Zebra

by Debra Adelaide

  The tour group clustered closer to their guide to hear him above the scrape of the wind. She heard him mention the name Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the letter, before moving on to remind them of the hundreds who had died just below them, on the beach, that first day one hundred years ago. When he stopped speaking, without exception everyone in the tour group checked their phones before heading back onto the bus.

  She looked down to the beach, so bare and clean. The sand here was greyish, the water a lively Mediterranean blue. Perhaps she should have been grateful for the presence of the tourists, for otherwise she might have given in to her own tears. She followed a short path onto the beach and sat down on a rock, drawing out the bottle of water she had bought back at the port. Though it was barely a port, just a small café with two dirty white plastic tables under an awning, and a jetty with no boats except for an old dinghy. As she and Harry had drunk their coffees, yet another dog had wandered towards them from out of nowhere, ignored them, and flopped down under the shade of the other table to sleep.

  She took off her sandshoes and walked to the edge of the water, where timid wavelets ran back and forth. The water was clear and warm, and the day was so hot. There was no one around, even though she knew the cove was full of tourists. Would it be wrong to have a quick swim? But even as she thought it through she knew she couldn’t, she couldn’t enjoy a swim in a place that had once been awash with so much blood.

  It was Harry who was weeping. She finally found him at yet another cemetery, seated under a small pine tree with his hands over his mouth, baseball cap pushed low over his face. Had anyone else noticed? She sat down and talked to him in a soft voice, brushing away the flies and eyeing the group of older tourists wearing proper walking shoes and sensible lightweight backpacks, willing them not to stop and chat. Harry took off his sunglasses, pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

  ‘I know so little about all this,’ he said. ‘Nothing.’

  He told her he felt ashamed that he had come here so ignorant. He had imagined there would be somewhere with all the names of the fallen listed on one great memorial, something hewn from white marble, polished and shining, a spotless testament to all those poor young men who fought and died here in those months of horror. He’d expected that he would be able to scroll down and find his great-grandfather’s name, John Harold Cunningham, listed there alphabetically, and then walk over to his grave and place the sprig of wattle he had brought, pressed between the pages of his Lonely Planet guide to Turkey.

  ‘How old was he again?’ Though she felt she knew.

  ‘Twenty-one.’

  Of course. The same age as his brother had been. He would have been how old now? Forty-nine, fifty? Angela had met Harry many years after Johnny had died.

  ‘He left a wife and baby. My grand-dad was just three months old when he was killed.’

  That was right. He’d told her all this before. In fact over the years he’d told her a lot more about this distant relative than he had about Johnny, and she never understood that. Nor why a man would enlist in a distant war when his wife was barely an adult herself and his baby son still unborn. Or why his death apparently troubled Harry more.

  She felt him shudder. A man’s sob, hollow and dry, and somehow always more frightening to her. She put her arm around his shoulders. When men cried like that it felt alien, uncanny. When men let forth their great dry cries the world was wrenched from its axis. All four points of the compass swivelled wildly.

  The tourists had wandered off and from their spot under the tree she could see the long unbroken rows of clean white gravestones, so uniform and orderly, as you would expect of soldiers. Not a single one sprouted weeds at its base or was blotted with mould. Overhead the sky was a cloudless, constant blue. The breeze brought a faint smell of wildflowers, or herbs.

  ‘I’m fine now.’ Harry got up.

  ‘You sure?’ Though he did seem calm again.

  ‘Yes, sure.’

  They agreed he would keep exploring one more cemetery and she would walk back towards the main road and meet him there within the hour.

  Dusk was falling when, supported by two other tourists, he hobbled towards her. There was a bandage around his ankle. She had waited at Ari Burnu cemetery as arranged. And waited, ringing his phone before remembering he had left it at the hotel. She had read the words on the memorial again and again; there was nothing else to read. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours . . . You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears. Then she had rung the hotel but Mark said he’d not returned, and she had just decided to start the long walk back alone when Harry appeared. Too relieved to be angry, she ran to him.

  ‘I’ve been so worried!’

  He was subdued. When she hugged him he remained stiff.

  ‘Lucky for your fella we were on our way down the track,’ said the man beside him. ‘And lucky Sandra always carries a first aid kit.’

  The woman had a backpack and a waist bag over a sleeveless jacket, which also featured what appeared to be well-stocked pockets.

  ‘He slipped and twisted his ankle,’ she said. ‘I don’t think it’s broken.’

  ‘Hi, I’m Grant.’ He held out his hand to Angela. ‘It’s dangerous up there. Some of those tracks need safety fences, I reckon. You could fall to your death in a second, and no one would know. No one’d find you, if you were on your own.’

  Harry eased himself onto the low wall beside her. He had dirt streaks on his clothes. His shoes were filthy. He had lost his cap and his wispy hair was sticking up as if electrified.

  ‘Where was this, exactly?’ Angela said.

  ‘Up towards the Sphinx.’ Grant turned and pointed up behind him, where the distinctive outcrop of rock now looked dark and sinister in the dusk.

  ‘That’s so high.’

  ‘Yeah, like I said, bloody dangerous.’

  Harry looked at his feet and kicked some clods of earth off his walking shoes, wincing when he knocked the bad ankle.

  ‘Anyway, we’ve got to get going. You right now?’

  ‘Yeah, thanks. Appreciate your help, mate.’ Harry shook Grant’s hand while Angela smiled and nodded.

  She gazed up to the Sphinx again. Fuck, it was high up there. She wondered if the enemy had been positioned there shooting at those men arriving in boat after boat onto the beach. They could not have stood a chance.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Beside her Harry was finally crying properly, great fat tears flowing over his dusty hands.

  ‘You don’t have to say sorry.’

  ‘Yes, I do. You don’t understand.’

  She waited while he cried and cried, and said nothing. When she could sense the storm of tears was ending she took out her phone and spoke quietly to Mark.

  ‘He’s sending a taxi. Won’t be more than ten or fifteen minutes.’

  On the drive back to Eceabat she still did not speak, even though Harry was right that she did not understand. When they got out of the taxi and she gave him her shoulder to lean on he seemed calm, as if the incident had shaken something within him, some emotional cog or bolt, shaken it back into place and erased his anguish. He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.

  ‘I’ve never been able to deal with it. His death.’ And of course she knew he was not talking about that afternoon or about John Harold Cunningham. ‘I let him down.’

  ‘Johnny’s death wasn’t your fault.’ But she knew as soon as she said it that she had not been there and had never really known the truth.

  He shook his head. ‘I fucked up. And today I fucked up again.’ He looked her in the eye for a moment then pushed past into the hotel foyer.

  Mark had organised a late dinner for them. After he’d finished up in the kitchen, Angela ordered a second bottle of the excellent local red wine and in
dulged him as he talked about what he had done here over the years. She realised she had misjudged him, as he was clearly knowledgeable and had devoted himself to helping people like Harry rediscover lost ancestors, or just come to terms with their own ambivalent feelings about the place. He was not the sad trainspotter type at all. He brought out a book he had published, titled Johnnies and Mehmets, describing the relationship between the Anzacs and the Turks, the gifts and tokens thrown over the trenches, the tins of bully beef and tobacco shared when both sides had next to nothing. Some gifts from the Turks had come with notes, signed Your friend, the enemy.

  In the morning they packed their things in silence. There was no point in staying since Harry was unable to walk unaided. They left the key at the desk and headed for the bus depot beside the waterfront. She knew Harry had more to tell her and that he might if she asked in the right way, but she would not ask. And she knew her silence was punishment though she didn’t mean to punish him. All sorts of scenarios had played out in her mind, and in all of them there she was, with a busload of well-meaning tourists waiting for the police, the ambulance, the port authorities. The drama that this would have involved, the forms she would have had to complete, the difficulties with the language, the phone calls and emails home, the endless whys and hows.

  Despite everything, Harry was an excellent sleeper. Whatever drama, tension, emotional turmoil, he always slept. He could sleep, they would joke, at postdoctoral level. He would be awarded an Olympic medal for it one day, a Nobel Prize.

  Of course it could also have been the strong painkillers they’d got earlier in the day. Angela watched him from the foot of the bed. He was snoring so lightly it was really no more than strong breathing. She took her iPad and pushed the door to the balcony open wider and sat outside with a glass of ice and tonic water that soon became slick with condensation. Far below was the Bosphorus, still smooth but now the colour of blue-black ink under the sky, seemingly as busy with traffic as it was during the day, as all sorts of craft from container ships to tiny fishing boats made their way up and down. The lights on the Asian side stretched as far as she could see. Here in European Istanbul she was conscious of the muted night-time thrum of the city. It was quieter now than it had been when they were walking back to the hotel after dinner – Harry hobbling with a walking stick they’d got at the market – but it was still alive with people, most of them locals. It was as if the city’s regular inhabitants stayed inside until the tourists returned home, before coming out in numbers. She had seen couples with small children way into the early hours, strolling around the parks between Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque, eating watermelon slices from the vendors, or sitting in the gardens of restaurants drinking apple tea while the dervishes danced. When it was especially hot some of these places sprayed a fine lemony mist over their patrons.

  The streets would still be thick with humidity. Music reached her, seven storeys high. Smoky food scents. The salty tang of the water. There was a crescent moon, just to complement the skyline of rich midnight-blue above the minarets and flat-topped buildings where people like her in hotels and bars or private homes were sitting outside to breathe the cooler air.

  Her hands were wet from the glass. She wiped them on her t-shirt then tapped at the iPad screen. Googling the memorial at Ari Burnu she found an article about the words inscribed on it, the ones attributed to Atatürk. Apparently he had not written these words, and they had not been contained in a letter he had sent to the Australian government, as the guidebook had said. There was no such letter. She skimmed through a few more articles but no one seemed to know how or why the myth had blossomed. She put the iPad down and stood up. Now she was profoundly tired, weary beyond sleep. She was nothing like Harry in this respect and it seemed to her that it was a good thing they would be leaving the next day; she realised she had barely slept since they’d arrived, and she imagined if she lived here any longer she never would. Istanbul was so rich and layered, so alive, it seemed a crime to sleep here.

  Angela stood at the foot of the bed again, watching Harry’s chest rise and fall. She had felt cheated that night at Anzac Cove, when they’d returned with Harry limping and crying and refusing to explain himself, and she felt cheated now, discovering the information about the memorial. All the points of the compass were still swivelling out of place. Wipe away your tears. She had been close to tears herself when she read those words: they had reached straight into her heart and now she felt used. Except she wanted to believe they were true; she wanted more than anything to know that Atatürk had assured the mothers of Australia that they could be at peace, that their sons had become Turkey’s sons as well. And she should have felt more angry than she did. Harry had no right to make of her an enemy too. If he had something to explain about the car accident, when he was with Johnny, then he should just tell her. And if he’d come all this way planning to throw himself off the Sphinx like it appeared – and then failed, like he said – she did not care to know.

  She should despise him for his silence, his stupidity, his clumsiness, and despise him even more for his inability to tell her what was really burdening him, what clearly had been burdening him for more than half his life. And for ensuring that from now on, every day from here onwards, she would be on guard. Instead, she despised herself, for her emotional fortitude, for being the one who got over things quickly, who could move on. Who would cope.

  ‘Harry. Harry.’ But there was no point; she knew he wouldn’t wake. She sat down on her side of the bed and put her head in her hands.

  She had decided this was going to be their last holiday together and she was going to tell him that before they returned home, and maybe continue travelling by herself for a few more weeks. She had never been to Greece. She would visit Delphi, Mount Olympus, stay at the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens for just one glorious, lavish night. Or perhaps do an island tour. Then there was Spain. She could try out the Spanish she might remember, when she took a community college course years ago. Maybe she would return to him, maybe not.

  Could anyone ever just wipe away their tears? Harry had cried for his dead great-grandfather, for his dead brother, both of whom were long at peace, and for his own yawning sense of failure. She supposed that meant he would never be at peace.

  In the taxi early the next morning he took her hand. He smiled then squeezed it like he always used to, and said thank you. She looked out the window beside her. Again, the streets were deserted but for the dogs, masters of the city at this time of the day. When they pulled up at a set of traffic lights one of them was right next to the vehicle. It stared at her unblinking, its eyes golden brown, then turned its head and trotted quickly across the road.

  Zebra

  Spring was late again. The day was never going to get hot, and long before nightfall it would be cold enough to have to pull on another layer. But for the moment the PM had laid aside her jacket – mushroom grey, part of the uniform of sorts she wore – and was enjoying the brief spell of warmth. She was seated at a garden table down under the port wine magnolia reviewing the draft report prepared by Health. Papers, folders, teacups, a roll of mints and several books covered the table. The jacket was folded over a lower branch of the magnolia, the telephone was back in the house. Or telephones: there were several office lines, along with the house’s own numbers, including a personal one, as well as the official and her private mobile phones. She could never work with any of them shrilling beside her. As if on cue, right then Malcolm appeared on the back verandah, holding one of them up. Tucked under his other arm were several thick red folders. She checked her watch, just after ten, and waved her hand at him, shaking her head. She wouldn’t answer it, not yet.

  A fat grub had dropped from the leaves of the magnolia onto page thirty-seven of the massive report. A complete overhaul of the national health budget was under consideration. She was up to chapter three, Health Industries Corporate Vision. Key Strategic Objectives: Minimising Negative Client O
utcomes. She flicked the grub off then picked up her pen to mark a query in the margin. The grub left a brown stain, which might, she thought, pass as tea, though that would look unprofessional.

  Half an hour on, and her lower back, right side, was aching. Deep in the buttock, but if she moved around it would ease. Leaving the report on the table, she rose. Her hip clenched. Perhaps she should have it seen to, except where should she go? The document she was reviewing, being a commissioned public service report, was woefully unclear. Actual patients did not rate a mention. Their specific health needs were smothered under bureaucratic jargon. Thick clods of managerese fell upon the subject as if it were already dead, shrouded, and six feet in the ground. She did not feel like a Health Service Stakeholder, and the report so far made her feel unenthusiastic about taking her right buttock, or any part of her anatomy, to medical facilities as they currently stood.

  As she walked off she caught, in her peripheral vision, a glimpse of Malcolm at the side door again. She kept walking away. It was plausible that she would not have seen him. In any case she had already told him that she wanted to work alone and uninterrupted.