The Corfu Trilogy by Gerald Durrell

was, in my opinion, just what a room should be. The walls were lined with tall bookshelves filled with volumes on freshwater biology, botany, astronomy, medicine, folklore and similar fascinating and sensible subjects. Interspersed with these were selections of ghost and crime stories. Thus Sherlock Holmes rubbed shoulders with Darwin, and Le Fanu with Fabre, in what I considered to be a thoroughly well-balanced library. At one window of the room stood Theodore’s telescope, its nose to the sky like a howling dog, while the sills of every window bore a parade of jars and bottles containing minute freshwater fauna, whirling and twitching among the delicate fronds of green weed. On one side of the room was a massive desk, piled high with scrapbooks, micro-photographs, X-ray plates, diaries, and notebooks. On the opposite side of the room was the microscope table, with its powerful lamp on the jointed stem leaning like a lily over the flat boxes that housed Theodore’s collection of slides. The microscopes themselves, gleaming like magpies, were housed under a series of beehive-like domes of glass.
    ‘How are you?’ Theodore would inquire, as if I were a complete stranger, and give me his characteristic handshake – a sharpdownward tug, like a man testing a knot in a rope. The formalities being over, we could then turn our minds to more important topics.
    ‘I was… er… you know… looking through my slides just before your arrival, and I came across one which may interest you. It is a slide of the mouth-parts of the rat flea…
ceratophyllus fasciatus
, you know. Now, I’ll just adjust the microscope… There!… You see? Very curious. I mean to say, you could almost imagine it was a human face, couldn’t you? Now I had another… er… slide here… That’s funny. Ah! got it. Now this one is of the spinnerets of the garden or cross spider… er…
epeira fasciata
…’
    So, absorbed and happy, we would pore over the microscope. Filled with enthusiasm, we would tack from subject to subject, and if Theodore could not answer my ceaseless flow of questions himself, he had books that could. Gaps would appear in the bookcase as volume after volume was extracted to be consulted, and by our side would be an ever-growing pile of volumes.
    ‘Now this one is a cyclops…
cyclops viridis
… which I caught out near Govino the other day. It is a female with egg-sacs… Now, I’ll just adjust… you’ll be able to see the eggs quite clearly… I’ll just put her in the live box… er… hum… there are several species of cyclops found here in Corfu…’
    Into the brilliant circle of white light a weird creature would appear, a pear-shaped body, long antennæ that twitched indignantly, a tail like sprigs of heather, and on each side of it (slung like sacks of onions on a donkey) the two large sacs bulging with pink beads.
    ‘… called cyclops because, as you can see, it has a single eye situated in the centre of its forehead. That’s to say, in the centre of what
would
be its forehead if a cyclops had one. In Ancient Greek mythology, as you know, a cyclops was one of a group of giants… er… each of whom had one eye. Their task was to forge iron for Hephæstus.’
    Outside, the warm wind would shoulder the shutters, making them creak, and the rain-drops would chase each other down the window-pane like transparent tadpoles.
    ‘Ah-ha! It is curious that you should mention that. The peasants in Salonika have a very similar… er… superstition… No, no, merely a superstition. I have a book here that gives a most
interesting
account of vampires in… um… Bosnia. It seems that the local people there…’
    Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot spout.
    ‘… but, on the other hand, it is impossible to say that there is
no
life on Mars. It is, in my opinion, quite possible that some form of life will be