The Nightingale Won't Let You Sleep

by Steven Heighton

  Elias peers into his coffee cup—nothing left but grounds—then drains his water glass.

  “In time, after tours in other difficult places, I arrived on Cyprus and was posted to Ephira. I could hardly believe my fortune. I’ve told you of how I cherished the village’s beauty, and of how well the two peoples seemed to mix. Certainly you would not say they loved each other—they were too wary for that, and most were insufficiently fluent in the other’s tongue. But, together, they loved Ephira, which made for a true bond. And their way of living in that place…I can say truly that it taught me to love.

  “In Berlin too I had loved, in a way, but always it was love ‘on the fly,’ in hurried passing, or love in the abstract—love of peace, liberty, humanity—or it was love in the shadow of my ambitions, or love postponing its full expression until a future when, somehow, one would be less busy—less driven! To a driven man, others are not fully human, you see. They are a portal to his goals, or a barrier in the path. In Ephira, I realized that affection does not combine well with the ticking clock.

  “Some days, once I’d completed the day’s work, I would sit for hours in the plaza beneath the spreading carob tree, playing backgammon and taking coffee or icy beer and conversing with the villagers, Greek, Turkish, and the few tourists who passed through. Folk up north might have seen the pleasant sameness of this life—at least once it passed the length of a sunny holiday—as wasted time. I insist there was a value. In the village, everything became real. I’d liked food and drink well enough before, but now the flavours—the intensity of the flavours was shocking! I looked at the people around me and—so it seemed—I saw them truly, heard them, understood them. I grew so patient, I hardly knew myself. For my neighbours I felt a calm and profound affection, even for those I disliked in certain ways, like the mayor, Adamou, and the rich Turkish Cypriot, Şenoglu.

  “I was by now paying visits to a widow who kept hens and grew vegetables just south of the village. I loved this Ariadne very much. As I myself was well liked by the locals (though not quite as well liked as I imagined), no one seemed to object to these visits, not even the priest, even though Ephira—like any village in the hills, from Bavaria to Bolivia—was quite conservative, and in ways I chose not to study too closely. You see, I’d resolved not to return to my unified country but rather to make Cyprus home. You’ll note the irony: I’d found happiness in a place that was still very much divided and I myself a kind of guard on the wall! Of course, there was no actual wall in Ephira, and I no longer felt like any guard. Like our lazy colonel here, I would forget my uniform more and more often, and never would I bear my gun. Still, each morning I would drive a route around the area in the white Jeep, though often I would stop to talk to people, or deliver a sack of rice or pitcher of wine from old Spyrou’s shop to the houses of elders outside the village. Or to the widow’s house.

  “Now and then, someone would arrive to replace me for my leaves, and I would go to Nicosia to buy a few needed things, mainly English and German books. As you know, Nicosia is still truly divided, as Berlin used to be, so I was always happy to return to Ephira. In due course, I petitioned the U.N. authorities that I might remain for another tour. Request granted. And so, two more years passed in happiness.

  “In most places, I think, most people wish to get along without the strife, but everywhere there are a few deeply driven men who, if the conditions come up, will seize their chance. These men are either idealists or cynics, nothing in between. They intoxicate the crowd and fool them into doing the work that a bloody dream demands. From the beginning, I sensed Yiannis Adamou might be such a man, but I was unwilling to believe he would cause real trouble.

  “Adamou was of average appearance, average build, average mind (though clever enough for his purposes)—not someone you would easily recollect if the police asked you to describe a man involved in a crime. Still, one thing divided him from the villagers: he carried himself not like a Cypriot but a Greek from Greece. Greek Cypriots, as you know, are more quiet and reserved, rarely looking you hard in the eye and standing close to dominate you, like Greek men—like our Stratis!—for whom that role is part of life’s theatre. Was Adamou simply conceited in his local importance? He’d been the mayor since his mid-twenties. But I suspect he had always been what he was.

  “Still, when he came to Mehmut to have his moustache or his hair trimmed—he was balding, with a flaking skull, but the fringe of hair grew thick and black—he was civil enough to the barber, who, by the way, was the saddest, gentlest man I ever knew, with drooping dark eyes, always moist, as though he cried eternally for some private sorrow, or for the world. Yet he would smile at jokes and plenty were told in his shop. That banter was a wonderful training for me, in both tongues. In fact, Mehmut’s noisy little shop on the plaza seemed the very heart of the…the liaison between Ephira’s Greeks and Turks, like the tiny parliament of a two-nation country.

  “One morning I lay in Mehmut’s chair with the hot towels on my face while three Greek Cypriots, Adamou the loudest, argued in terms which made it obvious: this was no new conversation but part of one ongoing, one of which I should have been aware, given a few things Ariadne had said and which I’d missed, or rather dismissed. But I knew I must listen now.

  “Over the past year some younger Greek Cypriots had left Ephira, making advantage of the republic’s new membership in the E.U. to take work in Europe. In the same period, by coincidence—though the men in the shop had their doubts on that score—there had been an unusual number of births in the Turkish quarter, and a large family had moved down from Girne, permitted to do so because they had relatives in Ephira. As a result, for the first time the number of Turkish Cypriots in Ephira was approaching the number of Greeks—so Mayor Adamou was now saying. Of course, everyone knew the Turks simply had more children. Now they were importing outsiders under dubious pretext, to ‘flood out’ the Greeks, just as they had in Ottoman times. And now the village’s wealthiest Turk, Derviş Şenoglu—a retired hotelier from Famagusta, who had also moved in and built a house, having relatives here—he had approached Adamou and, citing the demographic change, proposed that he should represent the Turkish Cypriots and meet regularly with Adamou. Adamou felt that Şenoglu was proposing a sort of co-mayoral arrangement and it angered him deeply. Şenoglu had not been elected, after all. Of course, in the next election, he might very well be elected, since by then the Turks of Ephira might be the majority!

  “As Mehmut lifted the towel off my face—his fingers seemed to be trembling—the men began to argue about what measures might have to be used if the Turkish population really did overtake the Greek. By now, I knew the other voices—Socratis, the owner of a hardware shop, and Andreas, a younger man who seemed never to do anything and lived with his parents. It was becoming harder to follow their words. I think perhaps they were finally made cautious by my presence, though in general, I think, they’d ceased to regard me as ‘U.N.’ at all. I was simply a likeable, harmless ksenos who had chosen to make his home among them. As for Mehmut—I suspect they were so accustomed to him that he’d become invisible to them, like a servant.

  “I heard the slap of dress shoes in the doorway and the men fell silent. I realized what must have happened. Şenoglu had come in. I wanted to sit up and look, but I sensed Mehmut hovering close above me with the razor. Evidently, Şenoglu was shrewd enough to interpret the silence but, like Adamou, too proud to be cautious. In Turkish he made a jocular remark to Mehmut. I think the gist of it was that he thought it courteous of the Greeks not to speak ill of him in his presence. Mehmut made no reply. He seemed to be more aware of the moment’s gravity. Adamou and his…what is the word…sidemen?”

  “Sidekicks?”

  “Ja—they all begin speaking at once, whether to each other or to Şenoglu, I couldn’t say. I sensed that all three were on their feet. Adamou said something in broken Turkish and Şenoglu replied in broken Greek, calling the man a vlakas. I sat up in the chair and ran into the razor, which nicked
me and left a small scar”—he indicates a horizontal welt on a part of his cheek previously covered by his beard—“the only mark that the tragedy has left on my person! With my toe, I spun the chair to face the door. As Şenoglu saw me, he seemed both surprised and amused. Ah, he must have thought, a quarrel finally erupts between the two sides and out of the air the U.N. appears! But to Adamou, the grin must have seemed another display of contempt, and he did something very odd—he pinched Şenoglu’s nose and twisted. Şenoglu’s eyes opened very wide and his black brows drew together, I think more in amazement than anger. He slapped Adamou across the face, terrifically fast. It was a slap, not a punch, but hard enough that Adamou staggered backward. Now Andreas, the biggest one there, who by the way wore a moustache modelled after Adamou’s, raised a fist to strike Şenoglu, but I called, ‘Stop now!’ first in Greek, then in Turkish. The Greek Cypriots glanced toward me, while Şenoglu grinned again, spun on his heel and left the shop.

  “The three Greeks—all muttering angrily—started out the door, and for a moment they blocked each other’s way, like comedians in a soundless film. Feeling ridiculous myself, I said, ‘If you catch and hurt him, I will have to arrest you!’ Never had I tried to speak this way, not in Cyprus. I was not even sure how to go about arresting anyone. They turned to me and, despite their anger, they began laughing. How those three men laughed! I realized I was still sitting in the chair, fully lathered, wearing a shaving bib, talking my accented Greek out of a St Nicholas beard of foam that must now be dashed with blood. Adamou said, ‘Will you chase us through the streets looking like that, Roland? Then arrest us and throw us in jail? And what jail would that be? Anyway, we can settle our account with Şenoglu at a more convenient time. Let him go. Ephira is small.’ ‘I will arrest you if you hurt him,’ I said, and then—trying to be even-handed, always an error with a man like Adamou—I said, ‘And I’ll be speaking to him as well, about striking you.’ The three laughed and Adamou said, ‘Don’t bother scolding him about that slap. His young wife could hit me harder. At least I think so. Perhaps I will find out.’ And they turned and left.

  “I lay back down in the chair and let Mehmut stop my cut with his pencil of ice, then finish the shave. His hand was trembling and I could feel the blade at my throat as I tried to think. I managed to convince myself the matter might go no farther—after all, had peace not prevailed in the village for years? Still, I did resolve to speak privately with both Adamou and Şenoglu the next day.

  “That evening as usual I visited Ariadne. She filled my glass many times, and after the meal—her stew of rabbit, lentils, and leeks, you know the dish, I prepared it just a few days ago—I told her I should go back into Ephira and spend the night at HQ. Naturally, I’d told her what happened in Mehmut’s shop—and, just as naturally, she already knew. Now she urged me to stay with her, at least for a few more hours. I insisted I must go, to insure that all was well, but she—how can I put this—she convinced me to stay a little longer. Afterward, I fell asleep, but at around eleven suddenly I woke. Her arm was firmly around me. I tried to remove it gently, but she held tighter. I explained again that I should leave, must leave, prepei na fygo!, and she grew almost angry, crying and pleading with me. I asked what was happening—did she know of some reason I should not go? No, no such reason, all was well, she said—in fact she now recalled hearing that the mayor and Şenoglu planned to meet the next day, to discuss matters. But she would not look me in the eye—this woman whose black eyes never seemed to weary of meeting mine. Would I not please stay for the night? I pulled away. She began to weep and rage. At the door she stopped me and held on, but I, now fearing the worst, I shoved her away and she fell back into the table that was covered with the remains of our feast. She ended on the floor and looked up at me with fury and fear. ‘Don’t go,’ she said, ‘for your sake, if not for mine!’ But I went, and one of the saddest things about this parting is that I recall so little of our last time together, I mean as man and woman. I had learned to pay such close attention to each moment, but that night—I was distracted.

  “I ran up the dirt road under the stars. It seemed to me that the insects to either side of the road fell silent, field by field, as I climbed toward the houses and the cupola of the church. The plaza was deserted, the cafés were all closed, which seemed odd—usually on summer nights they would be open till midnight. The tattered U.N. flag drooped pitifully above the one-storey HQ. I hurried into the back room and found my sidearm, which I hadn’t seen nor touched for who knows how long. My sense of alarm was real, yet I felt ridiculous as I loaded it—like a boy pretending to be sheriff of Dodge City, as I had as a boy. I tore off my shirt and pulled on my U.N. one—the faded blue one, you’ve seen me wear it—and my beret.

  “Downhill I ran from the plaza into the Turkish quarter. The lanes were deserted. The front door of Şenoglu’s house was ajar, as I’d feared and even expected—you see, everything was now appearing in a…an aura of the expected, like in some kind of half-conscious dream…”

  “Lucid,” Elias says softly, “a lucid dream.”

  “Ja, ja. So, I pushed open the door and entered. Şenoglu lay at my feet in a shallow bath of blood. He was in a bathrobe and undershorts, very bloodied. His breath was passing in and out of a wound in his ribcage—bloody froth emerging and being sucked back in. There were other wounds too. I thought, ‘I must alert the police,’ then recalled that there were no police but me. ‘I must fetch Dr. Economou,’ I thought, but then I heard sounds from up the hallway. I drew and readied the pistol and followed a deep green carpet, like in a grand hotel, so my steps were silent. A door was open on the right. It was a bedroom with a wide bed, modern furnishings, drapes instead of shutters. Yiannis Adamou—I knew him from behind by his wreath of hair—he was arched over the foot of the bed, the toes of his shoes planted on the floor and his trousers around his knees. His shirt-tail hung down and covered his thrusting backside. His thick thighs were like an ape’s. I couldn’t see whom he was covering but I knew it must be Şenoglu’s young wife, Fatim. A very small woman. She was face down, with her lower half bent over the foot of the bed.” Roland breaks off for a few seconds, coughs his throat clear, then resumes: “Her cries were muffled, yet they were loud. Adamou was strangely silent. At the foot of the bed, Socratis Costou was simply standing, as if observing these events with the detachment of a…a researcher, though now I conclude that he was really in shock, ja, I think maybe that none, not even Adamou, had believed their visit would go this far—maybe they too found themselves taking step by step, in lucid dream. As for Şenoglu, I picture him at his door, taunting them, flippant and haughty to the end, never aware he is dooming himself.

  “The third Greek, Andreas, stood over beside the drapes, restraining Şenoglu’s young son, who was watching in horror and crying (I mean weeping, not crying out—he was making no noise). No one seemed aware of me, even after I told them to stop. My voice must have been faint, or not audible over the other sounds. I held the pistol out in front of me and crossed the carpet on feet that I could not feel, then aimed at the mayor’s temple. Finally the others—though perhaps not him and Fatim, whose face was pushed into the bed and her eyes shut tight—the others knew of my presence. Socratis regarded me with surprise and yet, still, no visible alarm. Perhaps it was shock, or perhaps he had so often seen me at my ease, he didn’t believe me capable of action. Neither did I. He called to Adamou, ‘Yianni?’ My vision was reduced to a circle which contained the mayor’s face, still oblivious, and the tangled hair, cheek, and closed eye of Fatim. Then her eye—it opened and found me at the same time that Adamou’s turned toward me. Her eye showed no relief, only terror, while the mayor’s eye narrowed and his mouth curled at the corner—that conceited contempt again! I was still not real to him! He went on thrusting as if I and the pistol were not there, then he panted out his loathsome words: ‘The widow was not enough for you tonight?’

  “The bullet entered through his temple and killed him so fast, the insole
nt expression never left his face, which fell heavily on the back of Fatim’s neck. She screamed. For an appalling moment, his body seemed to move on her as before, then stopped. Fatim shut her eye and called, ‘Derviş, Derviş!’—which was both her son’s and husband’s name. With my free hand I gripped Adamou’s shoulder and tried to lift him from her, but I could only drag and tumble him off sidewise, so he flopped off the side of the bed and lay facing up. I took a step backward. His leering eyes stared up at me. They appeared even more mocking in death—a permanent mockery! I still see those eyes. His member—I tried not to see this—his member still looked murderously inflamed.

  “Fatim, having pulled her bloodied nightgown down over herself, had crawled up the bed to the…the headboard, where she turned to face the room. She stretched her arms toward her son. Andreas’s own arms had fallen limp at his sides, thus freeing the boy, but he, the boy, seemed not to realize, so the mother and son remained a short way apart. The boy was screeching while Fatim called to him, Come! She seemed afraid to move from her spot. As for Socratis, he seemed to be imploring me—his hands were open, he was trying to tell me something, he was speaking very fast, I couldn’t understand his words, couldn’t seem even to hear him, and I shot him in the chest. I watched my own hand and the pistol shoot him. He flew backward—the carpet all but silenced his fall. Andreas was making for the door in a panic, stepping over the body of Socratis. Andreas I shot in the side of the chest and he fell and curled into a ball and lay still. Naturally I assumed he too was killed”—kilt, Roland pronounces the word—“though some days after, I learned that I had wounded him only, and not too badly.