Songbirds(10)

I turned a blind eye to the crap Seraphim spewed. He was dodgy to the core, but there was something charming about him, a certain warmth. And he was good at keeping secrets. He held steadily to the steering wheel as the van bounced over the rough terrain. Seraphim was the only person in the world who knew about my relationship with Nisha.

‘Nisha’s gone,’ I said.

I could hear the sea now, below us to the right, breathing heavily. The clouds parted and the sky around the moon turned silver. I realised he’d been silent for too long.

‘Nisha is gone,’ I said again.

‘That’s not possible.’

‘Why not?’

He was quiet again and he made a right turn now, onto the road that would lead down to the jetty of a small private cove. There was a tiny church made of limestone on this corner, with a huge white cross that was illuminated at night.

‘Why would she leave?’ he asked, finally.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘She just disappeared.’ I paused. ‘I proposed to her on Saturday night and she disappeared on Sunday night. Well, any time on Sunday, I guess.’

‘Sunday night,’ he said. Not a question, but a statement. But before I could say anything else, he’d brought the van to a swift halt, turned off the engine and opened the driver’s side door.

Vyacheslav was waiting for us as usual by one of the boats, holding his silver thermal flask, smoking a cigarette and reading the news on his phone, his hair so blond it was almost white. He grinned when he saw us, throwing the butt on the ground and greeting us as usual.

Seraphim and I pulled a huge, rolled-up mist net from the back of the van, one side each, rather like we were carrying a body. I kept looking over my shoulder, sweating. These sea-hunts were the most dangerous. If we were caught, we’d be fined 20,000 euros and land ourselves in jail. Each time we went out to sea, I thought: Surely this time we will be caught.

Vyacheslav began to unwind the mist net in order to attach either end to the two boats. He would sail with Seraphim, as usual, and I would go out alone. I think he preferred Seraphim’s company.

‘It’s clear now,’ Vyacheslav said, looking up at the sky, his eyes narrowing, his face creasing into a big smile. ‘This’ll be a good hunt.’

‘Let’s hope so,’ Seraphim said. We all spoke to each other in English, in our respectively heavy accents.

Vyacheslav lit another cigarette and recited the main headlines of the day, something he always did, while Seraphim made sure that the nets were attached securely. I placed a couple of calling devices in each boat.

Thousands of migrating birds sweep down as the sun begins to rise, coming to the island to stop for a rest on their arduous journey across the Mediterranean Sea. This island, this little sea rock, is along one of the major migration routes. The birds see the lights of the town and fly towards them. Some birds even use the coast as a leading line, helping them to find their way. The mist nets are so fine that the birds fly straight into them. Every attempt to escape causes further entanglement. It’s not just blackcaps we catch, but all kinds – the nets are indiscriminate. Summer is relatively quiet, but during passage times, particularly autumn and spring, more birds move through – so many in fact, that we make a killing.

As we sailed out to sea, I was suddenly hit by the feeling that I was drifting further away from Nisha: that some invisible cord that kept us together was being stolen by an invisible but powerful current. She always seemed to know what I was feeling, or rather she carried my feelings, even the ones I didn’t know I had. She would rest her chin on her fist, lying on my bed, or sitting at the dining table, and look into me with her lion eyes.

‘What’s making you so sad?’ she would say, or ‘Why are you angry today?’ or ‘Where have you disappeared to?’ She knew my moods better than I knew them myself. The only other person who had ever paid me that kind of attention was my grandfather, when I was a boy. He was always so aware, as we walked through the woods: where I was stepping, whether I was too excited and would frighten the animals, whether I was tired, hungry. Once, after my dog had died, he let me talk about her all the way from Troodos to the East coast. We got off the bus, and although I was animated and told him joyful stories, he knew from the way I dragged my feet that my heart was heavy, and that when we went for our swim I would have sunk if I hadn’t given him those memories to carry.

Last summer, I had shown Nisha a photo of myself when I was six, taken in front of the farmhouse in Troodos. There was a cow in the yard just behind me, and I was crouching down tying my laces and looking at the camera, smiling. It was my mother who had taken that photo; I remember her carrying my sister on her hip. She had come back from taking my father and grandfather their lunch in the fields, her face red, a scarf tied around her head. Nisha cried when she saw it. She was sitting naked on my bed by the open doors of the balcony, the air hot, sticky, full of night jasmine and the perfume of women who roamed the streets. It was nearly midnight and the music from Theo’s drifted up to us. We had the fan rotating between us. Her yellow eyes had welled up and tears dropped down onto my wrist as I held the photo.

‘Why are you crying?’

‘You were just so beautiful and sweet,’ she said, wiping her face with the back of her hands. Then she lay down in my arms and I could feel her tears on my chest. I held her tight, not knowing if I was comforting her or if in fact it was she who was comforting me. I didn’t really understand what had made her cry. What had she seen in my face from all those years ago? What unfathomable dreams had she projected into the future?