‘Wait. Give me a moment,’ she blurts out through a mouthful of blonde hair. She speaks schoolgirl French with an Eastern European accent. ‘Who is going to buy this moth-eaten old rag anyhow?’
‘Quiet,’ comes the reply, also in French, from inside the room. ‘It is my father’s favourite. We cannot let him hear us.’
As the rug snakes its way into the hall the door opens wide to reveal a small study with an oak desk and captain’s chair. On one end of the desk is a brass microscope surrounded by teetering stacks of glass slides. The study walls are lined with half-empty bookcases, the gaps like forgotten moments or stolen memories. The rug is not the first thing to have been excised from this collection. Nor will it be the last.
Ayshe stands in the doorway clad in a long fawn dress and coarse cotton scarf. She is strikingly beautiful. Her grace, the poised way she holds her head high and her lilting French betray her privileged upbringing. Despite this, she labours without complaint.
Struggling to get a good grip on it, Natalia drops the other end of the rug.
Ayshe laughs and exclaims, ‘You are like a drunken sailor. You keep steering me the wrong way!’
‘Do you speak this way to all your hotel guests?’ Natalia asks.
The Turkish woman replies with a smile, ‘Yes. Come on! Pick it up.’
‘So much bother! I wouldn’t give you a piastre for it.’
‘It is silk, Natalia,’ Ayshe explains in a whisper. ‘The highest quality, from Baluchistan.’
The Russian woman grins lewdly. ‘It reminds me of a man I had from Baluchistan. He nearly split me in two!’
‘I don’t want to hear!’ Ayshe says, feigning embarrassment and trying to quell her laughter.
‘Ayshe Hanim, this is not a time of silk,’ explains Natalia, gently. ‘It is a time of bread. That is what everyone is queuing up for. You can’t eat silk carpets. You should hang on to it.’
‘I’ll take what they give me. I don’t have a choice.’
Ayshe casts her emerald eyes along the corridor and listens for the shuffle of her father’s slippers on the boards. All clear.
‘They are only things, Natalia. Just things . . . Now, go left,’ she whispers. Natalia goes right. ‘No, your left.’ They choke on their laughter as they edge towards the staircase with the rug hanging limply between them.
Natalia teeters on the steps, only the weight of the carpet keeping her from tumbling backwards down the first flight and through a wooden screen.
‘Careful. If I roll an ankle I might have to spend the rest of the week on my back.’
The two women look at each other from opposite ends of the rug, worlds apart yet united in compromise. The young Turkish beauty selling off her family’s belongings and the older, overdressed Russian widow bartering with the only thing she has left to her. They smile, a gentle smile of understanding and affection, before bursting into uncontrollable laughter.
‘On your back. Oh, you poor thing,’ Ayshe manages to blurt out.
‘Could be worse,’ replies Natalia as she drops her end and sits on the steps to gather herself.
The front door rattles. The two women stand and smooth their dresses with their palms. Natalia straightens her wig with a tug and automatically curls her fingers through the side locks. A serious man in his late thirties, wearing a burgundy fez, a suit and a self-important moustache, lets himself in. He swoops across the foyer to the counter with a proprietary air and speaks in Turkish without raising his eyes or his voice.
‘I heard you two chirping from the street. What if there had been guests, my dear?’
‘I don’t see any, do you, Omer?’ replies Ayshe flatly, the light mood ruptured. ‘I asked Natalia to help me.’
Natalia retreats upstairs, knowing where this conversation is heading. ‘It is fine, Hanim. Now the big man of the house is here you don’t need my help.’
As part of his morning routine Omer glances at the guest register, closes it, and then checks the keys. There is only one missing from its hook, the same one as always.
‘That Russian woman brings shame on this household,’ he blurts out, loud enough for Natalia to hear before she reaches the sanctuary of her room. She doesn’t speak fluent Turkish but Ayshe knows she will recognise the disapproving tone.
Ayshe cuts Omer off before he has a chance to wind up.
‘You know we don’t have the luxury to judge. She brings in money. Sometimes it is that simple.’ She points to the buckled rug on the stairs and deflects him. ‘Here, will you help me with this?’
Omer softens, genuinely concerned.
‘What next, Ayshe? The beds? The sheets? How do you propose paying the creditors when there is nothing left to sell?’
He holds her gaze as he takes off his suit jacket and places it on a hook. ‘Ayshe, what then?’
She shrugs and the corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly in good-natured resignation. It is in Allah’s hands. She has no real plan and knows it. She presents a good front to the world, but in her quietest moments, she struggles to control the quavering sense of anxiety that has embedded itself deep in her heart. Allah may have something in mind for her, but she wishes he would give her a hint of what that might be.
‘Leave this to me,’ sighs Omer as he shoulders the carpet and carries it out through the breakfast salon and into the courtyard.
Ayshe stands alone in the foyer and looks at the glass evil eye hanging on the wall, its black pupil set in a pool of indigo blue and pearlescent white. Momentarily she imagines herself drifting in a great expanse of water halfway between Europe and Asia. She treads water, waiting for the tide to turn in her favour, but every Stambouli knows the currents in the Bosphorus are fickle and treacherous.
Suddenly what sounds like the Sultan’s Army crashes through the front door. Orhan. Despite herself, she smiles. Her eleven-year-old son is one of the few things remaining in her life that still give her joy. He is an only child and it is a mystery to her how one small boy can make such a racket. His eyes gleam with a level of unbridled excitement usually reserved for such occasions as watching a firework display; a rare event these days.
Scarcely able to breathe, Orhan runs to his mother and wraps his arms around her waist while he blurts out his news. ‘Mum, mum. I found a foreigner. An Englisher.’
She holds Orhan tightly and inhales the scent of sea air and spices from his hair. She pictures the route he has come home by, along the wharf at Eminönü and through the Egyptian Bazaar, running up the hill past men smoking outside the coffee house.
‘My clever little man. I could eat you,’ she replies, now also excited.
Ayshe looks up as a long shadow crosses the stoop, preceding a tall, broad-shouldered man who steps through the open door.
Connor removes his hat and wipes his brow with his forearm. He is sweaty and puffing from the ascent up the hill and still struggles with a debilitating sense of displacement. He hesitates as his eyes adjust to the soft light, letting them wander over the faded glory of the Troya. This place has seen better days, that much is clear. He spots Arabic calligraphy on the wall beside a photograph of a man sporting a moustache, uniform and fez, but the hotel does not feel as alien as Connor had feared. Almost European, he dares to think. Although in truth his expectations are grounded in exotic bedtime tales of harems, crusades and caves of riches that open on command. For him, the Constantinople he has passed through is a closer match to how he imagined this city. But he has no reference point for the modern – if somewhat down-at-heel – hotel he has just entered, far less the breathtakingly beautiful woman standing before him.
The woman seems to sense his hesitation. ‘Hello. You are welcome. I am Orhan’s mother, Ayshe Hanim.’
The boy wriggles away from her. Her warm smile cuts through the fog of Connor’s grief and apprehension like a spotlight. As Ayshe steps towards him, smoothing her slim-fitting dress and tucking a stray lock of hair back under her scarf, this Australian farmer is completely disarmed.
/> ‘Yes. Ah, I need a room . . . Your boy said you . . .’
Ayshe smiles. ‘You are from England?’
‘I am from Australia.’
‘Australia?’ Ayshe bristles, visibly thrown by the revelation. Her warmth evaporates like mist on morning breath. She tilts her chin up defensively and raises her eyebrows. ‘I am sorry, Orhan has made a mistake. We have no rooms free.’
Connor looks past her at the board of room keys behind the reception desk and then glares at Orhan. The boy looks puzzled; confused.
Dumping his case on the floor, Connor raises his voice, fatigue and pent-up frustration threatening to bubble over. ‘Your son has dragged me halfway across this wretched city with the promise of a room –’
Before he has the opportunity to finish the sentence, a smiling man appears from the adjoining salon and pushes past Ayshe. ‘Welcome to the Troy Hotel, sir. Where Achilles himself would have stayed – if he had visited Constantinople.’
He pauses in his patter, anticipating a laugh that does not materialise. ‘We are busy but I am sure we can find you a room.’ He opens the hotel ledger and runs his finger down the page.
‘Ah, yes. You are in luck. The boy was right. Our best room is now vacant. Mr . . .?’
‘Connor. Joshua Connor.’
‘Welcome, I am Mister Omer. Can I have your travel document, please? I will register you immediately, while the room is still available.’ He smiles, pen poised over the book.
As Connor hands over his passport Ayshe spits her protest at Omer in Turkish. The man scribbles quickly and responds in Turkish through a frozen smile. He hands Connor his passport and a key. ‘You are most welcome, Mr Connor.’ Connor has no idea what has been said, but feels less than welcome.
‘Your room is upstairs and on the left. The break of fast is at eight o’clock in the morning. Would you like for her to bring you coffee or tea now?’ He nods to Ayshe.
‘Thank you, no,’ replies Connor. He picks up his case and heads for the stairs, one hand on the balustrade as he turns, recalling Orhan’s sales pitch on the docks. ‘Your son mentioned hot water and a bath.’
Orhan’s jaw drops and his olive complexion blanches. As the father of three sons who were known to be liberal with the truth at times, Connor recognises the shamefaced look immediately. Not for the first time today Connor concedes that the kid has had the better of him, but he’s too exhausted to make a fuss. ‘No worries, it’ll be just like home, then.’
Omer is not so forgiving. He cuffs the boy over the back of the head and snaps at the boy in English, apparently for Connor’s benefit, ‘It is shameful to lie. You are a spoilt mother’s boy!’ Orhan cringes in the corner of the lobby, tears welling in his eyes.
Connor intervenes, almost a reflex. ‘No, it doesn’t matter. Really. I probably misunderstood.’ Orhan may have led him a merry chase this morning, but he feels a strange camaraderie with the bright-eyed and persistent child.
The Turkish man bows his head and holds his right hand to his chest. ‘Sincere apologies, Mr Connor. It is not our way. You are our guest here, and it is our duty to make you welcome.’ He points to Connor’s suitcase and cuffs Orhan once more, lest he missed the point. ‘Orhan will help you with your bag. It is his duty.’
With his head bowed in shame, eyes fixed on his shuffling shoes, Orhan leads Connor up the stairs to the room. His chatter has dried up and the case the boy sprinted with through the streets as if it were as light as a feather now suddenly seems laden with bricks. They approach Room 6 and Orhan slides the key into the lock.
‘This your room.’
Connor takes his suitcase from the boy and pushes his way into a sparsely furnished room. He fishes a coin out of his pocket and presses it into Orhan’s hand. The remorseful boy tries to hand it back but Connor nods and smiles.
‘You seem to know where everything is around here,’ says Connor. ‘Tomorrow, can you take me to the War Office? I will pay you.’
Orhan’s face breaks into a broad grin and his hooded eyes reclaim their spark. ‘Yes you will.’
Connor watches Orhan race back along the hall and disappear down the stairs, three at a time. He wonders if you are still a father when you have no sons left.
Ayshe swings a wicker carpet beater in a fury. Decades of accumulated dirt explode in smoky clouds from the weathered Baluch carpet, which is suspended over a clothesline in the hotel courtyard. She whacks at it with impotent rage, tears of frustration cutting runnels through the dust that has settled on her cheeks. Finally she steps back from the rug, her anger beginning to abate.
She stands in what remains of a magnificent garden surrounded by an ageless stone wall. When this building was her childhood home Ayshe would help the gardener, Ali the Bent, weed the beds and plant seeds and bulbs that erupted in a riot of colour long after she had forgotten them. Tulips, hyacinths, narcissus, irises. It was in this garden that she first learned that miracles seldom happen without someone getting their hands dirty.
The courtyard has gone to seed, in every way. Small, tenacious tufts of grass appear between the flagstones, and tree roots growing beneath the paving lift the stones erratically. A build-up in its pipes means that the fountain that once spurted and gurgled merrily during hot, dusty summers has slowed to a trickle and does little more than stain its marble basin with streaks of rust. Wicker chairs, stacked in a far corner, quietly unravel.
Ayshe has fond memories of the garden in its prime, small tables set neatly with lace-edged napkins and delicate china cups as guests reclined in the dappled shade of the stately trees. But beauty has made way for necessity. Tethered to a tree is a nanny goat, named Şafak for a new dawn. Orhan helps milk her each morning. Tomato seedlings are staked along the back wall and cucumbers wind their way amongst the endive and Greek lettuces.
In the time of Sultan Abdulhamid II, Ayshe’s father would often drink coffee and read the newspaper out here in the mornings before heading off to work. This morning he sits on a stool throwing seed to chickens that scratch around his ankles. He is dressed in a faded three-piece suit, a fez and leather slippers. From under his thick eyebrows he eyes his daughter suspiciously. As Ayshe takes a deep breath and prepares to launch one last violent assault on the carpet, he pipes up.
‘I know this carpet from somewhere. Pasha . . . Pasha . . .’ He struggles to recall the name. ‘A pasha gave it to me. His son. I cured his son.’
Ayshe pauses. ‘Noblemen are in short supply nowadays, Father.’
‘I haven’t seen it for years. Where did you find it?’ Ibrahim asks as he nurses a hen and absent-mindedly begins to pull feathers from its tail. The bird squawks and flaps its wings in alarm but Ibrahim holds its claws and continues to pluck.
Ayshe smiles sadly to herself and gently takes the bird from him. ‘We haven’t killed it yet, Father.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Connor sits on the edge of his double bed in trousers and a singlet. There is a reassuring familiarity about the room, which, like the foyer, is unexpectedly European. It is decorated with care and restraint: a hardwood bedhead; a tallboy with turned legs topped with a delicately embroidered runner and a small silver salver bearing a heavy, cut-crystal tumbler and a decanter of fine Scotch whisky; bedside tables with marble tops and teardrop handles. The drapes are made of lace and the mattress is draped in an embroidered woollen bedspread. He could be in any Continental capital were it not for the lilting song that at this moment ripples across the city and through his open window. It is not one voice but a multitude, a breath between each call as they echo one another. For him it is strange-sounding and arcane; the only thing he can liken it to is the distant pealing of a bell.
Spread out on the bed is a hand-drawn map of the Dardanelles, copied by Connor from a newspaper back in Rainbow. In black ink are the foreign places that became household names in Australia during the war, for the very worst reasons: Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, Hell Spit, Krithia, the Nek, Lone Pine. The letters ‘A’, ‘H’ and ‘E’, one for
each son, appear in various locations with dates scribbled next to them as Connor has tried to trace his boys’ movements over the four months they were at Gallipoli. Art’s diary lies open and Connor reads, checking and crosschecking against the map.
There is a light knock on the door. Connor slips his arms into a shirt, pulls it up his back and hastily begins working on the buttons. He opens the door half-expecting to see the boy grinning at him on the other side. Instead it is Ayshe, struggling to hold a copper basin of hot water in a towel. The steam has made her face flush and a tiny rivulet of sweat trickles down her forehead and soaks into her eyebrow.
‘Please, allow me,’ says Connor, reaching for the basin instinctively.
Ayshe breathes heavily with the effort but refuses his help. ‘It is very hot. Be careful, please.’ She sidles carefully past him and deposits the basin on top of the chest of drawers.
Connor immediately regrets the fuss he made downstairs. ‘Really, there was no need.’
‘My son is no liar,’ Ayshe states firmly. ‘He promised you.’
Connor smiles, a little bemused by her prickly demeanour.
‘He seems like a very resourceful lad.’
‘Yes, he is,’ she replies, softening slightly. ‘You have sons too?’
Connor’s answer is unexpectedly abrupt, even for him. ‘Yes. Three.’ He retreats to the window, suddenly uncomfortable with Ayshe, for being Turkish, a woman, a mother, beautiful, prying, defiant – and for being in his room.
‘What’s that noise?’ he asks as the call to prayer trails off.
‘This is your first time in Constantinople, Mr Connor?’ she asks, rhetorically.
‘What are they selling?’ he asks, to remove any doubt.
‘God,’ she quips. ‘It’s a call to prayer.’
‘The bathroom is down the hall when you want to bathe.’ She casts an eye over the books and papers on the bed and spots the ornately bound blue volume of The Arabian Nights.
‘Your guide book is out of date, I’m afraid,’ she says dryly.
The Water Diviner Page 6