by Polis Loizou
Of his own accord, Aristos addressed her frustration. He suggested in a roundabout way that she sleep with a friend of his from the local council, a man so discreet that he’d barely uttered a sentence in the several years she’d known him. The proposal made her hairs stand on end. She turned the topic away and, to Aristos’ credit, it never came back – until the night of that associate’s birthday, when she met the Swedish wife of someone-or-other. Boys for rent, secret parties on the water… a new deck of cards had been spread on the table before her. A couple of hours later, the car lights sweeping signs and rocks along the highway, she confessed her interest to her husband. His response was a warm hand on her thigh, and a gentle squeeze.
She had brought a stranger to her husband’s house. She had undressed and enjoyed him. He was her one and only guest, with no determined length of stay. She had no idea what this would mean, for any of them. It felt in equal parts a transgression and a liberation. But that was the nature of borders; they were placed and lifted with little concern for tradition, connection, overlap. Walls were built and walls were destroyed. It didn’t matter who was where, and yet it was all that mattered.
Just as she wondered if she ought to go back inside, the patio door slid open and there loomed her husband. The living room light was on, the sun a mere memory. Nights fell so quickly here. Among the cicadas, she heard the sound of a car hacking itself awake. Orestis. The boy would go home, where he would lie in bed, reeling, and be ready to receive her call. In the meantime, he’d consider his future at the day job. Perhaps they would arrange the illusion of a transfer to another hotel, in Paphos perhaps, so as not to arouse suspicion among his colleagues. Or they might promote him to a higher position, in an invisible office, and allow glimpses of his presence every now and then for the sake of pretence.
Aristos came to her and stroked her cheek. And because he knew it was what she wanted to hear, he said in Greek: ‘Don’t worry. He’s fine.’
Six
The first thing Darya saw when she opened her eyes was the rainbow in Skevi’s hair. The AC whirred. Was this calm?
There was a second man in the class when usually there was only one. This new one was young, reminiscent of Orestis but more muscled. His brow also furrowed with self-doubt, as he struggled to position his limbs. In time he would learn to master it – if only he’d be kind to himself. At the end of the class, he went up to Skevi for a chat as if they were friends, which explained his sudden appearance. It could well be his last, a one-off trial as a bet or favour. Darya couldn’t help but glance at the couple’s body language, and the size of the young man’s arms. He must have been Maksim’s age.
‘Thank you,’ Darya said to Skevi in Greek as she headed to leave.
The man turned his hazy green eyes on her.
‘It’s nothing, darling, you’re perfect!’ Skevi replied in English. Then, in Greek, she introduced her boyfriend Pavlos.
‘How are you?’ His English was accented.
‘Good, thank you,’ she replied in Greek because the whole thing was ridiculous and how could she explain that to a stranger?
But Skevi seemed to understand. She laughed, her fingers wrapping around her lover’s huge arm.
✽✽✽
For the sake of discretion, he said, from now on Aristos would transfer payment to Orestis via Lefteris. It had been careless of Orestis and Darya to communicate directly. After the boy had had a couple of days to digest the information, Darya called on his services. As the hour approached, she felt a sense of doom. She trod to the front window, on the other side of which were muffled voices. One was Orestis’, and the other her neighbour’s.
Katina remarked that she’d seen his car several times and wondered whose it was. Nobody in the neighbourhood had a, she paused, Honda. Darya’s grasp of Greek came and went with her breaths. She caught snatches of their dialogue and processed some of it. She wished she could move closer to the window, to watch their body language, but the electric shutter was fully rolled up. She’d be exposed at once.
‘Doing some jobs,’ came from Orestis, and ‘For the Russian?’ from Katina. ‘Architect’ or ‘architecture’ in the neighbour’s whine of a tone, a stress on final vowels that made your skin retract.
In the window, a cypress was swaying in the wind. Things lived and died. Darya closed her eyes and breathed.
The doorbell buzzed.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Ioannidou,’ Orestis said as she answered, and pointed with his eyes towards the neighbour.
She went along with it and put on her teacher’s voice. ‘You are late.’
Shutting the door behind him, he pulled her in for a kiss, then laughed.
‘What did she say?’
‘Nothing, don’t worry. She thought I was a relative.’
‘Of me?’
‘Aristos.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I told her I was Eva’s cousin from England, and I came to Cyprus to do some jobs for my uncle.’
From the way he carried himself, it was clear Orestis was growing used to the idea of fucking his boss’ wife. Maybe his brain had compartmentalised what he was doing, added an extra duty to his job description: VIP service. Or, like so many other men, he longed to be half bull.
‘Why don’t you have any photographs?’ he asked one day. ‘I’ve never seen a house without family photos.’
She offered a near-truth: ‘I don’t like photographs with people. Only paintings with people.’
She’d ignore the betrayal in his voice, which crept in now and again to dampen the mood. Money was a balm for any wound, he’d soon get over it. But his voice had acquired an edge. Why the secrecy? Why not tell him from the start? She dodged not only his questions but her own. Why indeed? Why couldn’t she have told him that her husband knew? Why had Aristos insisted on concealing his identity? She didn’t want Orestis to view her as scheming, or calculating – whatever was associated with the bogeyman of her kind. Baba Yaga. ‘To keep simple,’ was her refrain, but even she cringed at that.
Moments later Orestis’ edge would fade, the hard light would pass from his eyes. By the end of the month, he was almost his old self. He talked to her in Greek as well as English and even tried to learn some Russian. More useful than Belarusian, she knew. But he had picked up some of her mother tongue as well and surprised her with it now and again. She gave him little gifts; a watch, which he received with a waning glow.
‘My dad will be angry when he sees it.’
‘Keep here,’ she said.
He liked bending her over the desk in her husband’s study, where tobacco lingered on the books and curtains. Afterwards, he’d spin the globe with a gentler finger, and point out all the places he longed to visit. Every so often, Aristos would walk in on them, wherever in the house they were. Sometimes he sat in the corner, watching, and she wondered if he felt anything about it. Orestis would get rougher. At other times Aristos would produce his camera, a Zenit he’d acquired from the Soviet bloc, and the click of the shutter, the whirr of the film inside, would make her heart stop. Orestis didn’t seem to mind. He would angle himself to the lens, turn his torso to the light. Satisfied, if that was what he was, Aristos would take his leave to sit in the living-room, mouth smoking with pipe tobacco, and pore over books of history and photos of old Cyprus. Orestis would let himself out of the house, the sound of his little car dimming in the twilight.
For the time being, Orestis would remain at the Harmonia. When Darya pressed the subject, Aristos only said, ‘Don’t worry. I have plans.’ It had taken Darya months to understand what his plan for her was.
Over the weeks, Aristos intercepted the boy as he took his leave and engaged him in conversation. At first, the talk was mundane; work and family, the day-to-day, football. Each time, the conversation grew a little more. On some nights Orestis cooked for them in the kitchen they barely used. It gave her a sense of pride to find him skilled in other ways – stupid, she knew, but there it was. Her lover could
make a three-course dinner and present it with a flourish. ‘You should add catering to your resumé,’ said Aristos. Was it meant to be a joke? Towards the end of the night, the men would end up side by side on the sofa, leafing through those big coffee table books of the Motherland before she birthed them. Her husband would indicate landmarks long-gone, copper mines long-abandoned, lakes that had evaporated, hotels that had been repurposed or left to be consumed by nature. He would talk of Northern Cyprus, now Turkish, which Orestis was too young to have known unoccupied.
‘Have you been?’ Aristos asked. The restrictions had been lifted, Southerners were free to cross the border and retread the ground they’d fled.
‘I can’t,’ said Orestis. His entire body clenched. He recalled those protesting cousins, killed on live TV as one tried to pull the Turkish flag down, and then the second to avenge the murder. ‘Also, my dad would kill me.’
‘Yes,’ Aristos said with a chuckle. ‘I can’t imagine your father would be happy.’
And it struck Darya that the men had a shared history, however weakly linked. Aristos had known Orestis as a child, as a growing teen, and now as a man. On these evenings, she indulged in a fantasy: if only they could live like this, the three of them. A perfect marriage, if far removed from her childhood mroya during lakeside sunsets.
But the dream was foam, it melted away. She was fifteen years his senior. Orestis would leave, and her husband would remain warm but detached. Darya would spend her days wandering around Lemesos, feeling ever more the stranger who never should have come in the first place.
Seven
It was a suggestion Aristos had made before, but it took her by surprise when he brought it up again: a cruise. They were strolling along the Molos with the crowds. It was Kataklysmos, and extra busy. Other countries’ customs were always odd – why celebrate a flood? Having run around in the afternoon blasting each other with water-guns, schoolchildren strolled along the lit-up boardwalk with their parents, stopping every so often at stalls of plastic toys and sweets. Kupala was on the next flip of the calendar page. She chased the thought away.
Her tongue was poking at the charcoal salt of corn-on-the-cob, which stuck both pleasantly and unpleasantly between her teeth when Aristos said with an easy air: ‘What do you say? How about a cruise?’
There was no reason he’d need to check with her. ‘All right,’ she replied in Greek regardless. ‘That would be nice.’
Her husband’s brow rose; the complexity of her phrasing was marginally better.
‘I have to confess: there is another reason I want us to go on this cruise,’ he said. ‘I want you to spend some time with Eva.’
‘Eva?’ A week, maybe more, on a boat, in the middle of the sea, with her wicked stepdaughter? ‘She will kill me.’
Aristos laughed. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be fine. I did her a favour when I gave Orestis a job. She owes me this.’
Darya picked at the salt in her teeth. So now she was a favour owed. Maybe it wasn’t too late to back out.
‘I told her she could bring a friend, to make things easier. She wants to bring Orestis.’ Aristos turned to her and smiled as if this news was good.
The moon was bright. It whistled at her, beckoned her thoughts to wander around it, circle it, before drifting off into the depths of the unknown universe, of which she was only a fraction of a morsel of a part.
Orestis would accept the invitation. That was a given.
✽✽✽
Aristos booked a cab to the port. He refused to leave either the Lexus or the BMW sitting in the briny air of the car park for a whole week. The AC was on full blast in the black Mercedes, and though she longed to ask the driver to turn it down she kept her mouth shut. The gleaming road signs passed overhead, along with the new flyovers, another thing she’d seen develop here, over time, over eras, still less than half her life, and as usual, she tried to mouth the Greek she managed to catch. Billboards announced the development of luxury flats and offices. Chinese families beamed at her from sparkling kitchens. New churches were rising from the parched hills, white, terracotta-headed giants.
‘More of them?’ Aristos muttered to himself. ‘Why bother with property developers when we have the Church?’
Before she knew it, they were nearing the port. Even though that wide blue strip made up every backdrop in Lemesos, there was a thrill about heading for the sea today, with the purpose of travelling on it, across it. The shadows of palm trees brushed the windows, and the jumble of glass-walled office blocks and grey plastered newsagents rolled by until all receded, and the landscape was whittled down to the bare essentials: the road, the port, the sea.
When she got out of the cab, the skin of Darya’s cheeks, nose and arms were prickled by the breeze. Inside, it was clear that nothing had been renovated in years – if ever. The terminal was heaving. Tanned bodies waited in long lines for the chance to go elsewhere and tan some more. Middle-aged men with huge bellies yelled unintelligible things at the staff. Suitcases landed on conveyor belts for a scan that nobody seemed to be checking. Children were preemptively dressed in T-shirts of windmills in sunsets or pharaohs’ death masks against pyramids. They ran around their mothers’ legs, the women sighing with hands on hips.
Aristos surveyed the room for two people. One was an acquaintance who would skip them ahead in the queue. Darya lowered her head. She recalled those hours in hospital waiting-rooms with her babulia, the feeling of relief when the old woman was finally seen to. The second person Aristos searched for was his daughter, who would bring enough luggage to sink the ship.
Time being nothing but a vague concept to her, Eva was always late. Days became nights, with iced coffees along the way. If she missed the embarkation, oh well; Aristos and Darya could spend a week roaming the Islands alone. The nautical miles might help to sever this rope.
Across the room was a familiar light: a rainbow of hair. Skevi. Darya squirmed at the thought of the woman spotting her, of having to introduce her instructor and husband. Some worlds were best kept apart. Next to Skevi was a young man, stroking the small of her back while the straps of both their duffel bags strained at his shoulders. The muscular boyfriend with the hazy green eyes. They might all end up on the same boat.
‘There they are!’ came Aristos’ sudden voice. He waved at his daughter and Orestis.
Darya was thankful for her sunglasses. She was even thankful for Eva’s, though the girl’s pout could be seen from Greece.
As he walked up to them, Orestis gave an enthusiastic greeting. They were supposed to be strangers.
Aristos was quick. ‘How are you, son? It’s been months.’
‘Yes, yes…’ said the younger man. ‘The party at the hotel.’
Orestis flicked a glance at Darya. If only he hadn’t.
‘Let me introduce you to my wife. Orestis, Darya.’
‘What a beautiful name,’ said Orestis.
The comment surprised her. She was careful to smile just enough. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said in Greek.
Eva’s eyebrows flew over her sunglasses.
Emboldened, Darya went for it. ‘Hello, Eva,’ she said. ‘Are you well?’
The girl sipped on her iced coffee. ‘A dream.’
Containers sat waiting to be loaded onto cargo ships. Cranes lifted their necks like giant metal birds and gulls squawked around them, fighting over soggy scraps in the water. Darya steeled herself; for the sight of the ships, for the sea itself, the connector of all her lives. Separation and union. From Cyprus, you could feel the breath of Turkey, whose head touched the Black Sea, who reached up to Ukraine, whose fingers intertwined with Belarus. Closer to Lemesos was Syria, Lebanon. Those poor souls, fleeing the destruction of their world and their selves. Like the victims of Chernobyl. Not only the dead, but those who mourned them. The farmers whose land was suddenly worthless. All she’d had to suffer was her father’s words, her fear, her sorrow, and a nose blocked to the bleach she had poured down toilets in cabins and hotel s
uites.
Maksim’s suffering was not her own. Those coloured dots had not been on her skin, those fevers not in her head. The pain she felt was only selfishness. Here she was, fine, with everything she could ever need.
Eva was first to go up the gangway. Orestis, the gentleman, stepped aside for Darya and spread his arm so she would go ahead. She watched her feet on the white iron steps, raised her eyes to Eva’s behind, which had reduced in size – but not much – since she’d last seen her. The girl might even wear a bikini.
Just like that, it came to her: Eva loved Orestis.
Within the next few years, they might even be married. That was Aristos’ plan.
Darya steadied herself on the railings. She barely breathed a hello to the pleasant girls in uniform that welcomed her aboard. Welcomed her into the lobby, where the polished wood of the reception desk, the surrounding pillars, the curved staircases, their marbled steps, the light filling the tall windows, floor after floor after floor above them, made her head spin. She would lose herself in here.
‘Is this how your one looked?’
Eva was talking to her. It took a moment for Darya to understand. Phrases rushed through her head in Greek. Instead, she settled on a gesture: a wave of the hand and a smirk that said as if.
Eva laughed, despite herself.
Maybe Aristos had been telling the truth. By being forced to spend time with her stepmother, Eva might demote her hatred to apathy. And Orestis, with his kindness and courtesy, might prove to be the key between their locked doors.
Or this would be a disaster. They might trip up. Eva would smell the truth between the prince and the witch. She might be sensitive to auras, shared glances, changed inflexions. Aristos always had been a gambler. But one thing was certain: whatever the outcome of this holiday, Darya would remain the antagonist. Baba Yaga.
