ANGELS AND MARTYRS

By Neil Grimmett

Angela looked into the murky sediment - thick and granular - and wondered if it was to be taken into her mouth. Her lips parted and she began to lift the small white cup; if it made her ill it might teach her husband, Sean, not to abandon her like this. She already felt vulnerable and exposed enough by the stares and whispers of this men-only customers in the kafenion.

"You do not drink that," a voice said in heavily-accented English. "We leave the grounds as they upset the stomach. Please, allow me to get you another coffee." He pulled up a chair to her table and gave a signal to the girl behind the counter.

Angela recognized the man, Stelios, from the night before. He had been drinking at the bar in the 'Bridge' taverna when they arrived for their evening meal. He had stared at them, then touched Sean's jacket. "Good cloth," he announced, squeezing the sleeve between his thick, nicotine-stained fingers: "I own a coat just like this one." He turned and looked at the other people leaning against the bar, as if challenging them, before continuing. "I brought it back from New York . I have travelled around the world," he assured everyone. "Many times."

Kostas, the owner of the place, had hurried her and Sean away and into the tiny eating area. A few tourists were already there, clustered together and talking across tables. "Bloody hell," Sean had muttered and looked trapped. Luckily, the food was excellent and Kostas and his son, Dimitris, paid them special attention. Angela warmed to Kostas who had a kind face and seemed to be very wise. And he'd helped her get Sean away after just one extra drink at the bar. “Honeymoon, hey?” he had said, smiling mischievously. “Who wants to stand drinking with old men on his honeymoon!"

Angela now repeated that question to herself as the girl carried over two cups of thick coffee and glasses of iced water and said something to Stelios in Greek. They laughed and Angela felt herself blush.

“Where is your dashing young husband?” Stelios asked. “Surely not still in bed on such a beautiful day!” Angela noted the puzzled expression crossing his face as he stared at her. She sensed he was seeking a possible answer to the question she was conscious of when people met them for the first time. A balancing of the fact Sean was dashing and charasmatic, while she was, as her mother often remarked, ‘homely'. And that he was not hers by any normally accepted right, and there was something needing to be justified.

‘Actually,' she wanted to say. ‘I'm as hot as a pistol and he's lying in a coma with his brains fucked out'. “ He' s following me,” she said, recalling Sean's parting words. She glanced at the door again.

“Is this your first visit to Cyprus ?” Stelios asked.

Angela told him it was and that they'd picked this quiet little village in the hope of getting to know the true island. She noticed that Stelios appeared tired and unkempt this morning. She guessed he must have stayed drinking long after they had left and, judging by his eyes, probably did so every night.

“This is the real Cyprus ,” he said, “but there is nothing to do here. You must get a car and go sightseeing. You will be able to visit the monasteries. Though, you must, of course, cover up your legs.” He scrutinized her bare legs, his eyes moving up inch by inch, until he reached her tight-fitting shorts.

“Sean,” she called out in her mind. “Where the bloody hell are you?”

“I must go,” the man told her. “Today, I am going to help gather olives with my relatives. Picking fruit, drinking red wine and breaking bread in the open. Simple, yet ancient pleasures that carry deeper spiritual meanings; ones that are still vital to our life. Unlike some ancient rites that are blasphemous and evil, offering only death. Though, of course, you would not be deceived, and would know how to act.”

Stelios stood up and bowed to her just as Sean appeared and before she could tell him she didn't know what the hell he was talking about. He shook hands with Sean. “A fine shirt,” he said, looking slyly at her husband before leaving.

“What happened to you?” Angela asked.

Sean raised a finger to the girl to order his coffee, as if he'd been doing it all his life.

“I ran into Dimitris from the traverna last night. He's invited us to have a bottle of champagne on the house this evening to celebrate our marriage.”

The girl carried the drink over to Sean. Angela could tell that she was already captivated by him and appeared delighted when he thanked her in Greek.

“I thought we'd agreed to move around and try different places. To stay anonymous and private.”

"I reckon that old playboy has got the eye for you," Sean said, gesturing towards the back of the departing man, now moving and chatting his way down through the village, past men gathered at tables outside other tavernas, football and hunting clubs.

"Very funny Sean." She felt herself begin to blush again, but was pleased he might be slightly jealous.

Sean tapped a cigarette out from the box of Craven A that were sold everywhere. "Too young or posh," he'd said to her, "to remember when these were sold in England ." He'd been chain-smoking since their arrival; delighted, she recognized, that each fresh packet came without any message of death; joking that the lucky black cat emblem was all anyone really needed in this world.

***

They took delivery of the hire car and drove into the nearby hills. Angela clung to his hand as they walked across the dam. And though they had only travelled a few miles from the village, the landscape all around was wild and desolate. The scorched earth made the reservoir seem as insignificant as a tear, Angela thought, glistening for a moment, before evaporating, or worse: becoming a smear or stain to be pitied by any who witnessed the dry empty basin that remained.

"Sean," she said suddenly, surprising herself, "Do you really love me? Are you glad we got married?"

He carried on walking and staring into the hills as if she had not spoken.

“Are you looking for somewhere specific?” she asked.

“Dimitris told me that there is an ancient copper mine a little way from here. A sloping shaft that goes down for two thousand feet. Can you imagine how deep that is? And what some people have had to do just to survive and make a living?"

Angela had noticed before that Sean was fascinated by a side of other people's lives that she had never really considered. Often, he would read her a piece from one of his magazines about some unfortunates who were working hundreds of hours a week for a pittance, with a short life expectancy thrown in for a bonus. Then wanting her to join in with some act of sacrifice or atonement for their own good fortune. ‘No wine tonight with the meal' or ‘We'll go without meat for a month'. As if such empty, but charming gestures, meant anything.

She felt his grip tighten and was being pulled along.

"Let's go and find it," he said.

"Mightn't it be dangerous," Angela worried, "collapsing or full of gas?"

Sean made a noise of contempt and frustration, as if she understood nothing of the real world. They finished crossing the dam in silence. A plaque marked the end, stating the triumph of the government's battle against drought and how thirst was now a thing of the past. Someone had placed a couple of bullet holes through the message and left it, Angela decided, as a warning of other battles still to be decided.

A sloping track led away from the road and up into the hills. They had only travelled a short way when the first of the hornets issued their warning, blocking the path with a complex geometric dance. Sean pulled Angela onwards ignoring it. The next message was, simpler, shorter and enforced by more of the guards with, a little way ahead, the roar of an angry swarm. Sean caught her heel a couple of times as they ran for it.

"Bloody hell! I'm going to say something to Dimitris about this," he gasped as the buzzing softened, giving them permission to slow down, "he told me it was easy, and safe."

"Do you always need to believe everything everyone tells you?” she snapped. “He is only being nice to you so we will keep going to his taverna.” Angela felt him slip away from her side and wished they had stayed in the apartment drinking wine and making love. What had mines, artificial lakes and concrete dams got to do with scenery anyway, she wanted to ask him. They should have been looking at ancient ruins and natural beauty; something romantic and mythological they could carry home to look back on as enduring symbols of their love.

***

The champagne was served with dignity and grace, which made her words from the afternoon's argument stick in her throat. Afterwards, they left the few other tourists and went to join Dimitris and the locals for a drink. There were three generations of the family working the bar and kitchen; Angela could feel them all vying for Sean's attention and wondered what it was that they really wanted. She tried to hold onto his hand but was left behind when he went to see the special pit used for cooking whole lambs for special celebrations. Anyway, she told herself, she was glad that she had not been invited; her head was too full of brandy sours to risk the acrid remains of any burnt offerings. Stelios arrived and Angela knew that he was going to speak to her.

"Did you enjoy the monasteries?" he asked.

"We didn't manage any today," she replied, "maybe tomorrow, if there is time.”

Stelios looked worried, and as if he was about to say something important, but a loud burst of laughter came from the kitchen before he could speak. One of the children came rushing into the bar and grabbed a bottle of brandy. Angela saw a cunning look on the child's face who then turned away quickly without meeting her gaze. There was more laughter and then a cheer as something got smashed.

"Do we pay here?" A timid English voice asked Angela. A couple who had sat near to them earlier stood under one of the archways, waiting to leave. Angela could see they were feeling uncomfortable and had picked her out as their best chance. She wanted to ask them how the hell should she know, but Stelios, without looking away from her, called in Greek for Kostas. He came out, followed by his son and Sean. They all appeared flushed and acted guilty about something.

The village was sleeping as they walked home, shutters closed to the freezing night air. The masses of Bougainvillea had been drained of colour and were shadows now that whispered to her of thorns and blood; the abandoned minaret towered above them like a finger warning them of danger.

"We'll not be getting much sleep tonight," Sean said, as soon as they were indoors. "It's the start of their shooting season tomorrow. Ten thousand hunters and all their dogs on this little island. It is going to sound like another invasion come dawn."

Sean had fallen asleep and was breathing heavily by the time Angela got into bed. She looked at his beautiful body and wanted to touch and arouse him. Instead she let the back of her hand brush the mosquito net and made a list of the things she had been desperate to talk about and must not forget.

***

They had already been awake for what felt like hours before the first shots began; ever since the arrival of the pick-up trucks with their crates of yowling dogs. The cafe had opened around 4 a.m. to give the hunters a gathering place, before each one left with wheels screeching and horns blasting. Now the firing had become non-stop.

"What can they possibly be shooting at?" Angela asked. "It sounds like a bloody cowboy film out there."

"Hare and partridge," Sean told her: "Wild game - not like all that tame and reared stuff back home."

"I hate blood sports," she said. "Killing for fun."

Later that day, as they travelled across the island to visit the large monastery high in the hills marked on their tourist map, the hunters were everywhere. They were dressed from head to foot in camouflaged uniforms and all carrying guns; dead animals and birds hung off their belts. No matter where she looked, Angela could see another line of men stalking on hills or through woods. Even the scraps of land left over from the motorway construction contained two or three figures, oblivious to anything but the ground in front of them.

Then the hunters took to the roads. Truckloads of them roaring around with their guns raised and yelling out as they passed each other. Angela suddenly noticed the hares: they had been placed on the front of the vehicles, tied or wired to look as alive as possible, and were being displayed and ridiculed in their death. Strings of birds hung from windows and roll bars in a similar fashion; some men were even holding them out at arm's length and making their wings tremble.

"I am going to complain about this when we get home," Angela stated, "they should warn tourists about this sort of thing. Can you believe how sick these macho, impotent morons really are?"

"I think they are just trying to keep the game cool," Sean said, "to stop it from getting fly-blown in the heat. They eat what they kill; and respect their quarry."

Angela was furious at the condescending tone in his voice. She knew she was hunching her shoulders and making herself look ugly, but it did not matter. He was her husband and whatever the so-called reasons he should be sensitive enough to understand her feelings. They did not speak again until the coolness of the monastery embraced them. In its carved and jewelled silence, with the iconostasis bathed in a radiance of golden light, Angela knew things would work out once they got home. There was some strangeness outside, lingering from an ancient world that had once made humans the playthings of cruel gods. She held Sean close in the little room that had belonged to the martyr and saint the place was named after. "It is so calm and peaceful in here," she whispered. “A place where love and forgiveness are worshipped.”

Sean read the legend on the wall. "They impaled the saint in Nicosia . Can you imagine that? Left wriggling on a stake with your blood soaking the earth until you die?"

Outside, they looked from the edge of the monastery down into the landscape below. A bronze statue of a bearded, gun-carrying archbishop towered behind them, its shadow hiding theirs and stretching out of sight like a shroud laid over the many forgotten graves and remains of all the other unknown martyrs.

***

That night they ate at a fish restaurant. The owner and his wife had originally come from England and as the place filled up they were introduced to other people who had made Cyprus their home. One couple invited them out for a trip on their boat. "We'll take you over to Egypt and show you the Nile and the pyramids," the woman said, " so romantic for honeymooners." The woman held Angela's arm when Sean went off to the toilet. "You are lovely," she said, keeping her eyes on Sean, "and a very lucky lady."

As they drove home Sean was angry. "You can't shake off these people," he said, "all clinging together with their fears and phobias, desperate for something safe and recognizable."

He had reluctantly agreed to the trip tomorrow. "They were only trying to be nice," Angela said. "I'm looking forward to it."

Sean swung the car into the Bridge taverna's car park. "I need a proper drink," he said.

***

Their lovemaking that night was rough and very strenuous but left her far from feeling anything, except for a worry about how she'd looked. He'd made her climb on top and sit astride him backwards and insisted on keeping the light on. She had felt the ripples of movement across her thighs and arse with each thrust and felt his hands opening her wide as he came. She was still bending over, her hair brushing his feet, as he pulled roughly out of her.

"I'm going off shooting with Dimitris in the morning,” Sean said. “He's invited me along to watch. It will be early so I shall be back in plenty of time for your trip to the ‘romantic' pyramids. It's a great honour for a foreigner be asked to go hunting. I knew you wouldn't mind"

Angela let him leave without saying a word. Now she was lying awake listening to the distant shots. Each one felt as if it was fired at Sean and she felt his pain. If only they had not come to this place and were back home in their flat, just the two of them as they had been at the start. She thought of their meeting. How he had singled her out, drawn to her. No one else had been able to get close. An electric charge, he said, that surrounded them and repelled any intruders. She had witnessed it happening, heard its static blocking out all the advice and warnings from her family and few friends. Now all she could hear was the gunfire and somewhere behind it, a squeal of death.

***

At 10 a.m. she had sat in the car and got as far as placing the key in the ignition. At 11 she walked down through the square towards the track that ran behind their apartment into the hills. It was too late to worry about making the cruise now, but other concerns were driving her on. What if there had been an accident? Even Sean had commented on how dangerous and unorganized their shooting appeared. Or what if there had been something darker hidden behind the invitation? She had sensed early on that she was going to have to guard Sean against his vulnerability to the flattery and attention he always received without questioning; that perhaps it would be the most important and enduring part of their relationship. Now, at the first real test, she'd failed him. All sorts of ideas filled her head as she moved into the desiccated and crumbling hills, searching for any sign of movement. Soon the track became the bed of a dried river, full of boulders and decaying logs, forcing her to watch each step and hear only the hollowness echoing below.

"So, you have come to witness the latest bloodletting," someone called out.

To the side of the track there was a high fence with a gate leaning open; Stelios stood in the entrance.

"I was just taking a walk," said Angela.

"Some of these trees are over a thousand years old," he said, gesturing with his arm and stepping aside to let her enter the olive grove. "Can you imagine what has happened under the welcome shade of their leaves? Or picture the generations of people they have fed?"

Angela thought the trees were hideous and deformed and the greed of each century had left nothing now but scars and bones to pick over.

He started to shake a smaller tree's branches close to where she stood. The ground underneath was covered with thin, stained, white sheets; olives began to fall onto them like the droplets of an approaching storm. He stopped and scooped up a handful. "Please, take some home to mature," he said. Angela looked at the olives and tried to find one that was not wrinkled and blemished, but could not. He handed her a bottle filled with some red, cloudy wine. "And take a drink of real wine." He crouched on the edge of the sheet and watched as she swallowed some and struggled not to choke on its astringency.

"And so, your young husband decided he preferred killing to visiting the monasteries as I suggested.”

Angela looked down at the little man, trying to appear unfazed by what he was saying.

"I saw him out with them earlier," he said, and made it sound like an accusation.

"He was asked to go," Angela said, sitting down next to him. "Being polite is Sean's way."

"This is no place for manners now," he snapped. “The island has recently been torn apart by war. The dark history of this place awakened.”

He took the wine from her and let it jet into his mouth as if trying to dowse a fire. "I will tell you my story," he said. "One that is known by all the villagers, but never before by a tourist.

"Once, when I was a long way from here, I became seriously ill, both in my mind and body. I had taken too much of all the bad things this world can offer. I lay in my bed surrounded by my ‘new' friends and yet alone. Then at the very end when I understood all the mistakes I had made, they came for me. Two beautiful angels. They took me up and carried me out of the building and into their chariot, which stood waiting outside, gleaming and golden amongst all the garbage. We flew on the most amazing journey with sights beyond description. Finally, we landed at the tiny monastery of Agios Georgios where a room had been prepared and nuns attended me until I was cured. Now I am alive again. I have had to promise that I will stay here and help all people understand the true path." He looked at her sadly. "Do you know why I am telling you this?" he asked. “Do you understand that you have failed in your appointed task? But there is still a chance of redemption for you.”

Angela decided that Stelios was mad or at least drunk. She guessed he'd probably never been off the island in his life and these fantasies were all he knew. She felt more embarrassed than afraid; then angry that once again this type of person had latched onto her for some sympathy. She turned and started to walk away.

The loud thump of a gun going off made her stop and stare through the tangle of branches in its direction. She could see two shapes, low and stooping as they rushed towards something writhing on the ground. It was large, but the sun was too bright and the distance too great for her to be certain of what sort of animal it was.

The men reached it and one of them raised his gun.

Angela watched the discharge puff out of the barrel like some evil genie released from its lamp and began screaming before the noise of the shot echoed into the olive grove.