A Recipe for Daphne by Nektaria Anastasiadou (reading well .txt) 📕

his back to Kosmas, as if he didn’t even exist. It was just like the words of the song: a thousand eyes were piercing her.

Suddenly Daphne stood and drew the backs of her hands along her chin and into her hair, raising it so that he could see her neck. Was she actually going to dance, here, in front of everyone? She moved to an open area between the tables. Her torso undulated to the 2/4 rhythm. She looked neither at the musicians, nor at the other customers: her eyes were fixed directly on Kosmas. There was no vulgarity in her tsifteteli, as there was in the tremors and jolts of professional belly dancers. Yet Daphne was certainly not an amateur. Her fingers separated like the plumes of exotic birds, flitted around her torso, and nested in her long hair. Her chest and abdomen slithered and snaked. This was the real thing: refined, sensual tsifteteli. The other customers watched, but not one woman dared get up and dancebeside Daphne.

At the end of the song, the musicians applauded Daphne’s accompaniment and reluctantly moved on to another table. One of the drunk ladies cheered, “Lucky man!” That was when Kosmas realized that his erection might be visible. He quickly moved his legs back under the table and squeezed his knees together. With a woman who could dance tsifteteli like that, he would never have any need for prescription stimulants, not even at ninety.

“I’m rusty,” said Daphne. “It’s been four years since I danced tsifteteli, since before I met Paul.”

“You didn’t dance for him?”

“Once, for about ten seconds in his living room, and then he waved for me to stop. I think he found it embarrassing.”

“You’re an easterner, Daphne, one of ours. Frankish men aren’t for you.” Kosmas served her a helping of eggplant and yogurt. “By the way, what’s your father’s name? My mother wondered if she knew him.”

Daphne wiped the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “Badem.”

How could her father have a Turkish name? Then Kosmas remembered how often Rum names were misspelled, mangled, or outright changed by the registry office employees. “What was it before?” he asked.

“They didn’t have one before. They chose it in the twenties, when everyone was required to take a surname.”

“But the Rums already had family names.”

Daphne flagged the waiter. “A single raki, please!”

Something had gone wrong. The drunk-on-love expression that Daphne had worn while dancing had disappeared. “I thought you didn’t drink,” said Kosmas.

“I don’t.” Daphne conjured an uneasy smile. “Half an hour ago, you passed on the raki in order to stay on course. Now a bit of deviation is necessary.”

The word deviation titillated Kosmas, but something told him that this would not be the kind he liked. He asked, “Are you okay?”

The waiter delivered a small ice bucket and a tall glass with two inches of clear alcohol at the bottom. Daphne dropped two ice cubes into the glass and said, “Drink so you’ll grow up strong.” As soon as he’d taken a sip, she opened her purse, took out her student card, and slid it across the oilcloth.

Kosmas read her full name on the card: Daphne Zeynep Badem. “What’s this? Why the Islamic middle name Zeynep?”

“My father is Ottoman,” said Daphne, replacing the student card in her wallet.

Kosmas froze. He’d fallen for Daphne believing she was one of his own. Now he wasn’t sure what she was. She didn’t drink. Her middle name was Zeynep. Her surname was Turkish. She liked the call to prayer. Kosmas swallowed half of the straight raki. Feeling short of breath, he raised his hand to loosen his collar, only to find that the top of his shirt was already open. He unfastened a button and slid his hand over his quickly beating heart. “Under Turkish law,” he said, “you’re Muslim.”

The space between Daphne’s black brows narrowed. “I think I’m the one who decides that,” she said.

“And the name Zeynep?”

“It was my grandmother’s.”

“I also noticed that . . .”

“What?”

“You take your shoes off in the house.”

Her mouth pursed like a wrinkly apple. “I don’t like dirt.”

“And the alcohol? And the pork?”

“What pork? I don’t eat meat. And why do you care so much about my father’s religion, anyway?”

“I didn’t mean to be rude, it’s just that . . . if you get involved with somebody, you get involved with the parents as well.”

“If I’d thought about it that way . . .”

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“This is ridiculous,” she said, tossing her napkin onto the table.

Kosmas took a sip of water and pushed his chair back. “Excuse me for a second. I have to check on the Vespa.”

He crossed the courtyard in two large strides, stopped in the entryway, and rubbed his eyes. Come on, he said to himself. Mother will get over the Ottoman-father thing, won’t she? It might take years, decades even, but in the end she’ll get over it. Then again, she’s seventy-two. She doesn’t have decades. Maybe it will even kill her. And maybe she’s right in the end. Daphne deceived us both. Who knows what else she could be hiding?

Kosmas opened his eyes. What was his destiny? To marry Daphne and have his mother fall over dead before the wedding? To reject Daphne and regret it for the rest of his life? To end up like Mr. Dimitris, alone in a rat hole? Kosmas leaned against a wall. It’s all right, he said to himself. Daphne’s leaving on Sunday. We’ll just have this little fling. Enjoy ourselves a bit. We don’t have to get married or even get serious. There isn’t time for that anyway. And if she ever returns . . . we’ll think about it then. He went outside for some fresh air. There was the Vespa, still chained to the overhang post. And Daphne was still inside, waiting for him, if he could just get control of himself.

Kosmas returned to the courtyard. The musicians were already on the other side of the restaurant, serenading