The Water Diviner

by Andrew Anastasios

  As the train approaches their hiding spot, it slows to a crawl. Counting the carriages, Hasan shouts to Jemal, ‘There! Those two!’

  Jemal scrambles up the embankment to the track and trots beside the passing train, seizing the unsecured doors of the empty livestock carriages and sliding them open. He vaults inside the second carriage and signals the other men – all is clear. In a rush, they scurry up the gravel slope and grab the edges of the carriages, hoisting timber crates of guns and ammunition on board and tossing their packs up onto the wooden floor before leaping onto the train. Hasan waits until all his men are aboard before he turns to Connor.

  ‘It’s not too late to change your mind, Australian.’

  Connor doesn’t hesitate. ‘Not a chance. I don’t have anywhere else to go now.’

  ‘If you insist.’ Hasan waves Connor forwards and they clamber up the embankment and make a dash for the second carriage. ‘Come on, then.’

  The air is implausibly crisp and clear as the train begins its slow ascent into the wooded mountains to the east of the town of Izmit.

  The slatted doors of the railway car Connor is in are fully open on both sides, allowing cool air to circulate in the carriage in gentle waves, a relief after the heavy and humid air of the port. After leaving Izmit, the soldiers had changed out of their peasants’ clothes and put their uniforms back on. Now, some of them sit with their legs dangling over the sides, quietly smoking and chatting. Others relax inside the carriage, backs leaning against the stack of crates that sit in one corner, cleaning their guns or seizing the opportunity to sleep, caps tilted over their eyes to shut out the light filtering through the open slats.

  Connor sits on the side of the train that faces the downward slope of the mountain, watching the sparkling waters of the Sea of Marmara recede in the distance. He is mesmerised by the verdant forest before him. It is unlike anything he has ever seen before, accustomed as he is to broad, desiccated plains and the tenacious but flinty life forms that manage to survive there. The loamy, rich volcanic soil tumbling down these craggy slopes supports a profusion of living things. Groves of lilac arch above dense mats of bracken and blood-red lilies. Soaring trees form a lush canopy – dark green pine needles, broad emerald plane tree leaves and the scalloped leaves of the oak – that casts dappled golden shadows on the forest floor.

  ‘Tell me, Australian,’ Jemal says, hefting his bulk to the floor to sit beside Connor. ‘What part of the Ottoman Empire did Australia get?’

  ‘None of it. The war was never about land for us.’

  Jemal scoffs. ‘Always it is about land. English get Egypt, Palestine. France gets Syria. Even Italy gets a beach. You don’t get land?’

  ‘We don’t need more land. We’ve got too much of that as it is. Australians didn’t even know where Turkey was before the war. We weren’t fighting for land. We fought for a principle.’ Just saying it makes Connor feel hollow. A generation of Australia’s youth decimated, the country’s coffers stripped.

  A costly principle, indeed.

  Slapping his thigh with mirth, Jemal roars with laughter. ‘You fight. You die. You get nothing. Good principle! We should make business with your country!’ He translates for his fellow fighters who laugh along with him.

  Jemal shakes his head, shouting out to Hasan who lounges against his pack in the corner of the carriage. ‘His whole country must be from the Black Sea!’

  Connor is confused.

  ‘All Turkish people are brave and smart,’ Jemal explains. ‘But not in Black Sea, all people are stupid.’ Without needing any encouragement Jemal launches into a story. ‘Two men in Trabzon, Temel and Dursun. They fight and don’t talk to each other anymore. One day Temel walks past Dursun with goat. “Where are you going with donkey?” Dursun shouts. “It is not donkey, it is goat!” Temel says. “Shut up! I not talking to you. I talking with goat.” See?’ Jemal cackles with laughter. ‘Black Sea people are stupid like Australians!’

  Suddenly, Jemal becomes serious. ‘We did it for two battleships.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We go to war for two battleships. Four million of your pounds. We pay your George King to build us two battleships. He steals our money, and keeps our ships.’ Jemal snaps his fingers in front of Connor’s eyes. ‘That is why Turks help the Kaiser.’

  Connor shakes his head, frowning. ‘The British didn’t do that.’

  From his corner of the carriage, Hasan snorts. ‘They did, as a matter of fact. But it is old news. Governments will always find a reason to go to war.’

  ‘And peasants like me do not need a reason. Being shot at is more exciting than watching sheep.’ Jemal laughs. ‘Me? I like war so I not have to sex my wife anymore.’ He repeats this in Turkish to gales of laughter from his comrades.

  The train surges on through the forest.

  Connor rests his head on a rolled-up hessian sack that smells of crushed oats and chaff dust. He dozes fitfully, lulled to sleep by the train’s rhythmic clatter as it travels along the rails. Through the slats in the side of the carriage, the dappled light of the forest gives way to the white, clean sunlight of the great central Anatolian plateau, and the tracks begin to level out. The train accelerates as it leaves the mountains and starts to cross the wide, grassy plains.

  The carriage begins to heat up as the sun beats down on its roof. Connor shifts, uncomfortable, but still half-asleep, disoriented and groggy.

  A sudden thwack of wood against wood next to his ear startles him awake, and he sits bolt upright.

  Jemal stands, legs apart, with his great mitt of a hand wrapped about the handle of a cricket bat.

  ‘I found this wood in trench at Çanakkale, the same day your Australians ran away. All day, I watch them use it on the beach. Through bombs and bullets. They never stop. I keep it – to remember me of that victory day.’ He holds it in both hands, spinning it over. ‘You tell me. It is a game or a weapon?’

  Connor holds out his hands, smiling. ‘Both, in the right hands. Here, give it to me.’

  A makeshift ball of rolled-up socks and string flies through the air, lobbed by Jemal towards Connor, who stands at one end of the carriage with the bat. Connor swats it away and it flies back to the other end of the railway car where six of the soldiers stand poised to catch it. Many an afternoon playing bush cricket in Rainbow stands Connor in good stead, and he skilfully places the ball at their feet, just out of range of their fingertips or a catch on the full.

  ‘Ha!’ Connor is excessively jubilant. The soldiers laugh, but Jemal glowers, unimpressed. He picks up the ball again and flings a full toss towards Connor’s head. The Australian blocks the shot with the bat. ‘No – that’s not the way. You must use a straight arm. Otherwise it’s a “no ball”.’

  Jemal advances on Connor, indignant. ‘Englishers. Always with rules.’ He reaches for the bat. ‘Give me the stick now.’

  The carriage jolts as the train slows suddenly. Hasan leaps to his feet and moves to the sliding door, briefly looking out before grabbing the handle and hefting it closed.

  ‘Sergeant!’

  He signals to Jemal to close the other. Jemal whips around, responding instinctively to the peremptory tone in Hasan’s voice, and sprints to the other door, glancing out before sliding it closed. Back pressed to the door he addresses Connor, deadpan.

  ‘We still want our battleships.’

  The train is now crawling along at walking pace. Connor detects the heavy stench of ash, smoke and cinders thick in the air. There’s something else, too; something sweet smelling that he cannot identify. He can’t see anything, but intuition tells him whatever is going on outside the carriage isn’t good. Any sense of levity quickly dissipates as Jemal directs the soldiers to ready their weapons. Faces grim, the men slide their rifle bolts and prepare to fire.

  Peering between the narrow slats in the railway car door, Connor catches a glimpse of a village in the middle distance consumed by flames, thick plumes of black smoke rolling in torpid waves into the oth
erwise blue sky. He turns to Hasan. ‘Greeks?’

  Hasan nods, raising his eyebrows. ‘Satan’s Army, the partisans. A special regiment sent ahead to terrorise the villagers. We ruled the Greeks for four hundred years, now they think it is their turn again.’ He takes his pistol from its holster and leans against the side of the carriage, sliding the door ajar slightly to afford a better glimpse of the passing country. Jemal moves to his side and raises his rifle.

  They wait.

  The landscape is a flickering patchwork of smoke and flames.

  The train crawls along the tracks past villagers fleeing the carnage, their faces caked in dust and soot and their meagre possessions on their backs. For a short distance, a woman trudges beside them, her expression a blank mask of shock. She is bent double under the combined load of a baby bound to her back in a papoose and a carrier crammed full of squawking chickens in her arms. Five children walk by her side, hand in hand, tears staining their grimy little faces. A boy pushes a crippled old man along in a handcart. They see very few, if any, fit and able-bodied adult men.

  Inside the carriage, Hasan and his men are silent and grim, their faces set. Connor clenches his fists in impotent rage. He has never been one to watch from the sidelines when others need help. The Mallee has left him no stranger to suffering. He has seen families left destitute from the ravages of drought, fire and flood; and, on one terrible occasion, he witnessed the shotgun murder of a gentle woman and her two daughters at the hands of her alcoholic husband. But he is overwhelmed by indiscriminate misery on this scale. It is almost impossible for him to conceive that other human beings are responsible for this pain. Back home, when a settlement was razed by a bushfire or inundated with water, everyone in the district rallied together to help the afflicted. Other than the occasional scuffle at the local pub, people rarely hurt other people.

  A revelation hits Connor like a thunderbolt. Australians are too busy fighting nature to fight each other.

  Australia has no borders with any other nations, no ancient rivalries with neighbours looming on the horizon like a powder keg just waiting for a fuse. Connor comes from a nation that has always fought other people’s battles. His sons had to travel halfway round the world to find someone to fight.

  Through the slats in the carriage, he sees a lone child wandering barefoot amongst the long grass on the side of the rails, clutching his hands together, face contorted in fear and grief. Connor grits his teeth and grasps the edge of the sliding door, unable to contain himself any longer. He prepares to leap from the train to help the child.

  ‘No.’ A slab of a hand lands firmly on his wrist. Jemal. ‘You will die, Connor. And then we all die. For one child.’

  Connor angrily pulls his wrist away from Jemal’s grip. ‘But he is alone. He can’t be left by himself.’

  He looks to Hasan who shakes his head grimly and adds, ‘Maybe he goes to his uncle’s village. Or he finds his father and mother. Maybe his brother is coming soon and will find him. Maybe, maybe not. This is war.’ Jemal moves between Connor and the doorway as Hasan continues. ‘There will be many more children like this if we do not make it to Ankara.’

  Connor drops his arm to his side and slumps back against the wall. He can’t deny the logic in Hasan’s argument. But it flies in the face of everything he believes.

  He turns from the side of the train and shuts his eyes, shielding his gaze from the parade of misery outside and fighting the tears that well up.

  The train, which has been making painfully slow progress through a low cutting, suddenly comes to a halt. Hasan motions for the men to stay still and quiet, and signals for Jemal to investigate. Connor follows Jemal to the carriage door. The Turk slides it open far enough to peer cautiously outside. At first, it’s difficult to see through the veil of thick black smoke that billows from the solid mass blocking the train’s passage. When a gust of wind cuts through the ghastly fragrant miasma, Connor can barely fathom what lies before him. Countless bodies have been tossed onto the track and ignited. A jumble of charred and bleeding limbs and scorched skulls burned bare of flesh entangled with garlands of burning clothes form a gruesome barrier that almost reaches the height of the train’s engine. Long hair, small limbs, large hands. Men, women and children.

  The train driver has jumped down from his cabin and stands, disbelieving, before the apocalyptic tableau, his hands hanging helplessly by his side.

  The silence is shattered by the crack of a single gunshot, and Connor sees the driver collapse to his knees, his head exploding in a grisly spray of arterial red.

  ‘Inside! Now!’ Jemal shoves Connor back into the carriage and slams the slatted door shut.

  The men in the carriages hold their breath. Waiting. Listening. For a moment, all they can hear is the rustle of wind in the trees.

  Then comes the ear-splitting chatter of machine-gun fire and the splintering rip of bullets tearing through timber. A wave of uniformed partisans appears along the top of the embankment, charging towards the train. Some race across the gravel with guns raised, firing and reloading rapidly, faces contorted and screaming in Greek. Others plunge down the slope on the backs of strong, stocky horses.

  Hasan shouts directions to his troops, who drop to the floor to escape the barrage that peppers the carriage. Men shriek and jerk as bullets find their targets, ripping through flesh and chipping bone. The dreadful metallic smell of blood fills the train car as wounded men groan and clutch at bloodied limbs, gore oozing between their fingers to splatter on the dusty floor.

  Keeping low, Connor reaches out for the injured man who has fallen beside him. The man’s face is pallid, his lips almost blue as he feebly attempts to staunch the flow of blood from the jagged hole in his left thigh, the shattered bone visible through his shredded khaki uniform. Connor grabs a hessian sack and rolls it into a pad, then presses it against the gaping wound. He knows it is futile as the fabric soaks through in an instant, the blood from the man’s femoral artery running in a sheet across the floor. As his heart tires and his blood drains, the man lies still.

  The salvo lulls for a moment. Jemal levers open the door a fraction and takes aim at an partisan on horseback galloping past the train. The rider jerks backwards in his saddle and tumbles off the rear of his mount, half his head blown off.

  Without explanation the Greeks withdraw from the train. All is still for a heartbeat. Then they hear the piercing whine and whoosh of an incoming mortar as it smashes into the carriage in front of them. A wall of heat and sound pummels Connor as the neighbouring railway car and most of the Turkish soldiers within it disintegrate in a hail of molten shrapnel.

  Hasan, Jemal and the remaining Turks smash through some of the shattered slats with the butts of their rifles and return fire, felling some of their assailants.

  Unarmed, Connor feels useless, helpless. He hears the rattle of the door behind them as it is forced open. Partisans pour in through the breach.

  Hasan takes careful aim with his revolver and picks the Greeks off as they swarm into the carriage. Jemal spins on his heel and raises his rifle, shooting a partisan in the face, shattering it to a featureless pulp. Before Jemal has the chance to reload, a comrade of the man he just felled shoots him in the gut. The big man slumps to his knees, clutching his stomach.

  The Greeks keep coming. They press into the carriage and overwhelm the surviving Turks.

  Hasan raises his revolver, readying to shoot, but is brought to the ground by a rifle butt slammed into the back of his legs. He lies, prone, with the muzzle jammed into his cheek. By his side, Connor feels strangely detached from reality as another partisan snaps at him in Greek, forcing him to the floor, where he kneels, the soldier’s rifle pointed at his head.

  An officer vaults into the carriage. He barks out a volley of orders. Most of the remaining partisans seize the fallen rifles and boxes of ammunition, and drag and kick the surviving Turks out of the carriage onto the embankment beside the train.

  The Greek officer moves towards Ha
san and bends to examine him as he would a dog turd stuck to his boot. He picks at the military insignia on the Turkish man’s tunic and tweaks the waxed tips of Hasan’s moustache, sniffing the air and turning to address his troops in Greek.

  Indicating Connor, Hasan lifts his head and speaks to the officer in Greek.

  He then turns towards Connor. ‘I have told him you are Australian and his ally, that you are my prisoner.’

  The partisan leader examines Connor, sceptical. ‘Australia?’ He holds his hands in front of him, mimicking paws. ‘Kangaroo? Speak English?’

  Connor nods. ‘Yes. Australian.’

  The Greek officer waves away the soldier holding Connor captive. ‘Australia, you stay in here.’

  Then he points at Hasan and tosses one of the men a hessian sack, barking an order. He laughs and explains to Connor. ‘We shoot Turk dog with his own gun. Then cut off his head, take to Smyrna.’ The commander vaults down to the side of the track where his men are rounding up the remaining Turkish troops.

  Jemal and Hasan are frogmarched to the door on the opposite side of the train and thrown to the gravel below. A wine-red stain covers the front of Jemal’s tunic, and he lets out a loud, frothy exhalation of air as he hits the ground.

  Connor is jolted into action by shouts and curses from outside the carriage, punctuated by the crack of a rifle and the ominous thud of a body hitting the dirt. Lifting himself to his hands and knees, he scrambles around on the floor of the railway car, pushing bloodied bodies and fallen crates aside in a desperate attempt to find a weapon. The partisans were too thorough. There is nothing.

  As he searches, Connor sees through the slatted boards that at the base of the embankment, a burly partisan has forced Jemal to his knees. The front of the Turk’s tunic and trousers are sodden with dark blood. An involuntary gush of urine runs down Jemal’s thighs as he struggles to conceal his pain. His face blanches as the Greek soldier pulls his arms behind his back, opening up the wound in his gut. The other partisan checks his magazine, tugs on the bolt and presses his rifle into Jemal’s brow.