The Way It Breaks

by Polis Loizou

  Days had come and gone. Orestis had messaged her after that afternoon at the Baths: I had a great day. But she was resolute. She let his message sit unanswered on her phone, and when she felt the urge to reply she would distract herself; by doing the groceries, or taking the car for its service. There was no doubt: she was a coward. All these years, she had thought herself defiant, independent, strong. She’d spat in the eye of both father and fatherland. But now her reflection showed a person who’d run away, abandoned mother and motherland.

  Movement, in the corner of her eye. Her head whipped to the garden wall, where next to a cypress danced a white orb, making noises. Not a trick of the light – a kitten, whose claw had got stuck in the trunk of the tree and was causing it to wail its troubles to the world. Darya lifted herself and ran to it. The kitten flinched and hissed when she held it, but she managed to work its paw free. Baring its teeth pathetically, it wriggled out of her hands and stood with its affronted back to her, fur mussed. She made encouraging noises but the kitten only stared with enormous eyes. She got into the cat pose and laughed. The kitten continued to stare. A white little thing, with blue-grey irises and an orange thumbprint over its nose and mouth.

  Strays were still poisoned here. People put out bowls of lethal food. Feeling a pang, she went into the house to fetch a pack of ham slices. She sat as close as the kitten could handle and held out a cool pink ribbon, which set its throat rumbling. It snatched the meat from her, making her gasp, and she watched as it nibbled away noisily. She stroked its spine, which excited its purring.

  ‘Where did you come from?’ she asked in her mother tongue. The words stuck in her throat.

  Aristos would never allow a pet in his house. But surely there was nothing wrong with feeding one here, in the garden, a space of which she had some kind of ownership, spiritual if not legal. She wasn’t willing to risk letting this creature eat from the wrong bowl, and have its life cut short by the whim of a larger being.

  ✽✽✽

  She’d started her game again. Around the aisles she went in Carrefour as the tension built up in her bladder. And all the while she was placing liquid soap, air fresheners, candles, napkins and fruit in the trolley with a deliberate pace. It wasn’t only the throbbing pain that hurt, but the enormous shame that she might lose control in public. A girl with a name badge arrived with a cage of stock to shelve. Darya went to the tills and the door before she could ask her where the toilets were.

  On the drive home, the pain became too much. She bent over the steering wheel, on the brink of passing out. With the backs of her hands, she wiped the sweat – or tears – from her face. She took an exit off the roundabout and kept turning till she found an empty plot. Bushes sprang from the earth and rubble. A construction site, either abandoned or never got going. She looked around first, then squatted, and felt the stab of relief.

  Finished, she stayed still and stared into space. She didn’t know what sort of person she was, what the point of her was ever to be.

  At least her father had had plans. That bile in his voice as she repeated scales, E flat minor, F sharp major, it had never left her head. She walked back to the Lexus. Having started the engine, she caught sight of a figure in the distance. A young man, brown, maybe a Turk, spray-painting onto the back of a care home an acronym she recognised from football shirts. He wore an Adidas hoodie and sweatpants whose waistband hugged his buttocks halfway down. Would it be so wrong to fuck a stranger? She could walk up to him now and he’d comply because men never said or heard no, and he could take her here in the open plot, against the car her husband had bought, on her hands and knees, by the throat, and not a word would pass between them, not even a cent.

  She had crossed a line with Orestis. Arrangement had become affair. In the beginning, it was perfect; she would give him orders to come and do as she wished when she wished it. Lick here, touch there. And he would. But the more they saw each other, the more he’d learned to call the shots. The goat was eating the wolf. How many female escorts got paid to have their way? How many of her former-Soviet sisters were enjoying themselves, satisfied by the hungry eyes of horny old toads in gentlemen’s clubs? More than likely they’d been brought to Cyprus by gangsters under false pretences, kept on their knees at gunpoint. To service pigs puckered with disease, and to have to be grateful for it. Darya was free, and free to have any man she wanted – any except her husband. Why pay for satisfaction? Here and now, with this young instrument spraying graffiti. Why not?

  Why. Not. She knew why her fingers remained on the steering wheel as if welded there. It was what she’d learned, what had come out of her in all those classes in Skevi’s studio and out in the garden beneath the gaze of the birds and the geckos: she was nothing but a coward.

  ✽✽✽

  Aristos was home that night. He took her to a taverna somewhere in the mountains, in one of those hundred tiny villages built by stone from a quarry, and whose only choice of an outing was food or church. In the black night, the smoke of cigarettes reached up to the lightbulbs strung from the beams. A table of Scandinavian tourists heaved with the spoils of mezze and Koumandaria. There was a waiter with a stylishly trimmed beard who caught Darya’s attention every time he passed. She felt nothing for him, it was a knee-jerk response, but Aristos eyed her with meaning.

  She embarked on the topic of the Paphos villas, to which he said, ‘Your Greek is getting better.’

  She shrugged and made her favourite gesture. ‘So-so,’ she replied.

  He was amused by her Cypriot pastiche. Then he answered her question. The island was doomed, it had got too expensive. Brits and other Europeans would be flocking to Turkey instead; similar landscape and culture and beaches for a fifth of the cost. And the way his countrymen were spending, living beyond their means, the banks’ ties to Greece— pe! A collapse was on the cards, he would bet his life.

  ‘That’s why I keep most of my money abroad,’ he said. ‘The business, too, move it all away.’

  ‘What about hotels?’ Darya asked, meaning his, here.

  ‘Their days are numbered.’

  ‘And people?’

  Aristos gave a sad shrug. ‘What can we do?’ he said.

  ‘Capitalist,’ she spat in Russian because she knew he’d understand.

  He laughed and drank his wine.

  ‘When there’s crisis,’ he started, before continuing in English, ‘you have to make your own destiny.’

  She sipped her wine, to excuse a silence.

  He reverted to Greek: ‘You have to ask yourself, How do I make money? What do I have that others would want to buy? Some people are more clever at figuring it out than others.’ And with that, he set his knife and fork down on his plate, and signalled the waiter for another glass of wine. The one with the stylish facial hair. Darya forced herself not to look.

  Five

  Every day after the first encounter, the kitten came to find her in the garden. That’s what you got for encouraging strays. But trouble never comes alone. What would this one bring? She found herself adding cat food to the shopping list, jellied hunks of fish and rabbit and duck that left amber blobs on her hands, which made her gag but the kitten purr. Such a heartwarming sound, with the power to reach inside you. Ahimsa.

  Orestis would be stewing. He’d be blaming himself for her lack of contact. That was if he wanted to pursue this; if he hadn’t been too shaken by bumping into that couple at the cliffside restaurant. For all she knew he had a black book full of clients, and fell into his own bed drained at the end of a night. What had that woman from Stockholm said? One of these men could handle two or three on his own? Aristos was almost right. It wasn’t just money you received in return for your assets. Of course, Orestis’ looks would get him plenty of that. But they also bought him respect, patience, status, trust… Things denied an ugly man. Things denied a beautiful woman.

  The kitten rubbed against her leg, its tail lifted. It arched its bottom to meet her fingertips.

  She took
out her phone to message Lefteris. If not him, then any of his friends – that catlike blonde from the boat. But her fingers were scrolling to the last exchange with Orestis, and before she knew it they were typing a day, a time and an order to come and make her happy.

  ✽✽✽

  The Sri Lankan had left for the day. As always, Orestis arrived on time. He stood at the doorway in chinos and a black shirt with the top two buttons undone. His face sagged. His hands were in his pockets. And was it her imagination, or did he look slimmer?

  ‘Hello,’ he said and ventured a small smile.

  Her reply was curt: ‘Upstairs.’

  His hand went towards her arm, then stopped. He did as he was told, the heels of his loafers tapping every marbled step in an upwards countdown.

  In the master bedroom, patchouli burned from incense sticks.

  ‘Take off your clothes.’

  He did so. Once they’d been discarded to the floor, his hand went straight to his stomach and hovered there. She felt sick, dizzy. He looked at her with eyes like a bad dog. So she gave him a smile, and the relief brought out his dimples.

  ‘On the bed.’

  He obeyed.

  ‘Lie down.’

  She walked to the dresser, and from one of its drawers removed two of her husband’s belts. Orestis flinched but his eyes glinted. An equal mix of fear and excitement made him stiff as she tied his wrists to the bed. If only she had something tighter than a belt. She stood by the balcony window, untouchable, and drew the curtains open. He tried to blink the sunlight away, so he could watch as she unzipped her dress. She let it slip to the floor. The breath built up in his lungs. The next part she did slowly: she untied the curtain sash from its hook on the wall and walked towards him, pulling it tense as rope in her hands. His body trembled as she neared. And when she put it to his eyes and tied it around his head, his gasp of a laugh made her want him even more.

  There he was, trapped like a rabbit. Here was his youth, pulsing back at the elements, his skin exposed and responsive – to the air, to her breath, to her fingers. Her Orestis.

  A ball of sadness turned inside her. Nothing lasted. Everything changed.

  Her head was a liquid, a gas, it wouldn’t solidify to help her stop.

  ‘A,’ said a voice from the doorway. ‘Hello.’

  The room went still.

  ‘Orestis,’ said her husband. ‘Welcome.’

  He ambled to the wardrobe, from which he took out a hanger.

  Darya’s hands clung to the naked man’s thighs, which rapidly cooled. The boy’s smile bent to bafflement, and his lips, once his brain had processed the other voice in the room, and to whom it belonged, twitched to form a sequence of words that never came.

  His wrists and fingers writhed like a mouse in a snake’s jaws. She helped to untie the belts, though they’d barely restrained him. Instead of whipping off the blindfold, he only brought his legs up to cover himself, too late already, and held his head, unable and unwilling to see what he had to face. All he could do, for a protracted minute, was mutter under his breath: ‘God have mercy.’ The patchouli filled her head with stars.

  Aristos placed his jacket on the hanger and tucked it back in the wardrobe before rolling up his sleeves. A man at the office. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  But for the first time since she’d met her husband, Darya felt a sprinkling of fear.

  ‘Leave us,’ he told her in Greek.

  Orestis raised his head, that ludicrous blindfold still wrapped around it. It shouldn’t have been like this, he would never forgive her. She lay her hand on his heart. Then she got up from the bed and left the room as instructed, his life still beating in her palm.

  Outside, the sun was being swallowed by the hills, leaving a trail of red blots. Darya found herself calling for the kitten in Greek, ‘Cat, cat, cat.’ As if the animal was restricted by linguistic borders. Who knew? But no kitten came running. There was only the hush of darkening walls.

  At least one border had been lifted, or at least softened; the arrangement was out in the open, if only within Aristos’ house. It was the end and the beginning, so she gave thanks for that. She looked up at the window of the master bedroom but saw nothing, not even a shadow. Aristos would be talking Orestis through the deal, as he would any contract. It brought a flutter of sickness to think of it like that, but that was what it was. She went to the seating area, where she lit the candles and enclosed them in their jars. Here, among the scattered cushions, was comfort. Here was quiet. She was here, and here was peace.

  She recalled the peace she’d expected to find in Berlin, peace being the elusive feeling of freedom. All there had been was a paper-chain of days, ready to tear at every glance over her shoulder. Who was that man? Had she seen that car before? Though she’d remind herself she was of no importance, that the KGB had more urgent tasks than to hunt down a provincial music teacher, she spent most hours of her week, whatever a week was in those days, unable to move or even open her mouth to eat. Her mother and babulia would assume her dead, or abducted. The sorrow she imagined on their faces and in their hearts made her ill. Her father might have guessed what had happened, but she could count on the silence of his shame. Every once in a while she’d feel a small sadistic glee at the irony of what he’d done to himself. How could he have guessed that those hours, years, at the piano or the cymbaly, yelling at her, slamming his fist against anything until she got the notes, got the scales, Enough! Again! over and over, would rear up to bite him as they did? He’d given her a ticket out. All it had taken was a visa to Poland with Tomasz, a concert of folk music by her and her students, to end his tyranny. That bottle in his hand would be the death of him, and her departure was its aid.

  She gave thanks for Frau Friedel, who had been a lifeline at a low ebb. Darya’s plan had been half-baked, concocted in the striking of a match on the train from Brest into Warsaw as her students laughed and joked. It had gone no further than finding somewhere to stay in Poland, never to return to Belarus.

  It went around in her head, that inscription in the fortress:

  I’m dying, but not giving up. Farewell, Motherland.

  Half-Polish, half-Russian Tomasz understood what she wanted and helped her to get it. He had acquaintances in Germany, fellow musicians. One of them would put her up. And one did.

  Frau Friedel came with numerous friends. Nights were filled with drink and song and laughter in that little apartment with those deep shadows in the corners. Days at Friedel’s café, and nights as a freelance translator, were easy compared with what had come before, and Darya thanked God every day for the mercy He had shown her. That was until she discovered forgiveness could be a guise for vengeance. The ghost of Maksim had followed her. She stared into those deep shadows in the corner of that little apartment until she felt one with them.

  Like a hard frost, the USSR had melted away. Belarus had been freed, her father had danced in front of his portable Junost. The Berlin Wall had come down, people had cheered and hugged each other. Everyone foresaw a future of peace, everyone except her. She’d come to the supposed West, she had crossed borders both physical and mental, but nothing had really changed, not inside her. One of Frau Friedel’s numerous friends led Darya down the path to Hamburg. There she would board a cruise ship, and become a cleaner for her foreseeable future. Former-Soviet women were known for their work ethic, and her excellent German would carry her over any bumps. Some nights she awoke to her fingers twitching. She put it down to the manual labour. She tried not to hear the yearning of the cymbaly beyond the gentle snoring of the three other women in her cabin, from outside the porthole, somewhere on that fathomless sea.

  It was on the ships where she got her first taste of Greek. Katya, the Ukrainian who shared a bunk-bed with her, had a Master’s in Greek literature and taught her a phrase or two. These varied in their usefulness. And then, like one card drawn after another from a pack, Life brought a giant of a man to her: a Cypriot by the nam
e of Aristos. She had grown tired of the restlessness of life at sea, the feeling of forever being adrift. Inspired by other colleagues, she began to look for work on land, in hotels. Cyprus was easy to get to, and it appealed: Aphrodite’s island, so small it was almost lost in the Mediterranean sea. Someone knew someone who had arranged a job for her as a hotel chambermaid. The hotel was run by Aristos. His first. He would own several more by the end of the decade. He liked to know all his staff, and for whatever reason had developed an affection for her.

  Before long he’d got his divorce, and begun negotiations with and about his daughter that would seemingly never end. Darya had prepared herself to sleep with the man, she was even looking forward to it. It amazed her that he’d never even broached the subject of sex but she put it down to honesty, old-fashioned values. It soon became clear that sex had never been Aristos’ goal. She heard the passion in his voice when he spoke of closing deals and forcing others into corners. He enjoyed tactics and persuasion, debate and mental athletics. He had a passing knowledge of dozens of subjects and even echoed her father in his passion for history and genealogy. But the one topic that gave him no physical or intellectual stimulus at all was love. She’d assumed his desire not to have more children was because his sole attempt had produced the gorgon Eva.

  She wondered at times if her husband was one of those men who lingered in bars to flick glances at the bartender. She noticed types like that, walking around particular coves in Speedos, and licking at dripping ice cream cones while peachy young Englishmen dived off the jetties.

  When Darya came to terms with her husband’s lack of libido, she resigned herself to living the rest of her life as an old maid’s soul in a kept wife’s body. She and Aristos had a civil ceremony with acquaintances for witnesses, and she was grateful for her family’s absence. Her urges could be suppressed, channelled elsewhere. And in the evenings, when she sat in the smoke of his pipe tobacco, she’d pull up images in her mental projector of men she had seen at the beach that day, the waves on their thighs or the wind at the necks of their shirts.