Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance (15 page)

Now we had arrived at a point at which our change of attitude could be defined as increasing respect on both sides as an essential prelude to the increase of affection. For I believed, with some reservations, that Gaithuri was actually beginning to like me. I knew I was beginning to like her. I also knew that at the slightest demonstration of
friendliness on my part those hind legs would start lashing out.

But she would come towards me as far as the tether would allow her whenever I approached and, although I realised this had got more to do with the piece of bread in my hand than anything else, she would also follow me around when she knew I hadn't got anything.

The fact was, we were beginning to compromise on each other's quirks, tolerate each other's weaknesses and even enjoy each other's company.

Haven't you heard all that before somewhere? Probably at a marriage guidance bureau.

This was the day on which my expedition to circumperambulate Crete nearly came to a premature end. I had missed the path I had been sent on at dawn and found myself in an explicit manifestation of a trackless waste. Fine white sand held together by scrubby bushes so densely packed with thorns that I could walk on top of them – nature's impenetrable last line of defence in her struggle to keep the earth in place against the allied forces of wind and rain and the goats of man.

Finally, I came to the gate in the sheep fence, which I had been looking for and which I was to make sure I closed behind me. From there I could follow the morning's directions accurately: two kilometres to another gate. “Close it behind you.” Three hundred metres to a fork in the path. Take the path along the sea to Lower Zakros.

I never did reach the fork in the path. That final 300 metres was a wilderness of sharp-pointed boulders which I could only traverse by stepping from point to point using my walking stick as a third leg. And if that had not been impossible for the donkey the waist-high rock barrier I came to certainly was.

There was no way round it between mountain crag and sea-plunging cliff and no alternative to going back. Full of gloomy thoughts about the two day march back along all the roads I had tried to avoid when I knew Lower Zakros was only two hours away along the coast, we reached the outskirts of our overnight village.

A man's voice interrupted my brooding. He was working in a tomato patch and of course he wanted to know where I was going and lots of other things besides
like where was my wife and how many children did I have. Finally I was able to explain my situation and my disappointment.

“But there is another path up the mountain here.”

I stared unbelievingly at the precipices to which he was pointing.

“There's a path up there?”

He indicated a tamarisk tree growing at the foot of a slight break in the range.

“You will find the path at that tree,” he told me and added, when he saw the incredulity on my face. “It is all right. My wife went up there with a donkey two weeks ago to pick olives.”

This was good news.

At the tamarisk tree, I found the path. It led me straight to what seemed to be a vertical wall of rock and then went up it. I stared in dismay at what lay ahead. Goats, yes; Tenzing Sherpa, yes; Gaithuri, no.

I turned to look at her. She clearly shared my opinion. She was looking up that goat track and her ears were two exclamation marks of horror. Since one of the unwritten rules of this expedition was never to turn back unless there was nowhere else to go I physically compelled Gaithuri up the first ten feet of rock. After that she realised there could be no turning back (there literally wasn't room to turn) and that the only way out was up.

Having made up her mind, she was magnificent, though I never really lost my doubts that we would ever reach the top until we stood panting on the ultimate rim. There, as usual, the reward was waiting.

I stood on the topmost tier of a vast amphitheatre, a bowl of pure space enclosed by the encircling summits. It was breathtaking. But I had precious little breath left for
contemplation of anything but the thin brown thread of path that unrolled at my feet to disappear briefly in a riverbed at the bottom of the bowl and then to zigzag up the opposite slopes into a ravine, which, presumably, was the way out.

The sun was at its zenith and I knew I would have to hurry if I was going to get out of the high hills by nightfall. But first the donkey must be refuelled with food and water. And so must I.

We stopped in the shade of an olive tree in the river bottom where a stream of clear water chuckled and I put out a few handfuls of barley on a paper bag for Gaithuri, promising her a bucketful in the evening.

Then I passed round behind her to reach the oranges and apples on the other side of the saddle. As I did so I made the mistake which I kept warning everybody against. I gave her an appreciative pat on the rump.

The fierce snort from the front end did not give me time to get clear. It came simultaneously with rear end events. Loaded and harnessed as she was, she could not, fortunately, bring all her weapons into action. She let fly with one hind hoof and caught me on that round piece of bone that juts just below the knee. I went down as though I had been shot, and it felt as though I had been. I really thought my leg was in two pieces.

I rolled out of the danger zone and examined my leg carefully. There was a lump the size of an apple and about the same colour but I could wiggle my toes and, painfully, bend my knee. So nothing was broken.

I contemplated various acts of revenge on the
donkey but as anything effective would probably end up with my baggage being deposited in the river, I concentrated on the practical propositions like what the hell did I do now.

That was when I heard the tinkling of distant bells and as a perfect accompaniment, the thin pure music of a flute. The pipes of Pan. This Pan turned out to be a dark figure standing on the edge of what looked like a cluster of moving white rocks. He was a long way away and high up, but I reckoned if I could hear his gentle music, he could hear my violent shouts.

So I yelled as loudly as I could: “
Vo… eee… theeea
!” It is a word that I had made a point of learning. It means “Help!”

The fluted notes ceased abruptly. I yelled again and waved a white handkerchief. The dark figure detached itself from the mobile boulders and came down the mountainside. It was a great sight to watch these shepherds moving over rough country, up or down. They sort of flowed like liquid. In a very few minutes, a young Cretan was bending over me muttering his distressed “
Po, Po, Po
!” when he saw my leg.

After that he took the matter in hand. He more or less carried me 200 yards to a derelict and roofless stone hut, fetched and unpacked the donkey, set up my bed and bedding, put me into it and lit a fire.

He left me for a while and when he came back he had a handful of leaves which he bound round the swelling on my leg. “It is good for the sheep,” he said, enigmatically, and set about making supper for us both.

It must have been those leaves. In the morning the swelling was down and I could move quite freely if a little painfully. The shepherd insisted on escorting me to the top of the ravine where the path joined a wider track. In another half an hour I was on a good dirt road and encountering trucks and cars. I would very much have liked a lift into town. But how could you hitch with a donkey?

It was now a good deal more than six months since my doctor in Athens, having removed a malignant tumour from somewhere inside me, had given me a fifty-fifty chance (“or maybe a little less”) of staying alive for another six months. I could say truthfully that I had seldom felt more alive or enjoyed each moment of life more continuously. I had no objective other than one day walking back into the town of Matala from the opposite direction to that whence I started, having walked round the entire perimeter of Crete.

I had had, and still had, no idea of how long that was going to take. I was even prepared to think in terms of two years. What I was worried about now was that it was not going to take as long as I wanted it to. This was not because I had hurried – I stayed in one delightful village by the sea for four days – but because, not for the first time, I had underestimated the distances you could travel and the heights you could climb by the simple process of putting one foot in front of the other. The secret of this process, as every hiker through rugged terrain must have discovered, was not to think of your feet at all unless some urgent physical reason like a fractured big toe compelled your attention.

My mind soared off easily enough on its own flights of fancy in search perhaps of the proper definition of infinity or the first moment in past time. Or I could send my thoughts in search of the perfect sentence to describe perfectly the nature and atmosphere of the country through which I was passing. This could occupy at least a whole morning and the chances were I wouldn't find it.

It had been chiefly in this subconscious state of
mind – though vividly aware of my surroundings – that I found at time of writing that I averaged fourteen miles a day, which was more than I had intended to do. It was also, as I said earlier, more than I wanted to do.

Towns posed special problems for the donkey, and the bigger the town, the bigger the problem. There was no grazing for her in that concrete and asphalt wilderness, no green field in which to tether her for the night. Once or twice I had been offered a stable, but Gaithuri refused to enter them even when the manger was full of hay and barley for her.

There was one memorable evening in a large village called Vasiliki when I was trying to pull her through a narrow doorway into a dark stall. I couldn't budge her. The owner of the stable went behind to push. I saw Gaithuri's back arch in what was now a favourite prelude to those lashing hind legs.

“Look out!” I shouted. “It is dangerous.”

“Bah!” said the man, and just as Gaithuri began her kick he went into those hind legs like a lock forward going into the back of a loose scrum. I nearly went over backwards as the rope slackened suddenly, and there we all three were, more or less on top of each other. I instinctively covered up against imminent attack, but fortunately her head had ended up in the manger and she was too hungry to bother about any form of retaliation.

But this undignified treatment had had a positive psychological reaction. For three days the donkey was as subdued as a well-trained spaniel. She looked miserable, as though something vital had left her character and she had become what she was – an old woman. I almost wished she would try to kick me or bite me or indulge in some other capriciousness with which she usually
demonstrated her superior position in the partnership. The new Gaithuri was a stranger and I didn't like her half as well.

One evening, after a long, hard day in the mountains, we came down to the sea at a white beach with its cluster of white houses. Even better, there was a field of the sort of tufty grass which the donkey seemed to like so much and for which I was always seeking along the roads and paths. Also, without my asking, the owner of the one
taverna
provided a bundle of chopped hay or straw and a kilo of barley grain.

The next morning when I went to release Gaithuri and take her for a walk on the sand she lay down and rolled around like a puppy for a good five minutes and then leaped to her feet and set off along the beach buck-jumping like a wild mustang with me hanging on to the rope grimly but still having to run much faster than I ever expected to at my time of life.

A few minutes later, hitched to a pole, she gave me a friendly kick on the backside as I walked round her with the saddle and I knew we were back to the old relationship.

For weeks, Heraklion, the capital of Crete, had lain ahead of me like a fortress barring my westward march – as it had impeded the progress of so many other marchers through centuries of invasion and conflict. The sprawl of buildings, of offices and shops and taverns, of warehouses, docks, streets, vehicles, old Venetian walls and modern suburbs was a physical obstacle which I pondered long in advance in an effort to find a safe way through or a convenient way round.

Forced to wait four days at Malia, east of the capital, I approached the problem of Heraklion in the same way as those earlier military commanders must have done: I carried out a series of reconnaissances. The first of these was to try to find a way round the outskirts of the city. It proved impossible. The countryside was carved into great ravines running south to north compelling all the roads to run between them in the same direction. Even the new national road, running east to west along the length of the island, came to an abrupt end at the suburban perimeter to resume its westward journey on the other side of the town. So unless I was to go by boat there was no alternative to a march through the town centre. Heraklion, with its narrow streets, hustling traffic and crowded pavements was a risky enough experience even for the cautious pedestrian. It is certainly no place to take a donkey for a walk.

I came to the conclusion that there was only one course open – to go through the town while it was still asleep. This involved getting as near to it as possible the previous evening and starting the next morning between four and five o'clock. There was also the need for
donkey and man to rest and eat after a day's walking and this implied, in the donkey's case, that I must get as near to Heraklion as the nearest bit of grazing would allow.

Another reconnaissance gave me the answer. Heraklion airport was three kilometres out, there was plenty of space round about for tethering Gaithuri and, with a bit of luck and some cool effrontery, maybe I could spend the night in warmth and comfort in an airport armchair. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the last flight of the day, or night, was a 7.30pm Olympic Airways plane to Athens. After that they closed up.