‘Sour grapes,’ the soldier says. Adem swallows hard. Acid rises to the back of his throat.
The soldier opens his hand again; the lines on his palm are like paths in the candlelight. Blood moves through a vein. It whispers as the river does. Adem hears it, swirling in his ears.
‘Be my guest,’ the soldier says. He smiles and hands him the candle. Adem takes it reluctantly. He hesitates and bends down. His trouser legs rise and the priest’s shoes glimmer in the light. He shuffles closer to the bodies.
Adem moves the flame over still faces. Their features stony and unmoving; grotesque chimeras on a hidden wall. The light drifts across the figures, unreal and grey in the shadows. Eventually Adem sees Engin’s face staring up at him. ‘What have you done to him?’ Adem calls and his voice bounces off the walls of the basement. He stands and walks closer to the other soldier. ‘How did this happen?’ he says, quieter now, but the soldier stares at him silently. Adem is enraged, he gnashes his teeth and clenches his jaw. His hands tighten into fists. He looks at the pathetic little man and stares at his stupid eyes. Bitter tears sting the back of Adem’s eyes and he holds his breath. He looks back at the pile of bodies. ‘Engin,’ he whispers, shaking his head. Adem kneels down again and looks at his friend closely. His arms and legs free of anxiety now. He leans forward and closes Engin’s eyes, then he looks again at the soldier, who is standing in darkness behind him. ‘Serkan is killing his own people?’ he asks.
‘He is getting rid of the ones that don’t belong here. If our army is to be strong we need to get rid of the weak ones,’ the soldier says definitely. ‘They were useless traitors. A hindrance, we could hardly even call them men.’
Adem stands up and moves right up to the soldier’s face. His hand twitches. He could kill him, he could strangle him right here and now in this dark basement, to get rid of the real scum of this earth. Adem looks into his fear-stricken eyes in the candlelight and backs away. He straightens his jacket and his trouser legs so that they fall neatly over the shoes. He hands the candle to the soldier. It lights up his face. The soldier stares at Adem and then coughs and looks at his jacket pocket. ‘You promised me something,’ he says. Infuriated, Adem grabs the bottle and shoves it into the soldier’s hand. The soldier smells it, smiles and gargles the whole lot down to the last drop, then he smacks his lips.
*
Serkan sits alone on a throne in the abandoned church. He has bolted the door. The icons on the wooden stands have been removed so that the step onto the aisle seems bare and lacks the warmth of the Virgin Mother and Child. There are no candles or shrines or books, he has taken them all away. On the floor is a bucket of blood and a wet cloth. The grandeur of the walls has been washed away with a coat of this blood, and now the church stands, merely a house, robbed of its memories. From the mere darkness of the blood, the sudden poverty of images and impoverishment of life and stories, the church stands as if without walls and Serkan sits as if in some Protestant nightmare; but in fact with no religion at all, although he will still not drink the wine in the bottle beside him.
He cannot hear the outside world. Not the crickets or the marching or the bombs or the rolling sea. He can only hear the ticking of clocks. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen small clocks and pocket watches; each from a different house, all in the church now, ticking manically, frantically, hastily. He had taken one with each victory, snatched it from the mantelpiece or from the pocket or wrist of a dead man and carried it back to the barracks as an emblem of his continuing life. Now tick-tocking, tock-ticking. Mockingly chattering constantly; filling the church with a stagnant sense of time. And motionless. Motionless. Motionless it spins. And these mechanical beings, with round faces that create a string of regularity across the town, now beating together, show the real chaos beneath. As if there is no time. Or that time does not exist. And these clocks beat the air as the crickets do, and thrash the silence, as the waves do, and in amongst all the noise, somehow create peace. As the war does. He cannot smile. He is immovable now. His arms and legs are heavy rocks. He looks at the hands of the clocks moving.
And copious are those black waves of time. In that dark space. Deep as light. Time rises and falls. Rises up as heavy as heat and falls as light as rain so that the mind and the stomach cannot help but do the same. In this turmoil, this is the place where the soul can get lost, where one is fool enough, or human enough to think that it is in fact time that is rising and falling.
He stands up. The clocks capture him and force him to be still. The tick-tocking calls at him and freezes time and life so that through the window the waves in the distance are still and sculpted from ice and the boats hang frozen above, like sparkling ornaments with unmoving crystal sails, and the sky is made of glass and around him the heat hardens into small shimmering droplets. And the outside world has been stained onto this window and frozen still to compensate for the walls inside. And if he moved, but just an inch, this world would break into clear blue shards of sky and sea and heat.
A drop of sweat forms on his forehead and slides down his cheek. He clenches his jaw and grinds his teeth. There is a knock at the door that resonates and echoes through the church. Hesitates for a moment and walks down the aisle. He stops in the middle of the aisle and twists his belt to make sure it is straight. He touches his collar and puts one hand in his pocket so that his jacket lifts slightly in a relaxed manner. He continues to walk and opens the door in that stance, but his shoulders drop when he sees who it is. A soldier enters and heads down the aisle; there is an air of overfamiliarity in the way he enters and a distinct lack of the fear that grips the other soldiers. ‘We have another witness to the dead in the basement. If that doesn’t knock them into shape, nothing will.’ The soldier looks for a moment at the bloodstained walls, but does not mention it. He is not surprised by it. He lifts his longer arm up to his smooth face and holds his chin. He takes a breath and looks out of the window at the swaying sea. ‘We’ll run out of men if we continue this way,’ he stammers very slightly, but covers it with a cough. ‘Apparently, other groups have succeeded without taking such measures, maybe we—’
‘Enough,’ says Serkan, ‘this is my herd and I have enough experience to know how to discipline my men. To steer them in the right direction. Didn’t Aba teach you enough?’
‘Dad was a shepherd, you are a commanding officer.’
‘Yet somehow, Hasad, we followed the same path,’ replies Serkan.
Hasad taps his foot on the stone floor, adding an extra rhythm to the beating of the clocks. From the top corner of his mind a flock of sheep descend like white birds and fill up the blackness with an immense white glow. He holds his temples and shakes his head to dispel the image. From the altar he picks up a pocket watch, holds it in the palm of his hand and looks at the time; the dial glimmers in the sunlight. He then turns it over, winds it, attaches the chain to his jacket and slides the watch into his pocket.
‘Maybe you should have stayed home, your back is fragile, Mum was right.’ Hasad looks at the bucket and nods.
‘But even if we get rid of them all, they won’t disappear,’ he persists. ‘They will live on here, even without these walls.’
‘The Turks deserve—’ begins Serkan.
‘Look,’ Hasad intercepts, ‘it’ll be dark soon and I’ve got things to do.’ He winks reassuringly at him and walks back down the aisle, leaving his brother to slump back into the throne.
Paniko comes out of the kitchen; he has finished cleaning for the afternoon. ‘Ena café?’ he asks Richard, and Richard nods. Paniko disappears into the kitchen again and appears a few minutes later with two coffees and a fresh bowl of crushed green olives and a plate of koubes. Paniko puts them on the table, takes off his apron and tosses it onto the back of another chair. Richard takes a cigarette from the packet on the table, strikes a match, lights it, waits for the smoke to engulf him and lifts the steaming coffee. He smells it first, then sips the golden kaimaki, the bitter froth that gives it that golden-brown colour
. Paniko looks at him. The coffee beneath is smooth and thick and sweet. Richard puts the cup back into the saucer, drags hard on his cigarette, flicks the ash into the ashtray onto a picture of Cyprus and takes an olive from the bowl. Outside, the drizzle has turned into a heavy rain. Above an off-licence, a red light flashes expectantly, but the streets are quieter now, only an old Englishman stands at the bus stop opposite beneath a black umbrella.
‘So you liked Marianna,’ Paniko says, pointing at the plate of koubes on the table indicating for his friend to eat, but Richard raises his hand, gesturing no. They sit like this for a while as Paniko squeezes lemon juice into the mincemeat filling of his koubes, eating and drinking coffee almost simultaneously. He finishes his coffee and slumps into his chair with his arms crossed.
Richard leans over towards Paniko’s side of the table and touches his coffee cup. Paniko is not sure what Richard is doing but watches intently as Richard lifts it, takes the saucer and places it, overturned, onto the top of the cup. Holding both tightly together, Richard with one fluid movement, overturns them and places them neatly back on the table. ‘What are you doing?’ says Paniko, disbelievingly. Richard ignores him, rotates the cup three times and stares out of the window. They sit like this for a few minutes and Richard lifts up Paniko’s cup. The sound of the saucer breaks the silence when it unglues from the rim, making Paniko jump by its mesmerising and familiar sound. Richard brings it closer to his face and peers in. Paniko smiles bemusedly. ‘Since you been back you have been the driest man I ever meet.’
Richard looks seriously at Paniko, but Paniko forces a smile again and bites another chunk of a kouba. Richard ignores his reaction and continues, ‘Tasseography has been practised for centuries, not just by the Greeks.’
‘Eh, who did you learn from?’ says Paniko, in an arrogant voice.
‘A Greek,’ says Richard, frustrated that his answer has given Paniko a smug smile. Richard is not going to let Greek megalomania ruin what he has been trying to say. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about Marianna. Her spirit, beauty and passion had captured me beyond comprehension.
‘One night she was gone. She totally disappeared. I was so desperate to find her. I don’t know what I was expecting. I didn’t care, I just had to see her. I’d walk around day and night, anywhere where I thought she might be, but nothing. I even asked your grandmother and she told me that she had not seen her or her mother. So I went to see Kyria Amalia, a fortune teller that I had met at the festival,” continues Richard, as Paniko raises his eyebrows. ‘Don’t patronise me. I don’t even know why I went. It smelt of chickens and coffee and she led me through her living room into the back garden where we sat beneath the lemon tree. She left me there while she went inside to make the coffee and a few minutes later I watched her walking slowly to me with the coffee trembling in her hand. She placed it in front of me, sat down and watched me intently while I drank it. We sat in silence for a while.’ Paniko shakes his head slightly, but Richard takes no notice. ‘And a little bit of something else, a bit of the sea had entered my blood. Every aspect of it, including its madness, or magic, or whatever you like to call it.’
Paniko takes a cigarette from the box and lights it. Richard’s eyes look heavy now, full of unshed memories. Richard pauses, contemplates and sips his coffee. ‘When I finished the coffee, Amalia ordered, with the flick of her hand, for me to turn the cup upside-down and spin it three times, clockwise, in the saucer.’ At this, Richard throws back the rest of his coffee and then performs the action with his own cup and saucer. ‘And then she watched me in silence for what seemed like a very long time and when she was ready, and no moment sooner, Amalia read my life in this cup.’ Richard stops there, and Paniko represses a frown, stubbing his cigarette into the ashtray and resting his chin on his hand. Richard rubs his own hands as if he is washing them slowly and looks momentarily out of the window. The rain is now heavier and a grey loom falls into the café like a shadow. ‘She looked into the cup then into my eyes and back into the cup. She tipped the cup into various angles, pointing into it and muttering to herself. She then told me that I was to meet a beautiful woman with dark hair and that I would live in the shadow of a big clock, and that I was a soldier. Even though I wasn’t wearing my uniform that day I had heard enough, this old bag wasn’t going to insult my intelligence. I stood up, reaching into my pocket to leave her an undeserved tip. But then she stretched out that bony hand of hers and …’ Richard paused again. When he continued, his voice had a heavier tone as though he were reciting an old poem. ‘She told me, like the witches in Macbeth or the ghost that visited Ebenezer, to wait for three events. One would be a wedding. Not mine. The second, a baby with hair of fire. The third, a visit from an unexpected stranger.’ Richard looks down at his hands, then ashamedly up at Paniko. He has not spoken this much for ten years and now he sounds like a Dickens’ character.
‘I can’t believe you went to a fortune teller … you!’ Paniko says mockingly.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Richard continues, ‘but the first two things happened just like she said. Listen. I left her house that day, walked back to my bedsit and then fell asleep.
‘The following night I was invited to your grandmother’s house, I remember it well; you were roasting peanuts on the barbecue and your dad was drinking whisky with a few friends. One of them was Marianna’s father, and he announced that Marianna had gone to meet the man she was going to marry – a man called Mihalis from Limassol. She had travelled with her mum and they were going to stay at a relative’s together for a fortnight so that they could meet his family. Everyone was so happy. They kissed and slapped him on the back. I could not move, I just stared at them, every emotion completely ripped out of my body. No one even noticed. I don’t think he would have wanted an Englishman congratulating him anyway.’
‘And …’ says Paniko, ‘people got married all the time … so she guess a wedding … I hope you no pay her too much. You are so stupid to believe a crazy woman! What did you expect, you were going to marry Marianna and have lots of children? You are lucky she even looked at you. And luckier no one else saw her looking at you!’ Paniko says in a harsh voice. ‘If this the root of your depression then I should jump off the top of Mbik Mben with the amount of women I see, fall in love with and not have.’
Richard cannot bring himself to tell Paniko about that night of the feast or even more the night after the festival when they made love.
‘Look, I’ve been trying to talk all day and all you do is either interrupt me or mock me,’ Richard snaps and Paniko is taken aback. Richard has never spoken to Paniko this way, and he sits back, folds his arms once again and listens.
‘I can’t explain right now, I just …’ Richard trails off. Paniko holds back the urge to speak and just listens.
‘What could I do but wait? For those two weeks I watched every minute tick by, waiting for Marianna to come back so that I could see her, talk to her, I just needed to see her. So I went back to Amalia. I just needed a distraction, or perhaps my utter impatience led me to search for answers anywhere I could. I remember there were lots of cats and one of them even looked like … the rat … doesn’t matter.’ Richard shakes his head and then rotates Paniko’s coffee cup around in one hand while looking inside.
‘When I returned to her I felt obliged to take her a gift, just as I’d seen other people doing. Cyprus had really dug its claws into me.’ Richard looks scathingly at Paniko, who is now wiping his lips with a white handkerchief. ‘So I turned up at the old woman’s house with the only thing I had to offer: a can of baked beans. They were Heinz as well. The old lady inspected the can, walked into the kitchen, opened it, and stuffed a spoonful into her mouth. I watched her patiently, half-expecting her to throw them in my face. She chewed slowly, narrowed her eyes, swallowed, closed her eyes completely, remained seriously still and suddenly smiled broadly with raised eyebrows. “Fasolia!” she declared. She slapped my back, laughed heartily and shook her head. “Fasolia, fas
olia, fasolia. Rrready food!” she laughed again. “And all this time I slave at the stove. So, you really are hero. It is true what they say!” Then her face changed and she looked down at the beans. “What you want?” she asked suspiciously, squinting her eyes. “British never bring gifts. Gypsies, yes. Turks, yes, shepherds, yes. Sometimes even the Egyptians, although they bring strange gifts. But British, never.” She looked at me as if she were about to take my brains out and eat them. I stepped back. This was clearly the wrong thing to do and seemed to immediately intensify her suspicions. She grabbed a wooden spoon from the counter and held it threateningly up to my face. And honestly I thought this was how I’m going to die; killed by a crazed old lady with a wooden spoon! Somehow she’ll find a way to kill me with it. They’ll find me on the floor. I pointed at the cup on the counter. I told her I wanted her to teach me, trying to sound as sincere as I could. The spoon lowered. I told her I wanted to learn how to read coffee cups, the future, the past, the present. She lowered the spoon even more, her face softened, and once again her mood changed like the wind. She giggled, strangely like a young girl, whacked my shoulder, laughed louder and led me out into the garden, nodding her head.
‘She pulled a chair from beneath the little white table and signalled for me to sit down as if I were now an important guest. She then stood behind me and pushed me in, straightened my shoulders and checked my legs. After all these peculiar actions, she stood opposite and stared at me, beaming. Honestly, I didn’t know how to get out of it. So I just sat there, like a lemon, pale-faced, probably, and waited to see what was going to happen. I tell you, I regretted taking those beans.
‘“Now,” she said, “if you going to learn, we do properly. You must here once every day.” I tried to protest, but she squinted her eyes and I nodded obediently. When she was satisfied she disappeared into the kitchen and returned, a while later, this time with two cups of coffee.
A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible Page 11
