Songbirds

by Christy Lefteri

  ‘Last Sunday evening,’ I said, cautiously. ‘I woke up in the morning on Monday, and she was gone.’

  This seemed to worry him even more and he stood up and paced up and down in front of the fire, his feet padding softly on the rug, so that his faint moving shadow drifted over the furniture. I thought how absurd it was that this man was in my living room all of a sudden, in his socks.

  ‘I don’t know where she is,’ I said.

  ‘Do you think she went home?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  I thought for a few moments, while he stared at me with wide eyes, waiting for an answer. Perhaps it was the fact that he seemed to share my confusion and concern, that I went into Nisha’s bedroom and came back with her belongings, those I had taken to the police station. I didn’t bring the gold ring. I placed them all on the coffee table without saying a word.

  He sat down again and looked at the items. He opened the passport and stared at her picture for a long time. Then he picked up the locket, as if he’d seen it before, and wrapped his hand around it. As for the lock of hair in the plastic bag – he pressed it between his palms, so tight, that I could see blue veins bulging in the backs of his hands.

  ‘So she hasn’t gone home.’ He said this more to himself than to me. His voice had changed: it rang out clear, filling the quiet room, hovering over us for a while, much like the sound of a gong that reverberates before vanishing into silence.

  ‘Have you been to the police?’

  ‘Yes, I went on Wednesday.’

  ‘What did they say?’

  I paused, considering whether to tell him the whole unpleasant story. ‘They were no help. They have no interest in searching for her. They said she’s probably run away to the north to find other work.’

  ‘Nisha would never do that,’ he said. And suddenly I understood clearly – it was the way her name rolled off his tongue, as if he’d said it a thousand times before – that he knew her. He loved her.

  There were questions – so many – I could have asked him. But I decided to keep us on our shared concern and knowledge that anyone who knew Nisha even a little bit would know that she would never take off in that way.

  ‘The only time she went away,’ I said, ‘was a few months ago. She went for the entire weekend to stay with a cousin of hers in Limassol. This woman was about to leave Cyprus and Nisha wanted to take her some things to give to Kumari. She gave me the woman’s name, her employer’s name, their telephone number – in case her battery went dead or something . . . she didn’t just take off. It was all organised.’

  Yiannis was silent for a while.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘In August,’ I said. ‘Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s when it was. I remember the heat that day. She packed an overnight bag and wore an orange linen dress that I had given her. I dropped her off at the coach station in the early morning. She was teary in the car. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she was going to miss Aliki. I remember saying, “Don’t be silly! You’re only going for a weekend!” But since Aliki was born, Nisha has never spent a weekend away from us.’

  Realisation hit me. Nisha had lived here for nearly ten years and in that entire time, had only spent two days away from us. She had taken care of my daughter and loved her, she had scrubbed my floors and toilets, she had made us hot dinners and kept the garden looking beautiful. She even polished the frame of Stephano’s photo every day, and it broke my heart when I recalled the look on her face as she did this. She had lost a husband, too. She gave us everything. In this generosity, she had been the heart of this house. And yet, I had no idea about her life. I knew she held the heart locket some nights, and I knew there was a new gold ring on her dressing table that I had never seen before. How had her husband died? She had never told me, and I had never asked. How had she felt? What was it like to feel something for another man, after losing him? Had Yiannis given her the ring? Had she loved both these men in the way that I had loved Stephanos? Did she love this man sitting before me? Or did he have something to do with her disappearance? I could barely hold one thought before I jumped to another.

  I heard a soft bump and saw the toe of a red Converse poking out from the doorway. Aliki was eavesdropping, but the intensity of Yiannis’s words surrounded me and pressed down on me. I didn’t want to break the spell to scold her.

  ‘Did she say anything?’ Yiannis asked now. ‘Before she disappeared. Did she say or mention anything that could help us to understand where she might have gone?’

  ‘We went up to the mountains on Sunday for a day out. While we were there, she asked if she could take the night off. It seemed as if she wanted to meet someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I have no idea. She didn’t say. And I didn’t approve of her going.’ I didn’t tell him about the whole conversation I’d had with Mrs Hadjikyriacou – that she had seen Nisha leaving that night around ten thirty. Something told me not to.

  ‘So, on Sunday afternoon she was with you in the mountains.’ He seemed to be turning this around in his mind. ‘And there was someone she wanted to meet that night. You say you didn’t approve of her going, but you haven’t said if she went or not.’

  ‘Nisha came home with us and I went to bed at nine o’clock. Nisha was here, putting Aliki to bed. Look,’ I said, standing up, suddenly exhausted, ‘I can see that you’re concerned but there’s nothing more I can tell you.’ I saw that Aliki’s shoe had vanished from the entrance to the hallway. ‘And plus, it’s late, and I haven’t made dinner yet. Aliki hasn’t eaten and I’ve been working all day.’

  He stood up too, looking dismayed. ‘Yes, of course – I’m sorry, Petra. I didn’t mean to bother you.’ He hesitated for a moment, as if he wasn’t sure whether to go out of the front door or the back – either way, there was a stairway that would lead him to his flat. Then he seemed to remember his shoes and went to the front door, bending over to put them on. The mud had dried now and was breaking off in flakes on the rug.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Petra. And if you hear anything . . .’

  ‘I will tell you straightaway.’

  He left. After closing the door, I went to the window and saw that he was standing again in the light of Yiakoumi’s shop, staring up at his flat, reminding me again of one of those wandering dogs, the ones that people leave on the streets when, for whatever reason, they are no longer good for hunting.

  At night, a bat circles the lake, almost invisible against the black water. For a brief moment, the clouds part and the moon catches its large wings, its fragmented flight.

  The new moon quickly disappears behind the clouds, as if it had never been there.

  The earth around the crater smells fresh from the rain, and the fur of the hare has begun to dry. Earlier, when the sun was high and the air was warmer, the blow flies returned to lay their eggs once more in the open wounds of cracked skin, while the flesh flies deposited larvae around the eyes and in the mouth.

  On this night the earth and the sky join without a seam. There are white flowers in the fields, hundreds and thousands of them. Had there been a fuller moon, had there not still been thick clouds in the sky, they would glow like stars, and heaven and earth would be mere reflections of each other.

  A man arrives, by foot. He lights up the path with the light of his phone. He has walked for miles along the bank of the river. The artificial light has a metallic quality. He has nothing else on him, no bag, no wallet, just the phone that he holds like a torch in his hand. The light drifts over the hare – he winces – then he directs the light over the lake and it catches the flight of the bat. He walks a few yards until he reaches the gallows frame, his heavy army boots leaving prints in the forgiving soil.

  12

  Yiannis

  I

  COULDN’T GO UPSTAIRS. I WAS restless.

  ‘Darrling,’ a voice said in English to my left. I turned and saw Mrs Hadjikyriacou on her deckchair, a thick throw
over her shoulders. Then she reverted back to her native tongue, a concerned look on her face: ‘My love, you look heartbroken.’

  I said nothing at all.

  ‘How about some baklava?’ On a small table beside her, she had an assortment of miniature cakes, as if she was expecting visitors.

  ‘No, thank you, Mrs Hadjikyriacou. I think I’m going to go for a walk. It’s a nice evening, if a bit chilly.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m numb to the cold. I have felt nothing, not heat, nor cold, since the war. It’s Ruba – she insists on putting this stupid blanket on me. She says I’ll catch my death. I tell her I’ve already caught him, many times before. And I’m stronger than him.’

  I nodded. I was sure she was right.

  ‘And I’ve said to you before, call me Julia. Mrs Hadjikyriacou makes me sound old.’ This almost made me laugh, because she looked as though she’d fought her way out of the grave.

  She reached over and selected two small portions of baklava, then gingerly folded them in a tissue and pressed them into my hand. She insisted that I looked malnourished and hungry – but then again, every person without a huge gut looked hungry to Mrs Hadjikyriacou.

  Thanking her, I took her carefully wrapped parcel and walked past Theo’s, where outdoor heaters had been lit and smoke rose from the ovens. Some of the men waved at me and I raised my hand and tried to smile. I continued on down the road, nearing the Green Line, where cats darted from one end of the street to the other, jumping over the dividing fence into the buffer zone. Everything seemed so surreal, like the world was ticking away without me. The only thing that seemed true was the moon.

  A cat was trying to get my attention, chirping, weaving through my legs as I walked. The black cat that often hung around with Aliki and Nisha.

  I thought about Nisha’s passport – the fact that she hadn’t taken it with her clearly meant that she had not gone back to Sri Lanka, as I had suspected. This made me feel relief and anxiety at the same time. If she hadn’t gone home, then where was she? Why had she not informed anybody? I thought about the locket her late husband had given her and the lock of Kumari’s hair. She would absolutely never leave without those two items. Even when she had gone away for those two days, she had taken them with her, neatly tucked into her wallet.

  The cat yowled at me now and, when I paused, sprawled itself expectantly on the ground in front of me, paws up, stomach exposed.

  I leaned down and stroked it, felt the vibration of its deep, contented purrs. I sat down on the ground, cross-legged, and continued to pet the cat. It seemed to have decided that this was what we both needed to do right then. The street was dark, deserted, with no lights on in any of the houses: most of them probably abandoned this far down the street, near the buffer zone. A new moon hung in the sky, still tinged with red.

  I thought about Nisha’s orange linen dress and the weekend she had left to stay with her cousin Chaturi in Limassol. The story wasn’t as simple as Petra thought.

  It began one Sunday in August. Petra had left Nicosia to spend the day with Aliki at Makronisos beach in the east. They’d left early in the morning, as it was a two-hour drive, packing deckchairs, towels and sun hats into the boot of the car. Petra had informed Nisha that they would be gone all afternoon, and would likely have supper in Ayia Napa with a friend. So Nisha and I had the whole day and evening to laze about together. It had been too hot to go anywhere except the sea, and Nisha hated the sea, so we had decided to stay in the cool darkness of the bedroom, with the balcony doors wide open. I will never forget that day. There was hardly a breeze: not even a leaf stirred on the trees. The sound of the cicadas and the smell of jasmine filled the room. Whenever the wind blew, it was hot and brought no relief.

  Before noon, Nisha spent some time talking to Kumari on my tablet. She sat at the desk while I lay on the bed, listening to them speaking in Sinhalese, their voices sometimes joyful, sometimes serious, a few words in English. Though I couldn’t understand their conversation, I knew Nisha well enough to pick up on the fact that she was distracted. I went to the kitchen and made us both some frappe, with lots of ice cubes and extra milk and sugar for Nisha, just as she liked. I handed it to her as she finished the call; she took one small sip and left it on the side of the desk, then she sat staring out of the open doors, hardly saying a word. We made lunch together, eating hoppers – Sri Lankan pancakes. She stirred the mixture and said a few things like, ‘Pass the rice flour’ or ‘Splash some coconut milk into it now.’ I added a ladle of batter to the wok and swirled it around, then she cracked an egg into the bowl-shaped pancake and began to make the garnish of onions, chillies and lemon juice while I fried the rest. ‘Don’t you think that one’s ready?’ she said, when I’d left the pancake in the wok too long, because I too had become distracted, wondering what was wrong with her. I knew she didn’t like to be asked, so I waited.

  Later that night, a full moon hung in the sky. Theo’s was bustling with people, the bouzouki was playing and Nisha was lying on her side looking up at the sky. She wanted all the lights off: she felt cooler that way, she’d said. The moon-light was cool. She stared at it, her eyes glazed, as if she was staring at the space between her and the moon.

  After what felt like a long time, she sat up, folded her legs, and faced me. I did the same. She looked at me straight in the eyes.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Pregnant?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You’re pregnant.’

  She nodded again. ‘We were so careful,’ she said. I could make out no obvious expression on her face, it was as blank as a stone. But then she leaned into me and rested her head on my chest and we lay down together.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  ‘I think it’s great.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She turned on her back, took my hand and placed it on her stomach, then she rested her hand on top of mine. I’d never felt as close to anyone as I did in that moment. Our bodies connected – mine, Nisha’s and this little foetus that was growing inside her. Our baby. Mine and hers. A wave of happiness came over me, like someone had opened a window that overlooked the landscape of my childhood and reminded me of what it felt like to be filled with love and wonder. What would this child look like? Perhaps these were premature thoughts, but I imagined that he or she would be everything like Nisha. These images fell into my mind as fresh and cool as rain in the heat of that room.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she said again.

  ‘I think it’s wonderful. I love you.’

  ‘That’s because you’re feeling and not thinking.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘My feelings and thoughts are perfectly in sync!’ Then I added, ‘For once!’ And I laughed at how often we’d both said the words feelings and thoughts.

  But Nisha didn’t laugh. She gently lifted her hand from mine, lifted my hand from her stomach and continued to gaze out of the window. Finally, she said: ‘I will lose my job. Nobody wants a pregnant maid.’

  ‘We’ll find a way. I’ll help you find something else to do. Or I’ll take care of you. Whatever you want, we’ll make it work.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘What about Kumari? I have to send money. If I lose my job, how will she live? I have debts to pay off. I have debts with the agency, Yiannis – I’m still paying them for bringing me here. And what about my mother? She is relying on me, too. It’s because of the work I do here that they have money to eat and live and go about their everyday lives. What would happen if I lost this job? It’s not just you and me and this baby.’

  She said all this in one breath and her voice broke, though tears didn’t come: she seemed to swallow them.

  ‘I understand,’ I said. I brought her closer to me, held her. ‘What if I helped you financially? What if I gave you money to pay off your debt and also to send back home?’

  ‘With what?’ she said. ‘Wild asparagus and snails?’ Her voice h
eld an edge of derision.

  And she was right, because if that was the whole truth then I’d be nothing short of a lunatic. I wanted to tell her about the songbirds. But if I told her, it would break her heart.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, ‘if I didn’t have this debt, I probably would have been able to go home by now, and we wouldn’t be here . . . we wouldn’t be in this situation anyway.’

  She was matter-of-fact, decisive; her words a brutal blow to a fragile dream. But then she took my hand again, and this time pressed it down onto her stomach so that I could feel the weight of her love in that small push.

  The following evening, I decided to tell her about the songbirds. It was the only chance I had to get her to believe that I had the means to help her financially. I wanted this baby, our baby, more than anything. It was late when she appeared at my door – we were back to our usual 11 p.m. rendezvous, since Petra and Aliki had returned from the beach. After Nisha had made them dinner and put Aliki to bed, she came up to my flat. I took her by the hand and led her to the spare room. I unlocked the door and for a few moments she stood there, confused, looking around, resting her eyes on one of the industrial fridges.

  ‘What is all this?’ she said.

  ‘I have another way of making money,’ I said. ‘I want you to know that I’ve saved enough and I can support you, Kumari, and your mother.’

  ‘But you told me this door was always closed because it was such a mess in here.’

  In fact, it was relentlessly tidy and I could see her taking all this in, looking around at the lime sticks, the wicker shoulder-pouch I took with me on hunts, the black calling devices lined up on the small desk, the containers stacked against the wall.

  ‘It’s like Indiana Jones with fridges. What have you been doing?’ she said

  ‘After I lost my job at Laiki, I became involved in hunting. I was desperate. I could never have survived selling mush-rooms and—’

  ‘Hunting what?’ she interrupted me.