by Ann Bridge
Faik and Güli had returned from Amasya, a little shamefacedly; the thorny Rose, who had become possessively fond of her Nilüfer Hanim, wanted her to go back to her own house, but Féridé would not hear of it, and Ahmet, on one of his brief visits, put his foot down absolutely in the matter. This was as well, for Güli’and Féridé could never really get on together, both had too much spirit and temper; and the younger woman, a stranger, had some trouble in resisting the wishes of the tough Ankarian house-wife. As for Nilüfer, she wished to stay with Féridé, but was too gentle and irresolute, in her enfeebled condition, to say so firmly to her kind masterful landlady. Orhan, absorbed in national affairs, and like everyone else round Kemal Pasha cruelly over-pressed, could not be bothered with such matters. “Oh, Light of my Eyes, send the woman to perdition!” he exclaimed, when Féridé sought his advice—a sentiment which thousands of husbands have expressed in their time, though perhaps less picturesquely. So Güli Hanim, sulky but resigned, at least made herself useful by coming sometimes to sit with Nilüfer when Féridé was in the kitchen or at the market.
Sometimes, but not always—and it so happened that on the day when she was most needed she was not there. Nor was Temel. Orhan had asked one or two friends in to dinner, and Féridé, who had secured a turkey from the man who came round with poultry, had gone down to the market to buy the best she could in the way of salads, vegetables, and fruit. The luscious honey-sweet little “pears of Ankara,” with their thin brown skins, renowned throughout Turkey, were in season; but the fruit-seller who usually brought them to the door had only had indifferent ones, so she wanted to find better. And olives and late aubergines (to be roasted on charcoal till the burnt flavour penetrated through the skin into the pale greenish flesh, which was then scraped off and used as a foundation for the rest of the salad) and the last of the tomatoes. She climbed up the hill, a basket on each arm, pleased with her purchases, looking forward to cooking a dinner which would do Orhan credit in the eyes of his friends, and earn her his praise; putting her baskets down in the kitchen, as always she ran into the house to give a word and a kiss to her sister-in-law, calling “Nilüfer, chérie, ça va?” as she went.
To her surprise there was no reply. Nilüfer was not in her usual place, under the window in the sitting-room, nor in the hall. A little disturbed, Féridé ran upstairs to the bedroom; as she reached the top she heard moans coming through the half-open door. She went in—Nilüfer was lying on her bed, clutching one of the hard bolster-like cushions off the window-seat; as Féridé spoke to her a pain came on—she turned greenish, her face contorted itself, and sweat sprang out on her forehead. Féridé waited till the pain had passed, and she saw Nilüfer’s hands relax and the agonised expression leave her face. “Dji-djim, can this be it?” she asked then, in surprise. “But it is only the seventh, and you said the fifteenth!”
“It must be it—never have I felt such pain!” Nilüfer said. “Oh, I thought you would never come!”
“Dearest, I did not know. But we must get the doctor and the midwife, quickly. Will you be all right for two instants, while I go to send Étamine for them?”
“Oh, here it is again!” was all Nilüfer’s reply, as another pain came on, and she clutched the cushion to her as before.
Féridé was terrified, and for a minute stood undecided. She had no knowledge whatever of childbirth, and was afraid the baby might arrive at any moment; but if it did, she herself could be of no use. Oh, why was Temel not here, today of all days? With a last frightened glance at the bed, she turned and flew downstairs, and round to her landlady’s.
“Sitaré Hanim, my sister is in labour! Is Étamine here? Could she go for the doctor and the mid-wife?”
Étamine was there, and after memorising the names and addresses aloud, she sped off on her errand.
“Oh, that is kind,” Féridé said as the child departed. “But I wish we had some other messenger also. I must get word somehow to my husband —he was bringing friends to dinner, and he must put them off.”
“As to that, I can cook your dinner, and serve it too, at a time like this,” said Sitaré Hanim cheerfully. “Do not disturb Orhan Bey, Féridé Hanim—let his friends come, and enjoy their food! Maybe a man-child will be born while they eat—a child to serve his country!—and they will rejoice. Do you but show me now what is to be cooked, and I will prepare it.” She snatched up an apron as she spoke. “For what hour?”
“Eight-he said eight,” said Féridé distractedly. “But Sitaré Hanim, I cannot come to the kitchen now—I must return to be with Nilüfer Hanim—I cannot leave her. The child might be born!”
Sitaré, good creature, was putting on her çarşaf to pass the twenty yards through the street; as she did so—“When did the pains begin?” she asked practically.
“I do not know. She was all right when I left for the market, a little after two.”
“Then all is well. Children are not born so fast! Come and show me your dinner; there is time enough. Children have been born before, you know!” said Sitaré blithely. “The first is the worst!—but it is all in the order of nature; there is no cause for alarm.”
As they passed out through the street to reach Féridé’s courtyard they encountered Güli, and never had the sight of her been so welcome.
“You come in a good hour, Güli Hanim—labour has just begun,” said Sitaré, who was in tremendous spirits over the whole affair, as primitive people are wont to be.
Güli had indeed come in a good hour, for when Étamine returned, after what seemed to Féridé an age, it was to say that the mid-wife had gone off some days before to a big hospital which had been opened in a school near Sivrihissar, behind the front—she had of course forgotten to mention the fact. So Güli took charge. In a rough-and-ready way she was really surprisingly efficient. She tied one of those long towels of Féridé’s to the foot of the brass bedstead, and made her patient pull on it when the bearing-down pains came on, to help the birth—an immemorial practice, and a very good one; she made Féridé light the stove and hang the infant’s first garments round it to warm, and set her to line the wooden cradle, which she herself had lent, with the soft shawls sent up by Réfiyé Hanim from Istanbul before the Greek advance closed the railway. She sent Étamine down to her own house for old linen—such things as rubber sheeting did not exist in Ankara then— and distracted Sitaré in her culinary operations by insisting on having pots of water kept hot on the stove. Étamine was next despatched to a neighbour for a metal tub in which to bathe the infant when it should emerge into the world. And all the while she kept up a ceaseless flow of exhortation and encouragement to the struggling girl—“Pull, my little love; pull hard! That’s my brave one! There!”—wiping Nilüfer’s streaming face with a damp cloth, and displaying a tenderness which astonished Féridé in that sharp-tongued, uncompromising person.
The labour was short and violent; there were barely thirty seconds between the recurring pains—which to Féridé, looking on in horrified helplessness, seemed like a series of earthquakes shaking Nilüfer’s body. The doctor arrived precisely five minutes before the baby was born; he studied the patient’s face, and then took her pulse with a slight air of anxiety, Féridé thought, as she stood a little apart, now and again putting another log into the stove, and turning the little garments that hung round it on chairs. It was dark now; Étamine had been sent off some time before to fetch the one lamp from her mother’s house; it cast huge distorted shadows of the doctor’s and Güli’s forms on the ceiling, as they bent over the bed, doing mysterious things, while Nilüfer’s unending moans rose, at last, to a crescendo of shrieks. Quite suddenly the shrieking ceased, and into the silence came the sound of vigorous slappings; after a moment or two a new voice was uplifted, in á loud sharp wail. Another human being had entered the world, and appeared to dislike it from the outset.
“That’s my mannikin!” Güli exclaimed triumphantly. “Féridé Hanim, quickly fetch the hot water, I beg of you. Nilüfer Hanim, my darling
, you have a son!—a splendid son, to follow his father and his grandfather.”
Féridé hastened down to the kitchen for the big pewter pots of hot water; as she returned with them across the courtyard, Orhan and his guests came in by the street-door. Busy as she was, she had not troubled to put on her çarşaf—she carried her jars swiftly into the house, and then called from the door, sofdy and imperiously—“Orhan! One moment, if you please.”
He hurried to her. “What is it, my Life? Is dinner ready?”
“It will be, soon; Sitaré Hanim is preparing it. A son has just been born to Ahmet and Nilüfer—you must excuse me, my husband; I must take these upstairs.”
“Well, this is good news! I will tell our guests; they will understand. Is all well?”
“I hope so. Oh Orhan, it has been terrible for her!”
“Ahmet will be happy. What is better than having a son? It is worth some pain in travail. Congratulate our sister for me,” Orhan replied airily.
Up in the bedroom, Féridé found the doctor holding Nilüfer’s wrist with a worried expression. Güli wiped the baby hurriedly with warm water, bundled it up anyhow in the shawls, without troubling to dress it; then she dumped it in the cradle, and hastened to join him at the bedside. Nilüfer was lying with her eyes closed, her face waxy white. The doctor now made a brief examination—’Yes, it is a bleeding,” he said to Güli. “Féridé Hanim, I must have some cold water—the coldest possible—and some cloths. Has your husband any brandy, by chance?”
Actually Orhan had that most unusual thing, a bottle of brandy; Mustafa Kemal had given it to him on their night of celebrations after the victory of Sakarya. “Yes, there is brandy,” she said. “Which first, that or the water?”
“The brandy.”
She ran to fetch it. It was kept in the dining-room, where Orhan and his friends were now beginning their dinner. Féridé had mislaid her çarşaf in all the hurry and confusion; she opened the door, behind which rose sounds of talk and loud laughter, a little way, and called through it urgendy—“Orhan! One moment, I beseech you.”
He rose and came to the door. “What is it?”
“I must have the brandy for Nilüfer.”
“Is she ill?”
“I do not know—she looks ghastly. But the doctor asks for it.”
Excusing himself to his guests, he fetched the bottle, uncorked it, and brought it to the door.
“And a glass, and a spoon,” Féridé said, and darted upstairs again. As she entered the room she heard Güli exclaim—“Allah be merciful! She is going!”
“No,” the doctor said. “Ah, you have it.” He snatched the bottle, poured a little brandy into the spoon, and raising the girl with one hand, tipped the liquid into her mouth. Nilüfer gulped, gasped, coughed, and opened her eyes.
“That is better,” the doctor said. “And the cold water?”
Féridé ran downstairs again. Out in the dark yard, where the air was icy under the immense glitter of the autumn stars, she dropped the bucket into the well, and started to haul it up again by the glow of light from the open kitchen door. Sitaré, hearing the echoing splash, came running out.
“What is it? What are you doing there, Féridé Hanim?”
“The doctor wants cold water—very cold,” the girl replied.
“But, in Allah’s name, then take it from the jars! It is freezing here above, and in the well it is warmer,” the practical woman said, moving over to the group of great earthenware vessels, filled by Temel, which stood by the kitchen door, looking for all the world like something out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. As she filled a pewter jug—“What is it? A bleeding?” she asked.
“Yes. Oh Sitaré Hanim, she looks so white and ill,” said poor Féridé.
“Ah, she is weakly! Now, I will carry this up for you,” said the good soul, who was longing for an excuse to get into the bedroom and see the baby. “The dinner was good, eh?” she chattered on as they went upstairs. “The turkey was perfect; a noble bird! And I made my special stuffing, of chestnuts with herbs. And the sauce!—and the salad! Ah, Ibrahim always says I am a witch with salads!”
In the sick-room she handed the can of water to Güli, and hurried to the cradle, where she unwrapped the baby to admire it. “Ah, the little man-child! Oh, what a boy! Listen to his voice!” For the baby, objecting violently to this disturbance, gave vent to a series of cries with lusty vigour.
While Sitaré crowed above the cradle with biblical joy, Féridé stood watching Nilüfer’s face as Güli Hanim and the doctor wrung out cloths in the cold water, and applied them to her body. She looked entirely peaceful, as if in another world already—but so white and bloodless. The doctor kept grumbling and muttering to himself as he worked: “She should be in hospital; she should have oxygen and strychnine. But we have no hospitals here, nor drugs; nothing!—we live like the animals in this place!” “She should never have had it here—she should have gone to Istanbul in time, and had it there. Ankara is no place for such as her.” And the thorny Rose, catching his mutterings, answered angrily that Ankara was a splendid place!—but did not cease her energetic ministrations.
Between them they saved her, though the struggle lasted most of the night. Orhan came tip-toeing to the door several times for news, and Sitaré forced Féridé to go down to the kitchen and partake of some of the turkey and the notable salad. Güli would not think of leaving her patient, and one of Féridé’s last tasks was to drag in a mattress and make up a bed on the floor for the faithful Rose.
Nilüfer lived, but she had little strength, and no milk. During the next thirty-six hours Güli again and again put the baby to the breast, where it sucked and tugged with energy, for it was a vigorous little thing—only to let go, after a time, with an angry wail of frustration. Search was made for a foster-mother, but fruitlessly; all the men had been at the war for so long that there were hardly any babies about, and in any case most of the young women were at the front. At last recourse was had to the bottle, in Ankara something almost unknown; the doctor produced a solitary and rather ancient teat through which goat’s milk, diluted with water, was administered to the baby. This seemed to be successful. Nilüfer adored the little mite from the outset, and insisted on holding it in the crook of her arm and giving it the bottle herself, weak as she was; she was wretchedly ashamed at being unable to nurse it. Güli and Féridé tried to cheer her up, pointing out how ill she had been; but it was no good. “I am a useless creature,” she kept saying; “I was never fit to be his wife.”
But after about five weeks, when Nilüfer was at last beginning to get up, and the baby was sometimes brought down to the sitting-room to lie in its cradle near the stove, suddenly it got ill with some form of acute gastritis. Nilüfer, distracted, showed the green slimy motions to Güli Hanim, who said it was nothing, a small disorder—it would pass. But it did not pass. The doctor was sent for and pronounced it to be a form of diarrhoea—which indeed the women could have told him themselves; he ordered dill-water. This did no good; the tiny creature, obviously in “pain, roared incessandy. The doctor came again—“Ah, it should have glucose,” he said gloomily. But in all Ankara there was no glucose, nor any form of patent baby-food. Féridé felt almost a hatred of such a barbarous place as she watched the baby getting weaker and weaker, and the mother more and more distraught—the sense of utter helplessness was horrible. At her suggestion they tried sugar and boiled water, but nothing was of any use. Obviously the baby had picked up some germ, either from the goats’ milk or from that appalling rubber teat. The poor little creature turned now, with a weary wail, from the bottle that had poisoned it; its angry roars of hunger diminished till they became faint whimpers. In a despair past imagining Nilüfer held the tiny thing in her arms night and day, talking to it, willing it to live, till Féridé wept to hear her. And then one evening, while the young mother still cradled it in her lap, Güli came in from cooking a meal for her neglected and long-suffering husband in the house below the wall, and went up as
usual to peep at the child—after one glance she laid a hand on Nilüfer’s shoulder.
“Nilüfer Hanim, my darling, give him to me. He is dead,” she said gently.
“He is not! He is not! He is sleeping, that is all,” Nilüfer almost shrieked, clutching the child. “Do not disturb him, Güli Hanim; sleep is good for him.”
But nothing would ever disturb the baby again.
Chapter Sixteen
Ahmet managed to come home on leave when he heard of the baby’s death, and did everything he could to console his wife, comforting her with a gentle patience that astonished Féridé. His own grief at the death of his little son was very keen, though mostly he kept it to himself; secretly, almost shyly, he sought out his sister and questioned her endlessly about the child—how had he looked? Whom was he like? When—“Would he have been tall, do you think?” he asked one day, Féridé cried—she could not help it. “Oh, do not cry, my sister,” he said, fondling her. “Please God, we shall have another son, when Nilüfer is stronger again. Take care of her—though I cannot thank you enough for what you have done for her already.”
“I wish I could have done more,” Féridé said, wiping her eyes. “But really, my brother, it is not easy in this place—one cannot even keep warm!” “Except here,” she said, with a little laugh—they were talking in the kitchen, where Féridé spent most of her time; she was peeling vegetables, while the young man sat on the table, his uniform and shining boots and spurs looking very out of place among the pots and pans. He laughed, too, and for a few minutes they chatted together in the ease and intimacy that is special to brothers and sisters. To Ahmet Féridé could confess what she would never have dreamed of admitting to Orhan, how wearisome she found the cold, the dark, the discomfort of that second winter, with all the charm of novelty long since worn off, and conditions harder than ever, without Kezban to help her.