting on board and almost dropped his precious accordion into the sea, but it was retrieved from a watery death by Max’s long arm. Eventually we were all on board. The benzina was pushed out, the engine was started, and we were off. In the pale, pearly, early morning haze, the town looked like a child’s town, built of toppling bricks. The façades of tall, elderly Venetian houses of the town, crumbling gently, coloured in pale shades of cream and brown and white and cyclamen pink, were blurred by the haze so they looked like a smudged pastel drawing.

  ‘A life on the ocean wave!’ said Kralefsky, inhaling the warm, still air dramatically. ‘That’s the ticket!’

  ‘Although the sea looks so calm,’ observed Theodore, ‘there is, I think, a slight – almost imperceptible – motion.’

  ‘What rubbish, Theodore,’ said Larry. ‘You could lay a spirit level on this sea and you wouldn’t get a wink out of the bubble.’

  ‘Is Muzzer comfortable?’ inquired Max lovingly of Mother.

  ‘Oh, yes, dear, thank you, quite comfortable,’ she said, ‘but I’m a little bit worried. I’m not sure whether Spiro remembered the garlic.’