Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corfu Read Free Page A

control all this material. If I wrote a book about Corcyra it would not be a history but a poem.
    World of black cherries, sails, dust, arbutus, fishes and letters from home.
    6.24.37
    Fragment from a novel about Corcyra which I began and destroyed:
    She comes down through the cloud of almond trees like a sentence of death, all dressed in white and leading her flock to the very gates of the underworld. Our heartsmelt in us at the candor of her smile and the beauty of her walk. Soon she is to marry Niko, the fat moneylender, and become a stout shrew drudging out to olive-pickings on a lame donkey, smelling of garlic and animal droppings.
    6.25.37
    N. has been away for three days in the town, trying to buy a few odds and ends of furnishings for the house. The silence here is like a discernible pulse—the heart beat of time itself. I am all day alone on the great rock; the sea is cold—its chill hurts the back of the throat like an iced wine; but blue as the grave, while the sun is blazing. Tonight a letter by boat from her.
    I have bought us a twenty-foot cutter, carvel built, and Bermuda rigged. I am terribly excited—the whole world seems to be open before us. But O how wine-darkly she rides. Bringing her out tomorrow with Petros. Wait for me at the point.
    6.26.37
    The problem of water for the garden is serious. The only spring is on the highroad a quarter of a mile up the ravine. All our water is carried down on the backs of womenfolk in huge earthen jars. We had Nick the douser down with his hazel twig, but after walkingbackwards and forwards grumbling under his breath for a quarter of an hour, he pronounced the water “too deep”—over five meters. As the house stands at sea-level we could not afford to dig and have the well turn brackish on us. It must be a mountain spring or nothing. Meanwhile my two erudites send their suggestions by water—each a model of its kind. Zarian suggests a machine that a friend of his invented for turning salt water into fresh; he forgets how it works but he will write to America at once for particulars. It costs rather a lot but would save trouble; we would simply put one end of the pump in the sea and spray the garden with fresh water. Theodore, on the other hand, suggests something more practical. In the droughty summer the natives of Macedonia construct themselves ice-boxes by pulping quantities of prickly pear which they bury in a hole to the depth of about two meters. The hole is filled with fine pebbles or stones, and when the rains come the absorbing pulp of the prickly pear sups up the water and retains it in its pores. He suggests that we should adopt this scheme for our walled garden-boxes. “Be careful,” he adds, “to pulp the tree well. Count V. tried this in his country house garden on my advice but omitted to pulp the prickly pear so that by some unfortunate chance he found it growing up through his flower beds. This, as you can imagine, was a catastrophe and he has not spoken to me since.”
    7.3.37
    The conventions of our weekly meeting at “The Partridge” are charming; we share our food, our criticism, and even our mail. When Zarian gets a letter from Unamuno or Celine it is read out and passed round the table; and when I get one of Henry Miller’s rambling exuberant letters from Paris the company is delighted. This is the real island flavor; our existence here is in this delectable landscape, remote from the responsibilities of an active life in Europe, have given us this sense of detachment from the real world. Over the smoking copper pans the face of Paul, the Cretan manager of the tavern, looms strangely. He watches over the dishes, pausing to wipe the sweat out of his great brown moustaches; his manner is that of one who has dealt with epicures for a lifetime. Later Luke, the blind guitarist, arrives, led by his small son—a child of great beauty and pallor. Its face is the face of a Byzantine ikon. Stiffly the old red-faced man sits down on a chair, and