frοm her new book
 " The key of Arsinoe" Το κλειδί της Αρσινόης, to appear in September (1996),
and from the particular part of the book entitled " Cypriot scenes".

 

Translation into English by Irini Papas

 

 

 The old lady had never learned anything else in her life except to drop

blessings from her lips, as if the blessings sustained her.

Her eyelash colour faded, her face was a mass of wrinkles. " Daughter, give

me the votive candle so I may light it, and may you reign like a queen one

day".

On Sundays, in the courtyard under the vine, they'd turn on the radio. "

Daughter, bring the radio, and may you pick up soil and have it turned to gold

in your hands".

Her legs were unable to take much walking anymore, she didn't go to church

anymore. In the kitchen, her daughter was preparing a roast, and she,

hearing the clatter of the soot-grimed pots, confused it with the clatter of

coins dropped into the offering trays at the church door. She then thought

that she was actually there, listening and following the words of the priest,

and as the trays came around, she would put her hand into the deep pocket

of her black dress, seeking a coin. " Bless you, may the angels guard you,

may evil die away around you".

The liturgy would continue until the moment when the sun was high in the

sky.  The old lady would whisper. " Daughter, bring me my purse, so I can offer

another coin, because the church is in need of repair, may a thousand good

things befall you".

   Only euphemisms, only good words, only advice, those things which she

had learned from her mother. Harsh words were foreign to her, she never

uttered them.

Even if something went wrong, like the time when she had lost her sight, even

then, someone heard her say to a neighbour, " Since I lost my sight, praised

be my Lord and Creator and His Mercy in blinding me, any other pain now

seems trivial".

That day,  her daughter  called to her from within the house that..... that it was

the anniversary of the invasion, the day  they’d fled from their homes, when

children and grandchildren had lost their lives and the cause of this being the

black, shadowy Attila.  The old lady twisted a small, white handkerchief in her

fingers and for a minute it seemed to be  like a tiny boat waiting to take her off

on a care-free trip around the lace-like  coast of her island.  The freckles, on

the back of her hands, became rosary beads. She opened her mouth to say,

for the first time, something other than what she had been used to say all

these years. "May the hour and the moment of their coming burn in hell". She

stopped. Her daughter ran quickly out into the courtyard, as if she had had an

ominous premonition. She touched the old lady's shoulder, and her jaw,

dropping in amazement, managed to say. " Who, mother? Who did you say

brought them?"

Her mother shrugged her off, and a different expression crossed her face,

which, however, still appeared calm. But her daughter stood there next to her,

waiting for a reply. Not that the daughter didn't know what the reply would be,

but she needed to persist for some kind of correction.

" The hour and the moment brought them", said the old lady, but then, almost

immediately, she realised that this was an impossibility. The hour and the

time  could never have such power, so she added, " Blessed be His name

and His Grace".

Hearing her own words the old lady leaned sideways in the chair and her

eyes closed.

The daughter cried out, clasped her head in her hands, sweat ran down her

face. She felt guilty had her insistence on the truth perhaps killed her

mother, her insistence on her mother showing disrespect towards the Divine.

She wiped away tears and sweat, shouted for help, but then stopped. She

suddenly started to gabble. There wasn't even a bird in the courtyard to hear

her gabbling, interweaving with her own words, those things her mother had

no time to say; as if she begged to be able to die too, while she cursed.

Her voice was carried down as far as the harbour, where the ships were

loading cigarettes for Lebanon.

" May the hour and the moment of their coming burn in hell, may they be

burned from the root upward. May they never see a fair day. Make it happen,

my God!"

She seized her dead mother's hand to kiss it, and saw again the rosary beads

of the freckles on the back of it. She heard the voice of legacy coming from

an ancient psaltery, strengthening the unalterably great-hearted Cypriot race,

and she had no desire to be any different to others of her blood.

While she sobbed, she carried on the tradition of euphemism.

" Pity them, and give them a heart, my God".

 

ERMA VASSILIOU