A Recipe for Daphne

by Nektaria Anastasiadou

  “Did she really think that . . . we . . . ?” said Selin.

  Fanis threw his head back dismissively. “I’ll go straighten things out this afternoon.”

  “She has a thing for you, doesn’t she?”

  “Perhaps. But it’s not mutual. Come on. It’s our turn to go inside.”

  After collecting his stipend, Fanis helped Selin up the steep byway to Sıraselviler Avenue, hailed a taxi, and delivered her to the concert hall. He then spent a delightful day listening to Tchaikovsky’s concerto. He was taken in by its gentle and unassuming beginning, its promise of a long journey to an unknown destination, and its dark and lyrical second movement. He closed his eyes to experience the full power of the explosive third movement. What he liked best, however, was the bittersweet energy of the finale, which seemed to signal that the end was not the end at all. Fanis tried to catch glimpses of Orhan the bassoonist, sitting stiffly in his chair. Sure, Orhan was handsome enough, but Fanis couldn’t believe that a man who played such a clumsy and confined instrument could possibly be the kind of lover who would satisfy Selin.

  When Fanis was not spying on Orhan, he fixed his gaze on Selin and the sweat that had collected on her forehead like a diadem. He questioned if such intense playing could harm her recently operated-on heart. At one point she broke so many bow hairs that she had to stop playing and take up a fresh bow. Fanis wondered what the surgical scar on her chest looked like: would it be an ugly jagged thing or a well-healed seam? It would have to be a red line, he decided, delicate and thin. He felt his tongue run along the ridge. . . .

  Selin’s voice recalled Fanis to the reality of Lütfi Kırdar: “That’s it for today.” She was standing before him and holding two steaming paper cups, one of which she held out to him. He hadn’t even noticed that the practice was over.

  He took the hot cup in both his hands and said, “You were marvelous.”

  “You’re kind,” she said.

  “Selin . . . do you remember that thing you said about the next man who entered your heart? Last June, at the tea garden? You said that before men came and went through the hole, but that the next one was going to have to stay. Would that be Orhan?”

  Selin looked at him with the sassy expression that one usually saw only on the faces of teenagers. “Orhan?”

  “Yes. Maybe it’s none of my business, but sometimes, from my window, I see him come and go from your place. I didn’t want to be indiscreet and ask questions, but. . . . Where is he now, anyway?”

  She sat beside him. “Gone already, but he sends his regards. He has a date with Ahmet, his boyfriend.”

  Fanis flopped back into the velveteen seat. “He’s gay?”

  “Are you okay, Fanis? You look a bit pale.”

  Fanis put a hand over his heart. It was still beating. “Of course,” he said. “But what about that hickey?”

  “What hickey?”

  He pointed to the discoloration beneath her jaw line.

  “And you call yourself a musician? That’s fiddler’s neck. A hazard of the profession.”

  “So . . . there’s no boyfriend at all?”

  “Unfortunately not. What about you? It seemed like you were interested in Daphne.”

  “Oh, come on. Daphne’s all right, but I prefer a woman with a better sense of style, an ear for music, and a fuller figure.”

  “That’s good. Because Kosmas is planning on proposing. As soon as his mother is better, that is. I didn’t want to tell you because I thought you might be upset.”

  Fanis finished his tea and crumpled his cup. “Good for Kosmas,” he said. He didn’t mention that he had sent Daphne a Christmas card, just to keep things open on the off-chance that she changed her mind. “I always thought they’d make a nice couple. Listen, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  Selin gave him a sidelong glance. “What?”

  “Did you ever want children?” That wasn’t what he’d planned to say. But still, now that he knew she was single, it was an important question.

  “Of course I did. But the years passed and now I’m forty-three with a heart condition.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Another thing we’ve got in common.”

  “How so?”

  She was being honest with him. He had to man up and do the same. “It’s difficult for me to admit this, but . . . I have cerebral arteriosclerosis and early vascular dementia. I could have a stroke at any time.”

  “Are you taking medication?”

  “I burned the prescriptions in the kitchen sink.”

  “That’s a relief.”

  “Not really. The doctor promised imminent death if I didn’t start taking them right away. For a while I put the diagnosis out of my mind, but Rea’s fainting scared me a bit.”

  “If she fainted.” Selin took his cup from him and stuffed it inside her own. “Don’t let her issues scare you, Fanis.”

  “But Dr. Aydemir is a good doctor. I just wanted you to know because you’re my closest neighbor, perhaps even my best friend—”

  “Your best friend?” Selin tilted her head to one side. “Really?”

  “Yes, you are. I always said that friendship between opposite sexes was impossible but, look, we’re doing it.”

  “I’m honored.” Selin put her hand on his forearm. Her shimmery black-painted fingernails stood out against his tan cashmere sweater, like beads of licorice. “Listen, Fanis,” she said. “Do you feel ill?”

  “No.” What was he saying? Wasn’t he confessing so that she would be prepared for the inevitable? “Well, sometimes,” he said. “But not very often.”

  “If you don’t feel ill, then you aren’t. But I’m here if you need me. That’s what best friends are for.”

  Fanis sighed at those words: best friends. They were as bittersweet as Tchaikovsky’s concerto. But in his condition, could he possibly hope for more?

  He took Selin home in a taxi, then trudged through the snow to Neighbor’s House. Upon arrival, he passed straight into the heated, mirror-walled back area, which his friends used almost as if it were their own private living room. Julien and Gavriela were sitting by the window overlooking the dim snow-covered garden where they took tea in summer.

  Julien stood, as he always did out of good breeding. Yet there was something aggressive in his bearing as he pulled out an empty chair for Fanis. “So what’s this I hear about you and my kid?”

  Apparently Aliki had recovered her ability to speak and put her telephone to use.

  “Your kid?” said Fanis, taking his seat.

  Julien crossed his arms over his fishing vest. “She may not be my biological child, but she certainly is a scholastic one.”

  Gavriela raised her sweater neck a little higher, so that it covered the bottom half of her chin. “Selin’s hardly a kid.”

  Julien sat. “I taught Selin for three years at the Lycée,” he said, rapping the wooden table with his index finger. “I gave her private lessons for five years before that. I wrote her recommendation for the Conservatoire de Paris. I went to her first professional concert in Lyon. And I got a phone call every time some bastard made her cry. That makes her my kid, damn it. And then you, Fanis . . . you’re old enough to be her grandfather—”

  “Not exactly,” said Gavriela.

  “Please—” said Fanis.

  “But he’s a womanizer!” said Julien.

  All heads in the tea garden turned toward Julien. Gavriela raised her penciled eyebrows and expressed everyone’s thoughts with an old Greek proverb: “Eipe o gaidaros ton peteino kefala.” And the ass called the cock a bighead.

  “Evil-hour!” spat Julien. “Have you got a mouth, Gavriela! Fanis has a right to his fun, but not with my kid. I don’t want any more teary phone calls.”

  “Listen,” said Fanis, “we—”

  “Emine,” said Gavriela, “another round of tea, if you please.”

  Gavriela extended a loaded plate of butter cookies to Fanis. He took one to calm his nerves, but it was so
ur and malty, as if the butter had gone bad. Emine returned with the teas. In order to wash away the cookie taste, Fanis took a sip, but the tea was stale. It had obviously been sitting for hours.

  “What I think the professeur means to say, Fanis,” Gavriela resumed, “is that, although you may be in love with Selin, you do need to think about what you have to offer her.”

  “Offer her?” said Fanis. “We’re good friends.”

  Julien rolled his eyes. “As if you could be friends with an attractive young woman. Look here, old man, you’re not fooling anybody.”

  “I swear I haven’t tried to seduce her,” said Fanis.

  “Cut it,” said Julien. “You’ve been with her for months. That’s why you’ve been so scarce. And why I haven’t heard about any new boyfriends.”

  Gavriela hissed in disapproval. “In a few years, you’ll be a burden to her. Do you really want to weigh her down with your care?”

  There it was again: Dr. Aydemir’s horrid little prediction in the form of friendly meddling. Why did Fanis have to give in to old age and illness? Why couldn’t he just have fun?

  But instead of saying any of these things, Fanis shook his head, rose slowly to his feet, and walked out, paying no attention to Julien’s attempts to call him back. The bakery door closed behind him with a rude jangling that unleashed the tears he had felt welling in his eyes from the moment Gavriela had said the word “burden.”

  23

  In Winter and in Love

  After kosmas had discouraged dimitris’s marriage proposal to Rea, the old journalist had had second thoughts. He had feared that Kosmas was right: perhaps Rea saw him only as a friend. The seventies are the age of platonic friendship, he told himself. He had already missed the love and marriage window.

  Dimitris put Kosmas’s sourness out of mind and took refuge in his old refrain about freedom: “I’m single. That’s the way I like it. Free, without any Madame to give me trouble at home.” As the winter holidays approached, however, he wondered if Kosmas might have been wrong.

  In December, Rea told Dimitris to start coming to tea earlier, before Kosmas returned from work, so that he could read the newspaper to her. She said that her eyes were going, but Dimitris suspected that this was a lie because one afternoon, when Rea was worried about the side effects of her statin medication, she put on her bifocals and read the minuscule print on the crinkly paper insert without any difficulty at all.

  In January, when Rea fainted, Dimitris was her first visitor. He rushed over on the morning after the episode—just forty minutes after Kosmas had called him—with a pile of newspapers, a bag of salted pistachios, and two kilos of oranges.

  “The nurse has arrived,” he called as he entered, brandishing the newspapers over his head like a trophy. Seeing Kosmas, Dimitris stopped abruptly: the boy’s eyelids were swollen and his face unshaven. “Time for you to take a break, kid,” Dimitris said.

  “I can’t. The doctor said I have to keep an eye on her—”

  “He didn’t say that you had to,” Dimitris replied. “He said that somebody had to.”

  “Thanks. But I don’t want to impose. Besides, she never lets anybody see her without makeup.”

  “At least tell her I’m here.”

  Kosmas nodded and withdrew. Dimitris set the bag of oranges on the kitchen counter, rummaged in Rea’s drawers for the small plastic press he had seen her use dozens of times, and set to work. By the time he’d filled a tall glass with orange juice and emptied the pistachios into a chipped porcelain dish, Kosmas reopened the door to Rea’s bedroom and called, “She’s ready.”

  Dimitris carried the tray as steadily as he could into the only room in the house he had never seen: Rea’s sunny boudoir. She was sitting up in her bed. Her hair was freshly brushed and loosely held by a headband. She had put on powder, fuchsia lipstick, and rouge. “You’re as beautiful as ever,” said Dimitris, kissing her perfumed cheeks. “It’s like nothing happened at all.”

  That was a lie, of course. He glimpsed an electrode peeking out from beneath Rea’s nightshirt. He saw the small, V-shaped gash on her cheek, the bruise on her arm, the under-eye circles that were accentuated rather than covered by the powder, as well as the embarrassment in her expression. The important thing, however, was to make her feel beautiful.

  Rea stopped the trembling in Dimitris’s right hand by clasping it within her own. “I’m glad you came.”

  Dimitris surrendered to the loose silkiness of her hand. He felt a thrill in his chest and a stirring in his groin—not a full erection, of which he was no longer capable, but a fluttering, an “I’m still alive.” He wanted to kiss Rea there and then. Yet Kosmas was sitting opposite him, on the other side of Rea’s double bed.

  Dimitris said, “You’ve been missing some important discussions.” He grabbed an orange-juice-spattered newspaper from the tray and read the headline: “‘The Prime Minister says Syria is headed for a war that could pose a threat to Turkey.’”

  “Isn’t there any happy news?” said Kosmas “That sort of thing might upset—”

  “Nonsense.” Rea took a sip of orange juice. “I want to know what’s going on in the world. It helps take my mind off my own problems.”

  Dimitris read: “‘At a press conference yesterday in Ankara, the Prime Minister expressed fears that Syria’s multi-ethnic and multi-religious population of twenty-two million could disintegrate.’”

  Rea clicked her tongue. “Such a shame.”

  “Kosmaki, really, why don’t you go get some rest?” said Dimitris. “And . . . I know you said you weren’t going to Miami, but if you did want to go, I’d be happy to sleep on the couch and take care of your mother.”

  Rea took a short breath.

  Kosmas reached for her. “Are you all right, Mama?”

  “Fine,” she said. “But Kosmas can’t go anywhere. It’s out of the question. Not that I wouldn’t be thrilled to have you, Dimitraki, but people would call me a loose woman if we slept in the same house without any formalities.”

  “At our age?” said Dimitris.

  Rea placed her soft, age-spotted hand on his. “Especially at our age,”

  “Thanks for offering, Mr. Dimitris.” Kosmas looked back and forth between Dimitris and Rea. “But I’ve already cancelled my ticket. If you could come during the day so that I could go to work for a few hours, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “Of course!” Dimitris picked up the newspaper to hide his enthusiasm. “Let’s see, for the Eurovision Song Contest representative, they’ve chosen—”

  “I guess I’ll be going now,” said Kosmas, standing.

  “Get some rest, son,” said Rea. “Or go to work if you need to. The orange juice did wonders for me.”

  Kosmas paused in the doorway. “Remember when I changed the light bulbs last summer, Mr. Dimitris?” he said.

  “Of course,” said Dimitris. He could never forget that day, one of the worst of his life.

  “We don’t always understand the people closest to us, Mr. Dimitris. Especially their silence. In other words, cancel whatever shit I said back then.”

  “Kosmas!” said Rea. “Watch your mouth.”

  Dimitris felt a surge of hope. He nodded to Kosmas and said, “The problems created by silence can be solved with love.”

  “What are you two talking about?” said Rea.

  “Guy stuff,” said Kosmas. “I’ll leave you two alone now.”

  The following day Dimitris bought a diamond ring, just like they did in American movies. It was nothing imaginative: a 4.1mm round solitaire with an 18-carat gold band, but he felt like a millionaire while picking it out. He decided to wait a few weeks to give it to Rea because he didn’t want to put any more strain on her overtaxed heart. And then, when the Holter monitor finally showed that Rea didn’t need a pacemaker, he decided it would be most romantic to wait until Lover’s Day.

  On the morning of February 14, he ironed a lime-green shirt, buttoned it all the way to the top, tied a green an
d pink floral necktie beneath the collar, put on a pair of brown wool pants, and pulled a sweater vest over the shirt. He donned his winter galoshes, his flannel-lined gabardine, and a herringbone newsboy cap. Then he picked up his briefcase, which was empty except for his cell phone and the brown-paper envelope that served as his wallet, and set out on a mission: to say goodbye to his freedom.

  He walked to his favorite candy shop in the Balık Pazarı, where he was greeted by his old friend Muharrem, who had been wearing a white lab coat and working in the minty vapors of his father’s candy shop ever since he had graduated from the prestigious Galatasaray Lycée fifty-three years before. Muharrem was not only the best-known candy-maker in Pera, but also the most thoughtful: he still phoned Rum neighbors who had immigrated to Athens whenever he read about earthquakes or floods in Greece, just to make sure that they were all right.

  “Monsieur,” said Dimitris, using a French title because Muharrem spoke that language as if he had grown up in France, “I am saying goodbye to my freedom today.”

  Muharrem adjusted the lid of a great copper urn, whose handwritten label read Rose Preserve. Then he clasped his hands behind his back and said, “Votre liberté?”

  “I’m proposing to Rea Xenidou.”

  “Excellent choice,” said Muharrem in Turkish. “I always admired her gait when she promenaded in the Grand Avenue with her mother. So graceful.”

  “She has a cane now,” said Dimitris.

  “But I’m sure she hasn’t lost her poise.”

  “Certainly not. What sweets should I take her?”

  “In winter and in love,” said Muharrem, like a doctor giving a prescription, “cinnamon lokum is the best choice.”

  “A box of cinnamon lokum, then. Perhaps I should offer her some chocolates as well?”