The Island of Missing Trees(82)

In the afternoon they rented a car and drove towards the Castle of Saint Hilarion. It did them good, the long, hard scramble up the steep and twisty hillside, the sheer physicality of the climb. When they reached the top, they surveyed the landscape from a Gothic window carved into the ancient structure, their breaths shallow, their pulses hammering.

That evening, once the castle was closed and both tourists and locals had left, they loitered around, not quite ready to go back and mingle with other people just yet. They sat on a rock where a saint had once rested, worn smooth from centuries of passage.

Steadily, dusk filtered into night. As the darkness around them thickened, it became impossible to walk down the way they had come, so they decided to spend the night there. This being a military zone, they were taking a risk by staying after hours. Next to a patch of meadow saffron, glowing pinkish-white under a pale sliver of moon, they made love. To be naked like that in the open, canopied only by an infinite sky, was a frightening experience, and the closest they had come to freedom in a long time.

They nibbled through a bag of hazelnuts and dried mulberries, the only food they had with them. They drank water from flasks they had brought in their rucksacks, and then whisky. While Kostas slowed down after a few sips, Defne didn’t. Once again, he noticed she was drinking too fast, too much.

‘I want you to come with me,’ Kostas said, keeping his eyes trained on her as if fearing she might disappear between blinks.

Shaking her head, she gestured at the empty space between them. ‘Where?’

‘To England.’

Just then the moon darted behind a cloud, giving him barely enough time to detect the change in her expression. A momentary surprise, then withdrawal. He recognized that way she had of closing in on herself defensively.

‘We can start all over again, I promise,’ Kostas said.

When the cloud edged away, he found her absorbed in thought. Now she was looking at him carefully, surveying his lips, the split still healing, the bruises around his eyes slowly changing colour.

‘Is this … Wait, are you proposing?’

Kostas swallowed, upset at himself for not being better prepared. He could have brought a ring with him. He remembered the jewellery store they had stopped by after visiting the psychic. He should have gone there the next day, but, busy tracking songbirds, he hadn’t had a chance.

‘I’m not very good with words,’ Kostas said.

‘I figured.’

‘I love you, Defne. I have always loved you. I know we can’t roll back the years – I’m not trying to gloss over what happened, your suffering, our loss – but I want us to give each other a second chance.’

Remembering he still had the fossil in his jacket pocket, he took it out. ‘Would it be terribly untoward if I gave you an ammonite instead of a ring?’

She laughed.

‘This marine creature lived millions of years ago, imagine. As it got older, it added new chambers to its shell. Ammonites survived three mass extinctions and they weren’t even good swimmers. But they had a fascinating ability to adapt, tenacity being their strong suit.’

He handed the fossil to her. ‘I want you to come with me to England – will you marry me?’

Her fingers closed around the smooth stone as she felt its delicate pattern. ‘Poor Meryem, she was right to be worried when she heard you were back. If we do this, my family will probably never forgive me. My father, my mother, my cousins …’

‘Let me talk to them.’

‘Not a good idea. Meryem already knows about us, but my parents still don’t have a clue. I’ll tell them everything, I am tired of hiding. They will now learn that I’ve lied to them all these years about Yusuf being the father of my baby … That there was even more reason for them to disown me … I’m not sure they will ever absolve me for smearing a Turkish man to protect my Greek lover, what a mess I’ve made.’ She ran her hand through her hair and spoke through a tight jaw. ‘But your family won’t be happy either. Your younger brother, your uncle, your cousins …’

His brow crumpled. ‘They’ll understand.’

‘No, they won’t. After all they have gone through, our families will only see this as a betrayal.’

‘It’s a different world now.’

‘Tribal hatreds don’t die,’ she said, holding the ammonite up. ‘They just add new layers to hardened shells.’

The silence stretched thin. A breeze blew through the trees, ruffling the bushes ahead, and she shivered despite herself.

‘Without any family support, without a country, we’ll be very lonely,’ she said.

‘Everybody is lonely. We’ll just be more aware of it.’

‘You were the one who made me read Cavafy – have you forgotten your own poet? You think you can leave your native land because so many people have done it, so why shouldn’t you? After all, the world is full of immigrants, runaways, exiles … Encouraged, you break free and travel as far as you can, then one day you look back and realize it was coming with you all along, like a shadow. Everywhere we go, it’ll follow us, this city, this island.’

He held her hand, kissed her fingertips. She carried the past so close to the surface, pain rushing beneath her skin like blood. ‘We can do it if we both believe in it.’

‘I’m not very good at believing,’ she said.