Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance by Robert Crisp

world about us and our possession of the precious earth. Our assault on the wilderness was brutal and the wilderness contested our assault with all the weapons it had so that we would end the day not only exhausted, which was an enjoyable feeling, but bruised and scratched and bloodied. Some of the retaliation against us seemed to be as deliberate and vicious as our own attack.
    I am not talking about the reptile and insect world, which remained dormant in hibernation, or whatever happens to the myriad life of summer in the winter months. Nevertheless, there were strange slitherings and movements in the deep undergrowth or the tangle of rotting grass and leaves in the path of our advance as invisible things moved supine and unwillingly away.
    One day, a loud ejaculation from Deborah – she was not the screaming type – brought me hurrying over to where she was hacking another small clearing. She indicated something hideous in the new-disturbed and dank leaves. It was the biggest, thickest scorpion I had ever seen. I chopped it in two so we would not have to think about it in the warm days.
    There was a need for urgency in our labours. The cotton fields were a chief source for a wide variety of edible weeds and roots and Janni had told us that in a month or so he would be ploughing in preparation for thespring planting. That would be the end of that. It was clearly going to be necessary to have at least the beginnings of a vegetable garden of our own. I doubted whether man could live by greens alone any more excitingly than by bread alone. Anyway I was not over-anxious to make the experiment. We got an occasional egg but the chickens’ ration was obviously as inadequate as our own. Some supplement was necessary for both.
    The money situation was causing me a little concern – not so much because I was in a continuously penniless state but because, after more than six weeks, there was no sign of my pension at the bank in Gythion.
    Occasionally, I walked the nine miles into the town in the hope of finding 1,000 drachmas awaiting. Each time I had to walk back. The bank manager was friendly and helpful and promised to send me a letter as soon as the money arrived by the postman who chug-chugged on his moped around the gullies and potholes of the track that led to a village high on the end of the promontory on which we lived. Its name was Ageranos and the postman always came twice to it every week: on Tuesday and Saturday.
    I used to hear that moped a long way off and would wait anxiously with fingers crossed for the stop at the foot of the hill that would mean he had something to deliver. The only letter I wanted was the one from the bank.
    But Saturday followed Tuesday and Tuesday Saturday for week after week and the bread bill – my only remaining concession to the credit system – at Stavros’s
magazie
began to rise to a point which made me think I was back in a capitalist economy.
    Once more the chug-chug came cautiously down the road. I and Deborah stood looking at each other fully expecting the usual crescendo and slow fade as it went past. This time the crescendo stayed with us and was interjected by a joyful succession of toots.
    â€œIt’s arrived!” we yelled in unison and rushed down the hill.
    There was the postman, aware of our predicament and grinning with shared pleasure, handing me a letter. It was from the bank all right and informed me that two payments had arrived and 2,000 drachmas had been credited to my account.
    Two thousand drachmas! I was a millionaire. Better than a millionaire because I knew the full value of my wealth. According to the postmark it had taken two weeks for that letter to travel nine miles – a feat which seemed to surprise no one.
    One immediate advantage was that Annabel could play a useful part in our lives again. We had not been able to go into Gythion with her because although there was enough petrol in the tank to get us to town there was not