Anyush

by Martine Madden

  ‘Mahmoud is a Kurd,’ his mother said. ‘Cut it like you did Thomas’s, Anyush dear.’

  ‘Think how much cooler it will be,’ Anyush said, snipping off a lock. ‘Short hair is easier in the heat.’

  ‘That’s what hats are for,’ Robert muttered.

  ‘Told you you’d have to cut it,’ Eleanor smirked.

  Her brother made a face.

  ‘Charles … I was wondering when we’d see you.’ Bayan Stewart rose to greet her husband who seemed a little distracted.

  ‘Barev, Dr Stewart.’

  ‘Barev dyzez, Anyush. You’re here today? I expected you at the clinic.’

  ‘Clinic tomorrow, Doktor.’

  ‘Oh … yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Robert is having his hair cut,’ Bayan Stewart smiled. ‘Samson shorn by Delilah.’

  ‘Not before time,’ Dr Stewart said, lowering himself into a chair.

  Taking the comb, Anyush began to pull the tangles from Robert’s hair.

  Since the evening at the cove she had not been to the beach. She never walked that way and kept busy from early morning until she fell onto her bed at night. But sleep didn’t hold her for long. In the early hours she would find herself awake and thinking of Jahan. Telling herself that nothing had happened and knowing that everything had changed. What she had felt sitting on the pebbles that day did not go away but lingered like a sickness in her veins. She thought of him constantly. She tried to imagine what might have happened if he hadn’t behaved as he did. She wanted to know what that would have been like. The warmth of his hand against her breast left her aching to be touched again. In her bed at night she touched herself, but in the cold light of morning she was ashamed. Days went by and she struggled through them – ordinary days, where only the thought of him gave her any pleasure. You need never be afraid of me, he had said, but, in fact, she was more afraid of herself.

  ‘What was the commotion on the square this morning?’ Bayan Stewart asked.

  ‘Soldiers. Some sort of manoeuvres. They’re packing up apparently.’

  ‘Leaving?’

  ‘Yes, and good riddance. They’re a damn nuisance.’

  ‘Where are they going?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘The Russian border. There won’t be a soldier left in Trebizond by nightfall.’

  ‘Oww! My ear!’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  The scissors fell from Anyush’s hand as Robert pressed his bleeding ear to the side of his head.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Master Robert …’

  ‘It’s only nicked,’ Dr Stewart said, prising away the boy’s fingers. ‘Let me see, Robert. Take away your hand. A tiny cut, that’s all. Keep it compressed. Anyush, he’s fine. You’re terribly pale. You’re not going to faint, I hope.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t have had my hair cut,’ the boy whined.

  ‘Are you certain you’re not feeling weak?’ Bayan Stewart asked. ‘You really do look pale.’

  ‘I think I need some air.’

  ‘Go home, dear. We can do our lesson another day. The weather is about to change for the worse anyway and your mother will be concerned.’

  When she was no longer visible from the Stewarts’ house, Anyush started to run. Taking the shorter path through the wood, she followed the river until she came to the stony track along the old river bed. The wind pushed hard against her when she reached the beach but she didn’t stop. It was raining now, slanting into her face and streaming down her neck. The sky was so dark and the rain so heavy that it was hard to make out the landmarks, but her feet brought her to the cliff and the steps leading to the ruin. Her lips were blue from the cold, but she whispered the same words over and over.

  ‘Let him be there … please, please let him be there.’

  Soaked to the skin, she climbed upwards, stumbling once on the slippery stone. At the top the wind roared in her ears, buffeting her across the little graveyard. From what she could see, the place was deserted. Nothing moved except gusts of wind threatening to blow her over the cliff. The church doorway was in darkness, but it was darker still and noisier inside. Currents of air whipped around the circular interior giving voice to the whistling winds. She was too late. He wasn’t there. Battered by the rain, she stood gripping the crumbling lintel until she saw something move in the darkness ahead of her.

  ‘Anyush …’

  It was the light reflected in his eyes that she saw coming towards her, and the outline of his uniform. His hands caught her as she fell against him. Combing her fingers through his hair, she pulled his head towards her, searching for his lips. They found each other, and her mouth opened to his, but she felt him hesitate.

  ‘I can’t.’ He drew away. ‘This is wrong.’

  But she already knew what he wanted. She began to open the buttons of her blouse, her fingers trembling as the fabric fell to the floor and the cold air touched her skin.

  ‘No, Anyush.’

  His eyes dropped to where her breasts pushed against the drawstrings of her chemise. Until that moment it might have been possible to put an end to it. To be themselves again, the soldier and the girl they once were. But she couldn’t stop what had been started and she didn’t want to. She needed to go beyond the point of return – to put an end to everything childish and all that marked them as different. She wanted to be seduced. Used by him. Opening the last button, she took off her blouse and stood in her chemise. They looked at each other while the storm blew outside and her clothes dripped pools of water by her feet. He came towards her and picked up her wet blouse. Draping it carefully around her shoulders, he stepped away. But she reached for his hand and placed it against her breast. She pressed his fingers hard against her nipple like he had done that day in the cove. Suddenly his lips were on hers and he pushed her against the wall, pulling away her blouse and the straps of her chemise. The stone pressed into the bones of her back, cold against the heat of her skin. Cupping her breasts in his hands, he bent and took a nipple in his mouth. A shudder passed through her, long waves of pleasure that grew stronger as he worked his tongue. She heard a sound, an animal noise that seemed to be coming from herself. An intense feeling was building at the base of her spine, spreading to her belly and limbs and changing the rhythm of her breath. His lips had moved to the base of her throat, kissing the hollow between the bones, licking the angle of her jaw. He took the lobe of her ear between his teeth.

  ‘Is this what you want, Anyush?’ he whispered. ‘Tell me. Say it to me.’

  With his free hand he bundled up her skirts and tugged down her drawers. They felt wet where they brushed against the skin of her thighs. His fingers moved inside her and her head fell back against the wall as though the muscles and sinews of her neck were no longer strong enough to support it. She had the feeling of being borne upwards, higher and higher while the air rushed from her lungs.

  ‘Say it, Anyush.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘Say it.’

  ‘… please.’

  He moved her away from the wall and they stumbled to the floor. Pushing her clothes to her waist, he pulled her drawers below her knees and tugged them off. She was barely aware of the cold stone beneath her and her nakedness. She felt no shame only an unbearable desire to have him inside her. Of their own will her legs parted and his hand caressed the inside of her thighs and the mound between. She began to sigh, incapable of anything like words. His eyes were fixed on hers when he released himself from his trousers. Stiff and swollen his flesh stood rigidly from him and her body opened to receive him. She closed her eyes, all feelings of fear and hesitation gone. This was not what she had been told to expect, the whisperings and half-truths among the village women, giving no hope of pleasure or joy only pain and humiliation. A flash of anger shot through her at the unfairness of it, the trickery of her own sex. But she was distracted by Jahan’s tongue moving across her belly, her breasts and nipples, and then, shockingly, inside her until she could think of nothin
g but their two bodies coming together and an urgency she couldn’t contain.

  ‘Now Jahan …’

  Her breath was coming too fast.

  ‘Please … now.’

  She felt him enter her and then a sharp, penetrating pain. He hesitated when she cried out, but she put her hands on his hips and guided him back inside her. Barely there at first and then deeper, faster, swelling so that they moved almost as one. Just when she thought she could endure it no longer, a wave of pleasure such as she had never imagined broke over her, flooding though her body again and again as she arched her back beneath him. Distantly, she heard him call her name, but she was gone from him, cast adrift on a warm and welcoming sea.

  Sometimes Jahan thought he had failed Anyush. That if he had acted in her best interests, he would have said his goodbyes or not come to the church at all. But the fates had conspired to bring them together, and he was glad of it. Had he not taken shelter from the storm, she would have found the church empty, and had the army not rescinded orders to join the Fifth Army on the Eastern Front, he might never have seen her again. But they had found each other that night, and oh what a sight she had been! His lieutenant had said that Armenian women were different, and Anyush certainly was. Jahan had expected her to be shy, hesitant and self-conscious, but when they had made love that first time she was none of those things. In the same way she had thrown herself into the water to save his neck, she had come to him wholeheartedly, and he delighted in every second of it. He hadn’t been able to look at her long enough. Her skin was so pale it seemed to be a source of light in itself, a soft radiance glowing against the dark granite stone.

  After they had made love, he had undressed her fully, letting his eyes linger slowly over her, from the upward tilt of her small breasts, to the depression above the jutting edge of her hip bone. His fingers had run along the protuberances of her spine to the rising mounds below, across her taut belly and into the hollows between her ribs. Just below her left nipple he had discovered a small brown birthmark, a smudge or thumbprint left by her creator’s hand.

  Did he regret what happened? Not for a moment. As they had walked home their separate ways, he had only been able to think of when he might see her again.

  Anyush didn’t sleep that night. In the early hours when a faint glow lit the horizon she stood outside the cottage listening to the waves tumbling on the shore. It was a peaceful sound and she closed her eyes. She might have expected to feel troubled by what she had done, but all she felt was a quiet calm. She prayed for the day to come quickly so that she could be with him all over again. Every part of her hummed like a wire in the wind. She was drunk from his touch, his smell, the way he had looked at her as if he had never seen a woman before. Being with Jahan was the only form of happiness she desired. And she was happy. She fell asleep finally as the sun came up and an hour later rose from her bed, the happiest girl in the Ottoman Empire. But others were not so lucky.

  ‘I need to see Dr Stewart,’ Parzik said.

  Anyush found her friend slumped on the clinic steps and brought her inside.

  ‘Inch’ skhal? Tell me, what’s wrong?’

  ‘They’re going to hang Vardan’s father. They’re going to do it in a few days.’

  Anyush stared at her. She had to be mistaken. Aykanian was innocent. Everybody knew he was.

  ‘Who said this? It’s only gossip. Rumour …’

  ‘They told Vardan. The gendarmes. They’re going to make him watch.’

  Parzik hung her head, tears dripping into her lap.

  ‘Dr Stewart will know what to do,’ Anyush said. ‘He’ll put a stop to it.’

  But Dr Stewart had bad news of his own. ‘There is nothing I can do.’

  ‘Doktor, efendim, you could talk to them. Tell them he’s innocent.’

  ‘Believe me, I have exhausted every avenue on Mislav’s behalf.’

  ‘It is not too late, Doktor. I beg of you …’ Parzik knelt at his feet, touching her forehead to his boots. ‘Please, Doktor … you are the only one who can help him.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Really I am.’

  On the day of the hanging the entire village gathered in the square. A platform was set up at one end where the wedding party had been, and a scaffold erected. Bayan Stewart told the children to remain in the house, but Thomas and Robert climbed out a window and slipped into the crowd behind where their father and the priest stood next to Vardan. Sosi and Anyush stood either side of Parzik, and nearby her mother and Gohar linked arms. The sun rose and began to sink towards the west, but still the heat beat relentlessly down. People retreated beneath the lemon trees or leaned against the platform, looking every now and then towards the southern end of the square. Husik was standing at the back of the scaffold, his eyes roaming over the rope and gibbet, and his father, a little behind, waited to catch the first glimpse of the prisoner. The day wore on and still there was no sign of Aykanian. Anyush’s arm ached where Parzik’s fingers gripped through the fabric of her sleeve. Vardan’s new wife was pale and drawn, and had hardly spoken. Every few seconds she glanced over to where Vardan stood by the scaffold.

  Finally, a lone gendarme walked into the far end of the square, followed by ten or twelve more. Vardan’s father shuffled along in the middle of them. Aykanian had always been thin, but the stooped, stumbling old man trying to walk with bound ankles drew a collective breath from the crowd. Every bone and sinew in his body was visible, his thin skin straining to hold them together. He was muttering to himself, mumbling with his eyes fixed on his feet as though unaware of others around him. A sob escaped Vardan’s lips, and Parzik’s trembling fingers covered her mouth. Some of the older women began to keen and others counted off what time was left to the old man on their prayer beads. At the steps to the scaffold Aykanian hadn’t the strength to climb but was pushed and prodded so that he stumbled and fell. His face hit the wooden step with a sickening thud, and before anyone could stop him Vardan ran over to where his father lay bleeding at the foot of the platform.

  ‘Get back … move away,’ a gendarme shouted, but Vardan remained crouched beside the old man.

  ‘Papa … hayrik,’ he whispered, wiping blood from his father’s face. ‘I’m here … it’s me, Vardan.’

  Aykanian looked at him with a mixture of confusion and fear. He shook his head and turned away.

  ‘I said move back.’ Using his boot, the gendarme kicked Vardan into the dust.

  ‘Give them a moment,’ Dr Stewart said. ‘It’s Aykanian’s son … his boy … he only wants to say goodbye.’

  ‘I know who he is,’ the gendarme said contemptuously. ‘Now get him away or I’ll hang him alongside the old man.’

  Father Gregory helped Aykanian to his feet as Dr Stewart led a weeping Vardan back to the crowd. The priest finally got the old man up the steps to the scaffold.

  ‘Hayrik … hayrik …’ Vardan cried as the noose was put around his father’s neck. Parzik buried her head in Anyush’s shoulder and Gohar made the sign of the cross. The old man was still talking to himself, a torrent of words spilling from his mouth as if he knew he hadn’t long more to say them. He shook his head from side to side as the rope burned against the loose skin of his neck. At a signal from the commanding officer, the rope was pulled taut so that Aykanian teetered for a few seconds on the tips of his toes. With a bang the trapdoor flew open and Vardan’s father fell into the void. There was complete silence. No one uttered a sound as the old man’s legs kicked, and his mouth opened, and his lips swelled and turned blue. It was only when the body had become completely still that a long and terrible cry welled up from his son.

  For three weeks following the hanging the Jendarma refused to allow Vardan to take down his father’s body. The decaying remains would serve as a warning, they said, to other Russian sympathisers. Finally, through the intervention of Dr Stewart and Father Gregory, permission was given to bury Aykanian and he was laid to rest in the Armenian cemetery adjoining the church.

  Diary of Dr Ch
arles Stewart

  Mushar

  Trebizond

  May 13th, 1915

  A new admission caused a stir on the men’s ward today. I was glad of the distraction because the mood in the hospital has been gloomy ever since the hanging. Nobody speaks openly of Aykanian but I am constantly hearing snatches of whispered conversation and bitter words. Perhaps I’m imagining it, but some of this vitriol appears to be directed at myself. Nobody can stomach the unpleasant truth that guns and rifles were found on the Aykanian farm. There was no denying the evidence, a fact people seem happy to overlook.

  Late this morning Anyush informed me we had a new patient in one of the private rooms on the male side. I walked in to see guns, cartridge belts, powder horns, swords and daggers decorating the walls, and sitting on the bed like the Sultan himself was the outlaw, Murzabey. He’s a powerfully built man in his middle years with the weathered features of a bandit and a deceptively brilliant smile. For as long as I can remember he’s been the leader of the renegade Shota tribe, but unlike Mahmoud Agha and the hill tribes around Trebizond, he is a violent man and is wanted throughout the province for various crimes. Hetty has treated one of his wives for puerperal fever and I saw him once years ago when he lost his right hand in a pitched battle against the local gendarmes. He is not a man you would easily forget. The stories circulating about his cruelty are legion. He keeps tight and extortionate control of the lands to the south and west of Trebizond and brutally dispatches any man threatening his position. The landowners throughout the province live in fear of him and even Mahmoud Agha makes him annual ‘gifts’ of sheep and horses to remain in his favour. In the real sense of the word, he is legendary, so why he should have installed himself in my hospital I couldn’t imagine.

  Entering the room, I saw Manon finish dressing Murzabey’s leg, as six of his men trained their rifles on her. In fluent Kurmanji she told them to drop the rifles or they would have to dress the leg themselves. Murzabey was scowling at her when he saw me in the doorway.