A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible

by Christy Lefteri

  A few moments later she returns to his table with a coffee and a plate of lokoumades. ‘Doughnut balls,’ says Richard.

  ‘That is what I said. You English know nothing. Do you think we came over on a donkey?’ she says, passionately pressing forefinger, middle finger and thumb together, waving at the sky. She looks down at his clothes and then into his eyes. ‘So Paniko has never managed to drag you out of that hole of yours. Is good for me really. I surprised actually to hear that you no kill yourself yet. But anyhow, this is, how you say? Strange and uncharacteristic. What you want?’ She places the coffee on the table next to the lokoumades and stares at him right in the eyes. When Richard does not reply she says something angrily in Greek and walks away towards a new customer with the pencil in her hand.

  Richard uses the tiny, three-spiked fork to pick up a doughnut ball, which drips with syrup, and polishes all five off in a matter of seconds. Greeks may drink slowly, but they eat fast, he thinks to himself. Then, overwhelmed by the sugar, he takes a sip of the bitter coffee and leans back into his chair.

  The rest of the day passes bearably. Paniko does not show himself from the kitchen and Elli confirms that he will be busy scrubbing and frying until one outdoes the other. Richard waits patiently until late afternoon, when Elli leaves to make dinner and invites Richard to join them, but reminds him that it is not a kind invitation on her behalf, rather that she has been left with no choice. If she wants to see her husband she will have to make do with Richard as well.

  That night Paniko closes the café at nine, throwing out groaning, unsatisfied punters, and they walk across the street and wait at the bus stop along Old Compton Street for the bus to Archway. The red bus pulls in, chuffs to a halt and the two men enter, pay their fare and sit on the two seats nearest the door, in front of a sleeping drunk man with a carrier bag full of beer. They remain silent for the journey and do not speak even as they walk along Archway Road.

  Paniko takes a single silver key from his pocket and unlocks the door. They enter, engulfed by the smell of mothballs, into an unreasonably narrow but elaborately decorated corridor, with a red patterned carpet and crystal wall lamps hanging outlandishly over a long console table packed full of vases, gold picture frames, sparkling animal ornaments and pot-pourri. Paniko takes his shoes off on the mat and places them next to a myriad other tiny shoes and hangs his coat on a mahogany stand. Richard does the same. An oversized crystal chandelier hangs too low for them to pass comfortably, and Paniko indicates to him to duck. They walk towards a closed white door at the end of the corridor, which Paniko pushes open, throws his arms up in the air and calls, ‘O Pappas! O Pappas!’ A young boy and a girl run into his arms, and two more, slightly older, scramble towards him from behind. There is a toddler on a highchair tossing food at the floor. The children, in their excitement, step into the food, and Elli, turning suddenly from the stove to witness the probably familiar frenzy, whips all of them, including Paniko, with a towel and orders them to sit down sensibly, either with their work or with their friend. This last comment, she makes looking at Paniko.

  The children disperse, reluctantly resuming their previous tasks, and Paniko offers Richard a chair, but of course, not at the head of the table, as this is reserved for himself.

  Elli brings Richard a glass of red wine in a crystal goblet, and shortly after she sets the table with sesame bread, olives, dips, feta cheese sprinkled with coriander, salad, artichokes and in the centre a large casserole of rabbit and onion stew, or stifatho, as the Greeks of the town used to call it. Richard remembers the name, as this happens to be one of his favourites. He had even had Amalia teach him how to make it once, after their usual coffee-cup reading, and Richard had written the recipe in a little journal he used to keep. But of course, that was a long time ago now, and there was never an occasion that required such elaborate cooking.

  Richard looks guiltily at the table. ‘You should not have gone to so much trouble for—’

  ‘Oh, you poor disillusioned Englishman,’ she interrupts. ‘You think this for you benefit?’ she asks, placing silverware and decorated china plates round the table and then digging a large silver spoon into the stew. She calls something in Greek and the children come running to the table, kicking each other, or screaming, or singing.

  ‘Bravo Paniko!’ says Elli to the little boy with no front teeth. ‘He has learnt the Greek national anthem off by heart,’ she says, beaming. ‘He will be either a fighter or diplomat one day, I am sure.’ Paniko Junior continues to repeat the song while Elli slaps stew into everybody’s plate and the family dig into the dips and olives and salad. Paniko Junior only stops when there is too much food in his mouth to be able to continue, but he doesn’t cease humming the song until the end of the meal, when the children clear the table, run away to play and Elli serves Greek coffee to the men. ‘I take little one to bed,’ she says, pulling the oversized toddler out of the highchair. ‘Now watch yourselves,’ she says warningly.

  ‘You are not talking to the children now,’ Paniko reminds her.

  At this Elli laughs. ‘Old men are twice children,’ she says, looking at Richard’s hair. ‘Grey hair is only a sign of age, not wisdom.’ She laughs, satisfied with her own observations, heaves the toddler higher on her chest and exits the kitchen, leaving the door open a crack behind her.

  Paniko’s posture relaxes and he sinks into his large shoulders, taking his coffee and bringing it to his lips. He follows Richard’s eyes, who is staring at the china ornaments that gaze at him from the top of the kitchen cabinets. ‘I tell you, my friend,’ begins Paniko, ‘you good in that little box on your own with your TV.’

  Richard smiles and picks up his coffee.

  ‘You’ve been bugging me for years to move out of that box, as you call it, and now you say that I am lucky?’ Richard says and sips his coffee. Paniko nods.

  ‘Is true, a miser is ever in want,’ says Paniko. ‘Come on, old friend, why you no find some place better? You have money. You no buy anything.’

  ‘I don’t live in that … box … because I’m stingy. I have my reasons,’ replies Richard scathingly. Paniko raises his eyebrows. Richard takes a deep breath, feeling Paniko’s anticipation for an explanation. ‘Back then,’ he begins, ‘before the independence of Cyprus, after I had followed Kyriaki and met Mihalis, I visited the taverna regularly. I never spoke to anyone and Mihalis never really said much to me again. I always sat at the same table, beneath a lemon tree, overlooking the rolling hills. I drank coffee, and observed the drying of the land as each summer approached and secretly watched my little girl as she grew. I watched her as she learnt to ride a bike, as she grazed her knees, as she cried alone beneath the olive trees, I watched her as she learnt to read and as she sang songs over the balcony. I watched her hair grow and her body change and her fingers lengthen, so that she made beautiful delicate tapestries, which Mihalis would hang proudly on the walls. He loved her. How that man loved her. Sometimes I would catch him looking at me but he never said anything and I was never too sure whether somewhere deep down he knew …’ Richard pauses there, sips his coffee again and resumes. ‘Her eyes were exactly the colour of the shallow part of the sea, the part that laps the shores. And they always moved, they were curious eyes, full of questions and tales and turmoil; her life was not easy. With the way she looked and the chaos of those troubled times, she became an easy target, a scapegoat. People treated her as though she were an alien.’ Richard stops there, squints his eyes shut and rubs the sides of his temples with his palms, bringing them down the sides of his face and round to his neck as though he is trying to relieve some tension. He then stands slightly and reaches into his pocket for a box of cigarettes.

  ‘Outside,’ says Paniko. ‘She can’t hear.’

  Richard nods, and they move into the garden, where they both blow cigarette smoke into the balmy night. A siren is heard in the distance.

  ‘Although I never spoke to her, I knew her. I knew what made her cry and what made her laugh.
I knew her loneliness. I knew that she had a mole on her left shoulder and a small scar on her forehead, from when she had fallen off her bike when she was nine. I knew her favourite dress and that she hated lemonade and that she loved to walk barefoot, which Mihalis always insisted was exactly like her mother. And as she grew, during those five years, I knew that she longed for something, from the way she tapped her foot on the floor, just like her mother, and from the way she paced around the olive trees.’ Another siren is heard, the toddler cries and Elli shouts something at the children.

  ‘I never spoke to her until the day I was to leave Cyprus in the autumn of 1960. She was thirteen, but looked like a woman as her eyes, by then, looked much older, as if her thoughts had aged her. I grabbed her arm as she walked past me and held a letter out for her to take. I looked her hard in the eyes and told her that if her father ever found out what was in this letter it would destroy him. I told her not to open it until she was ready for her life to change. She looked into my eyes, and then down at my fingers that gripped her arm desperately. She took the letter, I let go of her arm, and she stood and stared at me for a while. She leant forwards and touched my fingers, which were gripping my knees. That was the last time I ever saw her.

  ‘When independence was on the cards I rang you and asked you to get a bedsit ready for me so that I would have somewhere to stay when I got here. You sent me the address, which I put the details of in the letter for Kyriaki. In that letter I told her the truth about who she really was. I’ve been waiting all these years. That is why I never moved. I have been holding onto some hope that one day she might come and find me.’

  Paniko nods reassuringly and puts his hand on Richard’s shoulder. ‘You sad little man,’ he says, and laughs. ‘Why now?’ he asks.

  Richard ignores his tone. ‘Because this damn war ignited my pain, and my fear that I may never see her again. Now it seems impossible and my torment is too much for me to keep. Now she may even be—’

  ‘Don’t think these things!’ interrupts Paniko. ‘I did for only one day and nearly went mad! If they are all dead we cannot change anything with worry. We will wait and see; it is all that we can do.’

  Richard nods this time and throws his cigarette on the ground. Paniko bends down, picks it up and throws it into the next-door neighbour’s garden along with his own.

  ‘Fear your wife more than your neighbours, for to them you can close the door,’ says Paniko, and Richard forces a laugh.

  Serkan looks up into the dome of the church. The Virgin Mary stares down at him and he remembers then the face of his mother, so still, so unchanging, sitting at the kitchen table, holding Hasad in her arms. Serkan walks through the church towards the icon of mother and child by the altar. He leans forward and touches her hair, then he puts his hand in his pocket and paces up and down the aisle. The bloodstained walls scream red, and the cicadas and the sunlight pound beneath the wooden door. From above, light streams in through the stained-glass window. Serkan presses his knuckles, then adjusts his shirt to make sure that it is tucked perfectly into his trousers. The door bursts open and the pounding island enters the church. Hasad stands at the door, his longer arm dangling close to his knee. ‘We will not progress forward,’ Serkan says aloud, and his voice bounces within the high dome of the church. Hasad nods and walks in further. He looks down, noticing the girl that he had brought in a little while ago is half-conscious on the floor; her eyelids flicker. She has a bruise around her eye and blood on her arm. ‘They are animals,’ says Serkan. Hasad puts his hand in his pocket and retrieves the pocket watch, which sparkles in the sunlight; he holds it in his palm and looks at the time. ‘Take her back!’ Serkan demands.

  ‘The baby’s crying can be heard over the hills,’ says Hasad.

  Stepping out of the church, Serkan hears the baby crying. Its howl pierces the air like a siren. Serkan shuts his eyes tightly to block out the sharp light and adjusts the gun to his trousers. He charges down the hill, past the port and the well, towards the houses of prisoners, and with each step the baby’s shrill crying becomes increasingly louder. He turns right into the orchard and towards the basket where the baby lies screaming, red-faced, with its little arms reaching for the air. Serkan bends down and touches his fingers, and the crying misses a beat and becomes irregular. ‘Little man,’ he says, putting his large palm on the baby’s head. He then leans over, lifts the baby up and brings it close to his chest.

  Serkan walks for a while round the orchard while the baby hiccups in his arms, and he hums a song his mother used to sing. He stops suddenly and looks up at the blue of the sky through the trees and feels a surge of pain at the base of his spine. He winces and inclines his head affectionately towards the baby’s. The little boy is as quiet as the breeze now and his eyelids heavy in the cool shade of the leaves. He yawns.

  Sophia is tossed into a bush of skin-coloured thorns. Her flesh is ripped and blood drips from her forehead. Maroulla walks out and looks down at the girl’s golden limbs intertwined with the twigs and imagines that she is not there. She envisions the twigs as a path that would lead her to the rose. Her mother said so … her mother said so … she will not dare, though, take a step beyond the garden trees. Her heart flutters with fear at this thought. She looks down at the flesh and thorns as Sophia opens her eyes and the women come running from within. They lift her body and it droops lifeless in their arms as they carry her into the shadows of the room. ‘Don’t die, young girl. Don’t die,’ says Maria, while Litsa watches with wide eyes. Olympia sits rigid on the chair, still with her face to the wall. Costandina cries. The dog whimpers and follows the women that carry Sophia to the bed, where Elenitsa once lay, and cover her with a blanket. Maria fetches some water, holding the flask up to her lips, but Sophia will not drink. The dog licks her arm and face, but Sophia does not flinch. Maria wipes the blood from her face and arm, gently, with a wet cloth.

  ‘Let her be,’ says Olympia suddenly. ‘Just let her sleep.’ Maria holds the wet cloth up to Sophia’s face and looks at her lifeless eyes and cracked lips. She pauses, pulls the cloth away and rests it resignedly on the bed, sighing deeply. She positions a chair next to the bed so that she can be nearby if needed. She touches Sophia’s forehead with the palm of her hand and hums gently. Sophia closes her eyes. Soon her breathing deepens and Maria removes her hand and places it on her lap. The other women sit awkwardly around the room, all full of fear and expectation. At any one moment there is always one pair of eyes looking towards the back of the garden. A green uniform can still be seen flickering amongst the trees.

  ‘We cannot be like this,’ says Litsa, standing up. ‘This way they will not have to kill us, we will simply die of fear.’ She lifts her chin higher as she talks, and the women look up at her from the floor or from various chairs scattered about the room. ‘There is always something to live for,’ she continues, ‘the past is always alive in the present, it is never behind us.’ At this she looks at Koki, and the rest of the women follow her gaze. Maroulla is sitting by Koki’s feet with her arms wrapped around Koki’s leg. She too looks up at Koki. ‘I think I can speak for everyone when I say we would like to know what happened with the shoemaker,’ says Litsa. Sophia breathes heavily now in her sleep, and the dog sighs by her side. Koki smiles and the women look at her eagerly.

  ‘OK,’ she begins; she leans back into the chair and looks at the floor. Her eyes become distant and full of shadows from the falling sun. Her red curls slumber onto her shoulders and others tumble onto her purple dress. The headscarf is on the floor. She sighs and her eyelashes cast shadows on her face, and she looks, for a moment, like a china doll, lost in time. The women stare at her as if she is a recovered toy, found at the bottom of some long-forgotten trunk, igniting again the mislaid dreams of childhood. Koki moves her fingers. ‘In the church, on the night of the Resurrection,’ she begins. The women shift their positions and Maria leans over and looks closely at Sophia before fixing her gaze on Koki. ‘… On the night of the Resurrection, dar
kness rose. It rose from the black robes of the widows. It rose from the place where palms held the wax of unlit candles. The Christians waited eagerly for midnight when the bishop would chant “Christ is risen”, and holy light would be passed from candle to candle and the good Christians would at last be able to go home and feast on already prepared platters of meat and egg-lemon soup after forty days of excruciating fasting. The men stood at the front of the church, normally quiet, and praying for the prosperity of their own businesses; while the women stood at the back passing news of the town from mouth to mouth. Standing at the back of the church with Vassoulla, Litsa’s mum, I listened to the conversations of the women. “Antonia just told me that there is a new shoemaker in town,” the seamstress leant over and said to Vassoulla in what was much louder than a whisper.

  ‘“It’s about time, Dimitri’s farming boots are as useless as a donkey’s tail. Mario was hopeless, God rest his soul.” Vassoulla said this, looking at the ceiling of the church, and crossed herself, which, unbeknown to her, led to a succession of crossing as the women near them mindlessly followed the gesture, bowing their heads to the front with exaggerated looks of martyrdom, thinking that the priest had constituted the motion.