‘He loved to tell stories of Caliph Haroun al-Rashid of Arabia, who was an intellectual man of poetry and music. He described the type of shoes he would have worn when he occupied Cyprus. Then one night, I went to the hut and found the door was wide open and a candle flickered on the worktop. I walked in and called his name, but he did not answer. Then, I noticed, illuminated by the candlelight on a piece of red silk, the most exquisite shoes I have ever seen in my life. They were embroidered with gemstones and glittered majestically as I picked them up and turned them over in my hand. I took my shoes off and slipped them on.
‘He appeared from the back of the hut. “They are the same style worn by Sitt Zubayda, Haroun al-Rashid’s wife, she set the trends!” he said, and I told him I loved them. Then he took my hand, drew me close to him and we danced. At first I stumbled and laughed and stepped on his feet, but he put my fingers on his palm and led me with his hand and with his feet and soon I felt as though I was being moved by something within me, my body relaxed, and with my face close to his neck and my eyes closed we danced to our own music, we moved to the sound of the crickets and the sea and the wind. “Perhaps one day you can wear them out and we’ll dance.” He said these words quickly, with a slightly wistful tone, as though he knew that it would never happen.
‘Time passed in this way and I imagined that it always would; that one day I would live with him in his little dark hut of soil and dreams. But one cuckoo does not bring the spring. Soon the hut was full of graffiti, red words which warned of death and massacre and dripped, conveniently, like blood. Soon all the windows were smashed, and as the winter breeze whistled through the shards he would sit at the counter, with distant eyes and listen to the changes of the wind. I should have believed the tone in his voice rather than his words; I never wore those shoes again.
‘At that time my breasts swelled and my monthly bleeding stopped and I remembered that these matched the changes that Vassoulla had once described about her body one day when she was reminiscing about being pregnant with Litsa. At first I told no one and I prayed to God and begged him to take it away. But soon my fears came to life and a small bump started appearing, which I hid beneath layers of clothes. The bump was not getting any smaller. I had to tell him, I was afraid but he had to know.
‘It was a particularly cold night and the neighbours were all indoors and they peeked though their shutters as I walked by. I strolled down the hill, past the church and the port and the cafés. The younger ones opened the shutters and called words like “Traitor” or “Whore” and even as I passed the silent fields, I could still hear their voices ringing in my ears.
‘As I approached the hut, it started to rain heavily. The red soil bubbled and small rivers of puddles streamed down the hills. I arrived wet at the hut, as on that first night, but realised that the candle was not flickering in the window. All seemed dark within. I rushed to the door and knocked hard, but there was no answer. I turned the handle. Locked. I felt a surge of panic and looked around, but the streets were empty and still. I looked in through the broken window, but there was no movement within. I sat on the step and waited till the rain stopped and my dress and hair dried. I waited until the cockerel sang and the sun came up and bleached the houses white. I imagined that he was called away or taken on some call of emergency and that soon he would return.
‘As the days and weeks passed and he was nowhere to be seen, I continued to hope that he would turn up. During this time Pappa started to look at me suspiciously; he would often say that I looked different and that something had changed about me, but that he couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I was terrified. I knew the day would come when he would realise that I was pregnant. Soon the bump was big enough to show through my dresses, and it was at this time that Pappa called me to the little table where he sat, late one night.
‘I perched down on the chair opposite him and looked at the ground; I knew what was coming. He stared at me for a very long time and then said, “Can you tell me that you are not pregnant?”
I looked straight into his eyes and said, “No, Pappa, I cannot.” He deserved to know the truth. Then I waited for him to say more, to reach over and touch my arm, to even look at me as though he felt sorry for me; but he did neither. His face was severe and expressionless as he looked out across the hills. He did not look at me as he spoke this time.
‘“You have brought shame on me, Koki.” His voice trembled slightly as he spoke, but he made sure that he held his chin high and kept his face away from me. “Go to bed,” he said, and as I walked away he spoke again. “You see,” he exclaimed, “you have brought too much shame this time. Too much!” He shook his head from side to side and looked at the floor. I ran to my bedroom. With those words he had shattered my heart. I was devastated and I fell asleep that night crying. I had lost everything.
‘The next day Pappa told me that he had arranged for me to move into a derelict hut on the outskirts of the town. He said I would be far away enough there. When I asked him what he meant by that he simply said that the neighbours would not bother me as much. He said that he would fix the hut for me himself and that it would be good enough for me to raise a baby in. I asked him if I could stay there with him, but he did not answer and from that day on few words passed between my father and me.
‘But he loved me still; he never stopped loving me. I could tell by the way he hammered away at the walls of the hut, how he rebuilt the fireplace so that I wouldn’t be cold in the winter, how he planted lemon trees and fig trees for me. But all the while I felt as though he was building me a prison and I dreaded the day that it would be finished. Luckily, it took some weeks, as he could only work when the restaurant was closed, which was either at midday or very late at night. I would go with him; with the midday sun on our shoulders we would walk together down the hill and across the town. He would hold a sun umbrella for me, and when we arrived he would put a chair for me beneath the shade and wait for me to sit down, and fetch water or peel some figs that he had picked along the way. He put them on a plate, sliced them and brought them to me where I sat. It was at these times that I felt his love, just like I had when I was a little girl, and sometimes as I ate the fruit I would catch him looking at me, staring with a faraway look in his eyes as though it was not really me he saw sitting before him, but that little girl who had once sat on his lap and listened to his stories.
‘As I sat on that chair and watched him work I saw him gradually become older; his hair turned white and he seemed to shrink and shrivel. I loved Pappa so much; so many times I wanted to run to him and put my arms around him and tell him I was sorry for what I had done; but I was too ashamed, too embarrassed even to apologise, and I was terrified that he would tell me that he could never forgive me.
‘Soon enough the hut was ready. I was eight months pregnant by this time, and I moved in, frightened and alone. During this whole time I never stopped going to the shoemaker’s hut. Every night I made the usual journey to his hut. I did this until my shoes had worn thin and the neighbours sniggered and the bump of my stomach had grown so big that I could barely walk down the hill. But he never again returned. No, he never returned.’
There are tears now in Koki’s eyes. The women’s eyes shimmer in the darkness as the air pounds with Koki’s last words and the sound of the crickets. Sophia stirs in the bed, and the dog lifts its ears and sits up. Maria straightens her posture and strokes Sophia’s hair. Sophia sighs, tosses from side to side and protests at something, swinging her arms in the air. ‘Her eyes are closed. She is asleep,’ says Maria, and the women remain silent.
Adem stands patiently at the window, overlooking a garden of rosy pomegranates. A cockroach scuttles by his feet. The house is dark, and cloudy with fleas. Adem looks down at the priest’s shoes and taps the right one on the floor, then the left. He stands very still and looks again out of the window. Although Hasad brought the girl back a while ago, he has still not left. First Hasad hovered around the house for a long while, passing
up and down, smoking cigarettes, then he sat down on a wooden chair and has been there ever since. Adem must not be seen. He feels his nerves knotting up: his fingers tingle and his breath is shallow. If she is not here, he will lose all hope of ever finding her.
Hasad finally stands up and paces up and down the street again, with his longer arm on his chin as if deep in thought. He walks unrythmically, with a limp, and his head lifts up, then drops down. Another half an hour or so passes and Hasad now looks up at the sky.
Adem takes a deep breath and stands straight. He knows that this is his last chance to find her. If she has not escaped or died, there is every possibility that she may be in this last house. He looks at his shoes. He is torn between wishing that she has already fled and wishing that she is here, a prisoner, Serkan’s captive, just so that he can see her again. He thinks about all those years, all those wasted years, and retrieves the photograph from his pocket. He remembers that red hair, dripping wet on that doorstep, so many years ago, and the way her skin smelt of the outside world; of the sea and lemon blossoms, and the way she always left traces of sand from where she had been walking along the beach. Whenever he looked out of his window he would imagine that she existed wherever fire flickered: in the hovering flames of candles, in the sun’s rays that streaked through windows and in that invisible heat that rose endlessly. He remembers her eyes, so distant, so detached from this town. Where is she now?
He wipes the sweat from his forehead and suddenly feels a sinking feeling in his heart. The past! he thinks suddenly. The answer to the riddle is: the past! The past can never be destroyed and never be repaired! Somehow, in the confinement of this riddle, the two opposing words have come to hold the same meaning. No matter what, the past cannot be altered, whether to be broken or fixed. What’s done is done. Adem cries into his fist. He cries for everything lost and bends down and takes off the priest’s shoes. He finds a cloth, spits on it and rubs the dried-on soil, scrubbing hard until the shoes shine slightly in the light.
Richard leaves Paniko’s house late and walks to the bus stop. He is not in the mood to walk tonight and it is now raining. The bus arrives promptly and Richard climbs to the top and looks down at the multicoloured umbrellas bopping along Queen Victoria Street, passing the Palladian structure of the Mansion House, hanging like a painting of an ancient Greek temple in the rain; despite its grandiose pagan mannerisms, it fits neatly into the landscape, just as the foreign banana trees once did on the hills of Kyrenia.
The Victorian buildings dotted along the street sit on the pavements frugally, stiff-lipped, reticent and beautifully grey in that grey rain, a picture of a forgotten people; just like the baggy-trousered patriarchs that once lined the streets of Cyprus. The old men there became landmarks for the British colonialists trying to find their way through the winding streets. ‘To get to Bella-pais, turn left at the corner where the old man sits; you’ll know it’s him by his black pants and his white eyebrows. You’ll know you’re going the right way when you see a goat.’ Richard smiles nostalgically.
Arriving shortly at his bedsit, Richard stands in the kitchen in the corner and stirs a coffee on the stove. He watches it intently as the top layer becomes sand-coloured, and then lifts the pan off the stove just as the bubbles bloom around the rim. He pours it into a little cup and walks over to the television, turns it on, sees the familiar image and hears the monotonous tone that means the day’s programmes are over. He leaves it on and walks across to the open window that overlooks Queen Victoria Street, and looks out. Somewhere amongst the stout Victorian buildings the sounds of Black Sabbath rise disobediently; how times have changed from the world his grandfather had told stories about. Now, in the eyes of his grandfather, every Brit’s step would be defiant. ‘The insubordinate world is a subordinate world.’ That was his motto. What would he think now of the contraceptive pill and the hippies that held spring flowers in the winter? What would he think of the disco sounds and the all-nighters who strolled to work with the echo of Bee Gees still beating the rhythm of their steps? And the no-fault divorce law and women with lives of their own? This would be a travesty! When the church-going and pipe-smoking are a dying race, this will be an omen of the imminent breakdown of society! Richard smiles. He looks down at passers-by, even at this late hour, with their array of business suits and colourful clothes.
Richard brings the coffee up to his lips. Maybe, he doesn’t have to be here? His talk with Paniko has changed something within him, shifted the barriers that he had created in his mind. It was all out now. No more secrets. No more hope. How could he still be hoping that she would turn up? So many years had passed. Now that it is all out in the open Richard realises how fragile his dream was. Perhaps he could start his life again? He dispels the thought quickly as he thinks of the little girl with red hair and porcelain skin. He sighs deeply, puts the coffee on the windowsill and takes his pyjamas out of the drawer. He stands in front of the basin mirror, pats down his grey hair and brushes his teeth. The man downstairs boasts now about British watermelons. Does he never sleep? Richard raises his eyebrows and proceeds to undress himself. He remembers his coffee, walks back to the window and looks at the familiar net of clouding sky that hangs heavy over grey buildings and grey pigeons and those English splashes of red, like roses. He watches that graceful sweep of rain into the river. Someone calls something in a foreign tongue and a dog barks. For a moment a hole appears in the clouds and the rain is illuminated by the moon. A lady with hair dripping to her shoulders runs across the street with a pram in one arm and a crying child in the other. All noises are muffled and merge into one: the wailing, the distant sirens, the rain, the rumble of traffic, the mixture of tongues. Richard looks down at the displaced cherry tree, leaning uncomfortably over a bus stop. The woman stops beneath the tree and leans the pram against the bus stop. The bus pulls up and she is gone. The rain eases slightly and the tree drips onto the pavement below. The sound from the television drones on incessantly.
Richard feels suddenly alone. Although all these years he has had no one, he had somehow become accustomed to it; learnt that that was his life. But now something stirs within him, a different feeling; the realisation of where and who he really is. He sees himself as if from afar: a sad old man looking out of the window. They will find him here one day, dead in the armchair. Like William at Number 27. Richard turns around and looks at the worn furniture of this room; the brown armchair, the bed with the peeling frame, the crumbling tiles in the kitchen, the cardboard box. If his life doesn’t change, they will find him here one day.
The prisoners watch fearfully as a man enters from the side of the garden. He is not holding a lantern and stumbles in the dark. The thorns crunch beneath his feet as he ducks under the net of the carob tree. In the clearing, in the moonlight, his face is illuminated and the little girl beams. She recognises him by his hazel eyes, like crescent moons. She closes the book, tucks it into her apron and runs to greet the man in green.
She curtsies and holds out her hand and tells him that she has been waiting for his return. He looks down at her outstretched hand, unmoving, then turns his face away. ‘When will our journey begin?’ she asks, lowering her arm. His eyes dart into the room ahead. He looks quickly over his shoulder. His thoughts are his own.
He says nothing and looks down at her red shoes. She runs inside and leans on the chair where Koki sits, amongst the other women, next to the orange light of a candle flickering on the table beside her. Koki puts her hand on the little girl’s shoulder and continues to look at the floor in the half light. There are footsteps in the garden and the women hunch their shoulders at the expectation of another soldier. Sophia is still asleep, but stirs restlessly. Maria sighs deeply. The other women look fearfully at Sophia and wonder if they will be next. The soldier approaches without a lantern and without a gun. He walks slowly and pauses between every other step. His hesitation makes the women tense and they all attempt to hide their faces in the shadows. Olympia, though, sits a little st
raighter and adjusts the collar of her shirt before wrapping the crucifix in her palm. Her lips as straight as the horizon. Litsa digs her nails into her palm. Koki keeps her eyes on the floor.
The soldier enters. He brings with him the smell of burning fields. Koki looks at his feet. He is not wearing army boots. The front of the shoes glimmer in the candle light. They have been polished and the laces fall neatly beneath the rim of his army trousers. There is not a crust of mud upon them. Koki swallows a ball of nostalgia that builds in her throat. She remembers the shoemaker’s hut so many years ago and the shoes that glimmered in the moonlight. She dispels the thought. The toes of the shoes scan the room; they shuffle on the flagstones, then stop, pointing in Koki’s direction. They take a confident step towards her. Koki looks at the reflection of the candle flame within them. The women wait for her to be taken away. Koki keeps her eyes on his shoes. She is as still as a picture, as still as an airless night. The dog whimpers slightly by Sophia’s side and then is silent once more. The soles of the shoes crunch on the flagstones. Koki breathes quietly and grips the sides of the chair. The heat, thick, shivers with fear. The night, opaque, shimmers with light.
The shoes move closer.
‘I’m …’ he whispers, and his voice is lost like a wisp of smoke as he hovers above her in the dark. She can hear his breathing, the sound of his heart beating. He leans in towards her and the glimmer of his shoes is cast in darkness.
‘I’ve come to bring you in from the rain … I …’ His voice trails off as if he is using the last breath of air in his lungs. Koki’s eyes dart up to his face. He is shrouded in darkness. She looks at his silhouette. He leans forward into the glow of the candlelight and his face is illuminated. His eyes, unexpectedly, as familiar and strange as a drip of rain in the heat. Like new moons in the shadows, a cloudy, lost time suddenly sweeps across them. She remembers sitting on that step all those nights. She looks at his face, disbelieving, she looks at the lines round his mouth; deeper, yet unchanged, and the colour of his skin and the way his forehead is creased in anticipation, bringing his eyebrows, dark, over his eyes.
A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible Page 21
