The Way It Breaks

by Polis Loizou

  ‘Good afternoon.’

  Aristos turned to find a man slightly older than him, perhaps not quite as tall, definitely thinner, dressed in camouflage trousers and a black jumper. Next to him huffed the donkey he led up a slope.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Aristos said back.

  ‘Are you from Lemesos?’

  On closer inspection, the man’s stubble was patchy, the hairs greying, his eyes crusted with sleep. But there was also a child’s curiosity there.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I used to live here.’

  ‘You went to Lemesos?’

  ‘Ou, it’s been years now.’

  The donkey’s ears twitched. A couple of flies were circling its head, which the man tried to waft away.

  ‘May I…?’ said Aristos, raising his hand, and the man indicated yes. For the first time in years, Aristos felt the hide of a donkey. The touch brought back neighbours, the crowing of cockerels, the scent of warm bread from the ovens. Perhaps it was the animal’s face, that hopeless air of drudgery in every donkey – whatever the reason, he felt a deep longing. Darya riding her way up Santorini. Eva’s words about a creature’s use.

  ‘Do they have Cadbury’s in Lemesos?’

  Aristos laughed. But almost at once, off the man’s expression, felt remorse. He smiled what he hoped was a gentle smile. ‘Of course. Surely you have it here.’

  The man made a face that said either No or Not enough. ‘Will you bring me some when you next come back?’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘Only Cadbury’s, though.’

  Those British soldiers patrolling in their jeeps; handing out chocolates, coaxing the local children to be their shields; they’d done their job.

  ✽✽✽

  Across from a restaurant leaning over the wooded hillside, where a trio of men sat with cups of coffee, smoking, and sipping at glasses of water, stood the church. His grandma had told him stories of the eponymous saint, Ayia Mavri. So many versions of a single person’s life, none of them likely to be true. Yet for some, they still were, as real as the gods and Jesus and Christmas goblins. Aristos went to the side, where the building grew out of the hill and the plane tree. Water ran from a spring beneath the chapel. He had to duck to step through the entrance.

  In the dim light of candles, he made out the beautiful gates, hand-painted saints in gold leaf. His eyes travelled upwards, to the walls, the ceiling, where Christians hundreds of years ago had made their frescoes; a dark sky of martyrs watching from above. At his size, Aristos should have felt oppressed by this tiny space, but he felt embraced. All that love, that devotion unique to religious art, coddled him in its womb. Here he was, a logical, atheist Christian. He never wore a cross, so as not to draw overt lines between himself and a foreign associate. He never prayed, and only went to church for the fireworks at Easter. He baulked to hear of countrymen leaving their land and money to the Church. He almost spat at St Raphael, the Church-owned hotel resort. Who accepted such a thing? But he did believe in God. There had to be someone in charge of this. And that someone would choose to reward or punish him in the end. There was a small wooden table covered in red cloth, processional crosses glinting from it. Another table bore an icon of Ayia Mavri herself. Next to it stood a small wax head, a votive for a sick child perhaps. That head could be Darya’s. It could be his.

  He spent half an hour beneath the plane tree where Pantelis’ taverna used to be. The memories came, wave upon wave. That villager with the donkey, who’d asked about chocolate, was like Melis, the son of a local carpenter. In retrospect, Melis must have lacked oxygen when he was born. His mother had died from the birth, leaving behind a child with impaired abilities to speak, move, perhaps even to think, who could say? Aristos was not like the other boys. He did not taunt Melis, did not call him names like Sleepy or Dopey or kick him and flee as the others did. His mother had raised him to be kind. Otherwise, God would rage, you’d be denied your place in Heaven.

  But Aristos learned that compassion could attract more earthbound rewards. Melis’ father, Dionysos, nodded friendly greetings at the teenaged Aristos though he scowled at other boys. Aristos took his kindness – which so far consisted, paradoxically, of doing nothing – further. He sought out Melis to engage him in one-sided chitchat. The boy began to look for him too and smiled with a mouth open wide when he found him. This kindness was hard for Aristos. He had no tolerance for people’s failings and an impatience with anyone who couldn’t keep up. He felt sick at the drool and snot that came out of Melis. The boy hadn’t deserved to be bullied, but did he deserve Aristos’ time and effort? Dionysos was so grateful that he’d give Aristos a bag of oranges from his grove, to his mother’s glee, and sing his praises to everyone. It was easy, therefore, to ask the man for a job in his workshop. And in time, for a pay rise. Dionysos taught him skills that would prove to be invaluable. They would take him out of the village, enable him to get by in the city. That first job had led to other jobs, then to better jobs. Without any knowledge of his role, Melis had lain the foundations for Aristos to provide for his family and, ultimately, for himself.

  He didn’t even know if Melis was alive or dead. And if he saw him now, would his mouth open wide with joy?

  Eight

  Orestis had proposed to Eva. Aristos answered the phone expecting ear-bursting excitement, but the voice that greeted him was sedate. ‘Did you pressure him?’ Eva said instead of Hello.

  ‘I only told him it would make me happy to see you married.’

  ‘Right. Like a rifle to his head.’

  He knew then that for the rest of her life, his daughter would wonder if her husband truly loved her. He assured her they were a perfect match, that he had believed so for a while. She had even known it herself, back when they were children.

  ‘The only child who ever knew what was good for him was you,’ she said.

  Then she thanked her father and hung up.

  The engagement couldn’t have come at a better time. Orestis had requested to speak to him privately on one of his visits, and in the boardroom, he confessed as if to a priest: all the cash he’d received from Darya in those early days, he’d been keeping in the box of an old games console. His old man had discovered it while clearing out the house, looking for things to dump or sell at the car boot sale. Kostas had raged, yelling the house down about his son’s mendacity. What had he been doing? Selling drugs with his cousin, the hash addict? Stealing purses at the tourist bars? Here he was, an honest man trying to scrape by and pay back loans and remortgage his business, while his son was stashing away euro like a politician with a Swiss bank account. In a panic, Orestis had blurted to his father that the money was meant for an engagement ring: he would be asking Eva Ioannidou to marry him.

  The mood shifted. Kostas slapped him on the back, kissed him on both cheeks. Aristos bristled at the thought of this peasant being linked to Orestis. The idea that those genes would live on in his future grandchildren… He hoped Melina had actually cheated on him; that there was a better man in Orestis’ DNA.

  ‘Bravo, my son,’ he said, shaking Orestis’ hand and patting his back.

  That bashful, dimpled smile.

  Eva would be fine.

  Dismissing the boy to his duties, Aristos thought of that money, money from his own wallet, sitting in an old box only to return – even indirectly – to him in the form of a ring. A circular economy indeed.

  When he broke the news to Darya, he did it casually. It was better that she found out soon, and the less fuss the better. She simply nodded, the sunlight dimming in the window behind her. Nothing mattered. This was the way she was of late, taking everything in her stride. She had been doing her yoga, her meditation, even that reiki nonsense. But if this was its effect, then who was to say if it was good or bad, when a man could not even tell what his wife was feeling or thinking anymore? She had become stricter with her diet, a full-time vegetarian. When he took her to a taverna, she even refused the octopus. He asked her what good it did to
deny yourself pleasure. She replied, ‘I am not the only life.’

  ✽✽✽

  A date had been set for the wedding, the end of September on the following year. The perfect time, according to Eva, who didn’t want to sweat through a fabric meringue, or shiver when she whipped it off to dance. In the meantime, preparations for the engagement party were underway. The Harmonia’s Events team took care of everything, with special attention now that their client was Mr Ioannidou himself. As far as Aristos could tell from reports, Orestis’ colleagues appeared to be happy for him. He had stepped up to the position of manager and was handling himself as well as expected, with Thanos and Yiorgos on hand for support. Whereas Yiorgos frightened the employees who didn’t catch his humour, Orestis adapted himself to each person. He was palatable, popular. But his standards remained high.

  Though Eva occasionally asked after Darya, his wife showed no interest in anyone. Aristos found others’ perception of her increasingly hard to manage. Her behaviour must not reflect badly on him. He readied himself to be strict if she refused to attend the engagement party but, to his surprise, she was willing to go. She wore a patterned dress that Eva instantly recognised, it was one she’d picked out for her in Rhodos. The women spoke only for a moment, but he saw Eva lean in to whisper in Darya’s ear.

  ‘Bravo,’ his first wife said to him at the buffet table. ‘She’s like a statue. Galatea.’

  It didn’t matter, he let it go. ‘You look beautiful,’ he said in response. Because here, in this exquisite hall full of food and friends and music, where their daughter was celebrating her union with a man in a million, he could bat away his first wife’s arrows as if they were flies. He could even feel sorry for her. Especially now, as she watched her daughter with the evil stepmother, trying to calculate who was hurting her more.

  In a corner of the room, standing by himself, was Lefteris.

  Mastering his breath, Aristos went up to him. He put his face so close that he could see the flecks of bronze in those liquid green irises. ‘This isn’t the time or place for your business.’

  Lefteris smiled, his arrogance firmly rooted. ‘I’m here as a friend of your son-in-law’s,’ he said.

  ‘He invited you?’

  ‘Relax, my friend. I don’t know why you’re annoyed to see me. Don’t forget I’m the one who brought him to you.’

  ‘By accident. I’ve known him since he was a child.’

  ‘You knew what you could make of him. Not who he actually is.’

  Aristos left him standing there. He made his way to the doors, where Eva tried to intercept him. She begged him to come to the dance floor, the bouzouki was about to start. But he excused himself, saying he’d be back in a moment, and left the room to get some air.

  In the car home, he turned his head at every red light to check on his wife, who gazed out of the passenger window. She had behaved well. People had complimented her and received a reply in decent Greek. Though Orestis had spent the evening trying to catch her in the crowds, she had kept her contact with him to a single moment. Shaking his hand, she’d said, ‘Congratulations.’ He’d asked her how to say it in Belarusian, but she’d only smiled, looking down.

  ‘What did Eva whisper to you?’ he asked.

  She looked dazed.

  ‘Eva. She whispered something in your ear.’

  It took her a few seconds, but his wife did reply. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I could not hear.’

  Nine

  The sale of the Munich hotel went through. A collar released from his neck. Dubai would be next, though it would be painful to lose his biggest money-earner. He wondered if he should do it at all, especially now that his daughter was getting married. But it wasn’t as if he’d be leaving her nothing. Eva had shown minimum interest in the businesses and, provided she didn’t shop it all away, the proceeds from the sales alone would provide for several generations of Ioannidous. Between them, Thanos, Orestis and the other managers would take care of the Harmonia and the smaller hotels. The villas in Paphos would see to them themselves.

  His money was safe, locked away in a foreign bank. Switzerland, a friend in finance had said to him. The interest is good. And now with this atheist Communist for president, who knows what will happen to your money here?

  Despite himself, Aristos had harboured some hope in the election of a left-wing president. Almost every Greek-Cypriot politician had promised to find a solution to the Problem, to negotiate a reunification of this blood-stained isle. This time might be it. As the years since ‘74, and Aristos’ life, passed, reunification stayed stubbornly trembling, a near flatline. He’d even considered voting for that UN proposal a few years before if only to see the thing done at last. But how could he cross the box to breaches in human rights and international law; a freeze on freedom of movement; the presence of Greek and Turkish military on a land still shaken from the violence of both? The episode felt like subterfuge, a clearing of Turkey’s path to the EU, with no regard for Cypriots’ best interests – whether so-called Turks or Greeks.

  Just a year before the Anan plan, the borders between the free South and occupied North had been opened. Where once the Turks shot anyone who so much as hunted snails in an occupied field, now, at last, the people could return to their former towns and villages. They wept, seeing childhood homes again. They laughed, reunited with Turkish-speaking neighbours. A seed had been planted. The olive branches promised by the flag were beginning to grow.

  He cancelled an appointment in Paphos to go for a drive to the opposite end of the island; to Cape Greco, a place he hadn’t been to since Eva was a child. This time he asked Darya if she wanted to come. Her expression cleared, like sunlight poking through the clouds. She was on the brink of saying Yes, he was sure of it. But then something changed. She hesitated.

  ‘Fine,’ he’d snapped, and set off alone.

  Now he regretted it and wished he’d waited for her to agree. Perhaps she still would have.

  On the way, he stopped by his first hotel. A mere pebble compared to the jewel in his crown a few hundred metres along the avenue, yet it still gave him joy to see.

  He turned off for the highway. The road spread open before him, he pressed on the accelerator. He didn’t care. Let the cameras snap him, he could afford the slap on the wrist. Houses on hills looking down at the sea, apartment blocks and holiday flats, so many buildings he’d helped to construct. He passed the naval base at Mari, where friends of his had been stationed. He passed signs for Larnaka, Lefkosia and the British bases, that appalling Turkish flag on the mountainside, and before long he was driving through Ayia Napa, what used to be a village, a smattering of watermelon farms. Now it was a clubber’s paradise, crawling with youths so drunk and high they barely knew what country they were in. Then there was the waterpark, which Eva had begged him to take her to one summer. Ten or eleven years old she’d been, plodding along in her tight pink swimsuit with the silly frills, and the attendant at the slide assessing her as if she was an elephant trying to fit through a straw. He should have chastised that boy. He should have hugged his daughter. What he wouldn’t give to see her at that age again, her soft unpainted cheeks and big brown eyes.

  He drove along the beachfront, in this season a near wasteland of bars and restaurants waiting for party-loving tourists. Nightclubs on a long siesta.

  At last, he arrived. The sky was blank as paper and the sea was a blue that roared. The cape filled the horizon. Rocks scattered along down to the water’s edge, sometimes wrinkled, sometimes cracked, like blackened petrified sponge.

  He’d forgotten to lock the BMW. The keys were still inside, probably still in the ignition.

  It didn’t matter. Almost no one else was here, and the few bodies that were, were equally dazzled, equally buoyed by the air of the sea, and the immaculate turquoise where the shore rose to meet it. He was carried along to a small white chapel, where stray cats gathered around a water fountain. Little bowls of food had been left for them.

  He
ought to take one home. That would be the perfect bridge to his wife now, why hadn’t he done it already? Why did he always feel such a need to keep her down?

  Why did he feel the need to own things? Now, here, he wanted this place to be his. He wanted to grab it and keep it inside him. It was the nomad’s need for adventure, for experience at the same time as settlement, as stability. People wanted land so they could feel the existence of home, a patch of Earth to belong to them and them to it. But they were doomed to roaming, no single existence perfect.

  He carried on, stepping carefully over rocks to sit close to the sea. This raw patch of Earth, it existed regardless of anything or anyone but itself. It was rocks affected by water, water affected by rocks. A clash of chemicals, of pure being and being in the presence of nothing, beholden to no-one. It was a landscape without a calendar, without a clock, without currency, without nationality, without arbitrary walls. Even the sea, that enormous force with a trillion lives inside it, sliced into separate territories on maps. Here it simply was and lived regardless. Here you could almost believe in the gods, the dawn of everything. Ananke and Chronos, intertwined as a serpents around the egg of creation, breaking it, and out came land, sky and sea. Produce or progeny, all emerged from the twinning of desire and compulsion over time, the knowledge of transience. And then there were Ananke’s daughters: Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos. One spinning the thread of your life, the other measuring it, the last cutting it off.