Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance by Robert Crisp

Author:Robert Crisp
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Eat, Drink and Be Merry

There was a small glass before me containing half an inch of water. In a few moments it would become probably the most expensive short drink in the world. Nobody yet knew all the effects of the most expensive drink in the world. I hoped to live long enough to be able to tell.

Now I was opening two ampoules from a box labelled FLUORO-URACIL (it came with a tiny metal saw with which to cut through the glass) and tapping them into the glass of water. It was in ampoules because up to now it had been injected into the veins of people with my complaint.

My drink was not only expensive it was an experiment. For all I knew I may have been the first person who had actually swallowed any on a doctor’s prescription. Each ampoule cost me forty-one drachmas – as I was drinking it in Athens. Every time I swallowed that fortified half-inch of water, I swallowed eighty-two drachmas. That represented about one pound three shillings a half-inch. And I had been taking it twice a day.

It tasted awful.

The process culminating in this extravagant concoction had begun some weeks before, in Monemvasia, down on the southernmost tip of Greece, where I was inclined to spend the summer months and sometimes the winters.

Taking advantage of a chance encounter with the local GP, I asked if he could give me something for a stomach ache. This was a condition which I tended to blame on the red wine of Crete which was imported quarterly into Monemvasia.

The fact that it had become rather a persistent condition since the Easter festivities I likewise blamed on a rather persistent consumption. I owed an apology to the Cretan wine growers.

The doctor invited me to his surgery where it took only a few minutes prodding by fingers which obviously knew their business to start a chain of events which caused a great deal of hilarity and which led me to these postprandial ampoules.

“Ha, Ha!” he chuckled, with a final prod which made my stomach muscles twitch convulsively. “You must go to Athens immediately.”

I gaped at him.

“What do you mean, immediately?”

“Tonight,” he grinned down at me.

“Look, doctor, all I want is a dose of medicine for stomach pains. As long as it’s not castor oil.”

This was obviously a very funny thing to say.

“Medicine is no good for you. You must have X-ray. Immediately.”

“But what’s wrong with me?”

“When they have seen the X-rays they will tell you what’s wrong.”

He was still laughing merrily when I left the surgery.

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