A Recipe for Daphne

by Nektaria Anastasiadou

  “There you are!” said Julien. He unwrapped a packet of raw minced meat and set it beneath a bush. “I’ve been waiting for this one. What can I do? I feel sorry for the poor things.”

  “And the pellet rifle you keep on your back balcony,” blurted Aliki, “for the ones who do their business—”

  “Sus!” he said. “That’s for rats.”

  Selin stood. My, she was lovely. The kind that others might call plump, but to Fanis she was as voluptuous as Titian’s Sleeping Venus. “It was a pleasure meeting you all,” she said, “but I have to be going.”

  “It’s so early,” whined Julien. “Stay a bit longer.”

  “Do you have a rehearsal?” Fanis asked.

  “No,” said Selin. “My family always eats dinner together on Friday nights.”

  “Of course,” said Fanis. “Shabbat. From my visits to the synagogue, I know exactly how important it is.”

  “We aren’t religious. It’s just a family tradition.” Selin took a business card from her wallet. Unable to believe his good fortune, Fanis raised his hand to take it, but Selin reached straight past him and gave the card to Daphne. “In case you’d like to have coffee sometime,” she said.

  Fanis stood, grasped Selin’s fingertips, and kissed her knuckle beneath the daisy-shaped bijou ring on her middle finger. He sighed as she hurried off. If only he’d met her twenty years before, but now he couldn’t afford to be distracted. By the time he sat down again, Rea was already on to her favorite subject: the retirement stipends distributed to the Rums by the Greek Consulate in order to maintain the community and ensure the survival of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Fanis couldn’t imagine a more boring subject.

  “Plenty of people take advantage,” Rea said softly, in Greek. “Like the Bulgarians who immigrate to Turkey and obtain certificates from the Patriarchate saying that they’re Rum Orthodox so they can get a stipend—”

  “I don’t get it,” said Daphne.

  “Well,” said Rea, speaking more slowly, “the money should only go to real Rums—”

  “What’s a real Rum?” said Daphne.

  “Whatever do you mean?” said Rea. Her spit landed on Fanis’s hand.

  Daphne pushed her movie-star sunglasses onto the top of her head, like a hairband. “I mean that in Byzantine and Ottoman times, the term was religious, not ethnic. So how can we make it the exclusive property of Greek speakers?”

  “Because it is,” said Rea. “If you don’t speak Greek, you’re not Rum. Somebody enlighten her!”

  “Mama,” said Kosmas quietly. “She’s right about Byzantium.”

  Daphne sat tall in the sloping canvas chair. “Are Rums thoroughbred dogs? Do they have papers to prove it? Any Orthodox Christian is Rum, Madame Rea, regardless of his ethnicity.”

  “Amen,” said Fanis, already fed up with the conversation. “Now let’s talk about Saturday—”

  “Are you saying, Daphne,” Rea continued, “that the Antiochians and Bulgarians are Rums? If you are, you’re misinformed. They’re not part of the homogeneia.”

  “I despise that word,” said Daphne. “Homogeneia—the same race. Which means it’s a racist word.”

  “What’s she talking about?” said Rea, looking from one friend to the next. “Everybody says homogeneia.”

  “I’ve always thought it was a dumb word,” grumbled Julien.

  “You’re missing Rea’s point,” said Aliki. She planted both feet firmly on the ground.

  “Madame Rea,” said Daphne. “The ancestors of the Antiochians were Byzantines. That’s what Rum means—Eastern Roman, Byzantine. And you’re saying that they’re not Rum because they speak Arabic instead of Greek. That’s racist.”

  “Ritsa, she has a point,” said Dimitris, gently. He took a Tribune from his briefcase and fanned himself with it.

  “I’m not having this conversation,” Rea huffed.

  Kosmas caressed the back of his mother’s head. “Mama, please.”

  Rea slapped her hand onto the table. The tea-garden cat bolted toward the cemetery. “You’re not from here, Daphne,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The argument was a better gift than Fanis could ever have hoped for. Kosmas certainly would not pursue Daphne now, and Daphne, judging from the way she clenched her jaw, had already begun to hate Rea.

  “Come, come, Rea,” said Gavriela, nervously twisting a used antibacterial wipe. “Let’s settle down.”

  “Daphne,” said Kosmas, in a pathetic peacemaking effort, “don’t you think there can be some good in preserving one’s community? Don’t you think that there can be good in wanting to keep together so that it’s not all diluted and lost?”

  “Of course there is. But cultural heritage and religion don’t depend upon race.”

  “So well put,” said Fanis. He clapped his hands. “She’s right, you know.”

  “But I thought, Mr. Fanis,” said Kosmas, “that you, too, wanted to marry a Rum. I thought our community was important to you.”

  “It is. But a Rum, as our lovely Daphne just said, is an Orthodox Christian, not a thoroughbred dog. Anyway, let’s not give her a hard time. She has her views, and they happen to be quite intelligent, just like her.”

  The call to prayer resounded from the loudspeaker of the nearby mosque.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Fanis. “One doesn’t need to understand the call to prayer’s words in order to experience their meaning. Islamic chant also has a strong historical relationship with ours. We’re all linked in some way.”

  Daphne smiled. Realizing that he had found her spot, Fanis pursued his advantage. “Which reminds me, the bishop will be at the Panagia church on Sunday—it’s Pentecost, you know—and he always has good stories. Why don’t you come, my dear Daphne?”

  Daphne looked to her aunt.

  “We’ll see,” said Gavriela, standing. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Daphne and I have to be going. You know how my husband hates a late dinner.”

  After the others had left, Fanis and Julien ordered their last tea. Fanis hated nothing more than solitude at the close of the day, yet there was nothing more certain than solitude for the last of the Levantine Christians and Rums.

  “Selin’s a good one,” Fanis said. “Her hair is a bit—what’s the word? Outrageous? But she’s attractive nonetheless. Fetching, really. You’re a lucky man.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Julien. “Selin is way out of my league. We’re too old for women like that.”

  “Apropos, how old is she?”

  “Forty-three.”

  “That’s well within your range, Prof,” said Fanis. “You’re only twenty-nine years older.”

  “Please. I’d be lucky if I could get Aliki.”

  “Aliki?” Fanis wrinkled his nose. “You’ve set your sights a little low, don’t you think?”

  “I’m not a crazy old bastard like you. I’m practical. If you want somebody to share your loneliness, you’re going to have to start thinking about women your own age. Or at least closer to it.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Fanis, rising. “I’m off. Goodnight.”

  “Sweet and naughty dreams,” said Julien.

  Fanis plodded down the hill and stopped to peer through the open windows of the Çukurcuma mosque. The minarets and chandeliers were illuminated for the holiday of the Prophet’s Ascent to Heaven. Shoeless men kneeled on the rugs of its sunken floor. It looked inviting.

  Upon arriving at his building—a late-nineteenth-century rust-colored mansion with old-style oriels on each of its five floors—Fanis looked over his shoulder. Having reassured himself that no one was following, he fumbled in his pocket for his keys, unlocked the heavy iron door, and stepped inside. He shut the door gently so that its dull clang would not disturb his neighbors and took a deep breath while observing the faded entryway wall paintings, which had been designed to look as if they were alcove statues. Within a burgundy-bordered panel of yellow ochre, the tall figure of the goddess
Athena stood to his left. Directly across from her was a male counterpart, the god Hermes. Fanis had always attributed the sparing of his house from the mob to their guardianship, rather than to a God he visited every Sunday in church and in whom he did not entirely believe.

  “Friends,” he said to the faceless paintings. “Lend a hand, will you? Daphne hasn’t bitten yet, and that bewitching Selin is more than I can handle.”

  He ascended the staircase, pausing at each landing for a rest so that he wouldn’t suffer the stroke predicted by Dr. Aydemir. He felt just as fit at seventy-six as he had at sixty, but his mouth was parched. He opened his water bottle and took a sip but had difficulty swallowing. Wasn’t that a symptom of arteriosclerosis? If Fanis were not so attached to his apartment, he would have moved to the ground floor and saved himself the daily torture of ascending four and a half flights with a list of symptoms flashing like warning lights on a car dashboard. Damn that Aydemir.

  Once inside, he double-bolted the door, closed the velvet curtains, checked that he had indeed locked the balcony window before going out to tea, and peered inside closets and behind doors to make sure that no one had entered while he was out. When he was certain all was secure, he disconnected the telephone—lest he be bothered by his habitual prank caller—and arranged his cutlery, a plate of leftover meatballs and pilaf, and glass of lemon juice on a nineteenth-century Qajar table tray. Then he turned on the television to Magnificent Century, a historical soap opera that was the subject of much current debate. The prime minister had criticized it for misrepresentation of the golden age of Ottoman history. He was right, of course. Women—and men—of that epoch did not wear so much makeup; neither did the sultan’s wives and concubines expose their augmented breasts in such a fashion. Furthermore, uncastrated men did not enter the harem, as they had to in the soap opera in order to create a spicier plot. Even so, Fanis cringed whenever he heard talk of prohibiting certain representations of history.

  Sitting down to dinner, he chased the controversy from his mind and lost himself in the palace intrigues. Halfway through his meal, the electricity went out. His terror of intruders made him freeze with a mouth full of pilaf. Perhaps they had done it. Perhaps they were waiting in the street, like a flow of molten evil, just as they had been on that September night, and perhaps this time they would succeed in breaking down his door. Or perhaps it was just another electricity outage like the one they’d had last Monday.

  Fanis peeled back the curtains. The entire street was black. It was, after all, just a power cut. Swearing and stubbing his toes, he fumbled his way through the living room and located candles and matches in a sideboard drawer, beneath Dr. Aydemir’s crumpled scripts. He was sure that Aydemir was nothing but a pharmaceutical salesman, even if his diagnosis had been correct. So what was the use in keeping those hateful papers? Besides, Fanis was going to get his Viagra after all, and who knew if erectile aids could be taken with that poison?

  He lit a candle, snatched up the prescriptions, and carried them to the kitchen sink. Then, one by one, he set them on fire and watched the flames eat half-moons into the paper. A few wispy embers wafted up from the sink and settled down again. When the flames had gone out, Fanis surveyed the insignificant ashes, set the candle on the counter where his mother had rolled pastry, turned on the tap, and washed the death sentences down the drain.

  He took the candle into the bedroom, put on his pajamas, and stretched out on the bed. Over the roofs of Pera, a flock of screaming seagulls surged and receded like an ocean wave. A cat howled, like a woman having an orgasm. Now that’s a good sound, Fanis thought. He tried to picture Daphne’s face on the ceiling. Nothing. He tried Selin’s. Nothing. He tried again, and the result startled him, for he conjured his lost fiancée Kalypso instead. She was just as real as Daphne and Selin had been in the tea garden that afternoon, and she was not angry with him. He had always supposed that, if there was a heaven and if he met her in it, she would refuse to speak to him. Instead, smiling and laughing, she nibbled his ear. Then some idiot let the heavy iron building door slam shut, and she disappeared.

  Fanis tried to bring her back but other sounds—motors, a catfight, and Anatolian music—kept breaking his concentration. The couple who lived beneath him began quarrelling. Fanis unlocked the balcony door and shouted, “Can’t you argue during the day?” The couple fell silent. He extinguished the candle and lay down to wait for sleep or death, whichever came first. Not having gone to see Kalypso was the greatest regret of his life, the secret sorrow he had tried to numb with amorous adventures. He hadn’t expected her to die as she had, without warning. He’d thought they had all the time in the world—a lifetime—to heal the wounds of that night. Wouldn’t running to her bedside have made her feel dishonored twice over? Wait until she’s up and about again, his mother had advised him. Wait and then tell her that none of it makes any difference.

  7

  Those Who Live in Hades

  It was pentecost sunday, the day on which the souls of the dead, which had been released from Hades during the Easter Resurrection liturgy, would be obliged to return to the underworld. Fanis thought of the old-fashioned country housewives who said that one should never trim trees or vines between Easter and Pentecost because wandering souls liked to rest upon them. His own mother had never left laundry hanging out past sunset lest the souls wrap themselves in the forgotten linens and leave nasty stains. As a modernist, Fanis did not give much credence to visions of ghosts on bedsheets and tree branches, but he wondered whether Kalypso might be walking beside him that morning and enjoying the tranquil emptiness of the Grand Avenue just as much as he did. Suddenly he felt a light caress on the back of his hand. He looked to his right, but no one was there. Nothing even nearby. He really was losing it.

  He arrived at the Panagia before everyone but the custodian. He lit a solitary candle in the narthex, looked up at the starry-sky ceiling, and took a deep breath of church air. If he were a parfumier, he’d try to market that scent. Heaven, he’d call it: an Oriental classic with a stale wood and mold base, top notes of apple and rosewater, and a spicy heart of myrrh and cinnamon. Supplies not expected to last more than twenty years. Heaven: get it while you can.

  “Kalimera.” It was an ordinary Greek greeting—good morning—but since one hardly ever heard it in the street anymore, kalimera was balm to Fanis’s ears.

  He turned and saw the bishop standing beside him in the narthex. “Good morning, Your Eminence. You’re here early.”

  The bishop lit two candles and placed them tightly together in the sand, like inseparable lovers. “Couldn’t sleep. Probably from the fried zucchini I ate late last night. I should never, ever eat fried stuff at night, but what can I do? I’ve a weakness for it.” The bishop pulled open the heavy door to the nave and held it for Fanis. “Anyway, let’s not drag things out today. Pentecost liturgy is long enough as it is. Chant quickly and let’s be done by half past twelve.”

  “I’ll try,” said Fanis, knowing he’d do just the opposite.

  The bishop unbuttoned his suit jacket as they walked down the right aisle toward the sanctuary. “You’re looking gloomy,” he said.

  “Just the usual stuff,” said Fanis. “I try to be optimistic, but sometimes I think about how we’ll all be gone soon, and how these churches will be deserted, and it gets me down.”

  The bishop gave the Archangel Μichael’s door a little push. “Maybe the prognostications are right,” he said. “But, for some strange reason, I believe in resurrection.”

  Fanis followed the bishop through the iconostasis door and into the sanctuary, which was lit only by the flame of a vigil lamp. Switching on the lights, he said, “You have to. You’re a bishop.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” said the bishop. “I meant the resurrection of the community. I feel it today especially. Our young people are going to return.”

  Fanis hung up his suit jacket and took his black, satin-edged polyester cantor’s robe—a gift from the Patriarch—from t
he closet. “Dream on,” he said, threading his arms through the sleeves. “My godson wouldn’t come back if you paid him.”

  He returned to the nave and climbed the two creaky wooden steps to the first cantor’s stand. He reviewed the Byzantine music notation, which looked remarkably similar to Arabic script, and distributed his weight evenly on both legs: correct posture would help him avoid foot pain over the next few hours.

  Matins began, followed by the Great Litany. A few old peacocks gathered on the left side of the church, opposite the first cantor’s stand. Fanis paid them no attention. Still, he couldn’t prevent his eyes from wandering when a shapely Greek tourist venerated an icon at the front of the church and performed not one, not two, but three full hand-to-floor bows. Fanis continued chanting mechanically, but his mind inevitably traveled straight up the woman’s skirt.

  Kosmas entered just before the Holy Anaphora and settled into a stasidion opposite Fanis. As Fanis chanted his favorite part of the liturgy—“Holy, holy, holy, Lord Sabaoth, heaven and earth are filled with Your glory”—he couldn’t help noticing that Kosmas looked infuriatingly good in the new brown suit.

  Soon it was so hot that Fanis was obliged to dab his forehead with a handkerchief every few seconds. Wondering where Daphne was, he furtively observed the church. Cantoring was so much more enjoyable when you knew that a beautiful woman was listening. Yet Daphne and Gavriela were nowhere to be seen.

  As always, the Great Vespers of Pentecost were tacked on to the end of the liturgy. During that service, the bishop read a long series of poetic supplications while kneeling on a pillow in the Beautiful Gate. The parishioners kneeled on walnut branches, whose bitterness represented the grief of the souls who, at that moment, were being forced to walk the hair-thin bridge back to Hades. Fanis closed his eyes so that he wouldn’t see the sadness of the departing shades. After all, Kalypso was probably among them. When the bishop had finished the prayers, Fanis took a deep breath and let it all go. The souls had gone. They had taken their sorrow with them. The parishioners wiped their eyes and composed themselves. Fanis hid behind the cantor’s stand and discreetly blew his nose. He silently repeated one word, the most important of all: Resurrection. Perhaps the bishop was right. Perhaps it was coming.