‘Is it not strange that he comes here? To the hospital?’ Manon asked.
It actually is a little strange, but the times are strange and there is no accounting for any of it. Manon was not convinced. She wanted to know why, as an outlaw, he was coming with impunity to the hospital and setting up camp in a room next to the prefect of the local Jendarma.
Before I could reply, there was a loud rapping on the door and Paul Trowbridge let himself in. He looked flushed and dishevelled, as if he had ridden to the village at great speed. He wouldn’t sit or take off his coat but said he had come looking for me. The Vali had paid him a visit and had asked him to draw up a list of all the Armenians working at the Municipal Hospital, including the medical staff.
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘They haven’t said but it’s not good. Similar lists have been drawn up in Ordu and Sivas.’
‘Nobody has asked me for any list, but if they do, I’ve a pretty good idea why. Your staff are being conscripted, Paul.’
He looked at me as if I hadn’t the first idea what I was talking about. All those on the list, he said then, were Armenian or Greek. This seemed perfectly reasonable to me, given that the hospital was run almost exclusively by them, but he also said that half those on the list were women.
‘We’re at war,’ I said. ‘Who do you think is nursing the wounded at the front? It certainly isn’t the Vali.’
‘Armenians,’ Paul said. ‘They’re taking only Armenians and liberating known criminals from prison. Explain that to me, Charles.’
‘Murzabey est un criminel,’ Manon said.
At the mention of the bandit’s name Paul became even more agitated. He wanted to know what Murzabey had to do with anything, and before I could stop her Manon had told him about the Kurd’s stay at the hospital.
‘A reward of two hundred lira was offered on Murzabey’s head only a year ago, Charles. Why has that suddenly changed?’
I couldn’t answer, but I wasn’t about to get embroiled in one of his theories about a Turkish conspiracy, so I decided to go back to work.
‘You need to warn your staff,’ Paul said as I got up to leave. ‘You need to prepare them. Sorry about your leg, Manon, but I have to get back to Trebizond.’
Paul and I walked across the yard to the stable block together, and I had the impression that I’d been tested in some way and found wanting. He climbed into the saddle, insisting he couldn’t stay or come to dinner. As a peace offering, I told him I would speak to the Vali and find out what, if anything, was going on, but this did not seem to impress him.
‘With all due respect, Charles, you’re wasting your time. Give Hetty my best.’
The lieutenant and Captain Orfalea rode side by side, letting their horses pick their way at a leisurely pace along the narrow coast road towards Trebizond. Past the shade of the treeline and emerging into the sunlight, Jahan looked down on the sea below. It sparkled a dazzling blue and reflected his happy mood. He and Anyush had spent a number of evenings together and he was quietly planning when he would see her again. Slackening his grip on the reins, he leaned back in the saddle, scanning the distant line of the horizon.
‘All quiet, lieutenant.’
‘As ever, bayim.’
‘Would you rather we’d moved out with the infantry?’
‘I’d rather spend my time fighting the Russians, sir. Provisioning is women’s work.’
‘“Theirs not to reason why; Theirs but to do and die.”’
His lieutenant looked blankly at him.
‘Lord Alfred Tennyson. An Englishman who wrote about the Crimean War.’
‘Don’t hold much with reading, bayim. Never learned.’
‘Didn’t you go to school?’
‘I did but there were too many books. Too many words.’
‘You should have stuck with it, lieutenant. Everyone should know how to read.’
‘Wish I could now, bayim. I see you reading your books and think it must be a good distraction from all this.’
‘It is.’
‘Though you don’t read as much as you used to. Not with all your other amusements.’
‘Amusements?’
Jahan looked at the lieutenant.
‘The girl.’
They had come to a stop at a bend in the road with a sheer drop on the seaward side of them.
‘The men are talking, bayim.’
‘Really. And what are they saying?’
‘That she’s Armenian. And other things you don’t want to hear.’
Jahan looked at the sea spread out below him.
‘These men are hard won, Captain. It’s easy to lose their respect.’
‘I have no respect for men who string up young boys for amusement.’
‘You cannot hand-pick them, bayim. They’re soldiers, good and bad, but all you’ve got.’ The lieutenant took off his cap and wiped his brow with his sleeve. ‘I’m only saying, sir, for your own sake.’
‘Is she in danger?’
The lieutenant shrugged. ‘This is war, bayim. No woman is safe.’
They made their way down the track, without speaking of it again.
Anyush hated going to Kazbek’s house. Delivering the laundry to that grim cottage loomed like a black hole in every week. It sat in a hidden corner of the wood, and Gohar maintained that Kazbek built it there so he could carry out his nefarious deeds, away from the prying eyes of man and God. Approaching the cottage, Anyush watched for Husik. He had a knack of sneaking up on her, without making a sound, no matter how often she changed the time of her coming.
‘Inch’ skhal, Anyush?’
‘Husik! Don’t sneak up on me like that!’
‘Bet you thought I wasn’t coming. Bet you would’ve been disappointed.’
He walked backwards, his mud-coloured eyes fixed on her face. There was something new in his expression, something bold and sly. She shifted the sack of linen to carry it at her waist.
‘Where are you going?’
‘You know where I’m going, Husik.’
‘Come with me. There’s a place I want to show you.’
‘Not today.’
‘Come on. You know you want to.’
He was leering at her with an unpractised attempt at a smile, and it made her uneasy. Kazbek’s house was nearer now, but not close enough. She picked up pace as he fell into step beside her.
‘It’s a secret place, Anyush. Could be our secret.’ His breath was hot and moist on the side of her cheek. ‘Aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know?’
‘Husik, I can’t see.’
She moved off the main path onto a narrow track that ran parallel to the treeline. Instantly he followed her.
‘Do you know the thing about boys, Anyush? Other boys? I’m not like them. I’m better than all of them.’ One of his hands was clutching at the front of his trousers. ‘I know what you like, Anyush. I know more about you than you think.’
‘You’re in my way, Husik.’
‘I could put a lot more in your way.’
His full, girlish lips hung open and his eyes shone with a menacing light. This is just Husik, she told herself. Stupid, brainless Husik. But she was frightened and he sensed it. He pushed up against her and she could feel his erection through the fabric of her skirts.
‘Come on, Anyush …’
‘Get off me!’ She thrust the sack into his belly and knocked him backwards to the ground.
‘Husik!’
Kazbek was standing at the door of the house, watching them.
‘Get up here.’
The boy grinned, his hand still playing at the front of his trousers. Getting to his feet, he disappeared round the back of the cottage to avoid his father’s cuffing.
Anyush’s face burned. She stepped onto the porch and handed Husik’s father the sack of clean clothes. Prayer beads clicked at Kazbek’s wrist as he took the laundry and made to go inside.
‘There is the matter of payment, efendim,’ she called.
>
Kazbek turned around. He was a big man with the long body and wide sloping shoulders of a pickaxe. Unlike his son’s opaque eyes, Kazbek’s were clear as glass and shone with a yellow-grey light. Father and son had the same head of hair, a faded mink-brown, more pelt than human, but whereas Husik’s stood up from his scalp like wiry porcupine quills, Kazbek’s was oiled back from his face except for a few lank strands that hung in front of his ears.
‘Payment? Maybe we should discuss the three months’ payment your mother owes me in rent!’ He smiled, his teeth a darker colour than the skin of his face. ‘I’m tired of her promises. Tell her I want to see my money. Tell her my patience is wearing thin.’
Anyush stepped down from the porch and turned away. At the bend in the path where the house disappeared behind the trees, she picked up her feet and ran.
The smell of pilaff from the koghov only made Anyush more hungry. The meal her mother had cooked was watery and thin, rice with mushrooms and onions finely chopped, to make it go further. It had been difficult not to clear her plate of every last bit, but she had promised Sosi and Havat that she would keep some for them and a little for their mother. Walking up the lane to the Talanian farm, she wondered what it would be like to get up from the table feeling full, to know she couldn’t eat another bite. Before the famine she had always had enough, but like most people in the village she had been hungry for so long that she couldn’t remember what full felt like. It would be good not to dream of food all the time but it didn’t really matter. So long as she had Jahan she didn’t want for anything. She tried not to think beyond their next meeting, their next kiss, but the future was never very far from her mind. The war was coming to claim Jahan and nothing was going to change that. What would she do without him? She couldn’t go back to the way things were. She wished her life would stay just as it was at this moment, a dreamedof life, one that was completely happy. Her only concern was that she would not conceive a child, but Jahan promised he would take care of it. He knew about these things, he said. She could trust him. Anyush laughed the first time she’d seen him put on his ‘device’, tying it at one end with pieces of string. It had reminded her of the goat-hair bags the village women used for curds and cheese. Jahan had also instructed her in the practice of douching with alum and quinine. In all Anyush’s life she had never stolen so much as a fistful of flour, but she wasn’t about to risk becoming pregnant, so she’d started taking small quantities of both from the dispensary after Malik had gone home. Her mother would have said that her daughter had become a thief as well as a whore, and her grandmother for once would have agreed with her.
Approaching the Talanian farmhouse, Anyush saw a number of people gathered in the yard and milling around the outbuildings. Sosi stood in the middle of them with Doctor Stewart on one side and Bayan Talanian, still in her night attire, next to him. The Talanians’ neighbours, the Hisars, and Bayan Egoyan, a young widow who lived on the other side, were talking to the doctor’s sons, Thomas and Robert Stewart. Something was wrong.
‘Havi’s missing,’ said Sosi, her face white and tear-stained. ‘She’s been gone all day. Nobody’s seen her.’
‘I saw her at the gate this morning,’ Anyush said. ‘On my way to the clinic.’
‘She went out early to check the hens and we thought she had wandered down the lane as usual, but when she hadn’t come in for breakfast, I went to look for her and couldn’t find her. Something’s happened Anyush … I know it has.’
‘She’ll be found. She probably wandered off and lost her way.’
But there was a growing sense of unease among the people gathered in the Talanians’ yard. Havat never went beyond the house without Sosi and never missed a meal.
‘We’re going to form a search party,’ Dr Stewart said. ‘Sosi, you and your mother stay in the house in case Havat returns. Anyush, you should stay with them.’
‘I want to help in the search, Doktor. I know some of the places Havi goes with Sosi. I can bring you there.’
‘Very well. We’ll start with the road to the village.’
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Mushar
Trebizond
June 16th, 1915
I’ve been wondering if I should perhaps not write about the events I witnessed today, as I have no wish to relive them, but what happened was of such a pitiful and barbaric nature, that it cannot be ignored.
Havat Talanian, a young mongoloid Armenian girl who lives on the outskirts of the village, went missing from her home this morning. I had dropped in to the house on a routine call to see her mother who suffers from chronic depression, only to find the woman in a highly anxious state and claiming that her younger daughter had been abducted. It is another in a long line of misfortunes for the Talanians, who are more or less destitute and depend largely on the charity of others. The older of the two Talanian girls, Sosi, told me how her sister had not come in for breakfast after going out to feed the hens and that some of their neighbours had come to help look for her. I was reasonably confident that Havat had simply wandered off and lost her way and that we would find her unharmed. We had decided to split into a number of groups when two mounted Turkish soldiers advanced on us from the coast road. I recognised Captain Orfalea and his lieutenant. The captain asked what was going on and I told him about the missing girl. The lieutenant insisted that we were an ‘unauthorised gathering’ and had to disperse immediately, but, to my surprise, the captain volunteered to help in the search. He sent the lieutenant with half our group in the direction of the village, and the rest would search the coast road. An arrangement had been made that whoever found Havat would send a runner to the second party to call off the search, but by late afternoon there was still no trace of her. Anyush had looked along the shoreline and the headland but had no luck. On the chance that the two soldiers had missed Havat earlier, the captain rode halfway to Trebizond and back but didn’t find her either. The remains of our group walked the main pathways around the wood in the direction of the town but, despite thorough searching, the Talanian girl appeared to have vanished. As the light began to fade, we were deciding to call off the search for the night when the captain saw something moving at the edge of the wood.
‘There,’ he said, ‘among the trees.’
It took me a moment to realise what Captain Orfalea was looking at, and before I could say anything he had drawn his pistol. Anyush shouted as Husik, the trapper, emerged slowly into the dim light. The captain ordered him to stand in the road, and I told the boy to come out, that it was perfectly safe. I explained to the captain that Husik works for me and that he’s a trapper and knows these woods better than anyone. But Orfalea wouldn’t lower his pistol, and Husik’s hand remained on the knife at his hip. He was peculiarly agitated, his eyes shifting from one face to another.
‘You’re looking in the wrong place,’ he said. ‘You’ll never find her.’
I asked if he’d seen the missing girl, but he seemed more interested in Anyush. He stared at her with open hostility.
‘Husik,’ I said again, ‘if you know where the girl is then please say so.’
‘I’m not telling him,’ Husik said, looking at the captain.
I reasoned with the boy but he refused to say anything more. It was clear the captain thought Husik was in some way responsible for the girl’s disappearance and kept asking what he had done with her. At this point, Anyush begged the trapper to help find Havat, but he only laughed in a strangely insolent manner.
‘There’s so much I do know,’ he said. ‘So much I could say.’
‘Answer the question,’ the captain snapped. ‘What have you done with her?’
‘With her? What have you done?’
‘Enough!’ I said, stepping between them. ‘For once and for all Husik have you seen the girl or not?’
The boy half turned towards the wood, cocking his ear as though listening for something.
‘I didn’t say I saw her,’ he said. ‘I heard noises. That’s all.’<
br />
‘What kind of noises?’
‘Screaming. Like an animal in a trap. Only it wasn’t an animal.’
Anyush turned pale, and the captain was clearly sceptical, but I knew the boy wouldn’t lie to me.
‘Whereabouts?’I asked.
‘I might not remember.’
‘Please …’ Anyush begged. ‘We can’t leave her out here.’
The trapper clammed up again, and I was getting weary of the exchange. I took off my hat and wiped my brow. It was still very hot and the mosquitoes were out in force.
‘Look, Husik,’ I said finally, ‘if we don’t find Havat, she will almost certainly die. She doesn’t have the wit to survive in the wild as you do. You are the only one who can help her.’
I still wasn’t sure what he would decide, but he turned abruptly and disappeared into the trees. The captain, Anyush and I hurried to catch up with him.
Beneath the canopy the path was barely visible, but Husik’s step never faltered. Turning abruptly east, he left the track and made his way through scrub, low-hanging boughs and fallen trees. We had to move quickly not to lose sight of him, stumbling and lacerating hands and faces. Gradually the darkness seemed a little less intense and what initially appeared to be a clearing proved to be a wide pathway following a linear course through the wood. It was overgrown with moss and spindly trees reaching for the light, but it was clear that it had once been an avenue or thoroughfare of some description. Husik moved along it, following its southward course, constantly looking to right and left as though expecting company. Abruptly he came to a halt and waited for us.
‘There,’ he said pointing, ‘that’s where I heard it.’
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