by Polis Loizou
Two boys stood on the curb, on the point of crossing the marbled road. Not quite twenty, skin browned and hair bleached by the sun. On the other side of the road was an elderly gentleman, in a straw boater and a light expensive scarf. In an instant, Darya knew what they were, what the old man was. His eyes were trained on Orestis, and the boys had turned their heads to follow his gaze. As if by some wire between them all, Orestis lifted his eyes to acknowledge them. Understanding between the men expanded into a net, a net that caught everything. Darya’s heart stopped. The air thrummed with violence.
And then, the net between the men was clipped. The boys hadn’t crossed the road but perched on a stone wall. Gorgeous birds. The man waited for the traffic lights to change.
Darya understood, more with every breath, that she and Orestis were finished. Emotions were transient, as everything was.
Orestis turned and saw her, and his soft smile said he’d been thinking the same thing.
✽✽✽
They took a late lunch on the ship. The horde of passengers, some in shorts and flip-flops, others dressed as if for the ballet, heaped meat and fish and pasta onto their plates, jelly and ice-cream and cake in side bowls. Beasts. She had to force herself to eat a small portion of potato salad.
Orestis had removed his baseball cap when they re-embarked. Minutes later, running his fingers through his hair, he excused himself from the table to go to the bathroom, and she wondered if she was showing the appropriate amount of concern as he left. He returned with his hair in better shape. On his way back to the table, he checked his reflection wherever it was, calling to him from between the pillars like a sprite in a forest. He sat back down. His cheeks looked red.
During lunch, that anxious little frown made plough lines in his forehead. Then he straightened his back. ‘Mr Ioannidou, I just want to say again how grateful I am for this trip. I’ve always wanted to visit the Islands but never been able to.’ His shirt was more buttoned up than before.
Eva waved away his gratitude. ‘He did it for me, not you! Don't think you’re special.’
They all laughed.
‘Your father never brought you to Greece?’ There was a hardness in Aristos’ tone.
‘No. Well, we were going to go to Athens when I was little, but then… Anyway.’
‘Well, for now, you’re seeing the Islands. Next time you can do the mainland. Peloponnisos, Delphi, Thessaloniki.’ Her husband flourished, he expanded with every sentence. Out of his mouth blew the North East, where, he told them, Muslims and Christians and Jews once lived in harmony. Ioannina, with its forests and lakes and wildlife; the boars, the scorpions.
Darya recalled the lakes back home. The storks rising from their nests on telephone poles. A memory of her life or a memory of a dream? Either way, it didn’t matter. It was all real and it was all gone.
‘Is your family in Russia?’
The question surprised her. More surprising still, it had come from Eva.
Darya cleared her throat. ‘Belarus.’
‘A, yes. Do you see them?’
Darya bought time by pretending to clear her throat. ‘We speak,’ she said. That old lie. It had been ages since she’d called on it. She averted her eyes from Aristos.
‘You should see them.’
‘Yes…’ And she couldn’t think of any other words, not for a long, long, time. ‘It’s difficult.’
That anxious expression of Orestis’ came back, this time for her.
Eva babbled about her departed grandmother, which prompted Orestis to remember his, and Aristos his. From the way the memories converged, the three dead women had God and the kitchen at their centre. Darya’s babulia had been the same because of course she was. People were always the same, here and there, in the past and the future. It was only in the present where they differed.
When Eva asked her, ‘Is your grandma still alive?’ Darya froze.
She lowered her fork, dabbed her mouth with the napkin.
‘Still alive,’ she said. But how could she know?
Darya had never told her husband about Maksim. The existence of relatives back home was the extent of his knowledge. He inquired once about her father, and she didn’t want to discuss it. So she mimed drinking from a bottle and let that be that. Aristos nodded and allowed the subject to rest. But if that’s where his judgment had settled, it was a great injustice. Her father could have no knowledge of her betrayal, but all the same. Darya felt as if, with that single gesture, she had brought the Professor to the guillotine and removed his head. To reduce him to an alcoholic, to the cartoon mime of a bending wrist, was unfair. He drank vodka, so what? So did everybody. Her babulia could knock it back as if it was water. The Professor’s problem was his impatience, and the drink only aggravated it. He wanted Belarus to be independent, for its language to be saved from the brink of death, for those government bastards to pay for their lies, for God to be dead, for Darya to be good, for Darya to play well, for Darya to learn, for Darya to become what he wanted, now, now, now, now, now.
But it wasn’t who he always was. Sometimes he taught Literature, he read poems to their friends on winter nights and they sang. Sometimes he was a comedian, whose thick triangular eyebrows would point up to the sky after a dig at his mother-in-law. But the time came when all his personas would ball into one: a sick misery. The day they received the phone call, Maksim was breathing his last, the professor-father-clown was consumed. He railed against the power plant, against the military, against the government. He yelled his accusations and conspiracies at his family, wife, daughter, mother-in-law, what did it matter, they were all a single woman, and his screams were so loud that her mother threw uneasy glances at the kitchen wall. She who had seen so many bodies expire, death coming through the skin as red stars, he didn’t even care what his anger was doing to her. For years, there was only that buzzing lump of energy in the house, a dangerous planet whose orbit the women avoided. When the USSR collapsed and Lukashenka took over, they thought: ‘At last! A reprieve.’ Here was a President who addressed his nation in its native tongue, the Professor could finally be more than one persona again. How wrong they were. None of this brought Maksim back. Nothing erased the damage done to his country. All those infected bodies, all those empty deaths. Heroes of the USSR, leaving only golden stars in their place.
On the one hand, Darya felt guilt for dismissing her past, she felt shame for the pain she caused her mother and babulia by leaving. When she pictured them, their eyes were filled with tears. But on the other hand, she felt an enormous relief to reject everything that had come before, to turn it away and say, Enough.
Move on.
Start again.
✽✽✽
It seemed as if Tinos was drifting towards them instead of the other way around. Even from this vantage point, the island was dwarfed by its massive church. Officers barked instructions at sailors, sailors shouted to each other, officers called to men on the docks, who caught the mooring ropes. The anchor came clanking down. Given the go-ahead, Darya and the others gathered in the lobby to disembark. Down the gangway they went, holding on to their hats. In the temper of the afternoon sun, they crawled up the slope towards the church, the path to God marked out with tourist shops. Aside from the usual plastic magnets of windmills and beaches, which could apply to any of the Islands, there were icons. The best of them sat in woven baskets on the ground. These weren’t the usual, prints on card glued to planks of wood; they were thick slabs of tree trunk, hand-painted and finished with gold leaf. Jesus saw into you. The Virgin’s sorrow reached out for your hand. Darya watched one of the shopkeepers. Her face reflected the icons’ sobriety, the sense that you could only stand by and watch as life went on the way it did, as people acted the way they would.
Oh, white birch…
That song. How did she even think of it?
‘You probably know, Orestis,’ Aristos said, which Darya translated as You probably don’t know, Darya, ‘this is the most important pilgrimag
e of the Greek Orthodox world. But do you know how this church came to be?’
‘I only know it was a miracle,’ answered the younger man. Good pupil.
‘E, yes, basically. One night, a hundred years ago, a nun dreamt of the Virgin Mary. The virgin guided her to a place where, buried in the dirt, was her icon. The nun related her dream to the monastery. When they dug up the site she had been guided to, they discovered the foundations of an old church. This one standing before us was built in tribute to that miracle.’
Orestis nodded. ‘That’s a nice story.’
‘Nice story? God have mercy!’ said Eva. ‘It’s a miracle.’ She crossed herself.
Aristos winked at Orestis.
The church itself was not in the image Darya had come to expect, but more Western. Through the carved marble gate, embellished with flowing relief, was an immense forecourt. Large staircases with intermittent streams of blood-red carpet led to arched colonnades of marble columns, a cream facade and a bell tower that soared to Heaven. Our Lady of Tinos.
But there were no chants and psalms in her head, only that plaintive song:
Oh, white birch, why are you not green?
Inside, the church was more typically Greek: icons and gold. Except there also stood a glass plinth, like an upright fairytale coffin, with an icon of the Virgin inside. A throng of tourists queued to kiss it. Orestis had removed his baseball cap before they’d even passed the ornate gate. Eva was crossing herself. Aristos simply was, thinking whatever it was that he thought. She would never truly know her husband.
As Eva and her father admired the icons, the golden chandeliers, the sky-bound ceiling, Orestis and Darya found themselves queuing for the sacred icon. Sitting on a stool was a priest with a long black beard, who wiped the glass after every pilgrim’s kiss. Darya felt a bloom of discomfort. She kept a shrine in the house, over which she’d draped the rushnyk she’d bought from a vendor in Warsaw – a souvenir, a sign. But there was something about walking up to this holy picture, and this holy man, that left her exposed, afraid. Maksim was watching from Heaven, and he was sad. Sad to have been excluded from her life, to be dismissed from the telling of her story. She had denied him, eroded him. That made her no better than the Army, the government, those men in their brown suits, that had sent him to the plant. They were all culpable, united in their crime.
Then it was her turn to kiss the Virgin. She couldn’t bring her lips to the case, not quite. The priest caught her eye and brought his cloth up to wipe the glass regardless, to wipe away what hadn’t ever been there.
She and Orestis waited outside for father and daughter. Other tourists chatted and posed for photos. Somewhere here there might be other Belarusians. Darya would know them on sight, as you’re always able to tell your own. There was that time in Sigma when she’d bumped her basket into another woman’s, and had known in her gut that they shared a homeland. But she’d excused herself in Greek, and hurried to the cashier.
An elderly local walked through the gate of the church. She staggered up the steps, both her headscarf and eyes a burning blue.
‘Do you believe?’ Orestis asked. He wasn’t looking at Darya, but at the miracle site before them. ‘In God?’
‘Of course.’ Unconsciously, her hand went for the cross around her neck.
Orestis looked surprised, even a little hurt. ‘I thought maybe because of the yoga…’
‘No, I mean…’ But she didn’t know what she meant, what anything she ever did or thought meant. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘I understand.’ It wasn’t what she wanted to say at all.
Did he know about the USSR, about state atheism? About what God could mean? If only he’d remove his sunglasses, the baseball cap, if only they could face and see into each other. Her little finger stretched to his hand. Stroked the skin. For a few seconds, he allowed it.
‘Why you don’t believe?’ she said.
He didn’t turn. ‘E… Never mind.’
‘No, why? It’s your grandmother?’
His body tensed.
‘Some things make sense,’ he said after a while, the words taking their time to form. ‘If there was God, He would do things to always make sense. Some people suffer for nothing, die for nothing. God’s will. Other people are bad but they get rich, die happy. God’s will. His plan. What sort of plan—?’ His throat closed itself to words. Then he swallowed and tried a lighter voice. ‘My friend Paris… You should meet him. He says there’s nothing as bad as the Church, throughout history. God is fear, control. God is people. We are the ones who make things happen, we do things ourselves, even decide who lives and dies. Whose life has value and whose doesn’t.’
What she saw was a sort of sinking. Orestis sinking into the ground, away from her. ‘You cannot believe this!’
Orestis laughed and turned to face her. ‘Why?’
‘Because…’ But she could think of nothing to say other than, Because God. And then it came to her: ‘You know Fabergé?’
He repeated the word, but blankly, like a robot.
‘He makes eggs, the… golden ones, and with the diamonds… the ones there are only a few. Maybe fifty, in whole world. For tsar and tsarina.’ Orestis nodded, more out of politeness than recognition. ‘Some, you touch them and they break— sorry, open. And little things come outside, like a picture of Tsar Nikolai, or flowers. They are inside all the time. You think it is you, you are one who breaks the egg, you are one who makes things come. But it was like this already made. The way it breaks, it is the…’ She struggles for the word. ‘…The design.’
She made out his narrowed eyes behind the sunglasses. Felt the urge to kiss those lips, hold him. But they were here, among people, outside the church. She stopped herself.
‘Hmm,’ was all he said.
She thought of a ship departing; a mooring rope set loose, an anchor drawn.
‘I know is true,’ she said. ‘Believe me. I know.’
Now was not the time to say more. But she wanted to tell him. She knew with sudden clarity that if anyone would ever hear it, would ever listen to her, it was Orestis. This was why he was brought to her, this was why their paths had crossed. God wished to absolve her. He was giving her a chance to wipe her soul clean.
Eva and her father stepped out of the church. The girl looked at Darya as if she was Judas, caught.
Before the ship departed, they had time to sit at a café, of course, because what else did Cypriots do? Eva demanded lokmades, and her father had said Tinos served the best. Fried dough balls finished with streaks of honey and chopped nuts; the very thought of them repulsed Darya. ‘No sugar,’ she said.
‘Mash’allah,’ said Eva.
Why had this girl been so indulged? Everything was about and for her. All her father’s attention and affection, all the money and status she’d got for nothing, even the acquisition of Orestis – everything had been sown and harvested for her consumption. This fat spoiled child from a fable. But unlike make-believe children, she would never receive her comeuppance, she would never be taught a lesson.
The waiter came to inform Darya that they were out of the ginger tea she’d ordered. Apologising with a hand on his heart, so dramatic, he offered mint instead.
Darya shrugged, yes, whatever.
Eva found this hilarious. ‘She really doesn’t care, does she?’ she said to her father and carried on laughing.
No. Enough. She didn’t care. She wouldn’t care again.
✽✽✽
Darya left the others to watch the sun set from the meditation room. Her body and soul were wrung together like a wet rag, twisting her almost to tears. Sadness advanced and receded, anger swelled, then frustration, a sense of loss, grief, which faded to wistfulness, then apathy, as the water rolled out ahead of her, pink and golden and blank as if nothing had ever been troubled there; as if the sea was a vacuum of feeling, a lifeless and soulless mirror for existence.
She returned to the suite to shower while Aristos napped. The water ran over a lifeless
body, a plinth of bones. The woman was gone. What was Orestis for, if not to come and satisfy her now, to fuck her and do whatever she asked him to do, to earn the money her husband was paying? But she wanted nothing. Her energies were dimming, her soul departing. A paper boat.
But that was all she had to be. She sat in the armchair, licking her lips and swallowing, slowly, repeatedly, and watched her husband as he slept. The giant, with his toes dangling over the bed frame. He’d got himself a trinket in her. She’d grown wise to it early on, she’d been complicit. Aristos had never wanted sex. A man born without that switch for arousal. Eva was the product of a fluke experiment, if not a different father. What Aristos needed, after the divorce from his wife, was a beautiful ambassador. East-Europeans were Other, and Other, though hated, was exotic. Investors, partners, rivals were always men, always middle-aged and curious for foreign flesh. At first there came a dread, that Aristos might expect her to sleep with them – after all, there must be some reward for his expenditure, the clothes and spas and shoes and house. But her presence alone was enough. Already he held the prize, already he was powerful and envied. Why would you not trust him, align yourself with him, emulate him? It didn’t matter if she was actually a gold-digger, a common slut. She was there to remind the room that the man who’d bought her was a force to be reckoned with. He was potent. Giant.
But she wouldn’t stay dissatisfied.
God have mercy, she was never satisfied.
Ten
In Mykonos, they were again guided off the ship into smaller boats. This time the light had gone, and the sea billowed with complaint. Women fell into prayer while their husbands and sons affected nonchalance. Darya was unafraid. She all but jumped into the boat on the cold black water.