The Donkey Rustlers

CHAPTER 6 Panic

Never had the village of Kalanero known such a day as this. The villagers returned to the village, still chattering excitedly over Yani’s snake bite and they were just beginning to disperse and go their separate ways when into the village square ran Philimona Kouzos with a face the colour of putty.

“All of you! All of you!” he yelled dramatically. “Witchcraft! Witchcraft!”

He collapsed at one of the café tables and began to sob dramatically. “Witchcraft!”

The word riveted the villagers as no other word could. Even Papa Yorgo (well over a hundred as you will recall) had to drink two ouzos in swift succesion. The villagers gathered round the sobbing Kouzos.

“Tell us, Philimona Kouzos,” they begged, “what is this witchcraft that you are speaking of?”

Kouzos lifted a tear-stained face.

“Last night,” he said between sniffs, “late at night, I heard a noise outside my house. Now I am, as you know, a man of extreme courage.”

So fascinated were the villagers by his story that they did not greet this palpable falsehood with the roar of derisive laughter that would have been normal in the circumstances.

“Taking my gun and lantern,” continued Kouzos, wiping his nose on his sleeve, “I walked out into the night.”

The villagers gasped and crossed themselves. “Suddenly,” said Kouzos, “from behind a tree something leapt out.”

“What was it, Philimona?” inquired Papa Yorgo in a quavering voice.

Kouzos lowered his voice to a thrilling whisper.

“It was Vyraclos,” he hissed dramatically.

There was a rustle of indrawn breath from the crowd which now surrounded Kouzos. Kouzos had actually seen Vyraclos!

“What did he look like? What did he look like?” they asked.

“He looked,” said Kouzos, drawing on his imagination, “like a goat with man’s form, only with the face of a snarling dog and with two great horns. Also he had a long tail with a fork at the end.”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Papa Yorgo, nodding his head. “That’s Vyraclos all right. I remember an uncle of mine on my mother’s side saw him once. That was exactly how he described him.”

“He said, ‘Kouzos, I have come for your soul’,” Kouzos went on.

The villagers gasped again.

“Luckily, as I am a good, honest God-fearing man, I invoked our patron saint so I knew that he could do me no harm.”

“Are you sure,” said Petra, who was the village cynic, “that you didn’t take a little too much wine last night, Philimona?”

Philimona drew himself up with dignity.

“I was not drunk,” he said coldly, “and there’s more to come.”

More to come? The villagers could hardly contain themselves. This was, without doubt, one of the most exciting things that had ever happened in Kalanero.

“What more is there?” they clamoured eagerly.

“This morning,” said Kouzos, “when I went out to get my donkeys, I found that the lock — that fine big one belonging to my father — had been wrenched from the door as if by a gigantic hand, and my donkeys had vanished.”

“Vanished?” asked the villagers.

“Vanished,” said Kouzos. “And now I am a ruined man.” He burst into tears once again and started hammering his fists on the table.

“Vyraclos has ruined me,” he wailed. “Because the good saint wouldn’t let him take my soul, he took my donkeys instead.”

“Are you sure.” asked Petra, “that they haven’t just wandered into the olives?”

“Do you think I haven’t searched?” screamed Kouzos. “Everywhere I have been searching. They have disappeared without trace.”

The villagers looked at each other uneasily, for, what with Yani’s snake bite and one thing and another, they all realised that none of them had checked on their donkeys as yet. Immediately the crowd melted away as they all hurried home to see if their donkeys were safe. But within half an hour they were back in the village square and the clamour of horror and indignation had to be heard to be believed as the villagers all tried to tell the story of their missing donkeys at once.

“Undoubtedly witchcraft,” said Papa Yorgo. “This is where we need the help of the church. Go and wake up Father Nicodemus.”

Father Nicodemus never got out of bed much before twelve o’clock and led a fairly blameless existence. He had spent seventy-five years in the Greek Orthodox Church without having done anything more strenuous than comb his beard and sip the odd ouzo. Now here he was, being hauled out of bed ignominiously, and being forced to give spiritual advice to his parishioners at what amounted, as far as he was concerned, to dawn. By the time the situation had been explained to him by the villagers his head was aching so much that he was forced to have a glass of wine, although it was so early in the morning.

“What can we do?” asked Papa Yorgo.

“Exorcise,” shouted a voice from the crowd.

“What are you going to exorcise?” inquired Papa Yorgo. “The donkeys have gone.”

“But if we exorcise the place where they were,” said Mama Agathi. shrilly, “then maybe Vyraclos will bring them back.”

Father Nicodemus could not help feeling that there was a flaw somewhere in Mama Agathi’s logic, but he could not put his finger on it.

“I am not altogether sure,” he said, “how one does exorcise.”

“You are a priest, aren’t you?” asked Papa Nikos, who had returned from a fruitless endeavour to find his own donkeys. “You should know how to exorcise.”

“I think,” said Father Nicodemus, prevaricating wildly, “I think I have it written down somewhere.”

He tottered back to his house and returned with two impressive sheets of paper, one of which was a peroration which he normally gave on saints’ days, and the other was a list of groceries which he wanted from Melissa, but the villagers were not to know this.

Never in his whole career had he spent such an exhausting two hours. With a candle and incense he was forced to exorcise each and every stable or the place where the donkeys had been tethered. It was not until they reached the Mayor’s house that they became aware of the fact that the Mayor, who was also used to sleeping late, was unaware of the catastrophe that had overtaken the village. As soon as he was apprised of the facts, he rushed round to his own stable and there, to his horror, he found that his donkeys and his horse had been taken as well. Father Nicodemus was in full swing with the incense when the Mayor discovered the notice saying DONKEYS OF THE WORLD UNITE.

“Communists,” gasped Mayor Oizus, growing pale. “It’s Communists.” He tore down the notice and read it out in a trembling voice to the villagers.

“We must have a meeting of the council immediately,” he said.

The council of four, with the Mayor as Chairman, met in the village square and the entire population of Kalanero gathered round to listen to their deliberations and interfere in a helpful sort of way.

“I’m sure it’s witchcraft,” said Papa Nikos. “I remember hearing about a very similar case in Cephalonia many years ago.”

“Don’t be foolish,” said the Mayor, pointing at the notice which he had put on the table in front of him. “It’s obviously Communists. Who else would ask donkeys to unite! In any case, it’s a well-known thing that Vyraclos can’t write.”

“That’s very true, very true,” said Father Nicodemus, who could see that if he did not steer the villagers away from the witchcraft theory he was going to have a very hectic time from then on.

“Yes,” agreed Papa Yorgo, “it is indeed well known that Vyraclos can’t write, so therefore I suppose it must be Communists.”

“But why would they do it!” queried the Mayor plaintively. “Why would they take our donkeys?”

They sat and mused on this baffling problem for some moments.

“It must be a plot,” said Papa Nikos suddenly. “It’s a plot to undermine the agriculture of the village.”

“How do you mean!” asked the Mayor, mystified.

“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” asked Papa Nikos. “Without our donkeys, we can’t gather our food and therefore we are ruined. It’s a typical Communist plot.”

“I’m sure he’s right,” agreed Father Nicodemus.

“It’s possible,” said the Mayor doubtfully. “It’s possible, I suppose.”

“Maybe it’s not just this village,” said Papa Yorgo. “Maybe they’ve done it to every village in the island in order to undermine the economy of Melissa. It’s a well-known fact that Communists do dastardly deeds like this.”

Even the Mayor was a bit shaken at the thought of every donkey in the whole island of Melissa being spirited away by the Communists.

“Well, what are we going to do!” said Papa Nikos.

“Yes, yes,” clamoured the villagers. “What are we going to do?”

The Mayor looked round him helplessly. Never during his term of office had he been faced with such a problem.

“You’re the Mayor,” said Papa Nikos. “You think of something.”

The Mayor knew that he had never been particularly popular and, in fact, had only been elected to office because all four members of the council owed him money. He could see that by now the villagers, panic-stricken, were working themselves into an ugly mood and he sweated more than he had ever sweated in his life before.

“Where,” he asked, “is Menelous Stafili?”

“In bed,” said Papa Nikos, surprised that the Mayor should not have realised this.

“Well, go and get him,” said the Mayor. “This is obviously a case for the law.”

Presently Menelous Stafili shambled into the square doing up the buttons on his uniform and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The whole dreadful plot was explained to him by the Mayor, four council members and two hundred villagers. When he had grasped the essentials, which took some time for he was never at his brightest at that hour of the morning, Menelous Stafili looked at the Mayor.

“Well, Mr Mayor, what do you intend to do?” he asked.

“You lunatic,” snarled the Mayor, going red in the face. “What do you think I got you out of bed for? You’re the policeman. It’s up to you to suggest something.”

Menelous Stafili scratched his head. He had never received promotion, for the simple reason that he had never succeeded in arresting anybody. Apart from that, crime in Kalanero was not exactly on a grand scale. Now, faced with this major felony, Menelous Stafili felt exactly as the Mayor did.

“I suppose,” he said at last, “that we ought to send a telegram to Athens.”

“Fool!” roared Papa Nikos. “What do you think Athens can do?”

“It would be more to the point,” said the Mayor. “if the matter was reported to the Chief of Police in Melissa. It’s well known that Prometheous Steropes is a man of most astute mind.”

“Quite right,” agreed Papa Nikos. “I agree with you entirely. I think that Menelous Stafili as representative of the law in our village, and you as our Mayor, ought to go personally and report the matter to him.”

“Certainly,” said the Mayor, and smiled a smug smile of satisfaction.

“But how are we going to get there?” asked Menelous Stafili. “We haven’t anything to ride on.”

The look of smug satisfaction on the Mayor’s face disappeared in an instant.

“I would suggest, then,” he said hurriedly, “that Menelous Stafili goes on foot and then reports back to us.”

“No,” said Papa Nikos grimly, “I think you both ought to go on foot and then report back to us.”

“Yes,” growled the villagers. “Yes, that’s a very sensible decision.”

So the Mayor, seeing that he was cornered, dressed himself up in his best town suit and Menelous Stafili dismally gave a perfunctory shine to his leggings and they set off towards Melissa.

It was a good ten-mile walk, and whoever had built the road had done it in a rather vague manner, so that it wound to and fro and up and down. The white dust lay on it like a thick layer of talcum powder and the hot sun beat down like a blast furnace. The Mayor and Menelous Stafili tramped on getting dustier and dustier and hotter and hotter with each passing mile. Never in their lives had the usefulness of a donkey been brought home to them so forcibly. At length, half-dead from exhaustion, they staggered into the outskirts of Melissa. They immediately went to the nearest café, revived themselves with suitable quantities of ouzo, and then made their way to the Central Police Station where Inspector Prometheous Steropes had his office.

Inspector Prometheous Steropes took his job very seriously. He was an ambitious man and it annoyed him that there was so little crime in Melissa, for he felt quite sure that, given suitable opportunities, he could display a brilliance for detection which would dazzle his superiors in Athens and earn him swift promotion. However, as it was, his superiors in Athens hardly deigned to acknowledge his existence.

One of his most prized possessions was a set of Sherlock Holmes stories, in handsome red morocco binding, which Major-General Finchberry-White had brought out for him the previous year, and which he had studied assiduously until he knew the “master’s” methods by heart.

He was a tall, lanky man with a long chin as blue and as polished as a gun barrel and a sweeping nose that, he liked to think, made him the very personification of his favourite detective. When he was told that Mayor Oizus and Menelous Stafili, in a pitiable condition, were asking to see him, he was considerably mystified, for he knew Kalanero to be one of the most law-abiding villages on the island. What, he wondered, could they possibly want to see him about? The two still-perspiring men were ushered into his office where the Chief Inspector, in his immaculate uniform, was sitting behind his big oak desk, endeavouring to look as much as possible like Sherlock Holmes interviewing a client. He rose to his feet and gave a little bow.

“Mayor Oizus,” he said, “Menelous Stafili. Please be seated.”

The Mayor and Menelous Stafili sank gasping into chairs.

“It would appear,” said the Chief Inspector, fixing them with a gimlet eye, “that you have walked here.”

“We have indeed,” said the Mayor, mopping his face with his handkerchief. “I never realised what a great distance it was before.”

The Chief Inspector mused for a moment.

“Why,” he asked, “didn’t you come on a donkey?”

“That’s exactly what we’ve come to see you about,” said the Mayor. “We have no donkeys.”

The Chief Inspector frowned. “What do you mean, you have no donkeys?” he inquired. “Kalanero was full of donkeys the last time I saw it. You yourself, if I remember right, possess five.”

“But that’s just the point,” wailed the Mayor. “We none of us possess donkeys any more. The Communists have taken them.”

The Inspector started.

“The Communists,” he said incredulously. “What foolish talk is this?”

“Last night,” explained the Mayor. “some dastardly Communists came to our village and stole all our donkeys and my little horse.”

“Mayor Oizus,” said the Inspector, grimly, “can it be that you are drunk, or that you have taken leave of your senses?”

“No, no,” said Menelous Stafili, “what he says is perfectly true, Inspector. All the donkeys and his little horse have vanished.”

The Inspector picked up a long curved pipe from his desk and tapped it thoughtfully against his teeth, and then rasped it on his tiny black moustache.

“What,” he asked cunningly, “would Communists want with donkeys?”

“It’s a plot,” said the Mayor breathlessly. “It’s a plot to undermine the agriculture of Kalanero. It’s probably only the beginning of a gigantic conspiracy to undermine the agriculture of the whole island.”

The Inspector was visibly impressed by this.

“It could be that you are right,” he said. “But why are you so certain that it’s Communists?”

“Read this,” said the Mayor dramatically, as he slapped the poster saying DONKEYS OF THE WORLD UNITE on the Inspector’s desk.

“Aha!” said the Inspector, delighted. “A clue!”

He picked up an enormous magnifying glass and carefully inspected the poster, both back and front.

“You’re quite right,” he admitted. “It’s undoubtedly the work of Communists.”

“What do you suggest we do?” asked the Mayor. “If we can’t get our donkeys back, the whole village will be ruined.”

“Don’t excite yourself, Mayor Oizus,” said the Inspector soothingly, holding up one hand. “I myself will take charge of this case.”

He called for his clerk and told him to have three policemen at the ready, together with Melissa’s one and only police car, a battered old Ford which the Inspector generally used for trips out to inspect his vineyards. Then, with efficiency that visibly impressed the Mayor and Menelous Stafili, he picked up the telephone and dialled a number. He waited for a moment or so, tapping his pipe against his teeth, his eyes narrowed, looking every inch the determined detective.

“Gregorious?” he said suddenly into the phone. “Prometheous here. Tell me, Gregorious, you remember those two hunting dogs of yours that you offered to lend me? Well, are they any good at tracking? They are, eh! Would they be able to track a donkey? Yes, yes, a donkey. No, I am not fooling. I am trying to solve a crime. You think they would, eh! Well, can you lend them to me? Thanks very much — I’ll come round and collect them straight away.”

So, with great difficulty, the Mayor, Menelous Stafili, the Inspector, three policemen and two large, friendly and happily-panting dogs, were packed untidily into the police car and soon it was bumping its way along the road to Kalanero, where the Inspector hoped his great day of triumph would come.