Anyush (9 page)
Authors: Martine Madden
Dr Charles Stewart
Mushar
Trebizond
April 30th, 1915
Mr Henry Morgenthau
US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
Constantinople
Dear Henry,
I am very grateful to you for sending on Hetty’s parcels from Constantinople. It was with some disappointment we discovered, on opening them, that the ladies of the Illinois Mothers’ Circle have seen fit to send mufflers and mittens in this the hottest spring since our arrival. I would have been happier with seeds, or the smallest amount of filthy lucre, but no doubt next winter we’ll be glad of the woollens.
In answer to your enquiry regarding Hetty’s health, the hot dry weather has worked its seasonal cure on her bronchitis, and she is looking much the better for it. Her school is doing well and she has children attending from age six to fifteen of both sexes. A Turkish mudir has been recently appointed to oversee the running of the school and Hetty takes classes with him sitting silently at the back. He is obviously concerned that the children will be much
too
educated because he has removed most of the older boys to work on the railway and road gangs. Their poor mothers come to me hoping I can intervene, but my appeals have fallen on deaf ears. We are at war, I am told, and everybody has to play their part.
Your news of the arrest of prominent Armenians in Constantinople is disturbing, but I understand that city Armenians have become very politicised in recent years. This insurrection in Van is not helping their cause and a show of solidarity with the Empire would do much to improve the situation. I cannot help but think that
Armenians have brought this on themselves, especially when everyone needs to concentrate on the war effort. Which leads to my reason for writing. Mislav Aykanian, an old farmer and native of the village, was recently arrested and taken to the jail in Trebizond. The gendarmes raided his farm and discovered rifles and a few rounds of ammunition. Treason is the charge, but a less likely insurgent you would be hard pressed to find. His son is young, and who knows what he may be involved in, but the old man is simply not capable of it. The authorities refused to say what they’re planning to do with him, though I have the impression the Vali knows more than he’s saying. There is no hope of influencing the authorities here to release him, so I wondered if you could do something from your end of things? Any effort on his behalf would be appreciated by the family who are extremely concerned. As always Hetty and I are grateful for your kindness in this, as in so many matters.
While on the subject of disturbances, I appreciate your concerns regarding our safety if, and indeed when, America joins the Allies, but there is no question of quitting the Empire. You understand, Henry, that there is too much at stake here. I am grateful that you have kept us abreast of developments, but Hetty and I are resolved to sit it out. In any event, I am certain that with America’s involvement the war will be concluded swiftly.
Next time we correspond, Henry, I hope the subject matter will be of a more pleasant nature.
Please extend our kind regards to Josephine and the children.
Yours sincerely,
Charles Stewart
T
he house was silent as Anyush came down the loft stairs. Above her head the joists creaked and grumbled in the morning sunshine, but the room below was quiet and still. Tiptoeing past her grandmother, she looked over at Khandut’s door. It was firmly shut. She let herself out to the garden and crossed the narrow road that led to the village. Turning away from the town, she passed the wood and walked in the direction of the coast. There was no mist in the fields or the hollows of the road, and the sun shone brilliantly on a sleepy-looking sea.
Beneath the headscarf her hair was warm from the sun, and Anyush tilted her face for a moment towards it. This was the perfect time of day, before the heat silenced the birds and blurred the line of dark green pines. She tried to think only of the morning air and the smell of the sea but found herself thinking about the captain, Jahan. In her mind’s eye, she was dancing the tamzara with him, his arm curled around her waist. She could recall the smell of his cologne, a mixture of pine-needles and wood-smoke. She remembered his eyes, dark with long lashes like a girl’s. And she couldn’t forget how it felt to be imprisoned by him and the way he had of looking at her. A hungry look that reminded her of Husik.
She reached the track to the shoreline and climbed down onto the old
wadi bed, making her way along the stony bottom. The wadi eventually joined the long beach where she took the Stewart children, but a narrower course leading eastward from it cut down onto a smaller cove. The stones slipped under her feet as the trail fell steeply to sea level, and she scrabbled on all fours until she reached the pebbly shale dividing the sand from the land mass.
From where she was crouched, halfway down, she could see the entire length of the bay stretching away to the sandy dunes on the western end and the bulk of the cliff wall to the east. The tide had gone out, and the wet, tobacco-coloured sand was smooth and undisturbed. Anyush made her way to the water’s edge, where aside from the fly-strewn ribbons of kelp and the twiggy, criss-crossed pattern of gulls’ feet, nothing moved but the waves.
A light breeze flapped the tip of her scarf noisily as she walked along the shoreline to the stone steps in the cliff-face. The little hilltop circular church was as deserted as the beach below, and her footsteps echoed in the musty space. She inhaled deeply. There was nothing in the air except the smell of salt and damp.
Outside, past the leaning headstones at the edge of the cliff, the sea lay empty and green. Not so much as a fishing boat interrupted the skyline. She sat there for a time watching the sun cast its glittering net across the surface of the sea and the young seal which broke through the swell at the base of the cliff.
Her attention wandered. The same thoughts came back to her from the day of Parzik’s wedding. She pressed her palms against the hot skin of her cheeks and got to her feet. Gathering her skirts she left the clifftop and made her way down the steps and across the beach. The sand had begun to dry and filled her boots, so that she had to sit on a rock and empty them. Once they were laced again and the stray hairs tidied beneath her scarf, she started the steep climb along the river bed. She didn’t realise
that one of her laces had come undone until she tripped and fell heavily onto her knees. A tear appeared in the fabric of her skirt and in the chemise underneath. Annoyed, she flung the offending rock all the way down to the beach below.
‘Are you in the habit of throwing things, or is it just for my benefit?’
T
he captain could see that she was halfway down the track and appeared to be in some distress.
‘I fell,’ she said, by way of an explanation.
Slithering sideways to where she was crouched, Jahan extended his hand and helped her to her feet. A strand of hair was stuck to her forehead and the skin of her face was flushed. A long tear gaped in the fabric of her skirt, and the captain saw blood oozing through it from where she had cut her knee.
‘Are you all right? Can you walk?’
She nodded.
‘Were you climbing up or down? You look as though you could do with some air.’
Before she answered, he guided her back down towards the beach. At the bottom of the scree, he tried to take her arm, but she pulled away and walked to the water’s edge.
‘You might want to clean that,’ he said, nodding to where the blood was drying on her skirt.
‘It’s nothing.’
‘In this heat it’s unwise to leave it.’
She was heading for the far cliff, her face turned towards it and her fingers curled into her palms. Her thin blouse flapped around the bones of her shoulders and the wet, sand-encrusted hem of her skirt left swirling tracks on the beach as she marched purposefully ahead of him. Since their last encounter, the captain had been thinking of Anyush Charcoudian more than he might have expected. Despite rumours of an Azeri army gathering in Baku and talk of being moved south-east to bolster the Fifth Army at Van, he had found himself distracted by thoughts of her. It took courage to meet him in the old ruin, but he hadn’t expected her to be frightened of him. She hid it well, only two spots of high colour in her cheeks, but she was uneasy all the same. It was not what he had intended.
‘This is a beautiful beach,’ he said. ‘And nobody seems to come here.’
Walking was painful for her, but she didn’t slow her pace or turn to look at him.
‘Tell me, why do you come here?’
‘Because it is my refuge.’
‘And, aside from myself, who are you seeking refuge from?’
She stopped abruptly and turned towards the ocean. With her back to the captain, she lifted her skirt and splashed water on her cut knee. He turned away, facing towards the wadi, until he felt her draw level with him again.
‘My mother,’ she said. ‘I disappoint her and she likes to complain. She also hates men.’
‘Thank you for the warning.’
‘Turkish men in particular.’
‘So,’ he smiled, ‘you come here to get away from your mother.’
‘From everyone. And to swim.’
Jahan already knew she swam on a nearby beach. It was the beach visible from the hill at the top of the village and more easily accessible than the one they were walking on. He had seen her bring the American
children there one day, when she had divested herself of everything but her underclothes and dived into the waves beside them. What had struck him most was not that she was an accomplished swimmer or that she seemed so unselfconscious in the children’s company, but that the person who emerged from the water in the wet, clinging underclothes had the shape and figure of a woman – thin but shapely legs, a slim waist and pert breasts, tantalisingly visible behind the wet chemise. It was a revelation to him, and, from where he had been hiding at the top of the wadi, he hadn’t been able to take his eyes from her.
‘Not on this beach,’ she was saying. ‘The currents are too dangerous, but I swim on the main beach sometimes.’
‘It’s rather exposed,’ he said. ‘I’ve swum there myself but not that often.’
‘There are other places. Beaches that are hidden.’
‘I haven’t seen any others.’
‘There is a cove,’ she said hesitatingly, ‘a hidden cove at the bottom of the cliff, but it’s difficult to get to.’
‘More difficult than here?’
‘Much more.’
‘Could you show it to me?’
‘No.’ She looked away.
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s not safe.’
‘You swim there.’
‘I’ve been swimming since I was very young.’
‘As have I.’
But she would not change her mind.
‘Tell me where it is then, and I’ll go by myself.’
‘You’d never find it.’
‘So bring me there.’
She was looking towards the cliff, and he followed her gaze along the line of rock out into the white water churning at its base. It didn’t seem possible to swim anywhere near it.
‘There’s a very long drop to the bottom,’ she said. ‘This is not the place to go if you have a fear of heights.’
‘That settles it then,’ he smiled. ‘I have no fear whatsoever.’
‘A
nyush and the captain were crouched near the edge of the clifftop, looking at the tiny pebbly cove below. It was completely screened from the beach to the west by the side of the cliff that extended like a rocky arm out into the ocean and by the rank of low cliffs to the east.
‘Nothing except a bird could manage to get down there.’
‘I do.’
‘Then you’re braver than I am. That’s a sheer drop.’
‘There’s a track just there.’
‘For rabbits maybe.’
‘And footholds.’
He got up from his knees. ‘You’re making fun of me. I’ll plunge to my death.’
‘It was your idea to come,’ she said. ‘I don’t care if you climb down or not.’
He stood looking doubtfully at the drop, his black hair blowing around his face.
‘Well …’ he said, glancing at her long skirt, ‘I suppose if you can do it …’
Reversing over the edge of the cliff, Anyush climbed backwards down the track. It was not difficult for her but by the time the captain reached
the bottom his palms were scratched and cut and covered in bird droppings from the gulls’ nests he dislodged on the way down. His dusty, chalk-stained uniform was a sight and his face was red and shining with sweat. Anyush smiled, but the smile quickly faded when she thought about where she had brought him. They were completely hidden, tucked into the cliff like babes in arms. Should anything happen, there would be no one to call on, no one to come to her aid. She could swim out to sea around the headland and leave him make his own way back up the cliff, but she hoped she wouldn’t have to. He stood for a moment to catch his breath, watching the low sun play on the water. Beyond the cliffs the waves rolled and broke into plumes of spray, but within the small bay the water was calm and still.
‘This place is Paradise,’ he said quietly. ‘No wonder you keep it to yourself.’
Like a lake of fallen stars, the late afternoon sun sparkled across the blue-green surface.
‘Can you see the cove from above?’
‘No.’
‘What about the fishermen?’ he said, scanning along the horizon. ‘Don’t they come here?’
‘They have to stay far out to avoid the rocks.’
The heat of the day had almost gone, leaving only a gentle warmth in the pebbles beneath their feet. In the evening sky above them the colour was shifting from the palest yellow to rose gold along the horizon. He sat on the pebbles and began to pull off his boots and jacket. The wide plane of his shoulders shrugged out of his shirt, revealing a narrow waist. Each time he bent to remove a sock or boot, muscle rippled over bone beneath the surface of his skin. Anyush had never seen a man’s naked body before, nothing more exposed than an arm or a face. Her own self was known to her only in the shivering lengths glimpsed when she
undressed in the loft or in the reflection of a window pane. The thought of seeing her mother or grandmother without clothes was unimaginable, and men’s nakedness was completely unfamiliar to her. A man’s body was for ploughing and building and for imposing itself on the body of a woman. Every girl knew she should look at a man as if he had no body at all, but seeing Jahan undress on the pebbles before her, Anyush couldn’t look away. His skin was startlingly white, the smooth surface of his chest broken by a triangle of silky black hair that dipped into the hollow of his navel and out again before disappearing beneath the band of his trousers. Anyush pulled her scarf over her ears and tightened the lace on her shoe. Getting to his feet the captain waded into the sea, pulling up his shoulders against the chill. He dived beneath the water and surfaced again, swimming with easy, unhurried strokes towards the reef. Watching him, Anyush felt strange, heavy-limbed and loose, as though a part of her had come unglued, and her heart pumped somewhere it shouldn’t. She closed her eyes and dug her feet into the pebbles, kicking against the smooth stones. When she looked up again he was swimming towards the mouth of the bay.
‘Stay in the middle!’ she shouted. ‘The rocks are dangerous. Don’t swim too close to the cliff.’
The waters of the bay were deceiving. There were dangerous rips and tides along the base of the cliff and spit and beneath the smooth surface of the water. But he kept swimming, his bare, broad shoulders dipping easily in and out of the waves. He was very close now to the mouth of the bay. Approaching the line of breaking waves, he turned and swam slowly back towards the shore. Anyush sat with her arms pulled tightly around her knees.
‘Come in,’ he called. ‘It’s perfect.’
She shook her head.
‘Heavenly. Not cold at all.’
He eased himself back into the water and swam towards the open sea. She watched him turn and float on his back, the light catching the outline of his face and toes where they broke the surface. There was no sound except the gentle splash of his limbs and the distant breaking waves. His movements were graceful in the water, more practised than her own. She dropped her head onto her arms, closing her eyes against the sight of him. When she looked up again, he was nowhere to be seen. She got to her feet and walked along the shoreline, shading her eyes against the low sun. The flat calm sea appeared undisturbed, but a movement in the dark water at the base of the spit caught her eye.
He was over near the rocks on the western side of the cove, swimming against the breaking tide. Although the evening was still and the water calm, the waves broke with surprising heft over the promontory. He was very close now to where the sea frothed on the dark stone, and she realised he was in the grip of an undercurrent pulling him onto it. Again and again, he attempted to swim towards the centre of the bay, but the undertow was too strong and he was washed back every time.
‘Don’t fight the current!’ Anyush shouted. ‘Go with it!’
He didn’t seem to hear and kept thrashing about in the waves. She could see he was tiring and swallowing water. Pulling off her skirt, blouse and boots she dived into the sea and swam as close to him as she dared, but it wasn’t close enough. She had to stay away from the pull along the base of the spit.
‘Listen to me … Captain Orfalea … Jahan, listen. Pull up your knees. Can you hear me?’
Turning as best he could, he nodded.
‘Watch what I’m doing. You must do the same … you understand? Keep your legs away from the rocks. Let the tide carry you onto them.’
His eyes widened, and she knew what she was asking him to do sounded dangerous, but he was too tired to break away from the current,
and his only hope was letting the force of the waves carry him in. She had managed this herself once before, but it had been a high tide and there was less chance of hitting the higher rocks. It was a risk, but he had no other option. Taking a deep breath, she let herself drift into the current. The pull sucked her along by the rock face and she swam parallel to it so that she could get herself into the best position facing the spit.
‘Watch the waves!’ she shouted. ‘Wait for a big one!’
Out to sea a huge roller came thundering towards the bay and then broke on the reef into a smaller swell. It moved at speed towards her. Drawing up her knees, she took a deep breath and turned her back to it. Lifted suddenly aloft, she had a brief and terrifying view over the entire cove before falling towards the spar of barnacled granite. Pushing down on her heels, she landed forcefully but intact as the water rushed back between her ankles. Grabbing a finger-hold in the rock, she managed to cling on at the outward pull and crawl onto the higher rocks before the next wave broke over her. At her back she saw Jahan turn towards the incoming waves. One smaller than the other drifted inwards until, finally, another huge roller gathered in the bay. He was in a bad position from the start and then misjudged the timing so that he was pulled back into the water only to be thrown up again. Anyush’s heart beat like a bird’s as she realised the rocks would cut him to ribbons. Tiring and swallowing water, he struck out again for the spot she had launched from. In position just as another big wave hit, he turned his back to it and was carried onto the rock. This time he clung on when the water washed out, gripping hard with both hands. Coming as close as she dared, Anyush reached out and pulled him onto the dry rocks beside her.
They collapsed onto the pebbles, both trying to catch their breath.
‘That was very brave,’ he said.
Anyush couldn’t speak. She should have been angry that he had ignored her warning and put their lives in danger, but all she felt
was relief. ‘You’re bleeding,’ she said. ‘And your trousers are torn.’
He looked down and saw that one side of his chest was grazed, and watery blood trickled through his ripped trousers along his right shin. ‘I look like I’ve been in the wars.’
She tried to smile, but her teeth chattered and her lips were stiff with cold.
‘Here …’ He fetched his tunic and placed it around her shoulders. She was suddenly conscious that she had nothing on but a chemise. Despite the cold, blood rushed to her face. Gently he teased away the wet hair from her cheek. She was trembling, and cold had nothing to do with it. Heavy with seawater, her plait dripped onto her shoulder, and he moved it away, resting his hand on her collarbone. Her breath quickened as he traced the drop of saltwater to the low neckline of her chemise and she closed her eyes. In some part of her she knew she should run, get away as fast as she could, but her feet wouldn’t move and her legs wouldn’t carry her. His hand lingered at her breast, pushing against the nipple behind the wet fabric. She wasn’t thinking any more, only that she didn’t want him to stop.
‘Anyush,’ he whispered, tilting her face to his, ‘look at me.’
She looked at him. Hope, reason and any good sense she might once have had deserted her.
‘Anyush … you need never be afraid of me.’
Turning abruptly, he walked to where his shirt and boots lay discarded on the stones. ‘You should get dressed,’ he said. ‘I have to get back.’