by Polis Loizou
Finished, she sought out the hotel’s café. She carried her tea, with honey and lemon, to a window seat from which she could watch the people around the pool below. She recalled that afternoon with Orestis when his shaking fingers betrayed the nerves his face had tried to conceal. He liked to make a good impression, which mattered. To see him revealed bit by bit, at her command but enjoying her attention, brought her a rare joy. She wished she’d been clear-headed enough to request a tease on their first encounter. Instead, a coward herself, she’d switched off the light and ignored the sound of his zip to focus on the noise of the surf.
She’d never done anything like it before. She’d met the woman from Stockholm at one of the hotel functions – birthday, retirement, she couldn’t remember. At some point, the Swede locked eyes with a suited young man in a corner. ‘You know what he is?’ she’d said with a naughty smile. Then that word she’d understand in any language: ‘Gigolo.’
When Darya had laughed uncertainly, the Swede had confessed without shame that she knew for certain. Darya had been speechless. Not that she was naive; she’d heard many a tale of the quiet knocks at the doors of Minsk hotels, young ladies offering company to businessmen travelling solo. Of course, it happened here too, and where better than in the five-star resorts along the coast? What shocked her was that such a service existed for women. All she’d ever heard about men of the night was that they sold their bodies to queer perverts. The darkest, quietest sin.
The Swede had pulled an elegant card from her purse and handed it to her. ‘Come to my party,’ she’d said. There’d be a man for every woman, and if there weren’t enough women, she was sure one guy could manage two at once. An explosion of laughter. Darya had been left disconcerted by the encounter, but the memory of it had whispered at the back of her head along the highway, with Aristos driving at her side. Before she’d known it, an evening had been arranged, and three young men had been sourced for three middle-aged women. Darya, the youngest of them, had regretted her decision more with every passing moment. In an attempt not to squirm and betray herself, she’d sat rigid on that leather sofa and focused on her glass of vodka. He who talks little hears better, her babulia used to say. And so she’d listened to the charming man with the green-gold eyes, and his fair-haired friend. But mostly she’d been intrigued by the dashing darker one with the nervous smile, whose black eyes, glossy as caviar, took everything in. He would be hers.
Orestis.
He was hers.
Three
Darya gave thanks for the yoga class. For its combination of physical exertion and mental catharsis. For this chance to know herself. And as the summer advanced the evening slots coincided with the sunset, helping her to achieve a calm she seldom managed. There was Skevi’s voice, instructing and encouraging, and the rosy light on the metal window frames. In the peace of this no-man’s land, her flaws could reason with her rather than attack her. She had been selfish to leave Belarus. She’d abandoned her family, all of them drugged by grief. Yes, she had left, and done so for her sake, but what she’d run away from was not her father, and certainly not her mother and babulia, but the ghost of her older brother.
What she still had to come to terms with, however, was that ghosts could walk. And if something walked, it could also follow.
✽✽✽
She decided she would treat Orestis.
What was the use of hiding, of being kept behind shutters? In any case, her neighbour Katina was bound to have noticed the coming and going of a young stranger. Caught in a morning greeting, Darya had half a mind to mention she was having the interiors redesigned or anything else that might keep suspicion from her door. But she shrugged it off. Who cared what the old cow thought and who she spoke to? Whatever story she made up, the myth that would stick was always the same: Russian whore.
One thing she did wrestle with was exposing her young maid to the arrangement. The girl wasn’t stupid; she’d have figured out that Orestis was, at the very least, a lover. But if it brought a sense of guilt or shame to the girl every time she greeted Mr Ioannidou at the door, then Darya would have to find a solution. The only one she came up with, again and again, was to let the maid go. There’d be lots of other work for her in Cyprus, there was no need to feel bad about that. The problem lay more in how to put this suggestion to Aristos.
‘When is your next day free?’ she asked Orestis one afternoon.
‘Friday.’
‘Maybe we go somewhere?’
A look of horror in his face. It stung.
‘I want to see more,’ she continued. ‘We go maybe other side of island. Paphos or more far away.’
His eyebrows eased.
So it wasn’t Darya he feared. Lemesos was a big city where everyone somehow knew everyone else. This was his only secret. In a country full of yellow grass, Orestis was a green blade.
‘Yes…’ he said. ‘We could go to the shops in Lefkosia, or the theatre if you prefer.’
‘It sounds nice.’
‘Or sorry, we can go to Paphos like you said. Avagas Gorge, Coral Bay…’
They could hire a boat, he added with meaning. And she felt, as his hands curled around her back, his growing excitement.
They arranged to drive to a beach in the Paphos District, a village called Latchi. Orestis had put on a white shirt, short sleeves rolled shorter. Although he wore sunglasses, she had the sense that his eyes were wide for the sights, as a child marvelling at a dancing bear. And he did remind her of a child at times. Those dimples punctuating his smile, or the way his eyebrows would crease with concern. It was a face that invited a gentle hand.
‘I told my father I was with my friend Paris,’ he’d said. They’d just set off from their agreed meeting point at a municipal car park. ‘It’s OK,’ he’d added quickly, ‘Paris is visiting his cousin in London.’
So the glasses had nothing to do with the sun. His caution amused her. It brought to mind her foolishness in childhood, that fear of the KGB after a trip to Minsk. Those same fears had returned when she left for Poland, then Germany. They’d bounced along the corridors of the ships, and then the hotel. Her heart still raced, even now on an island far away in the middle of the sea, at the sight of a copper-armed cop with a gun.
At one point on the drive, as Orestis looked out at the sprawling city they were leaving behind, his hand travelled as if of its own accord, to rest on her thigh. She blinked a tear away. So far she had paid for every time he’d serviced her. She’d even made up for the time she’d forgotten by paying him double. ‘No,’ he’d said, ‘there’s no need, please.’ But she’d insisted. ‘I want to,’ she’d said in Greek, that single word.
But how many euro did it cost for a whole day out, with the expectation of nothing other than the company? How much were his conversation and presence worth? And not only that: what would he anticipate as reward for spending time with her? For at least sex gave him a degree of pleasure – that, she didn’t doubt. He got something in return for what he was giving. Who didn’t like sex and money? But an afternoon of driving over hills, to a beach where they hoped nobody knew them…?
Now that hand on her thigh. Something inside her had been opened, a gate lifted. Not just today, or even these past few weeks, but over years, maybe the whole preceding decade, since the new century, the new millennium of her new life. She had never been one for sentiment. Nostalgia was for dreamers, people who thought and never did. But where she once rolled her eyes at Hollywood nonsense, these days it took little to move her. A toddler walking next to her mother, or the sight of a ship departing, or a paraglider soaring over the archaeological digs. Yoga was to blame. In forcing her to look within, it pulled without.
They passed churches and petrol stations, dirt tracks off to mountain woodlands and signs to unpronounceable villages. In time they pulled up at a row of beachfront tourist shops peddling snorkels and swimsuits and rubber rings. Once the car was parked, Orestis’ brow creased. He scanned the surroundings, then walked up to o
ne of the spinners of baseball caps. He tried one on, turned for her approval, and handed the shopkeeper a five-euro note. ‘It’s hotter than I thought,’ he said to her. She smiled but said nothing, taking her own sunhat out of her wicker bag.
Peak season had yet to arrive, so the beach held only a half-dozen families and sporadic couples. They found a spot away from everyone. Orestis stood for a while, transfixed by the sparkling blue. She watched him. How blessed he was, whether he knew it or not. Despite his carefree image, the shorts and flip-flops, the shoulders loose, the white shirt hanging open, his head was busy. He searched the horizon as if expecting something or someone to appear there.
You could never fully grasp another’s life. You could never get inside their minds the way your limbs could enter their bodies.
He remembered she was there and turned to smile. She wanted to touch his face but stopped herself. There hung an unspoken agreement between them: no affection in public. He stripped to his snug black trunks and, to amuse her, ran into the sea with his arms spread out. The shades and baseball cap stayed on his head.
‘Come in!’ he called.
But she laughed and flicked her head no.
She watched him bob in the water, and she removed her shirt, sarong, sandals, and hat to lie back on her towel. The sunglasses too, so that she might feel the air on her eyelids, never mind if it bore salt and sand. Somewhere further up the beach, a child was pleading with its parents; their response was muted, tired. A perfect time to meditate. Skevi would. Instead, Darya’s limbs sank into the ground as if towards the centre of the earth. She stretched her toes into the warm sand. She wished to be alone, just her on the beach with the sun on her body. The light drumming on her eyelids, the water lapping at the sand. Dreaming of this, she drifted into sleep.
And then Orestis’ voice came tearing through. Something in Greek, phrases she couldn’t process. But a word she recognised, two, three. In her opened eyes stood a man, elderly and heavy, tan the colour of sandalwood. He was backing away and Orestis, dripping from the sea, was approaching. ‘Old man,’ that was what she’d heard him say. ‘What do you want, old man?’
Orestis stood tense, puffed out chest, face in shadow, hands turned to fists. The other man had left, mumbling, before Darya had even sat up on her elbows. She began to ask a question, barely formed in her head, when Orestis said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s OK.’ He grabbed his towel, wrapped it around his waist and took his wallet from his bag. She thought he was checking if they’d been robbed, as she ought to if that’s what the strange old man had been up to, but no — he merely took out some cash and said: ‘What flavour do you like?’
His head tilted towards an ice-cream van.
She was still too dazed to think. ‘No, no!’ she said. ‘I must not have sweets.’
But he only grinned and went off. And the thought alighted on her, moments later, that she ought to have paid. She would buy lunch to make up for it, and anything else he wanted. She was rubbing sunblock into her shoulder when Orestis returned with two towering ice cream cones. Banana and chocolate chip for himself, rose sorbet for her.
‘Sometimes you need a treat,’ he said and sat down beside her.
The rose was a welcome bolt, so fresh on her tongue. A treat, as Orestis had said. And in an instant, she understood. Orestis’ vanity, his ambition, his willingness to please. At some point in his life, he had struggled with his weight. It made sense. In this country, fatness, ugliness, were inexcusable. Deep scars never healed. Had she taught in Cyprus, she might have met a younger version of this beautiful man, with a belly hanging over his waistband, and he would still have been beautiful. Only less aware of it. How much of someone’s journey you missed when you met them along the way.
Another young man, European-looking, walked up the beach towards them. Orestis watched, not in the usual curious way of his compatriots, but with a certain wistfulness. She extended a hand to his thigh, only in consolation, only in understanding, a gesture she hoped might help him be kind to himself. He flinched. First, he looked around, then he gave her half a smile. He moved her hand with a shift of his thigh and left it to fall to the towel.
They got back in the car and drove to the Baths of Aphrodite, which disappointed her. A small waterfall in a rock pool where the goddess of beauty and desire had bathed. Where she was spotted by the beautiful Adonis. Ancient myths were too vast for daily life, they could not be contained to our geography, our buildings, our objects. Nothing on earth could reach the bar set by ancient tales. Orestis, on the other hand, looked dazzled by the water, and the twisted branches that swooped to protect it.
‘I forget that Cyprus is beautiful,’ he said.
She turned away from his pride. Her love for Belarus was equally strong, but she willed herself free of it. The devotion to a motherland dug as deep as any other, but it was the stupidest, most senseless of all. To be tied to the values of a group, to attribute a sense of identity to a mound of earth, a knot of rivers that had nothing to do with your personhood, was the surest way to lose your self. It made you a horse, broken in by a farmer and kept from roaming free. She’d been in Cyprus long enough to understand the devastation of clashing flags. She’d been raised under Communism, the taking of land and rights, the erasure of God. She’d been subjected to her father’s drunken ravings about Russia’s knife on Belarus’ tongue. It wasn’t people who’d been riddled with bullets and electrocuted on fences, it was ideologies. And tragedies became badges. The world saw Chernobyl as Ukraine’s cross to bear when the bulk of the damage was done to Belarus. But what did it matter? A group of humans had suffered. Others were to blame for it, others made it worse.
Enough. None of it, not armies, leaders, dictators, language nor faith, mattered to her anymore. If she could live alone in the entire world, she would. Like the goddess Aphrodite, she would bathe in the fresh water falling from the rocks, naked and divine. Only there wouldn’t be anyone watching, not even Adonis.
As they walked along the trail, Orestis relaxed enough to let her touch his arm. She bit her tongue. I pay you for this, she was about to say when he suddenly pulled her close to him. There in the wilderness, with no-one around but the spirits and creatures of the forest, he put his hand under her skirt and kissed her neck till she came. It made him happy, too.
Afterwards, they made their way to a cheap taverna. It sat on a cliff, overlooking a sea reddening in the sundown. They ordered their early dinner from laminated menus, she choosing the chargrilled octopus and he a chicken salad.
‘My babulia – my grandmother – she told me about Aphrodite,’ she said. ‘She liked to tell all the stories. Aphrodite and Adonis, Zeus, Odysseus, the… Who was the man, half bull?’
‘The minotaur,’ he said in Greek.
‘Yes! He was my favourite. For her also, I think.’
‘You loved her very much?’
She nodded. And she was grateful when he turned the conversation away from her.
‘I loved mine. She was like my mother.’
‘When did she die?’
He looked startled. ‘Last year. She was old, she had… many illnesses.’
And though he spoke casually, and folded his arms, she saw his glistening eyes and felt a pang in her heart.
Enough. This was too much intimacy. Stop this, she should say, as the responsible elder. Of course, she would pay him for the month, but then they must part. Lefteris would supply her with other young men. In fact, she should only have dealt with Orestis through him, as per the initial instruction. Stop this, start again. Meet other men, and only once a month, for sex and nothing else.
Orestis must have read her thoughts, for his expression changed. He lowered his fork. No, he was looking past her. Then he was forcing a smile, and exaggerating enthusiasm, as he rose from his seat to greet a person behind her. ‘Hey! What are you doing here?’
She spun to see a middle-aged couple walking towards them, holding out their arms for a quick peck on Orestis’ cheek. From the
rapids of dialect and tone and gesture, she surmised these were acquaintances or family friends. His baseball cap and sunglasses sat on the table. Her heart raced. But her mind cleared enough to hear Orestis introduce her as his aunt from England, whose Greek was next to nothing.
Acquaintances, not friends.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said the older man. His arm extended for a handshake.
She chose to respond in Greek with a single word: ‘Likewise.’ For once it didn’t matter that her accent was foreign. But might they realise her vowels were more Slavic than British?
‘We won’t bother you,’ the woman said, having kissed Darya on both cheeks. ‘We only wanted to say hi.’
‘Re!’ the man said to Orestis. ‘You’ve lost weight. Bravo!’
‘Such a handsome young man you’ve become,’ said the woman.
Orestis responded with a bashful dimpled smile.
She felt a tug at her heart. But she caught herself and looked away; the other woman had been watching her.
When the couple left them to their dinner, Orestis did his best to speak lightly as if Darya really was his English aunt.
‘That was one of my dad’s customers. They were in the Army together, ouf, years ago.’
But then he trailed off, and when the couple was safely out of sight his face changed. She saw the fear spread like tentacles over his face. The game was not a game. And in a place as small as this, perhaps sex would always come at a price, always with strings. Now was the time to end it. They both knew it was.
Four
The Sri Lankan must have thought her a bored old woman. Darya had taken to spending most of the daylight hours in the garden, slowly pushing her limbs to their limits and allowing her mind to clear in the silence. The time to be outdoors was a gift. She’d seen the swallows build their nests on the house. She’d watched the geckos scurry across the walls.
