LUCKY IN CYPRUS: July 2014

Thursday, July 31, 2014

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Terra Santa - Founded In 670 AD

Against all logic, Lucky felt betrayed by Jim's announcement that the fiery politics of Enosis had made it too dangerous for him to continue as his teacher. The boy felt he had abandoned by the only adult he had trusted since his father had destroyed all trust when he returned from the war.

In a way, this was a good thing. Instead of sinking into sulky rebellion, Lucky took an “I’ll show them,” attitude and attacked his new school with a will to succeed. It was a Catholic school – Terra Santa – and offered grades one through the equivalent of 12^th grade in America. Founded in 670 AD, Terra Santa was the oldest school in Cyprus. Like the British academy, each class was taught by a different teacher and the teachers changed classrooms, rather than the students. Unlike the British school – but very much like American Catholic schools – it offered an excellent, and even advanced education, aimed at the finest universities in the world.

Lucky spent the remainder of 1953 and a good portion of 1954 getting settled into Terra Santa. His marks from Jim were confirmed by the American Scholastic Society, as were his grade promotions.

Back in the U.S., it was a very strange year. There were continued reports of sighting of UFO’s – flying saucers. Lucky was briefly enamored with them, because as the son of an agent it was obvious to him that the government routinely covered up anything it had a vague notion ought not to be let out. He was also convinced there was life on other planets – why should Earth be the only inhabited one in the Universe, etc. etc?

The CIA chess club agreed that alien life most probably existed. But none of them thought they’d want to visit Earth.

“We’re at the butt end of the galaxy,” Joe Davis said. “Why’d they want to visit us? Shoot, we’re probably the most backward folks in all Creation.” As for the sightings, Joe said, “Sheriff back at home’s always seein’ things. Chases will-o-the-wisps all over the prairie. Near as we can tell he’s been drunk so long he’s in a permanent state of the DT’s. I expect that’s what’s happenin’ in those other places. Bored cops drinkin’ on the job.”

Sen. McCarthy was also still big at home. He staged hearings, accusing more citizens of being Communists, but as the year progressed people started getting the nerve up to accuse him of grandstanding – and worse. Even so, nobody would discuss the man in the chess club. Like Joe Davis said, “Some new guy’s gonna get mad at me for pulling a fool’s mate on him and he’ll turn me into Senator Joe.”

Some Puerto Rican nationalists shot five congressmen on the floor of Congress, sending everybody into a tizzy about terrorists at home. The Supreme Court ordered schools to be desegregated, which some predicted would bring a similar violent attack on the Court by the KKK. Lucky’s father was ecstatic over the launching of the world’s first nuclear submarine, christened the Nautilus after Captain Nemo’s sub in the Jules Verne story, “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea.”

One of Lucky’s favorite happenings – second only to the Supreme Court ruling – was that Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize. He felt almost as if he’d won it himself. He got all of Hemingway’s books out of the library and read them end to end. Yes, this was writing. This was English as pure as it could be.

Terra Santa, understandably, was not as excited as Lucky about all those events. He was, after all, the only American on campus, which proved no trouble at all for the student body of Terra Santa was incredibly diverse. There were British Catholics, a few Canadians, Armenians, Coptic Christians, Lebanese Christian, Polish and German Catholic and even a few kids from the Ukrainian and Russian Orthodox churches. Apparently there was an agreement worked out with the Vatican that children from Catholic-related churches could attend schools like Terra Santa if there were none available in their own faith. In return, Catholic children could attend similar schools in other lands if the same conditions applied. At the bottom of the agreement was that while the students would get a Christian education and be welcome at mass and for communion, Roman Catholic doctrine would not be forced upon them.

The school was run by a very severe, very old order of teaching priests. They looked a lot like Greek Orthodox prelates – with long beards, black robes and high hats. During Mass, however, they wore the same colorful vestments as every other Roman Catholic priest, and the Mass, and various other sacraments, were identically administered. Most of the teachers were laymen and women and all were well qualified for their positions. Some were retired professors, adding to their pensions while living inexpensively in the warm climes of Cyprus. Others were the wives of diplomats with advanced degrees from their native countries. About a third of the students were boarders, who saw their wealthy parents only on holidays – if at all.

School was 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, except for Wednesday, which was a half day, as was Saturday. Lucky’s curriculum was as follows: Languages: English, French and Latin; Math: Algebra; Social Studies: World history and political Geography; Philosophy: comparative religions and logic. PE was also required, and although the school had no gymnasium or much in the way athletic equipment, they had a young Italian athlete to oversee their physical health. An injured soccer star, and favorite of some of the sports-minded monks – he was being subsidized in his efforts to recover from his injuries and rejoin the Italian team.

The school was a partially converted monastery of significant age, with a few newer structures added – including a Quonset hut donated by the British Army Chaplain Fund that provided a cafeteria; and some stables that had been turned into additional classrooms. In Lucky’s mind one of the most amazing things about the school was that the playing field was on top of the walls of Nicosia.

Terra Santa was nestled against one of the widest sections of the city’s ancient defenses. There was literally enough room for a full soccer field. Immense cannons, built during the age when the Venetians ruled Cyprus, marked the opposite goal lines. The only trouble was, a bad kick could send the ball flying over the wall. Which meant somebody had to run down a long flight of stone stairs, while people above kept their eyes on the ball’s flight. Then they’d direct the retriever with shouts, until he finally found the ball.

But soccer, oddly enough, wasn’t the favorite game. Oddly enough. A game called “Red Rover” was wildly popular. The idea was that one guy – the Hero - would stand in the middle of a marked out field, with a safety line at his back. Facing him, would be the entire class - which could be up to fifty boys. The hero would shout “Red Rover, Red Rover, won’t you come over,” and all the boys would race for the safety area. The hero’s job was to tackle as many boys from the opposing side as he could – making them his allies against the others. Red Rover tactics called for capturing smaller boys first, then ganging up to overcome the larger lads.

At Terra Santa the last boy to be challenged in any game of Red Rover was a huge Armenian youth, named Boghos. He was about seventeen, with a small mustache atop a 280 pound body. Boghos was fat, to be sure, but also enormously strong and surprisingly fast on his feet. So, if the lots declared that he was to be the lone hero facing the multitude, he’d go after the biggest kids first and quickly win the game. But if he were one of the running multitude, he’d go back and forth, resisting all efforts to lift him. Until every last boy had been captured, then it would take all their combined strength to corral him, then pick him up off the ground.

For a time, Lucky thought Boghos was mentally slow. Well, to be cruel – nothing but a big fat, stupid ox. For most of his studies, such as languages, history, philosophy, he’d been held back to the lower levels where he was this enormous hulk amongst kids who had cookies and milk for a break and still took naps. But, then Lucky learned the Armenian boy was taking advanced classes in science and mathematics, including physics and chemistry. Apparently, he was a near genius in those subjects and much prized by his professors.

One day his poor opinion of the Armenian boy was turned upside down. Lucky usually ate lunch off campus at one of the cafes, or tavernas. His favorite place was the same café he’d taken Donna to – the one overlooking Metaxa Square. Here he could have an American style bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, a cold glass of pasteurized milk, and a small Greek salad of tomatoes and cucumbers and olives. Before he returned to school, he always downed the thickest, strongest cup of Greek coffee the café had to offer – and then he’d charge through his afternoon classes non-stop. On this particular day, however, Lucky needed school supplies, so he headed for a newsstand that sold such things, along with the usual fare - newspapers, magazines, tobacco, condoms and French postcards. After the newsstand, Lucky figured he’d make lunch off a shish-ka-bob cart.

He encountered the huge figure of Boghos at the stand, arguing heatedly with the old Turk who operated it. Boghos was grumbling - in that low tractor-pulling growl he had when he was angry – that the “Turk bastard” was cheating him. All this was in English. The Turk, meanwhile, was calling Boghos a lot filthy names in both Turkish and Greek. Boghos, it soon became obvious, spoke neither language and was trying to make himself understood in his accented English, with Armenian and French words thrown in.

Lucky knew for a fact that the Turk understood English well enough and was hiding behind a false language barrier. In other words, he was guilty of Boghos’ charges – no doubt about it. Lucky strolled easily up to the stand. Pretending to ignore the donnybrook, he picked out more than he intended to purchase and added some magazines and other things to the stack, to make the sale potentially sizeable.

It was then that he allowed himself to notice Boghos – and the argument. “Hey, Boghos,” he said in English. “What’s happening here? Anything I can help with?”

As Boghos turned and slowly recorded his presence, Lucky switched to Greek and told the newsstand operator, “Mr. Abaz, let me help you. This boy’s father is a very important diplomat and could make trouble.”

Boghos replied, “Turkish bastard takes Boghos’s money. Won’t give change.”

Mr. Abaz said, “This fat bastard lies through his Armenian teeth. He claims I gave him the wrong change. Bah! In thirty years, I have never given wrong change.”

Now Lucky knew what the problem was.

“What he says?” demanded Boghos, looming over Lucky. He had a way of trying to intimidate people, although Lucky had realized some time ago that Boghos was no bully. He was just a big, slow man, in a world of fast little people and sometimes he became frustrated.

“It’s not a big thing,” Lucky said. “Mr. Abaz, here, says he gave you the correct change and, obviously, you disagree.” He looked pointedly up and down the street, indicating that many curious eyes were on them. “How can we settle this without the police?”

While Boghos was frowning at this, Lucky turned his attention on the newsstand operator. “You heard what I said about the police?”

Abaz grinned. In a police encounter a Turkish cop would always back him against an Armenian kid.

Lucky said, “You are probably not in trouble – unless you sold him some of those French postcards you keep under the counter. Then he can accuse you of selling such things to a mere boy. He’s underage, you know.”

Abaz’s grin turned to a look of horror. While he was thinking about it, Lucky turned back to Boghos, who had come to some sort of a decision.

“I know he cheat,” the huge lad said. “He think Boghos stupid. Maybe so. But not with numbers. Boghos never stupid with numbers. Make him give me my money, Lucky.”

Lucky nodded and switched to Abaz. “He’s willing to forget the whole thing,” he said, “if you’ll only give him what he believes is his correct change.”

Abaz wanted to protest, but Lucky displayed his purchases. “For the sake of peace,” he said, “you can cheat me a little bit with these.”

Abaz hesitated, then jerked out his cash drawer, withdrew some coins and counted them one-by-one into Boghos’ hand. The two glared at one another while this was going on. When they were done, Lucky quickly tossed a bill on the counter that more than paid for his purchases – and grabbed Boghos’ elbow and hauled him away before he could let loose the anger he obviously still felt.

He gruffly thanked Lucky, then marched on – in no seeming direction. Boghos was too furious to set a course. Instead, he lumbered along, muttering what Lucky thought must be Armenian curses under his breath. Lucky tactfully drew him into a little sidewalk café, where he could eat lunch and calm down before they had to return to school. Boghos insisted on paying as a thank you and ordered up a huge platter of goat shish-ka-bob and vegetables and rice. He inhaled half the plate, before Lucky had barely started, then settled down, to drink a cola and scoop of swaths of humus on slabs of bread.

“Fucking Turks,” he said, getting the lunchtime conversation started. “Always fuck the Armenian. Every chance, fuck the Armenian.” He thumped his chest. “Well, I say, fuck Turk back.”

Lucky tried a little diplomacy. “Sure, some Turks are bad,” he said, “but this guy is just trying to feed his family. He doesn’t mean anything. Everybody in the whole Middle East short changes people. Why pick on him?”

Boghos banged the table with a massive fist. “He is Turkish shit, is why,” he said. “We know each other. He hate me. I hate him. Boghos hate all Turks. I study math, I study science - soon I learn how to build big bombs and big rockets to deliver them. And I, Boghos, will kill them all.”

Lucky was aghast. “That’s awful, Boghos,” he said. “How can you think that way?”

Boghos shrugged. “I have duty,” he said. “The Turks killed my family, the families of my friends, and the families of my friends’ friends. It was a massacre – like Hitler with the Jews. The Turks tried wipe all the Armenians from the face of the Earth. So, I will learn to make missiles. And I will learn to make bombs. And when I am a man, I shall kill all the Turks I can manage.”

He said all this while wolfing down all the humus and bread and swallowing three bottles of soda. Then, over a platter of honeyed fruits and pastries, Boghos gave Lucky a short history of what he said was the Turkish massacre of the Armenians. Between the 1890’s into the 1920’s, he claimed, the Turks had conspired to kill tens of thousands of Armenians. The land of Armenia itself was emptied out: everyone who stayed was killed and the survivors fled in terror to the ends of the earth. Their leaders, Boghos said, were stalked for decades by Turkish assassins.

Later, Lucky checked Boghos’ story and learned that it was all pretty much the truth, with a slight exaggeration here and there – but nothing that would in any way lessen the horror. Lucky wondered if that would be the eventual fate of the Greek Cypriots if they lost their battle for Enosis. A small part of him grew to understand the fanaticism of the people who opposed Jim. It wasn’t that different from his own people – the Irish who were victimized by the English.

But that was a lesson from real life. Meanwhile there were the musty, dusty lessons of the academic world to be mastered. To Lucky’s delight, after his concentrated one-on-one education with Jim, the school work was not so hard as it first appeared. He took to the new school with ease. After a time, he found himself enjoying the company of his classmates – something he missed when he was with Jim. There was a social world to be mastered, as well as an academic one, he realized.

He even became a close friend of a classmate – something that hadn’t happened to Lucky since he left the States and became a school gypsy. The boy’s name was Keith Digby. His father was a British diplomat, his mother minor Greek royalty and a great beauty in her day. Keith was an exceptionally smart young man, a little shy, but in Lucky’s view a holder of secrets. He guessed – correctly as it turned out – that Digby’s father was British Intelligence.

Digby was anxious to introduce Lucky to his mother and she was, indeed, as beautiful as advertised. Her features were classic Greek – porcelain skin, dark hair and flashing eyes and a figure a sculptor would sacrifice his soul to capture.

When they met, she sat in a boudoir decorated with Greek antiquities and she looked like drawings Lucky had seen of graceful young matrons in classical times. She greeted Lucky warmly and made him feel that she was supremely happy that he was her youngest son’s best friend.

Then Digby’s father entered and the atmosphere changed. A tall, cold, blonde man with a military brush mustache and a faint scar that ran from crown to chin, he barely took note of Lucky. Gave him a brusque handshake when introduced, then immediately broke away to give his wife orders about an upcoming social gathering at their house.

The way the woman gulped and nodded as he spoke – along with occasional signs of quickly suppressed rebellion – Lucky knew that she was struggling under the same harsh burdens as his own mother.

He said, “I haven’t met your grandmother, Digs.”

Digby gladly led him out of the room, through the house and down into a basement kitchen very much like the one at Lucky’s house. Except, here, the basement kitchen was the main kitchen. All the stoves were fired up, pots were boiling, giving off delicious odors, and two maids were operating spits of meat in a huge, old-fashioned kitchen fireplace. Commanding the kitchen was a formidable old Greek woman in widow’s black. Her eyes were stern as she watched the maids and her strong, wrinkled hands were busy shelling peas into a large bowl of fired clay.

When she saw Digby, however, all the sternness vanished and she gave a glad cry, pushed the bowl away, and held out her arms. She clasped the boy to her immense bosom and rocked him back and forth like a child. Obviously, this was Digby’s ya-yah – his grandmother. Then she saw Lucky and pushed her grandson away, scolding him – but teasingly – for not introducing his friend first.

“This is American friend, yes?” she asked in English, looking Lucky up and down with critical eyes.

Digby replied in Greek, that yes, Ya-yah, this is my friend Lucky and he’s an American.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Ya-yah,” Lucky said in Greek – to the woman’s huge delight. “Keith speaks of you all the time.”

The old woman practically adopted Lucky on the spot. Such a nice boy, who could speak Greek, no less, even if it was with a Cypriot accent. Immediately, she made the boys sit at the table and imperiously ordered the young maids to bring them refreshments. The girls giggled at Lucky when they served him little cakes and cups of sweet, thick coffee and the old woman barked at them for being hussies, although she did it with a smile twitching her lips.

She wagged a finger at Lucky. “If you should come to visit me and I’m not here, be careful of these girls, or they’ll get you into the pantry and who knows what could happen.”

Lucky was rather intrigued at this prospect, but he promised Ya-yah that he would take a care.

After Digby filled his grandmother in on school gossip, she said, “Your brother, Tom, is coming from England.”

Her words were spoken gravely and Lucky was surprised to see sudden moisture in her eyes.

Digby squirmed in his seat. Looking down at the table, he said, “Mother didn’t tell me. When’s he expected?”

“The Saturday after next,” the old woman replied. She reached over and covered Digby’s hand with her own. “Try not to upset your father,” she said. “We need to keep him calm, yes?”

Digby nodded, then abruptly got up. “Let me show you our chestnut tree, Lucky,” he said. “I promised I would.”

He’d promised nothing of the kind – Lucky didn’t know – or care – about chestnut trees. But he took the hint and got up. “That’s great, Digs,” he said in English, trying to sound enthusiastic.

They made their goodbyes to Ya-yah and hurried from the kitchen. Once outside Digby led Lucky to the back of the sprawling house, which was half-again as large as Lucky’s. A tree, that Lucky guessed was a chestnut, sat on the edge of the property. There were woods beyond. To Lucky’s surprise, Digby pushed past the tree, then shoved aside some bushes, revealing an irrigation ditch.

“Come on,” he said and he jumped into the ditch and scrambled up the other side.

Lucky followed, hopping over the stream of water running down the middle. Digby sat on the bank, tossing stones into the water. Lucky sat beside him, gathered a few pebbles of his own and started throwing. He didn’t say anything. His friend was clearly troubled and he was sure he’d tell him soon enough.

“My brother Tom’s a smashing bloke,” Keith finally said. “A great fellow. Everyone likes him. He’s good at school. Fabulous a sports. He’s tall like my father, dark like my mother and the girls can’t get enough of him.”

“I see,” Lucky said – not seeing at all. Was this a case of brotherly jealousy?

“He’s eighteen, you know,” Digby went on. “Been away to school in England.”

“I guessed that,” Lucky said.

Another long pause, accompanied by another stoning of the ditch water. Then: “He and my father can’t stand one another. There’s always a row when Tom’s around. And this time I’m afraid there might be fisticuffs.”

“Why is Tom coming home, then?” Lucky asked. “Wouldn’t it be better if he stayed at school.”

Digby hesitated, then asked, “You won’t tell?”

“I never tell,” Lucky replied – and this was certainly more true than his friend would ever know.

“Tom fallen for a girl and he wants to marry her,” Digby said. “Dad says he’s too young. Which is true, I suppose. But that’s not the worst part.”

Suddenly Lucky understood – it was the British class system. “She’s a bar maid or a shop girl, right?”

Digby nodded. “Shop girl. The thing is, my father wants Tom to marry royalty like he did. My mom’s one of King Constantine’s nieces. A countess or a princess… I can never figure which. She’s also a cousin of Prince Philip.”

“You mean, like the Prince Philip who is Queen Elizabeth’s husband?” Lucky asked, all agog. He couldn’t help it. This was getting interesting.

“The very one,” Digby said. “Anyway, Father’s ordered Tom home. Either Tom obeys, or he’s going to cut off the college trust fund my grandfather set up for him.”

Lucky raised an eyebrow – now there were trust funds involved. Digby explained the trust was administered by his father until Tom was twenty five, so he could cut him off without a cent at any time. Meanwhile, Tom had been ordered to Cyprus to have it out with his father.

Lucky shrugged. “That’s too bad, but from what little you’ve told me about your brother he’ll just tell your father to go to hell and do things his own way.”

“It’s not so simple,” Digby said. He hesitated a long, long time, then finally said – nearly in tears – “My father… He’ll take it out on our mother.” Another long pause and a big gulp. Averting his eyes, he said, “My father’s kind of crazy sometimes. He… well, he… bloody hell. You know what I mean by crazy, don’t you?”

Lucky said, “The war, right?”

Digby nodded. “He was in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Malaysia for four years,” he said. “It was really awful. He weighed all of ninety pounds when he got out – and he’s over six foot. You should see the scars on his body. And he still has all kinds of jungle diseases – malaria is the least of them. So, you know, he’s got a reason for being crazy. Anybody would, right?”

“Sure,” Lucky agreed. “Anybody would.” He skipped stones, then asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Tom can take care of himself,” Digby said. “He’s as strong as my father now.”

Lucky nodded. “Okay.”

“But then my dad gets mad because he can’t beat Tom, so he goes after my mother.”

Lucky sighed. “I know,” he said.

“I won’t let him, this time,” Digby declared. “I swear I won’t.”

“I know,” Lucky said.

“I can get a gun – cheap, too,” Digby said.

“I know,” Lucky replied.

“I’ll kill him. If he hurts her again, I’ll kill him. I swear it.”

“I know,” Lucky said.

Digby wiped away tears. Then he said, “Maybe I should wait for Tom to get home and ask him what to do.”

“Good idea,” Lucky said. He waited a minute, then added, “About the gun?”

“Yeah?”

“Ask Tom before you buy it.”

After a minute, Digby nodded. “Okay,” he said.

NEXT: THE ROSTER OF THE DEAD

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St. Andreas Monastary

In early September, Jim took Lucky on an extended weekend trip to see "the place where the world ends."

Intrigued, Lucky pressed Jim to explain, but no matter how many times he asked, Jim wouldn't give him the smallest hint. The refusal fired Lucky's imagination even more and he began to wonder what the ancients might have called "world's end." He thought of beautiful Sirens trying to entice the cunning Odysseus to the rocky shoals, or maybe it was the mountain that Sisyphus was eternally climbing, pushing the great boulder that was the world before him.

Of course, he didn't really think Jim would introduce him to any Sirens, much less Sisyphus, but in Cyprus you were very likely to get a damned good representation of them - a beautiful woman who said she was descended from the Sirens; or a strong man who claimed to be a descendant of one of Sisyphus' human sons. One would no doubt do nothing more than sing and play the lyre, while the other would bend iron nails between thumb and forefinger, rather than push a big rock. Even so, the prospects were intriguing.

They traveled with Jim's friend Kyriakos, who drove his faithful black Plymouth. They took a bundle of old British Army blankets with them, because, Jim said, at one point there would be nowhere to sleep but on sandy dunes by the sea. A jug of Cypriot insect repellent was also stowed away with their gear – apparently the mosquitoes and sand fleas were notorious in this section.

Their destination was Cape Andreas, the eastern tip of the island. With many miles of some roughest roads in Cyprus ahead of them, they took off Friday evening. They spent the night just outside Larnaca with a stone cutter’s family – a relation of Jim’s. They were poor people, with little to spare, but they immediately ran to their cupboards to empty them for their guests. Jim had wisely stopped on the way to fill a basket from the market in Larnaca, so he replaced much more than they gave.

Poor as the people were, the dinner was delicious – grape leaves stuffed with rice and vegetables; a delicious tomato and green onion salad with fetah sprinkled liberally on top; a huge bowl of lentils and wild greens picked from the field adjacent to the stone quarry, with tomatoes chopped up in it; chicken and dumpling stew with thick gravy; and finally, a big platter of pastries filled with cheese and olives and spiced yogurt made from goat’s milk.

Lucky was treated with elaborate courtesy – no one in the family had ever seen an American before. The children were especially shy, hiding in the only other room of the adobe cottage and peering at him from around corners with huge black eyes. But he’d encountered this sort of thing before and had a few tricks up his sleeve to relieve the tension. He whispered to Jim, who beamed and clapped his hands and announced in Greek that “Mr. Lucky” was going to perform a bit of magic. Everyone was intrigued.

Lucky rolled up his sleeves and bared his hands and arms for all to see. The children crept out while he kept up a little patter he’d concocted. He’d worked the whole thing out in Greek, had Jim correct his grammar, and then committed his little act to memory.

“A long time ago,” he intoned, “my famous cousin, Hopalong Cassidy, rescued an Indian witch doctor.”

Everyone murmured at this. Even in Cyprus, Hopalong Cassidy was known to one and all. The children’s eyes grew huge when he invoked the legendary name.

“In gratitude, this old Indian wizard taught Hoppy the secret of controlling water. Like Moses, he could command water to do his bidding. To rise, or to fall.”

During all this Jim – ever the willing magician’s assistant – laid out Lucky’s props. A plate. A candle. Some matches. And a glass of water. Lucky lit the candle, tipped it down so wax spilled on the center of the plate, then fixed the candle into the quickly cooling wax so that it would stand upright.

“It was my good fortune,” Lucky said, “that Hopalong Cassidy is not only my cousin, but my Godfather. And so, when I came of age, he showed me the witch doctor’s secret. A secret I will demonstrate to you now.”

Lucky emptied the water glass into the plate, so that there was a miniature sea around the blazing candle.

“Watch!” Lucky barked, making the children jump – and even a few of the adults. He held the glass out with both hands and intoned: “Hocus-pocus-dominocus!”

And he placed the glass over the burning candle. Jim had trimmed the bottom for him so that there was plenty of room between the burning wick and the top of the glass.

Lucky waved his hands over the makeshift lamp, intoning once again – “Hocus-pocus-dominocus!”

He could see the little kids mouthing the words as he said them. Their eyes fixed firmly on the glass. Then everyone gasped as the water in the plate suddenly started disappearing. Very quickly, the water vanished from the plate – and was transferred into the glass as if by some mysterious force. The water level in the glass climbed higher and higher and Lucky kept waving his hands like a great sorcerer, muttering hocus-pocus all the while. Finally all the water from the plate was gone and was now inside the glass.

Just before the oxygen-starved flame went out – Lucky had this trick timed to the split second – Lucky shouted: “Be done!” The kids nearly jumped out of their skin at his shout, and then the candle fluttered, as if obeying his command, and blinked off.

For a long moment the kids and the adults stared at him as if he were some sort of fabulous wizard. Then he grinned and the moment broke and the adults laughed and the kids all started shouting, “How did you do it, how did you do it?” And now came Lucky’s favorite part – his ultimate ice breaker. He told the kids that it was not magic at all but a trick of science. A trick they could do themselves and amaze all their friends.

He told them that actually the Greeks had discovered the secret in ancient times – way before the Indian witch doctor. (He didn’t say the Indian had been made up by him, because it would have spoiled the little drama.) He explained that it was based on something they had already learned in school. That fire requires oxygen. And that air has weight. So, if the candle is burning in an enclosed glass, it will use up all the air – the oxygen – creating a vacuum. And that the glass will suck up the water surrounding it until the pressure – the weight – inside the glass equals the pressure outside.

Some of the adults frowned, but every kid in the house got it. They might have been poor, but they had good teachers. They all jumped up and down and yelled for him to do it again. So he did – twice more. Which was just enough for them to memorize not just how the trick was done, but the all important Hopalong Cassidy, Indian witch doctor preface. Lucky got a kick out of that as he remembered what Jim had told him after the first he’d performed the trick.

“The way they’ll tell the story,” he said, “is that they learned this magical transfiguration from a mysterious American lad, named Mr. Lucky, who was the cousin of the great cowboy hero, Hopalong Cassidy. Who saved the life of the medicine man, etc… The point being, it will be their personal connection to you that will be most important.

“And so, my young scholar, in the end you will become a Cypriot myth. A small one, perhaps, but a myth just the same. And you know how myths are in Cyprus – they last forever.”

Lucky shrugged. He’d seen too many worn out statues to trust myths. “I’d rather write my own book about Cyprus,” he said. “It might not live forever, but it will around as long as the there is a Library Of Congress.”

Jim smiled a rather sad smile and put a hand on Lucky’s shoulder. “I know you won’t forget us,” he said. “But a book takes dedication. Forbearance. And complete belief in yourself and your subject. These are qualities I wanted to impart to you, Lucky. I hope I have partly succeeded and pray that another teacher will take up my task in the future. If not, you must learn to believe in yourself, Lucky.

“If you want to write – to truly write – then you must make that the only goal in your life. Everything else must be pushed aside.”

He looked at Lucky, his eyes boring in. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”

Lucky shook his head. “No, I don’t,” he said. “But I think I’ll figure it out as I go along.”

In the morning they had roasted eggs and olives and strong, hot coffee, heavily sweetened with Cypriot honey, with bits of cinnamon bark floating in it. Sufficiently fueled for the day’s journey, they were off very early, climbing down from the stone quarry to be greeted by the sun rising over the sea. They were heading east, after all, the direction where everything begins. So, of course, Lucky had to ask Jim if they were going to see the place where the world ended, why were they traveling east, instead of west, where the sun goes to die?

Jim grinned, saying, “You can decide that question for yourself when you see it.” He laughed and would say no more.

They drove most of the day on winding roads that were so pot-holed and rough in some places that it would have been faster to get out and walk. Despite the wear and tear on his car Kyriakos pressed on, saying he had just installed new springs and wanted to break them in, so the bad roads were actually doing him a favor. Several times they hit bumps so hard that the Plymouth bottomed out and Lucky winced, remember how his father had scraped the oil pan off their old Dodge many years ago.

After a time, the whole coastline became desolate and dreary, seared orange and black by the hot sun. Kyriakos rolled down the front windows and he and Jim tied strips of wet cloth in the gaps so the rushing wind would cool them as they drove. Just when Lucky thought he had left civilization forever, they came upon a small fishing village, shaded by ancient cypress and fig trees.

The adobe homes and shops were startling white under the blazing sun, with the backdrop of the Mediterranean. Except here, the sea wasn’t only blue. There were many colors – gray and green and even red, before the waters blended into the familiar crystalline blue. Jim said it was because of the different minerals in the silted-up harbor – apparently the village had once been a great Roman port, but had been deserted as the river that flowed into the harbor deposited more silt than the Romans had money or patience to dredge.

But even as a small, almost afterthought-of-a- village, Lucky found the place charming and welcome. At the taverna he drank gallons of iced lemonade while nibbling on a tray of honeyed fruits – sliced pears, apples, peaches and oranges and lemons. The whole area, it turned out, was noted for its orchards and the plump fruit they produced. A river arched down from the mountains through a miniature desert to reach this point and the fruit trees grew in great profusion. The villagers also grew peanuts in the sandy soil and these they toasted and salted with countless varieties of hot spices. While Jim was organizing food for the night’s campout dinner, Lucky bought several big paper sacks of different peanuts.

Lucky noticed that the villagers had a different look than other Cypriots. Their skin and hair was generally lighter and some even had blue eyes. Jim said there was a legend that a group of soldiers from the last Crusade were driven ashore during a storm and settled here, instead of joining their brothers in the bloody battles in Jerusalem. And these people were their descendents.

Jim said if they continued along the beach – following what amounted to a goat track, they would come upon a ruined city – with nothing but broken monuments and shattered pieces of pottery to mark its presence. He said the Romans had maintained a ship-building area there, with long stone docks that ran out into the sea. They weren’t visible now, but at low tide a man could make his way across them and look like he was walking on water.

“Do you think that might have been Jesus’ secret, Lucky?” he teased. “When our Savior walked on the waters of the Sea Of Galilee, was he actually walking on the rocks of a sunken Roman dock?” Lucky brushed it aside. He wanted to know more about the mysterious city. “Why don’t we drive along the road a little more and see what we find,” Jim advised.

And so they drove on, but it wasn’t the short expedition that Jim had hinted at. Instead, the road meandered inland for awhile and they crossed fertile valleys full of tobacco and wheat. The fields were empty – it was mid-day, when only mad dogs and Englishmen would be about. Later the road once again took them to the sea, but by now it was late and everyone was getting tired.

They pulled off the road near a grassy knoll where an ancient oak stood guard over an empty shore. At least it looked empty at first, then Lucky saw a man and his wife – both Turks, from their dress – wading through the surf with a mother camel and its foal. They had large push brooms and were scrubbing mother and child down, to the delight of the camels, who turned this way and that, offering different parts of their hides to be itched.

Lucky was feeling so hot and dirty that he stripped off his clothes and ran straight into the water, where he dipped and dived and rolled and snorkeled like a young seal. Jim and Kyriakos took off their shoes and rolled up their cuffs and padded down to the shore, cooling their feet in the water and chatting with the Turks while Lucky played in the water.

When Lucky finally came out, thirsty and ravenous, Jim called, “Come and have some camel’s milk, Lucky. It’s good and cool now.”

Not knowing what to expect, Lucky waded over to the group. The woman was tossing buckets of cool sea water on the mother camel’s teats. When she stopped, her husband slipped a large gourd beneath the animal and squirted milk into it. The baby camel tried to push in and get some, but the woman laughed and shoved it away, teasing the animal, but at the same time making soothing noises. Lucky had noticed that although Greek Cypriots had a poor opinion of Turks, that they were among the kindest people he’d ever met when it came to dealing with animals. When an oxen grew old, they put it out on a field to graze and die on its own, instead of killing it and selling its gristly meat to a butcher. The same with dogs and cats. They were cared for until they died a natural death.

Lucky drank the milk, which was very strong and made him cough at the first taste. But after he got used to the flavor he found that he quite liked it. The milk was refreshing, with a hint of sea salt in it, and he emptied the gourd and politely asked for more. When he was done, he stepped aside and the young camel rushed in to clap its lips on its mother’s teats. While it sucked away – giving Lucky the milk thief dirty looks – they chatted with the couple and learned that they were from a family that had been forced to convert to the Muslim faith long ago, during the Turkish reign. Now, although the man was content to praise Allah, his wife had started visiting a local Greek Orthodox Catholic church to learn what she called “the old ways.”

Her husband said he didn’t mind – he’d never been that religious at any rate. And he was quite willing to be convinced by his wife, if she decided to convert back again. “I don’t pray the required five times daily as it is,” he confessed. “So, if I stay with Allah I’ll be condemned as a sinner. But if I convert, I’ll only have to attend church once a week to find a place in heaven. This is a much better bargain in my view.”

Afterward, the couple led their charges away and Lucky and his companions settled down on the dunes to watch the seas darken as – behind them - the sun slipped over the western mountains.

Lucky saw a stone jetty hundreds of yards out to sea and asked Jim about it.

“This was once a grand city with a wonderful harbor,” Jim said. “It was noted the world over.” His hand swept the area. “I suppose thirty or forty thousand people made their homes and their living here.”

At that moment Kyriakos called them and they rose to see what he wanted. They climbed the grassy dune to an old oak tree, where Kyriakos was waiting, squatting over a shallow hole he’d dug. He was grinning up at Lucky – obviously this was something he and Jim had planned.

“I was going to make a fire, here, Lucky,” he said, “but look what I found instead.”

He held up several shards of pottery, one of which was as big as his broad palm and it had the faint figure of a naked woman on it – posing a goddess.

“Aphrodite?” Lucky guessed.

Kyriakos shook his head. “No, no, not the goddess of love, but a good imitation just the same.” He laughed, enjoying some joke of his own. “Tell him, Demetrakis, or the boy will drive us crazy with his questions.”

And so Jim told him the tale of Pygmalion, the Cypriot king who had founded the city of Karpasia whose ruins they were resting upon.

“He was not just a king, but a king with a talent for creating beauty,” Jim said, “and so the city of Karpasia was known all over the world for its gracious buildings, landscaped parks and wide boulevards. It’s said that the harbor rivaled anything the Persian engineers of Xerxes ever created. And he was also a sculptor of great renown, so the city and parks were decorated with his creations, which were said to be wondrous. According to legend, King Pygmalion was obsessed with finding the perfect woman. He searched the world over, but it was no good, Lucky. Nothing could be as physically perfect as what he saw in his mind.

“And so he determined if he couldn’t find a living woman that equaled his standards, he would make one of his own. He decided to sculpt the most perfectly formed woman the world had ever seen from a piece of the purest ivory. When he was done, he was so astounded by the perfection he had accomplished that he fell deeply and tragically in love with the statue. Of course, the statue was not alive and could not return his love. So he prayed to Aphrodite, whom he worshipped as the perfect goddess, and in the end she took pity on him and the next time Pygmalion kissed the cold ivory she became a warm and living woman – Queen Galatea. They married and in nine months time they had a son, Prince Paphos.”

He saw Lucky’s look of recognition and nodded, saying, “Now you know where the village we visited got its name. Anyway, when Pygmalion and Galatea ruled it was the golden age of Cyprus and there were many fabulous creations, both in art and the sciences and in engineering – which included the port of Karpasia, where the treasure of the world came pouring into the harbor.”

“What happened?” Lucky asked, looking out over the barren sands, where there was not even a cow shed to mark the desolate landscape.

“Allah happened,” Jim said. “The Muslim revolution. You saw the camel man and his wife – whose families were forced to convert. Well, that was only the last group of Muslims – from the days of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire a mere four hundred years ago. The city resisted its besiegers, so they burned it to the ground and ploughed the remains under the sands, like the Romans did to Carthage.”

He picked up the large pot shard, with the figure of the woman on it. “Queen Galatea,” he said. “A woman whose beauty rivaled Helen Of Troy’s. And yet here is all that is left of King Pygmalion’s dream. A broken piece of pottery buried and forgotten in the sand.”

They all sat in silence for a time. Finally, Kyriakos snorted, saying, “We’ll all be dust soon enough. At least Galatea has a bit of dried clay to rest on.”

He lifted a burlap sack and said, “Here, let’s drink to Galatea and Pygmalion. I declare this night their feast day. And long may they stay dead!”

Kyriakos tossed the sack to Jim. It contained cognac, which Jim swigged with great delight and passed back to his friend. The trucker took a drink and handed the bottle to Lucky – “Just a little,” he advised, “to help keep the insects away.”

Then they all trooped down to the sea, where Kyriakos had stashed a sack of beer and sodas to cool. He’d also laid out half-a-dozen fish traps. They were simple things – a bowl with a piece of cloth tied over the top, with a hole piercing the cloth. Little sardines had sought a hiding place through the holes, then couldn’t find their way out again. Kyriakos had captured several score or more. Which was a good thing, because they were very small.

He had Lucky track down and empty the fish traps while he sat on a rock in the dying sunlight, waving a decaying chicken head tied to a string over a shallow pool. Crabs leaped up for the smelly head and Kyriakos scooped them into his net, which he emptied into an old petrol can.

Then the mosquitoes and sand fleas made themselves known and the little beach party wisely retreated to the knoll, which was high enough to discourage the bugs and besides, the fire was rather smoky. To be sure, they lathered themselves with the locally produced insect propellant, which they all made jokes about because it smelled so bad.

Jim stripped some twigs from a nearby willow and wove them into a grill. The cleaned sardines – doused with olive oil and some spices from a pouch - were placed on the grill and Jim set the sardines to sizzle over the fire. Kyriakos, meanwhile, had got the petrol can of crabs to boil. At first, the sounds of the poor things scrabbling to get away from the heat upset Lucky, but before long the sound ceased and the smells that wafted out of that old jerry can made his stomach groan with anticipation.

The cookout was something that Lucky would remember forever. The crispy little sardines on black bread and cheese, the white meat of crabs spilled out onto spinach leaves that had been marinated in lemon and garlic. And the beer, of course – good, yeasty Cypriot beer that had been cooled in the Mediterranean Sea. And later, some cognac and Greek coffee from a recipe Kyriakos claimed had been passed down from his ancestors.

He told Lucky, “It’s said in my family, that long, long ago some of us came from old Arabia – in an area where coffee was first discovered.”

“Discovered?’ Lucky said. “Like gold or diamonds are discovered?”

“Exactly so,” Kyriakos replied. “And in those days coffee was even more valuable than gold and diamonds. I’ll tell you what my grandmother told me, because she said that a cousin of one of our Arab ancestors was the very man who first found coffee. And it happened like this… He was a goat herder, just a lad, you know. And one day when he went to collect his goats he couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw them dancing and prancing and playing in the meadow. He investigated and noticed that they had been eating berries from a strange bush. So he ate some as well – a few at first, in case they were poison, but then more. Soon he was dancing and prancing among his goats. He felt so alive, so wonderful, his brain so big he was thinking thoughts that he had never thought before.

“He went home to his village, his pockets full of berries. But he told no one about his discovery. He ate one berry every morning, another a midday and another still at night. And he found himself overcome with energy and intelligence and the desire to learn all he could. He read books every night, all night, until the early hours. And in the tavernas, everybody noticed how smart this goat herder had suddenly become. They were so impressed they made him the village teacher, so now he didn’t have to take care of goats anymore, but young students – which can be just as troublesom, as Jim will tell you.”

Jim laughed sardonically at this and poured them all some more coffee laced with cognac.

Kyriakos continued his story: “These students I’m speaking of were so lazy that they slept while our former goat herder was teaching, learning nothing. The goat herder, however, had a solution for that and he started feeding his students coffee berries every morning. And soon they were full of the desire to learn and gobbled up all he could teach them. In not too long the intelligence and diligence of his students became known all over the Arabic world and the Sultan sent his best physician, Dr. Rhazes, to investigate.

“For a long time the goat herder would not reveal his secret, but finally the famous Dr. Razes saved the life of the teacher’s mother with his medicine and the teacher revealed all – taking him to the bushes where the berries grew. And so Dr. Razes returned to his sultan with not only the secret, but the seeds to grow more coffee and in not many years his praises were sung all over the world.”

Astounded by this story, Lucky turned to Jim, wanting to ask if any of it was true. But he hesitated, not wanting to insult Kyriakos.

Jim caught what he was after however, and said, “There’s no written record of the dancing goats. But it is a story that has been handed down over the ages. As far Dr. Razes is concerned, he was a real man and produced the world’s first account of coffee and its effects.”

Lucky didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded and settled back on his blanket, nestling into the sandy dune that made up his bed. After a time Kyriakos got a homemade Bouzoukis – a sort of a mandolin – from his pack and started plucking away on the strings, singing old folk songs in a soft, raspy voice.

Lucky stared up at the starry night, listening to the songs and the sound of the softly breaking seas. And soon he fell asleep, dreaming of Pygmalion and statues that turned into Athena and Donna, who were dancing with goats around a strange kind of maypole made of green branches loaded down with purple coffee berries.

The next day, they washed in the sea then breakfasted on boiled eggs, olives, bread and cheese. With more of Kyriakos’ famous coffee, of course… sans cognac.

They continued their journey, bumping over rough, winding roads. For a long time the road was as empty as the countryside. Not even a goat made itself evident, much less a man. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but sun-blackened rocks – with an occasional lizard stretching out a tongue to capture an insect meal. Lucky could tell they were nearing the sea again, because he could smell the clean salt air.

Then suddenly, they rounded a bend and came upon a traffic-jammed crossroads. Scores of wagons, cars, bicycles, and people on foot, were milling around a battered sign that pointed toward a patch of blue, gleaming between towering palm trees. Lucky had no idea where all the people came from, but it was a mixed group – all dressed in their best, whether a rich businessman and his wife, or a brawny carpenter with his family. Among the group were a great number of people who were handicapped in some way – lame children riding on donkeys or carried by their fathers, or brothers. Blind people. Deformed people, some from birth defects, others from accidents.

“They are pilgrims to the monastery of St. Andreas,” Jim explained. “It’s said that the waters there have healing powers.”

Lucky looked doubtful. “But is it true? Or just a made up story?”

Kyriakos caught Lucky’s look of skepticism. “Of course the waters are holy,” he exclaimed in Greek. “Did not my grandfather’s cousin come here to be cured of her blindness? And didn’t the saint grant her that wish, so that now she is an old woman who delights in her grandchildren with eyes as good as yours or mine.”

Lucky looked at Jim who only shrugged. He sat back to study his surroundings as Kyriakos pushed the Plymouth through the traffic. After a time, the road broke out into the clear and Lucky saw they were now at the very end of the peninsula. Nothing but blue skies and blue seas stretched out before them.

On a broad rocky spit of land there was an old harbor, with piers of broken stone and a jumble of buildings, some new and some quite ancient. A few fishing boats plied the waters and a little distance out, Lucky could see what appeared to be a few small islands. Rising above the harbor was St. Andreas Monastery, constructed on two levels of hills, with several steps of worn stairs leading from one level to the next. The buildings on the lower level appeared to be older and Lucky learned these were the partially reconstructed ruins of the original church. There were several wells inside that purportedly contained holy water and lines of people carrying babies were being escorted to the wells.

Jim said this was the most popular place for baptisms on the island – perhaps even the world. The waters were said to be especially holy because of St. Andreas.

As they drew closer Lucky saw many ponds scattered around the monastery. Ducks occupied some, but in others priests were dipping up water in shells and pouring it over the heads of the infirm. Lucky could hear the constant murmur of prayers as people begged the saint to cure their loved ones.

Jim said, “The story goes that St. Andreas – who, I’m sure you know, was the first apostle called to the faith by Jesus – came ashore at this point. Wherever the holy man walked, pools of water sprang up in his footsteps.”

Guessing what Jim was saying, Kyriakos nodded firmly, muttering, “Ahyos... Ahyos…” Holy man, holy man.

They toured the main church, which was by far the richest one Lucky had seen in Cyprus. The statues glittered, the vestments of the priests were of the finest material and some of the candles were as large as a full grown man. Jim explained that people donated the gigantic candles to plead for special blessings for their families, or themselves. There were brass bowls of sweet oil set up here and there and the faithful smeared the holy oil on the faces and limbs of crippled people, hoping to make the prayed-for cure more certain.

Jim introduced Lucky to a young priest – a cousin, naturally - who at first looked forbidding in his long black beard and black Greek Orthodox priestly uniform. But when he learned Lucky was an American he positively beamed and spoke to him in flawless American slang.

“Hey there, you’re a Yankee doodle dandy like me,” he said. “I love Americans. Nat King Cole. Frankie Lane. John Wayne, bang, bang!” The last was accompanied by pistoled fingers that he blew on as if dispersing gunsmoke.

It turned out the priest had spent his childhood in San Diego – where his father owned a bar that catered to sailors. He’d returned home to Cyprus after a few years of college to take up the priesthood like his grandfather, the abbot of St. Andreas. Even so, he’d remained devoted to all things American – music, movies, books, and especially American girls. He said when he was promoted to his own parish he was going to try to find an American tourist girl to marry and settle down to make babies and put together a large record collection of American music.

Lucky listened patiently, then asked the question that had been burning in him from the beginning. “Did you ever actually see anyone being cured, father?”

The young priest turned serious, then nodded. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “Americans want to hear it from the horse’s mouth. And yeah, I can tell you straight that I saw a kid cured just a couple of months ago. I nearly fell over, I tell you.” He blessed himself. “But God love me, it happened. It actually did. Here, I’ll tell you the details and you can make up your own mind.

“A family brought this little boy to us. He couldn’t move his legs. Now, this was a good kid. A happy kid. He got good grades in school and used to play soccer every day after school. But then we had the earthquake – the seesmos. The boy’s grandmother was killed when the house fell in on her and the kid tried to go in after her, to dig her out. Then the second seesmos came and he got hit – and wham! The boy was crippled. Okay, so what happened is my grandfather listened to the whole story – I was there with him. And then he prayed for the boy – calling on old Andy to help out. And then he called for some blankets and put the boy in a room next to Andy’s statue.”

He gestured at the grand statue near the altar. “Then my grandfather got all the priests together, and the holy water, which we poured all over the boy, and we prayed and we prayed all night long. Just before sunlight, my grandfather calls us out of the room and shuts the door. We prayed some more. Well, actually, I’m ashamed to say that I fell asleep. And then I hear this great shout and I look up and see the kid come busting out of the room. Shouting and yelling that he could walk again. And who could deny it, because he was running on two perfectly good legs.”

He paused, then looked down at Lucky, his eyes glowing with conviction. “So my answer is, I really have seen a miracle. I tell you, when it happened I couldn’t speak, or move, or do anything, I was so surprised. Some of the older priests told me that they had witnessed similar things over the years.” He shrugged. “I shouldn’t have been so surprised. Jesus Christ our savior walked on water, didn’t he? And he raised Lazarus from the dead. In Cyprus we know this for a fact, because didn’t Lazarus come here to settle and live a second, much longer life, before he died again? This time for good?”

Lucky didn’t reply directly –he was taking all this in and churning it around. Instead he asked the priest if the monastery had always been known for its miracles.

The young priest said, “Of course you have your St. Andrea story, with the pools of holy water forming where he walked. But that was pretty much wrecked when the Turks came along. It was a fighting monastery, then, with canons and monks charging out dressed up in armor over their robes. But the Turks did us in and destroyed the place. Then about sixty years ago a rich Greek woman whose baby son was stolen by Turkish pirates came here to pray. It was winter and cold and there were only a dozen or so monks – and all of them were starving on lentils and bread. Anyway, this rich woman – we even know her name… it was Maria Georgiou, from Cilica. But that doesn’t matter, whether she was rich or poor, or even a Turk – we get a lot of Turks here who beg the healing blessing of St. Andrea.

“The thing was, this woman was tormented by the loss of her child, which had been ripped from her breast by the Turkish captain. She couldn’t rest and mourned for years until she had a sign to seek out the aid of St. Andreas. So she came here, she stayed for three days, she prayed and made offerings. Until finally, she promised St. Andreas and God that if she should ever be rejoined to her son, she would bestow half her wealth on the monastery. Well, at first nothing happened. She became discouraged and hired a boat to take her to Limassol, where her family waited. But when she was on the boat, people were curious why such a wealthy woman would be embarking from such desolate place as St. Andreas. Well, the woman wept and she cried. And she poured out her troubles about the pirates and the stolen baby.

“As it happened, one of the sailors – a Turkish kid – overheard her and asked if she had some way of identifying her boy. She said sure, he had birthmarks on his chest and his shoulder. The young sailor almost collapsed, he was so surprised by her answer. Then he took off his shirt and threw it on the deck. And showed the woman the very same birthmarks she was talking about. It was, indeed, her son. Stolen long ago and sold into bondage in Istanbul, where he was forced to worship Islam. But now mother and son were reunited. She ordered the ship back to St. Andreas, where her son was converted, and she made good her promise of blessing our order and monastery with riches enough to carry on our holy mission.”

He gestured at the crowds moving through the chapel, filling its collection boxes with coins. “Now we give away more money to the poor than even the big churches in Athens,” he said with undisguised pride.

Instead of questioning him more closely about the miracles, Lucky asked, “Are you ever sorry you left America?”

The young priest was taken aback at first, then gave Lucky a thoughtful look, as if he were considering how his little patter had gone down. This his grin lit up like the proverbial Cheshire cat’s – bursting with light through his black beard. “I miss my father’s bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwiches,” he confessed. “And also his French fries. They were the best in the world. Also I miss his juke box. He had everybody on it… All the greats.”

He thought a minute, then continued. “But when I was in San Diego, I missed Cyprus so much that sometimes I used to cry at night.” he said. “The only thing that made it bearable is that San Diego is a little bit like Cyprus. The sand and the sea and the mountains – quite familiar. And the plant life is exactly the same. Mediterranean chaparral, it’s called. It exists only in California, the coast of Spain and in the Middle East.” He shrugged. “Even so, my heart and soul belong to Cyprus, second only to Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord.”

After making their polite goodbyes and putting money in a nearby collection box, Lucky and Jim continued on, exploring the remainder of the peninsula on foot.

They left Kyriakos behind to take care of some family errands. When everybody learned his destination, he been given firm instructions from his wife, his mother, and a horde of other relatives to make special prayers and offerings at the monastery. He groused about it, but with much good humor, pouring coins into buckets and snatching up perfumed tapers to light his way from one icon and the next.

Jim and Lucky walked to the end of the peninsula, passing cottages - which were probably for the priests and their families – then clumps of piled up boulders, surrounded by bushes of flowering purple sage that filled the air with their scent. They went by a broken down chapel, whose roof apparently covered a well of healing waters, because there was a line of people posted before it, and a brawny young monk was hauling up buckets of holy water to hurl upon the crowd. The monk had his job perfected - hitting ten or more people at once, then dousing them again to make sure no one was left out. There was a second bucket next to the well filled with coins tossed by the crowd in payment for the blessing.

“Wait a minute,” Lucky said to Jim.

He jumped into a short line, threw a half-crown’s worth of coins into the bucket and stood there, eyes closed, waiting for some miracle, until the priest doused him with a full bucket.

Lucky opened his eyes, wiped the water from his face, then stuck a finger in his mouth to taste it. “I don’t feel any different,” he told Jim. “But maybe it takes awhile, like the lady on the ship who was looking for her son.”

Then they came to the end of the Peninsula, where two broken marble columns were driven into the earth. Pieces of marble were lying all around.

Jim said, “The legend is that the most beautiful, the most holy, temple of Aphrodite stood here.” He indicated the broken columns, which were about fifteen feet apart. “The image of the goddess, it is said, stood between these columns.” Jim gestured overhead. “Apparently there was a curving slab of marble for a roof - like a sail. But triangular, in the style of ancient vessels.”

Lucky nodded, he’d seen the drawings of the graceful ships of Grecian yore.

Jim’s hand swept around, taking in the dunes of sand heaped around the point of the peninsula. “And here Aphrodite’s acolytes would have made their sacrifices, begging the lady to protect this island.”

Now he pointed out to sea, to the islands Lucky had noticed before. “Those are called the great reefs of Aphrodite,” he said. “They wrecked nearly every sailor who tried to come this way. Including the ship that carried St. Andrea. Fortunately for him and for us, he made it to shore and was taken in by the people who lived here.”

Motioning for Lucky to follow, Jim scrambled up a mound of boulders that marked the end of the promontory. The sea was bleak, now, iron gray in color. The sun was a golden chariot riding off to the northwest behind them; the moon, huge and full, but pale in the fading light.

Jim had an odd look on his face as he gazed at the islands – and beyond. He’d been in an odd mood the whole trip – cheery on the outside, but Lucky had sensed that he was troubled by something. He’d wondered all along if Jim would tell him what the trouble was, and now he had a sudden sickening feeling that the moment was near.

Jim pointed out to sea – indicating things far beyond. “Look, Lucky,” he said, “It’s such a clear day. We can see Turkey and Syria and Lebanon.”

Lucky said dully, “So this is where the world ends?”

Jim turned to him, forcing a smile. “Well, haven’t I taught you that an island is a world of its own?” he asked. Lucky nodded. “So for a Cypriot, this is very much the end of the world.” He waved at the distant lands shimmering on the edge of the horizon. “But of course, in every ending there is a beginning. You can see so for yourself.”

He sighed and sat down on the boulder. Lucky sat next to him, waiting for what was going to come next.

Jim sat in silence for a long time, then he turned to Lucky, his eyes moist. “I can’t be your teacher any longer,” he said.

Lucky felt like he’d been struck. He struggled to speak, but could get nothing out.

Jim said, “I’ve already told your mother and father and I’ve helped them find another school for you, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“But why?” Lucky finally managed. “What did I do?” He became desperate. “I’ll study harder, I promise,” he pleaded. “And I won’t argue with you all the time. I’ll do better, just give me a chance, Jim. Please.”

“Oh, Lucky,” Jim said, “you didn’t do anything wrong. You’re the best student a teacher could dream of. It isn’t your fault. If anything, it is my doing.”

“What do you mean?” the boy asked, fighting hard to hold back tears.

“My work with the Mayor’s Council has earned me some pretty bad enemies,” he said.

Lucky nodded. “Sure, the communists,” Lucky said. “But what’s that got to do with me?”

“They say that I am against Enosis,” Jim said. “And that my teaching you – an American – only proves that I have sold out to the other side.”

“But I’m all for Enosis!” Lucky protested. “Everybody knows that. Heck, I have more Cypriot friends than American or British. Sometimes I go days, and the only time I speak English is in class with you.”

“That’s not how they see it,” Jim said. “They claim that you learned our language to mock us. That you prefer Cypriot company because you feel superior to us.”

Lucky was astounded. “It’s not true, Jim,” he said. “You know it’s not.”

“Of course, I do, Lucky,” Jim said.

“Well, tell them to go to hell,” Lucky said. “Say you’ll teach me anyway. I’ll prove they’re wrong.”

Jim put an arm on Lucky’s shoulder. “You don’t understand, Lucky,” he said. “They told me in no uncertain terms that if I can continue to be your teacher, they will hurt you. Maybe even kill you. It was you they were threatening, not me.”

“They don’t scare me,” Lucky said. “Besides, they wouldn’t touch me. I’m an American kid. They’d never get away with it.”

He was thinking that if anything happened to him, the CIA had people who would surely revenge him. But he couldn’t tell Jim that.

“These aren’t the kind of people who fear retaliation,” Jim said. “These aren’t taverna Communists. Arguing politics over coffee and cognac. These are terrorists. Crazy idealists. With no fear of dying.”

“I don’t care,” Lucky said stubbornly. “I don’t.”

Jim pulled him close for a minute, giving him a brotherly embrace. Then he released the boy.

“I care, Lucky,” he said. “And so do your mother and father. I’m afraid the decision has been made. We had no choice, really, Lucky. No choice at all.”

NEXT: THE BOY WHOSE FATHER WAS A BRITISH SPY

*****

LUCKY IN CYPRUS: IT'S A BOOK!

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Here's what readers say about Lucky In Cyprus:

"Bravo, Allan! When I finished Lucky In Cyprus I wept." - Julie Mitchell, Hot Springs, Texas
"Lucky In Cyprus brought back many memories... A wonderful book. So many shadows blown away!" - Freddy & Maureen Smart, Episkopi,Cyprus.
"... (Reading) Lucky In Cyprus has been a humbling, haunting, sobering and enlightening experience..." - J.A. Locke, Bookloons.com

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