‘You don’t know who you’re threatening!’ he said.
Life became more difficult after that. Kazbek accused Anyush of sleeping with the Englishman and told Husik his wife was a whore. Again, she was forced to kneel on the floor while her husband looked the other way. One day Dr Stewart called, and to Anyush’s surprise Kazbek allowed him inside. The doctor examined the baby and offered Anyush her old position at the hospital.
‘Bring Lale with you,’ he said. ‘You should remain on the staff and we would happily have you both.’
But Kazbek would not hear of it, and nothing Dr Stewart could say would change his mind.
The baby was soundly asleep when Anyush got to her feet. Her stomach was rumbling. There was wild garlic growing in the wood, and with a few potatoes and some rice she could make a jermag pilaff. Picking garlic reminded her of her grandmother’s khash, a meaty beef broth served with garlic and lavash. It was the most delicious food imaginable, but nobody had meat to make it any more.
Tiptoeing out the door, she slipped under cover of the trees, picking her way carefully over the spongy forest floor. A narrow track leading past bunches of hyssop led to where the garlic grew. The canopy was dense, shutting off the bright sunlight, but she spotted the white flowers just ahead in the clearing. A twig cracked and then another followed by voices. Looking around for somewhere to hide, she pressed herself against the trunk of two trees that had fallen onto each other.
‘What do you mean, nothing?’ a wheezy voice was saying. ‘What are we paying you for?’
‘People are nervous,’ a second voice said. A voice Anyush knew only too well.
‘They’re being careful. Nobody’s saying anything. Especially since Aykanian and all the others have been hanged.’
‘Aykanian was hoisted thanks to you.’
‘I didn’t think you’d hang him. Just rough him up a bit.’
‘Listen to me, you worthless shit, you knew very well the minute you gave us his name that he was finished. So save your crocodile tears for the priest.’
Kazbek laughed nervously. ‘No, no, of course. He had it coming. It’s just that it makes people wary.’
There was a loud crack of a match against flint and the sound of smoke drawn deep into lungs. Anyush risked a look. The gendarme had his back to her.
‘So they should be. There’s going to be a lot of changes around here.’
‘What do you mean? What kind of changes, efendim?’
‘You’ll find out soon enough.’
Grinding his match under the toe of his boot, the gendarme pointed a finger at Kazbek. ‘You’d better have something for me next time. Unless you want to swing like the old man.’
The heat had built up to an almost unbearable intensity. Anyush opened every window, but the house felt as if it was holding its breath. Lale seemed to sense the change in the weather. She had been uneasy all day, crying in her mother’s arms and finally falling asleep from exhaustion. Since the evening in the forest Anyush jumped whenever Kazbek entered the room. His eyes followed her and his jet beads flicked through his fingers as though counting down to her last breath. Anyush tried to stay out of his way, to make herself invisible, but there was nowhere to hide from Kazbek. Husik seemed unaware of the atmosphere in the house. He spent his days with his traps in the wood and laughed when his wife suggested she go with him.
‘No, Anyushi bai. Not there.’
The lavash bread she had taken from the tandoor in the yard was cooling on the table. It was too hot to tear with her fingers so she fetched the knife to slice it. At her mother’s cottage Gohar had made the lavash every morning, flattening the dough by throwing it in the air between her spread fingers. The force of its own weight gradually made the dough thinner and thinner, turning it into a large fine sheet ready for the oven. Anyush loved to watch Gohar make the bread and missed the rhythm and comfort of it. Her mother also made lavash but with impatient slaps of dough against the kitchen table. Khandut had been to visit only once since Lale’s birth. She had held her granddaughter with such tenderness that Anyush had to look away. Gohar hadn’t said a word. She had gone outside and dug the vegetable garden until it was time to leave. Khandut had never come again.
Anyush put the bread knife on the table. Through the window she could see the long path leading through the wood and she thought she saw her grandmother walking with her slow, shuffling gait. But there was no one there, only the branches of the trees moving in the wind. The Stewarts had asked Gohar to work for them as Lottie was not well and Bayan Stewart was nursing the child. If nothing else, Anyush thought, it was time away from Khandut.
Undoing the top buttons of her chemise, she fanned herself with a handkerchief. Her hair was pinned up and bound in a scarf, but still she felt as though she would melt. Sweat trickled down her breastbone and into the cleft between her breasts. Pressing her hand to the back of her neck, she had a sudden sense of the room darkening. Kazbek was standing in the doorway, watching her. His face was in shadow and the bright daylight pressed like a halo around him. Without taking his eyes from her, he pushed the door shut, his beads making small tapping noises on the wood.
‘Are you looking for, Husik?’ Her voice sounded weak and thin in the airless room. ‘He should be back soon.’
‘I’m not looking for Husik,’ Kazbek said, slipping his beads into his pocket. ‘I sent him to the village. On an errand.’
He stood in the middle of the room staring out the small side window. ‘Cover yourself.’
The buttons of her dress seemed too large for the holes she tried to push them through. Milky stains seeped into the fabric around the thin cotton yoke.
‘Do you think you fool me, Anyush? Do you think I don’t know what you’re doing when you expose yourself to me like this?’
‘No … no, Kazbek I was feeding Lale.’
‘I don’t see the child.’
‘She’s in her crib, asleep.’
‘Lust is a sin, Anyush.’
In the cool room Lale cried out and then fell silent. She cried again more urgently, and Anyush went to go to her, but Kazbek caught her by the arm. His fingers pressed into her flesh. ‘Did I say you could leave?’
‘Lale’s crying.’
‘Let her cry.’
‘She needs me.’
‘You’d know all about need, wouldn’t you?’ he said, his voice dropping to a whisper.
She could see his dusky grey gums and felt her stomach rise as he pushed her towards the table. It hit the bone in the small of her back.
‘What do you imagine is going through my head, Anyush, when I have to listen to you and my son in the next room? Do you think I’m saying my prayers? Is that what you think?’
She was almost lying flat now, curved backwards over the lip of the table and fighting the urge to turn her head away from his hot fishy breath.
‘Well you’d be wrong. I’ve been sinning, Anyush. Pleasuring myself. And who could blame me?’
A sour gush of fear filled her stomach. She tried to twist away, but he was strong and held her where she was.
‘I’ve been driven to it. By you, Anyush. There’s only one way to deal with sinfulness like yours. Fire with fire.’ His hand was fumbling at his trousers. ‘Fire with fire and sword with sword.’
‘No!’ She lashed out with her nails at his face and arms.
‘Whore!’
The force of his hand banged her head against the table and everything darkened for a moment. When she could see again, he was directly over her and she was finding it difficult to breathe. His arm was pressing with his full weight across her throat.
‘Why did you think I let Husik marry you? So I could keep my son happy? Is that what you thought?’
Blood was pooling in her lips and her vision began to swim.
‘I let him marry you so I could do this!’
‘Husik!’
‘Husik?’ Kazbek laughed, pushing his trousers down with his free hand. ‘Husik is miles away. Now,’ he l
eaned heavier and spots danced before her eyes, ‘unless you want that child of yours to end up motherless, open your legs.’
The pressure eased and she found her breath, but she couldn’t fight him. She hadn’t the strength. Tears trickled down her face and into her ears. Her arms fell limply beside her head and something cold knocked off her hand. The knife. She grabbed it and struck Kazbek in the shoulder. A wild roar bellowed from deep within him and his weight slid off her. Anyush’s legs were unsteady when she stood, but she inched away from him holding the knife with both hands.
‘Don’t come near me! Stay back or I’ll kill you.’
Edging around the crouched, bleeding figure, she risked a glance at the door and hesitated. She couldn’t leave without Lale, but Kazbek was on his feet again, lurching towards her.
‘Stay away! I mean it.’
‘Should have stuck it in my eye, Anyush.’ Blood seeped through his fingers where they grasped the wound. ‘Should have done the job properly, like I’m going to do.’
He lunged at her, but she sidestepped him to find herself in front of the table again. He was staggering like a drunk but moving purposely towards her.
‘Stay back!’ she jabbed the knife at him. ‘Stay back or I’ll tell everyone you’re an informer.’
Kazbek became perfectly still as if he had been struck with something of greater mass than himself.
‘That’s right. I know your secret. Your dirty dealings.’ Her voice was shaking, but the fear in his eyes gave her courage. ‘How many people would like to know the name of the man who betrays his own to the Turks? How many Armenians in our village? Vardan Aykanian maybe?’
In the cool room Lale started to cry.
‘It would give me nothing but pleasure to tell them, Kazbek, and I swear to you if you ever come near me or mine, every man, woman and child in the village will know what you are!’
They stood watching each other, heaving air into their lungs. From the look on his face she thought he would kill her anyway. But he moved away, pulled open the door and was gone.
From the shoreline Anyush walked the short distance to the start of the hazel wood. The trees followed the path of the river and linked up after a mile and a half with Kazbek’s wood and house. Along the road was easier, but there was less shade that way and it was no longer safe. Lale stirred in the sling, her cheek snug against her mother’s breast.
Since the attack, a week before, Anyush had spent as much time as she could outside. Some days Kazbek stayed away, disappearing in the early morning or locking himself behind his bedroom door. To Husik he was as cruel as ever, taunting him or putting him to the most menial of tasks, but to Anyush he spoke not one word. She started going further from the house again, visiting her grandmother and friends, as far as the Stewarts’. Nothing was said. No barriers were put in her way. Life was never easy within Kazbek’s four walls, but it was a little better.
Anyush seldom went to the village and most people avoided it. Vardan Aykanian had never returned from Trebizond, where he had been working on the police barracks. The Jendarma claimed to know nothing, and Dr Stewart learned little from them when he called to make enquiries. Vardan wouldn’t have gone away without telling his pregnant wife, but soldiers were trawling the towns, picking up unlisted men and taking them to the front. Turks as well as Armenians, old as well as young. It was of little comfort to Parzik, but it could have been worse. How was it, Anyush wondered, that Husik had managed to avoid conscription? He wasn’t clever, but he was healthy and strong. Kazbek had something to do with it. Secretive, brooding Kazbek, whose land remained untouched and who always had plenty on his table. The Devil rewards his own, Gohar had said. Perhaps Kazbek’s house was the best place for them after all.
Something brushed off her face. She pushed it away and was surprised to feel that it was smooth and solid. Anyush looked up. A body swayed and twisted from its impact with her head. Kazbek’s shiny black shoes were just visible under the trousers bunched around his ankles, and streams of brown-red blood had dried into the black hair on his legs. At his groin pubic hair, and torn skin and blood were congealed where his genitals had been, and more blood spattered onto his shirt which was torn open. Black-jet prayer beads bit into the skin of his wrists, tied behind his back, and, above the noose, his face had a mottled, liverish hue. His penis hung between swollen lips, where his tongue should have been, and Anyush noticed there was a word carved into the skin of his chest. The crude letters were distorted with blood so that it took a while to decipher them. A single word. ‘Informer’.
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Mushar
Trebizond
June 30th, 1916
In my career as a doctor I have never had to step into the shoes of a priest until today. Kazbek Tashjian was found hanging in the wood close to his house, and Mahmoud Agha and I were the first on the scene. It was a grisly sight, enough to turn the stomach of most men, but my first concern was breaking the news to Husik, his son. It took some time to find the boy. He often disappears for days at a time, even when he’s supposed to be keeping order at the clinic. I put the word around that if anyone saw him they were to contact me immediately. Husik turned up at the hospital with a brace of rabbits for Manon. I brought him to my office and told him what had happened, but before I had finished he fled from the room and ran to the wood where Mahmoud Agha had taken the body down from the tree. Husik began to wail like an animal, pulling at his hair and digging his fingers into the skin of his face. The sounds he made were unnatural, almost inhuman. After a while he composed himself and went back to the house to begin making a coffin. All afternoon he hammered and sawed, carving Kazbek’s name painstakingly onto the lid. The boy’s devotion impressed me, but like most people in the village I did not mourn his father’s passing. Kazbek Tashjian was a dangerous man and had been the cause of serious discord between Hetty and me.
It was shortly after Anyush’s marriage to Husik. Manon was told by Khandut Charcoudian that the girl had moved to the Tashjian house and would no longer be coming to the hospital to work. This did not surprise me. Armenian girls usually stay within the home. But Hetty decided this was a further calamity, and she and Manon set up a vigil for our assistant nurse – a cordon of watchfulness beyond whose boundaries Kazbek would not dare trespass. I thought it madness and none of our affair and I told her as much. Hetty accused me of being indifferent and asked how I would feel if Anyush was my daughter. This offended me deeply. I care for the girl as much as Hetty, but the law is the law. The only person who has any say in Anyush’s welfare is her husband and if he cannot protect her then nobody can. I pleaded with Hetty to drop the idea, to stay away from the Tashjian farm as it wasn’t safe.
‘No safer than it is for Anyush,’ she said.
I promised her I would do whatever was within my powers as a doctor to do but that I could not interfere with what happens behind closed doors.
‘Cannot or will not?’
When I said nothing, Hetty turned her back to me. ‘Turkey has changed you,’ she said.
Her words stung. They rankled with me for days. If Hetty had not been so influenced by Paul and Manon, she would agree with me that this is how the world is made. A woman is subject to her husband no matter what the country of her birth or our own personal opinions. Had my wife’s sound judgement not been so trenchantly cast aside, she would recognise that I have already done much for the women of Trebizond, and Anyush in particular. I have endeavoured to put the needs of others before myself from the day I swore the Hippocratic oath, but I will not break the law of the land. If there is any truth to Hetty’s words, it is surely that Turkey has changed all of us. These were my thoughts as I looked at the mutilated corpse of Kazbek Tashjian.
Because of the heat and the fact that the body had been hanging for some days, I advised Husik to bury the corpse immediately. People in the village did not have the means to buy a coffin and put their dead directly into the ground wrapped in a sheet, but Husik woul
dn’t hear of it. Two evenings ago, on his insistence, the coffin was placed on the table in the house and the soul of Kazbek prayed for throughout the night. Husik stood dry-eyed as Gohar Charcoudian recited the prayers, oblivious to the heat and the smell permeating the room. Towards midnight Arnak called with the news that the priest could not be found.
‘My father cannot be buried without a priest,’ Husik said. ‘There has to be a priest.’
I knew that in certain religions it is permitted for someone to take the priest’s place, and I told Husik that I would be happy to officiate. He reluctantly agreed.
At first light we loaded the coffin onto the cart and brought it to the village, the women following on foot. By the gates of the Armenian cemetery a small group of old men had gathered. My chemist Malik Zornakian, a close friend of Vardan Aykanian, stood at the head of them.
‘I am here to bury my father,’ Husik said when the body of men blocked the entrance.
They refused to move, throwing menacing looks at Husik and his father’s casket.
‘The man has to be buried,’ I said. ‘And soon.’
Nayiri Karapetyan, whose son had disappeared and whose tobacco stall had been burnt by the Jendarma, stepped forward and said that Kazbek Tashjian would never be buried in the village cemetery.
‘My father is dead,’ Husik said. ‘Every man deserves a decent burial.’
But the men would not give way. Husik’s face changed, taking on a mean and belligerent look. He clipped the reins on the horse’s neck and the mare shied, her hooves coming dangerously close to the men at the gate. They scattered, and only Malik stood his ground. He grabbed the bridle.
‘Now listen to me, Doctor Stewart,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry you had to be involved in this but thanks to the scum in that box Mislav Aykanian is buried with noose marks around his neck. That bastard’s bones will never defile holy ground.’
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