Free Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance by Robert Crisp

need little further enlightenment as to the appearance and performance of the type. It would be unkind to refer to them as the char-women of the Mediterranean but they are built solely for work and they thrive on it without getting rich. According to the ruler I borrowed from Alexis, the dimensions of this one were: length: 10.5 metres; width: 3.7 metres; depth: 1.6 metres; draught: 1.2 metres. There was no keel and it was this which enabled a
kaiki
to cope with a mid-ocean storm as happily and safely as with four feet of harbour or shoal water.
    It took a bit of pushing through the water, and I thought that six or seven knots was about as much as the sixteen-horsepower engine could manage economically, unassisted by wind. Pretty good dowager pace at that. Of course, all discussions concerning heavy expenditure by me were purely academic. But ever since I’d been there I had been concerned with small miracles and some of the ones I had waited for had happened. I asked Alexis how much the
kaiki
would cost.
    â€œYou want to know how much you would have to pay to buy the
kaiki
?”
    I nodded. He looked round the open-air restaurant like a conspirator and unobtrusively scribbled some figures on a piece of a cigarette box. He pushed it across to me saying: “This is what I would pay. Ready to go tosea.”
    The figures showed me 22,000 drachmas (275 pounds). The happiness and the strength of my position was that 22,000 was no more impossible for me than 2,000. I didn’t blink an eyelid. Alexis’s conspiratorial air deepened. He wrote another row of figures and said: “That is what I would offer.”
    I glanced casually at 17,000 and felt well-armed for any bargaining that lay ahead. For I was by then determined to pursue this academic project to its impossible conclusion.
    â€œWhen can I see the Kapitanos?”
    â€œI will tell him and he will come out to your house to talk.”
    In due course, the Kapitanos arrived at my home – by boat. He was accompanied by an elderly English-speaking Greek recently returned from America and three fish.
    Kapitanos was a sunburned and pleasant man, with a good face and merry eyes, and I felt sorry that he had given up his boat for a bus and the salt spray for dust. At the end of the chatty bit I asked him how much he wanted for the
kaiki
.
    â€œ27,000 drachmas,” he said promptly, and was at great pains to point out that this would include a complete refit and engine overhaul.
    I didn’t make my counter-offer but I was glad the interpreter was there to explain that I would have to get the permission of the Government in England if I wanted to take more than fifty pounds a year out of that country but that I was writing to the Governor of the Bank of England.
    I indicated for future use that it would be mostunlikely that he would give permission for any movement of capital that would not benefit Britain’s economy. Everybody looked very impressed.
    Of course, I was in a very strong position all round. At our next discussion I offered Kapitanos the ridiculous figure of 125 pounds (10,000 drachmas) for the
kaiki
as she lay there. After he had finished laughing and went away, he may have reflected that it would have been better to have 10,000 drachmas in his pocket than to watch 27,000 drachmas rotting away on the beach.
    That would have been one miracle. But I – and Kapitanos – would have to sit around and await another.

Chapter 10
A Feast to Assuage Any Sort of Hunger
    After six months of fairly naked endeavour (a description which, at least, indicates the nature of my clothing since the end of May), how went the struggle for survival? Well, I survived. And survived without the smallest doubt that ten pounds a month was adequate for all my needs and some of my indulgences. But that was not the whole struggle. If I were to ask myself a different question: “Had I succeeded in changing my environment to accommodate my needs and