by Lewis Desoto
“Almost a full tank. Thanks for your advice.”
As I drove off I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw the man writing something down in a notebook, perhaps our licence number.
“I don’t think we should go on,” Claudine said, leaning again over the front seat.
“He said we wouldn’t have any trouble. We’ve come all this way—it would be a pity to go back now just because somebody’s farm got burned.”
“Isn’t that serious enough? Or does nothing else matter except that you want to make a painting?”
I shook my head.
“We always come second to your painting. I thought this was supposed to be a holiday. For all of us. Isn’t that why we came? Or was that just an excuse?” She sat back and folded her arms, glaring at me. When she was angry her grey eyes burned with a cold light. “In that case, you should have come alone.”
“It is a holiday,” I said. “For all of us. Don’t worry about the local politics. People have been arguing over this island for centuries.”
“What about the terrorists?”
“There aren’t any. This isn’t Algeria.”
Piero, who was scanning the landscape with his binoculars, said, “I like it here. I want to go to the church.” Lowering the glasses, he turned to his mother. “I want to paint too. Like Papa.”
I glanced at Claudine in the mirror and raised my eyebrows. I knew her judgment wouldn’t allow her to start an argument in which she sided against both of us.
“Fine,” Claudine said, raising her shoulders in a shrug. “Fine. But I want to be at the hotel in Famagusta in time to go for a swim this afternoon. And I want to eat in a good restaurant tonight, not at some kebab stand.”
“We can eat calamari!” Piero exclaimed.
“Not me. I want a first-class restaurant that serves lobster.” In a softer tone she added, “And champagne. Not that terrible retsina we had last night.”
I smiled at her in the mirror, glad at the change in her voice. “It’s a deal. Lobster and champagne.”
“And octopus,” Piero said. “It means eight arms. Octo.”
“And an eight-legged octopus,” I said.
Soon, Pagratis appeared, a poor town consisting of a few two-storey houses and a concrete building with a flag hanging over the entrance. The speed limit sign read “25.” I slowed the car, keeping an eye on the speedometer.
“There’s nobody here,” Piero said. The town seemed to be deserted.
Then, a group of men came into view, standing outside a café. They all turned to stare at the car as it passed. Their faces were unsmiling.
“Drive faster,” Claudine urged, shrinking away from the window, but I resisted the temptation to speed up. Piero twisted in his seat and watched the silent men through the back window until they were out of sight. Claudine kept her eyes straight ahead.
I let out a sigh of relief as we reached the edge of the town and accelerated on the next stretch of pavement. The road ascended into the hills, now wooded with pine and cedar. I felt my mood lighten.
“The turn should be coming soon,” Claudine said after a while, her fingers marking the place on the map. “On the right.”
At the signpost I turned off onto an unpaved road that soon dwindled into a steep rutted track. The car bounced over the furrows, jostling us from side to side, making Piero giggle. I slowed and put the car into first gear as the engine strained up the incline.
Just as we reached the top of the ridge a herd of goats came scrambling over the crest, halting abruptly at the sight of the car. I braked quickly. The goats surveyed the car, waiting, then the front of the group parted to allow a large ram to come forward. As it approached, Piero rolled down his window, letting in the smell of dry dust and the clanking of the copper bell around the ram’s neck. No shepherd was in sight.
The ram came closer and raised its head to the window, regarding us with yellow eyes under long lashes. Piero extended a hand and touched one of the curved horns. The animal twisted its head and licked his fingers with a long pink tongue. With a laugh Piero jerked his hand back. At the sound of his voice the rest of the herd sauntered forward, their thick barnyard odour filling the interior of the car.
“Close your window, Piero,” Claudine said, wrinkling her nose.
She took off her sunhat and fanned her face. Her hair, which she wore cut short these days, stuck up from her head, giving her a gamine look. Glancing at her in the rear-view mirror, I felt a surge of tenderness.
I put the car in gear again, drove on to the crest of the ridge and stopped. And there below us, in a hollow next to a grove of trees, stood Agios Lazaros. A thrill quivered through me. This was the place I had longed for.
Piero jumped from the car and ran down the slope, Claudine close behind him. His blue and white striped T-shirt and her pink dress were splashes of colour against the landscape. I got out and breathed in the clean smell of grass and a faint pine scent. Below me, the chapel nestled between the rolling hills and the olive trees, their outlines like black flames, and the building white against ochre and sienna.
I strolled down towards the church. The voices of Piero and Claudine drifted from the shade of the olive grove. The heavy wooden doors creaked and scraped across the stone floor as I entered. The dark interior had that particular cool mustiness of ancient stone, of time itself.
As my eyes adjusted, the door opened wider behind me and the elongated shadow of Piero fell across the floor. In the sudden increase of light, I saw the fresco covering the entire side wall.
I was unprepared for the splendour—the rich depths of the blues, the clarity of the whites, the intense reds, the lustre of the gold. But the theme I knew well.
The whole painting measured about ten feet high by twenty feet long and seemed remarkably well preserved for something so old, with only one high patch where the colour had flaked off to reveal bare plaster beneath. A haloed figure, obviously Christ, stood just to the left of centre, one hand raised towards an open grave at the lower right corner. I walked closer, and because the scene had been painted to life size, it was as if I stepped right into the painting, coming to rest on the edge of the open grave in the foreground.
“Who are those people, Papa?” Piero asked, tugging at my sleeve. “What are they doing?”
“It’s called The Raising of Lazarus, from a story in the Bible.”
“Why is that man covered in bandages?” Piero pointed to where two men were lifting the stone lid from the tomb, revealing a figure swathed in a burial cloth, an expression of profound astonishment on his features as daylight penetrated the shadows and fell upon his face.
“That is Lazarus,” I explained. “Jesus came to visit him but when he arrived he found that Lazarus had died. Lazarus’s family begged Jesus to bring him back from death, so Jesus told the men to uncover the tomb, and then he called Lazarus’s name. When Lazarus heard his name he woke up and came out of his grave into the world again.”
“And then what did he do?” Piero asked, his voice lowered to a whisper.
I pondered the question. One I’d never asked myself. “I don’t know. Nobody knows.” Realizing I had whispered too, I said in a normal tone, “It’s just a story.”
Piero moved nearer to the fresco and stood with his face close to that of Lazarus, peering at it intently. He stood with such silent concentration, almost as if he were listening, that I reached out gently and put a hand on his shoulder.
He took a few steps backward, looking at the figures, then turned and hurried out again into the daylight, leaving me alone with the painting. Tiny motes of dust hung in the shafts of light emanating from the window openings, and from outside came the murmur of doves cooing. The sounds, which should have been soothing, gave me a feeling of disquiet.
Moments later two piercing blasts from a whistle outside broke the silence. I raised my head and listened. The whistle called again, summoning me. I left the painting and made my way to the door.
Halfway up the sl
ope, Piero stood looking up to where Claudine waited just near the summit of the ridge. She was turned away, observing something out of sight. For a moment I felt I was still looking at a painting—two figures isolated in an elemental stillness, a mother and child in a landscape, looking or listening to something only they could perceive, that I would never see.
Piero blew the whistle again. Two notes, one rising, the second descending.
The whistle had been a gift from me. A couple of weeks earlier, on a visit to Jardin des Plantes, which was crowded with tourists and groups of school children, I had become separated from him. I’d been gazing at one of the statues along the walkway, and when I turned, the boy was gone. I rushed around in a panic, shouting his name, my heart gone cold with terror. It was probably only seconds later that a smiling Piero emerged from behind the plinth on which the statue stood. It was a game to him, but I had fallen to my knees and grabbed the boy into my embrace with such ferocity that Piero had patted me on the back, saying, “I’m here, Papa. I’m here.”
A few days later I had stopped to look into the window of one of the antiques stores along rue Saint-Paul. On a lower shelf I noticed a silver whistle of the kind that referees use in sporting events, but smaller and engraved with an intricate floral design. As coincidence would have it, the name of the manufacturer was also engraved on the surface—Piero.
“If you get lost again and can’t find me,” I told Piero when I presented it to him, “just blow on the whistle and I will come to you.”
He ran his finger over the engraving with a look of pleased amazement. But when he tested it and filled the apartment with piercing blasts, I covered my ears and retreated to the studio to escape the noise. A little later I become aware that the whistle was sounding two repeated notes, softly, the first a bit higher and briefer in pitch than the second, like a bird call. I realized that the sounds mimicked the syllables of my name—Lee-oooh, Leee-oooh. When I opened the studio door, Piero was standing at the other end of the hall with the whistle to his lips.
“It works, Papa. You came,” Piero had said to me.
Now, the whistle sounded a third time. The scene came to life. Claudine beckoned to me, waving her sun hat. Piero raised both arms in a salute. I walked up to join them.
Claudine had spread a blanket on the dry grass and unpacked the lunch we’d purchased in Famagusta before setting out: goat cheese wrapped in sage leaves; a sort of pancake filled with herb-seasoned meat; a baklava of honey and nuts; and a flask of Commandaria, a local sweet wine. I fetched a bottle of water from the back seat and sat down in the shade of the car.
“This is a wonderful spot, Leo,” Claudine said, leaning against me and placing a cup of wine in my hand. “I’m glad we came.”
I kissed her and ran my fingers through her hair. “And I’m glad you’re here to see this with me. You should go and have a look at the fresco afterwards. It’s really fantastic.”
When lunch was over, I helped Claudine tidy up, then collected my paintbox from the car and sauntered along the ridge, a little sleepy from the wine but eager to set to work.
“We’re not going to stay long, are we?” Claudine called. She was stretched out on the blanket in the sun. “I want to get back in time for that swim.”
“Just a quick sketch. Piero, are you going to come and paint?” I was disappointed when the boy shook his head. I’d hoped that we could paint the scene together.
I found a vantage point where the church and the olive grove formed a pleasing composition. I sat down and opened the paintbox. At my feet, blue cornflowers grew among the blades of yellowed grass. In the distant sky swallows chirped their high-pitched cries. I reached for my palette and paints and set out dabs of titanium white, lamp black, yellow ochre and cobalt blue. The purity of the landscape required no other colours.
With the tip of my brush on the board I focused on the scene below. I waited. I waited for the place to reveal itself, to speak to me. All sounds gradually fell away, the faint rustle of the breeze over the grass, the birdcalls, Piero’s footsteps as he chased up and down the slope in pursuit of grasshoppers. A radiance gradually emanated from the scene below me; the church filled my vision, growing larger, its colours more intense.
My hand hovered in a moment of indecision, then stroked the canvas lightly, making a mark, then another. Working quickly, I drew outlines for the building, laying on washes of pale blue for the sky and blocking in the darker greens of the olive trees. I forgot myself as I worked and the vision that I had held inside myself began to flow from my brush. I was only dimly aware of Claudine and Piero moving about in the olive grove. I barely registered the door of the chapel scraping open, their faint voices as they entered, the door thudding shut.
It may have been only a second later, or minutes, when I heard a boom, like thunder. The doves in the olive grove took flight in all directions. Startled in mid-brushstroke, I looked up at the cloudless sky, and then across towards the nearby hillside where a puff of white smoke blossomed. Then the air above me rippled and tore as something unseen hurtled past, and with a deafening bang, the tower of the church collapsed inward. A second explosion sent a blast of hot, grit-filled smoke towards me. Everything went black.
And then I was running into the darkness, screaming their names.
CHAPTER 4
AN EYE, DARK AND ROUND AS A SHINY BLACK MARBLE, studied me with a steady, curious gaze. I lifted my head and tried to focus on it. A gull, which had been hovering on a current of air just near my face, wheeled away with a screech.
Raising myself on my elbows, I grimaced as a pain shot through my right side. All around me there was only a featureless pale blue haze. As I struggled to sit up, my legs swung free in the air. Between my knees and my dangling shoes I glimpsed, far below, a silent ragged line of white foam breaking against black rocks.
A glance to the left and right revealed that I was perched on a narrow shelf fifteen feet below the cliff edge. Sheer stone extended on both sides, and the rock-studded ocean lay a hundred feet below. Above was the cliff. A swarm of tiny spots swam across my vision and the vertigo almost made me vomit.
By shifting myself sideways, I was able to stretch out full length on the ledge, and then position my body so that my back was to the sea and the sky. With my arm folded under my cheek, I lay with my face a few inches from the wall of rock and closed my eyes. My whole body shivered.
Slowly, I began to remember—leaving the hotel and walking through a landscape of mist, then finding the cliff, and my resolution as I stood there. After that, all was confused in my mind. A ram charging out of the mist, driving me to the edge. I had no memory of falling. Had I jumped after all? Was I dreaming? But the hard surface of the stone beneath my cheek was real, the pain in my side was real. I kept my eyes shut. I didn’t want to see again what was around me. My throat was dry. I was thirsty. And tired. Very tired.
When I opened my eyes again the fog was gone, the blue above me was the sky, and gulls were sailing over the sea below. How much time had passed? Had I slept?
Then it came back to me—something in the mist. Someone. A boy. I had seen a boy, I knew it.
I listened. Nothing.
Of course, nothing. Piero was dead.
It had been more than a year since I watched the coffins containing Piero and Claudine sink into the black Normandy earth, had watched as the wet soil covered the burnished wood and brass fittings, had watched until the hole was filled and the strip of sod was placed over the grave where son and mother were buried. I turned my face to the rock wall again.
I could still end it. All I had to do was roll over a few inches and let myself fall and all of this would disappear, real or not. Isn’t that what I had wanted?
Time passed, if such a thing as time existed in this place. I remained with my face to the rock and my back to the emptiness that used to be the world, not moving. As I lay there, I became aware of a small caterpillar inching its way across the rough surface of the ledge, just in front of
my eyes. It measured no more than the length of my little finger and was yellow-orange, with a brighter stripe of yellow down the centre. The entire body was covered with bristly hair, and if it weren’t for the forward movement of the creature’s expansions and contractions, I wouldn’t have been able to tell the front from the rear.
As I watched its awkward progress across the ledge into a crevice in the cliff face, I wondered how the creature had got to this inaccessible spot in the first place, or where it would go from here.
Slowly I sat up. Bracing my legs with care and keeping my face against the cliff, hands grasping where they could, I gently levered myself upright and took stock of my surroundings.
To my right, just where the ledge ended, a vinelike plant with white flowers wound its way up a narrow fissure in the rock. By stretching out my arm, I was able to grasp and tug at the thick stem of the vine. It appeared to be firmly attached to the cliff. I edged closer and found a secure handhold in the rock. I searched for a foothold, but realized that the toes of my shoes were too wide to fit into the narrow niches and cracks. With one hand I eased off my shoes and socks and then, grasping the vine tightly, began to make my way up.
The vine trembled under my weight, but seemed strong enough, and I reached higher. A sudden pain bit into my palm and I inhaled sharply, but hung on. Sharp green thorns hid among the leaves and clusters of white flowers.
Gradually, I moved closer to the top. My legs were rubbery, the muscles in my arms taut with the strain. In another minute gravity would do its work on my weak body and I would have to let go. It would be so easy to let go, to just let go and fall free. But I didn’t want to die. Even if I didn’t really want to live either. But whatever I’d thought previously, whatever I’d intended as I stood on the precipice earlier, something now felt different.
The vine ended. The cliff edge was just above me. Not quite within reach. Stretching my arm up, I searched for a handhold, anything, the smallest fissure. My toes settled into a crack, my fingers closed on an outcrop. I took a deep breath, and with a great groan I launched myself upwards in a tremendous push. The side of my face scraped against the rock, my fingernails scrabbled and tore, my legs kicked free in the air. For a moment I was suspended in space, untethered from the earth.
