Authors: Gerald Durrell
‘Oh,’ said Mother, who having geared herself to cope with royalty, felt somewhat let-down. ‘Well, what do we call you?’
‘My friends, of which I have an inordinate number,’ said the
new arrival earnestly, ‘call me Jeejee. I do hope that you vill call me the same.’
So Jeejee took up residence and during the short time he was there created greater havoc and endeared himself more to us than any other guest we had had. With his pedantic English, his earnest, gentle air, he took such a deep and genuine interest in everything and everyone that he was irresistible. For Lugaretzia he had various pots of evil-smelling sticky substances with which to anoint her numerous imaginary aches and pains; with Leslie he would discuss in grave detail the state of hunting in the world and give graphic and probably untrue stories of tiger and wild boar hunts he had been on. For Margo he procured some lengths of cloth and made them into saris and taught her how to wear them; Spiro he would enthral with tales of the riches and mysteriousness of the East, of bejewelled elephants wrestling with each other and maharajas worth their weight in precious stones. He was proficient with his pencil and as well as taking a deep and genuine interest in all my pets completely won me over by doing delicate little sketches of them for me to stick in my natural history diary, a document which was, to my mind, considerably more important than a combination of the
Magna Carta
,
The Book of Kells
and the
Gutenberg Bible
, and was treated as such by our discerning guest. But it was Mother that Jeejee really charmed into submission, for not only did he have endless mouth-watering recipes for her to write down and a fund of folklore and ghost stories, but his visit enabled Mother to talk endlessly about India, where she had been born and bred and which she considered her real home.
In the evening we would sit long over our meal at the big, creaking dining table, the clusters of oil lamps in the corners of the great room blooming in pools of primrose yellow light, the drifts of small moths fluttering against them like snow; the dogs lying in the doorway – now their numbers had risen to four they were never allowed into the dining-room – would yawn and sigh
at our tardiness, but we would be oblivious to them. Outside the ringing cries of the crickets and the crackle of tree frogs would make the velvety night alive. In the lamplight Jeejee’s eyes would seem to grow bigger and blacker like an owl’s, with a strange liquid fire in them.
‘Of course, in your day, Mrs Durrell, things vere different. You could not intermingle. No, no, strict segregation, vasn’t it? But now things are better. First the maharajas got their toes in the doors and nowadays even some of us humbler Indians are allowed to intermingle and thus accrue some of the advantages of civilization,’ said Jeejee one evening.
‘In my day,’ said Mother, ‘it was the Eurasians that they felt most strongly about. We wouldn’t be allowed even to play with them by my grandmother. Of course we always did.’
‘Children are singularly insensitive to the correct civilized behaviour,’ said Jeejee smiling. ‘Still there vere some difficulties at first, you know. Rome, however, vas not built in a day. Did you hear about the Babu in my town who vas invited to the ball?’
‘No, what happened?’
‘Vell, he saw that after the gentlemen had finished dancing with the ladies they escorted them back to their chairs and fanned them with the ladies’ fan. So, having conducted a sprightly valtz with a European lady of some eminence he conducted her safely back to her seat, took her fan, and said, “Madam, may I make vind in your face?” ’
‘That sounds the sort of thing Spiro would say,’ said Leslie.
‘I remember once,’ said Mother throwing herself into reminiscence with pleasure, ‘when my husband was Chief Engineer in Rourki. We had the most terrible cyclone. Larry was only a baby. The house was a long, low one and I remember we ran from room to room trying to hold the doors shut against the wind. As we ran from room to room, the house simply collapsed behind us. We eventually ended up in the butler’s pantry. But when we had the house repaired the Babu contractor sent
in a bill which was headed “For repairs to Chief Engineer’s backside”.’
‘India must have been fascinating then,’ said Jeejee, ‘because, unlike most Europeans, you vere part of the country.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mother, ‘even my grandmother was born there. When most people talked of home and meant England, when
we
said home we meant India.’
‘You must have travelled extensively,’ said Jeejee enviously. ‘I suppose you’ve seen more of my country than I have.’
‘Practically every nook and cranny,’ said Mother. ‘My husband being a civil engineer, of course, he had to travel. I always used to go with him. If he had to build a bridge or a railway right out in the jungle, I’d go with him and we’d camp.’
‘That must have been fun,’ said Leslie enthusiastically, ‘a primitive life under canvas.’
‘Oh it was. I loved the simple life in camp. I remember the elephants used to go ahead with the marquees, the carpets and the furniture, and then the servants would follow in the ox-carts with the linen and silver…’
‘You call that camping?’ interrupted Leslie incredulously. ‘With marquees?’
‘We only had three,’ said Mother defensively. ‘A bedroom, dining-room and a drawing-room. And they were built with fitted carpets anyway.’
‘Well, I don’t call that camping,’ said Leslie.
‘It was,’ said Mother. ‘It was right out in the jungle. We could hear tigers and all the servants were terrified. Once they killed a cobra under the dining table.’
‘And that was before Gerry was born,’ said Margo.
‘You should write your memoirs, Mrs Durrell,’ said Jeejee gravely.
‘Oh no,’ laughed Mother, ‘I couldn’t possibly write. Besides, what would I call it?’
‘How about “It Took Fourteen Elephants”?’ suggested Leslie.
‘Or, “Through the Forest on a Fitted Carpet”,’ suggested Jeejee.
‘The trouble with you boys is you never take anything seriously,’ said Mother severely.
‘Yes,’ said Margo, ‘
I
think it was jolly brave of Mother to camp with only three marquees and cobras and things.’
‘Camping!’ snorted Leslie derisively.
‘Well, it
was
camping dear. I remember once one of the elephants went astray and we had no clean sheets for three days. Your father was most annoyed.’
‘I never knew anything as big as an elephant
could
go astray,’ said Jeejee, surprised.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Leslie, ‘easily mislaid, elephants.’
‘Well, anyway, you wouldn’t like it if
you
were without clean sheets,’ said Mother with dignity.
‘Of course they wouldn’t,’ put in Margo, ‘and I think it’s fun hearing about ancient India, even if they don’t.’
‘But I do find it most educational,’ Jeejee protested.
‘You’re always making fun of Mother,’ said Margo. ‘I don’t see why you should be so superior just because your father invented the Black Hole or whatever it was.’
It says much for Jeejee that he almost fell under the table laughing, and all the dogs started barking vociferously at his mirth.
But probably the most endearing thing about Jeejee was his intense enthusiasm for anything he happened to take up, even when it was demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could not achieve success in that sphere of activity. When Larry had first met him he had decided to be one of India’s greatest poets and with the aid of a compatriot who spoke little English (‘he vas my compositor,’ Jeejee explained) he started a magazine called
Poetry for the People
, or
Potry for the Peeple
or
Potery for the Peopeople
, depending on whether Jeejee was supervising his compositor or not. This little magazine was published once a month, with contributions from everyone that Jeejee knew, and some of them made strange reading, as we discovered, for Jeejee’s
luggage was full of blurred copies of his magazine which he would hand out to anyone who displayed interest.
Perusing them we discovered such interesting items as ‘The Potry of Stiffen Splendour – a creetical evaluation’. Jeejee’s compositor friend apparently believed in printing words as they sounded, or, rather, as they sounded to him at that moment. Thus there was a long and eulogistic article by Jeejee on ‘Tees Ellyot, Pot Supreme’. The compositor’s novel spelling combined with the misprints naturally to be found in such a work, made reading it a pleasurable though puzzling occupation. ‘Whye Notte a Black Pot Lorat?’, for example, posed an almost unanswerable question, written apparently in Chaucerian English; while the article entitled ‘Roy Cambill, Ball Fighter and Pot’, made one wonder what poetry was coming to. However, Jeejee was undaunted by the difficulties, including the fact that his compositor never pronounced the letter ‘h’ and so never used it. His latest enthusiasm was to start a second magazine (printed on the same hand-press with the same carefree compositor), devoted to his newly evolved study of what he called ‘Fakyo’, which was described in the first copy of
Fakyo for All
as ‘an amalgum of the misterious East, bringing together the best of Yoga and Fakirism, giving details and tiching people ow’.
Mother was greatly intrigued by Fakyo, until Jeejee started to practise it. Clad in a loincloth and covered in ashes, he meditated for hours on the veranda or else walked in a well-simulated trance through the house, leaving a trail of ashes behind him. He fasted religiously for four days, and on the fifth day worried Mother to death by fainting and falling down the stairs.
‘Really, Jeejee,’ said Mother crossly, ‘this has got to stop. There’s not enough
of
you to fast.’
Putting him to bed, Mother concocted huge strength-giving curries, only to have Jeejee complain that there was no Bombay duck, the dried fish which was such a pungent and attractive addition to any curry.
‘But you can’t get it here, Jeejee; I’ve tried,’ Mother protested.
Jeejee waved his hands like pale bronze moths against the white of the sheet.
‘Fakyo tells that in life there is a substitute for everything,’ he said firmly.
When he recovered sufficiently, he paid a visit to the fish market in the town and purchased a vast quantity of fresh sardines. We came back from a pleasant morning’s shopping in the town to find the kitchen and its environs untenable. Jeejee, brandishing a knife with which he was gutting the fish before laying them out in the sun to dry outside the back door, was doing battle with what appeared to be every fly, bluebottle and wasp in the Ionian Islands. He had been stung about five times and one eye was swollen and partially closed. The smell of rapidly decomposing sardines was overwhelming and the kitchen floor and table were covered in snowdrifts of silver fish skin and bits of entrails. It was only when Mother showed him the article on Bombay duck in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
that he reluctantly gave up the idea of sardines as a substitute. It took Mother two days, with buckets of hot water and disinfectant, to rid the kitchen of the smell, and even then there was still the odd wasp blundering in hopefully through the windows.
‘Perhaps I’d better find you a substitute in Athens or Istanbul,’ said Jeejee hopefully. ‘I vas thinking that lobster baked and crushed to a powder…’
‘I wouldn’t worry about it, Jeejee dear,’ said Mother hurriedly. ‘We’ve done without it for some time now and it hasn’t hurt us.’
Jeejee was
en route
for Persia via Turkey in order to visit an Indian fakir practising there.
‘From him I shall learn many things to add to Fakyo,’ said Jeejee. ‘He is a great man. In particular, he is a great exponent of holding his breath and going into a trance. He vas vunce buried for a hundred and twenty days.’
‘Extraordinary,’ said Mother, deeply interested.
‘You mean buried alive?’ asked Margo. ‘Buried alive for a hundred and twenty days? How horrible! It doesn’t seem natural somehow.’
‘But he’s in a trance, dear Margo; he feels nothing,’ explained Jeejee.
‘I’m not so sure,’ said Mother musingly. ‘That’s why I want to be cremated, you know. Just in case I happen to slip into a trance and no one notices.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mother,’ said Leslie.
‘It’s not ridiculous,’ replied Mother firmly. ‘People are so careless nowadays.’
‘And what else does a fakir do?’ asked Margo. ‘Can he make mango trees grow from seeds? You know, straight away? I saw them do that in Simla once.’
‘That is simple conjuring,’ said Jeejee. ‘Vhat Andrawathi does is much more complex. He is an expert in levitation, for example, and it is vun of the things I vant to see him about.’
‘But I thought levitation was card tricks,’ said Margo.
‘No,’ said Leslie, ‘it’s floating about, sort of flying, isn’t it, Jeejee?’
‘Yes,’ said Jeejee. ‘A vonderful ability. A lot of the early Christian saints could do it. I myself have not yet reached that stage of proficiency; that is vhy I vant to study under Andrawathi.’
‘How lovely to be able to float like a bird,’ said Margo delightedly. ‘What fun you could have.’
‘I believe it to be a truly tremendous experience,’ said Jeejee, his eyes shining. ‘You feel as if you are being lifted tovards heaven.’
The following day, just before lunch, Margo came rushing into the drawing-room in a state of panic.
‘Come quickly! Come quickly!’ she screamed. ‘Jeejee’s committing suicide!’
We hurried outside and there, perched on the window-sill of his room, was Jeejee, clad in nothing but a loincloth.
‘He’s got one of those trances again,’ said Margo, as if it were an infectious disease.
Mother straightened her glasses and stared upwards. Jeejee started to sway gently.
‘Go upstairs and grab him, Les,’ said Mother. ‘Quickly. I’ll keep him talking.’
The fact that Jeejee was raptly silent did not occur to her. Leslie rushed into the house. Mother cleared her throat.
‘Jeejee, dear,’ she fluted, ‘I don’t think it’s very
wise
of you to be up there. Why don’t you come down and have lunch?’
Jeejee did come down, but not quite as Mother intended. He stepped gaily out into space and, accompanied by horrified cries from Mother and Margo, fell earthwards. He crashed into the grapevine some ten feet beneath his window, sending a shower of grapes on to the flagstones. Fortunately, the vine was an old and sinewy one and it held Jeejee’s slight weight.