by Polis Loizou
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said to Skevi.
‘You were looking a bit preoccupied.’
‘A…’ Darya wished her English was better. ‘It’s no problem. I think of many things.’
‘Yeah,’ said Skevi, ‘that’s the good thing about yoga, it draws everything out of you.’
Darya nodded.
‘If there is something wrong,’ Skevi said, putting her hand on the older woman’s shoulder, ‘I also do Reiki.’ She lowered her voice a fraction. ‘It helps.’
Again, Darya nodded. She’d heard of Reiki. Maybe she needed it, maybe she didn’t. But all she said to the girl extending her hand was, ‘Thank you. This is enough.’
✽✽✽
In the near-darkness of the room, sunlight bore through the holes of the electric shutters. She stared at it, hypnotised. It brought afternoons, long gone, memories vague and remote enough to be soothing. They lay on the sofa, she against Orestis’ torso. Her hair was matted to her neck, cheek and forehead, and his ribs rose and fell against her skull, and yet she was too comfortable in the discomfort to do anything about it. Her legs, she realised, were quivering as the feeling returned to them, and the warmth of touch gave way to the relative cool of the air. Another evening without her husband.
This time she’d opened the garage for Orestis’ car. It was no more conspicuous to let him park there than have a young man walking alone to a married woman’s house in the twilight, or a taxi pull up to the drive. Since the lifting of the ban, their neighbour Katina was given to watering her pavement with a hose, and she kept her nose in the air sniffing for gossip. Darya and Orestis had similar colouring, so it occurred to her to pretend he was a younger cousin. But that was foolish; lies always ended in disaster. Better to let the busybody assume what she wanted and act as if nothing unusual was going on. What was the worst Katina could do: call her a Russian whore?
When she opened the door to the garage, Darya met Orestis with a hunger that surprised even her. The young man looked startled, then pleased. And he was not gentle. He picked her up and carried her into the sitting room, where he dropped her on the sofa and yanked off her skirt. It shocked and thrilled her that this boy who was courteous and considerate when clothed, almost to the point of feebleness, could be stripped to the devil at his core. Of the men she’d been with, this was the only one who dropped an act during sex rather than put one on.
Now he murmured to her, half-asleep from his exertion. ‘Where is your husband?’
‘Dubai,’ she said.
Moments passed, ticks of the clock on the unit, their breaths, almost in sync. She heard the sound of fingers on fabric, Orestis caressing the sofa.
‘I can’t believe he leaves you alone.’
Darya bristled. ‘He works. What he can do?’
Orestis put his lips to her ear. ‘He can work in Cyprus.’
She exhaled the feeling away. ‘He is good.’
Beneath her, his body tensed. Perhaps he was pouting. His expression defaulted to morose when he wasn’t charmed or charming.
‘Let’s not talk about him,’ she said, sounding harsh even to her ears. Like a teacher.
‘OK…’
Already, she felt, something was dying. A thing more delicate than either of them had realised. This mustn’t pass, not yet. Forcing herself to unstick her head from his chest, her back from his abdomen, she faced him. He had indeed been looking darkly at her, but his expression changed. It blossomed. And she knew this was real; this young near-stranger, whose body, whose energy she drew on, he didn’t only desire her — he liked her.
‘You want jacuzzi?’
He raised an eyebrow, yes. His hand went to her lower back. Hers was coursing down his stomach.
‘I make us drinks,’ she said.
He remained seated on the sofa, still dazed, as she left the room. Even through the corridor, along the wall of abstracts acquired by her husband on trips to Athens, into the lounge with the kitchen and bar, she felt those eyes of his on her.
Stop this, said a voice. The voice of her babulia, far away inside her head.
She poured the drinks at the bar and paused. There, that widescreen TV kitted out with surround-sound speakers and the latest Blu-ray player. There, an enormous sound system intended for parties they hardly threw, for people she’d never got to know outside of functions. Couches and stools to take their many guests. And none of this was bought by her, nothing belonged to her. Not even the cash in her wallet that she’d give this young man at the end of the night, in payment for reminding her where she was, what was hers, what she lacked.
She went up to the master bedroom, from which she heard the jacuzzi running. Air from an open window, light from the floor-to-ceiling windows; she gave thanks for it all. The bed was made and waiting. She entered the en-suite with a vague dread. In the doorway, she froze. Something about the sight of Orestis, sitting in the bubbling tub with his back to her, and the view of the hills and sea in the glass before him, chilled her marrow. Perhaps it was the confidence of his shoulders, his head. Like a king on a turret.
This was wrong. It was the same feeling she’d had in her stomach that evening when she lifted her fingers from the piano to answer the phone, to be told that Maksim was dying, to come and say goodbye.
✽✽✽
Orestis hadn’t stayed the night. She was dimly aware of his departure, sometime in the violet hours, when she heard the rustle of trousers and shirt. She remembered thinking about how polite he was.
With waking came panic. He’d left without being paid, she hadn’t given him a cent. Or worse, he’d stolen from her. This was it, after all. Orestis was a thief, partnered with Lefteris and that blond one, handsome young men trained to fuck old women at night and rob their husbands’ homes in the morning. He’d lulled her into complacency. She didn’t even know where he lived, or where he worked if he had a day job. But on checking first the bedroom, then the rest of the house room by room, she’d found nothing of any value out of place. Either it had slipped his mind to collect his payment, or he was so sure of her next call that he hadn’t been concerned.
The Sri Lankan would be arriving soon. Darya pulled the sheets off the bed and put them straight in the washing machine. She grabbed a bottle of Chanel from her dresser and sprayed the room. It made her laugh, suddenly, loudly as if she were a teenager again and come back with Oleg from the lake.
When the Sri Lankan came, Darya was struck not for the first time by how young she was; as if they’d kidnapped an Asian mother’s child. She’d never asked for help in the house; it was all, as with everything, Aristos’ doing. But if Darya had had to spend so much of her life folding sheets and bath towels and scrubbing shit from carpets on ships, in hotels, and come out of it all right, then so could this girl.
Leaving the maid to her mop, Darya went out into the garden for her morning meditation. She passed the pool, cheeks flaring at the thought of Orestis’ nakedness there the other day, and the way he took her, hands wet, hair wet, chest slick and the hairs of it black. She sat at her cushions in the paved seating area beneath the palms, and let her mind go clear.
Om.
The flutter of a dragonfly hovering by the wall echoed her humming. Nature lent itself to us. Life was a web of balance. Give and take. Lose something, gain something.
Two
Aristos would soon land in Cyprus, and Darya was to meet him at the airport. Still nervous about driving in the dark, she kept an enormous distance behind every car. Her caution was rewarded; a stray dog bolted across the highway. The lights of her car picked out its sad frightened face on the hard shoulder. Part of her wanted to stop and rescue the beast, but there was no way she could have it in the house. Besides, it was too late now. It had either run off into the fields and salt lakes or been hit by someone less careful. She rubbed her crucifix and gave thanks to the icon on the dashboard.
She waited with a coffee at Arrivals. At some point, a bunch of young men funnelled through the doors yel
ling English, cheeks red, eyes raw, bulging out of slogan t-shirts and palm-print shorts. Brits on their way to Ayia Napa. You heard tales of the goings-on there; booze-filled kids and foam parties, sex on church grounds. From the look of these boys, the tales were true. Some looked young and sweet, one swung an obvious python in his shorts, but they seemed hollow. Soulless. Moments later, her husband stepped through the same doors, wheeling his carry-on case at his side. A carriage that dwarfed other men. Even in a room this big and full, Aristos stood out.
He drew her in for a kiss on the cheek. ‘How are you?’ he asked in Greek, with a knowing hint in his tone.
‘Good,’ she replied in his tongue, annoyed by the Slavic vowels in her accent.
Aristos didn’t want to go straight home. He drove them to a restaurant by the sea, where they sat outdoors and watched the surf roll in and out like ghost hair in the dark.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said.
A breeze blew a strand of hair to her mouth, so she laughed.
‘I mean it.’
‘Please,’ she said. ‘You must speak to me in Greek.’
Now he was the one to laugh. ‘Why?’
‘I need to know more. Not just say houmous and patates.’
He grinned at his plate, and she wondered if he slept with other women. Maybe that’s what this was, an exercise in deception. Not a handsome man, her husband, but an attractive one. He could hold a conversation with anyone on any subject, his interests were limitless. And self-possession was power. It’s what put him above Orestis. The younger man’s eagerness was a crutch, he would see that one day.
At tavernas like this, Darya went for the octopus. Whether it was supposed to be healthy or not, who remembered? Was fresh food ever bad? Either way, she sought the warmth of its garlic and wine. And what felt good within was reflected without. Aristos dug into his kleftiko and explained to her, for the third or fourth time in their marriage, the origins of the dish. But now he did so in Greek, and stopped every few seconds to explain words like ‘Cretan’ and ‘rebels’.
When he finished, he raised the subject of an August holiday. A journey through Greece, the mainland or the islands or both. ‘We can go on a cruise,’ he said. He knew translation was redundant, and she wondered if that weight of meaning in his eyes and voice was really there. Teacher, translator, maid, wife; she knew what she was and had been, why remind her? She was aware of a streak in her husband that others feared. Perhaps he was beginning to show it to her.
‘What do you say?’
Those dark eyes peering out from their long lashes, the face of the man who’d only ever denied her one thing. He did love her, God knew he did. All he wanted was to take her on holiday.
‘Good,’ she replied in Greek, because what else could she say?
✽✽✽
The sun was gathering strength. Free of its gauze, it roasted the arms hanging out of car windows. It beaded foreheads with sweat, it made every shop turn its AC to maximum. Darya never used AC in the car and drove with the windows shut. She parked the car off Anexartisia Street and evaded the parking attendant’s gaze as she paid him. When the old man’s voice croaked out a pleasant goodbye in Greek, she felt a wave of guilt. ‘Bye,’ she said back, glad for the option of a single syllable.
Shopping had become routine, with diminishing returns. Long gone were her days of queuing for sausages she hated and gone were the evenings spent counting Deutsche Marks in Frau Friedel’s apartment, and gone were those first months of marriage to Aristos, the freedom and boundlessness of a credit card. Not a single label and not a hundred thousand fabrics were enough. Maybe she was simply getting older, losing her will to please. You looked good for other people, to earn something back; their approval, their respect, their libido, their money. There was nothing she lacked. For that, she remembered to give thanks. Accept things as they are, for what they are. Her babulia in the past, and Skevi in the present. There had always been a restless greed in her. Where had it come from? Not her babulia, not her parents, not her country. Be thankful, move on. Her fingers skipped over another row of clutch bags. She might buy a couple if only to mark this day out from the rest.
In the next shop, Darya heard her before she saw her, and by the time she had processed what was happening, it was too late: Eva. There she was, flicking through clothes on a rack, sunglasses pushed up her head and one of those iced coffees from the newsagent in hand. She was with a friend, and it was the other girl who’d spotted Darya first. A sudden drop in their chatter. ‘A,’ said Eva, seeing her. And that was all. She turned back to the clothes as if Darya had been a passing cat in the window. The salesgirl shifted in anticipation. Young, Cypriot, beautiful, her allegiance was already with Eva. There was one clear outcome: Darya would leave, and the others would talk about her.
They didn’t even wait. Eva’s friend was first to start, assuming The Russian was unable to follow Greek. The older woman listened as she fondled dresses, the fabric sliding from her fingertips as if she’d no desire to keep it there. She paced around the small boutique, counting out a minute, then another, willing her eyes not to drift to the girls. Eva was all right to look at, in that blunt way, spoiled only by the large nose and that heavy reliance on makeup. She also shared her mother’s flabby waistline and huge bust. If she wasn’t careful, she’d end up exactly like that bitter old hag. Neither Eva nor her mother deigned so much as to look at Darya, which upset Aristos. He was devoted to his daughter, but Darya never had the chance to find out why. This person, so caring and funny to others, would switch off her lights the moment she beheld her. It took some getting used to, spending chunks of her Christmas, her Easter, alone in the house because Aristos was left with no choice but to see his daughter in private. The girl had despised her from the start, though her parents were already divorced by the time Darya had come along. Eva’s love for her father, however, remained. In fact, it had mutated to monstrous proportions. Even now in her twenties, the girl would sit on his lap and call him Daddykins. Darya could never fathom acting that way with her father. To her, he was always The Professor. She had watched him dance, cigarette in hand, around the living room, around the gas heater, when Belarus stepped forth from the rubble of the USSR to become its own nation. She blinked the memory away. Had she ever even hugged him, at some point when it might have been possible?
Two minutes. Time to leave the shop and give them the freedom to discuss her openly, maybe even to laugh. ‘Bye,’ she said to all three – Eva, her friend, the shopgirl – at once, that single blessed syllable, and walked away, having once again bought nothing.
✽✽✽
The pain in her groin intensified. It was like a wild animal, clawing at her, grasping for her stomach, her insides, everything. Good. Game over, her bladder was full. She would park at a hotel and use the toilet.
Cars edged forward centimetre by centimetre along the seafront. Some of the mavericks tried to squeeze their cars through impossible gaps or climb over barriers to overtake the sludge. Her bladder was about to burst.
Stupid game. Conceived at her babulia’s house, long ago, on an afternoon in the banya whipping each other’s backs with birch twigs. She’d needed to urinate, but the steam of the room and her babulia’s giggles at her feeble whips were enough to make it wait. When she finally ran to the bathroom, the physical joy of release was so great that her body buckled. Already light-headed from the sauna, she trembled for minutes. At twelve years old, she was already awed by the miracle of the human body. With the tips of her fingers, she’d prodded her veins, searching for a surge of blood coursing through like a river. She’d rubbed her own collarbone till it made her gag. A few days later she pushed her bladder to the limit once more, and derived the same pleasure from it; that painful ecstasy. By the time she’d reached adulthood, and discovered other ways to please herself, the game took a back seat. But recently, a year ago, maybe more, it had returned.
She tried not to think of it. She focused on her breathing, the in and
out of it, oxygen to carbon monoxide, which was fundamental, which was the most natural and unconscious thing a human could do.
Outside the car, not a single palm frond stirred.
This would never be her home.
The thought wasn’t new. Darya would leave Cyprus. What that would mean for Aristos remained to be seen. Her family had been right, she thought only of herself and her own pleasure. She was greedy. Insatiable. All those years ago, when she dared to turn her back on Belarus, she’d thought she was being sensible. Why deny herself for the rest of her life? What for? In the past few months, the self-reflection of yoga made her face what she truly was: selfish; indulgent; alone.
The torso of a man appeared at her window, making her jump. The driver behind her had got out of his car and, barely containing his stomach in an old vest, stood to glare ahead at the traffic. He shrugged, swore in Greek, then turned to her for solidarity. She mimicked that Cypriot gesture of frustration, Pe! expressed through the hand, and the man nodded. But something about her caught his attention. He didn’t scowl, but it had registered: an infraction. She checked that the doors were locked.
In a snap, his attention turned back to the traffic. The look of relief on his face said the cars had started to move. ‘Finally,’ he confirmed through the window and patted the roof of the car as if it was a horse’s back. He returned to his own.
Releasing her breath, Darya stepped on the gas, evermore in need of a toilet.
With as straight and unhurried a gait as she could manage, she wound her way through lobbies and corridors in the Myriada to the ladies’. And there, in the haven of a cubicle, she was thankful for the absence of another soul as she gasped, the ache of release more intense than it had ever been.
‘Stop this.’ Her own voice now.
Who knew what it might do to her body, this senseless test? During puberty, when she began to admire the backs of boys at the summer camps, she feared she’d already done irreparable damage. Had she broken herself? Might she not bear children? These days, she worried about cancers. Of course, she would.
