by Nadia Marks
Adonis sat silently holding on to Anita’s hand, letting her speak.
‘Katerina was made for childbirth. During those last two months of her pregnancy, I lived in fear that she would go into labour while Sonia was at work and I wouldn’t know what to do. One Sunday afternoon while we were sitting in the sun, in the famous Volksgarten, eating ice cream with Great-aunt Heidi and Sonia, Katerina looked at me and very calmly said, “I’ve either wet myself or my waters have just broken!”’
Katerina gave birth swiftly and easily in the apartment with both Anita and Sonia by her side. ‘Everything my body did wrong, hers did right,’ Anita continued. ‘I can’t say it didn’t bother me,’ she looked around the room, ‘it hurt, but it didn’t last long and I knew it wasn’t Katerina’s fault; the only thing that lingered was the melancholy. I think most of the time she and I managed our destinies well.
‘After you were born, we stayed in Vienna for three months until you were strong enough for us to take you on the long journey back home. Katerina was an instinctive mother; she tried to include me, to show me, teach me, but the maternal instinct didn’t come naturally to me. Then it was time to come back to Cyprus and tell the world you were mine.’
Adonis sat listening, motionless and speechless. Conflicting emotions were rising inside him. Suddenly he got up and started silently pacing the room.
‘Didn’t either of you think that I should have been told when she was still alive?’ he said eventually, fighting to keep his composure. ‘Didn’t any of you think about me?’
‘You were the only one she ever thought about, never doubt that – you and the padre,’ Anita replied.
‘Didn’t she think that she had a moral duty to tell me at some point? Didn’t any of you? I’m a grown man, for God’s sake …’
‘I could see how she suffered over the years that you didn’t know the truth, Adonis mou, but she had given her word to God. She made a vow of silence, and she would never have betrayed the padre. He remained the love of her life till the end. His name and yours were on her lips when she died. He left not knowing anything. She wanted it that way; she had made up her mind she wouldn’t come between him and his God and she kept her word.’
‘Where did he go?’ Adonis asked, unable to control his tears now.
‘He was offered a position in Rome – I remember he wasn’t sure if he should go.’ Anita reached for his hand and looked him in the eyes. ‘I expect he didn’t want to leave her, or you … He was very fond of you – you have his eyes, you know.’
‘Is he still alive?’ Adonis asked, his voice barely audible now.
‘I don’t know. They wrote to each other regularly; she lived for those letters.’
Adonis managed to fall asleep for a few hours as the pale light of dawn started to creep through the shutters. He had stayed awake for most of the night, his head swirling with questions, his heart with emotions. He shifted from one to the other, driving himself to despair. He knew all about the five stages of grief, Robert had warned him about it when the news came about Katerina’s death. Now he was apparently grieving for a host of other things too. Initially, when Anita had been speaking, disbelief as opposed to denial was his first reaction, but that had only lasted moments. Now as he lay in his bed he started going through the rest. Anger definitely took hold of him for a while. How could they let me go through life not knowing the most important things about myself? He started to blame his grandmother and her cunning scheme. All sorts of alternative sequences ran through his head, tormenting him. She always wanted to control everything, he told himself, she had to be the boss … Then his anger shifted onto Anita and Katerina: Why didn’t they tell me earlier when she was still alive instead of letting me find out now that she’s dead? What good is that? The questions kept coming without any satisfactory answers as his head throbbed and the temperature in the room became hotter and hotter. The ceiling fan was doing nothing to cool him down and opening the window would only bring in the mosquitoes, so he lay there, unable to move in a pool of sweat, his brain pulsating with dark thoughts. He would have given anything to put his arms around her knowing she was his mother. What’s the use? the voice in his head lamented. It’s all too late now. A crushing sense of gloom engulfed him. Robert! he suddenly thought. I need to speak to Robert. He reached for the glass of water on the bedside table, drank it down thirstily and picked up his mobile phone and dialled Robert in New York. Three a.m. Cyprus time, he started to calculate – Robert would just be getting home from work, had probably just opened a bottle of wine and would be thinking about dinner. Thoughts of Robert started to make him feel better.
‘Hey you!’ his voice came trickling down the line. ‘You sound mighty sexy,’ he continued, responding to Adonis’s husky middle-of-the-night voice, ‘but shouldn’t you be asleep now?’
‘That is exactly what I should be, but my brain won’t let me …’ his voice trailed off.
‘What’s up, honey?’ Robert asked, sounding serious now, his soothing voice already having a calming effect. ‘It’s not surprising you can’t sleep – you had an emotional day, my love.’
Adonis propped himself up on the pillow and took a deep breath.
‘Yes …’ he replied. ‘I certainly have, and you don’t even know the half of it.’
Finally, he got up and made his way to the kitchen; he felt closer to Katerina there. The others were still asleep. Anita was a notoriously late riser and the only one who ever got up early had been Katerina.
The conversation he had had with Robert earlier had done him good. It was healing. Robert could always make him feel better, that’s why he was so good at his work. He knew the right words to say to help Adonis see things from a different angle, as Katerina had also used to do when he was younger. Those two had the ability to disperse any dark doubts hovering around him. Strange as it sounded Adonis had often thought that Katerina and Robert were similar in many ways. Their unconditional love for him was one of them. But there were other similarities too. If Katerina had lived at a different time, in a different world with different opportunities he thought she could have been a good therapist.
He looked around the kitchen. Everything was in its place, exactly as she’d left it and how he remembered it. He reached for the Turkish coffee that Katerina always kept in an old tin, which evidently in some distant past had contained Earl Grey tea. She hadn’t much cared for it – she preferred Russian tea, but Olga had been fond of it. Next to the coffee was the sugar in a glass jar and above it on a shelf the ibriki. She’d kept two of them in different sizes. If she was making coffee for herself or when the padre came to visit she’d use the small blue enamel one, but if it was for more people she always used the larger stainless steel one. That of course depended on whether everyone took their coffee the same way; if not she had to make each cup separately.
He picked up the blue enamel ibriki from the shelf and placed it on the gas stove. He liked his Turkish coffee metrio, a flat teaspoon of sugar to a heaped teaspoon of coffee. He opened the tin and took in a deep breath, filling his lungs and the room with the aroma. He began making it the way Katerina had taught him.
‘This is how you make the best cup of Turkish coffee in Larnaka,’ she told him when he was around fifteen and started wanting to drink coffee. ‘Watch and learn! First, you measure your water – one cup for each person, but take care not to add too much, otherwise it will taste weak,’ she instructed while going through the process and making sure he was watching. ‘The sugar goes in first and then the coffee; you stir it all well for a minute or so, and then – this is important – while you are cooking your coffee you do not take your eyes off it because if you do it will be a disaster! Not only will the coffee be ruined if it boils over, but you will have made the biggest mess on my stove and you will have to clear it up!’ Her cheery chuckle echoed around the room.
Alone in her empty kitchen, Adonis thought how improbable it was that he would never hear her laughter again. As he stood at the s
tove vigilantly watching over the ibriki, he felt sure she was standing next to him making sure he was doing it right. He lifted the ibriki off the flame at the perfect moment and poured the coffee into a small old-fashioned cup, one that Katerina liked to use for herself. The kaimaki, on top, was thick and creamy; it even had a bubble in it, which according to Katerina symbolized love. Smiling, he carried it to the table and sat down; he had made the perfect cup indeed.
‘Bravo, Adonis!’ he fancied he heard her praise him as he took his first sip, and then felt Eleni’s arms wrap around him from behind, hugging him tightly and causing him to spill some of his coffee. ‘Now you can make me one too,’ she said and kissed the top of his head.
He had hoped to savour his solitude for a little longer, but he didn’t mind; Eleni’s company was always welcome.
‘Kalimera, agabi mou!’ he said, putting his cup down and turning around to give her a kiss.
‘You see, Adonis, the way I see it …’ she said, ignoring his greeting, and launching into what appeared to be the continuation of an existing conversation between them, ‘in my opinion and if the truth be known, she’s always been your mother.’ She pulled up a chair and sat next to him, elbows on the table, staring into his eyes. ‘It’s as you said the other night: she mothered all of us one way or another, but you were different. You, Adonis mou, you were her true child, and you are the product of a grand passion! Isn’t that wonderful to know? I thought of nothing else all night.’ He nodded and started to say something back but Eleni continued with her stream of consciousness without giving him a chance.
‘Looking back now, it’s obvious; the bond between the two of you was different. I used to think it was because you were a boy, but now it all makes sense. I have to admit that all last night I tossed and turned, tormenting myself and thinking why couldn’t she be my mother! Can you believe it? I was kind of jealous; I became six again …’
‘I know, I know, I’m trying to take it all in, it’s all too much …’ Adonis started to say, but Eleni’s flow would not be curtailed.
‘This is so amazing, it’s so romantic, a true love story! She must have loved him so much … I couldn’t have done what she did. I couldn’t have given him up.’
‘I guess that is true love,’ Adonis put in at last just as Marianna walked through the door still in her nightdress.
‘She had a lot of love to give to us all,’ she said as she pulled up a chair to join them. ‘I was just a stranger and she took me in. God only knows where I’d be now if it wasn’t for her.’
‘I would have probably married Sophia,’ said Adonis, ‘had a couple of kids and made a mess of my life.’ Robert’s words from the night before came to mind again, softening his sense of injustice. Their talk had helped him to see the complexity of the situation. ‘It will take years to understand it all fully,’ he had told him, ‘but we can work it out – I will help you. Those women you grew up with managed to deal with whatever life threw their way by sticking together, and so will we!’
‘She was quite remarkable,’ added Eleni, moving up to make space at the table for Marianna, ‘especially when you think how she started her life.’
‘That unreserved love of hers, for all of us …’ Adonis’s voice trailed off again, his eyes welling up.
‘It’s funny how life turns out,’ Marianna said, putting an arm round his shoulders. ‘Eleni and I have no recollection or memories of our real mothers. Out of the three of us we thought you were the only one who knew your mother …’
‘As it turns out none of us knew our mother, or our father,’ added Eleni, ‘but in the end Adonis is the only one who actually knew both of them!’
The three of them stayed talking for a long time. The cuckoo clock struck ten when Anita finally came to join them. Then Adonis got up and made more coffee and toast and they sat around the kitchen table eating a breakfast of village bread, orange-blossom honey, carob syrup with tahini, and black olives. When they finished Anita pushed her plate away and leaning forward on the table, she began her discourse again.
‘I have told you a lot, my children, but I haven’t quite finished all I need you to know … Lend me your ears for a while longer and I will continue. If Katerina is listening I hope she approves of what I’ve said so far. I know it will take time for you to digest everything you’ve learned, but I hope it will give you an even clearer picture of where you came from and who this woman that we all loved really was.’
19
1961
It was Katerina who came up with the name Adonis. Anita insisted that she should choose the baby’s name.
‘I know that to the world I will be known as his mother but this is your child, Katerina, and so you must choose what we call him.’ She thought long and hard and decided on Adonis. ‘It’s a name that represents love and beauty,’ she told them. ‘If he had been a girl I would have liked to call her Aphrodite.’
Olga and the padre stood anxiously at the port, waiting for the women to disembark with their precious bundle. Anita walked ahead holding the baby in her arms while Katerina followed. She saw him looking up at the passengers on the gangplank, anxious and small searching for her in the crowd. The autumn sun was high in the sky and as she walked into the open air the heat engulfed her like a passionate embrace. Her love for him had not diminished one iota.
They had come in two cars. ‘I will take Katerina and Anita with the baby,’ the padre told Olga, ‘my car will be more comfortable for them.’
The journey to Vienna was long and tiring – a boat from Limassol took them to Piraeus, with an overnight stay in Athens, before boarding the train for Austria. They arrived in Vienna on a crisp and sunny November day. Sonia had come to the station to meet them.
Whereas the passage to Vienna with Olga had been exciting and fun, this return trip was something of an ordeal and they were all thankful it had come to an end. The baby was suffering from colic and cried most of the way while Katerina, who had started to wean Adonis so that Anita could bottle-feed him, was suffering from mastitis. For Katerina the hardest thing was giving up breastfeeding her baby. She cherished those three months in Vienna when he was truly hers and she always secretly believed that their bond was sealed during those months of nursing him and sleeping with him in her bed.
On arrival they found that Olga had arranged everything. She had turned one of the rooms into a nursery for when the baby was deemed old enough to sleep alone, but had also put a cradle next to Anita’s bed. For the first few months Katerina took to sleeping with Anita so they could both attend to him in the night. Olga’s plan was working out perfectly. Costas, as she had predicted, on hearing the news that Anita was pregnant, had made himself scarcer than ever, continuing to live in Nicosia and rarely visiting Larnaka.
Anita was determined to separate from him eventually but for the sake of town gossip she thought it wiser to wait a while longer. Besides, it made little difference if she was still married to him or not, she saw him so infrequently he had no impact on their lives, but putting off the divorce would keep wagging tongues at bay. She knew that the right time would come.
It was just over six months after Sonia and Nicos’s fatal accident and the Linser household was still in deep mourning when Costas came to visit.
Anita was battling unsuccessfully to keep herself from reverting into a state of depression while Katerina and Olga were doing their best to keep going for the sake of the children. During that period Adonis at the age of two and Eleni not far behind were the two bright rays of happiness illuminating the house, and Father Bernardino with his regular visits gave the women the hope and support they badly needed. Katerina’s heart never ceased to ache at the sight of him but she thanked the Panayia that he was still there and in their lives. She knew he loved her, she could see it in his eyes, and the pleasure she derived when she saw him with Adonis was immeasurable. Every Sunday at St Lazarus she would stay on after the service to pray in front of the icon of the Holy Mother. She would cross herself,
light a candle and silently speak to her.
‘Merciful Mother of God, Holy of all Holies, every day I am alive I will thank you for granting me this child. You are a mother like me so you know my joy and my pain and I beg you to always watch over him.’ She would cross herself three times, kiss the icon with devout devotion and leave.
It was one such Sunday when Katerina returned home from church that she found Costas had unexpectedly called round. He had restricted his visits to mainly religious holidays, Christmas and Easter, but apparently he wanted to speak to Anita about something important. The last time she’d seen him had been at Nicos’s and Sonia’s funeral. Since the New Year incident with his goumbaros, aware of everyone’s disapproval – especially his mother-in-law’s – he had kept his distance. He found Anita alone; Olga had taken the children for a walk to the beach.
When Katerina returned from the church the house was unusually quiet. The little ones were taking a nap so she went straight to the kitchen to make some tea, thinking that if Olga had been out with the children she’d probably be needing one too.
Startled, Katerina heard the hushed voices drift into the kitchen from the saloni; Costas had apparently been and gone and Anita was now relaying their conversation to her mother.
