Aphrodite's Island (8 page)

I wake with a jerk as people around me start to chatter and get up from their seats. Mezeli has stopped talking but the pictures that have formed in my mind are still as vivid as a sequence from a film. I want to use them somehow. I’m not sure how. A short story, perhaps? A poem? What matters is to get something down while the ideas are fresh in my mind. I go to my room, pull my laptop out of the wardrobe and boot it up.

I wake suddenly with a confused impression that the window of the room is in the wrong place and the morning traffic heavier than usual. Then I remember the geography of my hotel room and recognize the steady hum of the air conditioning. I have been dreaming, a dream that haunted my childhood but which has not troubled me for a long time, until tonight. I am a small child again, running beside my mother, dragged along by the fierce grip on my hand, tripping and stumbling on uneven ground. Around me is a forest of legs, blocking the light, kicking up dust that chokes my nostrils and my mouth. Then the hand that holds mine vanishes and I am alone in that huge, moving forest. I fall, but the feet keep trampling over me. I try to scream but my mouth is full of sand. At that point, as usual, I wake up, my body drenched in sweat. I force myself to get up and pour a glass of chilled mineral water from the fridge. The sweat dries on my body in the cool air of the room and after a little while I get back into bed and sleep fitfully until woken by the noise of the chambermaids busy in the next room.

I shower and dress and take the box containing the journal down to breakfast with me, determined to make a start on reading it out in the fresh air by the pool. However, as soon as I sit down Mezeli appears at my side.

‘Good morning, Miss Allenby. I wondered if you would care to come with us today. We are going to Salamis. I think you would find it interesting.’

I hesitate. The idea is appealing, but on the other hand I want to make a start on reading my mother’s journal. ‘It’s nice of you to
ask, but I’m afraid I have some research of my own to do. Thank you, Dr Mezeli.’

He smiles. ‘Karim, please. My name is Karim.’

I smile back. ‘And you must call me Cressida.’

‘Cressida. It’s very appropriate!’ He looks at me for a moment. ‘You know what it means? It is from the Greek
chryseis
, meaning golden. I imagine your parents must have known that and given you the name because of your colouring. Did they understand Greek?’

‘My father would have done,’ I say. ‘He had a degree in Classics.’ A thought strikes me. ‘I’m rather surprised that you speak it, though.’

He arches an eyebrow ironically. ‘You mean because I am Turkish Cypriot? But of course I speak Greek. Until the partition in 1974 I grew up with Greek friends. We were all bilingual.’

The waiter approaches to refill my coffee cup and Mezeli nods towards the box. ‘Is this connected with your research?’

‘Yes, it is. I managed to find the house where we used to live. It belongs to some people called Wentworth now. They gave me this. It’s some papers my parents apparently left behind when they moved out. Isn’t it amazing that they’ve been kept all these years?’

‘Are they important papers?’

‘Oh, nothing vital. Just a diary and some … some letters. But it will be interesting to find out a bit more about the time they spent here.’

‘Extremely interesting! For a historian like myself the discovery of original documents is always exciting.’

I can see from his face that he is genuinely fascinated and I laugh. ‘It’s a bit out of your period, isn’t it?’

‘You think so? To me, this is part of my own history. May I ask you, when did you leave Cyprus?’

‘In 1974, I think. At least, that’s what Mr Wentworth thought. During the – what did he call it? The peace operation.’

His lip curls ironically. ‘Ah yes. The peace operation.’

‘What was it all about, Karim?’ I ask. ‘Why did you invade?’

His face changes and the heavy eyelids come down like shutters. ‘I didn’t invade anyone. I am Turkish Cypriot. I was born here. My family has lived here for generations.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I murmur, disconcerted by his change of mood. ‘I wasn’t intending to imply any sort of criticism.’

‘Please, there’s no need to apologize. I don’t expect you to understand the situation here.’ He looks at his watch and rises to his feet. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I must collect the rest of my party.’ He inclines his head with his curious, old-fashioned formality and walks away.

I am tempted to call after him, but I cannot think of anything to say. I feel I have been tactless and am annoyed with myself, but at the same time I can’t help thinking that he is being unreasonably sensitive.

Later, by the pool, I set the box on a table and spread out its contents. I pick up the letters, the paper stained and ragged at the edges and so yellow that in places it is hard to make out the writing. The back of the bottom sheet is marked with several large, rust-coloured blotches, as if something has been spilled on it. I study the unintelligible Greek characters and then turn the page over and look again at the signature, quite clear in ordinary script –
Stephen. ‘My only beloved
’ he had begun. But if these were addressed to my mother, why had he written in Greek? And if they were not – and the implications of that give me pause – then how did they come to be in the same box as my mother’s journal?

I put the letters aside and open the notebook. My mother’s handwriting, instantly recognizable, sends a pang of anguish through me. I picture her as I saw her in the last days, skeletal, tremulous but still defiantly reaching for the sherry bottle. How different from the round-faced, smiling woman in the photograph outside the
Café Anonymou
. Was there some clue here, in the journal or in these letters, as to what had brought about the change?

I skim over the next pages, which are mainly concerned with my mother’s efforts to adapt to her new life and the struggle to
establish a regular clientele for the bar. There are references to
tentative
contacts with neighbours and some deft character sketches of some regular patrons but nothing of any significance. Then an entry catches my attention.

I put the journal down and gaze out across the harbour. So that was when it had all started. I imagine my mother sitting alone in the bar, waiting for a customer to turn up, with a bottle and a glass at her elbow. Why did my father leave her to cope alone like that? Didn’t he care for her? For either of us? And where was I? I try to see myself as the small child in the photograph. What was I doing while my mother slowly sank into this slough of despond? I have fleeting memories of endless sunny days, of my mother cooking, picking strange, exotic flowers and fruit, but no recollection of her drinking. Somehow I was protected from that – during those early years, at least. I give up with a sigh and tuck the journal back into the box and lower myself into the pool.

After my swim I take a stroll round the town, buy some
postcards
and write them at a table outside a restaurant facing the harbour. A waiter brings me a ‘village’ salad – (it would be a Greek salad in England) – and a glass of lager and I eat slowly, watching the passing scene. It is Easter week in England, but thinking of the packed beaches of Spain or the Greek islands, Kyrenia seems pleasantly uncrowded and relaxed. Many of the visitors are families who appear Middle Eastern in origin, Turks from the mainland, I assume. Most of the women are in summer dresses but a few are shrouded in headscarves and long robes. One such group takes a table next to mine. The children have curly dark hair and expressive faces and the father is muscular and macho in shorts and a tight-fitting T-shirt, but of the mother I can see nothing but her eyes. It comes as a shock to hear that their accents are pure Birmingham.

When I get back to the hotel the tour group have returned and
Mezeli is sitting at a table on the terrace with Alan and Mary. She sees me and waves me over but I hesitate, worried that after this morning Mezeli is still offended with me. But he rises with a smile and courteously offers me his chair. Mary leans forward. Her blue eyes are vivid with enthusiasm.

‘It’s such a pity you couldn’t join us today. We’ve been to the chapel of St Barnabas and then on to Salamis and it was
absolutely
fascinating.’

‘Salamis?’ I say. ‘Wasn’t there a battle there?’

Mezeli shakes his head. ‘That was a different Salamis, a naval battle off the coast of Greece. But don’t worry, most people confuse the two until they’ve been there.’

Mary says, ‘Dr Mezeli is
so
informative! I never realized that it was the place where St Paul first preached the gospel to the Jews of Cyprus.’

‘Oh, really?’ I try to sound impressed.

Mezeli’s expression is sardonic. ‘Not that it made much impression, to begin with, anyway. The idea of a god who died and rose again on the third day would not have seemed particularly revolutionary to the people there.’

‘How do you mean?’ Alan asks.

‘They were already accustomed to the rites of Adonis, who was slain by Zeus in the shape of a boar and then restored to life after a season in Hades. People here still say that the anemones that flower every spring arise from his blood. It is another re-telling of the ritual by which the sacred king was sacrificed every spring to bring fertility to the fields.’

‘Human sacrifice?’ Mary shudders. ‘How horrible! Thank goodness we’ve got beyond that!’

Mezeli lifts an eyebrow. ‘Have we? It seems to me this island has been regularly fertilized with new outpourings of blood. It is an inextricable fact of our history.’

Alan says, ‘I suppose you’re referring to the EOKA business in the fifties. But surely it’s only natural that the Greek Cypriots should want to be governed by their own people instead of by
us – I mean, us Brits.’

‘Why?’ Mezeli turns his hawk-like gaze towards him. ‘Cyprus was never part of Greece.’

‘Never? I know it was a British colony until recently. Wasn’t it Greek before that?’

‘No. For several hundred years before that it was part of the Ottoman Empire. And before that it belonged to Venice and before that to the Norman French who took it in the First Crusade.’

‘The Crusades?’ Mary exclaims. ‘Oh dear, Christianity against Islam – and now it all seems to be coming round again. Is the trouble here about religion?’

Mezeli shrugs. ‘Religion and politics together. Cyprus has the misfortune to lie at the crossroads between east and west, between the Muslim world and the Christian. But that’s nothing new. Before that it stood at the crossroad between Christianity and paganism.’

‘Which brings us back to St Paul,’ I say and he smiles and nods.

Next morning he stops by my table again. ‘We are going to visit the castle of St Hilarion. It’s not far. You must have seen it, up there above the city. Will you come with us?’