Anyush (35 page)
Authors: Martine Madden
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Constantinople
October 3rd, 1916
One of our last days in this country and it has proved to be a difficult one. We have been staying with Henry Morgenthau and Josephine while waiting for a steamer to take us to Athens. One final obligation remained to be resolved, which I had put off until today.
This afternoon we went to the home of Colonel Olcay Orfalea, a man who is known to Henry through diplomatic circles. The house is a large pale stone building with balustraded steps leading to the front door and wrought-iron clad balconies on the second and third floors. It is the home of a man with ideas of status, and I was curious to meet him. A maid showed us into the salon where Madame Orfalea, a small, dark-haired woman, waited to receive us. She apologised for her husband, saying he’s an invalid and permanently incapacitated, and that she was deputised to entertain us on his behalf. Henry made the introductions and we sat in awkward silence while the maid brought in the tea things and set them on the low table before us. Lale sat quietly on Hetty’s knee, and Madame Orfalea complimented us on our beautiful child. I drank my tea, wishing with all my heart that this were over.
‘Forgive me, Madame Orfalea, for not writing in more detail,’ Henry said. ‘But discretion was essential. This is a matter of some delicacy and I think it would be better if you heard it directly from Dr Stewart.’
I put down my cup and related our story. How we had come to be the guardians of Anyush’s child, the details of the baby’s anonymous delivery to our lodgings and the note instructing us to bring Lale to the address on Grande Rue. I told her finally that Anyush’s whereabouts were unknown.
‘Why should this woman’s child concern my family?’ Madame Orfalea asked. ‘There are institutions for such children. I would be happy to recommend one.’
I explained that although we did not know who wrote the note, the child was brought to us in Gümüşhane where we believe her son, Captain Orfalea, was at the time.
‘What are you saying, Dr Stewart?’ Madame Orfalea asked.
‘We are as mystified by all this as yourself,’ Henry cut in. ‘But the note was quite explicit. The child was to be brought here.’
‘Let me see it.’
I took the letter from my pocket and gave it to her. She studied it intently before handing it back to me.
‘I do not know what you are suggesting, Dr Stewart, but this is not my son’s writing and the address is vague in the extreme. It could be any one of the houses on Grande Rue.’
‘Begging your pardon, Madame, but is that not your name on the bottom?’
‘This house is not a welfare institution, Dr Stewart. I cannot be expected to take in Armenian orphans simply because my son has a misguided sense of charity. Do you know the penalty for harbouring Armenians? I would not put you or your family in such a position and I am offended that you would ask it of mine.’
‘It is
because
this child is so threatened that we hoped you would feel sympathy for her,’ I said, my dislike of the woman increasing with every word.
‘Madame Orfalea,’ Hetty interrupted, ‘my husband and I are more than happy to keep the baby. Lale has been with us for some time and we have grown very fond of her. If you have no objection … that is, if there is no one in your household who has any … we will bring her with us to America. Henry has assured us he can arrange the papers.’
‘You do not require my permission. I have no claim on the child.’ Madame Orfalea smiled brightly. ‘You will hear no objection from me.’
‘Objection to what, Maman?’ Captain Jahan Orfalea, the young man I had last seen in his office at the old mill, was standing in the doorway.
‘Jahan, I didn’t hear you come in. You know Ambassador Morgenthau, of course and these are—’
‘Bayan Stewart! Dr Stewart! You are most welcome.’
The young captain was much changed. He was thinner and his face was scored with lines either side of his mouth. His hair was unwashed and his clothes hung indifferently on his frame. He had become a cripple since our last meeting, but a short leg and a pair of crutches were not what altered him. He came across the room to stand beside Hetty’s chair, his attention on the small bundle in her arms. ‘Is this who I think it is?’
Hetty looked down at Lale sitting in her lap. She held her for a moment before getting to her feet and indicating that the captain should take her place. Gently, she placed Lale in his arms. Despite the restrictions of the bonnet, Lale’s eyes were wide open and curious. She blinked a couple of times at this new and unfamiliar face.
‘She is … she looks so healthy,’ the captain said. ‘You have performed a miracle.’
I told him that Lale was severely dehydrated and malnourished when she came to us but that she hadn’t contracted any disease and was otherwise healthy.
‘And she’s stubborn,’ I added.
Lale chose this moment to vent her displeasure at being handed to a stranger. Her lips puckered and her chest heaved, and she opened her mouth and bawled.
‘Hey, hey … little one,’ the captain soothed, jogging her up and down on his knee.
Lale looked at him and cried louder, the white bonnet flopping around her wet, red face. She reached out to Hetty who stood with her arms pinned to her sides as though she had been turned to stone.
‘We will take our leave,’ Henry said. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, Madame Orfalea.’
Our hostess nodded curtly and rang for the maid. Lale was crying louder, straining to reach Hetty whose lips trembled and whose eyes shone with tears.
‘Hetty,’ I said, taking her gently by the shoulders, ‘it’s time to go.’
I
t was Madame Orfalea who decided what friends and family would be told. She put it about that her son had married secretly in the east and his wife had borne him a daughter but had not herself survived the birth. The story caused a ripple of gossip in Constantinople’s drawing rooms for a week or two but was soon forgotten. For the family and Jahan, Lale’s arrival marked the beginning of a new phase in their lives. His sisters adored Lale, spoiling her and fighting over her, while Azize, the old nurse, was delighted to have a baby in her care once again. Jahan wrote to Dilar, who was now living with Armand in Paris, telling her about his baby daughter. She replied at length, bombarding him with questions and announcing her own imminent motherhood in the spring.
Jahan never tired of seeing Lale or of counting her small victories: her first tooth, her attempts to crawl, her shy smile so reminiscent of Anyush’s. What surprised him most of all was his mother’s reaction to her grandchild. Everybody agreed that Lale was an exact copy of her father, and it was this likeness that enabled Madame Orfalea to overlook her Armenian pedigree. Despite her protestations to the Stewarts, she took to his daughter in a way he did not remember her bonding with his sisters or himself. By the time Lale had started to creep along the floor,
she invariably made her way not to her two adoring aunts but to her grandmother’s outstretched arms.
Another person who took a great interest in Jahan’s daughter was Mademoiselle Hanife Bey. She had replaced his sisters’ tutor when old Monsieur Grandjean fled the country after France joined the war. Hanife was the daughter of Jevdet Bey, a brother-in-law of Enver Pasha and one of the leaders of the CUP. She was intelligent and handsome, and when she began to join Jahan regularly for afternoon tea his mother was more than pleased. Madame Orfalea would drop in to take Lale upstairs or for a nap or a walk in the park, leaving Hanife and Jahan to talk alone.
Jahan was not sure what his father had been told. Because of his illness Colonel Orfalea was confined to his room and had not encountered his grandchild, but Jahan would not have brought her to him anyway. He couldn’t forgive him for what he had done and, despite his mother’s pleas, father and son remained apart.
The years 1916 and 1917 would be a bloody for the Allies, the Germans and the other Central Powers alike. Two of the most important battles of the war took place during this time, the Battle of Verdun and the Battle of the Somme. In the Middle Eastern theatre the war was being fought along the Mesopotamian front mostly against the British with varying degrees of success. It was a year that saw the first use of armoured tanks and the Germans’ highly efficient ‘Fokker Scourge’ aircraft. As an engineer it should have been a time for Jahan to prove his worth, but he had little interest in any of it. Because of his amputation he had not been recalled to active service nor had he been offered any of the desk jobs many of the injured officers were given at the War Ministry. Neither did he look for one.
His world had contracted to the vicinity of his parents’ home, and what had at first seemed like a prison was now his refuge since Lale’s arrival. He could sometimes forget what had happened beyond its walls,
beyond the boundaries of the city, beyond the limits of his waking day. As the old year drew to a close and the New Year brought no signs of victory for the Ottoman Empire and the Central Powers, the household of one crippled soldier and his family had found an unexpected tranquillity.
T
he lieutenant left Anyush in the care of his widowed uncle, Hasan Kadri, a wealthy merchant in the town of Gümüşhane. Kadri was about to leave for his summer home in İskenderun and agreed to take the Armenian, disguised as a Muslim servant.
In the Kadri household she had been taken under the wing of Nevra, the cook, who fed her, deloused her and asked no difficult questions. The other servants were not friendly but mostly they left her alone. Once in İskenderun, Kadri arranged passage for her on a boat leaving for Beyrouth, and after procuring the necessary travel permits and her ticket, he left her at the dock.
She waited by the booking office where she could see the boats coming and going into İskenderun sound. Dressed in her abaya and burqa, she looked no different to other Muslim woman and sat near a family group who were waiting for the same boat. In a small bag at her feet was a change of clothes, a small sum of money and her ticket. She sat looking at the water, watching the surface lapping greasily against the dock wall, when a shadow fell across her.
‘We were never properly introduced,’ the man said. ‘My name is Armin Wegner.’ He removed his hat and the sun shone on his cropped hair and
pale face. The German soldier looked different somehow, his uniform hanging loosely on him and his skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. He seemed diminished, as if the people in his photographs had claimed part of him for themselves.
‘I am in your debt, Armin Wegner,’ she said. ‘How did you know it was me?’
‘The man who bought your ticket at the booking office … he called you Anyush. I wasn’t sure but I hoped it might be you.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m working at the cholera hospital. At least I was.’
‘I thought you had been arrested in Gümüşhane.’
‘For a time, yes. They found out about my pictures and I would have been court-martialled if Von der Goltz hadn’t intervened. I was sent to work at the fever hospital in Sivas and then the cholera hospital here. I’ve been ill so they’re sending me home.’
Behind him, stevedores were unloading crates from a cargo ship when one fell and broke open, strewing the quayside with bananas. The family next to them rushed over.
‘My train leaves tomorrow for Berlin,’ Armin said. ‘I was killing time wandering around the port when I heard that man mention your name. It’s an unusual name.’
Shouts and curses from the crowd gathered around the broken crate carried to them on the wind, and small boats tugged at their moorings like dogs chained to the harbour wall. Rigging clattered and clanged in the breeze blowing off the sea, and a ship sounded its bell as it passed the breakwater and reversed its engines to berth.
‘Do you know what happened to the others?’Anyush asked. ‘To Captain Orfalea?’
‘I’ve seen him. He was operated on in Sivas. They did the best they could, but he lost the leg. He’s been sent back to Constantinople.’
‘He’s a cripple?’
‘Yes.’
Turning towards the water, Anyush could see the outline of a ship on the horizon. It appeared to hang between the sea and sky while the sun shone in bright flashes around it.
‘Did he mention Lale to you? My daughter?’
‘He spoke about her. He said she was given into the care of an American couple. A Dr Stewart and his wife.’
‘Dr Stewart? Are you sure?’
Armin nodded.
‘But I thought …? Did Jahan go back to Trebizond?’
‘No. The Stewarts were in Gümüşhane.’ He looked at her for a moment. ‘They were leaving for America.’
Out at sea the ship had become indistinct. It grew hazy and pale, fading into the horizon until it vanished from sight. From behind her burqa Anyush watched it disappear, too far to identify any more. America was on the other side of the world, an unfathomable distance away, but Lale was alive. Nothing else mattered.
‘There’s something I would like you to have,’ Armin said, taking the rucksack from his back. He opened it, took out a book and leafed through the pages. A photograph fell from it and Anyush picked it up. It was a picture of Jahan and his lieutenant. They were standing side by side, caps straight and uniforms buttoned. Lieutenant Kadri looked solemnly at the viewer but Jahan appeared to be smiling.
‘And take this,’ Armin said handing her a fistful of money. ‘You’ll need it.’
‘No, you have done enough.’
He pushed it into her hand as the siren blew to board the ship. ‘You’d better go. Get on now, before the others.’
‘Thank you,’ she smiled, though he couldn’t see it. ‘Thank you Armin Wegner.’