The Donkey Rustlers

CHAPTER 3 Malevolence of a Mayor

Under the olive trees it was nearly dark and the children could hear the musical calls of the Scops owls.

“I wonder what it is Yani wants to tell us!” said Amanda.

“I think it’s about his father,” said David.

“But his father died last year. It can’t be that.”

“I still think it’s something to do with his father,” said David stubbornly.

They made their way deeper and deeper into the dark olive groves where the trees crouched weirdly. their leaves whispering surreptitiously in the evening breeze. But there was no sign of Yani and so presently the children paused and stared about them.

“Where d’you think he is?” asked Amanda.

“Oh. I expect he’ll be along soon,” said David.

At that moment from behind the bole of a gigantic olive Yani leapt out at them suddenly.

“Watch out!” he hissed. “I’m the Devil!”

He grinned at the fright he had given them and then said to Amanda, holding out his cupped hands: “Turn round, I’ve got a present for you.”

She turned round and Yani scattered from his hands several dozen fireflies on to her golden hair, where they gleamed like emeralds.

“You are a fool, Yani,” said Amanda. impatiently shaking her head. “It’ll take me ages to get them out without killing them.”

“Leave them in, then,” suggested Yani. “They suit you.”

Who’s that behind that tree? asked David suddenly. Yani looked quickly over his shoulder.

“Oh, that’s all right, that’s only Coocos,” he said and then called to the boy to come and join them.

Coocos shambled forward, removed his bowler hat and bowed to Amanda, placed the little cage containing his goldfinch on the ground and then squatted happily down with the children.

What have you got to tell us? asked Amanda.

“Well,” said Yani, “it’s about my father.”

“There you are,” said David in triumph, “I knew it was.” “Oh, be quiet,” said Amanda impatiently, “and let Yani tell us.”

“You see, it was not until after my father died,” Yani explained, “that I discovered he had borrowed eighteen thousand drachma from Niko Oizus.”

“What! The Mayor! Old oily Oizus?” said Amanda horrified. “I wouldn’t have trusted him in any business deal?

“Yes, but then he is the richest man in the village and the only man who could have lent my father that sum of money,” said Yani. “Now, as you know, my father left me the vineyards and the fields and the little house we had. This is all I possess. I have been working it, with the help of Coocos here, for the past year. It doesn’t make me a profit, but it makes me enough to live on. But now the Mayor is insisting that I pay him back the eighteen thousand drachma or else he will take my vineyards and my fields and my house away from me as repayment of the debt. And where am Ito find eighteen thousand drachmM I have a cousin in Athens, and I wrote to him asking if he could help, but he is a poor man himself and he has also been ill. So, unless I can do something very quickly, I am going to be completely ruined.”

Amanda had been bristling like an angry cat while Yani told this story and now she exploded.

“That filthy, misbegotten toad,” she exclaimed furiously. “That oily, slimy old hypocrite with his pot belly. I have never liked him and I like him even less now. Why don’t we go and burn his house down? It would serve him right.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said David placidly. “It’s no good getting excited like that We have got to think things out sensibly.”

“I know,” said Amanda excitedly, “we could ask Father for the money.”

“That’s no good,” said David scornfully. “You know Father’s motto is ‘never a borrower or a lender be’.”

“Yes, but he’d do it for Yani,” said Amanda. “After all, Yani’s our Mend.”

“If he won’t lend any money to me,” said David bitterly, “he’s certainly not going to lend it to Yani. So that idea’s no good.”

“We must think of something,” said Amanda.

“Well, why don’t you shut up and stop shouting and think?” inquired David.

They sat in a group and watched the fireflies winking in Amanda’s golden hair and thought and thought.

“The thing to do,” said David at length, “is to get some sort of hold over the Mayor so that we can make him see sense. So he’ll realise that it’s impossible for Yani to pay back the eighteen thousand drachma all at once, though he might be able to do it gradually over the years.”

“That’s all very well,” said Amanda, “but what sort of hold?”

“I know, his third cousin on his wife’s side is supposed to have had an affair with a married man,” said Yani helpfully. “Would that be any good?”

“Not with a man like Oizus,” said Amanda, scornfully. “I shouldn’t think he cares what his cousins do.”

“No, it’s got to be something better than that,” said David, “and it’s got to be something foolproof because if we don’t pull it off, we’ll muck up the whole thing and make it even worse for Yani.”

“I know,” exclaimed Amanda suddenly. “Let’s kidnap his wife.”

“What’s kidnap?” inquired Yani, puzzled.

“She means,” David explained, “to catch the Mayor’s wife and take her and hold her somewhere and then ask for money before we return her. I think it’s a stupid idea.”

“Well, you haven’t put up any ideas yet,” said Amanda, “and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible.”

“I don’t think it would work, Amanda,” said Yani sorrowfully. “For one thing, she’s very big and fat and it would be difficult for us to carry her, and for another thing, I think the Mayor would be only too happy to get rid of her. And if we have got the Mayor’s wife and he doesn’t want her back, it’s going to be a great problem, because it’s a well-known fact that she eats more than anybody else in the village.”

“Anyway, you just can’t go round kidnapping people,” David pointed out. “It’s against the law.”

“Bother the law,” said Amanda. “Anyway, isn’t what Oizus is doing to Yani against the law?”

“No,” said David, “it’s called foreclosing and it’s quite legal.”

“Oh,” said Amanda, somewhat dampened by her brother’s erudition. “Well, anyway, I don’t see why we can’t kidnap the Mayor’s wife. After all, there’s practically no law up here anyway.”

“There’s Menelous Stafili,” said David.

Amanda gave a little crow of laughter in which Yani joined, for it was a well-known fact that the local policeman was far too kind-hearted to arrest anybody, and in any case over the years he had worked with methodical intensity on the art of being lazy, so that it was with great difficulty one could get him out of bed should there be any dire emergency that required the enforcement of law and order.

“Well, if he’s the only law we’ve got to worry about,” Amanda giggled, “I should think we could kidnap the whole village and get away with it.”

“Yes, but I don’t think the Mayor’s wife is a suitable sort of thing,” David said gravely.

“I know,” said Amanda. “We’ll ask Father.”

“We won’t do anything of the sort. You know he would immediately put a stop to anything like that.”

“I don’t mean tell him, you chump,” said Amanda impatiently. “Just find out his views generally.”

“I don’t see how you are going to do that,” said David, “without telling him.”

“You leave it to me,” said Amanda. “I am more subtle than you are. Anyway, we’d better be getting home to supper now, Yani. Can you come out to Hesperides with us to-morrow morning and we’ll discuss the matter further? In the meantime I’ll try and find out what my father thinks.”

“All right,” said Yani, “I’ll meet you down on the beach in the morning.”

The children walked back to the villa arguing vehemently, in undertones, about the pros and cons of kidnapping. When they got back they found the big brass oil lamps had been lighted and were casting a pool of golden light through the windows and on to the terrace where the supper table had been laid.

“Ah, there you are, dears,” said Mrs Finchberry-White. “I was just coming to look for you Agathi says supper’s ready. At least, that’s what I think she says, because your father refused to come into the kitchen and discuss it with her.”

“With two women in the house,” rumbled the General, puffing meditatively at his pipe. “I really don’t see why it is incumbent upon me to go into the kitchen and discuss the sordid details of what we are going to eat.”

“Quite right, Father,” said Amanda, smiling at him sweetly. “you just sit there. I’ll go and attend to everything.”

“You are an idiot,” whispered David, following her into the kitchen where she was supervising Agathi.

“Why?” asked Amanda.

“Well, you are overdoing the sweet-little-woman stuff,” said David. “If you’re not careful Father will smell a rat.”

“Nonsense,” said Amanda. “You just wait and see.”

They sat down to their meal on the terrace and ate for some moments in contented silence.

“Did you paint well to-day, dear?” inquired Mrs Finchberry-White of her husband; she had long ago given up all ideas of her husband becoming a true painter and so now discussed his painting rather as though it was an ailment.

“Another masterpiece,” admitted the General, “This, by the way, is a remarkably good stew.”

“Thank you, dear,”said Mrs Finchberry-White, delighted, though she had played absolutely no part in the organisation of the food.

“Tell me, Father,” asked Amanda, “if you could paint as well as Rembrandt, what would you do?”

“I should be exceptionally pleased,” said the General.

“No. What I mean is, if you suddenly found you could paint as well as Rembrandt, would you sell your pictures?”

“Of course,” said the General in astonishment.

“Yes, but would you pretend that they were Rembrandts that you had discovered in the attic?” asked Amanda,

David was getting increasingly alarmed and mystified by his sister’s somewhat bizarre approach to the problem in hand.

“If I pretended they were real Rembrandts,” said the General thoughtfully, “it would be illegal, so I should have to sell them under my own name. I might, of course, do it under a pseudonym such as Rembranta, for example. But otherwise the whole thing would seem like fraudulent conspiracy.”

“Why are some things considered crimes and other things not?” asked Amanda.

“That, my dear,” said the General, “is a problem that has been confusing both religious sects and philosophers throughout the ages, so I find myself at this juncture, full of stew, unable to give you a quick answer.”

“I know,” said Amanda, “the crimes which hurt people, you can understand why they are bad, but there are other things which don’t necessarily hurt people, but yet are still considered to be crimes.”

“There are times,” said the General resignedly, “when you sound almost as incomprehensible as your mother.”

“Well,” said Amanda, waving her fork about, “take. Um . . . take kidnapping, for example. Providing you don’t hurt the victim, would you consider kidnapping a crime?”

The General took a large mouthful of food and chewed it thoughtfully while turning the question over in his mind. “In my considered opinion,” he said eventually, “next to murder, rape, torture and voting for the Labour Party, there is no worse crime.”

David looked at his sister with a self-satisfied air. “Anyway,” said the General, pushing his chair back from the table and pulling his pipe out of his pocket, “why this sudden interest in the more unseemly activities of the human race? You don’t, I trust, intend to take up cat burglary or some similar occupation in the near future?”

“No,” said Amanda, “I was just interested. You always told us that when in doubt we were to ask you.”

“The trouble is,” explained the General, “that whenever you ask me I find myself in some doubt too.”

With his empty pipe, he beat out a rapid and complicated rhythm on his aluminium leg.

“Henry, dear, must you do that?” inquired Mrs Finchberry-White.

“Wattusi drum rhythm,” explained the General. “They always play it before they attack.”

“It’s very interesting,” said Mrs Finchberry-White doubtfully, “but I don’t think you ought to do it at table. It sets a bad example to the children.”

“I see absolutely no connection whatsoever,” said the General, “since neither of them smokes and neither of them possesses an aluminium leg.”

“Yes, but when I was a gal,” said Mrs Finchberry-White, “gentlemen did not do those sort of things at table.”

“I,” said the General firmly, “am no gentleman. You knew that when you married me and you have spent twenty unsuccessful years endeavouring to convert me into one. I beg that you will desist from this Sisyphus-like struggle.”

The children left their parents wrangling amicably at the table and made their way up to bed.

“I told you kidnapping would be no good,” said David as they climbed the creaking wooden stairs, bent and warped with the arthritis of many winters.

“Well, we’ll think of something,” said Amanda firmly. “We’ve simply got to solve this problem. We can’t let that horrible fat Oizus take all Yani’s land away from him. After all, he’s only got about two acres and it’s barely enough to support him.”

“I know that,” said David. “But I keep telling you, it will have to be a good idea because if we muck it up it will make it worse for Yani,”

“I,” said Amanda with great dignity, “will think of something in the morning.”

She carried her oil lamp into her bedroom as regally and as beautifully as a princess and closed the door.

“I don’t envy the man who marries you,” David shouted as he made his way down the corridor to his own room. Amanda opened her door.

“I shouldn’t think you would get anybody to marry you,” she replied and then closed it. David tried to think up a suitably cutting answer to this, but could not, so he decided to go to bed and work on his lizard and cart problem.

The following morning the children met Yani down on the golden beach and together they swam slowly out to Hesperides, pausing now and then to dive down to the sea bottom to examine a strange fish or a black sea-urchin that lay curled like a hibernating hedgehog in a rock crevice in the shallow water. They landed on the tiny island and made their way up the steps, leaving black, wet footprints that were soon dried by the sun. On the terrace at the top they spread themselves like starfish round the small well, and then concentrated once more on Yani’s problem.

“My father says,” explained Amanda, “that kidnapping is a very bad crime and so therefore we cannot kidnap the Mayor’s wife.”

“This gives me great joy,” said Yani, “for, as I told you, she would be very heavy to carry, and she eats like three pigs.”

“I was thinking last night,” said David, “that none of the village really like Oizus, do they?”

“No,” said Yani, “as a matter of fact they all dislike him very much. But he’s in as Mayor for four years, and so they have got to put up with him. What can one do?”

“If we could do something,” said David, “that would turn the village against him, this might make him see reason.”

“Yes, but what?” asked Yani.

The children lay and racked their brains. Presently Yani rose to his feet and grinned down at Amanda, lying golden and beautiful in the sun.

“Would you like a drink?” he inquired.

“A drink?” she asked. “From where?”

“From the well,” said Yani, his eyes sparkling with laughter.

“I don’t think so,” said Amanda grimly. “I’ve no particular desire to get typhoid.”

“Ah, no,” said Yani. “Look, I’ll show you.”

He went to the well and threw back the great iron lid that covered it. Then he hauled on the rope. There was a splashing and a gurgling and a clanking noise and out of the cool depths of the well he pulled a bucket in which reposed some bottles of lemonade, From under a stone at the side of the well he pulled out an opener, removed the metal cap from a bottle and handed it to Amanda with a flourish.

“But how did these get here?” asked Amanda, bewildered.

Yani grinned his broad and attractive grin.

“I swam over with them this morning,” he said, “very early and put them down the well so that they should be cool. So now you won’t get typhoid, eh?”

“You are sweet, Yani,” said Amanda and her eyes filled with tears. “I wish we could think of something to do to help you.”

Yani shrugged philosophically.

“If you can’t, you can’t,” he said, “But at least you have tried, That shows that you are my friends.”

Amanda drank her cool think and then lay back in the sun, her mind busy with Yani’s problem, while David and Yani wrangled over the problems of lizards pulling a cart.

Distant sounds were wafted out to the tiny island from the mainland of Melissa: the tinny voice of one old peasant woman greeting another; the sound of a young rooster practising, rather ineffectually, his first attempts at crowing; the barking of a dog and then the familiar, lugubrious sounds of a donkey braying.

Amanda sat up suddenly.

“Shut up,” she hissed at the two boys. “Listen.”

They stopped their conversation and listened patiently for a second or so, but all that could be heard was the mournful braying of the donkey.

“What are we supposed to be listening to?” asked David at length.

“That,” said Amanda, with a beatific smile spreading over her face as the last mournful notes of the braying ceased.

“But that was only a donkey,” said Yani, puzzled.

“Only a donkey,” said Amanda. “You say only a donkey? That is the solution to your problem.”

“What are you talking about?” asked David irritably. “How can a braying donkey solve his problems?”

Amanda swung round on them, her face flushed, her eyes almost black.

“Don’t you see, you fish brains?” she said. “We have been trying to think of something that will turn the village against the Mayor, and that’s it.”

“But how,” said Yani, bewildered, “can a donkey turn the village against the Mayor?”

Amanda sighed the short exasperated sigh of a woman who is dealing with the foolishness of men.

“Listen,” she said. “All the fields of the village lie down below the hillside on the flat country. Now, how do people work those fields and gather their crops and then carry them to the village?”

“By donkey, of course,” said Yani, puzzled.

“Well, there you are,” said Amanda triumphantly. “Remove the donkeys and you paralyse the entire village and you cannot call it kidnapping, because it’s donkeys that you are taking.”

“What a beautiful idea,” said Yani, starting to laugh.

“I don’t know that it’s a very sensible one,” said David, “We will have to think about it.”

“I don’t know why you always have to think about things,” said Amanda, “Why don’t you do them?”

“But what is your idea, anyway?” asked David.

“I will tell you,” said Amanda and she leaned forward with her eyes sparkling.