A Recipe for Daphne

with his spoon in midair.
“I don’t speak like that when I’m around my mother.”
Fanis snapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth in disapproval. “And what do you want with Daphne?”
The boy looked left and right to see who could be listening. Finally he said, “I’d like to marry her.”
“You’ve seen her once.”
“Monsieur Julien proposed to his wife the night he met her.”
“And where is Julien’s wife now? In Paris with another man.” Fanis rolled his eyes. Kosmas’s father, who had died when the boy was just a teenager, had obviously not had a chance to educate him about women. Fanis continued: “Listen, son, the first thing you have to learn is this. A man who is on the lookout for a woman must never—never!—permit himself any weakness in vocabulary. You have to cut the foul language. From this moment on, you must be a perfect gentleman both in speech and in demeanor. You won’t do anything foolish. You won’t kiss a woman on the first date, if you get one—”
“Why not?”
“Do you want my advice or do you just want to do things your way?”
“Tamam, tamam. But may I ask a question? Are the stories they tell about you true?”
“If they were, a gentleman would never admit it.”
“Will you help me?”
Not even if it would guarantee me a place in Heaven, Fanis thought. Then he had an ingenious idea: perhaps playing the harmless grandfather and matchmaking confidant would provide him with a wedge into the life of that very woman who, on account of his advanced age, was just out of reach. So he said, “What do you want to know?”
“How do I get her to go out on a date with me?”
While Fanis considered what advice he should give—something useful enough to whet the girl’s appetite, yet not so effective that it would get the boy what he wanted—the waiter delivered the dried fruit pudding. Kosmas stared at it.
“Does it smell bad?” asked Fanis.
Kosmas clicked his tongue no and began eating. “It’s very sweet. And thick, which means they used starch.” He took another bite. “No rosewater, too little clove, but otherwise it’s not bad.”
“Finish your coffee, chef,” said Fanis. “Then cover the cup with the saucer, turn it over, and make a wish.”
“You read coffee dregs?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“Nothing. It’s just that I’ve never seen a man read coffee before. I thought fortune-telling was a female vice.”
“Well, you’re wrong. About that and a lot of things. Now do you want me to have a look or not? We might learn something about your chances with Daphne.”
Kosmas took his last sip of coffee, flipped the cup, closed his eyes, and made a wish.
Fanis wiped his mouth. “The first thing is your clothes. I don’t mean to offend, but those striped shirts . . . where did you get them?”
“My mother does our shopping.”
“Well. Mothers are sacred. But if someone were to dress me in your clothes before sealing me in my coffin, I’d come back to life screaming. No woman wants a man who dresses like that. We’ll have to change them.”
Kosmas dropped his spoon and looked at his watch. “It’s a quarter past six. Let’s go now. I’d like to pass by the tea garden later to see if she’s there, so we’d better hurry.”
“Finish eating,” said Fanis. “There’s more, much more, and we haven’t even looked at the coffee yet. Besides, you don’t want to make the rookie mistake of stalking her. You have to let women cook for at least a week after you meet them.” Fanis turned over his own cup, took out a pen, and wrote his barber’s address on a clean napkin. The boy wasn’t bad-looking: puppy brown eyes, mildly tanned skin, and features unworthy of note—except for a tiny scar on the forehead that made the right eyebrow seem permanently raised. If you didn’t know Kosmas well, you’d think he was looking at you with a dose of disapproval or sarcasm. All things considered, you might call him a good-looking fellow. But that brush-cut was anothersubject altogether.
“Let your hair grow a bit and then go to Ali. You look like you’re still in the army.” Fanis pricked his ears like a dog and tuned into the conversation at a nearby table. “Did you hear Greek?”
“No.”
“Yes. I think the girls over there are Greek. I have a nose for them. In the end, though, we aren’t Greeks. We’re Rums. Grandfather from grandfather, all the way from Byzantium, and we’re better off with our own Rum women, most of whom don’t care to get married because they have their retirement and their stipends. Why would they want a man over their heads? The rest have married Turks, and I don’t respect them. They don’t know how to choose. Who’s left?”
“Daphne.”
“Yes, Daphne. Let’s look at the coffee.” Fanis picked up Kosmas’s cup. “I see a voyage. It will happen soon.”
“Do you think it could be a trip to America to meet Daphne’s parents?”
“The path loops and comes back to the beginning.”
“That’s good,” said Kosmas. “I’d never have the courage to leave the City. And it’s her home, too, isn’t it? We’ll come back here to live.”
“There are obstacles.”
“I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“That’s it,” Fanis concluded. “The saucer is a plate of mud. I can’t see anything in it.”
Presently he picked up his own cup and beheld the clearest and most beautiful shapes that had ever appeared in coffee dregs. There was a thin woman with her arms crossed over her chest. A long, fanciful ponytail rose from her crown and undulated round the cup. The woman had to be the symbol of the solid good health that Fanis would enjoy with Daphne. Yet what was to be made of her crossed arms and ponytail? Presently he remembered the first time he’d seen Kalypso. Ponytail bouncing, she skipped into the Petridis Winehouse, her father’s meyhane, where Fanis ate his lunch on Saturdays, his mother’s reception day. Kalypso stopped