The Sunrise Read Online Free PDF Page B

not a question of cowardice,’ said Markos, carrying on with what he was doing. It was around ten in the morning and he was shaving, methodically passing his razor through thick white foam, watching his face gradually emerge. He looked at his own image in the mirror, apparently ignoring his brother who stood at the bathroom door.
    Christos had come up to Markos’ apartment to try and win him over to his way of thinking. He never gave up.
    ‘But you used to have conviction! Belief! What’s wrong with you?’
    ‘Christos, there is nothing wrong with me.’ Markos smiled at his brother. ‘Perhaps I just know more now.’
    ‘What do you mean by that? You know more? What is there to know?’ Markos’ calm manner angered Christos. ‘This island is Greek, was Greek, should be Greek, should be part of the
motherland
! For God’s sake, Markos, you once believed in the struggle for
enosis
!’
    ‘So did our uncle,’ said Markos impassively. ‘And our father.’
    ‘So that means we give up? Because people like Uncle Kyriakos died?’
    Their mother’s brother had been executed by the British authorities during the worst of the violence before independence. His name was rarely mentioned, but a black and white photograph of him on a table in their parents’ living room was a daily reminder.
    Markos continued shaving. A moment passed. There was nothing more to say about the martyrdom of their uncle that had not already been said during their lifetime. The grief that had engulfed the household would never be forgotten. It had left its own scars. Christos had been seven years old then, and witnessed the wailing and the naked anguish displayed by their aunt and mother.
    Markos had hated his uncle Kyriakos and could not now pretend otherwise. When he was little, Kyriakos used to slap him round the head if he was not pulling his weight with the fruit harvest, and if he caught his nephew eating an orange during picking hours, he would then make him eat four more, one after the other, including the rind, to teach him that greed had its own punishment. He was a cruel man, and not just to his nephew. Markos, ever observant of what went on around him, had suspicions that he hit his wife too. The first time he had caught his mother holding a cold compress to Aunt Myrto’s cheek, no explanation was given. When he enquired, he was told it was ‘no business for a child’, but such things had happened so frequently that he had seen a pattern. Markos wondered if this was why God had punished Kyriakos by giving him no children. If so, He was punishing Myrto too.
    Seeing his aunt grieve, keening and crying, hour after hour, constantly petted and patted by her family, Markos had wondered how much of it was an act. How could she lament the loss of a husband who had treated her that way? He watched his mother comforting his aunt and was reminded of how many times he had seen her with an arm around the same shoulders after she had been beaten.
    During the year that had followed Uncle Kyriakos’ death, their father had also been wounded, almost fatally. Even now, Markos vividly recalled the smell of dirt and blood that had seemed to pervade the house when he was carried in. Vasilis Georgiou had recovered, but his chest and back had been lacerated and his upper body was still criss-crossed with scars. The lasting damage was to his leg. Even with a stick, he rocked from side to side when he walked. His left leg could no longer bend and, ever since, he had been in constant pain that could not be alleviated by drugs. Only
zivania
dulled the continuous ache.
    ‘Look at our father, Christos! He’s crippled … Who gained from that?’
    Neither of them knew the full details of their father’s activities in the 1950s, only that he too had been an active member of EOKA. Vasilis Georgiou had been decorated by General Grivas, the leader of the uprising against British rule, before he was exiled. Markos knew that Grivas had secretly returned the