Should We Fall Behind, page 12
Daban got up. ‘Yep, time to go,’ he said. ‘Life is hard enough, Ebele. Don’t always think the worst of people.’
When she heard the front door close, Ebele stuck her head out of the window and blew smoke into the night air as she watched Daban disappear down the street, unsure who she felt most annoyed with, him or herself. He didn’t look back towards her. She didn’t expect him to but a small part of her felt a pang of disappointment. She leaned out further and took in the city. It wasn’t slowing down for the night. It rarely slept the deep sleep needed for proper restoration. Nightmares, she knew, existed regardless, on the streets and behind shabby net curtains and pricey louvre shutters. Traffic which had chuntered frustratingly throughout the day now sped precariously down Black Horse Lane, screeching into the night. Across the road, beyond bottle green railings, the park was a dark oasis in a desert of glaring pollution. A group of teenagers huddled around a bench – it was hard to tell where each ended and the other began. They too blew out wafts of smoke, passing a spliff around the circle. The smell was strong enough to reach her and she breathed in the heavy scent, wishing her cigarette was as potent as theirs. One boy, bloated with puppy-fat, stared directly at her. He exhaled a long whistle of smoke in her direction and smirked a ‘fuck you,’ glance she recognised as very similar to one of her own. She stubbed out her roll-up on the sill and closed the window. Before climbing into bed, she crept into Tuli’s room and lifted the curtain. She couldn’t see the abandoned car in the darkness but she knew it was there. She would call Makrides again in the morning.
12. NIKOS
Nikos Makrides sat in the armchair in his wife’s favourite room in their house. He looked out to the neat back garden through the frame of wooden doors towards the large fig tree in the centre of the lawn, planted with his two boys when they were both much shorter than him. The figs were over-ripe. He thought about other autumn mornings, when the boys were young enough to press their noses up against the glass and bicker about who would get to eat the first of the fallen fruit. He’d never told them his secret, how he’d always picked the first ripe fig for Ourania and how, when he knew others were ready to drop, he slipped into the garden with his flashlight late at night when the boys were fast asleep and picked two of the plumpest, most delicious looking figs he could see and placed them at the foot of the tree, ready to be discovered in the morning. Surrounding him in the room were Ourania’s clothes: dresses, blouses and cardigans, slacks and nightdresses spread out across the furniture with outstretched arms and flattened skirts. Getting rid of them was not an option. The week after she died she came to him in a dream in the blackest part of the night, wearing the yellow dress he liked best, dancing around the fig tree in the summer sun, beckoning him. Within the clothes were minute traces of her life, not just imperceptible flecks of skin or hair but moments they had shared together: their laughter, their sadness, tiny particles of grief and joy. When he awoke to the empty space beside him in the bed after the yellow dress dream, he wept into a pillow which still retained the faintest smell of Ourania’s perfume, then he carefully removed each item of her clothing from the wardrobe and laid it across the furniture in the living room. He had left her clothes spread out, undisturbed, ever since. Ourania still existed in that room and he found some comfort in this.
The first time Nikos Makrides saw Ourania it was with wet eyes across mossy stone crosses which lined the sprawling cemetery on the Larnaca road. He’d arrived at the cemetery gates on a hired moped just as Georgios Savvides’ body was being lowered into the ground. He switched off his ride only to find the heat of the day as hot as the bike’s engine, and its roar replaced by the breathless sighs and high-pitched sobbing of the Savvides women. The noise melded with the low moans of Savvas Savvides which resonated across the valley. The sobbing became a desperate wail as he approached the funeral party and Savvas Savvides turned to see what had diverted the attention of the women. He stared at Nikos as if he were a stranger rather than the boy who’d been in and out of his back yard as often as his own children. Similarly, Uncle Savvas was no longer the ox of a man Nikos remembered; instead he was broken, like a lame horse, unsure of its position in the world. Nikos watched, static, as Uncle Savvas scattered the first handful of dust over the wooden box, looking decades older than the few years which had passed by. Hestia Makrides, Nikos’ mother, lifted her long skirt and ran towards her son as soon as she saw him. She stretched out her arms to embrace him but lowered them quickly when she saw his eyes were on the mourners beyond. Instead, she lightly kissed his cheeks, took his hand and led him to the edge of the small crowd which circled the grave. Nikos’ father moved through the gathering towards them, followed by Marios. Mother, father and brother stood close to him; close enough to sense the invisible threads which bound them. He held on to his parents, squeezing each of their hands tightly.
Earlier that month, the phone had disturbed the peace of a bitter English night by ringing way after bedtime. Kostas answered it and by the time Nikos emerged, blurry eyed in crumpled pyjamas, Kostas sat on the leather seat of the telephone bench holding the receiver towards him. Nikos cupped his hand over the mouthpiece so he couldn’t be heard on the other end and said shakily,
‘Baba?’ Uncle Kostas shook his head. Nikos took the phone reluctantly, expecting to hear his mother’s voice. Instead it was Marios.
‘Marioso, my brother, it’s so good to hear your voice but why are you calling at this terrible hour?’
‘The sun will be rising here soon Nikos and I didn’t want Mama or Baba to wake with the dread of telling you the horrible news we bear so I got up before them. They already weep each time you are mentioned. We miss you so much, my brother.’
‘Marioso, what is it? What’s happened?’
‘It is Georgios.’
‘Georgios? What has he done now? Left the feta in the sunshine to go sour again?’ Nikos forced out an awkward laugh.
‘No, Nikos. It’s not good news. It is beyond bad. Let me tell you first how Angeliki, his sister and I have been seeing something of each other.’
‘Little Angeliki? Marioso, you devil. How old is that child?’’
‘She’s nineteen years old, same as me and not far from the age you were when you left us. We’re not children anymore.’
‘Nineteen. Already? My goodness.’
‘This isn’t important. Listen Nikos, she ran to me last night, one hour after Mama and Baba went to bed. Her banging woke them up and when I opened the door she fell into me, crying like a baby.’
Marios stopped speaking and after a moment, Nikos said, ‘What happened, Marioso? What’s happened to Georgios?’ Kostas stood up and guided Nikos to the bench seat. Marios began speaking again.
‘He’s dead, Nikos. Georgios is dead!’
Nikos felt the blood drain from his face. ‘What happened?’ he whispered; he didn’t want to know the answer. He began to shake uncontrollably.
‘Angeliki found him in the old shed. He was inside Uncle Savvas’ truck with a hosepipe through the window.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It was his birthday, twenty-three years old. They had loukoumades for his celebration. Remember how the two of you used to eat them all before us younger ones could get to them? Mama Savvides always made the best loukoumades,’ Marios paused again. ‘Georgios said he was going to get some air and then, when he didn’t come back by midnight, Angeliki went looking around for him in the land at the back of the house and Uncle Savvas did the same at the front. The pipe was attached to the exhaust. Georgios had seen someone do it this way in a film at the Attikon.’
‘He killed himself?’
‘He was unhappy. We all knew this but there was going to be a specialist, new hearing aids. He had so much to look forward to.’
‘But why?’ It was all Nikos could think to ask.
‘He was miserable. Who knows why? Sometimes people are born with it. Two days before his birthday he smashed all the records you collected and all the others in the house too. Who knows why someone does such a thing? Perhaps all the change, you going, the noises in his ears.’
‘It’s my fault,’ Nikos said. He slumped over with the phone held to his ear, still shaking. Kostas lay a hand on his shoulder and he was glad his uncle was next to him.
‘It’s nobody’s fault.’ Marios sounded like the older brother. ‘Who can know what goes through another person’s head? Angeliki was crying – it was hard to make sense of her. She kept saying he may not be able to have a proper funeral. Baba says Uncle Savvas must ask the doctor if perhaps it was an accident? Maybe he hadn’t meant to do this dreadful thing. I couldn’t make sense of it all. She was crying and crying like a baby. It was just a few hours ago, Nikos. All I can say for certain is Georgios is no more.’
Nikos couldn’t speak.
‘Are you sure, Marios?’ he said eventually. ‘That this isn’t my fault, I mean. The rock came from the sky, from nowhere but perhaps I should have seen it and pushed Georgios out of the way. I should have stayed with him until he was fully recovered, until he saw the specialists, but Baba said I had to come here, because of the trouble. Will I never see Georgios again? This can’t be true. Was it my fault, Marios? Tell me the truth.’
He didn’t sleep the rest of the night and first thing the next morning he got the bus to Brighton Road where Uncle Kostas had friends with a travel agency.
On the day of Georgios’s funeral, Ourania Dimitriou was tending a grave on the opposite side of the cemetery when she caught Nikos’ attention. He stood holding on to his parents’ hands as the priest said prayers over the casket, when she appeared in his eyeline. He was transfixed by the way her ebony hair fell from beneath her headscarf and cascaded over her shoulders. It is God’s will. So be it, he heard his mother whisper next to him and for a split second he thought she was talking about the girl. He shuddered, sleep-deprived and heady from the journey, and, when the burial ended, instead of attending the Makaria in the village hall, he made excuses and drove down the hill alone until he reached the little stone house on the up-slope to the village. He parked the moped and sat for a while, taking in his surroundings, allowing the intense afternoon heat to absorb into him, and the smells and sights of home to overpower the hangover of being away; only then was he able to enter his home and collapse onto his old bed as if he’d never left. He closed his eyes and plummeted into an exhausted sleep, dreaming in fragments: Georgios strumming his old guitar, the two of them discussing who might be the prettiest girl in the district like they often did; snatches of dream-memory floating away like cherry blossom on a sea breeze. When he woke, he thought of the conversations about pretty girls and decided, without a doubt, the answer was concluded this very day at the cemetery. He knew Georgios would agree; like music, their taste in women was fairly close to identical. Later that evening, he asked his mother about the girl.
‘Why, it’s little Ouranoulla from the watermelon farm outside Anafotia. You know her, you went to school together.’ And later, after the others had gone to bed, his mother kissed him on his forehead and said softly, ‘Ourania Dimitriou would be a fine match for you, Nikolaki mou. A fine match.’
The next morning, he discarded the noisy moped, dusted off his rusty bicycle and made the short but wobbly journey uphill to Anafotia. He cycled around the small village in the bright sunshine, asking questions about the girl and the watermelon farm until he got the information he wanted. Some people shrugged their shoulders, others nodded in a general direction across parched fields and olive groves towards the mountains beyond. Eventually, the chef at the Adamos Taverna said the Dimitrious’ were relatives of his sister-in-law. An hour later, Nikos leant his bicycle against a giant plane tree and watched the girl from a distance. She moved across her decked veranda with a broom sweeping up a mist of red dust which accumulated around her ankles; it was as if she was floating on air. She didn’t notice him at first and when he caught her eye she turned away shyly. He approached the farmstead tentatively, his stomach twisted in somersaults.
‘Excuse me miss,’ he said when he was close enough to be heard. ‘I hope you don’t mind but I would like to introduce myself. I am Nikos Makrides.’
‘My father is away on family business,’ she replied without turning to face him. ‘If you’ve come about work, I am afraid you’ll have to come back another day.’
‘Please,’ Nikos replied. ‘I’ve come to speak to you.’
She stopped sweeping, wiped away beads of sweat from her forehead with the tips of her fingers and looked at him quizzically.
‘I’m afraid you are mistaken,’ she said. ‘It’s my father you will need to speak to, about whatever it is you are here for. Please come back another time.’
‘Okay,’ Nikos said apprehensively. ‘I’ll return tomorrow at this same time but I hope your father will still be away as it is you I will be coming to see.’
The girl blushed, lowered her eyes and resumed her sweeping as Nikos walked backwards towards his bicycle with the hot sun on his face, watching as the dust rose up around her again.
‘Let me write to you from England,’ he begged, and after the third day of pleading, she consented.
‘Perhaps,’ she said eventually. ‘But I don’t promise to reply; I am not so good with words as you appear to be. Now please go away before people start to talk.’
That afternoon, Nikos skipped away from the little wooden farmstead with a smile so broad it made his face ache.
He packed his bags ready for the flight to Luton, leaving just enough time to visit the Savvides’ house next door but when Uncle Savvas refused to speak to him, Mama Savvides spoke firmly through her streaming tears.
‘Our boy loved this boy. Georgios could not accept the life he was given but this is not the fault of anyone. Let the boy go in peace with his conscience at rest. Let us all go in peace.’
Nikos wrote the first letter to Ourania on the bus from Luton airport.
Dear Miss Dimitriou
I am the boy who came to your farm just a few days ago. I am not a stranger so please do not be fearful of me – my mother tells me we played as small children and we once cracked our red Easter eggs together. I hope you will permit me to call you Ourania?
Do you like music, Ourania? Cat Stevens is my favourite but here in England where I now find myself (temporarily I hope) there is so much music everywhere: so many radio stations and always music on television too. This music is not always like the music I listened to at home but perhaps a little more angry, and maybe these people have more to be angry about; it is such an ugly, sunless place. When I first arrived here three years ago it was boys who looked like girls making music; boys in make-up with sequins. Now the musicians (boys and girls) are beginning to look like creatures from a different world – crazy, torn clothes and stupid coloured hairstyles. Near where I live there is a bar called Oasis. where bands play and sometimes I go with my uncle to hear the music I like – Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan – not the real people of course but pretenders, men on stools with guitars. Some are very good. I too would like to play guitar one day.
Perhaps this is boring for you if you don’t like music? Apologies but it is something which makes England bearable for me. England is so dull, I have to say. The sun shines for such a short time and the winters are cruel and long. From September to June it rains. Sometimes it rains until August. Luckily, the sun shone for a few weeks last July but the country nearly ran out of water so I suppose it is just as well it rains so much. Can you imagine sunshine for only four weeks of the year, and then only if you are lucky?
One good thing, in the area where I live there are many Cypriots and I have made some acquaintances amongst them; we play cards and discuss football of course. There are also many Turks but not so many Greeks from the mainland. I suppose they didn’t need to leave. The Turks keep themselves to themselves. There are fewer of them than us but, to be honest, they are young men like me mostly, yearning for home, and they probably miss their families just as I do. If I stand side by side with some of the Turks my age, we could be brothers.
I miss Cyprus too much. I can’t wait to be there again. When I saw you for the first time we were burying my best friend, Georgios and I realised it wasn’t just him I was crying for. I miss home so much sometimes it is as if my whole body aches for it. Can you understand this? Perhaps not. You are lucky to still be there in our beautiful country. Am I making any sense, Ourania?
Please write to me. Please tell me about yourself. I know nothing except you broke my egg and you are from a family of watermelon growers, the sweetest watermelons in the whole of the island, Mama says. I see your beautiful face in my sleep. I am brave enough to tell you this because there are so many miles between us. Distance makes it easier sometimes, to say what it may take many months to say face to face, I realise this as I write to you. Mama told me you were the winner when we hit our eggs against each other so now please allow me a little hope that one day we can play a return match of egg-cracking.
I hope you don’t find my long letter a nuisance. I know I have said more than I should already but I want to talk to you and get to know you. I wish I could have cycled out to your farm again on my trip so we could have sat under the trees and talked a little more but I was home for such a short time with many duties. And I was sad, so sad about my friend Georgios but seeing you was such a bright light in such a dark time. I know you must be thinking I am taking liberties writing to you like this, you who I know nothing about, who may not even remember me, but, with Georgios dying so young, so pointlessly, I feel compelled to act on what is in my heart.
Please write back, Ourania, even if it is just to tell me you have received my letter.
Kind regards
Nikos Makrides
