Chapter: 9 THE WORLD IN A WALL

The crumbling wall that surrounded the sunken garden alongside the house was

a rich hunting ground for me. It was an ancient brick wall that had been plastered

over, but now this outer skin was green with moss, bulging and sagging with the

damp of many winters. The whole surface was an intricate map of cracks, some

several inches wide, others as fine as hairs. Here and there large pieces had

dropped off and revealed the rows of rose-pink bricks lying beneath like ribs.

There was a whole landscape on this wall if you peered closely enough to see it; the

roofs of a hundred tiny toadstools, red, yellow, and brown, showed in patches like

villages on the damper portions; mountains of bottle-green moss grew in tuffets so

symmetrical that they might have been planted and trimmed; forests of small ferns

sprouted from cracks in the shady places, drooping languidly like little green

fountains. The top of the wall was a desert land, too dry for anything except a few

rust-red mosses to live in it, too hot for anything except sun-bathing by the dragon-

flies. At the base of the wall grew a mass of plants—cyclamen, crocus, asphodel—

thrusting their leaves among the piles of broken and chipped roof-tiles that lay

there. This whole strip was guarded by a labyrinth of blackberry hung, in season,

with fruit that was plump and juicy and black as ebony.

The inhabitants of the wall were a mixed lot, and they were divided into day

and night workers, the hunters and the hunted. At night the hunters were the toads

that lived among the brambles, and the geckos, pale, translucent, with bulging

eyes, that lived in the cracks higher up the wall. Their prey was the population of

stupid, absent-minded crane-flies that zoomed and barged their way among the

leaves; moths of all sizes and shapes, moths striped, tessellated, checked, spotted,

and blotched, that fluttered in soft clouds along the withered plaster; the beetles,

rotund and neatly clad as business men, hurrying with portly efficiency about their

night's work. When the last glow-worm had dragged his frosty emerald lantern to

bed over the hills of moss, and the sun rose, the wall was taken over by the next set

of inhabitants. Here it was more difficult to differentiate between the prey and the

predators, for everything seemed to feed indiscriminately off everything else. Thus

the hunting wasps searched out caterpillars and spiders; the spiders hunted for

flies; the dragon-flies, big, brittle and hunting-pink, fed off the spiders and the flies;

and the swift, lithe, and multicolored wall lizards fed off everything.

But the shyest and most self-effacing of the wall community were the most

dangerous; you hardly ever saw one unless you looked for it, and yet there must

have been several hundred living in the cracks of the wall. Slide a knife-blade

carefully under a piece of the loose plaster and lever it gently away from the brick,and there, crouching beneath it, would be a little black scorpion an inch long,

looking as though he were made out of polished chocolate. They were weird-

looking little things, with their flattened, oval bodies, their neat, crooked legs, the

enormous crablike claws, bulbous and neatly jointed as armor, and the tail like a

string of brown beads ending in a sting like a rose-thorn. The scorpion would lie

there quite quietly as you examined him, only raising his tail in an almost

apologetic gesture of warning if you breathed too hard on him. If you kept him in

the sun too long he would simply turn his back on you and walk away, and then

slide slowly but firmly under another section of plaster.

I grew very fond of these scorpions. I found them to be pleasant, unassuming

creatures with, on the whole, the most charming habits. Provided you did nothing

silly or clumsy (like putting your hand on one) the scorpions treated you with

respect, their one desire being to get away and hide as quickly as possible. They

must have found me rather a trial, for I was always ripping sections of the plaster

away so that I could watch them, or capturing them and making them walk about

in jam jars so that I could see the way their feet moved. By means of my sudden

and unexpected assaults on the wall I discovered quite a bit about the scorpions. I

found that they would eat bluebottles (though how they caught them was a

mystery I never solved), grasshoppers, moths, and lacewing flies. Several times I

found one of them eating another, a habit I found most distressing in a creature

otherwise so impeccable.

By crouching under the wall at night with a torch, I managed to catch some brief

glimpses of the scorpions' wonderful courtship dances. I saw them standing, claws

clasped, their bodies raised to the skies, their tails lovingly entwined; I saw them

waltzing slowly in circles among the moss cushions, claw in claw. But my view of

these performances was all too short, for almost as soon as I switched on the torch

the partners would stop, pause for a moment, and then, seeing that I was not going

to extinguish the light, would turn round and walk firmly away, claw in claw, side

by side. They were definitely beasts that believed in keeping themselves to

themselves. If I could have kept a colony in captivity I would probably have been

able to see the whole of the courtship, but the family had forbidden scorpions in

the house, despite my arguments in favor of them.

Then one day I found a fat female scorpion in the wall, wearing what at first

glance appeared to be a pale fawn fur coat. Closer inspection proved that this

strange garment was made up of a mass of tiny babies clinging to the mother's

back. I was enraptured by this family, and I made up my mind to smuggle them

into the house and up to my bedroom so that I might keep them and watch them

grow up. With infinite care I manoeuvred the mother and family into a matchbox,

and then hurried to the villa. It was rather unfortunate that just as I entered the

door lunch should be served; however, I placed the matchbox carefully on the

mantelpiece in the drawing room, so that the scorpions should get plenty of air,

and made my way to the dining room and joined the family for the meal. Dawdling

over my food, feeding Roger surreptitiously under the table, and listening to thefamily arguing, I completely forgot about my exciting new captures. At last Larry,

having finished, fetched the cigarettes from the drawing room, and lying back in

his chair he put one in his mouth and picked up the matchbox he had brought.

Oblivious of my impending doom I watched him interestedly as, still talking glibly,

he opened the matchbox.

Now I maintain to this day that the female scorpion meant no harm. She was

agitated and a trifle annoyed at being shut up in a matchbox for so long, and so

she seized the first opportunity to escape. She hoisted herself out of the box with

great rapidity, her babies clinging on desperately, and scuttled onto the back of

Larry's hand. There, not quite certain what to do next, she paused, her sting

curved up at the ready. Larry, feeling the movement of her claws, glanced down to

see what it was, and from that moment things got increasingly confused.

He uttered a roar of fright that made Lugaretzia drop a plate and brought Roger

out from beneath the table, barking wildly. With a flick of his hand he sent the

unfortunate scorpion flying down the table, and she landed midway between

Margo and Leslie, scattering babies like confetti as she thumped onto the cloth.

Thoroughly enraged at this treatment, the creature sped towards Leslie, her sting

quivering with emotion. Leslie leaped to his feet, overturning his chair, and flicked

out desperately with his napkin, sending the scorpion rolling across the cloth

towards Margo, who promptly let out a scream that any railway engine would

have been proud to produce. Mother, completely bewildered by this sudden and

rapid change from peace to chaos, put on her glasses and peered down the table to

see what was causing the pandemonium, and at that moment Margo, in a vain

attempt to stop the scorpion's advance, hurled a glass of water at it. The shower

missed the animal completely, but successfully drenched Mother, who, not being

able to stand cold water, promptly lost her breath and sat gasping at the end of the

table, unable even to protest. The scorpion had now gone to ground under Leslie's

plate, while her babies swarmed wildly all over the table. Roger, mystified by the

panic, but determined to do his share, ran round and round the room, barking

hysterically.

"It's that bloody boy again . . ." bellowed Larry.

"Look out! Look out! They're coming!" screamed Margo.

"All we need is a book," roared Leslie; "don't panic, hit 'em with a book."

"What on earth's the matter with you all?" Mother kept imploring, mopping

her glasses.

"It's that bloody boy . . . he'll kill the lot of us. . . . Look at the table . . . knee-

deep in scorpions. . . ."

"Quick . . . quick . . . do something. . . . Look out, look out!"

"Stop screeching and get a book, for God's sake. . . . You're worse than the

dog. . . . Shut up, Roger. . . ."

"By the grace of God I wasn't bitten. . . ."

"Look out . . . there's another one. . . . Quick . . . quick . . .""Oh, shut up and get me a book or something. . . ."

"But how did the scorpions get on the table, dear?"

"That bloody boy. . . . Every matchbox in the house is a death-trap. . . ."

"Look out, it's coming towards me. . . . Quick, quick, do something. . . ."

"Hit it with your knife . . . your knife. . . . Go on, hit it. . . ."

Since no one had bothered to explain things to him, Roger was under the

mistaken impression that the family were being attacked, and that it was his duty

to defend them. As Lugaretzia was the only stranger in the room, he came to the

logical conclusion that she must be the responsible party, so he bit her in the ankle.

This did not help matters very much.

By the time a certain amount of order had been restored, all the baby scorpions

had hidden themselves under various plates and bits of cutlery. Eventually, after

impassioned pleas on my part, backed up by Mother, Leslie's suggestion that the

whole lot be slaughtered was quashed. While the family, still simmering with rage

and fright, retired to the drawing room, I spent half an hour rounding up the

babies, picking them up in a teaspoon, and returning them to their mother's back.

Then I carried them outside on a saucer and, with the utmost reluctance, released

them on the garden wall. Roger and I went and spent the afternoon on the hillside,

for I felt it would be prudent to allow the family to have a siesta before seeing them

again.

The results of this incident were numerous. Larry developed a phobia about

matchboxes and opened them with the utmost caution, a handkerchief wrapped

round his hand. Lugaretzia limped round the house, her ankle enveloped in yards

of bandage, for weeks after the bite had healed, and came round every morning,

with the tea, to show us how the scabs were getting on. But, from my point of

view, the worst repercussion of the whole affair was that Mother decided I was

running wild again, and that it was high time I received a little more education.

While the problem of finding a full-time tutor was being solved, she was

determined that my French, at least, should be kept in trim. So arrangements were

made, and every morning Spiro would drive me into the town for my French lesson

with the Belgian consul.

The consul's house was situated in the maze of narrow, smelly alleyways that

made up the Jewish quarter of the town. It was a fascinating area, the cobbled

streets crammed with stalls that were piled high with gaily colored bales of cloth,

mountains of shining sweetmeats, ornaments of beaten silver, fruit, and vegetables.

The streets were so narrow that you had to stand back against the wall to allow

the donkeys to stagger past with their loads of merchandise. It was a rich and

colorful part of the town, full of noise and bustle, the screech of bargaining

women, the cluck of hens, the barking of dogs, and the wailing cry of the men

carrying great trays of fresh hot loaves on their heads. Right in the very center, in

the top flat of a tall, rickety building that leaned tiredly over a tiny square, lived

the Belgian consul.He was a sweet little man, whose most striking attribute was a magnificent

three-pointed beard and carefully waxed mustache. He took his job rather

seriously, and was always dressed as though he were on the verge of rushing off to

some important official function, in a black cut-away coat, striped trousers, fawn

spats over brightly polished shoes, an immense cravat like a silk waterfall, held in

place by a plain gold pin, and a tall and gleaming top hat that completed the

ensemble. One could see him at any hour of the day, clad like this, picking his way

down the dirty, narrow alleys, stepping daintily among the puddles, drawing

himself back against the wall with a magnificently courteous gesture to allow a

donkey to pass, and tapping it coyly on the rump with his malacca cane. The

people of the town did not find his garb at all unusual. They thought that he was

an Englishman, and as all Englishmen were lords it was not only right but

necessary that they should wear the correct uniform.

The first morning I arrived, he welcomed me into a living room whose walls

were decorated with a mass of heavily framed photographs of himself in various

Napoleonic attitudes. The Victorian chairs, covered with red brocade, were

patched with antimacassars by the score; the table on which we worked was

draped in a wine-red cloth of velvet, with a fringe of bright green tassels round the

edge. It was an intriguingly ugly room. In order to test the extent of my knowledge

of French, the consul sat me down at the table, produced a fat and battered edition

of Le Petit Larousse, and placed it in front of me, open at page one.

"You will please to read zis," he said, his gold teeth glittering amicably in his

beard.

He twisted the points of his mustache, pursed his lips, clasped his hands behind

his back, and paced slowly across to the window, while I started down the list of

words beginning with A. I had hardly stumbled through the first three when the

consul stiffened and uttered a suppressed exclamation. I thought at first he was

shocked by my accent, but it apparently had nothing to do with me. He rushed

across the room, muttering to himself, tore open a cupboard, and pulled out a

powerful-looking air rifle, while I watched him with increasing mystification and

interest, not unmixed with a certain alarm for my own safety. He loaded the

weapon, dropping pellets all over the carpet in his frantic haste. Then he crouched

and crept back to the window, where, half concealed by the curtain, he peered out

eagerly. Then he raised the gun, took careful aim at something, and fired. When he

turned round, slowly and sadly shaking his head, and laid the gun aside, I was

surprised to see tears in his eyes. He drew a yard or so of silk handkerchief out of

his breast pocket and blew his nose violently.

"Ah, ah, ah," he intoned, shaking his head dolefully, "ze poor lizzle fellow. Buz

we musz work . . . please to continuez wiz your reading, mon ami."

For the rest of the morning I toyed with the exciting idea that the consul had

committed a murder before my very eyes, or, at least, that he was carrying out a

blood feud with some neighboring householder. But when, after the fourth

morning, the consul was still firing periodically out of his window, I decided thatmy explanation could not be the right one, unless it was an exceptionally large

family he was feuding with, and a family, moreover, who were apparently

incapable of firing back. It was a week before I found out the reason for the

consul's incessant fusillade, and the reason was cats. In the Jewish quarter, as in

other parts of the town, the cats were allowed to breed unchecked. There were

literally hundreds of them. They belonged to no one and were uncared for, so that

most of them were in a frightful state, covered with sores, their fur coming out in

great bald patches, their legs bent with rickets, and all of them so thin that it was a

wonder they were alive at all. The consul was a great cat-lover, and he possessed

three large and well-fed Persians to prove it. But the sight of all these starving,

sore-ridden felines stalking about on the rooftops opposite his window was too

much for his sensitive nature.

"I cannot feed zem all," he explained to me, "so I like to make zem happiness by

zooting zem. Zey are bezzer so, buz iz makes me feel so zad."

He was, in fact, performing a very necessary and humane service, as anyone who

had seen the cats would agree. So my lessons in French were being continuously

interrupted while the consul leaped to the window to send yet another cat to a

happier hunting ground. After the report of the gun there would be a moment's

silence, in respect for the dead; then the consul would blow his nose violently and

sigh tragically, and we would plunge once more into the tangled labyrinth of

French verbs.

For some inexplicable reason the consul was under the impression that Mother

could speak French, and he would never lose an opportunity of engaging her in

conversation. If she had the good fortune, while shopping in the town, to notice his

top hat bobbing through the crowd toward her, she would hastily retreat into the

nearest shop and buy a number of things she had no use for, until the danger was

past. Occasionally, however, the consul would appear suddenly out of an alleyway

and take her by surprise. He would advance, smiling broadly and twirling his cane,

sweep off his top hat, and bow almost double before her, while clasping her

reluctantly offered hand and pressing it passionately into his beard. Then they

would stand in the middle of the street, occasionally being forced apart by a

passing donkey, while the consul swamped Mother under a flood of French,

gesturing elegantly with his hat and stick, apparently unaware of the blank

expression on Mother's face. Now and then he would punctuate his speech with a

questioning "N'est-ce pas, madame?" and this was Mother's cue. Summoning up

all her courage, she would display her complete mastery over the French tongue.

"Oui, oui!" she would exclaim, smiling nervously, and then add, in case it had

sounded rather unenthusiastic, "OUI, OUI."

This procedure satisfied the consul, and I'm sure he never realized that this was

the only French word that Mother knew. But these conversations were a nerve-

racking ordeal for her, and we had only to hiss "Look out, Mother, the consul's

coming," to set her tearing off down the street at a ladylike walk that was

dangerously near to a gallop.

In some ways these French lessons were good for me; I did not learn any French,

it's true, but by the end of the morning I was so bored that my afternoon sorties

into the surrounding country were made with double the normal enthusiasm. And

then, of course, there was always Thursday to look forward to. Theodore would

come out to the villa as soon after lunch as was decent, and stay until the moon

was high over the Albanian mountains. Thursday was happily chosen, from his

point of view, because it was on this day that the seaplane from Athens arrived and

landed in the bay not far from the house. Theodore had a passion for watching

seaplanes land. Unfortunately the only part of the house from which you could get

a good view of the bay was the attic, and then it meant leaning perilously out of

the window and craning your neck. The plane would invariably arrive in the

middle of tea; a dim, drowsy hum could be heard, so faint one could not be sure it

was not a bee. Theodore, in the middle of an anecdote or an explanation, would

suddenly stop talking, his eyes would take on a fanatical gleam, his beard would

bristle, and he would cock his head on one side.

"Is that . . . er . . . you know . . . is that the sound of a plane?" he would inquire.

Everyone would stop talking and listen; slowly the sound would grow louder

and louder. Theodore would carefully place his half-eaten scone on his plate.

"Ah-ha!" he would say, wiping his fingers carefully. "Yes, that certainly sounds

like a plane . . . er . . . um . . . yes."

The sound would grow louder and louder, while Theodore shifted uneasily in

his seat. At length Mother would put him out of his misery.

"Would you like to go up and watch it land?" she would ask.

"Well . . . er . . . if you're sure . . ." Theodore would mumble, vacating his seat

with alacrity. "I . . . er . . . find the sight very attractive . . . if you're sure you don't

mind."

The sound of the plane's engines would now be directly overhead; there was not

a moment to lose.

"I have always been . . . er . . . you know . . . attracted . . ."

"Hurry up, Theo, or you'll miss it," we would chorus.

The entire family then vacated the table, and, gathering Theodore en route, we

sped up the four flights of stairs, Roger racing ahead, barking joyfully. We burst

into the attic, out of breath, laughing, our feet thumping like gunfire on the

uncarpeted floor, threw open the windows, and leaned out, peering over the olive

tops to where the bay lay like a round blue eye among the trees, its surface as

smooth as honey. The plane, like a cumbersome overweight goose, flew over the

olive groves, sinking lower and lower. Suddenly it would be over the water, racing

its reflection over the blue surface. Slowly the plane dropped lower and lower.

Theodore, eyes narrowed, beard bristling, watched it with bated breath. Lower and

lower, and then suddenly it touched the surface briefly, left a widening petal of

foam, flew on, and then settled on the surface and surged across the bay, leaving a

spreading fan of white foam behind it. As it came slowly to rest, Theodore would

rasp the side of his beard with his thumb, and ease himself back into the attic."Um . . . yes," he would say, dusting his hands, "it is certainly a . . . very . . .

er . . . enjoyable sight."

The show was over. He would have to wait another week for the next plane. We

would shut the attic windows and troop noisily downstairs to resume our

interrupted tea. The next week exactly the same thing would happen all over again.

It was on Thursdays that Theodore and I went out together, sometimes

confining ourselves to the garden, sometimes venturing further afield. Loaded

down with collecting boxes and nets, we wended our way through the olives,

Roger galloping ahead of us, nose to the ground. Everything that we came across

was grist to our mill: flowers, insects, rocks, or birds. Theodore had an apparently

inexhaustible fund of knowledge about everything, but he imparted this knowledge

with a sort of meticulous diffidence that made you feel he was not so much

teaching you something new as reminding you of something which you were

already aware of, but which had, for some reason or other, slipped your mind. His

conversation was sprinkled with hilarious anecdotes, incredibly bad puns, and even

worse jokes, which he would tell with great relish, his eyes twinkling, his nose

wrinkled as he laughed silently in his beard, as much at himself as at his own

humor.

Every water-filled ditch or pool was, to us, a teeming and unexplored jungle,

with the minute cyclops and water-fleas, green and coral pink, suspended like birds

among the underwater branches, while on the muddy bottom the tigers of the pool

would prowl: the leeches and the dragon-fly larvae. Every hollow tree had to be

closely scrutinized in case it should contain a tiny pool of water in which

mosquito-larvae were living, every mossy-wigged rock had to be overturned to find

out what lay beneath it, and every rotten log had to be dissected. Standing straight

and immaculate at the edge of a pool, Theodore would carefully sweep his little net

through the water, lift it out, and peer keenly into the tiny glass bottle that dangled

at the end, into which all the minute water life had been sifted.

"Ah-ha!" he might say, his voice ringing with excitement, his beard bristling, "I

believe it's ceriodaphnia laticaudata."

He would whip a magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket and peer more

closely.

"Ah, um . . . yes . . . very curious . . . it is laticaudata. Could you just . . . er . . .

hand me a clean test tube . . . um . . . thank you. . . ."

He would suck the minute creature out of the bottle with a fountain-pen filler,

enshrine it carefully in the tube, and then examine the rest of the catch.

"There doesn't seem to be anything else that's particularly exciting. . . . Ah, yes,

I didn't notice . . . there is rather a curious caddis larva . . . there, d'you see it? . . .

um . . . it appears to have made its case of the shells of certain molluscs. . . . It's

certainly very pretty."

At the bottom of the little bottle was an elongated case, half an inch long,

constructed out of what appeared to be silk, and thick with tiny flat snail-shells

like buttons. From one end of this delightful home the owner peered, an unattractive maggot-like beast with a head like an ant's. Slowly it crawled across

the glass, dragging its beautiful house with it.

"I tried an interesting experiment once," Theodore said. "I caught a number of

these . . . er . . . larvae, and removed their shells. Naturally it doesn't hurt them.

Then I put them in some jars which contained perfectly clear water and nothing in

the way of . . . er . . . materials with which to build new cases. Then I gave each set

of larvae different-colored materials to build with: some I gave very tiny blue and

green beads, and some I gave chips of brick, white sand, even some . . . er . . .

fragments of colored glass. They all built new cases out of these different things,

and I must say the result was very curious and . . . er . . . colorful. They are

certainly very clever architects."

He emptied the contents of the bottle back into the pool, put his net over his

shoulder, and we walked on our way.

"Talking of building," Theodore continued, his eyes sparkling, "did I tell you

what happened to . . . a . . . er . . . a friend of mine? Um, yes. Well, he had a small

house in the country, and, as his family . . . um . . . increased, he decided that it

was not big enough. He decided to add another floor to the house. He was, I think,

a little over-confident of his own architectural . . . um . . . prowess, and he insisted

on designing the new floor himself. Um, ha, yes. Well, everything went well and in

next to no time the new floor was ready, complete with bedrooms, bathrooms, and

so forth. My friend had a party to celebrate the completion of the work, we all

drank toasts to the . . . um . . . new piece of building, and with great ceremony the

scaffolding was taken down . . . um . . . removed. No one noticed anything . . . um

. . . anything amiss, until a late arrival at the celebration wanted to look round the

new rooms. It was then discovered that there was no staircase. It appears that my

friend had forgotten to put a staircase in his plans, you know, and during the

actual . . . er . . . the actual building operations he and the workmen had got so

used to climbing to the top floor by means of the scaffolding that no one

apparently noticed the . . . er . . . the defect."

So we would walk on through the hot afternoon, pausing by the pools and

ditches and stream, wading through the heavily scented myrtle bushes, over the

hillsides crisp with heather, along white, dusty roads where we were occasionally

passed by a drooping, plodding donkey carrying a sleepy peasant on its back.

Towards evening, our jars, bottles, and tubes full of strange and exciting forms

of life, we would turn for home. The sky would be fading to a pale gold as we

marched through the olive groves, already dim with shadow, and the air would be

cooler and more richly scented. Roger would trot ahead of us, his tongue flapping

out, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to make sure we were following him.

Theodore and I, hot and dusty and tired, our bulging collecting bags making our

shoulders ache pleasantly, would stride along singing a song that Theodore had

taught me. It had a rousing tune that gave a new life to tired feet, and Theodore's

baritone voice and my shrill treble would ring out gaily through the gloomy trees: "There was an old man who lived in Jerusalem,

Glory Halleluiah, Hi-ero-jerum.

He wore a top hat and he looked very sprucelum,

Glory Halleluiah, Hi-ero-jerum.

Skinermer rinki doodle dum, skinermer rinki doodle dum,

Glory Halleluiah, Hi-ero-jerum .