He finds his feet and weaves his way through the recumbent figures towards a wooden door at the opposite side of the room. Limping, he reaches for a stick that rests against one wall and opens the door, flooding the room with early morning light. Squinting his glacier-blue eyes against the sun, Art stumbles into the street, leaning heavily on his shepherd’s crook.
Roosters crow to welcome the morning, their cries echoing along the narrow, dusty lanes. Chickens peck at loose grain in the street as a fat white cat with one green and one blue eye sits on a stoop, cleaning itself. An old woman wearing a black dress with a garish fringed scarf wrapped around her head is bent double, sweeping her front step and casting water from a cup like seed to keep the dust down.
Oblivious to the sounds of the town awakening, Art is in a waking dream. He lifts a hand to scratch at the lice that inhabit his matted, light-brown hair. An angry, jagged red scar crosses his forehead, and his trousers – baggy and white in the local style – are stained and ragged, held around his emaciated waist by an A.I.F. webbing belt.
He stops stock still in the middle of the street, spellbound by the sight of a mangy dog so thin her ribs protrude from beneath her matted coat, feeding her three puppies. The dog lies, resigned, beaten, its eyes dim, as the three small dogs fight and tug at her nipples.
An interjection breaks into his reverie. A bovine man leading a donkey laden heavily with fat sheaves of wheat is trying to pass.
‘Watch out! Watch out!’
Art staggers back against the whitewashed stone wall, raising his hands and responding in Turkish. ‘Yeah, all right, brother. All right. Keep your bloody shirt on.’
The ground undulates beneath his feet. Slumping back against the wall as the man shakes his head and pushes his way past, Art shuts his eyes, feeling the wet night chill in the stones seeping into his spine as the rays from the morning sun warm his face. A noisome stench cuts through his opiate stupor. Across the lane, a young woman uses a huge wooden paddle to chop and turn bricks of manure, drying them in the sun for fuel. By her feet, a basket woven of dried reeds is slick with the remains of the dung, gathered in her home the night before, to add to the rancid muck – excrement from bird, beast and human alike.
He turns and starts walking up the hill to escape the foul miasma. Carefully placing one foot in front of the other, Art tries to maintain his purchase on the slippery and uneven cobblestones, one hand reaching out to steady himself against the wall, the other clutching the top of his wooden stick.
Another narrow street intersects the lane. The air here is full of the warm and yeasty smell of freshly baked bread. Through a plate-glass window, a stack of fat, golden brown loaves the shape of lemons teeters precariously. Outside the shop, a group of women stand in a cluster, waiting to be served by the flour-covered baker. Their heads are covered with brightly coloured scarves fringed with delicate lace edges. They laugh and chatter, their nut-brown faces deeply creased with wrinkles, enjoying the reprieve from the day’s chores.
As Art limps past, the baker leans out from the stoop of his shop, raising his hand in greeting and calling him over. The young man sways and stumbles as he diverts his course, shuffling over to the bakery door where the women recoil and move aside as he passes. He takes the broken heel of bread offered by the baker, and acknowledges the gift with a hand raised to his brow.
‘Health be on your hands.’
The baker smiles kindly, nods his head and responds with the customary salutation. ‘Health be on your head.’ The irony of the blessing is never lost on Art.
He slumps down in the doorway of the neighbouring shop and sinks his teeth into the crunchy crust, savouring the still warm, cloud-soft bread, and is surprised to find his stomach rumbling. He chews, rolling the salty-sweet dough around his mouth. Art’s abject existence relies entirely upon the benevolence of others; he is a familiar presence in the streets of Afion and he survives on the alms offered to him by the shopkeepers and those who live in the small houses that line the streets – small gifts of food, clothes and the occasional coin. As the years have passed, his life force has dimmed to a flicker; his physical needs have been pared down so utterly through deprivation that sensations like hunger and fatigue no longer register on his blunted consciousness. He swallows, feeling the last of the bread passing down his throat and into his stomach.
A sound, clear in the morning air.
At first, Art thinks the pounding comes from inside his own head, a rhythmic beat yammering inside his injured skull. But then the haunting trill of the ney flute joins the drum. He leans on his crook and drags his body upright. Standing, cocking his ear, he begins to walk, trying to follow the direction of the sounds but at the same time wondering if the melody is real or a figment of his addled imagination.
He turns a corner; the music swells. To his left, a low stairway leads to a stone arch that opens out into a large terrace encircled by a high stone wall. The terrace is paved in tiny black and white polished pebbles painstakingly arranged in a chequerboard pattern. Here the drumbeats are louder, more persistent, as they echo around the four sides of the courtyard.
Mounting the wide stairway, Art treads warily and clutches the crumbly stone doorway with feeble fingers. The pebble paving is difficult to negotiate; the hard, rounded stones press uncomfortably into the soles of his feet, and his stick is next to useless on the uneven surface. At the apex of the courtyard is a massive building, its entrance graced by a colonnaded portico and the long wall facing Art punctuated by large arched windows. Through the windows, he can see movement. He edges towards the portico and approaches the door of the building, the sound of the music growing louder as he advances on the massive, carved timber doors that stand ajar.
The room is large, unfurnished. Beneath a soaring ceiling seven men are spaced like chess pieces in a ring on the tiled floor. Each spins slowly, rhythmically, arms outstretched at shoulder height, one palm facing the roof, the other the floor, his head tilted towards one shoulder and eyes gently shut. All the men wear long grey tunics with skirts so full they billow in heavy waves as they twirl, reminding Art of the movement of the swell far out to sea. Atop their heads are tall, conical felt hats. In the corner, the musicians, whose rhythmic melody was the siren call that drew Art to this place, sit on small wooden stools, nodding their heads slowly in time with the music. Most peculiarly, not a single man acknowledges Art’s arrival. In their ecstatic state he is invisible to them.
The scene is so improbable that Art is unsure whether or not he is hallucinating. His grasp on reality is fragmenting. The horizon between the real and imagined universe is becoming increasingly porous; motifs and visions often navigate between his opium dreams and the world around him.
He drops his stick to the floor, his senses spinning as he watches the men whirling silently in a trance. Art is drawn to them; like a satellite he is pulled into their orbit. He staggers forwards into the centre of the circle and holds his arms out, closing his eyes as he is transported by the music, spinning and limping in broken mimicry of the dervishes around him.
For a heartbeat, the Sufi trance seizes him and Art is at the centre of his world. But there is no revelation awaiting him. All he sees is a black and hopeless abyss.
The music stops and the dervishes come to a halt.
Art looks up at the ceiling, tears streaming down his face.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Connor sits bolt upright in the dawn light, breathing hard.
‘He is alive!’
Eyes heavy with sleep, Ayshe awakens. She has been lying beside Connor, and fumbles to close her shirt as she sits up beside him.
‘How can you know?’
The clear certainty in Connor’s eyes leaves her in no doubt, and she realises something. ‘But you have always known, haven’t you? That is why you came here.’ At last, Connor’s unwavering determination makes sense. ‘You did not come here chasing ghosts.’
Bending to lace his boots, Connor shakes his head, speaking
as much to himself as to her. ‘Lizzie never believed it. And to me, Arthur never felt dead. Not in the way my Henry and Ed did.’
Connor is interrupted by a sudden loud knock on the hotel’s front door. He and Ayshe freeze like adolescents discovered. There is silence for a moment and then there is another round of hollow pounding that echoes through the foyer and up the stairs. An abrupt and impatient summons follows: ‘Come down now, please, Mr Connor! We have a long walk to the dock!’
Ayshe looks up into Connor’s eyes. ‘You cannot go back.’ They both know that to have come this far only to be frogmarched back onto a steamer bound for Australia is no longer an option.
‘No,’ Connor says with conviction. ‘I won’t go.’
At the entrance, Captain Brindley balls his hand into an angry fist and pummels the door with greater force. True to his word he is here with his men to escort Connor to the wharf, to ensure that the Australian quits Constantinople as instructed.
The pre-dawn air has an edge to it, a crisp cold that scratches like a hundred fishbones at the back of the throat. A British private hops from foot to foot to keep warm. The corporal leans his rifle against the hotel wall and breathes warm fog into his cupped hands while his captain puts his ear to the timber door and listens for any movement inside. The prolonged silence makes Brindley even more agitated. He waits as long as his pride will allow and when he spots a smirk behind his corporal’s cupped palms he explodes.
‘Give me your gun!’ he demands, and begins to bruise the elm door with the corner of the rifle butt. The repeated dull thuds reverberate through the empty foyer but the hotel remains still. Brindley feels like a dog worrying a tortoise that has retreated into its shell. And right now, he looks just as ridiculous.
Connor’s impudence is staggering to Brindley. It confirms everything he despises about the colonials and their attitude to authority. It is no wonder that Anzac soldiers have such a flagrant disregard for rank, when they are all born of convict stock.
Brindley prides himself on being the product of a tradition steeped in glory and history, where rank and postings are purchased or come as a birthright. The British Army is founded on the twin principles of discipline and obedience. An order is an order, no matter how inane or misguided it might seem to the rank and file. Brindley and those around him know that their orders are part of a grand scheme in which every regiment plays a part, so he and his ilk obey unquestioningly even if he does not fully understand the intended consequence of his actions. It has worked this way for centuries. The cogs and wheels of the British military machine must work in perfect concert, or the entire framework will disintegrate. That is why the punishment for disobeying an officer is so severe: a recalcitrant soldier will face court martial and execution, in the most serious of cases. If men falter and the foundations crumble, the entire army can fall.
The colonials have a very different view, possibly because they are a volunteer army. Brindley and his peers refer to them as the ‘irregulars’, which the Anzacs seem intent on taking as a compliment. These men trek halfway across the world and go to war as if it is a great big adventure, with every expectation of returning home to their families and real lives in one piece, when the job is done.
Freedom of choice and the expression of will mean everything to the Australian soldiers. To them, Brindley has learned, respect is not a given, it must be earned. A man with a superior rank cannot automatically expect to enjoy due deference from the colonial soldiers in his command. At Gallipoli and in France, Brindley encountered Australians who willingly followed their officers to the gates of hell and back, but only those commanders who placed a high value on their men’s safety and who would never send them into battle if they weren’t also prepared to join the fight. He read it time and time again in the letters he censored. They highest praise an Australian soldier could give his officer was that he was ‘game’ and ‘led from the front.’ It was no surprise when the Anzacs lost so many officers.
If Brindley is honest with himself, what galls him the most is that despite, or perhaps as a result of, this ingrained resentment of authority, the colonials make a formidable fighting force. It was certainly only their bull-headed grit that kept them from being swept off the cliffs of Gallipoli by the Turks. Their refusal to follow orders meant they concocted some singular plans of attack on the spur of the moment that often took the enemy by surprise. But it was not just here in Turkey. On the Hindenburg Line, it was quickly realised that the most effective way of exposing the chinks in the German defences was to let the Australian ‘irregulars’ off their leash.
The Anzacs learned some hard lessons on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Their trials had become legendary. Even Brindley had heard about the Light Horse at the Nek, annihilated in the August Offensive. It was only a few hundred men – nothing in the context of the war – but he knows that the obscenity of the squandered young lives still sticks in their collective national craw, and for that, the Anzacs blame the British.
So in France and Belgium, where the Allied solution to the stalemate was to order wave after wave of young men to throw themselves at the German machine guns, the Australians would simply refuse to go. The cavalier flouting of authority trickled down from the very top of the Australian command. In letters home, their officers admitted to sending orders back to British Command, stalling, querying and ultimately refusing to send their men over the top when they thought they didn’t stand a fighting chance.
Brindley remembers having a run-in with an Australian officer who threatened to shoot any British soldier he saw retreating from the village of Villers-Bretonneux, as a deserter. He ordered his men to do likewise. Brindley objected, pointing out to the Australian officer that there was a significant difference between retreating and deserting.
‘It’s not up to you to play judge and executioner. There are rules,’ Brindley insisted.
‘Keep your shirt on, mate. I haven’t had to shoot anyone yet.’ The Australian smiled and then added, ‘So the message must be getting through, eh?’
Villers-Bretonneux had been a turning point in the war, and the Australians’ actions had made the difference between victory and an embarrassing retreat. The very thing that had infuriated Brindley about the Australian soldiers on the Western Front – the same thing that was making his blood boil as he stood here in the cold, dawn light outside the Otel Troya hammering on the front door – was what made these men such phenomenal soldiers. They would fight to the death for each other and for their cursed pride, and when issued with an order, they were almost always guaranteed to do the exact opposite.
He bellows, ‘Connor, I am losing my patience.’
Still nothing.
‘Break the damn door down!’
A thickset private with a rugby player’s bullocky neck steps forward. He takes a short run-up and puts his shoulder to the door, which rattles on its hinges but doesn’t give an inch. The door has been here for two hundred years and is not going to capitulate that easily.
Connor pushes his arms into his jacket sleeves and checks his pocket for Art’s diary, now the most precious object in his possession. His eyes settle on Ayshe. She is a vision: dark hair tousled from sleep, her green eyes wide, startled by the racket from downstairs. Her tongue rests against her top lip in concentration as she fumbles with the last of the tiny buttons on her silk blouse. She looks up, and their eyes meet in mute acknowledgement of so many things left unsaid, so many things left undone.
Ayshe feels a deep pang of regret. If the British were not hammering on her door, if she could overcome her crippling sense of propriety, she would give almost anything to succumb to desire, to feel this man on top of her, inside her. But it is beyond contemplation. It is something she can never – will never – surrender to.
Connor opens his mouth to speak but instead a sigh escapes and he finds himself speechless. He feels an unmistakable warmth filling his chest as they share a sad smile, the gentle flowering of a bittersweet love pierced by the cruel dart of
inevitable loss. He is, and will always remain, grateful for the evening spent in Ayshe’s arms, but now he knows he must learn to hold on to that memory, free from regret and without any need for atonement.
The pounding from downstairs is louder now, more insistent, the timber beams running beneath the floor transmitting the heavy thud as the front door is assaulted.
‘Quickly, the roof,’ whispers Ayshe.
She opens the bedroom door to find Orhan standing in the hallway, still in his cotton nightshirt and rubbing eyes puffy from sleep. The racket downstairs has woken him; the rest of the household won’t be far behind. Ayshe puts her arm over his shoulder and draws her son to her side. He is momentarily surprised to see Connor in his mother’s room, but does not question what somehow feels right.
‘Connor Bey is leaving, Orhan. You must say goodbye,’ she tells her son in English.
‘When will you come back?’ asks the boy.
Connor kneels down, takes Orhan’s hand in his and shakes it. It is answer enough. Tears well in the boy’s eyes as drowsiness gives way to grief. Yesterday, Orhan felt his father’s shade slip through his fingers like smoke, and now he must face losing this strong, kind man who has somehow made him feel safe again. When he is with his mother and Connor, Orhan feels that he has found a way to keep his head above water again.
The boy throws his arms around Connor’s powerful neck and squeezes him tightly.
‘Goodbye, Connor Bey. Come back.’
Connor smiles and smooths Orhan’s ruffled hair. ‘You will be a great man – just like your father.’
They hear a dull thud and the groan of splintering wood downstairs. Orhan starts and clutches his mother’s arm.
‘It is all right, Orhan. Now, you must be strong. You are a man now,’ Ayshe reassures her son. ‘Go and open the door before they break it down.’ As Orhan heads along the hallway she adds, ‘And stall them if you can.’ He gives her a cheeky smile and bounds down the stairs.
The Water Diviner Page 21