The Island of Missing Trees(56)
The driver cocked his head. For a moment Kostas thought he saw a hard gleam flash in his eyes. To break a possible tension, he leaned forward, trying to change the subject. ‘So, has the tourist season begun?’
A smile appeared on the driver’s face, slow and cautious, like a closed fist opening. ‘Yes, but you no tourist, brother. You are from here.’
And that simple word, brother, so unexpected yet reassuring, hovered in the air between them. Kostas did not say anything else; nor did the driver. It was as if they both had heard all they needed to know.
Hotel Afrodit was a whitewashed, two-storey building held tight in the bright magenta embrace of bougainvillea. A broad-shouldered and rosy-faced woman stood behind the reception desk, her headscarf tied loosely in the traditional Muslim way. To her left, lounging in a wicker chair, a man who must have been her husband sipped tea. Behind him, the wall was crowded with a mishmash of items: Turkish flags in various sizes, prayers in Arabic script, evil eye beads, macramé plant holders and postcards from different parts of the world, posted by satisfied customers. One glance at the couple and Kostas sensed that, though the husband might nominally own the place, it was the wife who ran everything.
‘Good afternoon.’ He knew they were expecting him.
‘Mr Kazantzakis, right? Welcome!’ the woman chirped, a smile dimpling her round cheeks. ‘Good journey?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Great time to visit Cyprus. What brings you here?’
He was expecting this question and had his answer ready, but still he paused. ‘Work,’ he said flatly.
‘Yes, you scientist.’ She elongated the last word, her English thickly accented. ‘You said on the phone you work with trees, did you know all of our rooms are named after them?’
She offered him his room key in an envelope. For a second, Kostas dared not look at the name scribbled on it, half expecting it to be The Happy Fig. The hair at the back of his neck bristled as his eyes skimmed the words. His room was called ‘Golden Oak’.
‘That’s good,’ he said with a smile; he was finding it harder to keep memories at bay.
Upstairs, the room was spacious and full of light. Kostas threw himself on to the bed, only now realizing how exhausted he was. The soft covers invited him in, like a warm, scented bath, though he didn’t allow himself to relax. He took a quick shower and changed into a T-shirt and jeans. Crossing the room, he opened the double doors to the balcony. Overhead, an eagle – the animal companion of Zeus – soared across a cloudless sky and glided westward, in pursuit of its next quarry. As soon as he stepped out, he caught a long-forgotten whiff in the breeze. Jasmine, pine, sun-baked stones. A smell he thought he had buried somewhere in the maze of memory. The human mind was the strangest place, both home and exile. How could it hold on to something as elusive and intangible as a scent when it was capable of erasing concrete chunks of the past, block by block?
He had to find her. This very afternoon. Come tomorrow, he might lose heart and put it off for another day or maybe two, make sure he was terribly busy, so busy that the entire week would pass in a blur and it would be time to pack again. But right now, fresh off the ferry and still riding the wave of longing that had carried him all the way here from England, he was certain he had the strength to see Defne.
All this time, he had kept collecting bits of information about her. He knew she was an archaeologist and had made a name for herself in the field. He knew she had never married, had no children. He had seen photos of her in newspapers sold at Turkish Cypriot stores in London, where she was speaking at academic conferences and seminars. But what did any of that say about the particularities of her life today? It had been impossibly long since they had last seen each other. You could not fill that big a void with those few paltry facts he had gathered, and yet they were all he had.
He didn’t have her number and did not want to call the university where she worked. The friends they had in common from the past had all scattered to different corners of the world and could not be of help. But before leaving London he was able to find a contact, and that was as good a beginning as any.
He had a colleague, David, with whom he had collaborated on various projects initiated by the United Nations Environment Programme. They had gone their separate ways but kept in touch. A cheerful man with half a dozen languages under his belt, a propensity for alcohol and a distinctively sandy beard, David had been based in Cyprus for the last ten months. Upon deciding to travel to the island, Kostas had called him, hoping he could be the bridge that would take him to Defne, knowing that bridges appear in our lives only when we are ready to cross them.
Remains of Love
Cyprus, early 2000s
Kostas arrived at the bookshop where they had agreed to meet and checked his watch. With a few minutes to kill he browsed the books, some of them in English. In one section of the shop he found rows of stamps dating back to the years of his boyhood and before. Among the thousands was one issued in 1975, showing the island divided into two opposing colours, separated by a metal chain. So much symbolism packed into four square centimetres of paper.
From the souvenir shop next door, he bought an ammonite – an ancient marine shell, coiled around its secrets. Feeling its heft in his palm, he wandered around for a bit. On a poplar tree he spotted a bird – a black-headed bunting with splashes of yellow across its chest. A passerine bird. Every year, this tiny creature migrated from the pastures of Iran and the valleys of Europe to the coasts of India, and further east, traversing distances beyond the ken of many humans.