A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible

by Christy Lefteri

  ‘I think of you all the time,’ Richard called out to her, and just then she stopped, wavered for a moment and turned back to face him.

  ‘I saw you smoking,’ she said precisely, as though she had remembered it from English grammar classes.

  ‘Yes,’ Richard replied.

  ‘I like one,’ she continued and walked back towards him. Richard fumbled in his jacket pocket, took one out, handed it to her and lit a match. In the light of the flame he looked at her face: at her eyes, at the soft curve of her nose, at the wisps of hair about her neck, at that red glow in her cheeks, at her chin and her lips and again at her eyes. The flame reached the tip of his fingers and he threw it to the ground. Marianna lowered her cigarette and he leant in and kissed her. It was a longer kiss this time, and he reached up and touched her hair and her shoulders, but she suddenly stepped back and looked at him hard in the eyes. There was a look on her face, one that Richard did not understand. Was it fear, regret? He wasn’t sure and all she said was ‘Thank you’, and this time walked off and left him standing there alone with the sound of the crickets.

  Someone grabs his shoulder and Richard comes to his senses with a start. Paniko stands above him, smiling. ‘You were either being killed or fucked,’ Paniko chuckles, but Richard does not reply and Paniko asks if he would like another coffee. Richard says no and then leans back onto the window again. His memory returns to that night, a little later, while walking home with his jacket in his hand and his cap wonky on his head.

  Richard proceeded to walk back to the base, but decided to go the long way, along the harbour where the white boats were as still as the fingernail moon. Warehouses full of fruit, awaiting export, lined the harbour and the smell of the carobs engulfed him. He untied his boots and sat down, swinging his tired feet round and allowing them to dip gently into the water. How soothing it felt. How he loved this place at night. God, how he loved the peace of the rippling waves and the silent little boats that circled the harbour like people at a table.

  Something soft brushed against his fingers. A grey, emaciated cat with large cave-like ears and lemons for eyes. Its back arched into a ‘Stroke me’ position and then a purr as soft as the breeze. ‘Shoo,’ said Richard and flicked his hand, but the cat strolled round him and rubbed its head on his knee. ‘Bloody vermin!’ he exclaimed and tried again to push the cat away, and then laughed at the contrast with his aunt’s pampered tabby in England.

  ‘You know why they so ugly?’ said a voice behind him. Richard spun round to see an old man sitting on one of the chairs of the closed harbour café. He smoked a pipe and wore the traditional black breeches that puffed at the knees. He held the pipe in one hand and flicked worry beads in the other. The flicking of the worry beads was muted by the sound of the crickets. White noise in that darkness. The old man rested his pipe on the table, lifted his walking stick that was leaning on the chair and tapped it a few times on the floor. The cat meowed and strolled towards him with its tail in the air. ‘About hundred years go, after long drought, the cats were shipped from Egypt for kill snakes.’ The old man leant the walking stick back against the table and dropped his hand so that it dangled between the legs of the chair. The cat touched his finger with its nose. Richard winced with disgust; back in England it would be like stroking a rat. ‘Vermin, they say,’ continued the old man, ‘but without these cats Cyprus would be full with snakes.’ The wind purred over the white sails of the boats.

  The old man brought his hand back to the table, picked up his pipe and relit it. A halo of smoke was carried away by the wind, and the musty tobacco mixed with the smell of lemons and jasmine.

  Richard looked at his watch. ‘What are you doing here on your—’

  ‘I like here at night better,’ the old man interrupted. ‘It no matter where I sit at night.’

  Richard knew immediately what the old man was referring to. The three cafés along the port front each had a different clientele. There were no signs, but everybody knew. The Greek Civil War had started and the people in Cyprus were equally divided between pro-royalists and pro-Communists. Richard knew that the British openly backed the royalists in order to restore the monarchy in Greece. The café on the left was mainly for the left-wing Communists, the one on the right for the right-wing royalists and the one in the middle for the Turks. ‘This, how you say? Political crap. Their mind been taken by the wind and by ideas that not serve them. The stupid thing that these youngsters not know is together they make a bird.’ The old man balanced the pipe between his lips, and with his hands joined at the thumbs mimicked the flight of a bird. Then he put the pipe onto the table and spat phlegm into a white handkerchief.

  ‘I’ll walk you home,’ said Richard.

  ‘Pah, I know these streets if I was dead,’ said the old man, standing up, balancing himself onto his stick and walking off slowly along the harbour, past the fruit warehouses and towards the town. The cat stayed behind.

  Richard stood up and allowed his feet to dry on the road, then, slipping his socks and shoes back on, followed the old man’s footsteps back to the town. The cat followed too. As he walked he thought of Marianna and the old man’s words. As much as the Greeks had accepted him and loved him, he was still an outsider, and beneath the dancing and the bubbling conversations, the people of this town were still divided. He wondered then what could ever become of him and Marianna. Could he ever really have her?

  His bedsit at the British base in Kyrenia was small and old with just a cast-iron single bed and a bedside table with a basin and a terracotta jug, but it had a little balcony that overlooked the hills. At this time of night the hills were black and buzzed with crickets. Richard unbuttoned his shirt and hung it on the balcony. He slapped a mosquito from his arm and took off his boots, feeling the cool white of the flagstones beneath his feet. A breeze blew, carrying the smell of red soil and cattle. Richard leant over the balcony and thought about the kiss. Despite the fact that he knew the problems that could arise, he ached to see her again, and with the thought of her lips and the taste of red wine and the smell of red soil his eyes began to close and he walked over to his bed, let his body drop and drifted off immediately. The cat slept on the floor beside his bed.

  In the present, a door slams, another costumer comes into the café and Richard’s head vibrates on the window. He looks around and realises that the café is now almost full. Paniko has replaced his old coffee with a new one, but he had not even noticed. He leans back on the window and remembers how the next morning he had woken up an hour too early with the cat sitting on his face. Irritated, he threw it off and washed himself in the basin. He decided to take a short walk to the harbour for a cup of coffee and a cold glass of water.

  Women with trays, sitting on wicker chairs, lined the streets where the houses offered a respite from the sun. Some snapped beans, others rolled wheat into fingers, others chopped, others peeled, others folded mince into vine leaves. And the street smelt pleasantly of onions and coriander and aubergines. A few stopped and waved at Richard, who smiled and continued past the houses and along the path that overlooked the wheatfield. Here, amongst the gold of the wheat, women with colourful headscarves were dotted throughout the field like flowers. Each carried a tray and bent her head from the sun.

  When Richard finally reached the harbour it was not surprising to see that the old man was not at any of the three cafés. Richard walked to the pro-royalist café, as this was where he was expected to sit, but spotting his friend Paniko at the pro-Communist café, he hesitated and walked towards him. Paniko was rolling a cigarette, with a steaming cup of Greek coffee on the table. Richard sat down and saw a few looks of disapproval from the neighbours. Paniko, then an apprentice farmer, was the same age as Richard; his skin was dark and black hair flopped haphazardly over one eye. He wore a white shirt that was creased and stained and rolled to his elbows.

  ‘You need a wife,’ said Richard, stopping to order a coffee from the waiter. Paniko looked down at his shirt.

 
; ‘New shirt is what I need,’ replied Paniko, ‘they are paying me … kounes.’ He picked a peanut out of the little bowl and held it up to indicate what he meant. Richard smiled and Paniko threw the peanut into his mouth.

  ‘You coming to Pente Mile tonight, for the banairi?’

  ‘Why not?’ said Richard, drinking his coffee as soon as it arrived so that he burnt his tongue and accidentally drank some of the chalky residue at the bottom.

  ‘You no learn how to drink coffee yet. Us Cypriots take time slowly. No rush. Where’s the fire?’

  Richard laughed, ‘And that’s why you earn koubes. I’ve got to get back to base.’ He tapped his friend on the back and left a shilling on the table.

  Paniko shook his head. ‘You English will work yourselves into an expensive coffin.’

  ‘See you tonight, my friend,’ said Richard, and Paniko nodded his head and sipped his coffee.

  ‘By the way,’ Paniko called after him, ‘the real word is kounes! Koubes is wheat stuffed with mince! Bloody Englezo!’

  That night Richard arrived at the fair with two other soldiers who immediately disappeared into the crowd. Richard continued alone along the path between the stalls, weaving through people and cats and running boys with catapults. An old man with a bouzouki played music while men threw stones at Coca-Cola bottles and women looked at lace that draped and shimmered over tables and the younger girls stood in small groups drinking homemade lemonade and looking at the young men that passed. Scarves and skirts hung, as if from the sky, in a multitude of colours, creating the burlesque of a theatre-like lavishness, where below the curtains, dramas dripped only from the mouths of the women. Cypriot men always said that the women made a flea into the size of a camel. And although Richard agreed that there was plenty of truth in this, he also perceived that the men did the same and thought that the size of the island and a definite megalomania was accountable for this.

  On the far left some English soldiers drank wine, but Richard ignored them and continued past the nut stall that was laden with trays full of almonds and pistachios and pecans; past the toy stall with rag dolls, china dolls, marbles, hand-made puppets, wooden cars and other wooden creations, and past the traditional clothes stall where burgundy Greek dresses with white lace hems and white petticoats hung on wire hangers in all sizes and varieties of red.

  Hoping to see Paniko sitting in one of the food areas, Richard ordered a ‘metrio’, which he had learnt was a Greek coffee with one sugar and wandered round the little plastic tables where families sat eating syrup-laden baklava with small forks. He sat at one of the tables and listened to a man who spoke with a loud voice and grandiose hand gestures. He could not understand the story that was told, but watched intently the dip of his hands and swoop of his fingers. He could not help but notice the fierce lift of his eyebrows, accompanied by a knocking back of his head when asked a question by a younger man at his table. Richard knew that this latter gesture was commonly used to affirm the negative. The man paused for a moment and then continued with his anecdote. Richard thought it was not surprising that these people needed a siesta, with all the energy they used to talk.

  He then looked down at his coffee and resisted the desire to down it in one as he was so used to doing. Richard decided he would take his time for once and brought it up to his lips slowly and delicately, first inhaled the aroma and then savoured the chalky kaimaki on his lips. A soft breeze, that carried with it the smell of fried sweets and jasmine and lemon, touched his face. The night was soft and balmy and the coffee sharp and sweet on his tongue. His shoulders relaxed and he melted further into his chair. He could definitely get used to this.

  Just then someone pushed his shoulder and then grabbed his arm. ‘My friend!’ announced Paniko. ‘Come quick, now!’ Richard, still holding the damned coffee, was forced to stand. ‘But …’ he resisted, looking into his un-drunk coffee.

  ‘It is time for the dance. We can look at girls.’ Paniko sniggered like a schoolchild and Richard was forced once more to down his coffee in one go. So much for taking it easy, he thought, as he followed Paniko into a dense crowd. All stood gossiping and looking at the empty centre of the circle. Then a man in traditional breeches entered the ring, followed by three or four other men who stood around him. The man in the middle remained serious and raised his arms like a magician or religious leader or politician; it was hard to tell which in this day and age, thought Richard.

  The man then raised his arm and clicked his fingers imperiously, and an old man with a bent moustache started playing the bouzouki and singing in a voice that the cats couldn’t tolerate, scuttling away between people’s feet. Then the dancer smacked his lips, clicked his heels and started kicking his legs and turning, almost in time with the music. The crowd cheered and clapped. Then two men, that were now standing on either side of him, repeated this leg-kicking fiasco, before standing together and bowing.

  ‘This is the good bit,’ said Paniko, nudging Richard. The man in the middle bowed again, swept back a strand of black hair from his face, clicked his fingers again and then flicked his hand, so that the crowd parted, making an aisle. The music resumed and five women, dressed in traditional Greek dresses and red headscarves, danced into the crowd. Holding hands, like schoolchildren singing ‘A Ring o’ Roses’, they formed a circle and moved their feet simultaneously in little kicks and steps. Richard watched as the women turned slowly and purposefully and suddenly caught a glimpse of something that made his face turn involuntarily red; something the Greeks always seemed to find amusing. It was that thick hair that spilled out of the headscarf disobediently and touched her olive, apple-shaped cheeks, as she hopped and kicked and turned. Against all his best efforts Richard’s heart beat faster as he watched her. Paniko continued staring at the other women; he had found this opportunity to stare at women longer than what was normally socially acceptable. Paniko bit his lip. And Richard, too. Sensible, controlled Richard was somehow now afraid that he was in love with this woman with the black hair, as she spun so beautifully before him. These damned Greeks are rubbing off on me, he thought, what with the coffee and now this.

  It was later, yes, much later when the night was almost white with stars and the waves far below powdered onto the shore and the people that remained sipped whisky and threw dice onto backgammon boards or packed unsold pashminas and headscarves and toys into boxes for next time. It was much later, while Richard walked the now empty and therefore much shorter length of the stalls with a cigarette in his hand, that he saw her again. She was talking to an older woman behind the nut stall. Her fingers danced about her as she spoke passionately and the woman nodded and bent down to retrieve a basket from the floor. She suddenly turned and winked at Richard as if she had already noticed him, and then without hesitation signalled to the trees. Richard looked behind him self-consciously; they would kill him if they saw. An English man with a Greek woman! They would take out his insides and put them in one of those disgusting lemon-gelatine mixtures they so seemed to enjoy. He suddenly had a grotesque image of his eyes floating with the pig’s eyes within this mass of discarded bits of apparent delicacy, in a clear jar, encased in off-white jelly. When he came to his senses again he realised that she was no longer standing there and so proceeded towards the trees.

  ‘Reading the future!’ called an old woman suddenly from a table.

  ‘No, thank you,’ Richard said and continued to walk.

  ‘Sometimes when you look inside you find that there is a different gift to the one you were expecting to find.’

  Richard turned around. She was dressed in black and held a steaming cup of Greek coffee over a white tablecloth. On the table there was a folded piece of card with the words ‘Tasseomancy – Kafemandeia’ on it. ‘Drink,’ she said, holding up the cup so that the steam slightly masked her face and her white crooked hand stretched out, knobbly and rumpled. Her eyes were small, buried amongst deep creases and her nose had a large pale mole on the side. She suddenly reminded him of the wicked
witch holding the apple in Snow White, and he stepped back slightly at the realisation of this strange resemblance. ‘I tell you tomorrow,’ she said ambiguously, lowering the cup. ‘My house by the church. Come.’ Richard hesitated for a moment, propelled by the intense look in her eyes, but did not reply and looked over towards the trees as he saw Marianna disappear into the foliage. As he turned away from the old lady, passing beneath the arch of the first tree and entering the pounding darkness, he heard the whisper of her words, ‘Many moons will pass before you get yours.’

  He felt a touch on his shoulder. He spun around and saw particles of Marianna’s face in the darkness. She lifted his cap and touched his hair. This time she did not laugh, but smiled and kissed his forehead. He ran his hands down her arms and then through her hair. She stepped back and he was afraid that she would leave but instead she slowly unbuttoned her dress and allowed it to fall to her feet and they lay down together in the midst of the fig trees. They made love and then they lay on their backs, side by side, staring up through the trees at the stars. Where their hands met in the middle, she moved her fingers ever so slightly over his. Her touch was so gentle, almost non-existent, elusive, like wind passing. He turned his face towards her and stared at her side profile. She did not turn to look at him; she continued to stare up at the sky. ‘To others you are hero, a knight,’ she said. ‘To me you dragon. You breathe fire on everything. You capture people. You got me.’ She turned now to look at him. Her eyes shimmered. Her words were just as obscure as her touch. Richard looked back at her, but did not reply. She turned completely onto her side to face him. ‘I could put my head on your chest and drop sleep there,’ she said and she closed her eyes. She did not put her head on his chest and she did not say another word, but Richard rolled on his side and stroked her hair for what seemed like hours. He did not want to move, he wanted to be close enough to feel her warm breath and smell the sandy orange of her skin.