The Walled Orchard Read Online Free PDF Page B

wanted to be let out, but nobody came; so I assumed that nobody believed me, which was reasonable enough. So, as soon as I felt confident that I had my strength back, I examined the door of the stable, which was barred on the outside and wouldn’t budge. Now, after surviving the plague and being promised a Chorus by the God, a little thing like a stable door wasn’t going to get in my way, and so I sat down on the manger and thought hard. Unfortunately, probably because the war kept interrupting my education, I had never been taught how to get out of locked stables — unless you count that bit in the Odyssey where Odysseus escapes from the Cyclops’ cave, which I had been made to learn by heart. But I say that doesn’t count, because the circumstances of that case were quite unique and highly unlikely to recur. Just as I was starting to feel baffled, I caught sight of my uncle’s old black donkey, and I had an idea.
    As soon as I was cured, the animals (who were just as hungry as I was) had resumed eating and drinking, and had finished off all their fodder. They were now getting extremely restive, and I saw how that could be turned to my advantage. You see, this old black donkey of my uncle’s, which he kept for hauling olives and ploughing in the season, had the sort of temper you only usually come across in bath-attendants and the commanders of naval vessels, and hunger had not made him any sweeter natured. I’ll swear that donkey hated everything and everybody in the world; but what he hated most of all, with the possible exception of other male donkeys and hard work, was being prodded in the ribs with a sharp stick. I happened to have a sharp stick handy — it had been in with the fodder in the mangers — and so I wrestled him over until his hind legs were almost touching the door of the barn. Then I took my stick and gave the donkey the most terrific poke and sure enough he lashed out with his powerful legs and gave the door a tremendous kick. I waited until he had settled down again and prodded him once more, and once again; and that was about as much as the stable door could take. The bar snapped, and at once I shooed the donkey away and threw myself at the door. It gave way, arid out I rolled into the blinding sunlight of the yard. As I picked myself up, I saw that the little finger of my left hand had snapped clean off, just like a dead twig, although I hadn’t felt a thing. I picked the finger up and stared at it — it had shrivelled away into a little white stick and it smelt quite disgusting — and I tried to fit it back on, but of course it wouldn’t stay. Eventually I gave up and threw it away, and a crow who had been busy with something behind the muck-heap fluttered over and took a very tentative peck at it. Apparently, the loss of fingers and toes and even whole hands and feet was quite common among people who had survived the plague, but of course I didn’t know that at the time and it startled me considerably.
    Well, there I was, safe and sound, and I wanted to see the expressions on everybody’s faces when I walked in and told them I was well again. Being a horrible child in many ways I thought I would give them a surprise, so I crept over to the back door and tiptoed in to the inner room, where I expected my grandfather would be sleeping after his midday meal. But he wasn’t there; instead I saw my mother, sitting bolt upright in her chair in front of her spinning-wheel, as dead as Agamemnon. I could see from the state of her and the horrible expression on her face that she had died of the plague; typically she had stayed at her household duties to the last, so that Hermes would be able to report to the Judges of the Dead that she had died as a woman should. That was my mother all over.
    I found our Syrian houseboy doubled up in the corner of the inner room — he had taken off his sandal and bitten clean through the thongs — while the Libyan maid was lying in the storeroom. The pain had