At eight o’clock precisely, Markos watched Savvas and Aphroditi Papacosta say their farewells and slip away. It would be seven or eight hours before he himself left. The pianist continued to play and he knew there would be a core of clients who would linger to enjoy the atmosphere until well after midnight. Some of them would return after dinner and spill out on to the patio to enjoy the balmy warmth of the night. Others, mostly men (though occasionally a lone female guest), would perch on a bar stool to give him their views about business, politics or something more personal. From his position behind the bar, Markos was adept at making the right responses and adjusting to moods that changed with the level in the whisky bottle.
He readily accepted offers of ‘a stiff double’, clinked glasses with a smile, toasted whatever the customer wanted to toast and stealthily lined up the drinks beneath the bar. Clients happily reeled off to bed after an evening of satisfying conviviality, while Markos poured the unwanted liquor back into the bottle and cashed up.
He drove past the new hotel on his way home. It was two thirty in the morning and lights were still blazing inside The Sunrise’s reception area. Numerous contractors’ vans were parked outside as people continued to work through the night.
There to the left of the main doors a huge sign had been erected, ready for illumination: ‘Clair de Lune’. He knew that everything inside was in place, as he had already inspected it that morning. Whatever Aphroditi Papacosta imagined, there was little with which she would be able to find fault, and for the group of guests who would be given a privileged preview of facilities that night, he was confident that the nightclub would be the main attraction of the new hotel.
Savvas Papacosta was giving him an exceptional opportunity. It was something Markos had dreamed of.
W
ITHIN TEN MINUTES,
Markos drew up outside his home in Elpida Street. Like most buildings in the residential outskirts of modern Famagusta, it had several floors, each with its own balcony, and each occupied by a different generation.
On the ground floor were Markos’ parents, Vasilis and Irini. On the first there was an empty apartment that would eventually be occupied by Markos’ younger brother Christos; on the second was his sister Maria with her husband Panikos. Markos lived alone on the top floor. If he leaned right out over the balcony, there was a glimpse of the sea and sometimes the possibility of a breeze. Everyone shared the rooftop, a permanent site for drying laundry. Rows of shirts, sheets and towels hung there, dry as paper after an hour. Rusty metal rods sprouted up like saplings, ready for another storey if ever needed for children of children.
At this time of night Markos would not stop at his parents’ place, but in the morning he would sit in their small garden for ten minutes before going to work again. His father would usually have left for his smallholding by ten, but his mother would make him the sweet Greek coffee that he loved and take a break from her chores.
When Vasilis and Irini Georgiou had built the apartments in the city, they had replicated in miniature everything they had enjoyed when they lived in the countryside. A vine that grew over a trellis to give them shade, five closely planted orange trees and a dozen pots from which his mother harvested more tomatoes than they could consume. Even the gerania had been propagated from cuttings of their plants in the village. There was also a tiny corner of the
kipos
fenced off with wire where two chickens scratched and fussed at the ground.
For Irini Georgiou, the most important feature of the garden was the cage that hung just to the left of her door. Inside it was her canary, Mimikos. His singing was her joy.
At three in the morning everything was still, apart from the cicadas.
Markos found his key, let himself into the shared hallway and began to climb the stairs. When he reached the first floor, he could hear his brother, Christos, along with some other voices inside the empty apartment. There was nothing in there but the bare concrete of walls and floors and the sounds were magnified.
Markos put his ear to the door and listened. His brother’s voice was raised, which was not unusual, but one of the other men inside sounded even angrier. He recognised the voice of another mechanic from the garage where Christos worked. Haralambos Lambrakis had exerted huge influence on his brother.
The two brothers had always been close and fond of each other. There was a ten-year age gap and they had joshed and played around together for Christos’ entire life. Since he had been old enough to walk, the younger one had followed the older around, copying what he did and what he believed. He had idolised Markos.
At the age of eighteen, Christos was far more radical than Markos had been at the same age. Just the previous morning they had argued over the burning issue of
enosis
between Cyprus and Greece. As a younger man, Markos had always believed passionately that this union should happen. He had been a member of EOKA, the National Organisation of Cypriot Fighters, and supported its cause when it was fighting for the end of British rule on the island. Since independence had been achieved a decade earlier, though, he had moved away from its extreme ideas.
After the military coup in Athens five years before, most Greek Cypriots valued their independence from the mainland more than ever and no longer wanted unification with Greece. There was now rivalry between the Greek Cypriots such as Christos who still campaigned for
enosis
and those who did not, and between them hung the threat of violence.
‘Why have you become such a coward?’ Christos had screamed.
‘It’s not a question of cowardice,’ said Markos, carrying on with what he was doing. It was around ten in the morning and he was shaving, methodically passing his razor through thick white foam, watching his face gradually emerge. He looked at his own image in the mirror, apparently ignoring his brother who stood at the bathroom door.
Christos had come up to Markos’ apartment to try and win him over to his way of thinking. He never gave up.
‘But you used to have conviction! Belief! What’s wrong with you?’
‘Christos, there is nothing wrong with me.’ Markos smiled at his brother. ‘Perhaps I just know more now.’
‘What do you mean by that? You know more? What is there to know?’ Markos’ calm manner angered Christos. ‘This island is Greek, was Greek, should be Greek, should be part of the
motherland
! For God’s sake, Markos, you once believed in the struggle for
enosis
!’
‘So did our uncle,’ said Markos impassively. ‘And our father.’
‘So that means we give up? Because people like Uncle Kyriakos died?’
Their mother’s brother had been executed by the British authorities during the worst of the violence before independence. His name was rarely mentioned, but a black and white photograph of him on a table in their parents’ living room was a daily reminder.
Markos continued shaving. A moment passed. There was nothing more to say about the martyrdom of their uncle that had not already been said during their lifetime. The grief that had engulfed the household would never be forgotten. It had left its own scars. Christos had been seven years old then, and witnessed the wailing and the naked anguish displayed by their aunt and mother.
Markos had hated his uncle Kyriakos and could not now pretend otherwise. When he was little, Kyriakos used to slap him round the head if he was not pulling his weight with the fruit harvest, and if he caught his nephew eating an orange during picking hours, he would then make him eat four more, one after the other, including the rind, to teach him that greed had its own punishment. He was a cruel man, and not just to his nephew. Markos, ever observant of what went on around him, had suspicions that he hit his wife too. The first time he had caught his mother holding a cold compress to Aunt Myrto’s cheek, no explanation was given. When he enquired, he was told it was ‘no business for a child’, but such things had happened so frequently that he had seen a pattern. Markos wondered if this was why God had punished Kyriakos by giving him no children. If so, He was punishing Myrto too.
Seeing his aunt grieve, keening and crying, hour after hour, constantly petted and patted by her family, Markos had wondered how much of it was an act. How could she lament the loss of a husband who had treated her that way? He watched his mother comforting his aunt and was reminded of how many times he had seen her with an arm around the same shoulders after she had been beaten.
During the year that had followed Uncle Kyriakos’ death, their father had also been wounded, almost fatally. Even now, Markos vividly recalled the smell of dirt and blood that had seemed to pervade the house when he was carried in. Vasilis Georgiou had recovered, but his chest and back had been lacerated and his upper body was still criss-crossed with scars. The lasting damage was to his leg. Even with a stick, he rocked from side to side when he walked. His left leg could no longer bend and, ever since, he had been in constant pain that could not be alleviated by drugs. Only
zivania
dulled the continuous ache.
‘Look at our father, Christos! He’s crippled … Who gained from that?’
Neither of them knew the full details of their father’s activities in the 1950s, only that he too had been an active member of EOKA. Vasilis Georgiou had been decorated by General Grivas, the leader of the uprising against British rule, before he was exiled. Markos knew that Grivas had secretly returned the previous year and was clandestinely leading a new campaign for
enosis.
He had found a new and willing generation of young men such as Christos ready to join his newly formed EOKA B.
‘What I can’t understand is why you stopped! It’s a mission, for God’s sake. You don’t just abandon it when you feel like it. Not until it’s won!’
Christos loved the rhetoric of
enosis
, enjoyed making a speech, even to the single audience of his brother.
Markos sighed. When he himself had flirted with the cause as a teenager, he had even sworn the oath – ‘I shall not abandon the struggle … until after our aim has been accomplished.’ Nowadays its aims no longer suited him.
‘Perhaps I have other interests now, Christos. Cyprus is becoming something else. A land of opportunity. How exactly is it going to benefit from becoming part of Greece?’
‘What do you mean? A land of opportunity?’
‘You haven’t noticed?’
‘Noticed what?
‘How this city is growing?’
Christos was annoyed by his brother’s bland language.
‘What … so it’s a matter of the money you have in your pocket, is it?’
‘Not only that, Christos. Just ask yourself: do you want your precious island to be governed by a dictatorship? From Athens?’
Christos was silent.
‘
Gamoto!
Damn!’ Markos had nicked himself slightly with his razor and blood oozed out of the cut. ‘Pass me that handkerchief, Christos.’
He dabbed at it until the bleeding ceased, mildly irritated by the realisation that a blemish would be left.
‘Look at you. Wincing like a baby,’ Christos taunted his brother.
Christos continued trying to persuade Markos to see his point of view, but the more desperate and ranting in his entreaties he became, the calmer Markos grew. He looked at his younger brother with sympathy and shook his head from side to side.
Christos stood clenching and unclenching his hands, almost crying tears of frustration.
‘How did you change so much?’ he pleaded. ‘I just don’t understand …’
Markos did not feel that he had changed. Not inside, at least. It was the world that had changed, and new opportunities were now presenting themselves and asking to be taken.
‘Christos …’ He appealed to his brother, but was immediately interrupted.
‘You’ve become like our parents …’
Markos could not halt his tirade.
‘… happy with an easy life!’
‘And there’s something wrong with that at their age?’ he asked.
‘Father was a fighter once!’
‘Once, Christos. But not now. And if you’re going to be part of it, just make sure you keep it to yourself. You don’t want people finding out.’
Markos was not only referring to their parents, whom he wanted to protect from the anxiety. The police were constantly searching for EOKA B suspects.
He continued his ascent of the concrete stairs and the voices faded. Even with the windows open, the sound of arguing and the noise of the cicadas would not keep Markos from sleeping. A long day and night of work would be followed by a brief but deep slumber.
The next morning he was up at nine as usual, and after the rituals of showering and shaving (he was more careful today), he went down to spend half an hour with his mother before going to work.
Irini Georgiou was chatting to her caged canary when he appeared. She wore a brown chiffon headscarf trimmed with lace which would be kept on all day, and beneath her rose-print apron she wore a floral blouse, the two designs clashing furiously. Everything in Irini’s life was similarly busy, from her daily schedule that was full from morning to night with a continuous sequence of small tasks, to the decor of the place where they lived. Their house in the village had been larger than the apartment, but they had brought with them every stick of furniture and knick-knack they had ever possessed. The combination of these made the apartment resemble a museum of small objects. Every plate, framed print, vase of plastic flowers, lace mat and postcard sent by a friend had been given a home and, just as before, the icon of Agios Neophytos was in pride of place. Irini felt safer this way, almost cocooned within memorabilia.
Among the photographs displayed in their apartment was a portrait of General Grivas, alongside an image of President Makarios, a wedding portrait of the Georgious and pictures of Markos, Maria and Christos as babies. Irini’s adoration of Makarios had increased now that he no longer supported
enosis
. Sometimes the photograph of Grivas, though, was turned to the wall. She said it was an easy mistake to make when dusting. She hoped that her husband had not been involved in any of the assassinations that had taken place, but she had never dared to ask.