Anyush (13 page)
Authors: Martine Madden
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Mushar
Trebizond
June 8th, 1915
Today for the first time since she was hired, Manon failed to show up for work. Or to be more accurate, she came and left mid-morning, which is equally alarming. I have never known her to leave early because of illness, or for any other reason, and I was concerned. It was a relief to discover that she had sprained her ankle when she tripped over a mop, and that, aside from losing her temper with my student nurse Patil, who had left it on the floor, she was otherwise well. Leaving Bedros and Grigor to attend to the last few patients, I went to pay Manon a call. It was the first time I had been to her quarters, a couple of rooms at the back of the dispensary building which was originally built as the caretaker’s lodge. I knocked, but the reception was not what you might call warm. A voice instructed me in no uncertain terms to go away.
‘
Allez-vous en!
’
Ignoring this, I announced myself which elicited a long silence. Finally, I was instructed to open the door and let myself in. The small space was difficult to navigate because the drapes were drawn and the room was in darkness. As my eyes adjusted, I could see Manon sitting on a divan in the corner, her foot resting on a low stool. She commanded me to open the curtains before inviting me to sit. In the light coming through the dusty glass I could see that the room was neat and tidy, as I might have expected, but otherwise quite bare. There was little by way of furniture in the room, just two armchairs, a stool, a drop-leaf table against one wall and a single chair next to it. A large Isfahan rug covered the middle of the floor lending the room a splash of colour, but it was what was on the wall behind Manon that drew my attention. Every inch was covered with souvenirs: a collection of prayer beads made from semi-precious stones; burqas in various styles,
including one that looked like steel but was actually made from burnished leather; macramé bowls lined up alongside incense burners on one shelf, and brass and copper coffee pots on another; baby-shakers from the gold souk, prayer rugs from the carpet souk and miniature icons which I suspected were the most valuable items in the room. Hanging from silk thread, so that they appeared as if they were suspended in mid-air, was a selection of silver khanjars – short, curved knives sheathed in elaborately wrought scabbards. The objects and the way she had displayed them took me by surprise. I never thought her the type to take an interest in such things, but it seemed there were sides to Manon I had never guessed at.
‘
Mes enfants
,’ she said, casting her eyes over the display.
I asked about her sprained ankle, and, after dismissing it as a ‘slight twist’, she granted me permission to examine it. It was swollen and turning a bruised blue-green colour and must have been causing her some pain. I advised her to keep it in a bucket of cold water and that I would come back later to strap it for her.
‘It has already been put in water and I will do the bandage myself,’ she said dismissively.
‘Well, if there’s anything you want–’
‘No more bandaging.
Halas
!’
It took me a moment to realise she was poking fun.
‘Murzabey!’ I said. ‘You still haven’t forgiven me.’
‘I have not.’
‘Then accept my apologies and my congratulations on a successful outcome.’
‘
Accepté
.’
I made to leave but she insisted I have a glass of grape juice. She nodded to where a curtain screened off a corner of the room and behind it I found a sink, a row of shelves with crockery, and one small cupboard and drawer. Taking two glasses and a carafe of juice, I filled them and brought one to her. We discussed her collection for a while, particularly the khanjars, which I said Murzabey would have been envious of. But Manon’s face darkened at the mention of his name.
‘He is a murderer and a thief,’ she said. ‘He should not be permitted in the hospital.’
‘Everyone is allowed in the hospital,’ I protested. ‘And I’d rather not be the man to refuse him.’
From the way Manon was watching me, I knew there was something on her mind. She asked how I had come to know Murzabey and I told her that years before I had amputated his hand after his thumb and four fingers had been blown off. I had been given little choice in the matter when two of his men had engaged me at gunpoint and had taken me blindfolded to his camp in the hills. At that time Murzabey moved from place to place and nobody was allowed know where he was hiding. Luckily for me, we both lived to tell the tale.
‘Is it not strange that he comes here? To the hospital?’ Manon asked.
It actually is a little strange, but the times are strange and there is no accounting for any of it. Manon was not convinced. She wanted to know why, as an outlaw, he was coming with impunity to the hospital and setting up camp in a room next to the prefect of the local Jendarma.
Before I could reply, there was a loud rapping on the door and Paul Trowbridge let himself in. He looked flushed and dishevelled, as if he had ridden to the village at great speed. He wouldn’t sit or take off his coat but said he had come looking for me. The Vali had paid him a visit and had asked him to draw up a list of all the Armenians working at the Municipal Hospital, including the medical staff.
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘They haven’t said but it’s not good. Similar lists have been drawn up in Ordu and Sivas.’
‘Nobody has asked me for any list, but if they do, I’ve a pretty good idea why. Your staff are being conscripted, Paul.’
He looked at me as if I hadn’t the first idea what I was talking about. All those on the list, he said then, were Armenian or Greek. This seemed perfectly reasonable to me, given that the hospital was run almost exclusively by them, but he also said that half those on the list were women.
‘We’re at war,’ I said. ‘Who do you think is nursing the wounded at the front? It certainly isn’t the Vali.’
‘Armenians,’ Paul said. ‘They’re taking only Armenians and liberating known criminals from prison. Explain that to me, Charles.’
‘
Murzabey est un criminel
,’ Manon said.
At the mention of the bandit’s name Paul became even more agitated. He wanted to know what Murzabey had to do with anything, and before I could stop her Manon had told him about the Kurd’s stay at the hospital.
‘A reward of two hundred lira was offered on Murzabey’s head only a year ago, Charles. Why has that suddenly changed?’
I couldn’t answer, but I wasn’t about to get embroiled in one of his theories about a Turkish conspiracy, so I decided to go back to work.
‘You need to warn your staff,’ Paul said as I got up to leave. ‘You need to prepare them. Sorry about your leg, Manon, but I have to get back to Trebizond.’
Paul and I walked across the yard to the stable block together, and I had the impression that I’d been tested in some way and found wanting. He climbed into the saddle, insisting he couldn’t stay or come to dinner. As a peace offering, I told him I would speak to the Vali and find out what, if anything, was going on, but this did not seem to impress him.
‘With all due respect, Charles, you’re wasting your time. Give Hetty my best.’
T
he lieutenant and Captain Orfalea rode side by side, letting their horses pick their way at a leisurely pace along the narrow coast road towards Trebizond. Past the shade of the treeline and emerging into the sunlight, Jahan looked down on the sea below. It sparkled a dazzling blue and reflected his happy mood. He and Anyush had spent a number of evenings together and he was quietly planning when he would see her again. Slackening his grip on the reins, he leaned back in the saddle, scanning the distant line of the horizon.
‘All quiet, lieutenant.’
‘As ever,
bayim
.’
‘Would you rather we’d moved out with the infantry?’
‘I’d rather spend my time fighting the Russians, sir. Provisioning is women’s work.’
‘“Theirs not to reason why; Theirs but to do and die.”’
His lieutenant looked blankly at him.
‘Lord Alfred Tennyson. An Englishman who wrote about the Crimean War.’
‘Don’t hold much with reading,
bayim
. Never learned.’
‘Didn’t you go to school?’
‘I did but there were too many books. Too many words.’
‘You should have stuck with it, lieutenant. Everyone should know how to read.’
‘Wish I could now,
bayim
. I see you reading your books and think it must be a good distraction from all this.’
‘It is.’
‘Though you don’t read as much as you used to. Not with all your other amusements.’
‘Amusements?’
Jahan looked at the lieutenant.
‘The girl.’
They had come to a stop at a bend in the road with a sheer drop on the seaward side of them.
‘The men are talking,
bayim
.’
‘Really. And what are they saying?’
‘That she’s Armenian. And other things you don’t want to hear.’
Jahan looked at the sea spread out below him.
‘These men are hard won, Captain. It’s easy to lose their respect.’
‘I have no respect for men who string up young boys for amusement.’
‘You cannot hand-pick them,
bayim
. They’re soldiers, good and bad, but all you’ve got.’ The lieutenant took off his cap and wiped his brow with his sleeve. ‘I’m only saying, sir, for your own sake.’
‘Is she in danger?’
The lieutenant shrugged. ‘This is war,
bayim
. No woman is safe.’
They made their way down the track, without speaking of it again.
A
nyush hated going to Kazbek’s house. Delivering the laundry to that grim cottage loomed like a black hole in every week. It sat in a hidden corner of the wood, and Gohar maintained that Kazbek built it there so he could carry out his nefarious deeds, away from the prying eyes of man and God. Approaching the cottage, Anyush watched for Husik. He had a knack of sneaking up on her, without making a sound, no matter how often she changed the time of her coming.
‘
Inch’ skhal,
Anyush?’
‘Husik! Don’t sneak up on me like that!’
‘Bet you thought I wasn’t coming. Bet you would’ve been disappointed.’
He walked backwards, his mud-coloured eyes fixed on her face. There was something new in his expression, something bold and sly. She shifted the sack of linen to carry it at her waist.
‘Where are you going?’
‘You know where I’m going, Husik.’
‘Come with me. There’s a place I want to show you.’
‘Not today.’
‘Come on. You know you want to.’
He was leering at her with an unpractised attempt at a smile, and it
made her uneasy. Kazbek’s house was nearer now, but not close enough. She picked up pace as he fell into step beside her.
‘It’s a secret place, Anyush. Could be our secret.’ His breath was hot and moist on the side of her cheek. ‘Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know?’
‘Husik, I can’t see.’
She moved off the main path onto a narrow track that ran parallel to the treeline. Instantly he followed her.
‘Do you know the thing about boys, Anyush? Other boys? I’m not like them. I’m better than all of them.’ One of his hands was clutching at the front of his trousers. ‘I know what you like, Anyush. I know more about you than you think.’
‘You’re in my way, Husik.’
‘I could put a lot more in your way.’
His full, girlish lips hung open and his eyes shone with a menacing light. This is just Husik, she told herself. Stupid, brainless Husik. But she was frightened and he sensed it. He pushed up against her and she could feel his erection through the fabric of her skirts.
‘Come on, Anyush …’
‘Get off me!’ She thrust the sack into his belly and knocked him backwards to the ground.
‘Husik!’
Kazbek was standing at the door of the house, watching them.
‘Get up here.’
The boy grinned, his hand still playing at the front of his trousers. Getting to his feet, he disappeared round the back of the cottage to avoid his father’s cuffing.
Anyush’s face burned. She stepped onto the porch and handed Husik’s father the sack of clean clothes. Prayer beads clicked at Kazbek’s wrist as he took the laundry and made to go inside.
‘There is the matter of payment,
efendim
,’ she called.
Kazbek turned around. He was a big man with the long body and wide sloping shoulders of a pickaxe. Unlike his son’s opaque eyes, Kazbek’s were clear as glass and shone with a yellow-grey light. Father and son had the same head of hair, a faded mink-brown, more pelt than human, but whereas Husik’s stood up from his scalp like wiry porcupine quills, Kazbek’s was oiled back from his face except for a few lank strands that hung in front of his ears.
‘Payment? Maybe we should discuss the three months’ payment your mother owes me in rent!’ He smiled, his teeth a darker colour than the skin of his face. ‘I’m tired of her promises. Tell her I want to see my money. Tell her my patience is wearing thin.’
Anyush stepped down from the porch and turned away. At the bend in the path where the house disappeared behind the trees, she picked up her feet and ran.
The smell of pilaff from the koghov only made Anyush more hungry. The meal her mother had cooked was watery and thin, rice with mushrooms and onions finely chopped, to make it go further. It had been difficult not to clear her plate of every last bit, but she had promised Sosi and Havat that she would keep some for them and a little for their mother. Walking up the lane to the Talanian farm, she wondered what it would be like to get up from the table feeling full, to know she couldn’t eat another bite. Before the famine she had always had enough, but like most people in the village she had been hungry for so long that she couldn’t remember what full felt like. It would be good not to dream of food all the time but it didn’t really matter. So long as she had Jahan she didn’t want for anything. She tried not to think beyond their next meeting,
their next kiss, but the future was never very far from her mind. The war was coming to claim Jahan and nothing was going to change that. What would she do without him? She couldn’t go back to the way things were. She wished her life would stay just as it was at this moment, a dreamedof life, one that was completely happy. Her only concern was that she would not conceive a child, but Jahan promised he would take care of it. He knew about these things, he said. She could trust him. Anyush laughed the first time she’d seen him put on his ‘device’, tying it at one end with pieces of string. It had reminded her of the goat-hair bags the village women used for curds and cheese. Jahan had also instructed her in the practice of douching with alum and quinine. In all Anyush’s life she had never stolen so much as a fistful of flour, but she wasn’t about to risk becoming pregnant, so she’d started taking small quantities of both from the dispensary after Malik had gone home. Her mother would have said that her daughter had become a thief as well as a whore, and her grandmother for once would have agreed with her.
Approaching the Talanian farmhouse, Anyush saw a number of people gathered in the yard and milling around the outbuildings. Sosi stood in the middle of them with Doctor Stewart on one side and Bayan Talanian, still in her night attire, next to him. The Talanians’ neighbours, the Hisars, and Bayan Egoyan, a young widow who lived on the other side, were talking to the doctor’s sons, Thomas and Robert Stewart. Something was wrong.
‘Havi’s missing,’ said Sosi, her face white and tear-stained. ‘She’s been gone all day. Nobody’s seen her.’
‘I saw her at the gate this morning,’ Anyush said. ‘On my way to the clinic.’
‘She went out early to check the hens and we thought she had wandered down the lane as usual, but when she hadn’t come in for breakfast, I went to look for her and couldn’t find her. Something’s happened Anyush … I know it has.’
‘She’ll be found. She probably wandered off and lost her way.’
But there was a growing sense of unease among the people gathered in the Talanians’ yard. Havat never went beyond the house without Sosi and never missed a meal.
‘We’re going to form a search party,’ Dr Stewart said. ‘Sosi, you and your mother stay in the house in case Havat returns. Anyush, you should stay with them.’
‘I want to help in the search,
Doktor
. I know some of the places Havi goes with Sosi. I can bring you there.’
‘Very well. We’ll start with the road to the village.’