One Cretan Evening and Other Stories (2 page)

It was what he had been looking for.

He slipped the book into his pocket and emerged once again into the gloom of the street, carefully locking the door behind him.

Now he approached the kafenion and nodded his greeting.
None of the men smiled. No one spoke. Despina was waiting for him. The man was much older than he had at first appeared. The dusky light had obscured the silver greyness of his hair and the deep lines on his face. He was no younger than the men who sat outside, but he was a city type, a businessman, obviously wealthy.

‘What do you want?’ she said. The brusqueness of the question surprised him.

‘What do you want to drink?’ she said, this time more politely.

‘Coffee please, with sugar,’ he answered, his accent revealing that he was from Athens, not from Crete.

‘So what business did you have at Maria Makrakis’ house?’ she asked bluntly.

‘Maria Makrakis?’

‘Yes, the woman who lived in that house.’

‘I don’t know a Maria Makrakis,’ he replied. ‘My sister lived there. Her name was Sofia Taraviras.’

‘Sofia Taraviras . . .’ the woman repeated, puzzled. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Look,’ he said firmly, producing the prayer book from his pocket. He carefully opened the cover and showed the inscription. ‘Sofia Taraviras. I found it in the house. That was what I came for. It was my sister’s.’

He handed it to Despina, who stared at the pale handwriting on the page.

‘But the woman who lived in that house was called Maria Makrakis.’

‘Well, she may have called herself by that name, but she was born Sofia Taraviras and this was given to her at her baptism.’

Despina closed the small leather-bound book, well worn with age and use, its pages as fragile as butterfly wings.

‘Let’s go and sit down,’ suggested the elderly man. ‘It sounds as though there was a misunderstanding.’

Despina felt herself go pale. Maria Makrakis had lived in that house for longer than she could remember. In fact she had lived there before Despina was even born and her parents had always warned her against going too close. She had not questioned her parents. Children never did in those days.

‘All I can tell you is this. Before I was even born, my older sister Sofia brought disgrace on the family and was despatched from Athens.’

The man paused to take a sip of his coffee.

‘At the age of sixteen she had a child and my father sent her away. As far away as possible. To Crete.’

‘But the woman in that house had always lived there. As long as anyone could remember. We were told she was a witch,’ Despina said quietly. ‘We were told not to go near her. And we never did. In fact I don’t think I ever heard her voice.’

‘Well she wasn’t a witch,’ said the stranger firmly. ‘She was just a woman who had made a single mistake. She paid a high price for it, I think.’

Despina looked thoughtful. ‘So why are you here now?’

‘I only found out about her a few months ago when this came.’ He produced the key from his pocket. ‘It came from the priest. He was the only person who knew her story. She had told him everything, but being the priest he presumably never saw fit to share her secrets with the village. He had found the address of the family home. Look, it’s written here.’

He turned the first page of the prayer book and there, on the reverse of the inscription from Sofia’s godfather, was an address. It was written rather proprietorially in neat schoolgirl script. An Athens address.

Despina listened in silence.

‘There was some aunt of my father’s who had lived here in this village and so this was where she was sent,’ the man continued.

For her entire lifetime, Despina, like everyone else of her generation, had ostracised this woman without questioning why and now she felt the force of this community’s shame. This ‘Maria’, this ‘Sofia’, had been forgiven by God, but never by His people. They had never even given her a chance.

Soon after, Sofia’s brother left in the taxi. All he took was the precious prayer book. It was the only thing he had come for and he could feel its warmth in his pocket.

Early the next evening, as light faded, even the men who rarely stirred from the kafenion went to say prayers for the woman who had died alone. Whatever the old woman had done in her past, tonight it was they who needed absolution.

Autumn was a time of new beginnings here, not a time of melancholy endings, and the following day, Despina went in to Sofia’s house. The shutters were thrown open and the light flooded in.

S
NOW FELL, DEEPLY
, crisply and evenly. Slowly the row of pine trees turned from green to white and their needles sparkled. A crimson-breasted robin puffed out his chest. It was the perfect white Christmas.

Santa Claus looked out from between the trees. His huge, round belly was accentuated by a wide belt and his head moved from side to side, as he mimed his maniacal ‘ho-ho-ho’. Over his shoulder was slung a sack from which spilled out a dozen presents wrapped in metallic red and green.

And beneath one of the trees nestled a crib. Mary and Joseph bowed over the manger, while shepherds and wise men queued patiently to catch a glimpse of the baby. The bearded figure in red velvet who stood behind them was as tall as the trees and all five of the sheep by the crib would have fitted into the palm of one of his big gnarled hands. Everything was out of scale.

In the centre of this tableau, there was a woman, tall and slim-waisted, with bare, strong arms. Claire caught sight of herself as the figures in the seasonal fantasy faded and the polished shop window mirrored her reflection. She looked into a pair of dark blue eyes.

She had been transfixed by these symbols of Christmas, conceived in northern Europe, manufactured in China and now in a window display in a hot and dusty street in Cyprus. They seemed so incongruous here. This was a city where pavements still shimmered in November and where snow was never more than a fantasy. People strolled down the promenade every day of the year, contemplated a swim in the sea and sought shade under the palms.

And yet here was an entire shop given over to selling tinsel and tat, an emporium of seasonal symbols for customers who yearned for the kind of cold snap that Claire herself was happy to have left behind. The sight of them did, however, provoke a strong twinge of homesickness and a wave of longing for the fog and ice of northern England and her family’s annual get-together.

She was nervous about the prospect of her first Christmas away from home, but she would not be alone. It was more than the lure of sun and the certainty of daily blue skies that had brought her here. It was Andreas. Like so many English women before her, she had taken a one-way journey for the sake of a dark-eyed foreigner.

Though they had met in Manchester, where Andreas was studying, he had no plans to be away from his
patrida
for long and if she wanted to be with him there had been no question of compromise. Soon she followed him to the sunny island where he had been born and his intense love gave her no cause to doubt her decision.

Andreas returned to his village near the capital, Nicosia, and Claire found herself an apartment on the edge of the city. The view was predominantly of the other white-washed
blocks that surrounded her in all directions, some of them only a few decades old but their paintwork already chipped and the plaster falling away in lumps from the concrete walls. What the architects had failed to visualise in their blueprints of these fast-expanding cities were the air conditioning units hanging off at angles, the jumble of solar panels and satellite dishes, and the metal rods that protruded from the roof tops like walking sticks. Lines of garish laundry pegged out on every balcony completed the picture of chaos.

There was no lack of opportunity in Cyprus for an articulate expatriate willing to work hard for little pay and Claire now had a job in a bookshop and a routine that was not so unlike the life she had left behind. There were details that differed, however. The working day was longer and the heat made it seem longer still as she struggled home on foot, carrier bags bursting with quantities of seasonal vegetables and household goods whose names she still struggled to decipher. Though corners of this island were almost English, it was nevertheless distinctly a foreign country. In her apartment, with the doors and windows thrown wide in an attempt to catch the breeze, the air was filled with the competing sounds of a dozen different TV stations. Some evenings, driven demented by the relentless cacophony of blaring music and voices, she would shut the windows and, though the heat was stifling, at least she could then enjoy the silence.

It was not the ex-pat life that her friends envisaged, of late nights and parties and daily visits to the beach, but she was strangely contented. She and Andreas saw each other at weekends and for now that had to suffice.

That December day, she was standing outside the Christmas shop waiting for Andreas to pick her up. He was finally to take her for the much-anticipated visit to her prospective in-laws. In-law, to be precise. And she was nervous. Such an introduction carried more significance here than it would in Yorkshire.

‘I know she’ll like you,’ said Andreas attempting to reassure her. ‘But don’t be put off if she seems a bit unfriendly.’

‘Why should she be?’ asked Claire, with faux naivety, knowing already the reputation of Greek mothers.

‘It’s just the language barrier,’ he answered. ‘She won’t really be able to talk to you, that’s all.’

As they drove up into the hills above Nicosia, they could see the faraway spaces of the part of the island occupied by Turkey. The division of the country was rarely mentioned by Andreas but, with the clear view of a Turkish flag provocatively carved into the hillside, Claire was reminded of this uneasy separation. Soon they reached his village and the streets narrowed. The buildings were warmly characterful and most of them had been home to several generations of the same family. Several of them seemed to be held up by thick boughs of bougainvillea and vine that were now inseparably entwined.

‘Look,’ he said, as they passed a blue door. ‘There it is.’

An elderly woman, slim, with birdlike features, appeared at the entrance of one of the larger houses. She looked frail enough to be blown over in a breeze. Her arms were folded and her face expressionless. Until she caught a glimpse of her son. And then it was as though the sun had emerged from a rain cloud.

Andreas parked his car in a dusty space at the top of the
hill and they strolled back down towards his home. His mother waited on the doorstep, her smiling eyes now fixed on her son. Although she was as thin as a stick, Kyria Markides had the strength to embrace her son with bone-crushing warmth and effusive cries of ‘
Angele mou!
My angel!
Matia mou!
My eyes!’ and all the while she looked over his shoulder at Claire and fixed her with a steely glare. In spite of the warmth of the day the young woman almost felt her heart freeze.

They went inside the house and gradually her eyes became accustomed to the gloom. They sat awkwardly at the table for some time as the elderly creature in widow’s weeds bustled about in the kitchen. Claire looked around her. The walls were covered in the same icons that she had seen in other Cypriot houses, but in addition there were perhaps thirty photographs. Some of them were wedding pictures but most of them were formal portraits of the same man, handsome, moustachioed, proudly wearing army uniform.

‘Your father?’ enquired Claire.

‘Yes,’ Andreas replied.

‘You look quite a lot like him . . .’

‘That’s what my mother always says. Sadly, I don’t remember him.’

Claire had known that Andreas had no siblings. She also now saw how much this only child was doted on and adored by his mother. She suddenly felt the awkwardness of being here. It was not just the nostalgia for home, a place where even if it did not snow on Christmas Day, the likelihood of frost was strong. It was also the sense of being an outsider, particularly here, in this house.

She sat quietly through the meal. A few other relatives had
joined them: cousins and their children, three aunts and two very aged uncles. Claire smiled when she was spoken to, though she did not have a clue what was being said, and took a little from every plate that was handed to her, even eating one of the minute baby birds,
ambelopoulia
, cruelly caught and killed on their maiden flight. She did not want to let Andreas down, but at the end of the meal, when glasses of fiery
zivania
had been swallowed and it was time to depart, she was exhausted from keeping up the pretence of enjoying herself. Kyria Markides gave her a cursory handshake as they left.

The atmosphere in the car on the way down the hillside was tense. Claire felt that she had done her best but the iciness from Andreas’ mother had been worse than she had anticipated.

‘Why does she have to be like that? What is wrong with these Greek mothers? Why are they so possessive?’ The tension had been building in her since the moment they’d arrived and she could not contain her anger.

Andreas did not answer and Claire was unable to make out his expression on this dark moonless night.

A few minutes later she repeated her question.

‘Well? Why?’

His silence only provided further provocation.

‘Your mother will never accept me,’ she said with resignation. ‘I’m an outsider here and I’ll never be anything else.’

They were now driving into Nicosia. Claire glanced out of the window and noticed they were passing the same shop window she had seen this morning with its fake pine trees and falling snow.

She also realised that he had now taken a turning that led away from her area of Nicosia but after a while he drew up.

‘There’s somewhere I want to take you,’ said Andreas.

They walked, apart, down a street illuminated with festive decorations and in the far distance Claire could make out a Christmas tree. It was standing in the middle of the pavement, not illuminated with fairy lights but festooned with ribbons. As they got closer she saw that there was something stranger still. Instead of baubles, this tree was hung with photographs, black and white pictures, mostly of men, with words and a date underneath. 1974.