The Island of Missing Trees(30)
It would take Kostas years to find out that the wives and children of asbestos workers suffered from secondary exposure to the toxic substance. Especially the wives. A creeping, gradual demise without any diagnosis, let alone compensation. They knew nothing of this back then. They weren’t aware that the cancer that had started to tear through Panagiota’s cells had stemmed from washing her husband’s overalls every day and holding him in bed at night, inhaling the white asbestos powder settled in his hair. Panagiota was sick, though people who didn’t know her well would not have guessed, watching her forever rushing from one task to the next.
Kostas barely remembered anything of his father. He knew that his elder brother had many memories of him, and his younger brother, a newborn back then, had absolutely none. But he, the middle one, was left with a layer of fog, a frustrating illusion that if he could only part the cloud with his hands, he might find his father’s face in there, the pieces no longer missing, finally complete.
Panagiota had not married again, raising the three boys on her own. With no other income since her husband passed away, she had turned to selling homemade goods to local shop owners and, over the years, she had built up her own business. The real revenues came from carob liquor, a feisty drink that burned the throat and settled warmly in the bloodstream like a friendly campfire, and every so often her brother, who lived in London, sent her some money.
Strong and resilient, Panagiota was both loving and strict. She believed malicious spirits were everywhere, preying on their innocent victims. The tar that stuck to your shoes, the mud that clung to your tyres, the dust that got into your lungs, the scent of hyacinth that tickled your nose and even the mastic flavour that lingered on your tongue could well turn out to be tainted with the breath of unholy spirits. To keep them at bay, one had to be vigilant. Still they sneaked into people’s homes through the slits in the doors, the cracks in the windows, the doubts in the human soul.
It helped to burn olive leaves and Panagiota did this regularly, the odour sharp and faintly suffocating and so pervasive that, after a while, it singed itself into your skin. She would also light charcoal since the devil was known to hate its smoke. Making the sign of the cross over and again, she would tread softly about the house, her lips locked in prayer, her fingers clutching a silver-plated kapnistiri. Each time Kostas left the house, and upon each return, he had to cross himself, always with his right hand, his good hand.
Whenever Kostas felt unwell or could not sleep, Panagiota would suspect the working of an evil eye. To undo the damage, she performed a xematiasma, setting him on a stool in front of her, a glass of water in one hand, a spoon of olive oil in the other. How often had he watched those golden drops fall into the water, waiting to see whether they would pool or spread so that she could assess the strength of the curse? Afterwards, she would tell him to drink the water, now heavy with incantations, and he would do so, draining it down to the last gulp, hoping to be freed of whatever malady it was that had seized him unawares.
When he was younger, Kostas would often slip out and sit under a tree on quiet afternoons, immersed in a book as he nibbled on a slice of bread spread with thick yogurt and a sprinkle of sugar. With all-encompassing curiosity he would study a moss-covered log, inhale the aromas of garlic mustard and pokeweed, listen to a beetle munch its way through a leaf, and he would marvel at his mother’s fear of this world so full of wonders.
Rules were what gave life a structure and rules had to be obeyed. Salt and eggs and bread must not leave a house after sunset. If they did, they would never return. To spill olive oil was a particularly bad omen. Should this happen, you had to knock over a glass of red wine to balance things out. When digging the ground, you should never put the shovel on your shoulder because then someone might die. Equally important was refraining from counting the number of warts on your body (they would multiply) or the coins in your pockets (they would disappear). Of all the days of the week, Tuesday was the most unpropitious. One should never get married on a Tuesday or embark on a journey or give birth if it could be avoided.
Panagiota explained that it was a Tuesday in May, centuries ago, when the Ottomans captured the queen of cities, Constantinople. It happened after a statue of the Virgin Mary, carried to a shelter to evade the tumult of the ongoing siege, tumbled down, shattering into pieces so small it could never be put back together again. It was a sign, but people didn’t recognize it in time. Panagiota said one should always look out for signs. An owl hooting in the dark, a broom falling on its own, a moth flying into your face – none of these boded well. She believed some trees were Christian, others Mohammedan, yet others heathen, and you had to make sure you had the right ones planted in your garden.
She was especially wary about three things: sitting under a walnut tree, because it would give you nightmares; planting a koutsoupia, the Judas tree, because Judas had hanged himself from its branch after betraying the Son of God; and cutting down a mastic tree, which was known to have cried twice in its long history, once when the Romans tortured a Christian martyr and, the second time, when the Ottoman Turks conquered and settled in Cyprus.
Whenever his mother said such things, Kostas felt his heart constrict. He loved all trees, without exception, and as for the days of the week, as far as he was concerned they were divided into two kinds only: the ones he spent with Defne and the ones he spent missing her.
Once or twice he had tried, but then swiftly changed his mind. He knew he could never tell his mother that he was in love with a Turkish Muslim girl.