The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell Read Free Book Online

funny little love song called ‘Falsehood’. ‘Lies, lies,’ we warbled, shaking our heads, ‘all lies, but it is my fault for teaching you to go round the countryside telling people I love you.’ Then we would strike a mournful note and sing, perhaps, the slow, lilting song called ‘Why Are You Leaving Me?’ We were almost overcome by this one, and would wail out the long, soulful lyrics, our voices quavering. When we came to the last bit, the most heart-rending of all, Agathi would clasp her hands to her great breasts, her black eyes would become misty and sad, and her chins would tremble with emotion. As the last discordant notes of our duet faded away, she would turn to me, wiping her nose on the corner of her head-dress.
    ‘What fools we are, eh? What fools, sitting here in the sun, singing. And of love, too! I am too old for it and you are too young, and yet we waste our time singing about it. Ah, well, let’s have a glass of wine, eh?’
    Apart from Agathi, the person I liked best was the old shepherd Yani, a tall, slouching man with a great hooked nose like an eagle’s, and incredible moustaches. I first met him one hot afternoon when Roger and I had spent an exhausting hour trying to dig a large green lizard out of its hole in a stone wall. At length, unsuccessful, sweaty and tired, we had flung ourselves downbeneath five little cypress trees that cast a neat square of shadow on the sun-bleached grass. Lying there, I heard the gentle, drowsy tinkling of a goat bell, and presently the herds wandered past us, pausing to stare with vacant yellow eyes, bleat sneeringly, and then move on. The soft sound of their bells, and of their mouths ripping and tearing at the undergrowth, had a soothing effect on me, and by the time they had drifted slowly past and the shepherd appeared I was nearly asleep. He stopped and looked at me, leaning heavily on his brown olive-wood stick, his little black eyes fierce under his shaggy brows, his big boots planted firmly in the heather.
    ‘Good afternoon,’ he greeted me gruffly; ‘you are the foreigner… the little English lord?’
    By then I was used to the curious peasant idea that all English people were lords, and I admitted that that’s who I was. He turned and roared at a goat which had reared onto its hind legs and was tearing at a young olive, and then turned back.
    ‘I will tell you something, little lord,’ he said; ‘it is dangerous for you to lie here, beneath these trees.’
    I glanced up at the cypresses, but they seemed safe enough to me, and so I asked why he thought they were dangerous.
    ‘Ah, you may
sit
under them, yes. They cast a good shadow, cold as well-water; but that’s the trouble, they tempt you to sleep. And you must never, for any reason, sleep beneath a cypress.’
    He paused, stroked his moustache, waited for me to ask why, and then went on:
    ‘Why? Why? Because if you did you would be changed when you woke. Yes, the black cypresses, they are dangerous. While you sleep, their roots grow into your brains and steal them, and when you wake up you are mad, head as empty as a whistle.’
    I asked whether it was only the cypress that could do this, or did it apply to other trees.
    ‘No, only the cypress,’ said the old man, peering up fiercely atthe trees above me as though to see whether they were listening; ‘only the cypress is the thief of intelligence. So be warned, little lord, and don’t sleep here.’
    He nodded briefly, gave another fierce glance at the dark blades of the cypress, as if daring them to make some comment, and then picked his way carefully through the myrtle bushes to where his goats grazed scattered about the hill, their great udders swinging like bagpipes beneath their bellies.
    I got to know Yani very well, for I was always meeting him during my explorations, and occasionally I visited him in his little house, when he would ply me with fruit, and give me advice and warnings to keep me safe on my walks.
    Perhaps one