The Way It Breaks

by Polis Loizou

  She was a rare person, Melina – intelligent, inquisitive, charming. Among the other mothers at parties and fairs and recitals, she stood out for her lack of airs. Her departure was a loss, and a shock to Aristos, though that was shameful to admit. His first wife bore the brunt of his moods. When Orestis was removed from the international school, Aristos’ heart dropped. He got close to approaching Kostas at the garage to offer the payment for the boy’s tuition, but he held himself back. What would it have achieved? To Kostas, the school had become a symbol of his wife’s Britishness. Nothing would make him prouder than to spit on it. Aristos kept out of their lives, but he monitored the boy’s development. Lemesos was a small place, it wasn’t difficult to bump into acquaintances, to ask after others. Over the years he noted with relief that Orestis was fine. He hit a snag after the Army when he put on that weight and worked for his uncle. But who was Aristos to judge? He’d always enjoyed a meal himself, and he hadn’t been born with a list of hotels to his name. When Eva put Orestis forward for a job, Aristos created a vacancy. And Thanos would hire the boy because Aristos knew his character. He’d known the woman who’d sown it.

  He dragged his feet as they made their way back, along the old castle walls, the palms, past the hundred cats, towards the SS Astraea. In the dappled shade, artists drew caricatures of tourists who had only just arrived.

  ‘Keep Ithaki always in your mind,’ he quoted as they boarded the vessel. ‘Arriving there is what you are destined for.’

  Eva, on a higher step, turned to face him. ‘Pe!’ she said. ‘We’re on holiday, don’t take us back to school.’

  Aristos laughed, and so did Orestis. Perfect boy. Who else would have his daughter, look after her when Aristos was gone? He loved his Eva, she was vibrant and – in her own way – beautiful, but there was no getting around the fact she was a handful.

  There was, however, that uncomfortable truth: Orestis was servicing Darya. Bad luck. But his wife needn’t sulk, there were other men to fill the part. Perhaps it was better this way; the young buck would’ve had his fill of women before he settled down to family life.

  As they walked into the ship’s grand lobby, a redhead in a low-cut top gave Orestis the once-over, and the young man tossed a glance back at her. Much as it disappointed him, Aristos had to confront another truth: not only was Orestis a man who would always attract attention, but he would always seek it. Aristos was resigning his daughter to the role of the cheated housewife, which even her mother had never played.

  Damn it. Nothing was ever perfect.

  ✽✽✽

  Knowing the Captain had its perks. Aside from the first choice of seating for dinner, table reservations for the nightly cabaret and complimentary drinks at the bar, they were now to be granted a tour of the bridge. It might lift Darya out of whatever state she seemed hell-bent to stay in. It was unclear if the others were oblivious to it or attempting to blow it away with good cheer, but Aristos was tired of his wife’s foul mood. She was a person whose emotions were clear, it’s what he liked about her, and one of the reasons he chose her. Whether the emotion was worry, distraction, or pleasure, nothing was performed. A person straight as a javelin. But this, now? Baffling. At first, after their fight on the beach in Kos, he’d thought she was jealous of Eva, possessive of Orestis. But she hadn’t gone to his cabin, though he told her she could. Thank you, she’d spat in response, her Greek vowels perfect. Now, she barely looked at the boy, or at any other male for that matter. Instead, she glanced over her shoulder as if something might attack from the corners of her vision.

  It wouldn’t have been the baby, not that beggar-woman. Darya had never wanted to be a mother, that was another reason he’d married her. Yes, the incident had been unsettling. Perhaps that was it. She was disturbed by a stranger’s sudden touch. In the early days, she would flinch at his fingers on her skin. I’m not use, she would explain in English, drawing the subject closed. He suspected a history of abuse, perhaps by the drunkard father.

  They were out on the open deck. The smell of salt hit him, all at once. The music of the after-show disco having dimmed to a thrum as they walked from rooms to corridors to those slick wooden floors outside, there was now the sound only of waves, and the light only of stars. Then, in the endless black, grew the orb of an officer’s torch.

  The lanky man appeared to know Aristos, whether by prior introduction or purely by reputation. The bigger man did what he always did when unsure of someone’s acquaintance; he put his hand on the officer’s back and said, ‘Thank you, my friend.’ Most responded well to physical contact. In a handshake, using both hands was better than one – You’re safe, I’m friendly. Of course, in his travels on the job he’d picked up on cultural differences. Sometimes it was handshakes, other times bowing, sometimes it was two kisses on the cheek and other times three; whatever ingratiated him to his hosts.

  The Captain stood by the door to greet them. He shook their hands, though the custom had been banned, as each stepped through to the bridge, a space that felt cramped to such a tall man as Aristos. Eva pointed out maps and compasses on the walls, a brass barometer. Meanwhile, his wife stared into the green light of a screen. ‘That’s the radar,’ the Captain said, ‘to warn us of any other vessels.’ Orestis was wide-eyed at the view beyond the wheel and the glass facade: the dark water, rolling onwards to mist.

  ‘I’ve seen some things, I can tell you,’ said the Captain. His face, with its deep lines in patchy skin and its faded eyes, had already said it for him.

  ‘I swear to God,’ Eva interrupted, ‘if we see an iceberg now…’

  The Captain laughed.

  Aristos was proud of his daughter; she had her own ways of ingratiating herself. But she was not to be taken for a fool. A manager without a boss. She would be all right without him.

  ‘Is it easy to steer the ship?’ Orestis asked the captain.

  ‘You want to try?’

  The boy couldn’t have looked more pleased. That charming smile of his, so like his mother in many ways, with the Greek nose and those warm eyes, was the only thing to make Darya look up from the radar. The low green light cast shadows around her features, distorting her face like a cubist portrait. That’s exactly what she was: cubist. Her every side was on show, but instead of being clearer, she was more obscured. He would never truly know his wife. But she had better not make trouble for him now. Not when it had all been going so well.

  Two

  His wife didn’t so much as look at him in the taxi home. When Aristos moved his hand across the cool back seat to cover hers, he expected her to pull away, and to have to be stern about it. Instead, she did nothing, not even flinch. Her hand sat there under his, dead. If she kept this up, he would be forced to take steps. Aristos had never been the sort of man to hit a woman – he didn’t even hate them – but people must be taught to learn their place and respect boundaries. If his employees knew not to be petulant, so should the woman who’d sworn to love him.

  The highway and the cars streamed past, the sea in the distance now, no longer beneath their feet. But she continued to wink from between the buildings, shrubs and signs. Billboards boasted of developments soon to rise from the yellow fields. Panthea was once a peaceful hill, a couple of houses at the top, now it buckled under family mansions and blocks of flats spoiling for a view. Prices had risen, the time was right. One of his cousins had sold an inherited bungalow in the centre of town, for a sum too mad to have been believed just a couple of years beforehand. And what was Aristos doing, holding on to his hotels, when every part of him was yelling to sell? He ought to build luxury flats on the new marina. The city was stretching out into the sea, again. Full of swagger, safe in the hands of the European Union, Cyprus was presenting herself as a five-star resort. She would attract businesses instead of families, the moneyed seeking money. Interest rates were favourable, criminals kept their bank accounts here. The Russians had come and stayed, established their neighbourhoods in Paphos, even their radio stations. Mone
y for a visa, and another EU citizen was born. Next, it would be the Chinese. And if the talk of offshore oil was true…

  It drained him. Perhaps it was the afternoon light on his eyelids. Or, call a spade a spade, he was getting old. Ambition was the blood of youth, and Aristos had never been greedy. He’d wanted to make money and dictate his own life. He’d achieved that by thirty-five. Leave business to the kids and get out while he could still enjoy himself. Sitting with Orestis in the living room, lifting page after page of a coffee-table book, chatting about all they remembered and felt and thought – that was living. Seeing his only child get married, maybe even give him a grandchild…

  And Darya?

  He’d imagined her next to him, propping him up in his dying days; that Soviet stoicism of hers a cure for any weakness. But now, seeing her profile against the car window, a shadow portrait of the woman he thought he knew… Who even was she?

  Back at home, her silence filled the house. It filled the dining room meant for friends they never invited; the salon meant for parties they rarely threw, and from which his wife would frequently absent herself; the hallway in which he’d let her make that shrine of hers, with the Slavic fabric draped over icons and candles; the garden she used for meditation, yoga, sunning herself, whatever she did out there; the bedroom where the young stud he’d hired specifically to cuckold him, for her, would fulfil her every desire. For her pleasure. For her needs. For her, for her, for her.

  ‘Darya?’

  She went straight to the kitchen. He heard the door slide open and he felt, for a second, a panic that she was about to do something crazy. Run away. Leap into the pool. She who had always been so steady, so calm.

  He walked to a reception room to watch from the window. In the frame, he saw her go towards the seating area, to its enormous cushions and candles in jars. She searched around it. She bent over to peer into a tree. Her shoulders slumped, she began to walk back. Then she stopped. She dithered, went back to the tree. She checked a bush. Then she looked over the garden wall.

  Was she looking for the cat? Christ, it would’ve gone by now. Someone would have run it over, if not poisoned it. That still happened.

  Darya walked off the frame. Soon he heard the door slide shut again, and her footsteps on the tiles. She was heading for the hallway.

  ‘Darya,’ he said, stepping out of the room. ‘Come here.’

  She paused at the staircase. What turned to face him was a maddening mix of confusion and defiance. The veins throbbed in his head. He was too old for games and so was she. But he would play all the same, a game for thinking men who liked to sit beneath plane trees. After all, life was chess.

  ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘are you OK?’

  ‘Yes.’ She didn’t even blink. To his surprise, she went on to offer something of an explanation: ‘I am thinking.’

  He nodded. ‘You know,’ he said with a gentle voice, ‘I only want your happiness. Whatever you want I’ll give to you.’

  Only a fool would not understand. She was no fool.

  Whatever thought had come to her, the words to express it never did. Her eyes moved, in a way that made him think of a printer spreading ink on a page. She allowed the silence to grow, and grow, and cover them both.

  Waking, he pulled away from it, her spell, whatever it was. ‘I’m going to get a drink.’

  And when he glanced back, he saw that she was staring at something in the distance, somewhere by the front door.

  ✽✽✽

  He had a meeting with Thanos at the Harmonia. Aristos wore a Tom Ford suit he had picked up in London, which the hotel manager correctly identified. Thanos was a man of detail. His judgment had been an asset to the chain, and he must be assured that he was valued. But he was also to be reminded that some things were beyond him, and so Aristos had paired the shirt with gold and onyx cufflinks that cost nearly as much as the suit. Once in a while, the manager’s eyes would travel to them.

  They were sitting at one of the cafés overlooking the pool. Aristos had passed Orestis at the Front Desk, and the boy had blended his greeting with the other staff. ‘Good morning, Mr Ioannidou.’ But he couldn’t help wondering how much Thanos had noticed or indeed suspected. The manager was an intuitive man, little escaped him. It must not be forgotten that he’d known almost at once what Lefteris was. He’d requested a private talk with Aristos then, in which he’d raised his concern of solicitation on the hotel grounds. There was nothing they could do about businessmen renting girls off the street, but this…? There are men in suits who wait in the lobby, Thanos had said, his tone full of portent. One in particular. Aristos had seen no point in feigning ignorance. Yes, he’d replied, and watched the manager’s face as it had filled in the blanks. Thanos, with his well-bred posture in a tailored waistcoat, had not been happy about the arrangement – an extra service he believed to be tarnishing the hotels’ good names – but Aristos assured him the men were being closely monitored. Male prostitution was far less messy than the alternative. Firstly, these handsome young bucks were always willing, and they got to choose the women or men they serviced; they were not foreign girls who’d been tricked into leaving their families for what they’d been told was legitimate work in Europe. Secondly, female prostitution was a side racket for drug-dealers and Mafiosi. Lefteris, and other men of his ilk, were sole traders. Female clients didn’t make trouble. As long as drugs were kept off the premises, the hotels’ doors were open to these sons of Aphrodite. In Orestis, Lefteris had seen an opportunity to earn some extra income. Notwithstanding that messy beginning when Darya had paid in cash, Aristos’ money passed as a housekeeping expense from him to Lefteris, who took his percentage before handing the remainder to Orestis. Aristos contended that this was, in no uncertain terms, hush money. On some nights the dread kept him from sleeping. But he comforted himself that Lefteris was of wealthy stock – rich families were the most fearful. While the young man’s father might get a secondhand ego boost in private, in public he’d be horrified at where the extra income had come from. Reputation was currency, and scandals were depressions. Aristos had to protect himself. If news of gigolos operating at the hotels were to spread to the general public, he could feign ignorance and make a grand show of stamping them out of his establishments. It was his word against that of creatures of the night. But then, who would leak the news in the first place? Employees for whom the hotel was a glittering line on a resumé? Male clients concealing their sin? Or women revealing theirs?

  At times he worried about Orestis. The boy could almost certainly be trusted, but he was also vain, and still unpractised. He might let slip to a friend about his work on the side. A friend of Orestis’ was likely to be a friend of Eva’s. And if Darya’s name got bandied about… This was why he had taken the photos. Orestis had been flattered, the poor fool; it hadn’t even occurred to him to conceal his face.

  Thanos thanked the waitress by name when she brought their pastries and coffees. Aristos took his in the traditional way, thick and unsweetened, the kind his late mother would have ‘read’ in the emptied cups of her visitors. Thanos was of the younger generation, who liked their fancy brews with milk and foam and sprinkles. Whatever kept him youthful.

  To begin with, the men made small talk, ‘How was the holiday?’ followed by ‘Wonderful,’ followed by a recap of the Islands. How light it all sounded without mention of his wife.

  ‘How about you? What news?’

  ‘Nothing exciting to tell,’ said the manager.

  ‘A, come now. Dashing man like you. You must have a line of ladies.’

  Nerves made a wave of the younger man’s smile, as Aristos predicted. An old army buddy had spotted Thanos walking into a gay bar. I’ll give you a hundred euro for a photo of him there, Aristos had said. Double for any kissing or touching. The friend had obliged. Aristos had paid double.

  ‘E… I get on OK,’ Thanos said.

  For a moment, Aristos reflected on how good it might be to have a more open relationship with t
his man; if only Thanos could be honest about himself, if only Aristos could be the sort of man who encouraged honesty. People were too afraid of him to reveal themselves completely. Everything he knew of them he had to divine. He had the talent to do it, like his mother discerning fortunes from the dregs of her visitors’ coffee cups, but whereas hers was a warm, inviting way to fathom people, his was cold. It was as if he’d only read about them rather than spoken to them. And information was rarely useless. That was what people feared in him: they could sense their own dissection.

  ‘There’s something I wanted to speak with you about,’ said Aristos. ‘It’s something to which I’ve given a lot of thought.’

  The manager sat up straight.

  ‘As you know, I’ve been travelling here and there in the past few months, sorting things out abroad. Long story short… I sold them. Munich, Amsterdam, Dubai, I sold them.’

  Thanos’ eyes widened.

  ‘I’m taking a step back. I’ve been working away so much these past few years, my poor wife thinks there’s an intruder whenever she finds me home.’ A good touch, he thought. ‘The truth is, I’m getting tired. But don’t worry,’ – he threw a hand up – ‘I swear on my life that I am never selling the Harmonia.’

  Thanos nodded.

  ‘As you know, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the hotels. It’s how we’ve sustained our standards, our quality, across the chain. But now I’d like someone else to take over for me. You.’

  A kaleidoscope of emotions in Thanos’ face. He was speechless.

  ‘I feel lucky to have found you,’ Aristos went on. ‘You have demonstrated over the years that your standards, your expectations, your leadership, are second to none. I can think of no-one else I would trust to do this for me.’