by Polis Loizou
She didn’t take it. But this was a time to be practical, to retain what little she had. She would show no pain, no emotion at all. Head held up, she walked past him, and back to the others, expelling the negative energy inside her to the air, to the sand, to the sea, step, by step, by step, by step.
In the taxi back to the harbour, Darya climbed straight into the passenger seat. Even the hot stare of the driver didn’t faze her. In the back seats, the others spoke about nothing in particular, but at one point she heard Eva asking her father, in a volume that was low by her standards and no-one else’s, ‘What’s up with her?’
‘Leave her, kori,’ whispered Orestis.
Darya almost felt his hand on her shoulder.
Twelve
Rhodos was the last stop. From the deck, Darya watched where the ship sliced the water to send foam spreading outwards. She’d started her game again. Something inside her body beat against its cage, it begged to be released. She squirmed, pushed her legs together. If she wasn’t able to stop it at this age, what would happen by the time she was sixty? Would nature take care of it, remove all control of her body from her? It happened to everyone, so why not. Just before she’d left home, her babulia had begun to struggle to rise from her seat. You can will yourself anything, but there it stops: at the will. Whether you achieve it or not is out of your hands, all you can actually do is want. And want prevented peace. Accept things as they are, don’t wish them to be what they aren’t. Aparigraha. But then where did that leave her? Not doing, not getting, not wanting; simply being. Let God move her as He wished, to people and places that were meant to happen to her. It was for the best. Look what her own free movements had done; they’d only resulted in pain.
The wind made her feel exposed. If the German pianist saw her again, he might approach her. She would have to explain his acquaintance to her group, and her unusual family to him. He might mention the piano, the fact that she played, something not even Aristos knew about. She used to find romance in living separate lives. Like one of those many-headed goddesses, she was mysterious and barely glimpsed. But now she was only tired.
Women lay in rows on deckchairs, rubbing sunscreen into their limbs, reading books with detectives on the covers. Who were they?
A sudden grip on her arm cut her breath. Orestis. He was pointing at the sea, his face an eruption of delight.
Dolphins.
A school of them swam along with the ship, leaping in and out of the waves as if trying to catch it, like dogs with a ball.
‘Sweethearts!’ said Eva, running to the railings. ‘My God, they’re so cute!’ Then she winced. ‘My camera. Damn it, it’s in my cabin.’
‘E, go get it,’ said Aristos.
‘And miss this? By the time I go and get lost like an imbecile…’
Her forehead creased. The poor spoiled girl didn’t know where happiness was, which path to take to reach it. She took out her phone to snap photos on that, then reviewed them, scowled, and gave up.
They stood to watch the squeaking lovely creatures. More and more passengers gathered. Orestis was so overjoyed that Darya laughed, and before she knew it her hand was patting his arm. He turned to her then, his soul leapt out to meet hers. It was a spark beyond flesh, beyond pleasure, or language, or history. And it unnerved her. Almost as much as the tears that gathered at his eyes.
Darya was about to say something, Are you all right? But Eva got there first: ‘Re, for God’s sake! What’s the matter with you?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, and he was still smiling, then laughing, as he wiped his eyes. ‘I don’t know, just…’
But the spectacle in the water kept him from finding the words.
The humans went back to their lives. Aristos summoned a waitress to order frappés. When she returned with their drinks, Darya wondered if the girl might be a trained lawyer or an architect.
‘E, Orestis, animal lover,’ said Eva. ‘I see you’re still drinking milk. You didn’t go and turn vegetarian on me like Paris.’
Orestis’ jaw dropped. ‘What are you talking about? Paris is a vegetarian?’
‘Hello!’ she said in English, as Cypriots do when someone’s being a fool. ‘As if it’s a recent thing.’
‘He never said.’
‘You didn’t notice. But me, I’m observant.’ She lit a cigarette.
‘A vegetarian poet,’ Aristos said. ‘What a surprise.’
Eva slapped his arm, and blew out her smoke to the immense sky. ‘Leave him, Daddy! He’s a darling. But God almighty, how can anyone be vegetarian? I couldn’t even fast for one day when you sent me to grandma’s that Easter.’
‘It’s easy,’ said Orestis. ‘There’s tons of food that isn’t meat.’
‘Don’t tell me you are too!’
‘E, no, but it’s healthy.’
‘That’s how you lost the weight, a? OK.’ Eva took a drag of her cigarette. Then she turned to her stepmother. ‘And you, Darya? The Buddhist.’
Darya didn’t understand, so Eva repeated her words.
‘Buddhist,’ said Aristos in English. ‘You know, Buddha.’
‘Not Buddhist,’ she said to the girl. She had the feeling of something needing to be held back, or stopped. ‘Vegetarian is good. Why not?’
‘Mercy!’ said Eva. ‘God made animals so we can eat them, and you’re all telling me to stop the souvlaki.’ She added in English, ‘Sorry, no way,’ and shook her head as the smoke flew out of it.
Orestis looked down at the table.
‘If you’re doing it for your health,’ Eva carried on, ‘then it’s worth it. But for animal rights? God’s sake.’
‘So nothing else is worth it?’ Orestis asked, lightly as if he was joking. Darya understood that he wasn’t. She hadn’t followed a conversation so clearly since her chat with the German. She felt plugged in, electric.
‘No,’ said Eva. More smoke blew out of her mouth. ‘An animal has no value besides the food it provides us.’
‘Tell that to your ancestors,’ said Aristos with a chortle.
‘E, I’m not a farmer!’ said Eva. ‘I’m not dragging donkeys up mountains.’
Orestis laughed, thankful for something he could tease her with, something easier than meaningful debate. He joked about Eva living as a peasant in a Troodos village.
It wasn’t that he was superficial; he was afraid. He felt and thought, deeply, maybe all the time, but what he wanted above all else was to be liked. To be rated like a good hotel.
‘The cow was worth something to your grandparents,’ Eva said to her father, ‘because it helped them with their work. I don’t need the cow for anything other than milk. A burger. It’s serving me in a different way.’
All life has value: Skevi’s refrain. Darya said the words in her head and repeated them aloud.
The other three looked at her. To her surprise, Eva nodded, cigarette aloft, and pointed. ‘Exactly.’
For the next few minutes, Darya let the others’ chatter sail over her. Her eyes rolled over to other life forms, other groups. There were dads with kids in rubber rings, about to take a shrieking leap into the pool. And in the pool were white-haired couples, three or four in a row, taking their cues from the thin instructor standing on the edge. Behind him, a girl she recognised as a dancer from the show led a treasure hunt. Her face opened wide for the children, eyes and mouth clearly expressing joy, excitement, danger. This was wrong. Children should be taught that no emotion is clear.
‘What day is it?’ said Eva. ‘My God, you forget everything when you do nothing all day.’
‘It’s the sea, that’s what it does to you.’
‘You’re always doing nothing,’ Orestis said.
‘Comedian.’
The sixth of July. Kupala. It opened inside her. Maksim in his white tunic with the embroidered collar, eyes reflecting the blaze of the bonfire as he leapt over it. His feet at the flames. Then her brave big brother telling her, grinning into his beer, that he would search the forest for t
he fern flower. He’d seemed so much older than her then. But now, through the inverted telescope of time, she could see how young he truly was, how little in life. A boy, not a man. A boy with a burning desire for his classmate Maryia, with those round green eyes that bore into your core, with their slow lids as if she didn’t care what she found there. A boy who smoked side-by-side with skinny spotty Yaraslau on his father’s tractor. And her own girlish hands, thousands of days in the past, dozens of lifetimes, making wreaths of flowers to float, candlelit, down the river, as she dreamed of her future husband. She’d had no idea of the future that was on its way, already swimming upriver towards her.
A motion woke her from her spell. Orestis’ hand, waving. Those friendly eyes.
She was on the deck, the ship. A woman in uniform darted to pin a plastic chair from sliding off in a gust of wind.
‘What were you thinking about?’ Aristos said. ‘We lost you.’
Now they were watching her, all of them. ‘Is important day,’ she said in English. ‘Today, in Belarus. Today and tomorrow.’
‘What day?’ asked Orestis. ‘A saint?’
‘No, is… Old.’ It was beyond her. ‘Very old,’ she added, throwing her hand over her shoulder to indicate the centuries.
‘E,’ said Eva, ‘whatever it is: cheers.’ And she raised her glass for them all to clink.
✽✽✽
That night Darya went to the show. The last thing she wanted was to be left on her own, staring out into an unlit sea. Aristos laced his fingers through hers on the table. With everyone’s attention on the stage, she was free to watch the lights flash and move across the room, and over the living bust that was Orestis. Waiters rushed around with cocktails, coffees and sundaes, communicating over all that bass-weighted noise. A man stood next to her, balancing a sleeping child on his shoulder. He filmed the English dancers on his camcorder. Darya scanned the room for the German. If he was in the room, he was lost amid the shades of blue that made up the audience. And so, then, was she.
A pounding pop number. Eva swivelled in her seat. ‘I love this song!’
Darya shrugged, she’d never heard it.
It was enough to make Eva slap the table with glee. ‘You’re something else!’
During a lively bouzouki set, the audience clapped along. The evening turned Greek, the compere’s voice booming ‘Opa!’ over the sweet tang of the strings. Men leapt onto the dance floor, landing with perfect balance to perform their sweeping gestures. Women joined them, arms around each other’s necks, moving their feet as if kicking up sand. Eva was one of them. Without a thought or care, she’d stood up, put her arm around a Cypriot stranger and together their bodies expressed the music. It was beautiful, a people’s ballet. Aristos applauded his daughter. Orestis put his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Darya, amazed at him, laughed.
‘Come on,’ he said, getting up.
And for a moment she forgot herself.
She let him take her up to the dance floor and join a group of people unconnected to her, all of them following an ancient ritual. She took his direction, feeling his hand on her back, on her waist. Her own hand was on his shoulder; here, it was allowed to be. And she picked up the steps. Soon she was dancing. A girl again. As if she would make a wreath of flowers to float along the river. And it stung her eyes. She would soak up the lights, moving and blinking, and she would soak up the sound, which made her limbs, her heart, vibrate because she was a spirit, an entity, borderless, free, above all this. She was outside of her body, looking down. And the woman down there looked happy.
Thirteen
If Santorini, with its tangle of lights at the dark summit, was the dream, Rhodos was the moment before waking. It was the island most like Cyprus so far. Stone piers at the harbour; medieval structures rising from them like yet more rocks; squares full of tourists browsing spinners of magnets and postcards; chain hotels and shops; restaurants peddling Greek, Italian and English food, within touching distance of Russian furriers.
Back in their cabin, Darya had told Aristos she was going on a guided tour this time, with or without them. She wanted to see something other than cafés by the beach. Part of her had hoped he would reject the plan, and let her go alone. Another part of her hoped that her husband and stepdaughter would go off shopping and eating together, and leave Orestis with her. ‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ Aristos had said. ‘I assumed nobody else would want to go.’ He suggested it to the others over breakfast, then, after speaking to someone in Reception, wangled four places on a coach. Because they were so late in booking, the only available tour group was for Russian speakers.
‘You can translate for us,’ said Aristos.
‘Pe!’ Eva threw her hand up. ‘Who cares? Old rock here, column there, whores there, we’ll get it.’
Darya was almost thankful.
Orestis phoned his father for the last time as they waited to board the coach. At the front stood a perfect blonde with a microphone. Between cheery banter with the driver, she pointed out the passing landmarks and sites in familiar words and cadences. Darya was on a coach full of former comrades, some maybe even from Belarus. Please God, nobody she knew. The world could be so small.
An elderly Ukrainian, travelling alone, leaned over to ask Orestis if he knew how long the journey was. Orestis apologised in English and explained he wasn’t Russian. He and the woman laughed about it, and he indulged her for the rest of the journey. In careful English, the Ukrainian spoke of her children, grandchildren, departed husband. His questions opened her heart. Darya pulled her eyes away. The sweaty fabric of the seats and the rancid WC, unleashing a stench every time its door swung open, were bringing on a headache.
Eva was watching her. There was no suspicion there, but something softer. Exhausted, Darya turned to the window, where Rhodos floated by.
‘Mash’allah!’ Eva gushed to Orestis as they shuffled off the coach. ‘A friend of beasts and old biddies!’
The sunlight was a slap. They’d been tricked by the tinted windows of the coach. Darya had worn a short dress with spaghetti straps and was now cursing herself. All this skin exposed to the rays. And why was she wearing black? She tended to tan rather than burn, but still: her skin had not developed under this glare. Aristos never even thought to wear sunscreen, he was dark as tea. This was why she wondered at times if Eva was his daughter at all. Beneath the mound of makeup, hers was a creamy complexion, which deepened with a coppery undertone. Orestis was the same. Today he wore a vest, no shirt. And she felt nothing.
What an idiot she’d been to tell him about Maksim. It was that face of his, that face that opened your heart.
Oh, white birch…
Not that again, taking over her thoughts. Floating along this brown earth here, around the ruined ancient columns, over the heads of other tourists to the dry hills in the distance and beyond, to the sea.
Oh, white birch, why are you not green?
Aristos extended his hand to hers, took it. She rejected it. After a long sleep, at last, she was awake. This was not affection; the man was incapable, a mere husk. No, worse: he was a parasite, a vampire. All these years, she thought she’d been immune, that she was somehow favoured. As if she had ever been special, as if she had ever been more than a tool. In this way, Eva had a point. Darya’s value to her husband was that of a cow; to milk, and ultimately to sacrifice.
They followed the Russian tour group, as a courtesy to the blonde with the microphone who kept scanning the horizon for them. Darya translated nothing, heard nothing. Aristos knew enough about the place and structures to give the tour himself. An amphitheatre nestled in the side of a hill, and a stone stadium leant against the surrounding trees. It reminded her of the way her father leant back in his armchair. The surroundings simply moved to make room.
She’d visited Rhuzany once, the palace ruins. Those windows, those arches, standing like burned-out matches against the dying sunlight – were they only so haunting because they were of her land? Did your ancesto
rs’ lives continue through yours? Would hers extend to her children? She thought of the little bodies swallowed and spat by Chernobyl, of their twisted limbs and hole-punched hearts.
Enough. If someone offered her a pill to erase her brain, she’d take it.
Maybe there were other cures. Skevi had mentioned reiki. Let the girl with the rainbow hair infuse her with positive energy, withdraw the negative old. Nothing else had worked.
Eva framed a shot. Darya stood back. Orestis, on the other hand, played at spoiling the photos. He posed as a runner on the track, then angled his torso to hurl an invisible discus. Darya lacked the ability to fill empty spaces with history. It was beyond her to envision the smattering of columns and steps and platforms culminating in a building that was supposed to have stood here. She couldn’t picture the athletes or their screaming fans, regardless of Aristos’ many descriptions. But she saw Orestis, standing amongst the earth and trees and stone, and felt the rush of millennia passing through. He carried more in him than even these ruins did, even more than the work of craftsmen who’d died thousands of years before he was born.
But a life could start again. She was a soul, not a corpse. Rebirth was as much a part of life as death. She watched the others gather round something ahead, and knew in her gut that she would leave them all.
On the coach back to the town centre, Aristos leant over to whisper that her mood was affecting the holiday. ‘One more day,’ he spat. ‘One.’
She didn’t know if this meant she ought to suck it up for one more day, be pleasant for one more day, or that she only had one more day as his wife before his patience ran out.
She would wait and see.
One more day.
✽✽✽
They sat down at a restaurant for what Aristos promised was the finest souvlaki in the world. Darya didn’t have the appetite, and said so, but Orestis wouldn’t take no for an answer. It was his treat, he insisted, enough freebies from his boss. Eva ordered a chicken gyro for herself and one for her stepmother. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘If you don’t want it I’ll have both.’