by Polis Loizou
Aristos picked up their keys, nodding with approval at his surroundings. A strapping East Asian wheeled a tower of luggage across their path. It was only then that Darya was struck by another thought: Orestis was sleeping with Eva.
But no. Her husband was placing different sets of keys in their hands. The youths were in separate cabins. With a smile, Aristos escorted his wife to their suite. In her gut was a bitter bud.
✽✽✽
The vessel pulled away from the port to a volley of Arabic between the sailors. Bulky, skinny, tall or short, the men passed anacondas of rope as if they were spider webs. Other men yelled in Greek from smaller boats, coast guard or pilots. The whole of Cyprus slid off into the horizon. Would they see the Turkish side at all? Would it be visibly different from the Greek? Her breath soared. Freedom was the sea, the realm of being and nothingness, this deep dark womb from which all life began. She shut her eyes and inhaled it all.
Eva called Orestis to her. ‘Come on, let’s do Titanic like losers.’ She stood against the rail with her arms spread out. ‘Not like that, what are you doing? He was holding her arms, you brick.’
‘You want this ship to be the Titanic?’
‘Of course. Don’t I look like Kate Winslet?’ She struck a pose that Darya vaguely recognised from the film’s nude scene. ‘I’m telling you, naked we’re exactly the same.’
This made Orestis smile in a way Darya had never seen before. He called her Miss Winslet and she thanked Leonardo. A glimpse at their youth, the schoolboy teasing his classmate. Then Eva said, not very quietly, ‘And she’s the old woman with the diamond.’
The Russian Whore pretended not to have heard.
‘Come on, then,’ Orestis said. ‘Throw the diamond in.’
‘Fine.’ After a pause, the girl unclasped the silver piece from her wrist and dropped it into the chopped-up waves.
Orestis gasped. He couldn’t stop it.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ said Eva. ‘I have others.’
Darya turned from her stare.
An hour later, they were sitting in a lounge of glass walls filled with light. Darya sipped at her grenadine mocktail while the younger two talked of a mutual friend. Orestis had mentioned him before, something about a book of poems. Eva was excited and dropped the names of other poets his book would stand beside on bookshelves. Orestis laughed her down.
‘I invited him too,’ she said. ‘But the idiot made some excuse. I don’t know, I think he hates me.’
Darya caught the expression on her face before she changed it. People couldn’t be forced to like those they were supposed to. Human pieces never fit neatly together.
For his part, Orestis was acting well. He mostly restricted his attention and conversation to Eva and her father. He was sharp not to exclude Darya completely and even had enough clout to ask what part of Russia she was from.
‘I am from Belarus, actually.’
Eva narrowed her eyes. ‘Pe! We’re like Eurovision in here.’
She looked surprised when Darya laughed.
As for her own performance, Darya was unsure. She knew she ought to face Orestis once in a while, and engage with him as a normal person would. But she couldn’t look at his arms, his jaw. Not at his dimpled cheeks. Caught in the no-man’s land of looking and not looking, possessiveness and aloofness, she stared at the carpet, the pillars, the table, the colour of her cocktail projected onto the table like an old slide, with only the occasional glance at whoever had started to speak. She would have to learn how. She would have to negotiate this.
Aristos’ thumb on her hand made her jump. He gave her his kindest expression, which his daughter scrutinised. The scent of pipe tobacco lingered on his fingers as Darya brought them to her lips and kissed them. All would be fine.
They parted ways for the afternoon. Father and daughter went off to the casino’s fruit machines. Orestis took his cue to work out at the gym, leaving Darya to find her way to the meditation room. It looked out onto the sea and was so close to the surface of the water that she felt like a paper boat carried along by the waves. She might go to the sauna after yoga, to open her pores and allow the badness out with her sweat. No, that was dangerous – too much like the banya. Instead, she focused on the spray of the vessel in the water, the play of light on the foamy ridges of the waves, willing herself one with them, with everything. Aparigraha.
Showered and dressed and perfumed, they reconvened for dinner in a white room of elegant chairs and soft lighting. A trestle table boasted fruit sculptures and chocolate fountains. The rush of the engines played beneath the piped jazz. Eva was funny and effervescent to her two men. And when Orestis exchanged Greek phrases for Russian ones with Darya, she couldn’t help but join in. She’d get Darya to repeat Cypriot words, which the woman gathered from the men’s reactions were rude, provincial or both, and then cackle with tears in her eyes. Such was the price of peace.
As the others made their way from the dining room to one of the lounges for the evening show, Darya excused herself to go out on the deck for some air. If only she could name what tumbled around inside her, which filled her close to bursting. Resting her arms on the wet wood of the ship’s railings, she cast her eye across the whole dark sea. She imagined her soul spreading out to cover it, embrace it, melt into it.
Not ten metres away, a father held his toddler up and pointed out the constellations. She couldn’t follow his language, but all the same, she heard the tale of the bear in the sky.
Would a child help? To see yourself, your kin, replicated in a brand new being – it must have some effect. And if it was Aristos’, or even Orestis’, it would plant her firmly in the country she never called home. But would her child be accepted? Would the blood of his homeland be enough to wash off her Slavic dirt? No. She could not be reborn from foam. She would become a rusalka, wrapping men in her long hair and dragging them down to their watery fate.
After the show, an assault of plucky young Brits with voices like bells, the four of them toasted the first island stop. Then they said goodnight and separated. Aristos’ hand was on her back throughout the walk to their suite. When he fell into a satisfied slumber there, she read the message from Orestis for the fifth time and followed the directions to his cabin. The brine walked with her along the corridor, as well as that familiar hush, hush, whirr of the vessel. She knocked gently at the door of his cabin. Orestis answered, dressed only in pyjama bottoms. She sat on his bed and made him get on his knees before she allowed him to take them off.
Eight
The ship wasn’t to dock in Santorini till the evening. Over a buffet breakfast on the open deck, bacon and croissants and yoghurt with granola, Aristos told them the myth of the island’s birth; a son of Poseidon had dreamt he’d slept with his niece, a nymph. She asked him to throw a clod of earth into the sea, which would turn into a place where she could hide from her father’s wrath. Having woken from the dream, the man obeyed its orders. He threw some dirt into the water and, before his eyes, the island of Santorini grew out of it.
‘What crazy stories,’ Eva said, smoking.
‘I like them,’ said Darya.
The girl exhaled. ‘Me, too.’
The ship being too large for the island’s port, small boats were dispatched from shore to fetch passengers in groups. Darya took the steps down to the other vessel, on which deep-tanned Greeks waited, arms held out. Middle-aged men who’d lived it all, and younger ones, their sons, slid around on the rocking wood, their bodies adjusting to the motion of every wave. Her feet were a heartbeat from the sea. She could miss the boat and plunge straight in. The thought of the release sent a shiver through her.
She was first to descend. Orestis had offered to go ahead but she’d sensed he was nervous. ‘I did this before,’ she told him.
‘Mother of God,’ Eva said, crossing herself.
When the boat was fully loaded they set off for the island. Eva pulled a digital camera from her handbag. Santorini ahead. A humble dock at
the base of a dark cliff, and the lights of a bustling square like lava at its peak. Within the rocky face of the island was a cable car that ferried tourists up to the town. Donkeys carried others up a dirt path.
Eva chose the cable car, as there was no way she’d be using the animal transport. ‘No way,’ she repeated in English. Darya chose the donkey because here she was, now, and there it was, now. She went alone; Aristos joked that his weight would kill the beast. Orestis was reluctant to let her go as if she might fall to her death, but then Eva said, ‘What are you afraid of? Let her go,’ so he relented. Darya knew from the girl’s narrowed eyes that she may have been looking at Orestis for a little too long.
The donkey’s owner was a short old man with a thick moustache and a straw hat, clothes faded by the long days. ‘You’ll be safe,’ he told her, and she knew from his calf muscles that this was a promise. As they ascended, he whistled to the mountains, to the sea, to the tiny pads of land rising out of the blue like thighs in a bath. She regretted choosing the donkey; Aristos’ comment reverberated in her head, and she hoped her own figure, though a splinter compared to his, wasn’t too much of a burden for the sad-faced beast.
She only knew she had reached the top when there came the sound of a shutter. Her heart lurched. Eva, waiting at the top, lowered her camera. The men came to stand by her side. Darya felt a burst of shame. Was she a joke? She mastered her breathing. Pranayama. As the camera clicks continued, she surprised herself: she posed for Eva, throwing one hand up in a carefree swoop.
‘Very beautiful,’ she said to the donkey’s owner in Greek as she dismounted, and joined her hands in thanks. She longed to pat the donkey’s head, to caress its melancholy face. Stopped herself.
Whitewashed bubbles of buildings grew out of each other among the stone-paved streets. Cats rubbed their bodies against painted wooden doors and play-fought around the potted cacti. Over the bright blue dome of a church and through the white arch of its bell tower, the sun was beginning to set. Eva tried to photograph it but scrunched her face at whatever she’d produced.
‘Aren’t you taking pictures?’ she asked her father.
‘I’ve done it a hundred times,’ he replied.
Night had fallen, but there was still time before the ship departed. They sat down at a restaurant with a view of the houses and churches cascading to the sea. They ordered seafood and dips, a bottle of wine. At some point during the meal, she felt Orestis’ hand on her knee beneath the table. Above it, his face betrayed nothing. He continued his talk with Aristos about the future of Cyprus tourism, things she had heard already. The island’s state of limbo; both too expensive and not luxurious enough. Tourists would be split between cheaper Turkey and frivolous Dubai, whose hotels were too godly to be confined to five stars.
‘And let’s not forget we’re in the middle of everything,’ Aristos said. ‘Lebanon here, Turkey there, Syria, Israel, Palestine… Even Bin Laden had a bank account in Cyprus, for God’s sake!’
Eva clapped with joy. ‘I can’t believe you’re both chatting away like this. Aw, my Daddykins! Just think, a few months ago Orestis was afraid of you.’
Aristos amended the topic. ‘What is it you want in life?’ he asked Orestis.
‘Well, I don’t know now. I thought I wanted to own a hotel.’ He forced a laugh.
Aristos smiled. ‘The smart man always looks at his situation. He stands back and thinks, How can this work to my advantage? What do people value? What do they want? Will they pay for it?’
Darya lowered her eyes.
‘This is where Cyprus finds herself. Who wants her, what for, what can she offer? Everyone’s fighting about Europe and Angela Merkel. But if we weren’t in Europe, we’d be back at the bottom of the sea. Europe is why the Russians are in Cyprus. Buy property, get citizenship. Putin keeps the Turks away and he gets something in return. He gets a foot in Europe, a port. We’re surrounded by sea. Cyprus is willing to sell herself because she found a buyer.’
His tobacco smoke mingled with Eva’s Marlboro. The girl waved it all away from Orestis’ face. ‘I’m willing to pay for anything,’ she said. Then: ‘With my father’s money, of course.’ Her laugh was so huge it made the other diners turn to look.
On their way back to the ship, Orestis kept touching his forehead. By the time they’d stepped off the cable-car down the rocks and onto the dock, he’d turned pale. With obvious effort, he tried to retain an easy, jovial air.
‘Are you all right?’ Darya asked.
‘I’m not… feeling too good.’
She watched as he gripped the stepladder up from the small boat onto the ship and swayed, despite his attempts not to, up to the entrance and the lobby.
Eva was concerned. Was it the food, her voice, did she drive him insane? He tried to laugh. It was nothing, a little dizziness. ‘It happens sometimes. I’m not used to travelling.’ She would fetch the doctor, she said, but he refused, insisting he’d be fine in the morning.
Those eyebrows of his were knotted, his eyes wet. Darya felt an ache in her chest. Orestis turned in, but not before accepting some pills from Eva’s handbag. Father and daughter took the change of plan in their stride and went out on the deck to watch the ship depart. The lights on the tip of Santorini, like lava at the mouth of the volcano, faded away. When her husband and stepdaughter headed off for the lounge to catch the late show, Darya scanned the blackness for signs of life. She could think of nothing worse than loud pop and dance routines. She yawned, counting on Eva to be happy of her father’s company all to herself.
Instead of returning to the suite, she watched her feet walk down a different corridor, through other doorways. Glass panels slid apart to let her through, nothing like her old ships, till she was rounding a corner for Orestis’ cabin. She passed an officer in his smart white suit, and though he nodded politely she turned her face from him. Bleach. She tried to block the smell, the memory – not in the cabins or suites she cleaned, but in the hospital. The white labyrinth where her mother had worked, where Maksim had died. He’d only been Orestis’ age.
The cabin was dark, the curtains drawn over the porthole. Sickness hung in the air. The sheets and quilt were a bundle in the single bed. Orestis was somewhere within it, his body still the same but folded up and obscured, its head turned towards the wall. She sat on the edge of the bed and placed a hand where his thigh would be. She had never seen him like this, a ball of cotton with a tousle of hair. She sat in that thin hum from the bathroom, the dim thump of music from the lounge. The walls, the floor vibrated. A cotton swan, discarded onto the carpet where it keeled and transformed back into a towel, trembled as if it was cold.
Why was she here? If she could leave, she would. But she was a tiny thing in a small space, the cabin a walnut containing her, floating on the wide expanse of the sea, on a large planet in the immense universe.
Samota.
She stared into the darkness of the room, focusing on nothing but her and Orestis’ breathing.
Nine
During her days as a cabin stewardess, she’d felt a pleasant ache at the sight of a new port. Each took her further on her journey, further from home. In a cabin filled with three other girls’ breaths, she would peek from her lower bunk at whichever foreign dock was in the porthole. Oslo, Algeciras, Port Said, Funchal, Agadir. From behind the glass would come the bickering of gulls and dock-workers speaking words she couldn’t know.
The ship had docked in Syros while they’d slept. This time Darya saw its port not as a miniature in a porthole, but as a vista from a suite above sea level; a room large enough for her and those three other girls to have danced in.
‘Let’s go out for breakfast,’ Aristos said. ‘I’ll ask Eva to check on Orestis.’ His tone suggested Orestis had been lying about his illness, or that Darya might be the cause of it.
They convened in the lobby. A voice came over the tannoy to announce first in Greek and then in accented English the imminent Bingo. What did he look like, this man who was sp
eaking? Had she passed him in the corridors?
Eva wore a dress with a bold floral print, which Darya complimented.
‘Thank God you got rid of those contacts,’ Orestis added.
‘Re! She pays me a compliment and all you can talk about is the colour of my eyes? That was the fashion at the time!’
It was as close to a thank you as Darya would get. When Orestis turned to her and made a point of saying, ‘You look very nice,’ she gave a small thankful nod. That would do.
Eva slapped his arm.
‘You feel better?’ Darya asked in Greek.
And before he could answer, Eva said in English: ‘Don’t worry, he’s OK.’
Then they were out in Syros – the streets, the roads, marble. ‘Fitting for the ancient capital of the Cyclades,’ said Aristos. And he reeled off bits of history as her eyes skipped up alleys of marble steps flecked with cats and chrysanthemums. She hoped the kitten was all right back in Cyprus. The Sri Lankan had been given strict instructions on feeding, and the girl only ever needed to be told a thing once.
Eva pointed at various signs along the harbour and challenged her stepmother to read them aloud: photographer, pharmacy, boat hire. The Greek alphabet was similar enough to Cyrillic that it wasn’t much of a challenge. She could read the words, even if they meant nothing.
‘Bravo!’ Eva would say each time. Thank God she was in good spirits, but those same spirits were annoying as hell. Darya had no interest in playing the amusing foreigner. Aristos distracted his daughter with boutiques.
Orestis was distracted himself. Walked close to the harbour, where dozens of boats were docked. Did he also recall their day in Latchi, the fishing boats strung on the boardwalk like lights from a beam? Here, among the bright bobbing speedboats were a handful of luxury yachts, standing up in the water like big white cliffs. Orestis looked chastened by them. She could buy him one, why not? A mere sliver off Aristos’ bank account. They’d take trips around the coast of Cyprus. Fruit and wine on the deck, sex in the open air, naps in the sun, all in the privacy of their own property. Their own floating island.