“I can’t sleep, Odisya,” I said. “Why don’t you get some sleep now?” He lay down under the pomegranate tree. I lit what was probably the second or third cigarette I had smoked in my life. And he had already fallen asleep.
The moon was back up in the sky. It was the first time I had ever watched someone sleep. But he wasn’t just anyone — he was an angel, a little man, pure and simple. I can still picture him now … dreaming his way through a world of peace and goodness and beauty. His waking world — that could make you tremble. But though I am awake, I swear I am sleeping his sleep. There I am with his heroes and his loved ones and the giant weeds and the fish and the sea; here now is a boat, and there, in front of the gardener’s shed, is a large-breasted woman, and a winegrower with his fat moustache and his breath reeking of tobacco and wine, and inside the shed is a pile of clean but broken furniture; and here was his wiry, olive-skinned sister with her windblown skirt fluttering over her thin long legs, and I feel close to her, and the pine trees and arbutus berries and all else I have seen. Desire bubbles up in me like water from a spring. I am leaning over. I am kissing my friend on the cheek, his eyes are shut and his lips open. For the first and last time, I am kissing someone with a desire that is as pure as it is secret. Then I am running up to the Portuguese pirate’s house to sleep. But I am a child, and I feel the Portuguese pirate might really be there and so I am vigilant. Silent as a mouse, I approach the house. The bottom of the window is at eye level and I look in. Moonlight is cascading across the room through another window; a young woman is sitting on one side of the room and a young man has his head in her lap, and she’s caressing his hair; he keeps trying to kiss her free hand. I watch for a moment, hardly believing my eyes. Then I head down the hill, skipping over the rocks, and I race to the shed where Yakup is sleeping. I wake him and say, “Up there … there’s …” Yakup asks me about Odisya:
“The fool. What’s he waiting for?”
“Don’t torture the poor kid. He’s a good boy.”
“I know better than anyone else that he’s a good boy. I’m doing it on purpose, I only treat him like this because I love him. He’d do anything for the experience. What’s he doing?”
“I just woke up. I told him to get some sleep. He’s sleeping now.”
“He never went to sleep? What a fool!”
We go over to see Odisya. Yakup looks him over carefully. As carefully as if he were dreaming his beautiful dreams. He leans over and caresses Odisya’s hair:
“Let him sleep then. Let’s go and have a look.”
In the shed on the hill, it’s the same as before. The boy in the girl’s lap is trying to kiss her hands. When he turns his head in our direction, we take a step back. Her head is still, bowed. She is looking down at the boy. When the young boy turns again we duck. A shadow seems to fall over Yakup’s face, which until then was strange, smiling and swirling with desire.
“He’s my age.”
“Who?’
“The guy in her lap.”
For a moment we stand there upright, our eyes fastened on the scene. Then we step back. Yakup speaks, lost in thought:
“He’s just my age, man!”
I don’t say a word.
Winter drove our dreams into the rain, the snow, the cold, and the dark; some of us were at school, some of us were apprentices at corner shops, some of us were trudging through fog-covered fields of spinach, some of us were like Yakup, at the head of a boat, the sail billowing against a lodos or a poyraz …
From winter to summer a person can change beyond recognition. Most people grow fatter, and paler; some take on alarming new shapes … It seems to me that children never change over the summer, only over the winter do they grow.
We almost never saw each other that winter. By spring Odisya had grown tall, and in his face I could see the sinuous traces of a trickster. He was still singing but he had lost that crystal clear voice. That voice that had once drawn me into a warmer, sunnier world now sounded like the voice of a village trickster, a throaty, snaky, swaggering voice that sang of wine and greed and lies and gossip and lust and sleepless nights. It was as if he had thrown off the warm and open face that had once held me captive and discarded it like an old shirt; the face I saw now was the one I feared. It was the face of his uncle Manoli, the face he wore that week he spent trying to sell a lobster. Once I remember marvelling at how one face could evoke a world of sun and warmth, while another face, even a face that bore a close resemblance, could only convey the cold of the world we lived in. Back then I think I drew a line between a person’s face and his character. That is not to say I thought beauty and good character went hand in hand. A wicked soul performs its sorcery best when it can hide behind a beautiful face. What I am trying to say is this: the facial gestures, even color and subtle movements that bespeak morality, are only there when the face is as true as the soul shining through it. The traits are then quite charming. And if the soul remains true, your friend will be pure, and easy to love, and almost too sweet to be true. But how wonderfully beautiful was the look on Odisya’s face when he was exploring the real world back then: his nose crumpled up at a new scent and his mouth hung half open as he listened, trying to make sense of his discoveries. But today the same movements of his face are easily likened to his uncle Manoli and his impertinence, his jealousy and his deceit.
The fourth time I saw him, my regret knew no bounds. Oh, why did I do that? I couldn’t stop asking myself. Why ever had I kissed that boy? How could I have ever loved that face?
Yakup had changed, too. Completely. Now he had as thick a neck as that boy we’d seen with that girl in the stable on Spoon Island. Somehow the barber had changed the color of his dark hair. He still hadn’t shaved his moustache. And the barber had trimmed it into the oddest-looking thing. Despite all the unfortunate changes in his outward appearance, you could still see the old Yakup. When I looked into his face, I could still see traces of the adventures we’d shared. No, they were more than just traces. But not a word about Spoon Island. Now all he wanted to talk about were his adventures with a young girclass="underline"
“Eftehia’s legs were as desperate to burn as yellow church candles, her crisp white teeth were as white as fresh walnuts, and her hands asked to be kissed.”
Yakup met Eftehia in the autumn, when those arbutus berries I told you about were at their ripest. The bushes with blooming red flowers. Together they collected berries. Eftehia always took the ripest, plumpest berries. And then she was drunk, like all the other island women who said the berries made you drunk. She brought a ripe berry to her lips, took a bite and said to Yakup, “Now you eat the other half.” Then they lay down as the scent of honey wafted over them from the bushes’ red flowers.
Eftehia’s face was the face of an ordinary Greek girl. Full of fire, nothing more. She wasn’t very beautiful, and she wasn’t ugly either. But when she was in the sea in her dark blue bathing suit, the sight of her little breasts, and the rounded, cruel curves of her lustrous, powerful legs could make a boy double over and drive his hands into the earth, and tear up the grass with his teeth … how beautifully she swam. When the island’s summer houses filled up with dashing young men who dressed in sparkling whites, Eftehia quietly moved on from Yakup, who dressed in thick grays and had holes in his trousers. Odisya, meanwhile, had befriended the new boys, and with the money he’d saved up over the winter, he bought himself a pair of white pants and a short-sleeved silk shirt, and after begging a thousand different ways with the dashing youths he managed to get himself a sailor’s cap. When he strolled out onto the square in his new get-up, his powerful, well-proportioned body could make a young girl’s heart flutter and her thoughts race — at least from afar. Yakup and I would exchange only quick hellos before he went off to join the new boys, and the girls would introduce him. They would play cards in the gazino and because he won more than he lost, he always had money in his pocket.