The Silence of Scheherazade

by Defne Suman

  Once he’d got over the surprise, Avinash Pillai began to laugh. His lover was standing there in front of him in her white silk dressing gown, barefoot and with her wild hair, which she’d not had time to gather up, forming a halo around her head, alive with static. In her slender arms she held the hunting rifle as if it were a machine gun. Lowering the shotgun, Edith took two steps back, raised her head with difficulty, and looked at Avinash, her black eyes magnified beneath her thick lashes, the pink of her rosy lips set off by the paleness of her face.

  Avinash waited for Edith to realize the absurdity of the situation and join in with his laughter, but instead she unexpectedly threw herself into his arms. She was shaking like a leaf.

  ‘Oh, Avinash, is it you? Thank God! Thank God! What is happening, for God’s sake?’

  Avinash caught the rifle before it fell to the ground. It was the first time he’d ever seen his lover of eleven years afraid. Edith was always calm and courageous. During the Great War, when the British were prepared to bomb Smyrna, all the neighbours left the city; only Edith stayed in a by-then deserted Vasili Street. She slept alone in the house with her maidservants every night. With the exception of a few times when they’d come back tipsy from some summer excursion, she never allowed Avinash to spend the night at her home. She was one of those women who would not permit any man to be her protector. At first Avinash had been attracted by this peculiarity, but over time it became a flaw in their relationship, which he felt keenly. This was the first time Edith had ever thrown herself into his arms, and it reminded him of Juliette Lamarck’s hysterical episodes.

  There was another explosion down at the harbour. Edith pressed herself even more tightly against Avinash. The stained glass of the door rattled and something shattered upstairs. With Edith’s arms still around his waist, Avinash nudged her back indoors, closed the door behind them and leaned the rifle against the wall. She was still trembling. He rested her back against the door so that she wouldn’t fall and looked around for one of the servants to request a glass of water.

  Butler Christo, who still smiled under his moustache at Avinash’s visits and never, ever left the young servant girls or the hallway unattended, was nowhere to be seen. Was Edith alone in the house? He took her hands in his. ‘The Greek fleet has arrived. The soldiers are landing.’

  Edith hid her head in Avinash’s shoulder. She’d stopped shaking. ‘So who are they attacking?’ she asked, her voice muffled. ‘Why is the city being bombarded? Is it the Italians? Are the Turks fighting back?’

  ‘No, darling. Nobody is attacking anybody. Those guns are celebrating the fleet entering the harbour. Ah, you thought…’

  Avinash enfolded her delicate body in his dark arms, in the way he might hold a child. Part of him was thinking about making love to Edith in the rooms where they’d never yet made love – the kitchen, the pantry, or right there in the hall, where, normally, Christo kept watch.

  ‘Is everything all right? I mean, has public order been maintained?’

  ‘Yes, everywhere appears calm. There are soldiers in some of the districts and, for now, public order is excellent. If you wish, we can go out together. I’ll accompany you as far as the quay. The wharf is thronging with Christians; they’ve gone wild with joy and it’s like a holiday atmosphere down there.’

  ‘So you mean one is free to go out on the streets now, my master?’

  Avinash realized that she was referring to his imperiousness of the night before. He pulled himself together. She must have sent Butler Christo home immediately after he’d left last night. Before detaching her arms from around his waist, he tried to catch her eye, but she still had her head on his shoulder.

  ‘You know, some of the Greek soldiers weren’t even aware where they were going. They’d been told they were going to a port in Ukraine to fight the Bolsheviks. They only realized that they’d come to Smyrna when they sailed into the harbour this morning.’

  ‘Even the deaf Sultan had heard about the occupation, but they hadn’t?’

  Avinash was surprised at his lover’s choice of words but said nothing. Despite her sarcastic tone, she still hadn’t extricated herself from his arms, as much to her own surprise as his. His hands instinctively moved inside her robe, finding her small breasts under the silk fabric. Edith made a sound, whether as invitation or rejection it was hard to say.

  ‘Where are Christo, the servant girls, Zoe…? Where are they all?’

  ‘I don’t know. When I woke up, there was nobody in the house.’

  ‘They’re probably all down at the quay too,’ murmured the Indian, without giving a thought to what that must have meant for his lover, having to wake up alone in an empty house; his lover of so many years, whose caprices he had submitted to and no longer tried to counter, and whom he now believed he knew to an exceptional degree.

  The relationship between Avinash and Edith had been going on for eleven years. There were still times – in the wavering light of a kerosene lamp dimmed low on winter evenings, when darkness fell early; stretched out on Edith’s bed, smoking hashish from a waterpipe; on spring afternoons with the seashell-smelling wind cooling their sweaty skin – when they made love with pleasure, but they no longer felt the same desire for each other that they once had. Right now, however, they were both hungry for each other, just as they’d been in the early years; they both felt the same urge and wanted to take advantage of the moment, but, fearing that one of the maids or the butler might return to the house at any moment, they instead continued to stand by the door, pressed up against each other, speaking of the outside world.

  ‘What are the Muslims doing? What’s the situation like where you are?’

  ‘For now they’re in shock. As you know, the news that the Greek army would land was given to the governor yesterday evening. Last night, in spite of the rain, a large group from the Muslim districts assembled at the Jewish Cemetery up in Bahri Baba, overlooking the port. Shots were fired in protest. I went to have a look, but it was more like a fairground than a protest. Rich, poor, women, children – all sorts were there; thousands of people from the Muslim neighbourhoods. There was a lot of beating of drums, but for what? This morning they’re all hiding behind closed doors. What else can they do?’

  ‘Is something going to happen?’ Edith asked, her voice momentarily not hoarse with desire but deep and serious.

  ‘The soldiers are landing in an orderly fashion, but it seems to me that they aren’t quite certain what to do. The atmosphere is very highly charged, and there may well be security lapses during the changeover from the Turkish administration to the Greek one. There will be incidents, for sure. Hopefully no one will get hurt.’

  This time his hands went lower, slipping between the folds of her nightgown. His experienced fingers, knowing all the pleasure points, moved between her legs. Yielding to Avinash’s expert touch, Edith turned the lock in the door with one hand. Her lover was someone who always paid great attention to his appearance; he bought the finest quality British cloth, had his suits made by the best tailors in Smyrna, and walked around dressed to the nines. But this morning, because he’d been at the consulate all night, his trousers were wrinkled and the underarms of his shirt were stained with that spicy sweat that always embarrassed him so. He had never before come to Vasili Street without having first visited a bathhouse.

  Drunk with strange emotions, Edith realized that, on this day when such important work awaited him, he’d come not to make love to her but to check on her. The Greek landing would be considered a victory for the British; in the coming days, Avinash would certainly be very busy. In order to have him all to herself for a short while, to place herself, even at such a critical time, above the demands of politics, the Secret Service and all those other manly preoccupations that lay ahead, the hand that had turned the lock now moved to undo the buttons of his trousers.

  Avinash placed the hat that he’d taken off when Edith pointed the gun barrel between his eyebrows gently down on the floor and pressed her
between his body and the joyfully coloured stained glass of the front door. And on the very spot where, thirty years before, Monsieur Lamarck had lifted Nikolas Dimos by the collar and shaken him, Avinash entered Edith hungrily and with deep longing.

  Frog Rain

  ‘Mama, Mama, come here! It’s raining frogs! I swear, Mama, it’s raining frogs. Oh my God! Run, Mama!’

  Katina was slicing onions in the kitchen. Wiping away her tears with the back of her hand, she came out into the hallway and strode swiftly to the front window. Panagiota, dressed in her white dress that reached down to the floor, was kneeling on the mat set inside the bay window, her hands and nose stuck to the glass.

  ‘Kori mou,’ Katina shouted, ‘didn’t I tell you not to stay in front of the window today! Eh? Why are you still there?’

  ‘Kita, look, Mama. Come and look at the street from here.’

  Straightening her black headscarf, Katina approached the mat. Her forehead was beaded with sweat. ‘Your father has always said that stones will rain down on our heads. And it has started already, even before the sun has set, with this gunfire from the Greek evzones. So where are the frogs? The crickets are everywhere again. What you call frogs—’

  ‘Look at the ground – it’s covered in frogs. Have you ever seen anything like this?’

  Katina murmured a prayer from between her pursed lips and quickly made the sign of the cross. Frogs truly were raining from the sky and falling – pat, pat – onto the cobblestones in front of Akis’s grocery. Some died as they hit the ground, some hopped off into the square after the initial shock. Shadows hovered like ghosts over the ones that had died, making them look double the size.

  ‘Manoula mou, may I run down and collect some frogs, please? I’ll take a bucket with me so that they can fall into it. Se parakalo!’

  ‘Ah, Thee mou, dear God, what a thing to ask, daughter! Do you see a single soul on the street? Why would you want to go out there? The gunfire has not stopped since this morning. What a foolish child you are, vre yavri mou! Is this the time to be collecting frogs in the street, darling girl?’

  ‘What is there to be afraid of? Everybody’s out in the streets. The whole neighbourhood rushed down to the quay carrying Greek flags and flowers in their hands. We’re the only ones staying at home like prisoners.’ Panagiota’s eyes were full of tears as she turned from the window to face her mother. Like a festering wound, her resentment, finding no outlet, had swelled inside her. ‘Everybody went, and did anything happen to any of them? They came pitter-pattering back to their homes. Just listen – Elpiniki and Afroula are singing songs next door. Everyone got to see the evzones in their traditional white skirts and pointy shoes and all. It was only me who stayed home. This evening when we go out, they’ll all make fun of me.’

  ‘Nobody will be going out onto the streets tonight.’

  ‘Really?’ Panagiota’s voice was louder now. Her black curls had come loose from her plaits, and her eyes and cheeks were blazing.

  She’d been up since daybreak. Knowing full well that her father wouldn’t let her go down to the docks, she woke before the sun, dressed in white as her teacher had instructed, and put a crown of laurel leaves on her head. If she couldn’t go down to the wharf, she would celebrate the soldiers landing in Smyrna by herself at home. Her father couldn’t stop her doing that!

  Akis had woken up grumbling as the fleet entering the harbour began to fire their guns. After forbidding the women to leave the house, he went off to the coffeehouse. Which meant that if looters came and ransacked the house, he wouldn’t hear them. Katina had tried to comfort Panagiota. ‘Is that likely, yavri mou? Your dear father isn’t far away; he would hear a scream for help from the window and would run over.’ As it was, as soon it became clear that the gunfire was coming from the shore rather than out in the harbour, Akis returned home and stayed until everything had quietened down.

  Panagiota had been furious ever since, sitting in the window in her white dress, with the crown on her head. The only thing that had taken her mind off her anger was the sudden downpour of frogs.

  ‘I’m a disgrace. The whole school went – everybody except me. Nobody in the neighbourhood except you supports the Greek king anyway. I don’t support him either. This evening I’m going to shout, “Zito, zito!” at Father. Just wait and see. Zito o Venizelos! Long live Venizelos! Zito, zito, zito!’

  Katina took a step towards the window and slapped her daughter, drunk with her own anger, in the face. ‘Watch your mouth, little lady. As long as you are living under your father’s roof, you will not behave like that. Come to your senses, mari!’

  With jaws clenched, mother and daughter glared at each other. Outside, the storm intensified. The lemon tree in front of the window was so confused, it didn’t know which way to turn; like a fragile, multi-armed child, it was tossing its branches from left to right and beating at the glass.

  When several more frogs fell onto the roof of the house, both mother and daughter burst out laughing. Katina regretted having slapped her daughter, and Panagiota regretted having upset her mother by shouting, ‘Zito, zito’. With the tension now gone, Katina sat down beside Panagiota on the mat in the window and wrapped her arms around her slender form.

  ‘Ah, my beautiful daughter, my darling child, how could I send you out into those crowds? They even sent word to your father not to open the shop. You were here when Uncle Christo stopped by yesterday evening; you heard him yourself. That Indian jewel merchant said shops should stay closed today so as to avoid tradesmen getting hurt or goods being damaged. So how could we let you, our only child, go out by yourself. Huh? Tell me, Panagiota mou.’

  Panagiota leaned her head on her mother’s breast as she used to when she was little, crushing the leaves of her crown. She was fourteen years old and a head taller than Katina, but at times like this she felt like a tiny child. Her ear found her mother’s heartbeat. Closing her eyes, she listened to the sound of frogs striking the cobblestones. Her mother’s skin was soft and warm. Guilt welled up inside her.

  It was always the same! She said things she knew would make her mother blow her top. She would be asking for a slap and then would feel sorry for having upset Katina. But what could she do? She was fed up with all the melodrama. Yes, her brothers had died. But life went on. Panagiota was alive, and so was Katina. During the funeral rites at the church, her father had stood guard on their doorstep so that her brothers’ souls couldn’t come in, but what good had that done? The ghosts of Kosta and Manoli had continued to haunt every nook and cranny of the house for three and a half years. At Panagiota’s age, a year felt as long as a century and death a distant concept. As the memory of her brothers gradually faded, thinking about them no longer brought Panagiota pain, though there remained a residue of sadness around her soul.

  Inside their house, there were reminders of them everywhere: in the black cloth covering the mirrors; in the evening meals eaten in silence by the light of the kerosene lamp; in the endless hours her mother spent praying in front of the icon; in the koliva dessert made for the souls of the dead and blessed by the priests; in Akis’s sighs and in the tears of Katina, who never took off her mourning black. No matter how much her mother loved her, Katina always seemed resentful when Panagiota burst into genuine laughter. It was out of the question that Katina and Akis could ever laugh together. At such times Panagiota would feel very small and insignificant. She missed Adriana and Elpiniki and felt guilty.

  When the Ottoman Empire entered the Great War on the side of the Germans, Christian boys were ordered to join the labour battalions. Akis tried to pay in order to have his sons exempted from military service. The amount he paid to the first policeman wasn’t enough, so later a gendarme came by. Then a sergeant knocked on their door.

  This sergeant was an insolent man. In addition to cash, Akis gave him enough sugar and flour to last an entire village many months. He arranged for a cart to take the provisions to Bergama. But the sergeant was never satisfied. Maybe he was
aware that the grocer had a volcanic temper and was just waiting for him to erupt. Sure enough, on seeing the sergeant grinning in his shop doorway yet again one day, Akis lost his rag and strode over to the weasel, ready to punch him out. The sergeant would definitely have had him prosecuted, but that evening Kosta and Manoli announced that they were giving themselves up. They didn’t want their father to get into any more trouble.

  The image of the twins and the fresh smiles on their faces as they boarded the train at Basmane Station had never left Katina. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Mama,’ they’d said. ‘We’ll make some roads, dig a few tunnels. How long can this so-called war last? You should put aside some money for Panagiota’s dowry, and send her to Homerion High School.’

  At first Katina had been happy that her sons wouldn’t be fighting at the front. A childhood friend of Akis’s, Ismail from Chesme, even though he was over forty years old, had been called up to the army because he’d done a month less than he should have. He was sent off to the front in the Allahuekber Mountains. His wife Saadet and his children were only able to survive thanks to the sacks of flour and tins of oil that Akis sent to their home. That Ismail managed to return safely from Enver Pasha’s unimaginable ordeal was a miracle. At least Katina’s twins wouldn’t be fighting in battles like that, wouldn’t be lice fodder on a snow-covered mountain.

  Even though it was a war waged by infidels against infidels, the Sultan had joined it on the side of the Germans and had called his people to a Holy War. Since non-Muslims could not fight in a Holy War, the Christian boys were drafted in to work in labour battalions, building infrastructure.

  When he first heard about this, Akis had said, ‘The Sultan would never have thought of doing that; it must be the members of the Committee of Union and Progress, those Unionists, who dreamed up this business of having labour battalions.’ But many years later, at the end of another world war, when he saw photographs of the death camps Hitler had sent the Jews to, he was to say to his empty walls, ‘It wasn’t the Unionists who came up with the idea for those labour battalions that took our sons’ lives; it was the Germans.’ For one brief moment, Grocer Akis had forgotten that his wife was not with him in the squatter’s house with the corrugated iron roof and closed curtains in the New Smyrna neighbourhood of Athens. She couldn’t argue with him about his theory about the labour battalions, for Katina had not managed to pass from the old Smyrna to the new one.