The Winter Thief (19 page)

Y
AKUP BROUGHT A TRAY
of food from the hospital kitchen, where Kamil had sent him to learn what he could from the staff about the events of the night before.

“The staff says that the orderly on duty last night disappeared before the murders were discovered,” he told Kamil in a low voice. “Two of the policemen who were here this morning weren’t from the local station. They arrived after the others, asked a lot of questions, and then left. One of the cooks has a brother who works at the Üsküdar station, so he knows everyone there. Also, there were reports of strangers asking for Huseyin Pasha at other infirmaries.”

“Any idea who these people are?” Kamil could think of no conceivable reason someone would want to kill his brother-in-law. Perhaps the attack on Feride was in retaliation for Kamil’s appealing directly to the sultan and upsetting Vahid’s plans. But why the hunt for Huseyin?

“People are whispering about the secret police, but no one knows. A farmer has been spreading stories about a djinn in the vineyards. The townspeople are afraid to leave their homes.”

While Yakup returned to eat with the staff in the kitchen, Kamil brought some of the dishes to Doctor Moreno and Vali. They both had regained consciousness, although the doctor was still very weak. Vali sat on a bench in his underwear, his head bandaged, a towel across his lap, sewing up a tear in his trousers. When Kamil entered, the driver jumped to his feet, clutching the towel, embarrassed.

Kamil addressed them formally, “I would like to thank both of you, and Boatman Nissim, may he be received into paradise, for protecting my sister and Elif Hanoum.”

“I thank you, pasha, for honoring me.” Vali bowed his head. “I did no more than my duty, and barely that.”

Doctor Moreno tried to rise on his elbow, but winced in pain and let himself down again. “You needn’t thank me at all, son. I was lying on the ground like a discarded broom.”

“The doctor is right,” Vali said. “It’s Elif Hanoum who deserves our gratitude. I’ve never seen a woman wield a blade like that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Allah knows, I thought it was all over. Nissim was dead, the doctor and I helpless on the ground. I was reciting the fatiha and preparing myself for the end when I saw Elif Hanoum walk over, calm as glass, and pick up a sword one of the attackers had dropped. She used it fast and with no hesitation. Those men weren’t even able to raise their arms before she had already cut them off. She saved our lives.”

“How is she?” Doctor Moreno asked.

Kamil was still digesting the image of Elif slicing off men’s arms. “She’s not well. Physically she seems fine, but her mind has turned in on itself. We’re hoping it’s only temporary.”

Vali lowered his eyes. “I’m not surprised. I don’t understand how a woman could do what she did, but even less how she could bear it.”

“Women are hardier than men think,” Doctor Moreno said, but he sounded unsure.

“Well, you might be right there, Doctor. My wife, Allah protect her, is as tough as month-old bread.” Vali grinned.

Kamil called in an orderly to help the doctor eat, then stood in the waning light of the courtyard and thought about what to do. They’d have to stay the night. He hoped the patients would be well enough to move back to the city tomorrow. Omar hadn’t arrived, so he had only Yakup and his boatman, Bedri, for security. That would have to be enough; he trusted no one else. He himself would stand guard over Elif and Feride.

T
HE NEW DAY DAWNED
bright as a baby’s eye, with a cloudless pale blue sky and the promise of warmth. A week had passed in which Vera alternated between a kind of blank-eyed existence helping Father Zadian’s housekeeper, Marta, in the kitchen and a searing impatience to act. In frustration, Vera had stalked into the yard, taken an ax, and swung it over her head with all her might into the block. Her hands and shoulders still ached from the blow.

The following day, Marta asked Vera to accompany her on her weekly shopping rounds. Marta’s figure was sturdy as an amphora, her graying hair braided and pinned in a circlet at the back of her head, but her red-cheeked face and eloquent brown eyes retained a youthful eagerness. Being Christian, she didn’t veil her face. Marta hired a small boy who followed behind them with a big, cone-shaped basket on his back. In the mild air, the greengrocer had spread his wares on the sidewalk outside the door of his shop. He beamed with pleasure at Marta’s approach.

“Just give me the best, Gosdan,” Marta told him sternly. “We’ve been doing business for twenty years, and you always try to cheat me.”

“Marta.” Gosdan crossed his arms and puffed himself up in mock offense. “Never, never have I cheated you. I would rather cut off my right hand. Take these leeks.” He held out one of the fat green stems. “Thick as a sausage and just as tasty.”

Marta didn’t take the proffered vegetable. “You’ve obviously never cooked anything”—she leaned in and peered at him—“and sometimes I wonder whether you even eat. You’re getting as thin as that meager excuse for a leek you’re trying to sell me.”

Gosdan slapped his stomach with both hands. “Hard as a rock,” he announced.

“Well, give me two okka of sweet apples,” she relented. “Sweet, mind you.”

“Like you.” Gosdan selected the apples and put them in a bag made of folded newsprint. He filled another bag with Jerusalem artichokes. Into the boy’s basket went three cabbages, a brilliant white cauliflower, and another two okka of onions. The greengrocer carefully placed the bags on top, then added a leek and an orange from the south.

“So you remember me and come back,” he told Marta, who smiled and thanked him. “I’ll add the rest to the parish bill. Come by again soon. You could fatten me up with one of your apple cakes,” he suggested wistfully. He held the basket while the boy slipped his arms through the leather straps and balanced the load on his back.

Marta gave Gosdan a flirtatious smile, then lowered her eyes and stepped into the lane. Amused, Vera followed, trailed by the boy, plodding slowly under the weight of their purchases.

“Marta,” Vera asked, “did you ever meet my husband, Gabriel?”

“No, but I’ve heard much about him.”

Vera noted the caution in her voice and wondered what it was about Gabriel’s mission that kept everyone silent. She stopped and swung around to face Marta. “No one will tell me anything,” she burst out. “Why is that? He’s my husband. Don’t I have a right to know what he’s doing?”

Marta wouldn’t meet her eye but signaled to the boy to take a rest. He slid the basket from his shoulders and settled himself under a tree. Marta guided Vera into a wooded clearing beside the lane. “It’s unseasonably warm today,” she complained, wiping her face with her apron.

Vera turned her back. She didn’t want to talk about the weather.

“Your husband and his friends have founded a socialist community in the Choruh Valley. It’s called New Concord,” Marta told her. “Didn’t you know?”

Vera nodded. She had heard about the New Concord Project. Gabriel had collected money for it in Geneva and had encouraged people to emigrate there, but she had no idea that was the reason they had come to Istanbul.

Marta pulled Vera close. “Then you should know everything.” She continued in a low voice, “The authorities captured a shipment of illegal guns and the Ottoman Imperial Bank was robbed. Someone blew it up. They think Gabriel was responsible.”

Vera’s shock was apparent on her face, and Marta tightened her grip on the girl’s shoulder.

“There’s more. Father Zadian says the palace sees these as signs of a revolt. The sultan might send troops to wipe out New Concord.”

“That’s terrible. Does Gabriel know this?”

“Probably not. Listen to me. Gabriel wasn’t responsible for the explosion. Abel set it without his knowledge.”

“What?” Vera took a step backward, tripping over a root and almost losing her balance. Sosi’s brother, Abel, she had learned, had been Gabriel’s driver before being murdered by Vahid’s men.

Marta’s voice was taut with urgency. “Some people think that if the sultan cracks down on Armenians, it will get Britain and Russia involved on our side. Your husband’s commune is expendable. They’re outsiders. Whatever happens, the socialists will be blamed for it.”

“What people? What are you saying?” Vera shouted. “How could anyone want that?” A woman passed by in the lane, pulling a child by the hand. She peered at them curiously.

Marta looked after the woman with an anxious face. “I shouldn’t have told you.” She grasped Vera by the shoulders and shook her. “You mustn’t tell anyone that I told you.”

“Who is doing this? Who?”

Marta released Vera and walked away, shaking her head. The porter watched them from the lane.

Vera ran after her. “Is it Father Zadian?”

Marta made sure the boy was out of earshot. “People think we won’t get an Armenian state without outside help,” she answered in a low, hoarse voice. “But they’re terrible, terrible fools.”

“How far away is the Choruh Valley?”

“Several days by ship and then through the mountains. It’s on the Russian border. You’re not thinking of going there, are you?” Marta asked her in a concerned voice.

“Of course I am. Someone has to warn Gabriel.”

Marta’s face sagged. “Yes, you must go to your husband.” There was resignation and a deep sadness in her voice. “Not knowing can destroy a person. I am married still, although I haven’t seen my husband in fifteen years.”

“But…” Vera stopped herself from saying that he must be dead.

“He might have been killed in the war, but he might also be in captivity. I dare not be fully alive until I know he is dead. Can you understand that?”

“You must love him very much.”

Marta cocked her head and smiled quizzically. “That wasn’t our way. I barely knew him until we were wed, and he left for the war ten days later.”

“So, why?”

“Because loyalty is more important than love.”

“Even if he’s alive, your sacrifice is meaningless if he doesn’t know about it.”

“His relatives know. The Lord knows.”

“But you’re unhappy,” Vera pointed out, wiping a tear from Marta’s cheek. “What about Gosdan?” she asked. “He seems like a good man. After fifteen years, no one would blink an eye if you decided your husband wasn’t coming back and wanted to marry again.”

Marta blushed. “You don’t know this community.”

“There are worse things than some neighbors’ unkind words,” Vera told her. “Fifteen years is more than should be asked of anybody.”

Marta looked up at the light filtering through the trees. Their dry leaves rattled in the breeze that had sprung up. “There’s a lodos coming. I can feel it.”

“What’s a lodos?”

“When it gets suddenly hot like this in the winter, it means a wind will blow in from the southwest. It brings wind demons that dance on the water, kicking up their heels. They drill aches into people’s heads and sit on their lungs. They can even make your eyes bleed. That’s the lodos. We’d better get home. We still have to stop at the butcher.”

By the time they got back to the road, the wind had picked up, a strange, airless breeze that felt suffocating. The boy was asleep under the tree, his legs sprawled in the wild sage.

A
FTER THEY
had walked along the lane for a while in silence, Marta said, “Your husband is a brave man. I don’t know anything about socialism, but he’s working for our people, and I respect him for that. Armenians have problems here, discrimination, unfair taxes. Sometimes the Muslims turn on us. We hear about it,” she whispered. “Who can know why? Perhaps someone wanted his Armenian neighbor’s land. It won’t happen here. We get on well with our neighbors. But I sense a difference in the air, as if a lodos were coming. Sometimes your breath gets stuck in your throat.” She looked around. The boy, with his heavy load, had fallen behind.

Just then a gust of wind sent the boy and his basket sprawling. Onions, apples, and cabbages rolled in every direction. The women ran over and helped him up. They gathered the produce and mounted the basket again gently on the boy’s back. Vera hadn’t realized how heavy it was until she held it while the boy inserted his arms into the shoulder straps. This too should end, she thought with a pang of pity for the skinny lad. They hurried, one on either side of him, back to the rectory.

“H
AVE SOME MORE
, my dear.” Feride reached across the table and dabbed a spoonful of cream on Elif’s plate.

“Stop fussing over me as if I were an invalid.”

Feride raised herself to her full, not very considerable height and feigned offense. “Well, you were an invalid.” Elif had been in bed since their return from Üsküdar, sleeping or staring silently at the ceiling.

Elif tried to smile but winced instead, and Feride felt sorry for having brought it up. Elif had been away from her body, for lack of any other description, for two days, and then this morning, when Feride came down to breakfast, she had found Elif sitting at the table.

Feride sent a message to Kamil to tell him. The day before she and Kamil had attended Nissim’s funeral at the Ahrida Synagogue. Surprised at the large crowd of mourners, they learned that Nissim had been a famous wrestler and respected for his wisdom. Feride sat with the women in the balcony and watched Nissim’s wife shudder with grief. Her friends held her, while others cared for her children. Nissim’s three girls sat frozen in place, unsure how to cry for something so big.

W
HEN
K
AMIL
arrived at Feride’s, he found Elif in her suite, staring at a blank sheet of drawing paper. When she saw him, the pencil dropped from her hand. They moved together and stood entwined, Elif almost disappearing within Kamil’s embrace.

“Stay with me,” she said, and slipped her delicate fingers between the buttons of his jacket. She pulled at the woolen cloth, forcing Kamil to bend over, then pressed her lips against his.

Her abrupt embrace startled him. Kamil stepped back so he could look at her face. The strange light burning in her eyes made him uneasy. He caught hold of her hands, which had renewed their onslaught on the buttons of his jacket. “Elif,” he said softly, “come and sit with me.”

“No,” she wailed, pulling her hands free. “No.” She pounded his chest with her fists, her knees buckling.

Kamil caught her up in his arms and carried her to the bed in the adjoining room. She weighed little more than a child, sobbing in his arms. He threw back the covers, laid her gently down, and covered her. He sat holding her hand until she quieted, then walked to the door of her suite and flung it open. As he suspected, a group of servants had gathered there, alerted by Elif’s cries. They stepped back, on their faces curiosity and disapproval mingled with shame at being caught eavesdropping. Kamil didn’t care. “Where’s Feride?” he demanded. “Fetch the doctor.”