Aphrodite's Island

by Hilary Green

  ‘I hope your visit this morning was a success.’ The words come out before I have time to analyze my reasons.

  He turns to look at me again. ‘Yes, it was, thank you.’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘To the temple of Aphrodite at Vounos. What is left is mainly Roman in origin, but it is built on the site of a much older temple.’ He pauses. ‘You’re not interested in history?’

  ‘Well, I’ve never been very keen on ruins and, well, you know, trenches with bits of pottery in them.’

  He laughs, his teeth very white against his tan. ‘Perhaps that’s because you don’t know what they stand for – the stories they could tell us.’

  ‘Ah, stories!’ I find myself smiling back at him. ‘Now there you have caught my interest. I love stories.’ I realize that he is still standing, looking down at me, and add, on an impulse, ‘Won’t you sit down? That is, if you have time.’

  He seems to hesitate for a moment, then he draws a chair closer and seats himself. ‘As it happens, I have the afternoons off. Perhaps I could order some tea for both of us?’

  What am I doing? I ask myself. Aloud I say ‘Why not? Tea sounds great.’

  Mezeli beckons to a waiter and orders tea, then turns back to me. ‘You’re here alone?’

  A warning bell goes off at the back of my mind. ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Only that it’s unusual. People usually come either as couples or in a party.’

  ‘Yes, well – I just felt like having some time to myself. I’ve been – rather busy lately.’ Why am I telling him all this?

  ‘Work?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a teacher.’

  ‘Oh, what do you teach?’

  I can’t resist this. ‘The classical answer to that is “children”.’

  He acknowledges the barb with a smile. ‘I’ll rephrase the question. What is your subject?’

  ‘English.’

  ‘That explains the interest in stories. Where do you work?

  ‘London.’

  ‘Ah! The hectic metropolitan life.’

  The waiter returns with a tray. ‘Your tea, Dr Mezeli.’

  I look up, startled. ‘Doctor? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize …’

  He grins. ‘Oh, not a real doctor. Just a Ph.D.’

  I am embarrassed. I had assumed that he was just a local tour guide. To hide my confusion I turn my attention to the tea. As I pour, something occurs to me. ‘You know my name. How?’

  He lifts his dark brows. ‘It’s not difficult. I looked in the hotel register. All the other guests belong to the tour group.’

  I keep my eyes on my cup. So, he was sufficiently interested to look me up. I feel a stir of gratification and take myself instantly to task. This is exactly the sort of thing you came here to avoid!

  ‘What made you choose to come here, particularly?’ he asks.

  I am not sure where to begin – or if I want to begin at all. ‘It’s a long story.’

  He looks away. ‘Then I mustn’t pry.’

  ‘No!’ Suddenly I feel I am being ungracious. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just – well, I don’t want to bore you.’ He does not respond and to break the silence I say, ‘You speak very good English.’

  ‘I should. I studied for six years in Newcastle.’

  ‘Newcastle! That must have been a bit of a shock after Cyprus.’

  ‘I loved every minute of it. They were the happiest years of my life.’

  ‘But you came back to live here.’

  His face grows serious again. ‘I was born here. It is my home. There was work to be done here.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure if I had to choose between all this,’ indicating the view across the harbour, ‘and the River Tyne I’d choose to live here.’

  ‘Would you?’ He looks at me quizzically. ‘I wonder. So, what did make you decide to come here?’

  ‘An old photograph I came across. You see, we used to live here once, when I was very small. I’d almost forgotten until I saw the photo. My mother and father ran a small bar in a village called Lapithos. Do you know it?’

  ‘Lapta,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, yes, sorry. I forgot we have to use the Turkish name now.’

  ‘Yes, I know the place. What made your parents come here to run a bar?’

  I laugh. ‘God knows! I think it was some mad idea of my father’s. My mother never talked about it, but I think he was rather inclined to crazy impulses like that.’

  He looks at me. His gaze is sharp, attentive, slightly disconcerting. ‘Was?’

  ‘I never knew him very well. He left us when I was six and died soon afterwards.’

  ‘And your mother? You speak of them both in the past tense.’

  ‘She died six weeks ago.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. So you came here out of – what? Nostalgia? Curiosity?’

  ‘A bit of both, I suppose. It was just an impulse, really. My doctor said I ought to take a holiday and then I happened to come across the photograph so I thought, Why not? I had no idea it would turn out to be so complicated.’ I hesitate, not wanting to appear ignorant. ‘I’m afraid I don’t really understand what happened here. I don’t have much time for politics and that sort of thing.’

  He smiles wryly. ‘You’re fortunate. Here, everything is political. Anyway, I hope you will enjoy yourself, now you are here. It’s a very beautiful place. It’s just a pity you can only see half of it.’

  ‘Is it quite impossible to cross the border?’

  ‘Completely. Unless you are a diplomat or a member of the UN peace-keeping force.’

  ‘Well,’ I finish my tea, ‘it doesn’t really matter. The part I’m interested in is round here – where my parents lived, well, where I lived briefly.’

  ‘Why don’t you join some of our excursions? It would give you a different perspective on the history of the island.’

  My first instinct is to refuse. ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that. After all, these other people have paid for the privilege.’

  His nostrils flare and his eyes narrow and I think that he is not a man to be thwarted by convention or red tape. ‘I don’t see that it makes any difference to them. There is room in the coach and one more in the group will make no difference. Come as my guest.’

  The idea appeals, but I suspect for the wrong reason. But I give in. ‘Well, if you’re sure it’s OK …’

  He smiles. ‘I’ll make it OK.’

  I look at him. I have always gone for fair, very English-looking men before but there is no denying the quiver of excitement at the pit of my stomach. He glances at his watch. ‘Forgive me. I must leave you. I have to prepare a talk for this evening. I hope you’ll come and listen?’

  I promise that I will and watch him walk away. He moves lithely, like a dancer or someone more used to walking barefoot than in shoes.

  After dinner I feel more like turning in for an early night than going to a lecture, but I made a promise and I find I do not want to disappoint Karim Mezeli. So I treat myself to a brandy from the bar and make my way to the room set aside for the talk. Most of the rest of the group are there and a couple near the back make room for me with friendly smiles. They introduce themselves as Alan and Mary and I learn that he is a lecturer in maths at an FE college in Guildford and she teaches history at a local comprehensive. ‘Bit of a busman’s holiday,’ she says with a laugh. I am relieved of the need to admit that I am a teacher too, with the inevitable comparing of notes and sharing of grievances that would follow, by Mezeli’s arrival. A projector and a screen have been set up in readiness and one of the hotel staff stands by the machine.

  ‘I hope you enjoyed our excursion this morning,’ he begins. His manner is pleasant; unassuming but at the same time authoritative. ‘Now I want to give you some background to that and to other temples we shall visit. As I told you, the worship of Aphrodite goes back many centuries before Roman times, or even the classical Greek period. Now, I kn
ow we are all familiar with the conventional image of Aphrodite, or Venus as the Romans would have called her. To us she is the goddess of love. Usually she is presented in a rather romantic, even sentimental style. We have all seen the Botticelli painting of a buxom, rather coy lady standing in a seashell. But the Aphrodite who was worshipped in Cyprus from prehistoric times would have been a much more powerful figure; an incarnation of the Great Mother Goddess who was worshipped all around the Mediterranean. She was primarily the goddess of fertility, as this ancient statuette makes clear.’ He taps the lectern and a photograph appears on the screen. It shows a terracotta figurine of a squat female shape, huge breasted and obviously pregnant. He smiles at the murmur of surprise from his audience. ‘Not quite what we think of as a love-goddess. Aphrodite symbolized the natural process of birth, maturity, death and regeneration. She had a triple nature, represented by the phases of the moon. At the new moon she was the virgin goddess, whom later Greeks called Artemis. At full moon she was the mother goddess and as the moon waned she became the goddess of death. One of her Greek names was Aphrodite Epitymbria – Aphrodite of the tombs. Of course, we don’t know precisely how her rites were celebrated but it seems that at some temples young girls were required to offer up their virginity to the first man who asked them, before they could marry. Then, there is this Bronze Age model that was found near Bellapais.’ He taps again and a new image appears on the screen. ‘This suggests that a bull was sacrificed to the goddess, or perhaps a man wearing a bull mask. He was probably the sacred king, chosen by the High Priestess to be her consort at the spring equinox and then sacrificed the following spring, when his blood would be sprinkled on the ground to fertilise it …’

  I only half listen to the rest of the lecture. Perhaps it’s the brandy, or the heat of the room. I find myself drifting into a drowsy state where the images he has conjured up seem to take concrete form. I see a girl, sitting in a temple courtyard. Other girls sit all around her but she does not speak to them. Her head is bowed and her hair falls forward to cover her face. Men stroll between the rows, examining, choosing. Some of the girls weep and tremble, others stare back brazenly. Some are obviously waiting for one particular man. When a man sees a face that appeals to him he throws a piece of silver into her lap, takes her by the wrist and leads her out of the temple. As a man pauses beside her, the girl I saw first raises her head and I see why she keeps it lowered. Her face is disfigured by an ugly red scar – a burn perhaps. The man draws back, shakes his head and passes on. She droops forward again, letting her hair cover the scar. Poor girl! How long will she have to wait?

  I wake with a jerk as people around me start to chatter and get up from their seats. Mezeli has stopped talking but the pictures that have formed in my mind are still as vivid as a sequence from a film. I want to use them somehow. I’m not sure how. A short story, perhaps? A poem? What matters is to get something down while the ideas are fresh in my mind. I go to my room, pull my laptop out of the wardrobe and boot it up.

  CHAPTER 9

  I wake suddenly with a confused impression that the window of the room is in the wrong place and the morning traffic heavier than usual. Then I remember the geography of my hotel room and recognize the steady hum of the air conditioning. I have been dreaming, a dream that haunted my childhood but which has not troubled me for a long time, until tonight. I am a small child again, running beside my mother, dragged along by the fierce grip on my hand, tripping and stumbling on uneven ground. Around me is a forest of legs, blocking the light, kicking up dust that chokes my nostrils and my mouth. Then the hand that holds mine vanishes and I am alone in that huge, moving forest. I fall, but the feet keep trampling over me. I try to scream but my mouth is full of sand. At that point, as usual, I wake up, my body drenched in sweat. I force myself to get up and pour a glass of chilled mineral water from the fridge. The sweat dries on my body in the cool air of the room and after a little while I get back into bed and sleep fitfully until woken by the noise of the chambermaids busy in the next room.

  I shower and dress and take the box containing the journal down to breakfast with me, determined to make a start on reading it out in the fresh air by the pool. However, as soon as I sit down Mezeli appears at my side.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Allenby. I wondered if you would care to come with us today. We are going to Salamis. I think you would find it interesting.’

  I hesitate. The idea is appealing, but on the other hand I want to make a start on reading my mother’s journal. ‘It’s nice of you to ask, but I’m afraid I have some research of my own to do. Thank you, Dr Mezeli.’

  He smiles. ‘Karim, please. My name is Karim.’

  I smile back. ‘And you must call me Cressida.’

  ‘Cressida. It’s very appropriate!’ He looks at me for a moment. ‘You know what it means? It is from the Greek chryseis, meaning golden. I imagine your parents must have known that and given you the name because of your colouring. Did they understand Greek?’

  ‘My father would have done,’ I say. ‘He had a degree in Classics.’ A thought strikes me. ‘I’m rather surprised that you speak it, though.’

  He arches an eyebrow ironically. ‘You mean because I am Turkish Cypriot? But of course I speak Greek. Until the partition in 1974 I grew up with Greek friends. We were all bilingual.’

  The waiter approaches to refill my coffee cup and Mezeli nods towards the box. ‘Is this connected with your research?’

  ‘Yes, it is. I managed to find the house where we used to live. It belongs to some people called Wentworth now. They gave me this. It’s some papers my parents apparently left behind when they moved out. Isn’t it amazing that they’ve been kept all these years?’

  ‘Are they important papers?’

  ‘Oh, nothing vital. Just a diary and some … some letters. But it will be interesting to find out a bit more about the time they spent here.’

  ‘Extremely interesting! For a historian like myself the discovery of original documents is always exciting.’

  I can see from his face that he is genuinely fascinated and I laugh. ‘It’s a bit out of your period, isn’t it?’

  ‘You think so? To me, this is part of my own history. May I ask you, when did you leave Cyprus?’

  ‘In 1974, I think. At least, that’s what Mr Wentworth thought. During the – what did he call it? The peace operation.’

  His lip curls ironically. ‘Ah yes. The peace operation.’

  ‘What was it all about, Karim?’ I ask. ‘Why did you invade?’

  His face changes and the heavy eyelids come down like shutters. ‘I didn’t invade anyone. I am Turkish Cypriot. I was born here. My family has lived here for generations.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I murmur, disconcerted by his change of mood. ‘I wasn’t intending to imply any sort of criticism.’

  ‘Please, there’s no need to apologize. I don’t expect you to understand the situation here.’ He looks at his watch and rises to his feet. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I must collect the rest of my party.’ He inclines his head with his curious, old-fashioned formality and walks away.

  I am tempted to call after him, but I cannot think of anything to say. I feel I have been tactless and am annoyed with myself, but at the same time I can’t help thinking that he is being unreasonably sensitive.

  Later, by the pool, I set the box on a table and spread out its contents. I pick up the letters, the paper stained and ragged at the edges and so yellow that in places it is hard to make out the writing. The back of the bottom sheet is marked with several large, rust-coloured blotches, as if something has been spilled on it. I study the unintelligible Greek characters and then turn the page over and look again at the signature, quite clear in ordinary script – Stephen. ‘My only beloved’ he had begun. But if these were addressed to my mother, why had he written in Greek? And if they were not – and the implications of that give me pause – then how did they come to be in the same box as my mother’s journal?

  I put the l
etters aside and open the notebook. My mother’s handwriting, instantly recognizable, sends a pang of anguish through me. I picture her as I saw her in the last days, skeletal, tremulous but still defiantly reaching for the sherry bottle. How different from the round-faced, smiling woman in the photograph outside the Café Anonymou. Was there some clue here, in the journal or in these letters, as to what had brought about the change?

  LAURA ALLENBY – JOURNAL, 1974

  5 April

  So, here we are, installed in what I suppose I must start to think of as our new home. I have to admit I find it hard to believe that we now live here permanently. It’s very different from when we were here last Easter on holiday. Then everything was new and exciting. Even going to buy a loaf of bread was an adventure. But today I went to get some groceries at the little shop in the village and I was suddenly almost overcome by a great feeling of homesickness. No more popping into the local Spar store on the way home from work. No more Sainsbury’s or Waitrose! I’m going to have to learn a whole new way of cooking, with different ingredients. And I suppose I must keep struggling with my Greek. Stephen is in his element, of course, nattering away with the locals. At least most of the customers at the bar are English ex-pats, so I can chat to them.

  Not that they offer much in the way of intellectual stimulus! I’m just beginning to realize how much I’ve given up to come here. Not just familiar shops. That’s not really important. I mean friends, good conversation – my job. That’s why I have decided to keep this journal. At least it will force me to put my ideas into some sort of coherent order and stop me from becoming completely brain-dead.

  I just hope this move will make Steve happy, at last. He hated England, and he hated teaching – and I’m afraid he would have begun to hate me if we had stayed. So, as long as he is happy here, I can stick it out. At least Cressida seems to have settled down all right. Stephen says she will soon pick up the language and make friends. I suppose he’s right, but God knows what we’ll do about school when the time comes. Oh well, sufficient unto the day….