Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

by Lawrence Durrell

  “All this can only be done immediately,” said Sabri quietly. “Look. We will go to the widow and get the mortgage paper. We will pay her mortgage before you at the Land Registry. Then we will pay you before witnesses for the house.” Then he added in a low voice: “After that the gentleman will discuss the water. Have you the papers?”

  We were moving rather too swiftly for her. Conflicting feelings beset her; ignorance and doubt flitted across her face. An occasional involuntary sob shook her—like pre-ignition in an overheated engine which has already been switched off. “My grandfather has the title-deeds.”

  “Get them,” said Sabri curtly.

  She rose, still deeply preoccupied, and went back across the street where a furious argument broke out among her seconds. The white-bearded old man waved a stick and perorated. Her husband spread his hands and waggled them. Sabri watched all this with a criti cal eye. “There is only one danger—she must not get back to the village.” How right he was; for if her rela tions could make all this noise about the deed of sale, what could the village coffee-shop not do? Such little concentration as she could muster would be totally scattered by conflicting counsels. The whole thing would probably end in a riot followed by an island-wide strike.…

  I gazed admiringly at my friend. What a diplomat he would make! “Here she comes again,” he said in a low voice, and here she came to place the roll of title-deeds on the table beside the key. Sabri did not look at them. “Have you discussed?” he said sternly. She groaned. “My grandfather will not let me do it. “He says you are making a fool of me.” Sabri snorted wildly.

  “Is the house yours?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you want the money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want it today?”

  “Yes.”

  My friend leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the cobwebs in the roof. “Think of it,” he said, his voice full of the poetry of commerce. “This gentleman will cut you a chekky. You will go to the Bank. There they will look with respect at it, for it will bear his name. They will open the safe.…” His voice trembled and she gazed thirstily at him, entranced by the story-book voice he had put on. “They will take from it notes, thick notes, as thick as a honeycomb, as thick as salami” (here they both involuntarily licked their lips and I myself began to feel hungry at the thought of so much edible money). “One … two … three,” counted Sabri in his mesmeric voice full of animal magnetism. “Twenty … sixty … a hundred” gradually getting louder and louder until he ended at “three hundred.” Throughout this recital she behaved like a chicken with her beak upon a chalk line. As he ended she gave a sigh of rapture and shook herself, as if to throw off the spell. “The mortgage will have been paid. The widow Anthi will be full of joy and respect for you. You and your husband will have three hundred pounds.” He blew out his breath and mopped his head with a red handkerchief. “All you have to do is to agree. Or take your key.”

  He handed her the key and once more swiveled round, to remain facing the wall for a full ten seconds before completing the circle.

  “Well?” he said. She was hovering on the edge of tears again. “And my grandfather?” she asked tremulously. Sabri spread his hands. “What can I do about your grandfather? Bury him?” he asked indignantly. “But act quickly, for the gentleman is going.” At a signal from him I rose and stretched and said, “Well I think I …” like the curate in the Leacock story.

  “Quick. Quick. Speak or he will be gone,” said Sabri. A look of intense agony came over her face. “O Saint Matthew and Saint Luke,” she exclaimed aloud, tortured beyond endurance by her doubts. It seemed a queer moment to take refuge in her religion, but obviously the decision weighed heavily upon her. “O Luke, O Mark,” she rasped, with one hand extended towards me to prevent me from leaving.

  Sabri was now like a great psychologist who divines that a difficult transference is at hand. “she will come,” he whispered to me, and putting his fingers to his mouth blew a shrill blast which alerted everybody. At once with a rumble Jamal, who had apparently been lurking down a side street in his car, grated to the door in a cloud of dust. “Lay hold of her,” Sabri said and grabbed the woman by the left elbow. Following instructions I grabbed the other arm. She did not actually resist but she definitely rested on her oars and it was something of an effort to roll her across the floor to the taxi. Apparently speed was necessary in this coup de main for he shouted: “Get her inside” and put his shoulder to her back as we propelled her into the back of the car and climbed in on top of her.

  She now began to moan and scream as if she were being abducted—doubtless for the benefit of the grandfather—and to make dumb appeals for help through the windows. Her supporters poured out into the road, headed by a nonagenarian waving a plate and her husband who also seemed in tears. “Stop.” “You can’t do that,” they cried, alerting the whole street. Two children screamed: “They are taking Mummy away,” and burst into tears.

  “Don’t pay any attention,” said Sabri now, looking like Napoleon on the eve of Wagram. “Drive, Jamal, drive.” We set off with a roar, scattering pedestrians who were making their way to the scene of the drama, convinced perhaps that a shotgun wedding was in progress. “Where are we going?” I said.

  “Lapithos—the widow Anthi,” said Sabri curtly. “Drive, Jamal, drive.”

  As we turned the corner I noticed with horror that the cobbler and his family had stopped another taxi and were piling into it with every intention of following us. The whole thing was turning into a film sequence. “Don’t worry,” said Sabri, “the second taxi is Jamal’s brother and he will have a puncture. I have thought of everything.”

  In the brilliant sunshine we rumbled down the Lapithos road. The woman looked about her with interest, pointing out familiar landmarks with great good-humor. She had completely recovered her composure now and smiled upon us both. It was obviously some time since she had had a car-ride and she enjoyed every moment of it.

  We burst into the house of the widow Anthi like a bomb and demanded the mortgage papers; but the widow herself was out and they were locked in a cupboard. More drama. Finally Sabri and the cobbler’s wife forced the door of the cupboard with a flat-iron and we straggled back into the sunshine and climbed aboard again. There was no sign of the second taxi as we set off among the fragrant lemon-groves towards Kyrenia, but we soon came upon them all clustered about a derelict taxi with a puncture. A huge shout went up as they saw us, and some attempt was made to block the road but Jamal, who had entered into the spirit of the thing, now increased speed and we bore down upon them. I was alarmed about the safety of the grandfather, for he stood in the middle of the road waving his stick until the very last moment, and I feared he would not jump out of the way in time. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply through my nose: so did Sabri, for Jamal had only one eye and was unused to speeds greater than twenty miles an hour. But all was well. The old man must have been fairly spry for when I turned round to look out of the back window of the car I saw him spread eagled in the ditch, but quite all right if one could judge by the language he was using.

  The clerks in the Registry Office were a bit shaken by our appearance for by this time the cobbler’s wife had decided to start crying again. I cannot for the life of me imagine why—there was nobody left to impress; perhaps she wanted to extract every ounce of drama from the situation. Then we found she could not write—Grandfather was the only one who could write, and she must wait for him. “My God, if he comes, all is lost again, my dear,” said Sabri. We had to forcibly secure her thumbprint to the article of sale, which sounds easy, but in fact ended by us all being liberally coated with fingerprint ink.

  She only subsided into normality when the ratified papers were handed to Sabri; and when I made out her check she positively beamed and somewhat to my surprise insisted on shaking hands with me, saying as she did so, “You are a good man, may you be blessed in the house.”

  It was in the most am
iable manner that the three of us now sauntered out into the sunlight under the pepper trees. On the main road a dusty taxi had drawn up and was steadily disgorging the disgruntled remains of the defeated army. Catching sight of her they shouted vociferously and advanced in open order, waving sticks and gesticulating. The cobbler’s wife gave a shriek and fell into her grandfather’s arms, sobbing as if overtaken by irremediable tragedy. The old man, somewhat tousled by his expedition, and with grass in his eyebrows, growled protectively at her and thundered: “Have you done it?” She sobbed louder and nodded, as if overcome. The air was rent with execrations, but Sabri was quite unmoved. All this was purely gratuitous drama and could be taken lightly. With an expressive gesture he ordered Coca-Cola all round which a small boy brought from a barrow. This had the double effect of soothing them and at the same time standing as a symbolic drink upon the closing of a bargain—shrewdly calculated as were all his strokes. They cursed us weakly as they seized the bottles but they drank thirstily. Indeed the drive to Lapithos is a somewhat dusty one.

  “Anyway,” said the cobbler at last when they had all simmered down a bit, “we still have the water-rights. We have not yet discussed those with the gentleman.” But the gentleman was feeling somewhat exhausted by now, and replete with all the new sensations of ownership. I possessed a house! Sabri nodded quietly. “Later on” he said, waving an expressive hand to Jamal, who was also drinking a well-earned Coca-Cola under a pepper tree. “Now we will rest.” The family now saw us off with the greatest good humor, as if I were a bridegroom, leaning into the taxi to shake my hand and mutter blessings. “It was a canonical price,” said the old greybeard, as a parting blessing. One could not say fairer than that.

  “And now,” said Sabri, “I will take you to a special place of mine to taste the meltemi wind—what is the time? Yes, in half an hour.”

  High upon the bastions of Kyrenia castle was a narrow balcony which served the police officers as a mess. Sabri, I discovered later, was a sergeant in the specials. Here, gazing across the radiant harbor-bar towards the Caramanian mountains, we sat ourselves down in solitude and space like a couple of emperors while a bewildering succession of cold beers found their way out on to the table-cloth, backed up by various saucers full of delicious Cypriot comestibles. And here Sabri’s wind punctually arrived—the faintest breath of coolness, stirring across the waters of the harbor, ruffling them. “You see?” he said quietly, raising his cheek to it like a sail. He was obviously endowed with that wonderful Moslem quality which is called kayf—the contemplation which comes of silence and ease. It is not meditation or reverie, which presupposes a conscious mind relaxing: it is something deeper, a fathomless repose of the will which does not even pose to itself the question: “Am I happy or unhappy?”

  He had been jotting on a slip of paper and now he handed it to me, saying: “Now your troubles begin, for you will have to alter the house. Here, I have costed it for you. A bathroom will cost you so much. The balcony, at so much a cubic foot, should cost you so much. If you sell the beams—they fetch three pounds each, and there are eighty—you should have so much in hand. This is only for your private information, as a check, my dear.” He lit a cigarette and smiled gently. “Now the man you want to build for you is Andreas Kallergis. He is good and honest—though of course he is a rogue like me! But he will do you a solid job—for much can go wrong, you know. You will find the cost of cement brick there, and rendering per cubic meter.”

  I tried to express my gratitude but he waved his hand. “My dear Durrell,” he said, “when one is warm to me I am warm to him back. You are my friend now and I shall never change even if you do.”

  We drank deeply and in silence. “I was sent to you by a Greek,” I said, “and now the Turk sends me back to a Greek.”

  He laughed aloud. “Cyprus is small,” he said, “and we are all friends, though very different. This is Cyprus, my dear.”

  It seemed in that warm honey-gold afternoon a delectable island in which to spend some years of one’s life.

  Chapter Five: The Tree of Idleness

  Perched on a mountain-side, her terraces looking down into the gardens of Cerinia, and across the waters of Adana towards the glens and pastures of the Bulghar Dagh, her situation is no less lovely and secluded than herself. Her name is Peace. Nestling in woods, high above the port, her Anglo-Norman builders called her Peace—convent of Peace—Cloîture de la Paix; a beautiful and soothing name, which the intruding Cypriotes corrupted into Delapays, and their Venetian masters into Bellapaese. Here during many ages, gallant Western men and pious Western women found their rest.

  —British Cyprus by W. HEPWORTH DIXON, 1887

  ANDREAS KALLERGIS PROVED to be a sort of Shock-headed Peter from a story-book. He lived with his pretty wife in a tumbledown little house among the orange groves below the Bishopric. Though he spoke very fair English he was delighted by my evident desire to speak Greek, and it was in his little car that I made my next visit to what was to become “my” village, sweeping up through the bland green foothills in true spring sunshine towards where the grave hulk of the Abbey lay, like some great ship at anchor. He too was something of a diplomat and coached me in those little points of protocol which are essential if one intends to make the right sort of impression.

  Together we called upon the Bellapaix muktar whose house actually formed part of the Abbey and who waited for us on a balcony hung high above the smiling groves which stretch toward Kasaphani. He was a thick-set, handsome man in his late forties, slow in manner, with a deep true voice and a magnificent smile. He stood, impressively booted and belted for the shoot upon which he was about to embark (he was a passionate hunter), lovingly handling a gun while his handsome dark wife dispensed the traditional sweet jam and spring water which welcomes the stranger to every Greek house. He noticed my admiring glance and handed the weapon to me saying: “A twelve-bore by Purdy. I bought it from an Englishman. I waited a year for it.” We turned it upon the kestrels and turtle-doves which flickered down below us over the plain, trying it for balance and admiring it, as he questioned me quietly and discreetly about my intentions. He had already heard of the sale of the house. (“Two things spread quickly: gossip and a forest fire”—Cypriot proverb.) I told him what was in my mind and he smiled approvingly with calm self-possession, “You’ll find the people very quiet and kindly,” he said in his deep voice, “And since you speak Greek you know that a little politeness goes a long way; but I must warn you, if you intend to try and work, not to sit under the Tree of Idleness. You have heard of it? Its shadow incapacitates one for serious work. By tradition the inhabitants of Bellapaix are regarded as the laziest in the island. They are all landed men, coffee-drinkers and card-players. That is why they live to such ages. Nobody ever seems to die here. Ask Mr. Honey the grave-digger. Lack of clients has almost driven him into a decline.…”

  Still talking in this humorous, sardonic vein he led us through the thick grove of orange trees to Dmitri’s cafe, which stands outside the great barbican, and here in the sunlight I had a first glimpse of my villagers. Most of the young men and women were in the fields and Dmitri’s clients were mostly grandfathers wearing the traditional baggy trousers and white cotton shirts. Gnarled as oak trees, bent almost double by age and—who knows?—professional idleness, they were a splendid group, grey-bearded, shaggy-haired, gentle of voice and manner.

  They gave us a polite good day in voices of varying gruffness, and it seemed to me from the number of crooks and sticks which had collected like a snowdrift in the corner of the tavern that many of them must have deserted their flocks for a mid-morning coffee. We did not sit under the Tree of Idleness, though the temptation was strong, but gathered about a table set for us under the fine plane tree which spans the terrace of the cafe, and here (as if to introduce me fittingly to Cypriot life) the muktar ordered a small bottle of amber-colored brandy and some black olives of a size which betokened comestibles specially prepared against a feast-day. I had alre
ady noticed with disappointment that the Cypriot olive is a small and flavorless cousin of the Italian and Greek olive, and I was surprised at the size and richness of the plateful which the good Dmitri set for us. There is only one place in Greece which produces such an olive—and I scored a triumph in pronouncing its name, Kalamata. I earned a respectful glance from the muktar for this observation which showed me to be a person of experience and discrimination, and Andreas smiled warmly upon me, making it clear that I had won my spurs by it.

  I had been casting covetous eyes upon the Abbey, which I was dying to explore—indeed I was already beginning to feel somehow a part-owner in it—when a short sturdy man clad in the uniform of an antiquity-warden emerged from among the flowering roses and joined us with a smile of welcome. He had the round good-natured face of a Friar Tuck and a brightly quizzical eye, and he addressed me in excellent pointed English. “Your brother,” he told me briefly, “died at Thermopylae. You must have a drink with me, and see my private property.” This was a shaft: aimed at the muktar. “It is a good deal more impressive than his house. Look at it!”

  Indeed the Abbey cloisters with their heavily loaded orange trees and brilliant flower-gardens were a study in contrasts—the grave contemplative calm of Gothic pricked everywhere, as silence is by music, by the Mediterranean luxuriance of yellow fruit and glittering green leaves. “Somewhere to walk,” said Kollis, for that was the newcomer’s name, “to think, whenever you please, to be quiet among the lemon trees.”

  The muktar must have read my mind for he suddenly said: “Wouldn’t you like to visit it? Go along with Kollis, it won’t take long. Andreas and I will wait here and talk.”