The great man said something to Trowbridge in a dialect I didn’t understand, and left. It all seemed a great to-do about nothing, but Paul assured us it was otherwise. ‘It’s a mark of honour. Of respect. The Vali doesn’t usually meet foreigners at the quayside.’
‘Does he always behave oddly?’ I asked. ‘Staring like that?’
‘Only when he likes you.’
Paul laughed at my expression and told me a rumour had spread that I had some skill as a dentist. ‘He wants you to pay him a visit. Our esteemed Vali has very bad teeth.’
It took an age for the luggage to be unloaded and repacked onto the mules, so while we were waiting Paul suggested we eat at the local hotel. It was surprisingly good, run by two French brothers from Bayonne. Over dinner Paul told us a little about himself. After qualifying as a doctor, he decided to travel through Europe, spending time in most of the major cities, before moving on to Athens and then Constantinople. Elias Riggs was his only contact, so he stayed with him in the city and worked there for a couple of years.
‘Not as a missionary,’ he said. ‘I never believed in all that “my God is better than your God” nonsense.’
He apologised then, and said he hoped we didn’t think his views were offensive, but, in fact, I found myself liking Paul Trowbridge more and more. It was Riggs who offered Paul the position in Trebizond when a friend of his, Dr Fred Sheppard, died of typhus, and the authorities were looking for somebody to replace him.
‘How many years are you here?’ Hetty asked.
‘Too many,’ he said. ‘I’ve stopped counting. My parents are dead, and I have only one brother in England, so I rarely go back. This is home really. I hope you’ll come to feel about it as I do.’
I assured him that we would give it our all, and I meant it. During the long trek across Europe I did have doubts about my decision to come to Turkey. From a career point of view, leaving the medical hierarchy was disastrous. Certain people, Hetty’s mother to name but one, thought that from all points of view it was disastrous, but Paul Trowbridge convinced me otherwise. By the time the food and wine arrived, I was congratulating myself on having made the right move.
Before we had finished the meal, Hetty had told Paul a little about what we’d been doing in New York, and I could see they had hit it off immediately. She was charmed by his old-fashioned manners, and he was clearly taken with her unflappability and good humour. I should have taken against him since he is everything I am not: tall, handsome and charming, but it is impossible to dislike Paul Trowbridge. He is amiable, easy company, and we might have been there yet, had the time had not come to leave for Mushar.
The last part of the journey proved to be the most difficult. Paul had warned us about the army of flies in the mountain pass into the village, but nothing prepared us for them. We had brought wide-brimmed hats with netting and a floppy bonnet for the baby, but they were useless against the onslaught that descended as we rode in single file through the pass. As soon as we hit the treeline, they appeared, and no amount of swatting or netting kept them away. I spent the journey batting at the cloud above my head, and noticed that few of the little bastards appeared to be troubling Paul. After the caravan of horses and mules jangled up the mountain and down the other side, the village of Mushar finally came into view. What a contrast to the glory of Constantinople and the elegant harbour at Trebizond! Dusty, foul-smelling streets, full of yelping dogs and ragged children, buzzed with flies and mosquitoes.
‘Şapka giyen insanlara gel!’ the children chanted, which Paul translated as ‘Come see the people wearing hats!’
Black-eyed, brightly dressed children crowded around us, while their mothers drew their scarves over all but one eye and ambled through chickens, lambs and dogs to see for themselves. Many of the children had swollen eyes covered with clusters of black flies and I asked Paul why they didn’t shoo them away.
‘Because they believe that to do so would bring on the eye-sickness. Trachoma. It’s rampant in these parts.’
Trachoma, caused by flies, leads to chronic infection and, if left untreated, would cause blindness in at least half of these children. I watched them run after our horses, clouds of black flies following them. The adults were no better off, and they didn’t try to brush away the flies either. Instead, they made us gifts of fruit, goat’s milk and grapes, huge bunches of them that they pressed into our dusty hands. A woman carrying a baby pressed a bit of blue cloth, with the shape of an eye embroidered on it, into Hetty’s hand, nodding to where Thomas dozed on her back.
‘It’s called the atchka ooloonk,’ Paul explained. ‘People carry them to ward off the evil eye.’
The children were wearing blue beads, shells or triangular bundles of cloth, which had the same symbol and verses from the Koran sewn inside. Hetty leaned down to touch a dark-eyed baby wearing one around her neck, but the woman pulled away, covering the child with her veil.
‘Don’t take it personally,’ Paul said. ‘You must never praise a child because it draws the evil eye to him, and if you forget you must say Maşallah, “God has willed it”.’
Mushar, it turns out, is bigger than I first thought, running east to west along the Black Sea coast. Heavily wooded hills reach down almost to the shoreline where pristine, undisturbed white sand gleams in the midday sunlight. The centre of the village is more developed than the outskirts with wooden two- and three-storeyed houses looking onto a reasonably sized square. A Christian church and a mosque dominate either end, and the only other building of note is what looks like a store, with a haphazard jumble of items spilling from an open doorway. Paul led us down a small street, behind the Armenian church, and we turned onto an overgrown, cobbled pathway. At the end of this narrow lane we saw a neat, biscuit-coloured stone house, which looked as though it had been transported fully formed from the English countryside. It was a house such as a child might draw, with a central wooden door surmounted by a small, arched fanlight and two mullioned sash windows on either side. This arrangement is repeated on the second floor, with the addition of an extra window in the middle. The remnants of a garden were visible in the overgrown borders both sides of the door, and old fruit trees blossomed in a little orchard to one side.
‘It’s just wonderful,’ Hetty said.
‘Who on earth would build such a house here?’ I asked.
Paul looked at it as he got down from his horse. ‘It’s called usuts’ch’I tuny, “the teacher’s house”. Jane Kent had it built when she taught at the school here.’
‘It reminds me of a house from an English novel,’ Hetty said.
‘That was the idea. It’s supposed to be a model of Jane’s home in Surrey.’
I asked Paul why the teacher had left, but he was preoccupied with unloading the mules and didn’t seem to hear. Inside we walked from room to room.
A small parlour and drawing room look out either side of the front door, while the dining room has a view of the orchard to the rear. A tiny maid’s room leads off one side of the kitchen, and a scullery, pantry and cool room off the other. Upstairs are four modestly sized bedrooms, a dressing room, a bathroom and an airing closet. The privy is in the yard. As you might expect of a building that hasn’t been lived in for some time, it is full of dust, damp and musty odours, but it has a definite charm and could be transformed with a good clean and the appropriate furniture into a comfortable home.
Sometime later, when everyone had gone and we were finally alone, Hetty and I sat exhausted in our two chairs.
‘It’s odd, don’t you think?’Hetty asked.
‘I thought you’d like it.’
‘I meant that Jane Kent should have left. I had the impression that Paul didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Oh?’
‘Did you notice that he used her first name?’
‘Are you saying there was something between them?’
‘I’m saying that he knows the house better than one might expect.’
‘Perhaps he stayed here?
’ I suggested. ‘Or looks after the place?’
‘Perhaps,’ Hetty said. ‘Even though he works in Trebizond, a three-hour journey away.’
I laughed, wondering what Paul would think of our speculations.
It is now well past midnight, and Hetty is urging me to blow out the candle and put my pen away, but I know I won’t sleep. My mind is turning over, making plans. There is so much to learn about this place and so much to do. The small maid’s room off the kitchen would be the perfect spot for my laboratory, and tomorrow I’ll move my equipment in there. It is at least a start.
The captain’s second encounter with Anyush happened on the same beach some time later. He saw her in the distance, but this time she was distracted and didn’t notice him. Carrying a boot in each hand, she pitched them into the air, throwing them furiously along the curved line of sand as though aiming at someone’s head. The boots sailed past his ear and landed in the shallows at his feet. He picked them up and brought them to her.
‘You missed,’ he said, ‘but I’ll give you another shot if you allow me the pleasure of walking with you.’
Holding out the wet boots, he smiled apologetically, and she began to laugh. Her eyes were filled with the brightness of the sea, and when he came to think about that day down the years, he remembered it as the day he fell in love with her.
They walked towards the eastern end of the bay along the shore. Her smile quickly disappeared and she became wary of him. The beach was screened by the cliff and the woods, but every so often she glanced over towards the track and the road leading to it. The captain didn’t think she was afraid of him but understood that she was reluctant to be seen in his company. He wanted to find a way to put her at ease. More than once, he tried to catch her eye, but she stared fixedly ahead. Her cheeks had pinked up prettily, but it was only when he pretended to stumble that he had a full view of her face. It was a perfect oval with a wide brow, a small straight nose and pale complexion that was more cream than milk. Her eyes were widely set and the colour of liquid sugar, but it was her mouth that caught his attention – full, slightly protruding lips, the colour of persimmons, with a downward droop at the corners. He was staring, and she looked away.
‘This is a difficult place to find,’ he said. ‘The track is almost invisible.’
‘You found it.’
‘So I did. Well, actually, I followed you.’
A look of alarm crossed her face.
‘I couldn’t find my way down here from the main beach. You were walking on the road ahead of me and turned off in this direction so …’ He shrugged. ‘I apologise if I’ve imposed myself on your hideaway.’
‘It’s not mine,’ she said, walking on again. ‘Anyone can come here.’
‘It’s really lovely. In an odd way it reminds me of home.’
‘Constantinople.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Your accent. And you use French and English words.’
‘Do you speak English and French?’
‘Some. Bayan Stewart teaches them at the mission school.’
The captain’s interest was piqued. ‘So you grew up here? You have family here?’
Unexpectedly, she clamped up again.
‘That’s rude of me,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you ask me something in return? A sort of trade.’
There were things she wanted to ask. He could feel her curiosity and also that she wouldn’t give in to it.
‘I’ll tell you about myself, then. I’m the oldest and only son of four children. My eldest sister, Dilar, is a terrible flirt and will make some poor fellow very unhappy. My middle sister, Melike, is shy and bookish with a talent for painting, and my youngest sister, Tansu, could charm every snake in the Empire. My father is retired from the army, due to ill health, and has ambitions for his son, that is to say myself, to take over in his stead. And my mother? Well, she wants to marry me off as soon as possible. There. Now you know everything. Your turn.’
‘I didn’t make any promises,’ she said. ‘Seems to me you were entertaining yourself.’
He laughed, and her colour deepened.
‘At least tell me what it is you do when you’re not wielding pitchforks.’
He had the satisfaction of extracting a small smile.
‘I help Bayan Stewart at the school. And I’m a nurse’s assistant at Dr Stewart’s hospital.’
‘I’ve met Dr Stewart. He’s a serious man.’
This, he could see, was easier for her, safer than talking about her family, or anything concerning herself. She spoke for a time about the Stewarts, and he learned how they were in the village as long as she could remember. How Dr Stewart was respected and how he had set up a hospital in the village, which people travelled to from as far as Trebizond, and beyond. The American spoke Turkish, Armenian and Kurmanji badly, she said, but people made allowances for him because he worked hard. Mrs Stewart, or Bayan Stewart as she was known, was a doctor for women and had taken over the running of the school after the previous teacher left. She had also set up a sewing and embroidery cooperative for girls and was much loved by the village women.
By this time, they had come to the end of the beach, and the base of the headland loomed before them. They could only go back, but the captain found that he didn’t want the conversation to end.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to the cliff. ‘At the top?’
‘A ruined church. And a graveyard.’
‘Is it possible to get up there?’
Pointing out rough-hewn steps cut into the side of the cliff, she said that it was, but that few people went there because some believed it was haunted by ghosts.
‘Can you show me?’
She hesitated, and he thought she would refuse, but she turned and climbed up the slippery stone, telling him to watch where it was eaten away in places. Picking his footing carefully, he followed her, struck by the ease with which she climbed. It was clear she had done this many times before, and ghosts did not deter her. At the top, the wind blew directly in their faces and whined between the headstones in the tiny graveyard. Some stones had fallen into the sea, and others leaned over like stumps in an old man’s jaw. The church itself was a small beehive-shaped building, with part of the roof missing and the main doorway skewed slightly to the west so that it looked out over the sea but away from the prevailing wind. Inside, the render had long since fallen away, revealing the stonemason’s ingenuity in constructing a circular wall with layers of chiselled granite blocks. The stone floor was speckled with bat and bird droppings, and the place smelled of must and salt. He walked around the walls, grit cracking beneath his boots, while she watched from the entrance. There was nothing else to see, no ornament, no icons, nothing of any religious nature, except a short transept at the apex of the circle opposite the door. A swallow flew over his head and darted out into the sunlight.
‘Only a bird would find this homely,’ he said, his voice competing with the moaning wind. ‘I feel as though I’m standing at the centre of a drum.’
‘Go to the back,’ she said. ‘The very back.’
He moved to the darkest part of the church, to the wall opposite the doorway. In the space of a few paces, the noise of the wind dropped, and the place became eerily quiet. He stepped back towards the door, and there it was again, the wind whistling and sighing.
‘Extraordinary!’
But she hadn’t heard because she had gone outside. He could see her dark-blue skirt and light-coloured blouse moving among the gravestones, her head bent and the sun shining on the plait hanging below her scarf.
‘I have to go,’ she said when he joined her.
‘Let me walk with you.’
‘No. I can go home this way.’
He tried to insist, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
‘You never told me your name,’ he called after her.
She stopped and turned around. ‘Anyush.’
‘Very nice to meet you Anyush. My name is–’
�
��I know your name.’
Quickly, she crossed the headland and disappeared into the hazel wood beyond.
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Mushar
Trebizond
June 8th, 1901
We are finally something like a proper medical practice, if ‘proper’ is the right word. The small maid’s room is now furnished with microscope, specimens and slides. I’ve been obliged to use the kitchen as an operating room and our downstairs parlour has become the consulting room. The patients I find waiting for me every morning come in all shapes and sizes: men in salvar trousers, tent-like kaftans and Western suits; women veiled, cloaked and burquaed; children standing at their mothers’ sides and one or two sitting in the branches of the fig tree. In the beginning they liked to stare sullenly at me, as though I do not measure up to their idea of a doctor and they are already regretting abandoning the local chekeji, but I think finally we are reaching an understanding. They have had to adjust to my ways, and I must adjust to theirs. The local ideas of rank and influence, for example, were familiar to me from our time in Constantinople, but, if anything, are more pronounced here. There is a system of caste, a pecking order of those who must be seen first, no matter who is the most ill or infirm. It is related to the country’s long and troubled history and can neatly be summarised as Turk, Kurd and lastly Armenian. The Turks are the ruling class, the oppressors, if you like, even though historically the Armenians were here first. And the Kurds are fierce hill tribes who think nothing of killing a man for his horse or his money. They command respect even from the Turks. That leaves the Armenians, who are viewed by the government as being sympathetic to Russia, the old enemy, and so have little chance to improve their station in life. Paul and I have had many discussions on the subject. He believes the Armenians are unfairly oppressed, but, as I’ve often told him, the Turks are a territorial race and all outside alliances are viewed with mistrust.
Anyush Page 3