Anyush (21 page)

Anyush

One year later

T
he baby had fallen asleep at Anyush’s breast and her head lay heavy in the crook of her mother’s arm. Her tiny, perfect lips were parted, making small sucking noises in her sleep. On the skin of her chest, just visible under the loose cotton shift, was her birthmark. Anyush touched it with her finger. It was in the shape of a tulip, rose pink and perfectly formed. Gohar had frowned when she had seen it, pinning on the
atchka
ooloonk
to ward off the evil eye. Anyush loved the mark, as she loved everything about her baby daughter. Jahan was stamped all over her, from the long lashes and brown eyes to the silky-fine black hair. It hurt they were so alike. She tried not to think of Jahan, but every time she looked at her daughter he was there. Anyush bent her head to kiss the baby and put her in the crib she had been given by the Stewarts.

The pregnancy had been a long and frightening time. So many changes, so many lies. That day on the beach she had taken Husik by the hand and led him to the wood. What happened after was something she tried to forget, but weeks later when she told him she was pregnant he took the news calmly. Telling his father had been a different matter. He called Anyush every devil’s name and damned her to Hell, but some days
later he had a change of heart and agreed she could marry his son.

Others took the news badly. Sosi burst into tears and Parzik refused to believe it. It was to settle the debt her family owed Kazbek, Anyush told them, and to protect her mother and grandmother. Parzik knew she was lying, but Anyush could not tell her that she’d had a Turkish lover and that the father of her child was an Ottoman soldier.

Throughout those long months dark thoughts troubled Anyush. What if she didn’t love this child? What if she had no feelings for the baby as Khandut had none for her? She worried that her mother’s strangeness was buried inside her all along, but the moment the midwife put Lale into her arms she felt nothing but love for her child. Her friends came to bless the baby and celebrate the arrival. Sosi made infant clothes, and Parzik, who had lost her first pregnancy and was with child again, held her and said how lucky Anyush was. Havat came with her mother and bestowed one of her rare and heartbreaking smiles. The three friends saw a lot of each other during Anyush’s lying-in, but when she moved back to Kazbek’s house after the birth, it came to an abrupt end.

Anyush’s father-in-law was a man who liked his clothes clean and his shoes polished but whose house was stiffening into its own filth. He swung his beads like a jailer and shouted his prayers like an assault, but was too strong, too fleshy to give himself to any power greater than his own. There was little in his manner that spoke of a fear of God, only a will to instil it in others. Because she was afraid of him, and partly in an effort to please, Anyush tried to win his favour. She washed and scrubbed the house until it shone. She convinced Husik to repair the window sashes so that they opened again and let in air to blow away the smell of male sweat. With Gohar’s help, she planted a small vegetable garden at the back of the house and put back the potato drills that had been there in Husik’s mother’s time. Kazbek complained constantly. Nothing was done to his satisfaction and the harder she tried the more bad-tempered
he became. He liked to drop to his knees praying aloud that she might be forgiven for her laziness and sinfulness, and forced her to kneel beside him on the newly cleaned floor.

Then there was Husik. Her husband was as strange as his father but without the same malice. Anyush tried not to compare him to Jahan, but it took all her strength not to recoil from him. She thought he would consume her in the close confines of their bed, his eyes pinning her to the mattress and his rough hands exploring her body like a blind man. He baited her into the bedroom they shared with the baby, heedless of Lale’s cry or his father on the other side of the wall or anything else that might distract him from his needs. He was a man obsessed, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to hate him. She was touched whenever he held Lale, a name he had suggested and which meant ‘tulip’. After the birth, Anyush had cried bitter tears when she saw the mark on her baby’s chest, but it was Husik who persuaded her that it was beautiful. She was thankful to him then, and grateful for the kindness he showed her grandmother. It was this she kept in mind when his thick fingers pulled impatiently at the ties of her dress, and when he squeezed her breasts painfully as he reached the peak of his excitement, and when he lay spent beside her as she battled with tears and shame.

Beyond the house other battles were being fought. Raids on farms and shootings became common. Every other week someone was hanged in the square like Mislav Aykanian. The villagers hid away their women, but there was no protection from Ozhan and his men. Armenian girls were theirs for the taking and any girl would do. It was a relief whenever Ozhan disappeared to the city and a torment when he returned. The Stewarts were doing their best for the villagers, but the soup kitchen was no longer enough. People took to the roads to beg and some tried their luck in the city, where they fared no better. The Talanians and the Setians, who now had Parzik and Vardan living with them, were barely eking out an existence.

After Lale’s birth, the Stewart family paid Anyush a visit, bringing Lottie’s old crib as a gift. Millie touched Lale’s birthmark and said that having a tulip mark on her skin meant that she would always be a very lucky baby indeed. Bayan Stewart and nurse Manon had visited often during her confinement and Anyush had lived for those visits. Kazbek did not like the women calling and became difficult and rude in their presence. He never moved from his chair in the corner so that Anyush couldn’t talk freely and neither could anyone else. Finally he forbade her to have visitors altogether. At first, Bayan Stewart ignored him, but Kazbek frightened the doctor’s wife with his long body and yellow eyes. Nurse Manon continued to come as far as the wood and whistled for Anyush to come outside. It was better than seeing nobody, but everything changed for the worse after Dr Trowbridge called. She watched from the window as he approached along the path, getting off his horse and walking to where Kazbek was driving the cattle back from the river. They talked quietly at first, but soon Kazbek was shouting and waving his stick at the doctor.

‘You don’t know who you’re threatening!’ he said.

Life became more difficult after that. Kazbek accused Anyush of sleeping with the Englishman and told Husik his wife was a whore. Again, she was forced to kneel on the floor while her husband looked the other way. One day Dr Stewart called, and to Anyush’s surprise Kazbek allowed him inside. The doctor examined the baby and offered Anyush her old position at the hospital.

‘Bring Lale with you,’ he said. ‘You should remain on the staff and we would happily have you both.’

But Kazbek would not hear of it, and nothing Dr Stewart could say would change his mind.

The baby was soundly asleep when Anyush got to her feet. Her stomach was rumbling. There was wild garlic growing in the wood, and with a few potatoes and some rice she could make a jermag pilaff. Picking garlic reminded her of her grandmother’s khash, a meaty beef broth served with garlic and lavash. It was the most delicious food imaginable, but nobody had meat to make it any more.

Tiptoeing out the door, she slipped under cover of the trees, picking her way carefully over the spongy forest floor. A narrow track leading past bunches of hyssop led to where the garlic grew. The canopy was dense, shutting off the bright sunlight, but she spotted the white flowers just ahead in the clearing. A twig cracked and then another followed by voices. Looking around for somewhere to hide, she pressed herself against the trunk of two trees that had fallen onto each other.

‘What do you mean, nothing?’ a wheezy voice was saying. ‘What are we paying you for?’

‘People are nervous,’ a second voice said. A voice Anyush knew only too well.

‘They’re being careful. Nobody’s saying anything. Especially since Aykanian and all the others have been hanged.’

‘Aykanian was hoisted thanks to you.’

‘I didn’t think you’d hang him. Just rough him up a bit.’

‘Listen to me, you worthless shit, you knew very well the minute you gave us his name that he was finished. So save your crocodile tears for the priest.’

Kazbek laughed nervously. ‘No, no, of course. He had it coming. It’s just that it makes people wary.’

There was a loud crack of a match against flint and the sound of smoke drawn deep into lungs. Anyush risked a look. The gendarme had his back to her.

‘So they should be. There’s going to be a lot of changes around here.’

‘What do you mean? What kind of changes,
efendim
?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

Grinding his match under the toe of his boot, the gendarme pointed a finger at Kazbek. ‘You’d better have something for me next time. Unless you want to swing like the old man.’

The heat had built up to an almost unbearable intensity. Anyush opened every window, but the house felt as if it was holding its breath. Lale seemed to sense the change in the weather. She had been uneasy all day, crying in her mother’s arms and finally falling asleep from exhaustion. Since the evening in the forest Anyush jumped whenever Kazbek entered the room. His eyes followed her and his jet beads flicked through his fingers as though counting down to her last breath. Anyush tried to stay out of his way, to make herself invisible, but there was nowhere to hide from Kazbek. Husik seemed unaware of the atmosphere in the house. He spent his days with his traps in the wood and laughed when his wife suggested she go with him.

‘No, Anyushi bai. Not there.’

The lavash bread she had taken from the tandoor in the yard was cooling on the table. It was too hot to tear with her fingers so she fetched the knife to slice it. At her mother’s cottage Gohar had made the lavash every morning, flattening the dough by throwing it in the air between her spread fingers. The force of its own weight gradually made the dough thinner and thinner, turning it into a large fine sheet ready for the oven. Anyush loved to watch Gohar make the bread and missed the rhythm and comfort of it. Her mother also made lavash but with impatient slaps of dough against the kitchen table. Khandut had been to visit only once since Lale’s birth. She had held her granddaughter with such tenderness
that Anyush had to look away. Gohar hadn’t said a word. She had gone outside and dug the vegetable garden until it was time to leave. Khandut had never come again.

Anyush put the bread knife on the table. Through the window she could see the long path leading through the wood and she thought she saw her grandmother walking with her slow, shuffling gait. But there was no one there, only the branches of the trees moving in the wind. The Stewarts had asked Gohar to work for them as Lottie was not well and Bayan Stewart was nursing the child. If nothing else, Anyush thought, it was time away from Khandut.

Undoing the top buttons of her chemise, she fanned herself with a handkerchief. Her hair was pinned up and bound in a scarf, but still she felt as though she would melt. Sweat trickled down her breastbone and into the cleft between her breasts. Pressing her hand to the back of her neck, she had a sudden sense of the room darkening. Kazbek was standing in the doorway, watching her. His face was in shadow and the bright daylight pressed like a halo around him. Without taking his eyes from her, he pushed the door shut, his beads making small tapping noises on the wood.