Songbirds(8)

Right next door sat Mrs Hadjikyriacou, who Aliki called the Paper-Lady. She was sitting on her usual deckchair, in the front garden next door to ours. Her skin was so white and creased that she looked as though someone had scrunched her up into a ball and opened her up again. She sat there most of the day, and late into the evening, sometimes until midnight, watching the day go by, the seasons change, and she remembered everything – her mind like a journal, full of pages and pages of the past, or at least every bit of the past that has walked her way. It is a well-known fact that her hair turned white overnight, during the war, when the island was divided. That’s when she started storing everything in her mind, so that nobody could take her soul from her. This is what she told me once, many years ago.

She sat there now, perched on her chair, watching TV, which had been brought outside; the wire was stretched almost to breaking point, plugged into a socket in the living room. She spat phlegm into a handkerchief, inspected it, then shouted at the TV. She was furious, it seemed, about a decision the president had made.

I hoped that she might have seen Nisha leave.

I watched as her maid came out with a tray of fruit and water, placing it on a small table by the old lady’s side.

‘I don’t want any,’ she said, flicking her wrist in dismissal, and the maid mumbled something in her own language before returning to whatever she had been doing inside. This maid was new and hadn’t yet learned a word of Greek or English, so they communicated with their respective mother tongues, plus gestures and eye-rolls.

As usual the Paper-Lady was surrounded by cats, all of which Aliki had named. One of the cats was sitting to attention, staring at her, meowing.

‘What is it, my dear?’ she asked, with a sigh. ‘What is it, my darling sesame dough? You want to drink? You want to eat? Come to me and I’ll kiss you!’ In response, the cat turned its back to her. Then, without even looking my way, she lowered the volume on the TV, and said, ‘Petra, come over and have some fruit.’

I approached, with usual pleasantries about the weather, taking a slice of orange out of courtesy, and then I asked whether she had seen Nisha the previous night or, in fact, that morning.

Sitting back with her fingers laced together, she searched her mind, her head tilted slightly to the right, towards the light of Yiakoumi’s shop. She fixed her gaze on the window display. ‘According to seven of Yiakoumi’s clocks, it was ten thirty when I saw her. According to one, it was midnight.’

I waited for her to say more but instead she scooped up one of the cats and placed it on her lap. The black cat’s eyes were gold, with an area of patchy blue that looked like the Earth from a great distance.

‘Did she say where she was going?’

‘She was in a hurry. She said something about meeting a man.’

‘Who?’

‘Do you think if I sniff my nails they will tell me the answer?’ Her stock phrase.

She stared at me for a while, as if she was waiting for me to stop chewing. When I swallowed the last bit of orange she tapped the plate with her finger.

‘Have some more.’

I could see that her attention would remain on the plate until I obliged, so I took another slice. She watched me as I bit into it, and as I wiped juice from my chin.

‘Was there anything unusual . . . ?’ I began.

‘My daughter is coming next week from New Zealand. She’s coming to see me from the other side of the world.’

‘That’s wonderful.’ Through the crocheted curtain I could see her maid’s silhouette; she looked like she was bending down to wipe the coffee table, the glow of an orange lamp behind her. She was shaking her head, talking to herself about the old lady, no doubt – unless there was something else that had peeved her so badly that she looked like she had taken a bite of a lemon straight from the tree.

Just at that moment, the bouzouki started playing in the restaurant and the cats, as if on cue, scurried off in that direction.

‘Did she say anything else?’ I said. ‘Nisha, I mean.’

‘No.’

‘Which way did she go?’

She pointed to the right. ‘Then she turned left at the end of the road.’

‘But that way’s a dead end,’ I said. What would Nisha be doing going down there? It only led to the Green Line, to the military base and the buffer zone that separated the Turkish and Greek parts of the island. Nobody went that way.

Mrs Hadjikyriacou was looking up at me, examining me. From her corneas, triangular films of tissue threatened to take over her eyes.

‘What’s the problem?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know where Nisha is. I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, she probably just—’

She interrupted me: ‘Just what? You mean to tell me she hasn’t returned?’

I nodded.

‘I presume you’ve tried her phone?’

I nodded again and she looked up to the sky, her silvery eyes restless. She looked so worried that I suddenly had the urge to reassure her.

‘Honestly, I’m sure it will be fine. There has to be a reasonable explanation.’

‘No,’ she said.

‘Maybe she went to see a friend.’

‘No,’ she said again. ‘Nisha would never take off like that, even for a day. You must know that. She is an extremely conscientious young woman.’