“What did he see?”
“Her body; they had shaved it. And above her pudenda, indelibly tattooed in red, the star and crescent…”
“I don’t believe it.”
“He went back to the Gulf, for good… She lives alone in Nicosia.”
He fell silent again. He raised his eyes and looked at him.
“Listen to another story,” he said.
“I would rather not.” He hated the cruel piercing gaze of the old man.
“She was called Olgitsa. From the Karpass. From Trikomo. They freed her, too, after holding her for two years. She rejoined her family, they were living in a tent, too, not far from mine. All her friends and relations came to see her. They were happy! The young girl seemed to be, too. Courteous, always cheerful, full of health. Until the day when her cousin came to see her. He was an infantryman, in uniform. He had managed to get a two-day pass to come to the wood. And as soon as Olgitsa saw him standing before her in his khaki uniform she went into the tent without a word, undressed quickly and docilely lay down on her bed.”
He looked at the grandfather with hatred. He said:
“What reminded you of all this?”
“I remembered my black dog.”
And he dived in again. He continued swimming out to sea until he could barely be seen and he got further and further away.
Lefteris did not dare follow him. He remained floating on the reef, with the water hitting him from all directions, sucking at him, pulling him down… He felt nauseous. He pulled himself onto the rocks and doubled up with the pain in his stomach.
When he returned to the beach he was bruised. Why had he told him all those things today? What had made him do it? It was inhuman, he really was the liveliest corpse, not Barnabas but Lazarus…
It was days before he saw her. Ten whole days. The inexplicable and mutual setbacks in his relationship with Maria and what the old man had told him had disturbed him. He suddenly felt, again, that he was breaking up, dissolving. He lost all inclination to paint, all further desire to put down roots in this place. The thought of cutting his ties and settling somewhere else, far away, perhaps in Crete, perhaps in France, day by day grew in strength, became a decision. And he would have put it into practice if he had not found under his door, on the evening of the eleventh day, the letter. He opened it and read: “What has become of you? Maria.” Six short words. Neither date nor address. Just those bare six words. Truly, what had become of him? Why? What reason had he? Why this inhuman ingratitude? It was clear that she felt the same for him as he did for her. If she did not feel it she would not have kissed him, she would not have written to him… If she had run in panic from his arms she must have had a reason. She may have been disturbed by that first touch, the contact, which deepened their relationship, which put it on the basis which they had both wanted from the beginning. Perhaps her contact and relationship with all this unhappiness, with the wretchedness and conflict, which was embodied in her grandfather and the old people around him, had disorientated her, had deprived her of all passion for what is good in life and elemental… Something which often happened to him too… Perhaps there were other reasons, perhaps all of them… None of this in any way changed what he deeply felt for her; nor, of course, fate, which would follow its preordained and immutable course.
Yes, he was immature still, and foolish; as always; instead of standing by her, winning her, conquering her, he had run away and cut himself off and was preparing to leave.
He felt the nightmare depart. He was relieved. He sat at his easel and all night, until the next morning, he painted her portrait from memory. Bare on a bare beach; surrounded by logs and bones where lizards breathed slowly.
The Other Aspect was the title he decided on. Your Other Aspect, Moon, he thought.
The unseen; which he would discover himself; which he would assimilate with the known, the visible and the beautiful. There, he would make her a person again, he would draw her out of that chimerical world of old people, he would bring her down from the utopian magic carpet, he would give her back to life, simple, strong and young again. He felt like Saint Dimitris, like Theseus, who struggled to save the maiden, not only for reasons of chivalry, not only for those, fortunately.
And the next morning, this morning, at dawn, he got into his car. He arrived about seven, before the day’s activity began on the estate. The time when everyone was preparing to leave for work. He sat with the old man and they drank their coffee on the veranda as usual, as though his absence had never occurred. They spoke about trivial matters, the daily routine, the weather, the light and politics, his exhibition “with dead and living still-lifes from the Cape Greco peninsula” which, he said, he intended to hold in the capital in the spring. But he gave no hint of the decision which had brought him out here, with so many expectations, and neither did the grandfather betray his anguish about what was about to happen.
First he would talk to her, he would tell her; afterwards her grandfather. Only when he had heard her say yes, only when he had felt again her cold lips warm on him, would he confess how he needed her, how determined he was to save her, to enclose her in his own small space, his flat with its two and a bit rooms, freezing in winter, a furnace in the summer, to make the woman complete beside the picture, to give her back to life, to happiness, which had been stolen from her by so much death, so much flight… He loved her as he had never loved before. Neither his mother nor his grandmother, nor the Virgin Mary, nor even his wretched painting… He loved the old man, too, even though he feared him because of that wrinkle, which always seemed to be there lately, because of his obstinacy, which hid an anguished, dark, cruel soul. But he would leave him back here. Alone, with his wrinkles, his dreams. With his nightmares. Only her would he take with him into life. Her and her unseen aspect…
When she heard his car arrive she rushed out and greeted him as warmly as if they had not seen each other for months. Perhaps they had not. She told him to drink his coffee with her grandfather; she would feed the baby immediately and then come and join them, or if they preferred, the two of them would go down for a swim together. Her grandfather had work to do. “Haven’t you, Grandfather?”
He and her grandfather again spoke about the North. About the village and the fields, about the sea, Lambousa, his Doma. They also spoke about this year’s crop from the estate, which would surpass all their expectations.
“And what will happen when you eventually go back to Lapithos?” he asked. “Will you have the heart to abandon it? Such an undertaking? Such an investment of toil and sacrifice?”
“When the time comes what we have done will be the only difficulty, the only obstacle. But not for the reason you think… First we shall eliminate it… Not with buckets and wheelbarrows. We’d be in a hurry. We’ll bring bulldozers to uproot it, to empty it into the sea. We shall uncover again what we toiled so hard to cover up… The bones, the stones, the good things you love… We’ll restore everything as before, as it was… Nothing will remain as a reminder that we lived.”
He stopped, drank a quick mouthful of water: “Is that what you want?”
“Is that what I want? Do you have to ask? If you don’t do it you’ll see what trouble you’ll have with us artists and poets of Cape Greco.”
He laughed. But the old man was again gloomy.
Maria appeared in the doorway. “I’ll be finished in two minutes.” She held Diamantis in her arms and was feeding him. He was beautiful, with deep blue eyes. He smiled as he ate and his hands squeezed her breast.
The old man fixed on eyes on he child and said emotionlessly: “He is my great-grandchild! Do you know that? You surely know that he is not just a child we raised… He is her son! The son of that same wild beast who destroyed my family. My wife and my son, her father… But we love him… We grew to love him… Do you remember what I told you about the carbon in the earth? This is the clearest evidence, isn’t it? Just as the carbon he became a diamond…”
He got up; sl
owly he left. Maria watched him with hate in her eyes, piercing.
He was left alone with her; and with her child, who ran to him as usual as soon as she put him down, to play with him, waiting to be picked up, his little arms outstretched… But Lefteris abruptly withdrew his arm, he drew back, he avoided touching the child, or looking at him, avoided her eyes, which were watching him… He did not know what he should say, where to start, what to do… And when she, deathly humiliated, clutched her son and held him to her with a despair, a tenderness and a love which the painter had never seen before, and went inside closing the door behind her, he got into his car like a thief and started it…
…he dropped the skull of the sheep or dog… He kicked out, uprooted a melon, trampled to pieces all the plants that lay in his path. He left a wake of destruction…
He reached the car again. He threw away the stick and reached out to open the door. He changed his mind. He made himself turn round, and set off for her house again, on foot, even if he had to uproot all the green area until his powerless rage had abated, but he did not have the strength any more… Neither to go forward nor back. Neither for life nor for death…
…the first cancer cell was activated… At that precise moment… While the sun sank bloodily in the blue clay, which received it in successive muddy rings, a moment before darkness fell…
From the collection:
The Unseen Aspect, Kinyras Publications, Nicosia 1979
Translated by David Bailey
* Traditional carved wooden shelf
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Vagabond Street
Gregory
Beehives
The Bath
Festival of the Full Moon
Cinyras
Gregorios and Efthymios
Kypriani
Uniforms
The Suitcase
The Escape
The Unseen Aspect
Gregory Page 18