The Corfu Trilogy (68 page)
Authors: Gerald Durrell
The sea was still and warm, looking as though it had been varnished, with just a tiny ripple patting languidly at the shore. The shingle scrunched and shifted, hot under my bare feet. The rocks and pebbles that made up this beach were incredible in shape and colour, moulded by the waves and the gentle rubbing and polishing one against the other. They had been sculptured into a million shapes. Arrow-heads, sickles, cockerels, horses, dragons, and starfish. Their colouring was as bizarre as their shapes, for they had been patterned by the earth’s juices millions of years before and now their decorations had been buffed and polished by the sea. White with gold or red filigree, blood-red with white spots, green, blue, and pale fawn, hen’s-egg brown with a deep rusty-red pattern like a fern sprawled across them, pink as a peony with white Egyptian hieroglyphics forming a mysterious, undecipherable message across them. It was like a vast treasure trove of jewels spread along the rim of the sea.
I waded into the warm shallows and then dived and swam out to cooler water. Here, if you held your breath and let yourself sink to the bottom, the soft velvety blanket of the sea momentarily stunned and crippled your ears. Then, after a moment, they became attuned to the underwater symphony. The distant throb of a boat engine, soft as a heart-beat, the gentle whisper of the sand as the sea’s movement shuffled and rearranged it and, above all, the musical clink of the pebbles on the shore’s edge. To hear the sea at work on its great store of pebbles, rubbing and polishing them lovingly, I swam from the deep waters into the shallows. I anchored myself with a handful of multi-coloured stones, then, ducking my head below the surface, listened to the beach singing under the gentle touch of the small waves. If walnuts could sing, I reflected, they would sound like this. Scrunch, tinkle, squeak, mumble, cough (silence while the wave retreats) and then the whole thing in different keys repeated with the next wave. The sea played on the beach as though it were an instrument. I lay and dozed for a time in the warm shallows and
then, feeling heavy with sleep, I made my way back into the olive groves.
Everyone lay about disjointedly, sleeping round the ruins of our meal. It looked like the aftermath of some terrible battle. I curled up like a dormouse in the protective roots of a great olive and drifted off to sleep myself.
I woke to the gentle clinking of tea-cups as Margo and Mother laid the cloth for tea. Spiro brooded with immense concentration over a fire on which he had set a kettle. As I watched drowsily, the kettle lifted its lid and waved pertly at him, hissing steam. He seized it in one massive hand and poured the contents into a teapot, then, turning, he scowled at our recumbent bodies.
‘Teas,’ he roared thunderously. ‘Teas is readys.’
Everybody started and woke.
‘Dear God! Must you yell like that, Spiro?’ asked Larry plaintively, his voice thickened by sleep.
‘Tea,’ said Kralefsky, waking up and glancing round him, looking like a dishevelled moth. ‘Tea, by Jove. Excellent.’
‘God, my head aches,’ said Leslie. ‘It must be that wine. It’s got a kick like a mule.’
‘Yes, I’m feeling a bit fragile myself,’ said Larry, yawning and stretching.
‘I feel as though I’ve been drowned,’ said Max with conviction. ‘Drowned in malmsey and then brought back by artificial inspiration.’
‘Must you always massacre the English tongue?’ said Donald irritably. ‘God knows it’s bad enough having thousands of Englishmen doing it, without you foreigners starting.’
‘I remember reading somewhere’ – began Theodore, who had awakened instantly, like a cat, and who, having slept like one, looked as immaculate as though he had not been to sleep at all – ‘I remember reading once that there’s a tribe up in the mountains of Ceylon that speaks a language that nobody can understand.
I mean to say, not even expert linguists have been able to understand it.’
‘It sounds just like Max’s English,’ said Donald.
Under the influence of tea, buttered toast, salt biscuits, watercress sandwiches, and an enormous fruit-cake as damp and as fragile and as rich-smelling as loam, we started to wake up. Presently we went down to the sea and swam in the warm waters until the sun sank and pushed the mountain’s shadow over the beach suddenly, making it look cold and drained of colour. Then we went up to Stavrodakis’ villa and sat under the bougainvillæa watching the sunset colours blur and mingle over the sea. We left Stavrodakis, who insisted on giving us a dozen great jars of his best wine to commemorate our visit, and made our way back to the
benzina
.
As we headed out to sea we left the shadow of the mountain and came into the warm glow of the sun again, which was sinking, smudged blood-red behind the bulk of Pandokrator, casting a shimmering reflection across the water like a flaming cypress tree. A few tiny clouds turned pink and vine-yellow, then the sun dipped behind the mountain and the sky turned from blue to pale green and the smooth surface of the sea became for a brief moment all the magical colours of a fire-opal. The engine throbbed as we edged our way back towards the town, unrolling a white bale of lace wake behind us. Sven played the opening of ‘The Almond Tree’ very softly and everyone started to sing.
‘She shook the flowering almond tree one sunny day
With her soft little hands,
The snowy blossoms on her breast and shoulders lay
And in her hair’s dark strands
The snowy blossoms on her breast and shoulders lay
And in her hair’s dark strands…’
Spiro’s voice, deep, rich, and smooth as black velvet, harmonizing with Theodore’s pleasant baritone and Larry’s tenor. Two flying fish skimmed up from the blue depths beneath our bow, skittered along the water, and were lost in the twilight sea.
Now it was getting dark enough to see the tiny green coruscations of phosphorus as our bow slid through the water. The dark wine glugged pleasantly from the earthenware pitchers into the glasses, the red wine that, last year, had lain snarling to itself in the brown barrels. A tiny wind, warm and soft as a kitten’s paw, stroked the boat. Kralefsky, his head thrown back, his large eyes full of tears, sang at the velvet blue sky, shuddering with stars. The sea crisped itself along the sides of the boat with the sound of winter leaves, wind-lifted, rubbing themselves affectionately against the trunks of the trees that gave them birth.
‘But when I saw my darling thus in snow arrayed,
To her sweet side I sped.
I brushed the gleaming petals from each lock and braid,
I kissed her and I said:
I brushed the gleaming petals from each lock and braid,
I kissed her and I said…’
Far out in the channel between Corfu and the mainland, the darkness was freckled and picked out with the lights of the fishing boats. It was as though a small section of the Milky Way had fallen into the sea. Slowly the moon edged up over the carapace of the Albanian mountains, at first red like the sun, then fading to copper, to yellow, and at last to white. The tiny wind-shimmers on the sea glittered like a thousand fish scales.
The warm air, the wine, and the melancholy beauty of the night filled me with a delicious sadness. It would always be like this, I thought. The brilliant, friendly island, full of secrets, my family and my animals round me and, for good measure, our friends. Theodore’s bearded head outlined against the moon
wanting only horns to make him Pan; Kralefsky crying unashamedly now like a black gnome weeping over his banishment from fairyland; Spiro with his scowling brown face, his voice becoming as richly vibrant as a million summer bees; Donald and Max, frowning as they endeavoured to remember the words of the song and harmonize at the same time. Sven, like a great ugly white baby, gently squeezing the soulful music from his ungainly instrument.
‘Oh, foolish one, to deck your hair so soon with snow,
Long may you have to wait;
The dreary winter days when chilling north winds blow
Do not anticipate!
The dreary winter days when chilling north winds blow
Do not anticipate!’
Now, I thought, we were edging into winter, but soon it would be spring again, burnished, glittering, bright as a goldfinch; and then it would be summer, the long, hot, daffodil-yellow days.
‘Oh, foolish one, to deck your hair so soon with snow,
Long may you have to wait;
The dreary winter days when chilling north winds blow
Do not anticipate!
The dreary winter days when chilling north winds blow
Do not anticipate!’
Lulled by the wine and the throbbing heart of the boat’s engine, lulled by the warm night and the singing, I fell asleep while the boat carried us back across the warm, smooth waters to our island and the brilliant days that were not to be.
Corfu is of such importance to me that its loss would deal a fatal blow
to my projects. Remember this: in the present state of Europe,
the greatest misfortune which could befall me is the loss
of Corfu.
– N
APOLEON
Letter
Dear Mrs Durrell,
It seems at last war can no longer be avoided and I think perhaps you were wise to leave Corfu. One can only hope that we can all meet in happier times when mankind has regained its senses. I will look forward to that.
Should you wish to reach me, my address is c/o The Ionian Bank, Athens.
I wish you and your family the very best of luck in the future.
Love to you all,
Yours,
Theodore
Postcard
Mother,
Have moved to Athens, so keep in touch. Place marvellous. Acropolis like pink flesh in the sun. Have sent my things to you. In a trunk marked ‘3’ you will find book called
An Evaluation of Marlowe.
Can you send it to me? Everyone here wearing tin hats and looking like war. Am buying myself large spear.
Love,
Larry
Letter
Dear Mother,
I have had all my travellers’ cheques pinched by some bloody Italian. They nearly arrested me because I punched him in the snoot. Give me the Greeks any day.
Can you send some more money to me at the Magnifica Hotel, Plaza de Contina, Milan? Will be home soon. Don’t worry.
Love,
Les
P.S. It looks like war, doesn’t it?
Letter
Darling Mother,
Just a hurried note to tell you I’m leaving on the boat on Monday so I should be in England in about three weeks.
Things here are rather hectic, but what can you expect? It never rains but it snows. I think it’s simply disgusting the way the Germans are carrying on. If I had my way I’d tell them.
Will see you soon.
Love to you,
Margo
P.S. I enclose a letter from Spiro. Most odd.
Letter
Dear Missy Margo,
This is to tell you that war has been declared. Don’t tell a soul.
Spiro
This book is for Ann Peters,
at one time my secretary and
always my friend,
because she loves Corfu and
probably knows it better than I do
1
Dogs, Dormice, and Disorder
The unspeakable Turk should immediately be struck out of the question.
– C
ARLYLE
That summer was a particularly rich one; it seemed as if the sun had drawn up a special bounty from the island for never had we had such an abundance of fruit and flowers, never had the sea been so warm and filled with fish, never had so many birds reared their young, or butterflies and other insects hatched and shimmered across the countryside. Watermelons, their flesh as crisp and cool as pink snow, were formidable botanical cannonballs, each one big enough and heavy enough to obliterate a city; peaches, as orange or pink as a harvest moon, loomed huge in the trees, their thick, velvety pelts swollen with sweet juice; the green and black figs burst with the pressure of their sap, and in the pink splits the gold-green rose beetles sat dazed by the rich, never-ending largesse. Trees had been groaning with the weight of cherries, so that the orchards looked as though some great dragon had been slain among the trees, bespattering the leaves with scarlet and wine-red drops of blood. The maize cobs were as long as your arm and as you bit into the canary-yellow mosaic of seeds, the white milky juice burst into your mouth; and in the trees, swelling and fattening themselves for autumn, were the jade-green almonds and walnuts, and olives, smoothly shaped, bright and shining as birds’ eggs strung among the leaves.
Naturally, with the island thus a-burst with life, my collecting activities redoubled. As well as my regular weekly afternoon spent with Theodore, I now undertook much more daring and comprehensive expeditions than I had been able to before, for now I had acquired a donkey. This beast, Sally by name, had been a birthday present; and as a means of covering long distances and carrying a lot of equipment I found her an invaluable, if stubborn, companion. To offset her stubbornness she had one great virtue; she was, like all donkeys, endlessly patient. She would gaze happily into space while I watched some creature or other or else would simply fall into a donkey doze, that happy, trance-like state that donkeys can attain when, with half-closed eyes, they appear to be dreaming of some nirvana and become impervious to shouts, threats, or even whacks with sticks. The dogs, after a short period of patience, would start to yawn and sigh and scratch and show by many small signs that they felt we had devoted enough time to a spider or whatever it was and should move on. Sally, however, once she was in her doze, gave the impression that she would happily stay there for several days if the necessity arose.