Secrets Under the Sun Read online

  Anita of course knew well enough that her friend’s cancer had spread and the end might be close. She had taken to accompanying her to the hospital and during the last visit their family doctor had been quite explicit about Katerina’s condition. But Anita refused to lose hope, believing that her old friend would pull through. ‘Miracles do happen, Katerina,’ she insisted. ‘I believe in the power of the Almighty and you have always been so strong.’

  Nevertheless, since the last visit to Dr Demakis, Anita took herself every morning to the Catholic church to light a candle to the Virgin Mary and pray for her friend’s recovery.

  ‘Believe what you will, Anita mou, but I suggest you start reading some recipes just in case,’ Katerina had teased her friend.

  That day, with tightness in her heart, Anita had picked up her mother’s cookery book for the first time. She knew all about Olga’s ‘bible’, yet as much as she loved its contents she had never actually read it. She took it to the sofa by the window and started to leaf through its pages. She had a lot to learn and she knew that once Katerina had gone, she would have no choice but to start cooking and looking after herself. But then again, she thought, there were plenty of bakeries down the road that would deliver her orders. Still, whichever way it went, she knew her culinary tastes would have to change.

  Now that Katerina had gone, Anita felt lost. She was the last remaining member of the old clan, and living in the big house by herself terrified her. She had never lived on her own or knew how to. In the last decade after her mother Olga died, it was Katerina who had taken care of her, as she had done all Anita’s life.

  Anita had made a huge effort to look her best for her son. The last time he’d visited she had been rather unwell, and most of his time there she had spent in bed. She could sense his disappointment in her, but then again she always sensed his disappointment in her. She had never really been much use as a mother; always ailing with something or other and mainly with her bad nerves. In truth Katerina had been much more of a mother to Adonis than she had, and she felt guilty.

  For their supper on the night before the funeral Anita defrosted a huge baking tray of pastitsio – baked pasta with layers of aromatic meat sauce – which she knew was one of Katerina’s specialities and one of ‘the children’s’ favourites. She never stopped referring to her son and niece and their friend Marianna as ‘the children’. ‘I know you’re grown up now, but you’ll always be “the children” to me,’ she’d defend herself when one or the other complained of being infantilized.

  Waiting for ‘the children’ to arrive, she took the opportunity to lay the table with the best linen and table service. She was good at that. She might not have been a cook but she was very good at making the table sparkle. It had been a long time since she’d made such splendid preparations for dinner, she mused, possibly not since that last Christmas when they were a family and her sister was still alive. In the last years, she and Katerina had taken to eating in the kitchen where it was warm and cosy and easy to clear up. She longed for the old days, for the exquisite china to be set out, the silver and the crystal, for the wine to flow and her mother’s stimulating conversation. But times had changed. She and Katerina were the only ones left and what do two old ladies have to talk about? And now Katerina too was gone. How long, she kept thinking, before her own turn came?

  How would she start, how would she be able to speak to them all alone with no back-up and help from her companion?

  For months Anita had pleaded with her dying friend to agree to summon the three children and speak to them together.

  ‘Please, Katerina,’ she had implored, trying to convince her to agree.

  ‘It would be so much easier if we did it together,’ she persisted. ‘It’s time.’ But Katerina would not be persuaded.

  ‘I have given my word of silence,’ she told her, ‘and besides, what good can it do now? It was all so long ago; all that is past now. Let it be, Anita. Don’t stir it up.’

  But Anita was troubled. She was burdened and needed to speak out.

  She asked Adonis to open the bottle of single malt whisky she had bought for the occasion and handing each one of them a crystal tumbler, an heirloom from her grandfather, she began.

  ‘My children, let’s drink to our beloved Katerina. We will all miss her, but she will live on with us through our thoughts and the memories we have of her.’

  Their glasses raised for the toast, Eleni, Adonis and Marianna stood in a state of confusion and anticipation beneath the sparkling crystal chandelier in the saloni, the large reception room usually reserved for entertaining guests.

  The high ceilings and airy bright rooms of this house held so many childhood memories. Portraits of grandparents hanging on the walls smiling down on them, botanic illustrations and paintings were all as known to them as each other. The opulent red velvet sofas, heavy Linser Textiles curtains over floor-to-ceiling windows, the dark mahogany sideboards and glass cabinets full of silver and crystal, were all so familiar, and yet everything that night seemed strange. They stood in mournful silence waiting for Anita to speak.

  ‘I have much to say,’ she continued, ‘but let us eat first – once again Katerina has provided a feast for us.’

  Anita sat at the head of the table, the others around her. Reaching for the bottle sitting in the silver ice bucket, she filled everyone’s glasses with the perfectly chilled white wine, then stretched across the table and started serving the food.

  They ate in almost complete silence, each lost in thought and contemplation. After they finished eating the main course and the plates were cleared, Anita fetched a platter of fruit and placed it in the centre of the table.

  ‘Now, before I begin our story,’ she looked at the three of them, ‘I would like, on this night before we say goodbye for the last time tomorrow to our beloved Katerina, to honour her memory by asking each one of you to say something about your tante. To share a memory, something you cherish about her, what she meant to you. I am well aware of the influence she had on each one of you and the love you all felt for her. Then, when you all finish, it will be my turn.’

  Eleni, Adonis and Marianna darted bewildered glances at each other. In all the years they had known Anita this was the first time they had seen her so articulate, and in control. She always stayed in the background in life, hiding behind her ill health and bad nerves. First it was her mother, the dynamic Olga, who reigned over the household, and then Katerina who ran the home and took care of everything including Anita.

  ‘Eleni mou,’ Anita said calmly, looking at her niece, ‘let us start with you – after all, Katerina was like a mother to you.’

  2

  Eleni

  ‘She wasn’t like a mother to me,’ Eleni said quietly, ‘she was the only mother I ever knew. She made me feel safe and loved …’

  One of Eleni’s earliest memories was sitting in the warm and cosy kitchen, something simmering on the stove for lunch, watching her tante bake baklava. Sometimes Adonis was with them too but mostly she was alone with Tante. Later on when Eleni was a little older, keen to introduce the girl to the finer traditions of Cypriot home cooking, Katerina would encourage her to help.

  ‘First we prepare our filo pastry,’ Katerina would explain, ‘then we slowly lay it out in the tin, layer by layer, like so, and only then do we start with the filling.’ The young Eleni, holding a wooden spoon, was poised over a large bowl filled with the sweet, sticky, crunchy mixture, eager to start the next stage in the process. That part, she remembered vividly, was her favourite. The chopped walnuts, pistachios and almonds, sugar, and honey fragrant with cinnamon and ground cloves: a heavenly mixture of edible delight for the young girl. It was all she could do not to tuck in and start eating it with the wooden spoon before it was cooked. Eleni was sure that those cooking days with Tante started her lifelong love affair with cinnamon.

  ‘After baklava can we make Mama Sonia’s koulourakia?’ she would ask, eager to continue in the blissful atmosphere of t
he kitchen with all its aromatic treats. Sonia’s famed koulourakia were delectable almond cookies sprinkled with rose water and dusted with icing sugar, making them look as if they had been left out in the snow – not that Eleni knew much about snow, apart from a few visits to the mountains in the winter and from Christmas cards.

  Katerina always talked to the girl about her mama. She talked while they baked, and Eleni wished she could remember her mother making koulourakia as she was doing with Katerina, but by the time she was old enough to remember, her mother and father were already dead.

  ‘Please, Tante, can we make koulourakia now? Please?’ the young girl would plead.

  ‘In a few days, when the baklava is all gone, then we will make them too,’ Katerina would promise, smiling and ruffling the girl’s hair. Eleni felt safe in the kitchen, nothing could harm her there, so long as Tante was with her telling her stories, showing her how to cook, and always laughing. When Katerina laughed Eleni felt everything was all right with the world; there was no danger and no one was dead.

  If she closed her eyes tight and whispered the name Sonia a few times, she could invoke an image that was her mama. The close-up framed photo on the sideboard helped. Everyone said that Eleni looked like Sonia, but she couldn’t tell. Her mama was beautiful with red lips and gleaming black hair; her own hair was a mass of light brown curls, almost blonde by Cypriot standards. The only feature she could see that they shared was a little dimple on the chin. Eleni thought she looked more like Tante than the photograph of her mama. Katerina had big dark eyes, almost black, and so did Eleni, so she was happy enough and felt lucky that she had two mamas.

  Another photograph stood on the sideboard. This one was of Sonia and Nicos, Eleni’s parents, a young couple standing with arms around each other by the salt-lake. Shimmering in the distance on the edge of the lake, like a scene from Arabian Nights against a blue sky and palm trees, was the Hala Sultan Tekke holy mosque, one of Eleni’s favourite places to visit as a child. When she was older she loved to listen to Katerina tell her the story of the holy place. The mosque, she’d explain, was built on the burial ground of the prophet Mohammed’s beloved auntie, whose name was Umm Haram. While Umm Haram was riding a donkey during a visit to Cyprus she fell off and died on that very spot, where the mosque was built in her honour. Eleni liked the name – it was like a sound she made when she was eating mama’s koulourakia. ‘Umm,’ she’d repeat to herself with pleasure. Katerina always tried to talk to the girl like a grown-up; how else would she learn anything? During winter months she would take Eleni to the holy site, especially when the pink flamingoes landed on the island to feed on the lake, rich with brine-shrimp and algae. It was an enchanting sight and the little girl would watch the hazy pink cloud hovering over the water like a mirage as the birds in their thousands dabbled their beaks through the shallow water.

  She liked that picture of her parents in front of the mosque and lake. It looked exotic and glamorous, but her parents were standing far away and Nicos was wearing dark glasses so Eleni couldn’t really see his face, so they were like a mirage too. He was tall and was smoking a cigarette and she thought he looked handsome. Glamorous, she thought years later when she was a student, and understood its meaning was the appropriate word to use for that photograph. Glamour, magic and sorcery were all alike, she decided, cloaking what one saw with a mysterious aura and altering reality. Who were those two people who she was told were her parents? Would she ever know?

  Throughout her life her parents had remained a mystery to Eleni. While she was growing up, Nicos was hardly mentioned; she knew almost nothing of her father apart from what Katerina told her. No one else seemed to mention him. In almost all the photos of Sonia around the house she was alone – there was only that one picture where Nicos was with her. There were a few pictures of Eleni as a baby with her parents when they lived in Vienna – she was born there, they told her, but she didn’t remember anything of the place; she had barely begun to toddle when they came back, and her only memories were of Larnaka.

  She was growing up in a house of women where men didn’t seem to feature, and of course they held a fascination for her. Obviously her cousin Adonis was there, but he was a boy not a man so he didn’t count. The only man, apart from her teachers, that she saw regularly when he visited them at home, was Father Bernardino. But she never thought of him as a man either – he was the family priest and wore a dress.

  Even though Nicos was apparently persona non grata in the Linser household, Katerina obviously felt it was important for little Eleni to have some idea of her father.

  ‘He was tall and handsome, your papa,’ she’d tell her as she stirred something or other in the aromatic kitchen. ‘Your mama loved him. Eros is blind, my girl,’ she would sigh and Eleni imagined a blindfolded angel with a bow and arrow.

  She loved to hear stories about her mother, and Katerina had plenty of those.

  ‘She was a rebel, your mama,’ she’d tell Eleni and laugh.

  ‘What’s a rebel?’ she asked, thirsty to hear more.

  ‘She wouldn’t be told what to do by anyone. She had a mind of her own, that girl,’ Katerina would say, still laughing.

  ‘Our head is our own, so isn’t our mind in our head our own, too?’ Eleni quizzed Katerina, perplexed.

  ‘Of course it is.’ The older woman smiled at the girl. ‘But when you are young you have to listen to older people who know more than you and guide you … your mama thought she was born knowing everything.’

  ‘Was I born knowing everything?’

  ‘No, Eleni mou, you weren’t,’ she’d tell her and give her a hug. ‘You are a very good girl. You listen to those who know more than you.’

  Eleni loved nothing better than to hear Katerina tell her she was a good girl. She always tried her best for her.

  MARIANNA

  ‘If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be the woman I am now,’ Marianna began. She always knew that it was down to Katerina that she was now living in a nice little flat in Nicosia, the island’s capital, with a good job as a dental nurse, a nice car and understanding two other languages. Her English was not bad and when she visited Venice and Rome on holiday she had enough Italian to order in a restaurant and get around; the sound of German, too, was quite familiar since it was regularly spoken in the house that was to become her adopted home. Olga, Eleni’s and Adonis’s grandmother who welcomed Marianna into her home, was partly Austrian and partly Italian and encouraged her grandchildren to speak both languages. The mere fact that she had the opportunity to travel to these places and had been exposed to these other cultures filled her with gratitude at how her life had turned out. She also knew that if it hadn’t been for Katerina and the Linser family, the most she could ever have hoped for was a job as a barmaid or a waitress.

  The first time Marianna saw Katerina was in the kitchen of the old home, preparing lunch for the family. She was wearing a light blue apron with a pink rose motif on it and she was standing in a pool of sunshine which poured in through an open window. Marianna fancied that the woman had a halo around her head, and to her young girl’s mind she was the embodiment of the perfect mother crossed with how she imagined the Panayia, the Holy Mother of God, would look like if she was cooking for baby Jesus.

  ‘And who is this?’ Katerina said looking up from her chopping board when the three children walked into the kitchen. ‘Who is your friend, Eleni mou?’ She smiled and looked at Marianna. ‘What’s your name, honey?’ she asked again sweetly. The girl, too shy to speak, stood silent, looking at the woman with awe.

  ‘Which one of you children would like a piece of bread and haloumi before lunch?’ Katerina continued cheerfully, sensing the girl’s confusion, and opened the fridge door.

  Marianna couldn’t remember the last time anyone had spoken so kindly to her.

  It was mid-September, the autumn term at the elementary school that Eleni and Adonis were attending was well underway, and according to custom, the children went home for t
heir lunch. That day, for the first time, the cousins had invited Marianna to come back with them. The fact that their house was only a four-minute walk from school made them the envy of their fellow pupils.

  ‘Won’t your mama mind?’ Marianna had asked reluctantly when Eleni suggested she could come for lunch. ‘Will there be enough food? What if your mama gets angry?’

  ‘My mama is dead,’ Eleni said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘But my tante won’t mind at all, or my yiayia, or my thia – they all like children and we always have more food than we can eat,’ she told her new friend and linked arms with her as they walked on.

  ‘Tell her, Adonis,’ Eleni shouted to her cousin, who was walking ahead of them. Tell her it’s OK to come home with us.’

  ‘Yes! Come,’ the boy said, turning round to look at the girls. ‘Come – we can play snakes and ladders.’

  It was a while after the term had started when the cousins had first noticed Marianna making her way to school alone. The two of them were laughing and joking, running and playing, as they always did on their way to class, when Eleni saw the lone girl walking near them.

  ‘Yia sou!’ she greeted her, breaking away from Adonis and falling into step with her. ‘What’s your name? Mine is Eleni and his is Adonis, do you want to walk along with us?’ she chattered, hardly giving the girl a chance to reply.

  ‘It’s Marianna …’ she finally said in a small voice and gave Eleni a shy look.

  ‘I’ve seen you in the playground, you’re in the other class,’ said Eleni as they walked on.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Adonis asked, joining them and kicking a stone that lay in his way.

  ‘Not far …’ the girl replied, her voice trailing off into silence.

  They walked to school together that day and every day after that. Each morning the cousins waited for Marianna to pass their house and together the three of them made their way to school. The girls were in the same year and Adonis in the class above. When school was over Marianna would walk with them till they reached their house and then she made her way home alone. They never knew exactly where she lived. It was a long time before they found out.