A Recipe for Daphne Nektaria Anastasiadou (the rosie project .TXT) 📖

“No.” Kosmas flattened himself against the wall so that she could open the refrigerator door and take out the previous day’s lentil and bulgur soup.

Rea set the pot on the stove, lit the gas burner beneath it, and loaded a tray with three sets of her mother’s silverware and three water glasses. “You were out with a woman this afternoon,” she said, turning down the flame on the cauliflower mixture. “She must have been Ottoman. Otherwise you’d tell me.”

“You didn’t mind when the Greek guy married the Turkish girl on A Foreign Bridegroom,” said Kosmas.

“That’s a soap opera!”

Rea stepped past Kosmas into the living room, collapsed into an armchair by the barred window, and rubbed her knees. “They always ache when it rains. And these bars! Whoever thought of putting bars on the inside of a window? You can’t get even a breath of fresh air.”

Kosmas leaned against the kitchen doorjamb, staring at her. “I’m not complaining to the landlord again. There’s no point. He won’t change them.”

Rea took a bundled-cane crucifix from the doily-covered corner shelf that served as the household iconostasis. She crossed herself and kissed the crucifix. “On the black Tuesday night of the pogrom—”

“Not this again.”

“—we were at our cottage on the island. It’s always on a Tuesday that these things happen, just like in 1453.”

“Mama, please. What do your shoes have to do with black Tuesdays and pogroms and the fall of Constantinople?”

“When the mob arrived by ferry, my mother and I hid in a shed behind the house. My father and brothers took refuge in the fig trees. The thugs threw the bell of Saint Nicholas into the sea and killed the monk who used to make these crucifixes. They tried to burn our house, too, but the fire extinguished itself. My mother said it was because of the crucifix. She’d fixed it to the inside of the door before we hid in the shed.”

Kosmas crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve heard this a thousand times.”

“And you need to hear it again so you understand why it would kill me if you married an Ottoman. When my family returned to the City, my mother and I wore headscarves. We communicated with hand motions. If we spoke Greek, people would know we were Rum. If we spoke Turkish, they’d know from our accents. So we didn’t speak at all, like animals. If you marry an Ottoman, your whole life will be like that. You’ll forget your religion and your language because your wife won’t share them. Where will that leave your children?”

Kosmas pulled a chair from the dining table, sat, and lowered his head to Rea’s eye level. “I had coffee with Mr. Fanis, Mama, not with a woman.”

“Whatever for?”

“I wanted a little fashion advice, that’s all. He’s a nice dresser.”

“But I buy your clothes for you.”

Kosmas leaned back, balancing the chair on its rear legs.

“You’re going to ruin my furniture,” said Rea. “I’ve told you a thousand times not to do that.”

The chair’s front legs crunched onto the wood floor.

Rea struggled to her feet, replaced the crucifix in the iconostasis, and hobbled over to the chipped walnut sideboard. She opened a drawer, shuffled through a pile of unframed black-and-white photographs, and set one in front of Kosmas. “This was taken in Halki when I was sixteen. The one pouring lemonade is Aliki when she still had teeth. Kalypso—cutting the cake—lived at the top of the cul-de-sac off Ağa Hamamı Street.”

“And?”

“She was engaged to Fanis.”

“I thought he didn’t marry until he was in his forties.”

“He didn’t.” Rea eased herself into her armchair and looked out the barred window, toward the little park across the street.

“And the girl in the picture?”

“You know what they did to girls during the pogrom.” She puckered her face and drew her hand backward in an expression of disgust. “Kalypso was one of those. Her family decided to emigrate the following day, but she didn’t want to go. Even after what they’d done to her, she didn’t want to leave the City. Fanis didn’t go to her afterwards. It was such a difficult time, so I try not to judge. But I think about Kalypso now and then, and I wonder . . .”

Kosmas stared at the fuzzy mold on the wall behind the television set. The previous week he had thought it was just dirt, but now it was forming rusty continents. He’d have to call a specialist.

“Are you listening?” Rea snapped.

“Of course I am. What happened to her?”

Rea grabbed her embroidery hoop from the side table and pulled out the needle. “Never mind. I’m just saying that you ought to know what sort of man Fanis is. If he’s giving you romantic advice, you certainly don’t want that from him. Everybody knows what a libertine he was. He even made a mistress of one of the French nuns living up his street.”

A rattling and then a hissing came from the kitchen, but Kosmas was too angry to pay any attention. “And what makes you think my meeting with Fanis had anything to do with a woman?” he said, convinced that his mother couldn’t have guessed his attraction to Daphne. “Rita Tereza and I didn’t even exchange phone numbers.”

There was more hissing, louder this time, accompanied by the faint odor of burned food. “The soup!” said Kosmas. He bolted to the kitchen and removed the pot of boiled-over, bottom-burned lentil and bulgur from the stove.

6

Teatime

It was friday afternoon, just before teatime and—Fanis hoped—a propitious meeting with Daphne. The sun poked through the acacia leaves and speckled the tables outside Ismail’s Home-cooked Food, the restaurant where Fanis was grabbing a late lunch of eggplant stuffed with suspicious-looking gray meat. Ismail’s was not the type of place to which Fanis would ever take a lady friend. It was a place for being alone. The tables rocked on the uneven sidewalk and the food was indifferent, but occasionally, when Fanis couldn’t be bothered to cook