Songbirds(20)

Later, I stood by the large window at the front of the house, looking out onto the street, hoping with each second that passed that I would see Nisha turning the corner. I couldn’t tamp down that hope. Maybe any moment she would appear in the lights of Yiakoumi’s shop and Theo’s restaurant, coming to our door and turning the key in the lock, putting down her handbag and explaining where she had been.

I must have stood like that for half an hour, maybe more. Like a cat, Aliki came in and out of the living room, standing beside me for a while and leaving again. She was anxious. I could hear it in the way she moved, in the urgency of her footsteps.

The olive tree opposite was illuminated by the shop lights. Yiakoumi came out and sat beneath it with a coffee. A woman was singing at Theo’s restaurant – I couldn’t see her because the men sitting beneath the grapevine at the tables around her obscured the view, but her voice was pitch-perfect, so full of pathos, so full of beauty and sadness, that something welled up inside me and I began to cry.

Who was this woman who sang in a foreign tongue? Where had she come from? What had she wished for before coming here? These questions brought me back to Nisha in a way that I had never thought about her before. I had failed to recognise that she too was a woman with pain and hopes. I had known this only as a distant thought – I had never absorbed it into my heart. For she too had lost her husband. She too had come from an island ravaged by war over the years, one besieged by colonialists. Its beauty and its people had suffered too. And these things live on: they carry themselves silently into the future. Who was Nisha? What had life taught her? Why had she travelled such a great distance? To save her daughter . . . from what?

I had never asked these questions.

I knew that she treasured the locket. I knew how she loved Aliki. I knew the taste of her food, the spices and curries and creams. I knew how she dusted and vacuumed, how she ironed the clothes, how she wrote careful shopping lists, taking her time with each letter, each word, as if she were writing a poem. I knew how she packed the groceries in perfect order so that she could unpack them more easily. I knew she had a copy of the Buddhist scriptures by her bed and a fat little statue of the Buddha beside it. I knew that when she washed fruit, she’d watch the water fall and get lost for a while.

I didn’t know Nisha.

Now that I could hear this woman’s song – a melody that told a story I couldn’t understand – I hoped with all of my heart that it wasn’t too late.

I felt Aliki standing beside me; I thought she was going to put her hand in mine. But when I turned, she was nowhere to be seen.

*

Aliki was sitting out in the garden in the boat again. She was rowing and humming to herself. I went outside, turned an empty plant pot over and sat on it, a little distance away from her. The trees around the garden created a shelter from the wind. Above, the moon shone brightly in the dark sky but, around it, thick clouds were gathering – an indication of a brewing storm. The black cat was in the garden now, sprawled across the patio, purring. I watched it, contemplatively. If only it could speak.

‘Would you like to come in?’.

I turned and saw that Aliki was looking in my direction. ‘You want me to sit in the boat?’ I asked.

She nodded.

So, I climbed in opposite her and she gave me the olive branch to hold. The cat jumped in with us and snuggled up against her thigh. I glanced over at the glass doors of Nisha’s room.

‘She loves me,’ Aliki said, and I wasn’t sure if she was talking about Nisha or the cat.

‘I know,’ I replied, and whichever it was, this seemed to satisfy her as she started to row with the oar she was holding.

‘You have to row on the other side, because if you don’t we’ll end up just going around in circles. This is why it’s important to be balanced. Because then you’ll go around in circles if you’re not.’

Her words made me chuckle there was so much truth in them. I moved to sit beside her, and began to row with the olive branch, to the rhythm that Aliki had set.

‘Where are we going?’ I said.

‘To the Sea Above the Sky. This is where I go with Nisha. It’s lovely up there. Sometimes a bit scary, but not always.’

‘I see,’ I said, matching her movements still.

I was hoping that she would tell me more, but she had fallen silent. Her last words had floated away, high into the sky, and were mere dots up above, like helium balloons at carnivals when I was a girl: after all the sweets and colour and noise, I would release them at the end of the day and watch them float away.

Finally, Aliki spoke. ‘Mum, please find her,’ she said. ‘I really want you to find her.’

At that moment, the sky opened, and rain began to pour down on us.





The hare is drenched. Its fur looks oily in the sunlight that shines intermittently through the clouds. The rain falls into the red lake. The rain falls onto the yellow rocks, forming streams of gold. The rain clangs against the steel of the gallows frame and the metallic structure creaks. Water begins to fill its hollow shell.

In the fields beyond, it falls through the leaves of the pecan and fruit trees. It falls down upon the wheat and barley fields. No one is out today; even in the village, doors and windows and shutters are closed, and water runs from the eaves of buildings.

Rain is always a surprise. The villagers are relieved because the earth needs to drink. Not so long ago were the scorching summer days when the water barrels were empty, the land dry as a bone. Now, the trees are cool in the drenching. When the rain stops, the locals will come out to collect the pecans before the crows do.