Gerald Durrell - The Picnic and Suchlike Pandemonium

The four young waiters in the dining saloon were no exception and kept up an incessant and noisy warfare with each other like a troupe of angry magpies disputing a titbit. The decor, if that is not too strong a word, followed that of the bar, which we had now discovered was called the Night-Cloob. Fumed oak pervaded all. The brasswork had not been polished with more than a superficial interest in its brightness and the tables were covered with off-white table-cloths covered with the ghosts of stains that some remote laundry in Piraeus had not quite succeeded in exorcising. Mother surreptitiously but determinedly polished all her cutlery on her handkerchief and exhorted us to do the same. The waiters, since we were the only people there for breakfast, saw no reason to disturb their bickering until Larry, tried beyond endurance, bellowed, “ Se parakalo !” in such vibrant tones that Mother dropped three pieces of Margo’s cutlery on the floor. The waiters ceased their cacophony immediately and surrounded our table with the most healthy obsequiousness. Mother, to her delight, found that one of the waiters, an ingratiating young man, had spent some time in Australia and had a rudimentary knowledge of English.

“Now,” she said, beaming at her protégé, “what I would like is a nice, large pot of hot tea. Make sure the pot is warmed and the water is boiling, and none of those tea-bag things that make one shudder when one refills the pot.”

“I’m always reminded of the Bramaputra after an epidemic,” said Larry.

“Larry, dear, please, not at breakfast,” remonstrated Mother, and continued to the waiter, “and then I shall have some grilled tomatoes on toast.”

We sat back expectantly. After years of experience, Mother had never given up a pathetic hope that she would one day find a Greek who would understand her requirements. As was to be expected, the waiter had let Mother’s instructions regarding the tea pass unnoticed. Tea grew in tea-bags, and any attempt to tamper with nature would, he felt, involve dire consequences for all concerned. However, Mother had now introduced into his life a complication, a species of food unknown to him.

“Gill-ed tomatoes?” he queried uncomfortably. “What is?”

“Gilled tomatoes,” echoed Mother, “I mean grilled tomatoes. You know, tomatoes grilled on toast.”

The waiter clung to the one sane thing in the world, toast.

“Madam want toast,” he said firmly, trying to keep Mother on the right track, “tea and toast.”

“And tomatoes,” said Mother, enunciating dearly, “grilled tomatoes.”

A faint bead of perspiration made itself apparent upon the waiter’s brow.

“What is ‘gill-ed tomatoes’, Madam?” he asked, thus bringing the thing full circle.

We had all relaxed around the table having ordered our breakfast, sotto voce , and now we watched Mother launch herself into battle.

“Well,” she explained. “You know, um, tomatoes . . . those, those red things, like apples. No, no, I mean plums.”

“Madam want plums?” asked the boy, puzzled.

“No, no, tomatoes ,” said Mother. “Surely you know tomatoes?”

The gloom on the young Greek’s face lightened. She wanted tomatoes.

“Yes, Madam,” he answered, smiling.

“There,” said Mother, triumphantly, “well then, tomatoes grilled on toast.”

“Yes, Madam,” he said dutifully, and went away into the corner and communed with the Purser.

Greek gesticulations are remarkable for their force and expressiveness. Behind Mother’s back we watched the shadow-play between the waiter and the Purser. The Purser obviously told him in no uncertain manner that if he didn’t know what grilled tomatoes were he must go and ask. Disconsolately, the waiter approached to encounter Mother once again.

“Madam,” he said mournfully, “how you make gill-ed?”

Mother, until then, bad been under the impression that she had made a major breakthrough in the barriers that the Greeks kept putting up against her. She suddenly felt deflated.

“What is ‘gill-ed’?” she asked the waiter. “I don’t speak Greek.”

He looked flabbergasted. It had, after all, been Madam’s idea in the first place. He felt that she was being unfair in now trying to lay the blame at his door. She had asked for “gill-ed”; if she didn’t know what “gill-ed” was, who the hell did?

“Tomatoes Madam wants,” he said, starting all over again.

“On toast,” repeated Mother.

He wandered away moodily and had another altercation with the Purser, which ended in the Purser ordering him sternly to the kitchen.

“Really,” said Mother, “one knows one’s back in Greece because one can’t get anything done properly.”

We waited for the next round. Basically, the rule in Greece is to expect everything to go wrong and to try to enjoy it whether it does or doesn’t.

After a long interval, the waiter came bath with the things we had ordered and plonked a pot of tea in front of Mother and a plate upon which there was a piece of bread and two raw tomatoes cut in half.

“But this is not what I ordered,” she complained. “They’re raw, and it’s bread.”

“Tomatoes, Madam,” said the boy stubbornly. “Madam say tomatoes.”

“But grilled ,” protested Mother. “You know, cooked.”

The boy just stared at her.

“Look,” said Mother, as one explaining to an idiot child, “you make toast first, you understand? You make the toast.”

“Yes,” replied the boy dismally.

“All right, then,” said Mother. “Then you put the tomatoes on the toast and you grill them. Understand?”

“Yes, Madam. You no want this?” he asked, gesturing at the plate of bread and tomatoes.

“No, not like that. Grilled,” said Mother.

The boy wandered off carrying the plate, and had another sharp altercation with the Purser, who was now harassed by the arrival of a lot of Greek passengers, including our fat ladies, all of whom were demanding attention.

We watched the waiter, fascinated, as he put the plate of tomatoes and bread on a table and then spread out a paper napkin with the air of a conjuror about to perform a very complicated trick. Our hypnotized gaze attracted the attention of Mother and Margo and they looked round in time to see the waiter place the bread and the tomatoes carefully in the middle of the napkin.

“What on earth is he doing?” asked Mother.

“Performing some ancient Greek rite,” explained Larry.

The waiter now folded up the napkin with the bread and tomatoes inside, and started across the saloon.

“He’s not bringing them to me like that, is he?” asked Mother in amazement.

We watched entranced as he solemnly made his way across the saloon and laid his burden upon the big oil stove in the centre of it. Although it was spring, the weather was chilly, and so the stove had been lit and was, indeed, almost red hot and giving out a comforting heat. I think we all divined what he was going to do but could not quite conceive such an action being possible. Before our fascinated eyes he placed napkin, bread and tomatoes carefully on the glowing lid of the stove and then stepped back to watch. There was a moment’s pause and the napkin burst into flames to be followed, almost immediately, by the bread. The waiter, alarmed that his novel form of cookery was not being effective, seized another napkin from a nearby table and tried to extinguish the blaze by throwing it over the top of the stove. The napkin, not unnaturally, caught fire too.

“I don’t know what Greek delicacy that is,” said Larry, “but it looks delicious, and cooked almost by the table, too.”

“The boy must be mad,” exclaimed Mother.

“I hope you’re not going to eat them after all that ,” said Margo. “It doesn’t look very hygienic.”