Gerald Durrell - The Donkey Rustlers

“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?”