A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible

by Christy Lefteri

  Nani, nani, my child.

  Come, sleep, make it sleep

  And sweetly lull it.

  Come sleep from the vineyards,

  Take my child from my hands.

  In the background another scream is heard, but Olympia attempts to continue singing, ‘Take it to the sheepcote’. Her voice trembles slightly, and, noticing this, Costandina joins in, helping her along, followed shortly by Koki, Maria, Sophia and Maroulla. Together their voices are strong enough to rise above the screams; a sugary, sweet melody wells up inside this room.

  To sleep like a little lamb,

  To sleep like a little lamb,

  And to wake up like a little goat.

  Nani, nani my child.

  Come, sleep, make it sleep

  And sweetly lull it.

  The baby gurgles, rests his head on Olympia’s breast and falls asleep. No one says a word, and the sound of the crickets pounds in the air. There is the sound of rustling and footsteps and they all look towards the back of the garden, holding their breath. Elenitsa emerges, hardly standing, stumbling, falling, pushing off the ground with her arms. Everyone stands suddenly and rushes to her aid; Costandina and Koki hold her beneath the arms, and Sophia runs into the house with Olympia to get water and fetch a blanket.

  Tucked into the pavements and shivering lights of Soho, the café windows steam with coffees, and now and then customers stream onto the puddly streets and walk away, leaving behind them, like snails, a trail of nostalgia. Richard has been waiting for Paniko all evening. He has not moved from the little white table at which he has sat since the morning and the two cups are still overturned. The rest of the tables are full of men playing cards. The man in the brown suit from that morning, seated at the adjacent table, with his back to Richard, leans on his chair, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth; the ash hangs, long and grey, as he stares thoughtfully at the ten cards in his hands. Richard does not have to try to look over his shoulder. Three consecutive hearts. A six of clubs. Three nines and three queens. Almost a full hand. Richard is pleased with himself at having remembered ten-card rummy, or kounka, as the old men of the town used to call it. The man taps his foot lightly on the floor as the other three players take their turn. The old man opposite him takes his time; he looks at his cards purposefully and then at the other players. He pulls his moustache contemplatively, and then touches the top of a card. He changes his mind and leaves his fingers hovering over the top of another card.

  ‘Come on, Yiakovos! Pingo’s seeds will be full-grown children by the time you play your hand,’ says the man in the brown suit.

  ‘Shut up, Nikos!’ says Yiakovos. ‘I need time.’

  Nikos becomes impatient and taps his foot faster. Yiakovos takes no notice. He looks down at his cards with a serious face. His fingers hover now over the top of another card. He frowns slightly and then resignedly takes the first card and tosses it onto the table. ‘Assiktir,’ Yiakovos proclaims, and his shoulders slump like a disappointed child.

  It is finally Nikos’ turn. He remains still for a moment, then, taking the cigarette from his mouth, looks at every man in the eyes, leans slowly over to the pile of cards in the centre of the table and picks up the queen of diamonds that Yiakovos just threw down. ‘Kounka!’ he declares, placing his sets down neatly on the chequered tablecloth. The three other men lean forward and look at his cards.

  ‘The donkey!’ shouts Yiakovos. ‘All you touch turns to gold!’

  Nikos stands now proudly with his hands in his pockets. Yiakovos smashes a fist on the table. Nikos smiles. ‘A lucky person plants pebbles and harvests potatoes,’ he says, looking down at his cards.

  ‘Paa!’ exclaims Yiakovos. ‘You planted pebbles and harvested a factory, a wife, a mistress and plenty of the queen’s heads!’ He bashes his fist on the table again. ‘While I plant my own bollocks and out pop peanuts!’

  Yiakovos takes his coffee and slumps into his shoulders. ‘I should just refuse my wages from now on. What’s the point in pocketing them if I am going to just give them back to you?’ The man next to him, who has not spoken yet, nods agreeably. Yiakovos shakes his head in resignation; he is the eldest at the table and looks as though time has scratched and battered him, and torn out his hair, leaving him only with a few mocking strands. His skin hangs loose on him like an oversized hand-me-down and the skin beneath his neck wobbles.

  ‘Another game, boys?’ Nikos says.

  The men nod and Nikos raises his hand to Paniko. ‘Bring these men a glass of ouzo on me, to drown their sorrows.’

  The other men groan and Nikos deals the cards.

  Watching these men play evokes a memory for Richard: of sitting in the café at the harbour, looking at the boats come in and out and at the men on the table beside him playing cards. At first he had felt like an outsider. He remembers this feeling now, sitting in Paniko’s café, watching Nikos and Yiakovos arguing.

  Soon Paniko returns with the drinks and slices of melon. Richard, sitting nearby, raises his hand and indicates to Paniko that he would like the same. Paniko nods and disappears again into the kitchen. A few men in the far corner, near the window, argue loudly about war and speak of death and atrocity.

  A man sitting on a table nearest the counter slides his chair backwards and reaches over to where a radio is located on the shelf behind him. He turns up the volume and orders everyone to be quiet, holding up his palm. The news starts and finishes, but there is no mention of Cyprus. The men all sit perched on their seats, frozen still with cards in their hands and cups at their lips. There are many groans and sighs, and arguments begin from every corner of the room about solutions and outcomes. ‘Danger can only be overcome with more danger,’ calls the man near the radio. Many nod and continue to sip their coffee or ouzo. ‘Grivas is to blame for all this, damn it! Overthrowing the government, starting a coup, provoking the Turks!’ calls a very young-looking man in a business suit.

  ‘You are merely twenty,’ calls the thin man near Richard’s table. ‘What do you know about war and peace?’

  ‘I know that peace never comes from war,’ the young man replies.

  ‘He lives in cuckoo land,’ shouts the other old man, ‘a cat in gloves never catches the mice! We do not need romantics, we need fighters. What has happened to the young generation? They have become lambs. The wolves will tear their smooth skin to shreds and leave their guts for the flies. They will make shreds of their fluffy white paperwork that they hide behind.’

  Paniko appears now with a tray in his hand. ‘Enough, otherwise you’ll all be sent to your wives.’ A few of the men sit down resentfully, and Paniko stares threateningly at the ones still standing. Eventually they give up and return to their drinks. The young man does not resume the game at his own table, but takes his jacket and coffee, looks around and then hesitantly decides to join Richard. These Greeks never ask, Richard thinks, remembering Paniko’s poor manners. They assume all is for the taking. He watches the young man sit down and peek curious looks at Richard over his coffee cup.

  ‘I guess you’re not in the rag trade then,’ the young man enquires in a cockney accent that falls almost ridiculously out of his strong, Mediterranean, mythical jaw.

  ‘I couldn’t be,’ replies Richard, ‘I’m one of them.’ The young man nods and sips his coffee again. Richard’s Englishness forming a barrier between them already.

  After a while the young man takes his jacket and leaves, and soon the other men follow his lead and stumble onto the pavements, steaming up the cold streets with the warm smell of aniseed and tobacco. As they speak they blow white puffs of the past into the black night. Richard watches them as they disappear along Old Compton Street, all except the man in the brown suit, who waits beneath the canopy of the grocer, looks right, then left, makes sure the streets are empty and then knocks on the door beneath the flashing red light. The door cracks open and he is quickly ushered in.

  For a while Richard sits quietly while Paniko rattles cups in the kitchen. Afte
r some time Paniko appears with a plate of koubes in one hand, wearily lifting the apron over his head with the other, dashing it onto the counter and sinking into the chair opposite Richard. He puts the koubes into the centre of the table next to the overturned coffee cups. The rain outside has stopped and a somnolent wind blows beneath the door. Paniko’s lids hang heavy over his eyes, but he heaves himself to sit straight, bite into a kouba and look thoughtfully at his old friend. ‘See,’ he starts the conversation with a full mouth, ‘our lives aren’t that different. You eat and shit alone and today I done neither.’

  Richard smiles. He lights a cigarette and passes one to Paniko.

  ‘So, that’s why you left,’ says Paniko, nodding slowly.

  ‘What other choice did I have? I didn’t want to cause her pain and I couldn’t stand to be there while she married another man. I asked to be transferred to Akrotiri on the south coast of the island, an area which the British Air force used. I had to get as far away as I could, for my own sanity. I had to get away from Marianna.

  ‘I lived there for eight years and in those years I changed. I was consumed with sadness and isolated myself completely. I preferred to be alone and think about Marianna and the child I had never met. I felt as though I had been left out of my own life. I lost my love of food and conversation and I hid away, working solidly and returning to my room alone each night. During those eight years my hair turned grey and my cheeks became sallow and gaunt. I could see it when I looked in the mirror each day; I hardly recognised myself. The loneliness, the sleepless nights, where I lay awake, hour upon hour, thinking, had stolen my youth.

  ‘In 1952 I received a letter from you, saying that you were moving to London, times were bad and you told me to come with you, we could have feasts again and parties and talk about the days when we drank and danced. You told me you had, finally, found a wife and were planning to make a new life out there, perhaps in the rag trade, or the catering business and that now you would always have clean shirts. You said there was nothing left for you here, the taxes were even higher and the agricultural industry was economically unstable. You said that you would make a good life for yourself. I wrote back to you, if you remember, and told you that I had to stay, there were still a few things I needed to do. But the truth is I was lost and a prisoner of my own devices.

  ‘Then one day in 1955 I was transferred back to Kyrenia. Time had passed and much had changed in those short years. I arrived in May, just a month after the bombing of Government House. The EOKA riots had started, the Greek nationalists were determined to get the British out and attain enosis with Greece. There were riots in the streets and curfews; Cyprus was not the place it used to be. I was quite isolated in Akrotiri, so when I returned to Kyrenia I was not really expecting what I found. The streets were seething with rage that marked the walls in the form of red graffiti. I remember the day I arrived, walking by the strip of cafés in my uniform, with my suitcase in hand. People looked up with narrow eyes as I passed. Animosity breathed in the silence, in the way their chins lowered and their backs stiffened. Nobody knew who I was. I was a different man and their hearts had changed. I was the enemy now. I was the obstacle to independence. Even children looked down when I passed and if I happened to catch a glimpse of their eyes I could see, somehow, the fire burning within their minds. And as I walked I realised that this flame was alight everywhere: behind every window, in each flick of the rosary beads, in every candle, in every hymn, in every bell that tolled across the town; every man, woman and child carried the flame of Ancient Greece as though with every step they took they were ready to fight like Alexander the Great. I walked along the port as though I was an intruder and as I looked at those familiar boats and longed to put my feet in the water again, I knew for sure that life would never be the same.

  ‘I remember on my first day I was invited to Mr Kitchen’s, an elderly officer, for an afternoon drink; his house a whitewashed meringue just off the sloping foothill west of the Kyrenia range, overlooking the sea line that swept elegantly to the right. All was pristine: the marble interior and marble conversations, the tailored gardens and tailored attire, the delicate finger food and delicate mannerisms. I remember Mr Kitchen leaning proudly on the balcony, a soft breeze in his toupee, conversing with Mr Smith, Mr Blackburn over a glass of wine. The women by the palm tree, dressed in hazy florals, complained about their peasant housekeepers and compared regional origins for suitability. “I have one that comes from Man-dres, I find them somewhat man-ly,” said Mrs Kitchen.

  ‘“Yes, and the ones from Limassol are far too cosmopolitan for my liking,” replied Mrs Smith. They would not talk about the fear and the uncertainty and the hatred that jumped out at them round every bend. They never mentioned the campaign, led by General Grivas, or “the one who could not be taken” as the Greeks called him, this fight for freedom or power that would glow by torchlight and never slept; and, just then, in the daylight, as I peered down onto the expanse of land I could see that the battle had left sections of land blackened, like the footsteps of small gods or large generals. At that moment a breeze brought with it the smell of desiccated sewers, wafting over wild flowers. All simultaneously ignored it and sipped their wine.

  ‘When I left I had realised that I had not spoken a word, except to say that the finger food was delectable, though it was not. I strolled along the foothills for a while and looked down at the carob trees that webbed across the town below and then descended and walked amongst them until that smell of semen which emanated from them got too much. I realized then how much I missed the life that I had had, so I continued walking, spiralling through the neighbourhoods like an unwanted snake, listening to the conversations on the verandas. It was late afternoon and people were venturing out after their siestas. Nobody called to me, nobody welcomed me into their home as they used to do, they only looked at me sideways and then resumed their snacks or their conversations. One child even threw a stone at me.

  ‘I remembered how the Turks and the Greeks and the British had once lived together, like the trees on the hills. Apart from the divided cafés, they actually lived peacefully; their mosques and their churches side by side; their priests and imams walking along the same foothills. Greek and Turkish Cypriot workers even took part in universal trade-union struggles. It was only since the Greeks demanded union with Greece and freedom from colonial rule that their lives became divided. I tried to repress a feeling of shame. The Turkish Cypriots were the object of incessant endeavours at manipulation. Our aim was to use them as an instrument against the Greeks. The British lured Turkey into its dispute with the Greeks in an attempt to dilute the threat: it was much easier to maintain power if the dispute was more complicated. Everyone was at war! The Turks wanted division; they thought that this was the only way they could secure the rights to the island. They believed that enosis with Greece would be an impingement for them. The long path towards the invasion had begun.

  ‘I looked at the path ahead and the houses that tingled with laughter and knew that the walls behind the blossoming gardens were blemished, and that somewhere, even inside the houses, stewed the dichotomy of intolerance; and that here, amongst the olive trees that lined the street, the cicadas muttered the true story.

  ‘I continued towards the harbour, walking past the carob warehouses, the cafés and the supermarket as the fishermen drew in their nets. People were busy about their business here and did not seem to notice me. I couldn’t help looking through the crowd for Marianna; I thought I might catch a glimpse of her walking. I remember seeing a dark-haired woman, facing away from me, talking to an elderly lady, and my heart came into my mouth. When she turned around I saw that it was not her and suddenly I could see her everywhere: I thought she was the woman standing by the café, or the one sitting by the harbour, or the one holding a small boy by the hand. I had only been in Kyrenia a short while and already Marianna had managed to crawl into my mind and overtake it. That old familiar sense of longing came back to me and captured me.r />
  ‘People walked with baskets of fruit or carts of wheat, women sold doilies and beautiful tapestries, children ran around with catapults or skidded down the slopes on bicycles. Boys chased lizards and three girls skipped past with ragdolls made from old tea towels. I looked across at the castle and its beautiful towers that marked the entrance of the harbour. For a moment I felt elated, I caught a glimpse of the old life, the Cyprus I had known and loved so well and for a while I walked contentedly, feeling the last rays of the afternoon sun on my face. I lit a cigarette and walked through the crowd of people, taking in the smells and the colours and the musical sound of their words. And just then, I saw something that I was not expecting. Walking through the crowd with a loaf of bread in her hands was a girl with hair of fire.

  ‘She walked alone and skipped on every other step. I dodged through the crowd to keep sight of her as she passed the other children quietly and made her way beyond the port. When she came to a clearing I stayed further back so that she would not see me. I followed her past the cornfield and up a crooked path that led to a taverna in the foothills. I watched from afar as she ran through the gate and handed the bread to a man and then skipped towards a lemon tree, where she sat down and took some marbles out of her pocket.

  ‘I left before I could be seen and made my way briskly to Amalia’s house by the church. It had been eight years and I had no idea if the old woman was still alive. My nerves were aflame, I walked fast across the town and took a short cut through the cottonfield so by the time I got there I was red and flustered and out of breath. I tried to compose myself and knocked on the door. I heard some movement inside and waited for what felt like five minutes before the door opened. Amalia looked straight up at me and didn’t say a word; she held a walking stick and had become so badly hunched that her neck dipped down then up, like a vulture’s. “Who is it?” she screeched in Greek, and when I looked into her eyes I realised that she could not see me; the brown of her eyes had now become a misty blue.