Betwixt and between

Chapter 1 • PREHISTORY-3

Dimitri did not hate her, and he did not despise her. Her tears made her grey eyes even more beautiful. He told her so, and repeated it until she calmed down. “I love you and whatever happens I will continue to love you”, he said to her with all the honesty and candour of his fourteen years.

“Go to your father now,” said Maria, “and if you have time, pass by and say hello to Evdoxia. She will be so pleased to see you.”

They kissed each other on both cheeks, and Dimitri went straight into his father’s office, where he found him talking on the telephone. He left the telegram on the desk and went away without waiting for the end of his father’s call. Before shutting the office door behind him and without turning round to look or giving his father a chance to object, he said, “I am going to see Evdoxia.”

Dimitri went into Maria’s room without knocking. Evdoxia was sitting with her books and exercises open on a little table in front of the window, from where she looked out onto the garden. As soon as she saw Dimitri, she rose and came and stood, embarrassed, in the middle of the room, a step away from him. It was plain that she had conflicting feelings. Her instinct was to show sympathy to her friend who had lost his mother, but she hesitated, fearing that a sentimental display would not be welcome. Dimitri was held back by a similar fear. He felt guilty that for so long he had abandoned Evdoxia, as if she had been responsible for his mother’s death, and he was afraid that she might think ill of him for letting her down. In the end Evdoxia, who was naturally more spontaneous, made the first move and took Dimitri’s hand, pressing it without speaking.

“So you’re not angry with me?” he asked her.

“But how could I be, stupid? Why should I be angry with you? Because you lost your mother? I might be angry with the illness, with the doctors, even the Saints, but with you?”

“You might be angry that I haven’t come to see you for two months.”

“No, I’m not angry, but I don’t like you staying shut away at home on your own. My classmate Aspasia is coming over and we’re going for a walk together in the Municipal Gardens opposite. You are coming with us, whether you like it or not!”

And so Dimitri’s career of monastic seclusion came to an end. Aspasia was a fiery brunette, an early developer, and blessed with unconquerable good humour. She talked non-stop, laughed, sang. Her cheerfulness was infectious. In her presence, Evdoxia became even more playful and Dimitri was soon the butt of their friendly teasing. When the three of them went back to Maria’s room, Aspasia turned on the small radio on the dressing table next to the bed, and from BFS, the station of the British Forces, came the first notes of Bill Haley and the Comets’ latest hit, “One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock rock”.

The girls danced in the narrow space between Maria’s large double bed and Evdoxia’s folding put-me-up. Then Aspasia threw off her pumps and jumped up onto the bed, so that she could carry on dancing barefoot. The music’s wild rhythm inspired the young girl, who had loosened her black hair to fall freely over her shoulders, and she moved and gesticulated like an ancient maenad. At the end of the song Aspasia, feigning sudden exhaustion, threw herself down off the bed, straight onto Dimitri, who was watching her shenanigans in amazement. He felt compelled to catch her in his arms, to stop her from falling onto the floor and hurting herself. His contact with her girlish figure flooded his senses. For the first time in his life a soft female breast pressed against his chest, for the first time his fingers touched fabric made damp by the womanly sweat from under her arms, and for the first time the rush of a woman’s sweet breath caressed his face. Aspasia, as if guessing that the excitement she had deliberately provoked in Dimitri had gone beyond what she intended, got to her feet and freed herself from the boy’s embrace.

Afterwards, laughing and a little embarrassed, she stood in front of the mirror, straightened the skirt of her uniform and re-plaited her braid. But their carefree merriment had vanished like the wind and couldn’t be retrieved, and soon the children turned off the radio and said goodnight. Dimitri and Aspasia walked together as far as the gate of the hospital courtyard. As they parted, Dimitri asked his new friend if they would see each other again.

“Sure,” she answered, “didn’t you know that Evdoxia and I are inseparable?”

That evening, during the dinner which he and his father habitually ate together, Mr Dorides eventually broke their customary silence.

“So you went to see Evdoxia. How was it, then?”

“Good. A friend of hers came too, Aspasia, and we listened to music”, was the true, though not complete, answer from Dimitri.

“So you enjoy Evdoxia’s company?”

“Do you need to ask? Evdoxia is like a sister to me.”

“And Maria? Do you think you could bear to see her again after your mother’s death?” asked Dimitri’s father haltingly.

“Father, not only does it not bother me, but I already saw her this evening and I would be very happy to see her again as soon as ever possible.”

Dimitri’s father made no reply, but on Saturday he asked his son if he would like to go on an outing the next day to Soloi.

“Will Maria and Evdoxia be there?” asked Dimitri.

“We could invite them”, answered his father cautiously.

On Sunday, at eight thirty in the morning, father and son passed by the hospital to pick up Maria and Evdoxia. They were standing there, waiting in the forecourt, just as they had been on the first day that Dimitri had met them.

After that excursion to Soloi, there were many more, to towns, villages and archaeological sites on the island. Dimitri, with the help of the books which his aunt had left him, was becoming an expert on Gothic architecture and on the history of the Frankish kingdom of Cyprus, a fact which had the immediate result of making him give in willingly to pressure from his father to take up intensive lessons in French, in addition to the ones he had at school.

Mrs Artemis Christodoulou, a woman of mature years, ex-pupil at a Catholic nunnery and wife of an impoverished businessman, took up the task enthusiastically. Dimitri had at that time discovered T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, and through them had started to investigate Italian and, more particularly, French mediaeval literature. His tutor was wise enough not to object to Dimitri’s leaning towards the more ancient, if a little less practically useful, forms of the French language. Instead, she encouraged him by furnishing him with rare books from her own private library, and even spent part of her fee on ordering him books from Rustem’s bookshop near Seraglio Square. Dimitri rapidly progressed from Rabelais to François Villon, and from him to Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France.

Increasingly, Dimitri spent his free time with Evdoxia and Aspasia, and not just at the hospital. He invited them to his own house as well, taking advantage of the freedom allowed him by the death of his mother, the absence of other relatives, and his father’s long hours at the office. Of the numerous women who had surrounded him when he was a small boy, there was only one remaining, their servant Tasia. His father had also employed a housekeeper, Mrs Katerina, a widow with no children, to run the house after Eleni’s death. Neither of the two felt inclined to be strict with the orphaned boy.

Dimitri’s belief in himself grew as his easy companionship with Evdoxia and Aspasia developed, and this in turn made him more self-confident in his dealings with his peers at school. During the two days in the week when he participated in after-school activities and did not come home until the afternoon, he took to walking back with three of them from the Pancyprian High School, and inviting them to his house for an afternoon snack: Paris and Nikos, who lived in his neighbourhood, and Iason, who lived beyond the river at Engomi. They drank glasses of milk and ate fat slices of bread with butter and sugar or marmalade, which Tasia prepared for them. They took out their stamp albums - the boys from their bags and Dimitri from his bedroom - and swapped stamps. Iason collected Cypriot stamps, and Paris was searching for the first stamps issued by the Greek state in 1861. Dimitri had plenty of them to spare from his father’s collection and was happy to swap them for stamps from the German Principalities. Nikos, who was attracted by anything flashy, collected exotic and colourful stamps from the Soviet Republic of Tannu Tuva.

As a matter of fact, stamp collecting bored Nikos, and he tried to persuade his friends to play cards. One day, to keep him quiet, they agreed to let him teach them to play poker. They were spurred on by the fast pace of the game and the skill it demanded, the need for a cool indifference to fortune and the ability to bluff. The game became a favourite, and was imbued with all the lustre of the Far West. Instead of silver dollars they used bronze Turkish paras and piastres, which Dimitri divided out among them from a little sack at the start of the game, and carefully put back when it was over.

To regulate and formalise their card-playing activities, they founded the Four Aces Club, with rules written down by Nikos. Their activities were to include poker, dominoes, Monopoly, swapping stamps, listening to music and dancing - if ever female members were to join. The enrolment of new members required a unanimous decision by its four founders. Smoking was forbidden, as was the consumption of alcoholic drinks and playing with real money. The rules were submitted to Dimitri’s father, who approved them, after correcting a few minor spelling mistakes. He even endowed the newly established club with a tape recorder, over which the four boys scrambled to record the latest hits from the radio, in particular the velvety alluring voices of the American crooners.

Dimitri now came to lead a double life, much like his father. He spent two afternoons a week with his classmates, and the other days, including Sunday, with Evdoxia, Aspasia and Maria. During the school holidays, he had a dilemma: whom should he ask to his house, his school friends, or Evdoxia and Aspasia? By the second week of the Easter holidays, he had decided to solve the problem by uniting his two worlds. He would invite both his classmates and Evdoxia and Aspasia to listen to music. His father had no objection. The girls were enthusiastic. Maria wasn’t opposed to it either. It was not clear whether Aspasia judged it advisable to tell her parents. The other three boys responded positively to the proposal too. Iason commented that it would be a chance for them not just to listen to music, but to dance as well.

But there was one problem: there would only be two girls for four boys. If they agreed, Iason might be able to bring along Christina, a young neighbour of his, and his cousin Fanny. The boys were impressed by their friend’s female reserves and willingly agreed, and so a party in lounge suits was fixed for six in the evening on the Tuesday after Easter, 27th April. On the big day, Mrs Katerina and Tasia spread white tablecloths on the side tables and sideboard in the drawing room, and put out bottles of cherry juice and almond syrup. They set to work, frying meatballs and baking cheese pies and galaktoboureko.