by Polis Loizou
She looked away, shrugged.
‘Come out.’
She lowered her head so that the water covered her mouth. He sat on one of the poolside deckchairs.
‘You are manager now,’ Darya said when she raised her head again.
These days he wore his own suits, good ones, not that green branded shirt. The only sign of a uniform was a metallic badge with his name and position engraved on it. ‘Yes.’
‘I knew this would happen.’
He didn’t know whether that was a compliment or not.
‘Why you are here, Orestis?’
‘To see you.’
On saying it, he knew it was true. What he had come for were the photos. He’d imagined searching the house, like a cop in a raid. But his offence fell to pieces when he saw her. This woman before him was not a vindictive person. If she found the photos, she would destroy them herself. Or she would keep them, to look at whenever she felt the desire. A part of him hoped she would.
‘Don’t marry Eva.’
She’d spoken so quietly he thought he’d misheard. The hairs on his arms stood on end.
‘I’ve known her since we were children.’
‘But this is not life. Your life – it mean something. It matters you are alive.’
His eyes stung. ‘What else can I do?’
‘Leave. Go away. Start again.’
‘Like you?’
Her voice was low. ‘Yes, like me.’
‘This is my home, Darya. My friends, my family…’
She looked away.
‘What will you do?’ he asked. The two of them together, on a boat, sailing away on her husband’s inheritance. He would cook for her, clean, whatever she wanted.
‘I will see what comes,’ she said.
She was planning to leave. The realisation shook him.
What was there to keep her here? What roots did she have, what ties without Aristos? She and Eva had made progress since the cruise, but no-one would call it friendship. There was nobody else around, not a Russian or a Ukrainian or even that Swede on the yacht. Yet she never looked weak, never unsure of herself. Was she free, or was she simply alone?
‘Will you sell the house? Will you leave?’
‘The house is not mine.’
‘E… I’m sure Aristos—’
‘No.’
It was so final.
‘Come on, Darya… Surely… It must—’
‘Everything goes to Eva.’
Orestis felt the deckchair fall away from him, his well-dressed legs dangling in space. ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded.
‘E, Eva will give you something. No question. I’ll ask her. Let me give you something.’
‘I don’t want,’ she said with a shrug. ‘This is Aristos’ gift for me.’
He didn’t understand. He only heard his jagged breath.
‘Do you remember Rhodos? Woman with baby?’
He nodded. It came back to him often.
‘This was God for me.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘He gives me a chance.’
Her idea of God differed from his. Never mind what would always divide them, he wanted to hold her, as he had done in his cabin. He wanted her to open to him. But all he said was the only thing he could think to say: ‘Come out of the water. Please.’
This time, she did. She floated to the edge of the pool and, gripping the metal rails, rose from the water. Her body shivered, her hair stuck to it. Her eyes were locked on his. There was the sound of her wet feet on the tiles, and the touch of her soaking hair at his neck as she bent to kiss his cheek. ‘Do not worry.’ She stroked his forehead with her fingertips. ‘You always worry.’
It was good to see her happy. He kissed her wrist as she lifted his chin.
‘My Orestis,’ she said.
Then she slid the patio doors open and went back into her dark, empty house.
PART V
As you are is as you’ll find it, her grandma used to say, and Eva knew the words would follow her to the grave. It came from a story that varied with each telling, but its moral was ultimately the same: the world gave back what you gave to it. That was something her father had understood and used to his advantage. People remember kindness, he would tell her. And most of them — not all of them, but most — repay it.
When she thought of her father now, Eva could assess him as she might a stuffed lion in a museum. That was the curious legacy of death, this privilege to look without fear at what once might have killed you. Not that her father had ever scared her. He dominated, that was who he was; a man so big you were bound to look up. She admired him for bettering himself. He went from a childhood in the village, in that shack with a hole in the ground for a toilet, to an adulthood in which his name had spread throughout the island and across the sea. But his success made him impatient with others’ slow progress, intolerant of their demons.
He had been vile to her mother. He put his dreams before hers, and for him to rise unimpeded she had to be suppressed, pinned like a butterfly on a board. When she was depressed, he was mad that she wasn’t buoyant. If she was lonely, why wasn’t she throwing a party? Why cry, and not at least try to be beautiful? Eva remembered him yelling at his wife, to get up and walk, stop being lazy, do something, which made her limbs too limp to move. By the time he’d married Darya, he appeared to have mellowed. It annoyed Eva that this Russian slut might have changed him. What did this woman have that her mother didn’t? It wasn’t until they went on the cruise that she saw the film repeat itself. He’d pinned Darya just as neatly, and his technique had improved. Who knows what he had promised the poor woman? An escape from the Eastern bloc probably. Why have nothing as a Communist, when you could have everything as a Capitalist?
It was not the lesson her father had taught her. For all his amassed wealth, his views remained more or less socialist. It wouldn’t have surprised her if he’d voted for this bumbling fool of a president. He always paid his taxes, as confirmed by his accountant and solicitor. And unlike everyone else with a job she’d ever met, he never once complained about the refugee tax.
He’d raised her to reject racism, nationalism, xenophobia. It was why he’d sent her to an international school rather than a state one, cost and status were a bonus. He wanted her to see for herself how big the world was, how tiny she was within it. But in some ways, the experiment had failed. She loved Cyprus. If it was idiotic to love a concept, and to be proud of what you hadn’t achieved, then she was an idiot. She compared the traits of her people to others and they fared well. She loved the way Cypriots stared at strangers and welcomed them. She loved that they fed and ate too much. She loved that they danced together in a circle and sang without inhibition. She loved that they mocked everything and everyone, including themselves. And she felt for this country, this cursed little island, which had barely scraped together fourteen years of independence in its history.
Fourteen was how old she was when she started to claim ownership of herself. When she told her mother she was seeing grownup films at the cinema, or piercing her ears, or staying up past her bedtime. When she accepted her size and the gossip it would fuel. At least she had big tits, even if it made clothes-shopping awkward. It was when she finally told her father that she didn’t care if she was fat, as long as she loved herself. It was when she started to learn how to play his game.
✽✽✽
Paris’ book launch was at a poetry café in Old Town. Nestled in one of those Venetian buildings with the tall doorways, it was a cosy room of dim lights and the smell of wine and food in its walls. Paris took his place at the microphone stand and with a clear voice read his poems as if they were breathing inside her head. Though teachers and classmates had presumed him shy, Eva had always known that the opposite was true. Paris didn’t care about how he was perceived, in fact, he was an anarchist. A symbolic brick here, metaphorical graffiti there. She had teased him about it once and he’d called her a princess.
‘A,’ she’d said, ‘and you’ll shoot me like the Romanovs.’ But even she had been unprepared for the ability and comfort he showed in his readings. A natural. She felt a warmth in her heart as the room applauded his work. If he wasn’t such a Communist who antagonised everyone, then who knows… He might even have been the one to meet her at the altar.
She queued to get her copies of his book signed, one for her and one for her new friend the lesbian who liked this sort of thing but was in Azerbaijan designing shopping centres. She told him what a weirdo he was, what was this book jacket? A snakes breaking an egg? God have mercy. Paris smirked. Eva felt a sudden urge to stroke his stubbled cheek and thank God, the very shock of it kept her paralysed. Paris had a girlfriend now, a pretty Greek-Bulgarian who cared passionately about renewable energy. Her honey wave of hair tumbled over his head as the girlfriend leant to kiss his temple. The proud owner.
‘I didn’t understand a word,’ Orestis said of the reading.
Eva laughed, slapping his arm. It helped to keep the sadness down. Laughter and cocktails. Regardless of what he said, Orestis had watched his friend in awe and put his fingers in his mouth to whistle loudly at the end. That was enough.
✽✽✽
The idea came to her to have a traditional wedding, in tribute to her father. He may not have been a nationalist, but the man had still been fond of his heritage. Orestis joked it would be traditional-lite, like the bouzouki pop she blasted in her car. She told him not to try her.
One day she drove up to his village of Kilani. To see the jumble of paved slopes, the stone houses with painted wooden shutters, the pagoda of vine leaves over an alley, old men with walking sticks sitting on wooden chairs with straw seats, she felt a nostalgic ache. Stupid; she’d never even lived here. She took photos. When anyone passed her, she’d engage them in conversation and explain her project: she was documenting her father’s life, and a Cyprus of the past that she hoped would remain in the future. Then she’d invite them to her wedding. She wanted the reception to be right there in the village. On the streets, if the inhabitants allowed it. She hoped that an invitation to the feast would tempt them. Big deal, they only numbered a couple of hundred souls. One by one, she knocked on doors or, if they went unanswered, left notecards with her phone number on them, asking for people’s permission to have her banquet here. God have mercy, the majority of the residents was over sixty. And most of them remembered her grandma fondly. The Seamstress. They were thrilled to be invited to her descendant’s wedding.
There was one person she wished to invite, but it would take all her powers of persuasion to do so: Orestis’ mother. She got the sense that her fiancé felt the same. No matter how dismissive a front he presented, he couldn’t quite hide the hurt of her departure, his curiosity to know her. ‘Leave it,’ he’d say when Eva brought her up, but each time his tone softened, weathered like stone by water. She realised that the biggest part of the problem was Kostas, that perhaps he was the reason Orestis feigned aloofness. Eva knew her future father-in-law’s faults – quick-tempered, unwilling to be educated, immoveable, xenophobic, sexist – but she knew how to make him laugh, or at least raise his eyebrow as a sign of mirth. It was how she got away with her bullshit.
‘If you invite that whore to the wedding, I’m not going!’ he said when she raised the subject at a family barbecue.
‘So many whores in my family are coming to this wedding, isn’t Orestis allowed one?’
A shocked silence. Then an explosion of laughter from the rest of the family, and even Kostas was amused. What stunned him was his pride. Eva knew that if she pushed her agenda, played the role of the interfering bride, he would finally relent. He wanted to see her again, too.
‘And me, the poor wretch. I want to know what genes are going to make up your grandchildren. I want to know where this gorgeous human being came from.’ She held Orestis’ hand.
‘What,’ said Kostas, softening, ‘you don’t think it came from this?’ He was indicating himself, an eyebrow raised.
‘Excuse me,’ Andrikos interjected. ‘Who is the one who brought the supermodel genes into this family?’ He made a show of presenting himself, from the dirty Nike cap to the protruding belly and the navy flip-flops.
She joined him in laughing. But he was right, Pavlos was probably even more good-looking than Orestis. Those green-grey eyes, that lazy smile – my God, who made these beings? Demigods. They bore no resemblance to their fathers.
In the kitchen, Lenia whispered to Eva: ‘I have Melina’s email address. I’ll give it to you.’
‘Thank you, auntie.’
‘Don’t mention it. What mother would want to miss her only son’s wedding?’
It was Easter. They played at cracking dyed eggs, a dozen pairs broken down to semi-finalists, then finalists, and at last, a winner. Orestis held up his champion egg to prove that its red veneer was unscathed. Lunch was a table covered in roasted lamb and salad, broad beans, green beans, olives, feta, taramosalata, tahini, moussaka, roast potatoes. Of course, she ate, none of that diet nonsense. While the younger cousins ran around, the adults talked and laughed and listened to music.
One of Orestis’ cousins tried to tell her about property, that her husband was a genius at it. He had bought a house to let in Romania, dirt-cheap country. He could advise her. Eva had already hired an architect and bought a cute apartment with huge windows on the seafront to serve until the house was built. To the cousin, she simply said, ‘I have plans,’ and shut the conversation down by asking about the kids. One of her plans was to buy shares in smartphones, invest in new media. People were embracing technology more and more as a life enhancement. This was a connected world. People wanted everything on their phones, the less to carry the better; as if they were nomads or refugees. But she would always, God willing with her mind intact, keep up with trends; if you didn’t move with the times, you were a dinosaur, extinct. She’d driven past the concrete ghost of the Ariel cinema enough times in her life to understand the ephemeral nature of a status quo. She had broken into the abandoned Fysco Lotus mall, to document the process of decay; weeds where once was commerce. There, she had found the shop of a local artisan, his small-scale reproductions of ancient statues left in cobwebs on rotten shelves. These predated everything she thought she knew about her motherland, even Aphrodite herself. Female forms with enlarged vaginas, what looked like penis heads, babies worn as necklaces. She photographed them, breath stilled. They barely looked Greek.
The other part of her plan was to sell the properties, maybe even the Harmonia. But she would ensure the staff remained. The new owners would be crazy not to have those sweethearts Thanos and Yiorgos in their establishments. Times had changed. If Cyprus was going to be too expensive for the penny-pinchers, then she would aim to focus inwards, on affordable luxury. With her inheritance, she would open spas and gyms, on sliding scales of expense. People always wanted to feel and look good, no matter their lot in life. She might even open a yoga and meditation retreat, somewhere in the mountains where the sound of running water was all around and the air was fresh. Orestis was keen to have Pavlos run one of the gyms, and she agreed he should. Judging from his work with Orestis, he was a good personal trainer, and his looks would boost sales. But she would not end up with a hash-den empire under her nose. Pavlos had better keep his other business outside of hers, or else.
✽✽✽
It was a sunny September morning on the day of their wedding. They had rented an old-style country home, with a courtyard of large clay pots bursting with flowers instead of grains, and a four-poster bed that took up the room in which, that very night, she was to give herself to her husband. Orestis and Eva went through the rituals of separate preparation. Musicians stood playing their fiddles and flutes while Pavlos, as best man, shaved his cousin. After the bride’s hair and make-up were done, Eva’s mum and maid of honour wrapped the sash around her waist and head. In a church full of souls, the priest blessed their union. He gave them bread and Ko
umandaria. He led them around the table three times after they placed the rings three times on each other’s fingers. They’d worn their headbands, a design of fig leaves out of silver, copper and crystals. Like the bridesmaids’ dresses, they had been made in London.
The invitations had been printed on paper from Lebanon, the flowers imported from France, the favours from Athens. She was a Ioannidou after all, and her name carried certain branding duties. But her wedding dress was of Lefkara lace, handmade by a local craftswoman. At the reception the beer was Keo, and the wine brewed at the Ayia Mavri next door. The food was also her people’s: spit-roasted lamb, stuffed peppers and vine leaves, grilled halloumi and salad. Dessert was a mountain on a trestle table: loukoumades, daktyla, yoghurt with honey and fruit salad. Some of the villagers had even gifted glass amphorae of their own homemade spoon sweets: bitter orange, bergamot, walnut, cherries and watermelon peel preserved in syrup and lime.
Music was provided by the live bouzouki band, instructed to play a melange of old folk songs and recent pop. People danced, Orestis throwing himself into the middle with Pavlos and Paris as people cheered. Guests pinned money to the bride and groom. Her mother’s South African relatives were touchingly generous.
‘It takes me back to old times,’ an elderly villager said to Eva with tears in her eyes. ‘Any minute now, we’ll be hearing Turkish.’
How different one generation could be from the next. Even in the space between hers and her father’s, Greek had been modernised. Then kids were typing Cypriot words in English letters. This old biddy was missing neighbours that some of Eva’s peers would spit on.
Taking a break from dancing, Eva sat with Orestis’ mother. She had emailed Melina to introduce herself and to request a postal address. The woman, as Lenia had predicted, was delighted to hear from her. What sort of woman would want to miss her son’s wedding, yes, but also: what sort of woman could leave her son in a different country, to stew in worry and regret and confusion without her? Who in their right mind abandons their child? At least that beggar in Rhodos was trying to give hers a better life. Though Eva had gone against Kostas’ wishes by inviting his ex to the wedding, she was starting to see his side of things. They met Melina two weeks before the big day, at a café by the beach. The woman cried when she saw Orestis. Orestis was more restrained, which made Eva’s throat contract. Melina sat through their coffee marvelling at everything around her: the road by the Zoo, it had been fixed! And Mesa Yitonia – avenues and flyovers where before there’d been fields of snakes! The area around the Castle was as beautiful as always. But how sad some of the buildings were looking now, and what was with the Russian furriers? Eva began the afternoon feeling anxious about the meeting, protective of her fiancé, all too late, but by the end of their coffee, she’d been charmed by his mother. Melina stared with wide eyes, Orestis’ eyes, at all the change that had occurred between one life and another. She looked at her son, again and again, squeezed his knee, kissed his cheek, overcome with pride at the man he’d become.