CHAPTER 3
Malevolence of a Mayor
Under the olive trees it was nearly dark and the children could hear the musical calls of the Scops owls.
“I wonder what it is Yani wants to tell us!” said Amanda.
“I think it’s about his father,” said David.
“But his father died last year. It can’t be that.”
“I still think it’s something to do with his father,” said David stubbornly.
They made their way deeper and deeper into the dark olive groves where the trees crouched weirdly. their leaves whispering surreptitiously in the evening breeze. But there was no sign of Yani and so presently the children paused and stared about them.
“Where d’you think he is?” asked Amanda.
“Oh. I expect he’ll be along soon,” said David.
At that moment from behind the bole of a gigantic olive Yani leapt out at them suddenly.
“Watch out!” he hissed. “I’m the Devil!”
He grinned at the fright he had given them and then said to Amanda, holding out his cupped hands: “Turn round, I’ve got a present for you.”
She turned round and Yani scattered from his hands several dozen fireflies on to her golden hair, where they gleamed like emeralds.
“You are a fool, Yani,” said Amanda. impatiently shaking her head. “It’ll take me ages to get them out without killing them.”
“Leave them in, then,” suggested Yani. “They suit you.”
Who’s that behind that tree? asked David suddenly. Yani looked quickly over his shoulder.
“Oh, that’s all right, that’s only Coocos,” he said and then called to the boy to come and join them.
Coocos shambled forward, removed his bowler hat and bowed to Amanda, placed the little cage containing his goldfinch on the ground and then squatted happily down with the children.
What have you got to tell us? asked Amanda.
“Well,” said Yani, “it’s about my father.”
“There you are,” said David in triumph, “I knew it was.” “Oh, be quiet,” said Amanda impatiently, “and let Yani tell us.”
“You see, it was not until after my father died,” Yani explained, “that I discovered he had borrowed eighteen thousand drachma from Niko Oizus.”
“What! The Mayor! Old oily Oizus?” said Amanda horrified. “I wouldn’t have trusted him in any business deal?
“Yes, but then he is the richest man in the village and the only man who could have lent my father that sum of money,” said Yani. “Now, as you know, my father left me the vineyards and the fields and the little house we had. This is all I possess. I have been working it, with the help of Coocos here, for the past year. It doesn’t make me a profit, but it makes me enough to live on. But now the Mayor is insisting that I pay him back the eighteen thousand drachma or else he will take my vineyards and my fields and my house away from me as repayment of the debt. And where am Ito find eighteen thousand drachmM I have a cousin in Athens, and I wrote to him asking if he could help, but he is a poor man himself and he has also been ill. So, unless I can do something very quickly, I am going to be completely ruined.”
Amanda had been bristling like an angry cat while Yani told this story and now she exploded.
“That filthy, misbegotten toad,” she exclaimed furiously. “That oily, slimy old hypocrite with his pot belly. I have never liked him and I like him even less now. Why don’t we go and burn his house down? It would serve him right.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said David placidly. “It’s no good getting excited like that We have got to think things out sensibly.”
“I know,” said Amanda excitedly, “we could ask Father for the money.”
“That’s no good,” said David scornfully. “You know Father’s motto is ‘never a borrower or a lender be’.”
“Yes, but he’d do it for Yani,” said Amanda. “After all, Yani’s our Mend.”
“If he won’t lend any money to me,” said David bitterly, “he’s certainly not going to lend it to Yani. So that idea’s no good.”
“We must think of something,” said Amanda.
“Well, why don’t you shut up and stop shouting and think?” inquired David.
They sat in a group and watched the fireflies winking in Amanda’s golden hair and thought and thought.
“The thing to do,” said David at length, “is to get some sort of hold over the Mayor so that we can make him see sense. So he’ll realise that it’s impossible for Yani to pay back the eighteen thousand drachma all at once, though he might be able to do it gradually over the years.”
“That’s all very well,” said Amanda, “but what sort of hold?”
“I know, his third cousin on his wife’s side is supposed to have had an affair with a married man,” said Yani helpfully. “Would that be any good?”
“Not with a man like Oizus,” said Amanda, scornfully. “I shouldn’t think he cares what his cousins do.”
“No, it’s got to be something better than that,” said David, “and it’s got to be something foolproof because if we don’t pull it off, we’ll muck up the whole thing and make it even worse for Yani.”
“I know,” exclaimed Amanda suddenly. “Let’s kidnap his wife.”
“What’s kidnap?” inquired Yani, puzzled.
“She means,” David explained, “to catch the Mayor’s wife and take her and hold her somewhere and then ask for money before we return her. I think it’s a stupid idea.”
“Well, you haven’t put up any ideas yet,” said Amanda, “and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible.”
“I don’t think it would work, Amanda,” said Yani sorrowfully. “For one thing, she’s very big and fat and it would be difficult for us to carry her, and for another thing, I think the Mayor would be only too happy to get rid of her. And if we have got the Mayor’s wife and he doesn’t want her back, it’s going to be a great problem, because it’s a well-known fact that she eats more than anybody else in the village.”
“Anyway, you just can’t go round kidnapping people,” David pointed out. “It’s against the law.”
“Bother the law,” said Amanda. “Anyway, isn’t what Oizus is doing to Yani against the law?”
“No,” said David, “it’s called foreclosing and it’s quite legal.”
“Oh,” said Amanda, somewhat dampened by her brother’s erudition. “Well, anyway, I don’t see why we can’t kidnap the Mayor’s wife. After all, there’s practically no law up here anyway.”