Songbirds

by Christy Lefteri

  ‘No,’ Yiannis said, and his voice came out hoarse and unfamiliar, as if he hadn’t spoken to a soul in many years. ‘But I know for a fact that Nisha wouldn’t have gone on a date with anyone. I know that for sure. She loved me.’

  Tony nodded sympathetically. ‘It will become clearer in time,’ he said, ‘but for now we must wait.’

  *

  After the men left, I felt frightened and cold. A strong wind rattled the windows and bent the olive tree out front. I went into Aliki’s room. She was fast asleep. I crawled into bed with her and curled up around her, smelling her hair, giving her soft kisses while she slept.

  26

  Yiannis

  T

  HE MURDER OF ROSAMIE COTABU had been announced on the news. People were restless. The Vietnamese maids with their rice hats kept their eyes fixed on passers-by. Downstairs, at Mrs Hadjikyriacou’s, Ruba stood out front holding a broom, looking frightened.

  This time I called Kumari. Once again, she was alone.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Yiannis, do you have any more information? My grandmother is making me breakfast and she is crying all the time. She is wiping all her tears on her sleeve and cardigan.’

  ‘Have you been crying, Kumari?’

  ‘No. I don’t cry until I know all the facts. Are there new facts now?’

  ‘They know who the woman in the lake is and it is not your mother.’

  Kumari let out a huge sigh as if she had been holding her breath and her words came out shaken and broken: ‘Thank you. Oh, my! Mr Yiannis. It is not my amma.’

  She left her tablet on the table with me staring up at the ceiling, and I could hear her saying things to her grandmother, who once again seemed to be asking many questions through her tears.

  Kumari picked up the tablet again.

  ‘What is the lady’s name that they found inside the lake?’

  ‘Her name is Rosamie Cotabu.’

  ‘Was she one of the missing ladies that you told me about?’

  ‘Yes, she was.’

  ‘One of the five missing ladies.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was she a maid like my amma is?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kumari was silent now. I could hear the old lady in the other room, still talking.

  ‘You think they will find Amma like they did this other lady, don’t you Mr Yiannis?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think that.’

  ‘But she was also a missing lady, like Amma. Isn’t that right, Mr. Yiannis?’

  *

  It turned out that Rosamie Cotabu was Christian and church bells rang for her departure to the next world. Meanwhile, anger was brewing. The maids were not just scared, they were livid. Rosamie Cotabu had, after all, been reported missing and the police had ignored her employer’s pleas and concerns. Then she had been found in a mineshaft, wrapped up in white cloth.

  The women walked by on the street below, always in pairs now, keeping their heads close together in muffled conversation, but their eyes were always roving, on the lookout for the next threat. It felt like the hours and days after a massive earthquake, where people walk around expecting it to happen again at any moment, where the walls and the ground beneath one’s feet no longer seem solid and there is no certainty of safety anywhere.

  A man was in custody but his name had not been released to the public and Tony had no idea of it either.

  *

  During that week, at some point one evening, Seraphim knocked on my door. This was the first time he’d ever come to my place and the first time he had arrived unannounced.

  I opened the door for him and without saying anything I stepped aside to let him in.

  ‘How is your arm?’ he asked, glancing at the bandage. I’d released it now from its sling.

  ‘Better.’

  ‘I heard about the woman found at the Mitsero mines,’ he said.

  I nodded and offered him a seat.

  ‘Have you heard from Nisha?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He looked out of the balcony doors but said nothing.

  Then he unzipped a rucksack that he’d placed by his feet and took out a wad of money. From the look of it, it was much more than what he owed me for the previous hunt.

  ‘That looks around 10,000 euro,’ I said.

  ‘You’re spot on.’ He put it on the coffee table between us. ‘It’s yours,’ he said.

  ‘A bribe?’

  ‘Why would I need to bribe you?’

  ‘To keep my mouth shut.’

  The little bird hopped up onto the table now and inspected the wad of notes that lay upon it. Seraphim frowned and glanced at me straight on.

  ‘You have a pet bird now?’

  ‘It’s not a pet,’ I said. I had no energy to say more.

  ‘The money is to help you get by, until you figure out what you’re going to do.’

  I just stared at him blankly.

  ‘We go a long way back, don’t we?’ he said.

  I nodded, apprehensive, wondering what dirty plan he had up his sleeve this time.

  ‘I remember when I used to come visit your farm with my dad, do you remember?’

  I just shrugged, but he went on.

  ‘I loved being there, getting out of the city. I saw the kind of life you had and I was jealous. I was always so jealous of you and all that freedom you had. The only time I got to be out in the open was when I had a rifle in my hand.’

  His eyes had drifted away for a while and they flicked back to me now.

  ‘The other day, when I saw how you reacted to the death of the mouflon, it . . . it reminded me of . . .’

  I waited, but the sentence was never finished.

  ‘I’ll tell the bosses that you’ve been badly injured in an accident and won’t be able to work anymore.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll reassure them that we won’t need to keep you quiet.’

  I nodded.

  ‘You know, I wasn’t always such a pig. Don’t you remember?’

  What I remembered was Seraphim running down that mountain holding the crow he’d killed by its feet.

  He must have seen the doubt on my face as he said, ‘Come on, Yiannis! Don’t you remember? It was as soon as they placed that gun in my hands, that’s when I changed. Before that we played in the woods. You showed me all those creatures that crawled amongst the leaves. You showed me how to catch a snake and release it. We played dominos in the olive orchard. We made an igloo out of twigs and explored the North Pole! We fought sharks in the Pacific Ocean!’

  He was right, of course. I remembered all of it. Those memories were exactly what had stopped me from despising him completely. I had a sudden image of him now, standing on the fallen trunk of a tree, encouraging me across a treacherous river of grass.

  ‘We made a catapult to knock the ripe apples off the trees,’ he said, ‘so that we could eat and survive in the Amazon.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘You do know.’

  I nodded, slowly.

  ‘Take the money,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  ‘OK.’

  I didn’t thank him and I didn’t offer him a drink.

  ‘I have a new apprentice,’ he said, as he made his way to the door. ‘Young lad, very sharp. Exactly what I need. But, you know, Oksana wants me to stop all this stuff. She doesn’t understand there’s a huge price to pay. We are expecting a child. I cannot take risks.’

  His eyes were so sad, so full of anguish.

  ‘How is Oksana?’ I said.

  ‘Very well. I finally finished painting the nursery and revealed it to her, grand opening, that sort of thing. She was beside herself.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ I said, and for a brief moment I genuinely was.

  ‘If I’d really hurt you, I would never have been able to live with myself,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’

  Then he was gone.

  I glanced down at the money and I knew what I wa
nted to do with it. I would send it to Kumari, along with everything else I had saved.

  As for me, I would start again. I’d get a job at a restaurant somewhere, maybe even at Theo’s if he needed any waiters. I would do this and start over again, and when Nisha returned, she would see that I had let go of my old life, that I had understood.

  There was not going to be another earthquake. One was enough. But I could hear my grandfather’s voice in my head: ‘The truth is in the earth, in the song of the birds, in the rhythms and whispers of the animals. If you want to see and hear it – only if you want to – it is there.’

  *

  It had been nearly a week from his last visit when we heard from Tony again. Petra knocked on my door one evening to say that he had called and he was coming late that evening. She asked if I could come down at ten o’clock, after Aliki was asleep.

  I arrived early and Petra offered me a seat by the fire. I took the same spot on the sofa I had occupied before, and placed my hands on my knees. Petra kept glancing over at me, as if I were a stranger, and I smiled to myself. My hair and beard had grown even more and I was sure I looked something like a bear. A friendly one, I hoped.

  ‘I’ve stopped the poaching. I should have listened to Nisha from the start,’ I told her, and waited for her reaction.

  ‘Yes, you should have,’ she said and then seemed to regret her words, the heat of them. They were true, however. Fair and true. I lowered my eyes to the ground.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Petra. ‘I’m sure Nisha will be very relieved and happy when she returns.’

  I glanced at her sharply and was about to speak, but the doorbell interrupted us.

  A moment later, Petra ushered in Tony. He remained standing for a moment, taking us in, before taking a seat.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ Petra offered.

  ‘No, nothing,’ he replied, bluntly.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘I will come straight out and say this. The man they have in custody, the soldier, he has confessed to the murder of Rosamie Cotabu.’

  ‘Why?’ I blurted out. I wasn’t quite sure what I was asking. Perhaps I needed quickly to see a motive for this murder so that no one could, even for a second, be able to link it to Nisha’s disappearance.

  ‘Because he is a mad man!’ Tony’s eyes were alight with fury. He looked as though he was about to stand up, grab something and dash it at the wall, but instead he collapsed back into the armchair, and for a moment he seemed deflated, defeated even. Then he took a deep breath, leaned forward, clutching his hands tightly together over his thighs. ‘This monster is apparently devastated by what he has done, as if all he had done is steal something. He has decided to help the police. He said it’s the least he can do.’ Tony’s voice was harsh, it shook with anger, he spat out the last sentence with venom.

  He glanced at Petra, then he looked over at me and held my gaze. ‘He has subsequently confessed to the murder of four more women and two of their children. The women were all foreign maids. He met two of these women on dating sites – those two he knew their names, though the police won’t release the other, not yet, not until they have recovered the bodies. The rest he captured as they were walking; for them, he said he never asked their names. He is a lunatic. He needed to kill. He killed foreign maids because it was easier, he knew that nobody would search for them, he thought he would be able to get away with it. What does that tell you, huh? Tell me, what does that tell you about the shitty world we live in?’

  Neither Petra nor I seemed to be able to speak.

  ‘He threw two of the bodies into the mineshaft,’ Tony said. ‘The other two women and the children are in suitcases in the red lake. He put them in suitcases, he threw them away, as if they were not human.’

  Tony stopped talking. He pressed his temples hard with his fingers, scrunching up his eyes. I could feel a burning sensation in my chest, fire burning. I couldn’t move. Petra quietly began to recite names, ticking them off on her fingers:

  ‘Rosamie Cotabu,

  Reyna Gatan,

  Cristina Maier and

  her daughter, Daria,

  Ana-Maria Lupei and

  her daughter, Andreea.

  And Nisha Jayakody.’

  Petra stared at her hand, all five fingers stretched wide. She looked over at me, as if still trying to comprehend, put together the pieces of everything she had just heard.

  ‘The search is beginning tonight,’ Tony said. ‘Soon, everything will be certain.’

  27

  Petra

  W

  HEN I WOKE UP, I thought I had blood on my hands. I felt it, sticky and warm. When I opened the blinds, however, and held my hands up before my eyes, they were clean and white in the morning sun.

  I remembered the blood of the birds. The way it had felt and smelled, the way it had stuck in my nails.

  It was a cold winter Saturday and the house was silent. The dust had gathered. I sat down by an unlit fire.

  ‘Mum, Nisha isn’t coming back, is she?’ Aliki was standing in the doorway, looking at me with sombre eyes.

  ‘You’re awake, baby. I was hoping you would sleep longer.’

  ‘She’s gone,’ my daughter said, simply.

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘I think she might be gone.’

  ‘She made my heart be full of stars, now it’s just dark inside me.’

  I reached out and Aliki came to me. I pulled her into my lap, her gangly legs barely contained on my knees, the fug of sleep still clinging to her sweatpants and T-shirt. I stroked her hair, pulling it back from her face, and she closed her eyes.

  And then we both heard it. Shouts. Cries. A murmur that was growing, beginning to swell. Aliki sprang off my lap and ran to the door. I followed her. We both stood in the doorway, watching people pass by.

  First, we saw the two Filipino maids who always walked with the young girl between them, the pretty little girl with pigtails, holding each of their hands. But this time they were without the child, and heading down the street with a solemn determination. Then we saw Nilmini stepping out of Yiakoumi’s shop, untying her apron and leaving it by the front door as she headed in the same direction.

  When I looked back at Aliki she was crying. I put my arms around her and she cried into my chest; I felt the weight of her on me and I embraced her, tighter. Then she held herself upright and watched the maids pass by. There were so many now, all heading in the same direction. I held Aliki’s hand tight. Her tears fell down her cheeks and dropped onto the cobbled street. I imagined a stream, flowing, a stream of tears flowing in the direction that the maids were heading.

  The two maids at Theo’s abandoned their tasks and followed the crowd. Finally, Ruba from Mrs Hadjikyriacou’s house next door stepped out, closing the door behind her.

  I stopped her. ‘Where are they going? What is happening?’

  ‘Come and see,’ she said.

  Aliki shoved her feet into the nearest Converse and we followed the maids.

  *

  Women that I’d never seen before in the neighbourhood were joining in. They watched from windows and came out as the women passed, without a second thought joining the rest. Most were immigrant workers and there were children, too, some Aliki’s age, some even younger, who held the hands of their nannies as they followed the crowd. We walked along the backstreets from the Famagusta Gate until we reached the Cyprus Museum, then we took the main road all the way down to the Presidential Palace. There, a crowd of thousands, dressed mostly in black, spread out across the street below the palace holding lighted candles with their heads bowed in prayer. Others held banners reading ‘Misogyny and Racism Must Stop’ or ‘End discrimination towards women and foreigners’ and ‘We sacrifice our lives’. I saw Soneeya and Binsa in the crowd, standing close together with candles in their hands, directing their shouts at the white palace. In her hand, Binsa held a banner that simply said: ‘Where are they?’

  We stayed out for hours and the sun began to set as the afternoon
turned late. Someone handed Aliki a candle and she held it high above her head, joining the shouts and demands. She was still crying, but kept the candle aloft. As the darkness gathered the candles glowed, beacons everywhere. There were so many women, so many faces, so many voices raised in chorus and hope.

  This was the story of Nisha Jayakody, as I understood it:

  Nisha was a mother of two children, who lived in different worlds.

  Nisha’s child in Sri Lanka has straight hair, so soft it feels like the down of an owl.

  Nisha’s other child is my child. Nisha had lost her first love.

  Nisha knew how to love.

  Nisha filled my daughter’s heart with stars.

  I owe Nisha more than I could ever repay her.

  *

  That night, when I came in to kiss Aliki goodnight, she was sitting up in bed, looking out of the window. I followed her gaze to Monkey, who was outside and pawing at the window-panes, trying to get in.

  ‘Look, Mum, it is our cat!’ Aliki said. She began to laugh and then, quite suddenly, she exhaled and gave in to a mighty exhaustion and began to cry. She scrunched her face and her tears flowed out. They flowed like they would never stop this time and amongst her sobs she said, ‘I’m so tired,’ and, ‘I miss Nisha so much.’ I sat down beside her and held her in my arms. I held her in a way that I never had, like I should have all those years gone, like Nisha had always wanted me to. I felt my daughter crying on me, I felt her tears soaking into the skin of my neck, into my veins, right through to my heart.

  I rubbed her back and rocked her. ‘Tell me what’s in your heart,’ I said.

  ‘I want Nisha, Mum,’ she said into my neck, with shaky breath and tears. ‘I want Nisha to come back. I want to sit in our boat. I want her to tell me stories and get me ready for school and . . . and . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And do the stupid times tables with me and . . . and . . . and . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I wake up at night and I’m so scared because Nisha is not there. Sometimes I wake up and knock on her door and wait for her to open it, but she never opens it. She never opens it anymore.’

  My chest burned and my eyes burned until I too was crying, crying and rocking Aliki.