Songbirds(17)

‘Of course, madam,’ said Bian. ‘We will come to tell you first.’

*

When I got home, the house was quiet. I peeked into Aliki’s room and she was asleep, a book lying across her chest. Feeling restless, I went to the garden to collect the pieces of broken money-box and coins from the ground. I put all the lira in a glass bowl and sprayed them with water until they gleamed. The black cat sat by my feet.

Then I went out to the front porch to sit for a while. I watched the neighbourhood go about the business of shutting down. Mrs Hadjikyriacou was indoors tonight. Yiakoumi’s maid was taking the antiques inside in order to shut the shop. To the right, Theo’s restaurant was getting quiet, just a few customers remained, finishing drinks and paying their bills. Bian and Chau dashed about, wiping down tables and preparing them with fresh tablecloths for the next day.

I had started to see the rhythm of these women with new eyes – how the whole neighbourhood pulsed with their activity. They had been invisible to me before Nisha had gone missing: all I had seen before was a little Cypriot girl walking excitedly down a street with two adults; the shining antiques outside Yiakoumi’s shop every day; the clean and well-kept front garden down the road; the happy customers at Theo’s. I had not really seen the women.

*

When I went to bed, I heard my daughter’s voice; it struck me, since I had craved the sound of it all through dinner. I had the window slightly open, the sky a deep blue, when her voice came to me with the wind. Such a soft voice, but textured, rising with excitement, falling with lilting sadness. I peered out of the shutters and was surprised to see her sitting in the boat. When had she woken up? This time she was holding the oar and the olive branch but not rowing. Then she laughed, holding her sides, as if someone had said something funny. I called her inside and lay back on my bed and closed my eyes.

I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up it was completely dark and I heard knocking coming from the garden. I got out of bed and opened the glass doors. Yiannis was standing by Nisha’s room, tapping on the glass.

Startled, he turned to me. ‘Petra,’ he said.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I heard a noise.’

‘But you were the one making the noise,’ I said. ‘Was there another noise?’

He didn’t respond to this.

‘Do you know where Nisha is?’

‘No,’ he said, bluntly. And then it seemed that he regretted this and said, ‘I wanted to ask her something. Do you know where she is?’

‘Unfortunately, I don’t.’

Then there was anguish on his face, anguish in his eyes. The moonlight illuminated the streaks of silver in his hair and I thought to myself what a beautiful and lonely man he was.





A gallows frame looks over the red lake at Mitsero, a colossal rusty carcass that creaks in the wind. It is quiet by the lake, on this bright day in October. The hare is exposed to the sun, its body bloated as gases stretch its insides and skin, as bacteria eat soft tissue. The hare is still intact, in the running position, but its powerful hind legs have lost their purpose. It is lying on a slab of yellow stone about five metres from where the crater wall drops to the water.

A praying mantis flies down – green as another land in another time – all five eyes alert for any movement or changes of light. It scuttles a short distance across the yellow stone where the bloated hare is lying, back legs pushing its green frame forward, the front two – sharply spined – reach out and capture and hold a roaming fly.

The hare’s head is slanted slightly upwards, away from its front paws. It would seem that it is looking at the mantis eating the fly, but its left eye, the colour of amber, is flat against the earth, and its right eye looks directly into the sun, golden. The hare’s black-tipped ears give the impression that they are blowing backwards in the wind. As if it were running.

No vegetation grows around the lake, the soil is arid. But, further out, the soil is rich in copper and pyrite and gold, and there are barley and wheat fields and sunflowers leading to the village. There are fruit trees in the fields beyond the village, and from there come the distant sounds of life – of leaves rustling, wings flapping, animals moving amongst the cherry and pecan trees as they begin to shed their golden leaves.

The hare’s carcass reeks now, and the smell is carried by a soft breeze over the red water of the lake, through the hollow gallows frame into the fields, where it meets rosemary and thyme, eucalyptus and pine.





9

Petra

I

CALLED UP NISHA’S AGENCY. I asked them if they’d heard from her.

‘No,’ the woman said, after checking the system. ‘We log everything and there’s nothing here.’

I told her that Nisha had gone missing three days ago, that I couldn’t get through to her on her mobile, either.

‘Well,’ the woman said, ‘keep us posted because she still has an outstanding debt.’ She had a voice like a foghorn. It was awful and too loud, and it said nothing helpful.

‘How much?’ I said, but the woman wouldn’t tell me, it was confidential information. However, I knew that the agencies charged the workers a considerable amount of money to sign up and secure a placement abroad.

Then I rang Nicosia hospital to see if Nisha had been admitted, but they had no record of her.