Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance (17 page)

Perhaps the wine was compensation for hitting my head a terrific crack on an overhanging branch while tying up Gaithuri the previous evening. I suppose I was unconscious for one second. Just long enough to send me plunging over a five foot drop which was the first step down a precipitous gorge. Fortunately, I ended up wedged in the inverse apex of two boulders whence the mayor, aided by his wife and three children, was able to extract me more or less intact. I wondered, as I have often enough wondered before, why those boulders were just in the right place.

Now let's try that once more: “She says sises by the sheshaw…”

Clip-clop, clip-clop, clippety-clop, clip-clop…

That was the sound I had been living with for weeks past but which, the map showed me, I would only have to endure for a few more days of walking. It was the patter of my donkey's hooves on the seemingly eternal asphalt of my westward journey along the north coast of Crete.

It could become a bit monotonous but there were often times when I found it friendly and comforting – the patter not the asphalt.

There was one day of national-road marching, my thoughts miles away from my feet, when I became aware of a sudden silence and strained my ears and all my other senses to identify it. Equally suddenly I realised what it was: there was no clip-clop behind me.

At the same time came the knowledge that there was no rope in my hand either and I wheeled round fearful of some small disaster my wool-gathering had brought about.

Forty yards behind me Gaithuri was standing motionless on the edge of the tarmac, the lead rope hanging loose in front of her and two erect ears exclaiming her astonishment at my receding back.

I was grateful for the early training which made all Greek donkeys obedient to the bridle, rein or rope when it was let fall in front of them – the signal to halt and stay put. In Gaithuri's case she was often more obedient to the dangling rope than to the taut one when I was trying to get her to do something.

As I walked back, a little sheepishly, to rejoin her I studied her expression for any sign of joy or sorrow. It
was unrevealing of anything but mild surprise and a touch of resignation but she managed somehow to convey the impression that she was quite prepared to just stand there and watch me walk out of her sight and, for that matter, out of her life.

And that, I told her, brusquely and untruthfully, is all right with me.

This constant, repetitive clip-clopping on the tarmac of the highway had brought a problem. Gaithuri had shown increasing signs of footsoreness and my own opinion about it was confirmed by a vet I consulted on the approaches to Chania.

He took only a two-second look at her hooves and pronounced: “Too much asphalt.” He went on to tell me that I must give her a rest for a few weeks on a soft surface.

So that was what I was doing. I had found some soft earth in an olive grove on the side of a mountain above Souda Bay (where, in 1941, I watched German Stukas sink a British battleship). There was grazing under the trees and shade from the scorching sun and a deep well from which I could haul up buckets of water.

Poised there on my plateau above the sea while I waited for Gaithuri's feet to get better, I could look back eastward for a considerable distance along the coast I had already travelled.

As I saw cape and bay and island succeeding each other until they disappeared imperceptibly where sea and earth and sky blended in a haze of infinity, it was time to capture transient moments of experience and to remember some of the human beings who peopled them as I walked through 600 kilometres of Cretan coastline.

One especially recurred in my memory…

There was an afternoon way back in late January on a remote road in a remote corner of the south-east when I was startled to hear the rumble of an approaching truck behind me, startled because it was the first internal combustion engine I had heard in two days. I dragged the donkey off the road as a big, square contraption came lumbering up.

It looked like a do-it-yourself caravan but I was even more surprised at the unmistakably English middle-aged couple on the front seat. An impression confirmed by the GB plate at the rear.

They gesticulated towards Gaithuri and gave me their thumbs-up signs of approval as they passed and disappeared in their small cloud of dust. I was a little disappointed that they did not stop; I hadn't spoken a word of English for three weeks.

An hour later, as I plodded slowly on into the afternoon and evening, I saw the same caravan parked by a stream and two people waiting for me at the side of the road. The man held out his hand and with a quickly identifiable burr in his voice, said:

“My name's Jim and this is my wife. We're from Bristol.”

“Come and have a cuppa,” said Mrs Jim. A few minutes later with Gaithuri tethered, I was inside their mobile home, put together, as I had suspected, by Jim and in which all six feet three inches of me could stand upright – enjoying a sumptuous West Country afternoon tea.

All these miles and months later every detail of it.

The clink of gleaming cups and saucers and plates, the burbling kettle, Twinings Ceylon tea being spooned into a brown earthenware pot (one for each of us and one for the pot), fresh bread, Irish butter and cheese from the fridge, strawberry jam, home-made pickled onions and a jar of Branston pickle.

I couldn't remember when I had last had such a feast and could not imagine when I would have another one like it. Not unless I met that GB caravan on some other remote road. I'd be looking out for it.

Because Ioannis (John) was the most popular Christian name among Greeks, the festival of John the Baptist – which they celebrated as their name-day – was one of the country's major religious events.

It certainly seemed to me that most of the Ioannises of Greece and Crete had come together at the tiny church of St. John buried in the mountain wilderness that was the peninsula forming one of the horns on the bull's head of western Crete.

The previous evening I and Gaithuri had wandered a little wearily into the village of Rodopou which brings the tarmac to an end on a branch of the great east-west highway. There was no way of getting unnoticed past the peopled cafes and
tavernas
and, anyway, I had to make my formal enquiries: “Where can I tie up my donkey? Where can I get some water? Can I buy some hay here for the donkey? Is there a tree I can sleep under?”

Inevitably I got an invitation to relax while the machinery of Cretan hospitality goes into silent invisible action.

I had never yet been able to spot who gave the original instructions. The donkey was temporarily ignored unless I did something pretty positive about it. They plainly found it puzzling that I should show so much concern for Gaithuri's immediate welfare. Maybe she did, too, after her earlier upbringing.

In Rodopou the water question was superfluous. The town's water supply came from three huge wells in the main square and each of them was occupied by the evening gossip of pitcher-burdened women. It was a scene straight from the Bible.

So, with the donkey safely tethered under a mulberry tree, its thirst quenched and with the promise of some grain to come, I could turn my attention to the glass of wine and saucer of olives that had materialised at the bidding of some anonymous presence. I drank their health in, by now, familiar Greek phrases and, as usual, they were surprised and pleased at my fluency.

“Are you going to the feast of St. John?” they asked.

I needed to carry an almanac around with me to keep track of Greek feast days. I shook my head. It was the first I'd heard of it.

“But there will be 7,000 people there tomorrow night. It is something for you to see now that you are here.”

This was startling enough for me to provoke a general discussion during which I discovered that every year a pilgrimage took place to this remote little church some six or seven miles north of Rodopou. Sitting in a village
taverna
, as I was, with most of the male population grouped around me and all the females at the wells, 7,000 seemed an unacceptable number and I put it down to a bit of Greek hyperbole.

“But, why,” I asked, “do so many people come to such a small church in such wild country?”

“Because of the miracles.”

“What miracles?”

“The healing miracles. Rheumatism. Pneumonia.”

These, incidentally, are proper Greek words though pronounced a little differently.

“And bad heart.”

“And broken legs.”

“And blindness.”

Everybody was intent on making his miraculous
contribution. For me, this was a case of seeing is believing and I announced my intention of going to the church early next morning.

This seemed a suitable opportunity to murmur something about a resting place for the night. They made, as I expected, the gestures that meant that everything was in hand and that I should have another glass of
krasi
.

Ten minutes later, a boy arrived on a bicycle and handed a key to the man sitting beside me at the table.

“Come,” he said, “let us go to your room.”

The next morning, we visited the church of St. John, the residence of the miracle worker. As I began the steep zigzag descent down the seventy degree slope to the valley floor I couldn't help reflecting, a little cynically, that it would need one miracle to get the maimed and the halt and the blind down to the church and an even greater miracle to get them all back up again.

My cynicism was not destined to last long.

Even as I started down with a reluctant Gaithuri a massive ten tonner pulled into a cleared space at the top of the pass and unloaded its cargo of pilgrims.

They came down the path behind me – a complete cross section of Cretan domestic life from grandparents to grandchildren and including a few, I could see, of an about-to-be-born generation. To be a complete cross section it had to include their goats and sheep – the former for their daily milk supply, the latter for dinner. For clearly they intended to spend the night.

The trickle, which began in the morning, swelled during the day to a continuous torrent – a human and
animal cascade that made me grateful for my early arrival and the adequate tree that I was able to expropriate for myself plus a shady annexe for Gaithuri.

In a few more hours, big tarpaulin-covered wooden frameworks had emerged magically from the barren earth with charcoal fires and crates of beer and wine to give them their sudden personality as
tavernas
. On the hillsides, tents and canopies erupted like mushrooms. By midday there were the 7,000.

Shortly after noon I wandered over to the church in search of information and found six priests arranged in a sort of pecking order around a luncheon table.

As I had secretly hoped I was invited to share their meal, to discover, among mouthfuls of fresh-grilled lamb, that miracles of healing had been performed on this spot since the establishment of the first church in AD 650. Would it be possible to see a miracle?

A shake of the head from one of the priests. They would surely take place as they did every year but such a happening, when it concerned human recovery, would not likely to be manifest immediately. I thought that was what he was trying to say.

“But,” he added, “don't you think that is a kind of miracle?”

He pointed to two withered and bent old women, one of them hobbling with a stick that was almost like a crutch, who were slowly approaching the church across the pebble-strewn path.

“They are both over ninety years old and they have been coming here for as long as I can remember. And that is a long time. Can you see how tired they are? And can you see the happiness in their faces? And they will climb back up the mountain just as gladly tomorrow. But
now look up there coming down the path.”

I looked hard – and could scarcely believe my eyes. Something was moving slowly down the mountainside on hands and knees. Every ten or fifteen yards, it would stop and let the stream of humans and animals flow past.

“What is it?” I asked. I could see well enough but needed his reassurance.

“It is a woman. Not an old woman. She comes in penitence and prayer every year waiting for the miracle. It takes her ten hours to reach the church from the top of the mountain.”

Then I knew what St. John meant. It needed no other miracle than the sight of these people who came down the mountain in such steadfast faith and toiled up it again with their faith unshaken and renewed to understand how, to people of such faith, miracles sometimes happen.

It would not be fulfilling one of my main objectives in writing this series and, indeed, in living the sort of life I was at that moment, if I did not occasionally discuss the subject of cancer – the disease, I was informed on good authority, from which I was suffering.

Suffering!

It was now going on for eighteen months since my Athens surgeon had given me a fifty-fifty chance of surviving another six months after he had removed a malignant tumour from my insides. And I had never consistently enjoyed eighteen months so much in my whole life.

This was no reflection on the prognostications of my doctor, who was an acknowledged authority on cancer and in whom I had complete confidence. What it was a reflection on I would very much liked to have known, but all the answers I got were as enigmatic as the disease itself.

The question I most wanted answered was simply how and when I would know that I no longer had cancer.

Well it sounded simple but my doctor's reply only provided one more enigma: “In your case that is a question you should never ask.”

That was soon after I left hospital and I hadn't asked it since. In fact, I hadn't even seen my doctor since. Nor any other doctor. And I didn't intend – not yet anyway – to ask the only remaining significant question: “Have I still got cancer?”