White Moon Black Sea (33 page)
Kadin arrived with her nanny, flown in on Rashid’s plane, the same plane that would fly him and the others out the following day. But there was no Moses on board. Mirella was on the telephone to him as soon as she had read the note he sent. He assured her all was well and he would fly in the day after Rashid’s departure, on the plane that was to remain at Lyttleton Park. That, he promised, was the final change of plans. The women weren’t happy. This constant changing of plans — it was so unlike Moses. But, chided by the men for making a drama where one did not exist, they forced thoughts about Moses and his unhappy love affair out of their minds.
They had one grand evening. A ball. The first Lyttleton Park ball since its new master had taken over. Brindley had dreaded it, certain that Deena would work herself up to a frenzy. But he need not have worried. She was unflappable and behaved as if nothing could go wrong, and it didn’t. For years to come the aristocracy of Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, and the Princess Eirene’s admirers (who begged invitations for no other reason than to be able to spend time with her), would speak about the dazzlingly simple but glamorous party. The counties had never seen such a receiving line. The women were resplendent in haute couture and jewels that dazzled the eyes of every guest. The men, handsome and charming, won the local ladies’ hearts much too easily.
Like heroes and heroines, high jumpers in life who strove for big stakes in work and play, is how Deena saw her friends. But there was something more in them, she realized, during their stay with her. They were not just high fliers, high livers. They
liked
living, had a real passion for all kinds of life, and made strong their bonds with the people around them. She savored the ease with which they added laughter and merriment, and their own brand of humanity, to Lyttleton Park. Long after Mirella, Muhsine, Deena, Adam, and Brindley waved the other guests off as
their plane soared into the air, the aura of their presence lingered on with those of the house party who remained.
Deena would never again take tea in the sitting room without remembering the Princess Eirene almost lost in an overstuffed chair of beige and peach and aquamarine roses on a cream-colored glazed chintz, playing charades (behind her looming Hyacinth and Narcissus like a pair of oversized bookends). Or Rashid playing with Kadin on the old leopard rug in front of the fire. Or Tana Dabra and Mirella chatting to each other on the window seat by the huge leaded window, crisscrossed with stone mullions, the evening sunset casting a golden light behind them. Mirella looking more beautiful than Deena had ever seen her, with her raven hair and violet eyes, her beautiful features that had outshone every woman at the ball. Tana Dabra, an Ethiopian empress in a realm all her own. Then Adam, with his special all-American look, fussing with Muhsine, who was sweet and quiet, submissive and shy, trying to teach her how to play croquet on a lawn squared-off with thousands of white tulips. There were so many images of their days together that would never fade.
Deena was getting quite blasé about “this airplane thing,” as she called it. But the farmhands and the house staff weren’t. They remained thrilled by it all, stopping everything to see who was arriving and who leaving, fascinated by the takeoffs and landings. When another plane buzzed the house, the remaining houseguests joined Deena and Brindley to welcome the newcomer. “Moses,” thought Deena. She beamed at Brindley, slipped her arm through his, and smiled broadly at the others. “Dear old Mose. You’re going to love it here. Wait till you see what I’ve landed myself in. Heaven, heaven on earth. And I’ll make it clear that you are always welcome here whenever you want to come. You can have one of the little old cottages in memory of all the kindness, tolerance, and friendship you’ve shown me.” As the plane taxied slowly to a halt, she looked up at the sky, and then said, “Is the weather going to hold, Brinn?”
“The sun is out, Deena.”
“I know that. But is it going to hold?”
“You’re doing it again, Deena.”
“What?”
“The weather.”
“Sorry about that. Forgot myself. And besides, I’m too happy to worry about the weather.” She gave her husband a friendly poke in the arm.
And then he was there, framed in the open door to the plane, looking big and handsome and kind, and controlled as always. He hurried down the steps and greeted everyone, apologizing for his delayed arrival.
Deena didn’t know what to expect, what to make of the latest news of his unfortunate love affair. But, the moment she saw that calm, almost ethereal look that always lingered in the back of his eyes, she was reassured that all was fine with Moses.
“Boy, am I glad to see you, Mose. Actually, I’m furious you’ve missed out on these last four glorious days. Brinn has supplied us with the most wonderful weather.” Everyone interrupted her with elaborate groans, and she had the good nature to laugh at herself and wave them off. Then she continued as she pulled him along to one of the waiting cars, “You’ve missed the ball. It was fantastic, Mose. But never mind. The gardens are even better than they were four days ago, so I have a whole heap of horticulture to show off to you that you won’t believe. You’ll be mad about the kitchen gardens. The lot. And I have a lovely guest room ready for you. With a fine view over the orchard and —”
“Hey, whoa, whoa, girl. Slow down,” Adam interrupted. “I think you’ve brought something for Deena, Moses? I’ll just go fetch them from the plane.”
“No, I’ll do that, Adam,” Moses said a little too sharply. Something strange in the way Moses looked at Adam made Adam declare emphatically, “We’ll go get them together.” None of the others appeared to register whatever passed between the two men.
From the doorway, the pilot greeted Adam and asked, “Ready for the cargo?” Adam made an effort to step forward, prepared to mount the few stairs. Moses put a hand firmly on Adam’s arm. This time Adam understood
the look in Moses’ eye: He was telling Adam something was wrong.
Moses said, “Why don’t you wait here, Adam, at the bottom of the stairs? I’ll hand them down to you, one at a time.” Adam’s shrugged consent confirmed he had gotten Moses’ message.
Moses mounted the steps, and Adam said, “Deena, Brindley. Here, from your houseguests, is a small present. Small, maybe, being the operative word here.”
One by one, Moses handed down six top-of-the-breed miniature horses, the largest of which was twenty-seven inches high. Absolutely perfect, full-grown miniatures. One pair was white, another chestnut, and another black. They whinnied and kicked up their heels, enchanting and distracting everyone. This gave Adam and Moses a chance to have a word on the side, away from everyone.
“I need your help, Adam.”
“You have it.”
“Humayun is in the plane. She’s run away from Rashid. That’s maybe not quite right. We have run away together, from Rashid and the life she has lived with him. I thought for the moment — until he cools down — this would be the safest place for us. I don’t want to compromise you or the Ribblesdales. But we had no place else to go.”
“Moses, I don’t care about being compromised. That doesn’t even come into it. But have you any idea what you have done? The damage you may have done to yourselves with this rashness? Of course you were right to come here. You know both Mirella and Deena feel you are family. And, yes, we’ll help and make you welcome. Is Humayun all right?”
“Yes, I think so. She was fine when we made our plans two days ago. But then she was with Rashid on his return yesterday, and I think that upset her. She hasn’t spoken about it. She asked to be left quietly for a day or two before we sprang ourselves upon you all. I need help to find a quiet place for her. Just until I break the news to everyone, and they get used to the idea. Till things calm down with Rashid.”
“Look, we can’t talk now. Leave it to me. Tell her to
stay where she is, until we return. I’ll taxi the plane over to the hangar. Let her know she’s welcome.”
The discussion was brief. Moses was being nagged to hurry by Deena, and the last thing he wanted was for her to climb into the plane and discover Humayun.
Adam had never met Humayun. When he saw her, he was quite overwhelmed by her extraordinarily sensuous beauty. That and the degree of elegant chic about her. She was dressed all in icy gray silk that flattered her skin and her luscious hair. Her jewels were superb, art deco diamonds and emeralds. She was out of Moses’ league. She had the unmistakable mark of Rashid on her. How could they have made such a disastrous mistake?
He knew. She saw it in his eyes. She sensed it when, after he had moved the plane to where no one would disturb it, he returned to her, sat down facing her, and, taking her hand in his, kissed it.
“I have made the most dreadful mistake of my life,” she said, her voice scarcely a whisper.
“Yes, I think you may have,” Adam said sadly. “We’ll find a solution for you. But first I will find somewhere comfortable and private for you to stay for a few days. I’ll be back. I’m sure we can do what we have to to make it right.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
Adam had no answer for that. He stood up and stroked her hair and laid his hand on her shoulder, and she placed hers over it. He looked into the seductive green eyes of the stunning voluptuary. He understood how easy it was for a man to be possessed by her. Moses, he thought. Is it poor devil, or lucky devil? He pressed his lips together and sighed again in sadness. Whichever it was, for Moses it had to end in “poor devil.”
Moses came to her in the dead of night. It had been impossible until then to get away from Deena’s enveloping hospitality. He was very relieved to see that Adam and Brindley, in whom Adam had to confide, had been wonderful to Humayun. They had put her in the newly restored, eighteenth-century Folly situated on a small hill just above the Grotto. He saw her through the panes of
glass in the door, lovely in a peach chiffon dressing gown over a semitransparent yellow nightgown. He had never seen her look lovelier than she did then in the candlelight of the one-room Folly, with its walls and ceiling draped in bright yellow silk.
He closed the door and took Humayun in his arms, kissing her passionately. She let the book she had been reading fall soundlessly from her hand to the carpet. He slid her nightclothes from her shoulders and let them drop to the floor. Then he took her in his arms again and kissed her. As they went to the daybed, he left a trail of his clothes along the floor. Humayun was filled with potent sexual desire. She could feel herself about to come as he again took her in his arms, just from the touch of their skins, the depth of their kisses. “Take me, please take me. I want to come and never stop coming,” she entreated.
They were tender with each other, and then wild and passionate. The more she came, the more he wanted her to come. He, too, never wanted her to stop. He sustained ecstasy for them both. They were as far out sexually as it was possible for two people to go.
He reveled in her wetness and, if he could have, he would have crawled all the way inside of her. He would have been happy to drown in her orgasms. For hours they kissed and made love that way. They made love that was as pure and as light as a white down feather. Then they worked themselves through passions as base and perverse as were imaginable, until dawn, when he left her with a kiss and saw the ecstasy in her face as she came once more.
It was Adam who found her in the Grotto below the Folly, naked, floating faceup, her golden-red hair spread out like a great fan around her, her peach chiffon dressing gown billowing from her shoulders like a soft pink cloud over the water. Her hands were tied loosely behind her with her yellow nightgown. It had been torn in three pieces. A second strand was tied the same way around her ankles. She had been gagged with the remaining piece of the once sensuous silk.
A water lily was caught in her hair. A white swan was gliding over the mirror-bright surface of the water not far from her body. She looked no less sensuous and remarkably beautiful, at peace With herself. He waded through clumps of Siberian iris and the water lilies and swam to her. He touched the beautiful arabesque designs tattooed around the nimbus of her breasts, and he covered those over her pubic mound with the wet chiffon of her gown. Then he gathered her in his arms and carried her from the pebbled and shelled Grotto, up through the wild daffodils and bluebells, to the Folly. There he sat down with her on the daybed and rocked her in his arms, so sad he thought his heart would never smile again. Then he rose and laid her on the daybed and covered her with a blanket.
R
ashid stopped at a flower stall. He bought masses of flowers and one of the old worn white plastic buckets vendors kept their flowers in. He filled it with fresh water from a tap in the street, plunged the flowers into it, and carried them to his waiting taxi. They drove to the cemetery on the edge of town. En route, he had the driver stop at the old stonemason he remembered and, after renewing their acquaintance, he purchased an urn, a simple one almost archaic in its beauty. That too was put in the taxi.
When they arrived, the driver helped him take these things to Humayun’s grave. He placed the urn where Rashid directed, and then he left.
It was a clear sunny day. Hot, but with that delicious heat that comes to Crete after a long, cold, wet winter. Alone in the cemetery, with the driver gone, he felt what seemed to be the ultimate in loneliness around him. There was something desolate and pitiable about Humayun’s
grave, much more so than the others he had walked by, or even the ones close to hers. A small stone had been placed at the head of the plot. It was of white marble, the marble of Paros, and it had simply carved on it: HUMAYUN.
He looked around the cemetery and saw green grass in some places, a few trees, flowers, and wreaths. But around Humayun there was nothing. Only the marble headstone surrounded by dead, dry earth, some old leaves that had blown there, a few pieces of crumpled brown paper, and a broken purple plastic fork. Even the weeds were dead, brownish, and ugly.
He looked at the stone again and he thought of his Humayun. He imagined her head carved of the same white marble, and holding it in his hands, he carried it, not knowing, even in imagination, where to put it down. It exhausted him. His imaginings since her death were like bad dreams. They were something he had to accept because she was gone, while he was alive still to happiness. How could he make her understand that dead she remained a part of him as she had been alive? They were as one, even now in her death, and so could never again be separated.
He refused to think of her body decomposing in the ground but tried to see her as she was alive. Instead, all he could conjure was a vision of the skull beneath the skin: Eyes not open, not closed, because they were no longer there; a mouth without lips that could not speak; only bones that had once been her caressable cheeks.
Rashid looked at his perfect hands, but in his mind they were mutilated because they could no longer touch her. His horrid vision of his Humayun mercifully disappeared, but it had taken his strength with it.
He wanted only a word, just a sign of some sort, why she had done this terrible thing.
He looked into the plastic bucket of flowers and the myriad colors sparkled like jewels in the dead atmosphere. There were tears in his eyes as he gave a painful sigh, knowing how much the fresh blooms would have pleased her. He lifted the flowers out and laid them on the unyielding earth. The quick flow of water from the bucket to the urn sparkled with life. The ground was hard under
his knees as he arranged the flowers in the urn. Afterward he crawled over the plot, picking up the rubbish, dusting off bits of gravel, lumps of dirt, and dried weeds with the sides of his hands as he went.
There were birds singing somewhere in the trees in spite of the heat. He stood up and walked around the back of the white marble headstone and cleaned that as well. He had been bending over, pulling at a weed, when suddenly he heard someone calling. He straightened up and looked all around, but saw no one. He was certain someone was calling. There it was again: “Help me, help me.”
He quickly walked to the edge of the cemetery which overlooked the sea far below. Again he heard the sound. He ran among the gravestones, seeking the person in distress. Once more came the cry, but this time from another direction, and it was not, “Help me,” as he had thought, but, “Help him, help him.”
There was no one. Rashid was quite alone. He walked slowly back to Humayun’s resting place and, picking up the bucket, let what was left of the water stream down upon the barren earth that lay over her bones.
He was feeling distraught, disturbed by the voice he was sure he had heard, and saddened to the depths of his soul. He picked up the empty bucket and put it a few feet away. Then he walked back to the foot of the grave. He straightened his jacket and smoothed his hair.
With tears slowly lining his cheeks, he spoke to her, “I remembered this is where you wanted your final resting place. That last time we were here in Crete together, I said I thought I would never return, and you answered me, ‘Maybe not together, and not in our bodies, but I know I shall. All my life, and after I am dead. My soul will wander under the sun …’” Rashid was unable to continue. Finally he composed himself and went on, “What does it matter now what you said? It’s what you wanted, to be here in Crete where we first met, to be near the love and passion and complete happiness you once found here with me. I too, my dear Humayun, found it with you here and always. You are here under this simple stone because you wanted your heart and soul to roam under the sun in this
old port of Xania, in the house where we were so happy, and to haunt the sea lapping the shores of our beloved Crete. I have come to tell you my heart and my soul will roam here with you, even though I am alive.
“I should have come sooner, I should have placed you in the earth myself. I couldn’t. I was desolate, your death an incalculable loss to me. But to have died as you did … why, why, my dear heart? I am sorry, so sorry for you, Humayun. I will come whenever I can. It won’t be often, but know that you are not forgotten. Every day, wherever I am in the world, and no matter with whom, I am always with you. In Istanbul I am building you a small mosque on a hill where the Black Sea flows into the Bosporus. In the light of a full white moon it will stand out as a place of worship and great beauty. A jewel upon the earth, as I know now, too late, you were for me in life. And, in the garden of my house, there is a magnificent fountain that will flow always with sweet water for you. Every morning fresh gardenias are placed there by your maid, whom I have taken into my household.” He broke down and sobbed.
Some considerable time later he wiped his tears away and raised his bowed head to take a last look at the flowers which half covered Humayun’s inscription. Then he turned around, picked up the old white bucket, and left.
He passed a row of cypress trees at the edge of the cemetery and was starting down the hill to the village when he met an old man dressed in shabby clothes. He wore some of the bits and pieces of the traditional costume of Crete, a wide sash wrapped around his waist; a worn, but magnificent black embroidered waistcoat; and a black scarf tied around his head, over which there was a battered panama hat. He was a handsome man of considerable age, with a huge white moustache, yellow at the edges, and a white stubbly beard. He was dark-tanned, with a face and neck expressively wrinkled by time. He was leaning on a broken rake which had been tied together with a piece of heavy hemp rope, lighting a cigarette.
Rashid went to him and said in Greek, “Good afternoon, are you the caretaker here?”
“No. The gardener; For forty years.”
“Are you in charge?”
“But of course I am in charge. You are a Greek American come to visit a relative?”
“No,” Rashid answered. “Not a Greek American. I came to visit the grave of an old friend.”
“If you are not a Greek American, and you speak Greek as good as I do, are you a Greek?”
“No, I am a Turk, from Istanbul.”
“Oh,” said the gardener. “From Istanbul. I do not welcome your background, but your Greek is to wonder at. I have not seen you here before. Who have you come to see?”
“I have come to visit the grave of Humayun.”
“The foreigner.” With that the old gardener made the sign against the evil eye, spat twice into the dusty road, and crossed himself three times.
Rashid looked coldly at the old man, rage and grief at war within him. “It is not good to dishonor those who are dead,” he said simply.
The old man eyed him, then put his hand on his shoulder, and said, “Sir, it is truly something to hear a foreigner speak my language so good as you do.” Rashid shifted irritably. The old man removed his hand from Rashid’s shoulder, but he put it right back again and said, “Please, sir, remember that you do not know everything. There is no rest here for the lady. You saw, nothing will grow there where your friend is buried.”
“What do you mean, there is no peace? Why do you not care for the plot? I see that you care for the other plots. There are flowers, shrubs, wreaths brought by friends and relatives. But I also see green grass and planted blossoming bushes. Why have you not done that for her, even if she has no relatives to come?”
“You are right. No one comes. Since Mr. Mavrodakis brought her and we buried her, no one. Maybe one person, a black man once. He cried for long time, and he gave me money to plant bulbs. But the grave is cursed, nothing grows. Whatever I plant dies at once.” His mouth spread in an impassive smile not reflected in his eyes. He crossed himself three times again but did not spit.
“It is impossible that nothing will grow there. If I give you money, can you think of something hardy enough to grow?”
“Come,” said the gardener. He took Rashid to the end of a row of cypresses where there was a crooked wooden bench with two legs shorter at one end. The two men sat down on a slope. The old man offered Rashid a cigarette, then lit one for himself. He said. “I can speak to you about this problem. Do you think I like having a cursed grave in my cemetery? I wish they would come and take her away to another country. I am over forty years in this cemetery, and I have never had anything so strange happen here. There have been times while I am up there working alone that I hear something. At first I thought it was the wind playing jokes on me. It was not the wind.
“One day there was a Greek lady from Athens. She came to see her father’s grave on his name day. I stand there talking with her for a long time. Then we hear the sound, but I say nothing. I pretend I do not hear it. The lady, she say, ‘There is something wrong, I hear someone calling for help. Do you not hear it?’ I say, ‘Yes, I hear something but I do not understand it. I hear it many times.’ She tells me that the sound we hear is not the wind but someone calling two words. Turkish words. It is someone calling for help.”
He formed the words, imitating the whine. The very sound that Rashid had heard only a few minutes before.
“Sir, you are unhappy about your friend. I am sorry for you, but I do not want to be near the grave. That lady she is not at rest. From the first it is a bad story.” And again the old man made the sign against the evil eye. He crossed himself three times and was about to spit into the dirt but hesitated under Rashid’s gaze.
Rashid sat there with the old man and told him he too had heard someone calling, but that it had to be the wind; that the lady from Athens and he were wrong, although in his heart Rashid knew they were not.
“No, sir, it is not the wind. The lady from Athens heard the same words we do, and she should know the meaning because she is a Greek born in Izmir. That is in Turkey. It is the soul, the soul that will not rest. I am not frightened
of the soul calling. It is that I do not like to think of a soul that will not rest, one that is destined to wander endlessly. It is an evil thing that.”
Rashid spoke with the gardener further about the problem of the wandering soul. Was there something they could do to give the restless spirit more care? He worked hard on the old man and charmed him into helping, finding it impossible to leave Humayun’s grave unattended and as shabby as he had come upon it. Together they decided to plant a crescent of cypresses around the back of the headstone. They were to be bought as large as possible in the hope that mature trees might survive where nothing else had.
“They will be like sentinels shielding the grave from nothingness,” Rashid said, “and make up for the people who do not go to visit her. Maybe she will understand when there are tall, beautiful trees watching over her, keeping her company, and she will rest.”
How could Rashid tell the old man that he believed all would be well now because he had come to Humayun and assured her they were as one? Rashid wanted a sign of some sort from the spirit world that she understood. He was saddened that he had received none, but his faith in Humayun was strong enough to convince him that she would give it in time. He believed in these things as his mother and father had, as the Princes Eirene did. It was part of their culture to believe.
The gardener said, “Sir, forgive me for speaking so frankly, but I think you are a dreamer, and it will not be. But I tell you the truth, I am willing to try because who needs such bad spirits around?”
Rashid gave him the money for the trees and for fresh flowers to be placed in the urn every day, and he said he would send a friend, Christos Mavrodakis, to see that it was done and how it looked.
“Are you leaving Xania soon?” the old man asked.
“Yes.” And the moment Rashid said the word, he knew he would never return to this place. The two men shook hands. The gardener kept pumping Rashid’s hand and said, “I am happy for all you are doing. Who knows, maybe she
was only waiting for you to come and take care of her. Maybe the trees will grow for the dead woman and for you.”
Under a blazing, cloudless sky, Rashid walked down the hill with the empty white bucket swinging in his hand. Then, suddenly, upon a further thought, he turned and ran back up the hill. The gardener was nowhere to be seen. Rashid walked swiftly, weaving between the crosses, headstones, and plangent marble sculptures until he stood in front of the tiny desert that was Humayun’s grave. He was breathless and closed his eyes, emitting deep sighs and taking in gulps of air. He called out to her in his pain and anguish.
“I asked you. I ordered you. I begged you to let Moses go from you. One mistake, just one mistake in our sexual games, and we pay for it, all three of us, with the loss of your life. Always you listened to me and I kept you safe. While the others speculate about what happened, only I really know the truth. You committed suicide. And it was because although you ran away with Moses, you found it impossible in the end to leave him … or me. What was it, then, that forced you to make a decision to abandon me? Our lives could have gone on as they had been. Surely you must have known what pain you cost us by this violent act of yours. What made you inflict such pressure upon yourself or even try to change your life? We both know you were happy in it until you thought to leave it. What choice do I have but to forgive you, because unless I do I can never forgive myself? And after all, am I not one with you?”