Songbirds

by Christy Lefteri

  *

  I realised I had hardly touched my dinner. I got up and put it in a Tupperware box to store in the fridge. I gave the little bird some more water and it drank, drop by drop. I had put out a plate of seeds in the morning and it had eaten quite a bit. Then I nestled it in my palms and took it out, once again, to the balcony to wait for 11 p.m. I watched it as its jet-bead eyes opened and closed, its feathers fluffing up as it settled in my hands. I had an image in my mind of the other birds, the dead ones, thousands of them in the black bin-liners, feathers stuck together with their own blood and the blood of the other birds. Beady eyes open forever to the darkness.

  I was even more uneasy that night. Below, on the street, the light from Petra’s living room shone on the cobblestone street. There were shadows on the stones, the movement of people within. Yes, one was Petra’s – long and slim, hair up. The other was Aliki’s – shorter and broader – coming to the window intermittently to stand silently, no doubt, beside her mother. Then, on one occasion, there was a third, softer, rounder – standing alone. This must have been Nisha. But I could hardly go and check. I rang her, and once again it went straight to voicemail. I could think of no good reason to knock on their door at this hour. But I kept thinking – She’ll be back. Unless she went back to Sri Lanka . . . No, I was sure that Nisha would knock on the back door at eleven, like she always did, and the memory of waiting for her would fade into the past and be forgotten.

  Mrs Hadjikyriacou was outside again, talking nonsense to the cats. I couldn’t hear was she was saying, though – the bouzouki wasn’t playing that night; instead, a girl was singing in another language, and the foreign words flew in their hundreds over the streets and consumed them. I’d never seen her before, and she was beautiful: dark, with dark eyes. Her right hand was smaller and seemed damaged in some way, perhaps a birth defect. It remained scrunched up, close to her breast. Her left hand, however, danced as she sang, rose and fell with the mesmerising tone of her voice, her fingers tapping the air as if she was playing an invisible instrument. Her voice was extraordinary, clear as glass. On the tables around her, the men, many of whom had once been officers in the military, who probably had medals and flashbacks locked away somewhere, knocked back shots of ouzo, sucked snails with their gums, laughed – and ignored her. She was merely background noise.

  I saw Yiakoumi come out of his shop. He sat down on a wicker chair to drink coffee and hear the music. The clocks behind him were lit up – it was 10.30 p.m.

  I sat there holding the bird, listening to the music, waiting for the next half hour. But Nisha didn’t come.

  *

  At 5 a.m. I was awakened by the sound of my iPad ringing. I jumped up to answer it, thinking it was Nisha, but the name that was flashing brightly on the screen was Kumari. I stood and watched it for a while not knowing what to do. What would I say to her?

  In a moment it stopped. But not even ten seconds later, it began to ring again and once more I could do nothing but stand there, imagining the little girl on the other end, waiting eagerly to speak to her mother.

  8

  Petra

  T

  HE NEXT MORNING, AS SOON as the cockerel started to crow, I made myself some tea and toast and went to Nisha’s room. I looked around, without knowing what I was searching for. Her makeup was on the dressing table, neatly lined up. The brushes sparkled with rouge. Then I noticed a journal and, resting on top of it, a gold engagement ring. I had never seen her wearing this before – it was simple, with a decent sized diamond in a raised clasp. I placed the ring on the dresser and opened the journal. On the first page was a rough sketch of the garden – there was the boat and the orange tree. The rest of the pages were full of writing in Sinhalese.

  In the drawer of her bedside cabinet, I found a gold locket. It was heart shaped and inside were two, roughly cut out photographs – one of her, and one of a young man. She never wore this locket but sometimes, in the evenings, when she sat down to rest and watch TV, she held it tightly in her palm or coiled the gold chain around her finger, like a Christian would their rosary.

  In another drawer, I found a lock of hair.

  ‘That’s my Sri Lankan sister’s hair.’ I turned and Aliki stood in the doorway. ‘Her name is Kumari. She is two years older than me – she’s eleven.’ She stared at me. ‘Did you know that?’

  ‘Not really,’ I said. It occurred to me that I had never bothered to ask about her daughter, about what she looked like, what she was like, how she was doing without her mother by her side. When did Nisha even speak to Kumari?

  The lock of hair was in a clear plastic bag, the type you might keep coins in to take to the bank.

  ‘But my hair is curly and hers is straight.’

  I nodded.

  ‘That is a locket that Nisha’s husband gave her before he died. He is inside that heart. She would never, ever leave without him.’

  So, these were Nisha’s most precious possessions.

  None of Nisha’s clothes or shoes were missing. She owned three handbags, but only two were there, lined up at the bottom of her wardrobe. Her reading glasses were resting on her pillow. Her bed was neatly made, the covers folded at the corners meticulously.

  Turning around to ask Aliki a question, I realised that she had slipped out of the room. Probably gone to make herself some breakfast.

  There was a small antique desk by the glass doors and when I opened the top drawer, I found her passport. At this point I sat down on the chair, I was so confused. A part of me had hoped that I wouldn’t find these items, particularly the passport. I wanted to believe that Nisha had taken off somewhere – and that would mean she was safe. But, if she had, why would she leave her passport? The locket? I opened the journal again and ran my fingers over the foreign words, the beautiful lines that ran along the paper like the vines in the garden. I wished I could read it, hoping it would give me some clue to Nisha’s whereabouts.

  She had simply vanished.

  I took the locket and held it tightly in a closed fist, like Nisha did when she watched TV. It reminded me of Aliki’s tiny heart, during the last ultrasound I had had when I was pregnant, before going into labour.

  Stephanos hadn’t been there. He had been an army officer and worked at the British base, which was why we had decided to stay here – in my parents’ house – after we got married. Stephanos was a British Cypriot, born in Islington, raised in Edmonton. His parents moved to London as refugees after the war. He’d enlisted in the army in England, but one summer he came to Cyprus to stay with relatives and we met and fell in love. After that he requested to be transferred here. The British still have a base in Cyprus, a remnant of their occupation of the island until its independence in 1960.

  It was convenient for him to get to work, as he could walk there in ten minutes, or drive in two. By that time, Mum had already passed away and Dad had moved to a small flat in the mountains, so we moved into this beautiful Venetian property in the old city – the house I had grown up in.

  It belonged to my dad’s aunt, and for a few years, when I was between the ages of five and seven, she lived above us, where Yiannis now lives. I remembered her as a tiny, pretty, old lady, with silver hair, which she always wore in a net. She used to sit in the garden and crochet tablecloths, curtains, wedding dresses and veils. She told me stories about the beginning of time and the end of time, her hands always busy. She told me once that she was buying time, that she would work until she was ready to leave this world and reunite with the man she loved – my father’s uncle, who had died fighting for the British in the Second World War.

  Stephanos was diagnosed with cancer when I was five weeks pregnant with Aliki. It travelled from his prostate, to his bones, to his liver. He went from a man leaving the house in his military gear every morning, a man who ran laps around the old city in the evenings, a man who made me laugh till I burst, into a . . . something. Something shrivelled, not human. Something not alive and not dead. A creature; a tiny, dying bir
d.

  Aliki continued to grow. She grew and she grew like a fruit on a tree, like a plump fig, growing and expanding my insides till I was ready to burst. She writhed and wriggled and pushed, and that’s when the idea of an octopus came to me.

  By the time of the mid-pregnancy ultrasound, Stephanos was bed-bound. I promised to bring him the scan to see. He hoped, he’d said, that Aliki would be as beautiful as me. He had chosen her name. When he spoke like that, looking right into my eyes, I knew that he was still there. But then I would take in the rest of him; how alien he looked – bones crumbling, spine twisted, neck bent forward like a vulture’s – and I had a feeling that I wanted to melt away. I wanted to disappear into him, into his eyes, so that I could rest inside him and hold on to his soul. I began to see his eyes like tiny doors, leading to the man that I had always known. I would wait for him to wake up each morning, sitting by his side in the hospital. I would look at this shrivelled form on the bed, wired up to machines, and wait for those doors to open. When his eyes closed forever, I’d lose him completely.

  The day of the scan, the nurse spread gel over the bump and ran the cold wand over my skin. But I couldn’t bring myself to look at the screen. I just thought of the first scan at twelve weeks. Stephanos had come with me to the appointment – we knew his diagnosis by then, but he hadn’t deteriorated yet. We had both stared rapt at the screen, not even sure what we were looking at. The foetus, the size of a raspberry, had barely looked human. The heartbeat was faint and muffled, so far away. But now if I looked at the screen there would be a real child, and I wasn’t ready to imagine her. Not without Stephanos. Still, I heard her heart-beat. It was steady and strong and full of life; it knocked on the boundaries of this world demanding to be heard. I heard it. Oh, I heard it! I had no choice. Aliki was announcing herself, forging a path for her arrival.

  At the same time, my heart vanished. It turned to mist and disappeared.

  *

  I hired Nisha as soon as Stephanos died. She was even there for the birth. Most of the other women in the city had domestic workers, so I saw no harm in having one too. I did my research and realised that it wouldn’t be too expensive, no more than I could afford. I would offer her accommodation and food, so the monthly fee was minimal. The fact was, I couldn’t manage on my own and I knew I would need to return to work sooner rather than later. It was my own business, after all. This is how I reasoned, anyway.

  Aliki was an 8lb baby with a full head of hair. She looked exactly like Stephanos. I’m petite with mousy-brown, straight hair and olive skin. I saw nothing of me in her. Even my breasts were too small for her and I never produced enough milk. She pulled at my skin and sucked my nipples raw, trying in desperation to get more than I could give her. I have to admit, I was jealous of how Nisha was able to love her, hold her in her arms, so close to her skin.

  Aliki would cry and cry.

  ‘Madam,’ Nisha would say, ‘your baby is crying. Go to her, she needs you.’

  I couldn’t go. I couldn’t move. ‘Please, Nisha, can you go, just this once? I will go next time.’

  ‘OK, madam, if that is what you want.’

  She would pick up the wailing child and walk around, but Aliki would not stop. Then, one day, for some reason, Nisha decided to lie on the floor on her back, lift up her top, and place the baby on her naked chest. Aliki suddenly stopped crying. She whimpered for a while, then slept. Sitting back in the armchair and watching them like that – Aliki’s white, curled-up body against Nisha’s darker skin – reminded me of the night cradling the moon.

  Aliki fell in love with Nisha: she desired her odours and the warm touch of her skin. I imagined that in the beating of Aliki’s heart, Nisha could feel that of her own child. I didn’t want to think about this. I dashed the thought aside, to a safe place, where the guilt couldn’t reach me.

  Nisha never gave up trying to bring me closer to my child. She tried to get me to hold Aliki, to be still with her. But I couldn’t. In Aliki’s face, in her eyes, in the soft curve of her chin, the pink freshness of her skin, even in the mole on her cheek, I saw Stephanos. I had nightmares. I would sit up and see huge white spiders the size of shoes crawling to the baby’s room. I’d follow them, stamp on them, trying to keep them from reaching my baby. Then I would wake up, standing over the cot, Nisha by my side with her hand on my back, rubbing it.

  ‘Shush now, shush, madam. Everything will be OK.’

  She would take my hand and place it on Aliki’s chest so that I could feel her chest expanding as she breathed,

  ‘You see,’ Nisha whispered beside me, ‘your daughter is just fine. When she wakes up, you can take her outside and enjoy some sunlight. It will be warm tomorrow.’

  Then she would calmly lead me back to bed, holding my hand, tucking me in, whispering, ‘Sleep now.’

  *

  No, Nisha would never leave Aliki without saying goodbye. This I knew for certain.

  I placed the locket back in the drawer and, taking the passport with me, headed outside to see if Mrs Hadjikyriacou was there. She was sitting on the deckchair by the front door and her maid was kneeling in front of her, rubbing zivania into her legs, her translucent skin creasing like tiny waves under the maid’s fingers. It was warmer but windy that morning. When she saw me, she shooed her maid away and propped her legs up on a stool.

  ‘It’s a bit early for you,’ she said, without even looking in my direction. She was gazing up at the sky and straining her neck to do so. It was early; Yiakoumi hadn’t even opened his shop yet, and all his timepieces, apart from one, read seven o’clock.

  She straightened her neck now and turned to look at me. The wind blew stronger and the alcohol evaporated from her legs and drifted towards me. She smelled like she’d spent the whole night in a bar. I brought my hand up to my nose and she noticed the passport I was holding.

  ‘My darrrrling,’ she said in English, then in Greek: ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Nisha hasn’t returned.’

  ‘I know,’ she replied, nodding.

  ‘This is her passport.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘If she’d intended to leave, then wouldn’t she have taken this with her? She’s even left the locket her husband gave her before he died, and her daughter’s lock of hair.’

  I waited, expecting to hear another ah, but Mrs Hadjikyriacou remained silent. She seemed to be thinking.

  She looked up and down the street then turned to face me, her eyes filled with anxiety, with intensity. ‘She was wearing a long-sleeved black dress,’ she said, ‘with white trainers. She had a green scarf wrapped around her neck, which partly covered her mouth. She wore that scarf like it was the middle of winter, though I know it must have been a warm Sunday night because my woman didn’t bring me a blanket.’

  ‘Why was she dressed like that?’

  ‘Do you think if I sniff my nails they will tell me the answer?’

  I rolled my eyes without her seeing.

  One of the cats jumped onto the stool and walked along her leg as if it was a tree branch, then settled in her lap. She stroked it while it purred. ‘Petra,’ Mrs Hadjikyriacou said, ‘if she’s not back by tomorrow, you must go to the police.’

  I looked down at my watch. There was no time to think about this right now, as I needed to get Aliki ready for school.

  *

  Once again, I left work early to collect Aliki from school in the afternoon. I had no option but to bring her to work with me again. This time, she sat behind the counter doing her homework with Keti’s help. She was learning the periodic table.

  ‘It’s amazing to see all the elements of the whole universe on one page!’ I heard her saying with excitement, as I led a client into my office for an eye exam.

  That evening, after work, I made some pasta with haloumi and mint for dinner. Aliki and I ate in silence. Aliki’s eyes flicked towards Nisha’s empty chair now. The photograph of Stephanos in his uniform sat behind her on a console table. Sometimes I would c
atch Aliki stop in front of it while she was playing, pausing to stare at it. Could she see how much they looked alike? Their pale skin, wide-set eyes and round faces – even the small moles on their right cheeks.

  I tried to engage Aliki, ask her questions. How was school, and do you have homework tonight? She replied with a nod, a shrug or a shake of the head, but she never spoke. Not a word. Sometimes I thought she wanted to speak, but then whatever words were hovering would be swallowed, gulped down with the pasta.

  When we had finished, I helped Aliki with her homework at the kitchen table, then settled her into bed. We both pretended she was going right to sleep, but no doubt she would stay up reading for a while.

  When I heard no more sounds from her room, I tiptoed to the front door, quietly closing it behind me before crossing the street to Theo’s restaurant. He was in the kitchen shouting at the chefs. I stood and waited for him to stop and finally he turned to me with a smile. ‘Petra, my dear, table for tonight? A late supper?’

  ‘No, Theo, I’ve come to speak to your maids.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s about an important matter regarding Nisha. She’s gone missing and I want to see if they know anything.’

  ‘Take a seat,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring you a coffee on the house. They are busy in the back but they can take a break soon.’

  I sat down beneath the vine-covered trellis, sipping my coffee. It was just after 9 p.m. and there were a few diners at the table and a couple of punters at the bar. After about fifteen minutes, the women emerged from the kitchen, both in black trousers and white shirts, their usual rice hats tied at the chin with a red ribbon. It occurred to me then how awful it was that Theo was making the women wear these hats; I couldn’t imagine that it was their own choice. This wasn’t a Vietnamese restaurant, after all, it was Greek. The hats were exotic, a fetish, of course. The men ogled from their seats. How had I never noticed this before?

  Theo gestured in my direction, and they approached my table, clearly tired but smiling.