Anyush

by Martine Madden

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You sure? I wouldn’t want it said we weren’t looking after the colonel’s son and heir.’

  ‘Lack of sleep, sir.’

  ‘For all the wrong reasons I’ll bet!’ The colonel laughed. ‘Take yourself off to Mother Yazgan’s place behind the bazaar. She’ll fix you up with a nice little virgin. Tell her I sent you.’

  The colonel leaned back in his chair and extended a well nourished leg beyond the corner of his desk. ‘You’ve been stationed in Trebizond, I hear. Are you familiar with the area?’

  ‘We were in a small village just outside Trebizond, sir. But yes, I know it.’

  ‘Good. I have an assignment for you. A chance to demonstrate some of your father’s mettle. You’ve heard of the Armenian resettlement plan?’

  ‘Rumour only, sir.’

  ‘It’s no rumour. The Armenian population is being moved to the interior and you will escort the Trebizond Armenians to Erzincan. You will be relieved of the convoy there and return here to Sivas.’

  ‘You mean … only Armenians, sir?’

  ‘You heard right the first time.’

  Abdul-Khan picked up a pen and started writing on a document in front of him.

  ‘But, sir … efendim … when you talk of Armenians … you mean the military population?’

  ‘I mean the lot of them. Every last one. When you leave Trebizond, there will be no Armenians in it.’ He signed his name at the bottom of the page and put the pen down. ‘Is that clear Orfalea?’

  ‘I … yes, sir … but women and children? Is it necessary to-?’

  ‘All of them!’ the colonel said, banging his fist on the desk.

  A pewter cup toppled over and dropped to the floor, coming to rest near Jahan’s foot. Bending down, he picked it up and placed it on the desk beside Abdul-Khan.

  ‘This is war,’ the colonel said, looking directly at him. ‘Armenians across the Empire are deserting to the Russians. We will remove traitors from our borders in any way we can. Every man, woman and child of them. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Speak up. I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘Yes, sir. But sir … I’ve been relieved of my command. I have no rank.’

  Abdul-Khan smiled and handed him the document he had signed. ‘Congratulations, Captain. You’ve just been reinstated.’

  The covered market was hot and crowded and smelt of sweating bodies, henna and overripe fruit. The captain and the lieutenant were moving in single file through the main thoroughfare, standing aside for the veiled women at the fruit and vegetable stalls. Propped against a pillar in the spice market, a beggar held up his stump as they passed by.

  ‘Why does he choose me? Someone who’s been disgraced?’

  ‘That’s just the way of it, bayim.’

  ‘Not with Abdul-Khan.’

  A dog raced between the stalls, a large fish in its mouth.

  ‘And why the Trebizond Armenians? There are other companies closer than we are.’

  Small cupolas in the roof filtered pools of light into the teeming, sunless space. At the end of the main walkway they turned left and entered the gold souk. Reflections from the jewellery and brass weighing scales cast a yellow glow on the whitewashed barrel-vaulted ceiling and along the walls. On both sides, dealers set out their trays of gold, and groups of black-clad women fingered the goods and haggled. A bracelet studded with lapis lazuli caught Ahmet’s eye and the stall-owner materialised in front of him. ‘Very beautiful. Perfect for your mother, efendim. Or your wife.’

  Ahmet threw it back, but Jahan picked it up again. The stones were the colour of the sea at Trebizond. ‘How much?’

  ‘Persian lapis,’ the gold-seller said, wiping the disappointment from his face. ‘Very good quality.’

  ‘Your best price?’

  They haggled for a while before finally agreeing on half.

  ‘I saw Shota in there,’ Jahan said, putting the bracelet into his pocket. ‘In the colonel’s office.’

  ‘Couldn’t be Shota, bayim.’

  ‘I’m telling you they were. I was as near to them as you are to me. One of them had no right hand.’

  ‘Murzabey?’

  ‘Yes, and by the looks of things he wasn’t about to be arrested either.’

  Leaving the gold souk, they walked beneath the twin columns of the Northern Gate into the sunlight. Pushing past the shoppers, they headed towards the Gök Medrese.

  ‘Let me buy you a coffee, bayim.’

  The coffee house faced the immense stone pillars of the Northern Gate and the twin minarets of the Gök Medrese, the city’s thirteenth-century religious school. The tables were empty except for two old men sitting in a far corner. Jahan and Ahmet took a seat at a table near the pavement and the lieutenant ordered. Over by the souk veiled women in brightly coloured skirts passed through the main gateway. The waiter arrived with two cups of coffee and a dish of figs.

  ‘Maybe this isn’t as bad as I thought,’ the captain said. ‘Maybe the Armenians are better off this way.’

  ‘Bayim?’

  ‘They’ll be out of Ozhan’s reach. If they leave, I mean. I can’t see Ozhan moving to Syria, can you?’

  Ahmet stirred his coffee.

  ‘You know there are Armenian settlements in Syria? Whole towns of them. If fighting breaks out along the Georgian border, the Armenians will have to move anyway. Better to go with us than wait for the Russians.’

  ‘Bayim,’ the lieutenant said, placing his coffee spoon on the table, ‘there are things you should know. This is not–’

  ‘Hey, Jahan!’ A tall, uniformed figure in a ghutrah and agal waved over from the shadow of the Northern Gate. He was carrying his wooden boxes, and a troupe of small boys fanned out behind him like a peacock’s tail.

  ‘Lieutenant Wegner,’ Ahmet said, getting to his feet.

  The men shook hands and the waiter brought more coffee. Behind them the boys stood guard over Armin’s boxes.

  ‘I was at the Medrese,’ Armin said. ‘Trying to photograph the interior and I picked up some onlookers.’

  ‘Gitmek!’ the lieutenant shouted.

  ‘Leave them. They’re not bothering me.’

  The boys retreated a little, keeping one eye on Ahmet and another on Armin.

  ‘I was in the bazaar earlier, trying to set up a shot of the gold souk, but I got ushered out. Thrown out actually.’

  The boys seemed to understand and smiled.

  ‘What is it? Did I do something wrong?’ asked Armin.

  ‘You must never steal a photograph of another man’s wife,’ Jahan explained.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Women. It is forbidden to photograph them.’

  The old men in the corner stared as the boys laughed louder, covering their mouths like girls.

  ‘But they were veiled. You couldn’t see anything.’

  ‘No photographs of women. Veiled or not.’

  ‘I see.’ Armin’s pale face coloured.

  ‘The Seljuk Keykavus is near here,’ Ahmet volunteered. ‘I show you today.’

  ‘Well, if you don’t have previous commitments.’

  ‘Seljuk is old hospital. Very old. You will like it.’

  ‘Ahmet is forgetting that we will be gone in a few days,’ Jahan said.

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘For Trebizond.’

  ‘I’m joining von der Goltz there in a week’s time,’ Armin said. ‘Do you know the town?’

  ‘I was stationed near there for a year.’

  ‘Good. I will travel with you, then.’

  They finished their coffee and Armin announced that he was finished for the day. ‘See you here tomorrow?’

  ‘Outside the souk.’

  Armin left, walking through the crowds with long strides as the boys ran after him.

  ‘Captain,’ Ahmet said when Armin was out of earshot, ‘you should not have agreed to bring Wegner to Trebizond.’

  ‘Why no
t? He’s going there anyway.’

  ‘This evacuation, bayim. It is not what you think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My cousin Naim was involved in relocations in Bitlis and Diyarbekir. They were told to bring Armenians to camps in the interior as you were, but the idea is not to bring them anywhere.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense. They have to go somewhere.’

  ‘Not if they die on the way. They are marched without food or water until they collapse from starvation and exhaustion. Those that survive are handed over to the Shota.’

  ‘Shota?’

  ‘They’re tipped off in advance and the soldiers turn a blind eye. That’s what Murzabey was doing in Abdul-Khan’s office. There’s an arrangement. They take the younger women and …’ he shrugged. ‘You know the rest.’

  ‘Are you telling me … are you saying I will be marching these people to their deaths?’

  ‘I’m saying, bayim, that because of the way this is organised it couldn’t be otherwise.’

  Jahan felt cold. The crowds on the street were too close, and the press of bodies threatened to smother him. He walked away from the coffee house, elbowing passersby out of his way.

  ‘Captain!’

  Jahan kept moving. He had no idea where he was going, only that he couldn’t stop. People scattered right and left to avoid him. He tripped on something hard and immovable and fell against a tobacco stall, scattering the ground with cigarettes and broken matches. Someone swore and a crowd gathered. The tobacco seller’s face pressed up close, cursing and calling for the Jendarma.

  ‘Here, hacı,’ Ahmet said, pressing a note into his hand. ‘For the damage.’

  He took the Jahan by the arm and steered him down a side alley away from the crowd.

  ‘My father,’ Jahan said. ‘This is my father’s doing.’

  ‘With respect, Captain, this is Abdul-Khan’s doing.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I know he did this.’

  ‘You said it yourself, bayim: Abdul-Khan answers to no man.’

  ‘I can’t do it, Ahmet. I can’t do this.’

  ‘You have no choice.’

  ‘I have to get to Trebizond. I have to find Anyush.’

  ‘Forget about her.’

  ‘How can I forget her when she’s going to be my wife? Am I supposed to march her to her death or present her as a gift to the Shota?’

  The lieutenant looked away from him, up along the alley to where the dome of the mosque gleamed like a half-moon above the streets below. The figure of the muezzin was just visible on the balcony, preparing to sing the words of the Tekbir.

  ‘Bayim,’ the lieutenant said, ‘this evacuation will go ahead with or without you. If you don’t carry out the order, Ozhan will, and you know what will happen to the girl then. She would not last beyond the borders of the village. You call her your wife and perhaps she is that to you, but if there’s any hope of her surviving, and it is only a faint hope, it is with you leading that convoy.’

  Anyush made her way to the washing-pool. Nothing had been laundered for two weeks since she was forbidden by Husik to go out alone, but she couldn’t bear being imprisoned in the house any longer. Her life should have been easier with Kazbek gone but it was as if he never left. He was there in the breath that lifted the hairs on her neck and the shadows that followed her from room to room. He watched from his chair in the corner and settled with the heat and dust blowing in under the door. She wasn’t the only one haunted by him. Husik was drinking heavily and staying up nights, reciting poems for his father or singing love songs to his wife until he passed out at the table. Other times, he forced Anyush to her knees, shouting drunkenly the badly remembered words of his father’s prayers. Piece by piece, a little more with each passing day, Husik took on his father’s shape. He wore his father’s clothes and squeezed his feet into the old man’s shoes. Dressed in this way, he would disappear into the wood and go missing for days – long days Anyush spent alone with Kazbek’s ghost and the threat of what lay in the wood beyond.

  She walked on, keeping to the shade beneath the trees. On her hip, curled up amongst the clothes in the basket, Lale lay asleep. Every few steps she stopped to listen. She knew why the gendarmes hadn’t bothered the Tashjians and understood also that this protection was gone. There seemed to be more and more of them, making impossible demands and imposing new taxes on Armenian families. Turkish neighbours, the Hisars and many others Anyush had known all her life, turned away. They locked themselves behind a wall of fear so that they saw nothing and heard nothing and pulled their children indoors so they would hear nothing either. It felt as if the ties that bound her to Trebizond had already been cut. The cups on the shelf, the distant sea, the unyielding earth in the potato drills had all turned faithless against her.

  Lale stirred in her sleep, her little mouth widening into a smile.

  ‘Please God look after Lale,’ Anyush prayed. ‘Please God look after us all.’

  When she looked up again, Jahan was standing on the path before her.

  Anyush had changed. Something was gone from her, an innocence perhaps, and yet she was more beautiful than Jahan remembered. He would have liked to take her in his arms, to press his lips against hers, but something in her face prevented him.

  ‘How are you, Anyush? You are well?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, putting the basket of laundry at her feet.

  ‘And your mother and grandmother, they are in good health?’

  ‘They are well also.’

  ‘I’ve thought of you often, Anyush. I’ve been to the church on the cliff–’

  ‘You’ve been away a long time, Jahan.’

  The wind shook the leaves, throwing them for an instant into shade. She shivered and hugged her arms around her.

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No.’

  Nothing about this moment was as Jahan had imagined it. Many times he had rehearsed what he would say but now he couldn’t find the words. The wind veered around to the east, bringing with it the acrid smell of burning. Behind the wood in the direction of the village, Jahan could see dense black smoke rising into the blue sky. ‘Trebizond has changed.’

  ‘Everything has changed, Jahan. This is not the place you knew.’

  There was a wariness about her. She seemed distant and guarded with him.

  ‘I passed Dr Stewart in the village. With his friend … the Kurd.’

  ‘Mahmoud Agha.’

  ‘Yes. The hospital is still running then?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Good. That’s good.’

  A small sound like an animal’s cry came from somewhere near them and Anyush’s eyes flicked to the basket at her feet. It was moving slightly and a baby’s hand waved for an instant above it. A bar of sunlight glanced off the gold ring on Anyush’s finger.

  ‘You … you’re married?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  The infant began to cry lustily.

  ‘The child is yours?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jahan looked at her, his face stiff as stone.

  ‘Why did you come back, Jahan?’

  ‘I’ve been ordered to come. The Black Sea coast is vulnerable and people are being moved to the interior.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘Armenians.’

  ‘I’m Armenian, Jahan. Do you mean to take me?’

  ‘It’s for your own good. For security reasons.’

  ‘Security?’ A bitter little laugh. ‘What about my Turkish neighbours? Are they not a threat to your security?’

  ‘I can offer you my protection,’ he said stiffly. ‘No harm will come to you.’

  She shook away the words as though they were insects biting at her ears. Bending down, she picked up the basket at her feet.

  ‘My child,’ she said, holding it out to him, ‘will you offer her your protection too? And my husband?’

  When he didn’t answer, s
he turned to leave.

  ‘Anyush … Anyush wait! If you won’t come with me, go east. Take the coast road to Batum. Leave immediately. Today.’

  They stood for a moment as if something could still be reclaimed between them. She turned her head and the sun caught the weave of her plait hanging below her scarf. It touched the blade of her shoulder where it pressed against the thin fabric of her blouse. Jahan closed his eyes, and when he opened them again she had gone.

  Lale had fallen asleep by the time Anyush reached the house, and she put her in the cool room at the back. In the bedroom she emptied one drawer after another and crammed the contents into a sack. In the kitchen she opened doors and cupboards, throwing objects at random onto the table. The pair of silver serving spoons Gohar had given her as a wedding present, still wrapped in their blue cloth. A gourd of water filled from the barrel. A side of salted pork wrapped in muslin. A knife. Bread. Some rice. A fistful of Gohar’s seeds. A shaving blade that had belonged to her father. A lock of Lale’s hair. Every inch of the table was covered as tears dripped onto the growing pile.

  The soldier she had met under the trees was not Jahan. He was a stranger, an instrument of the Government and an officious Turk. Wiping her eyes, she went to the door of Kazbek’s bedroom and opened it. It was dark and close and still smelled strongly of him. The outlines of the bed, table and chair were barely visible in the light creeping around the shutter slats. She pushed up the iron bar, sending motes of dust drifting in the sunlight to the floor. Old blackened ash spilled from the small fireplace, but otherwise everything was neat and tidy. Her stomach rose at the smell of him, stronger here than anywhere else. Facing the door, the huge oak headboard rose like a gravestone halfway up the wall. She had noticed on the few occasions he told her to clean the room that the bed was sometimes moved slightly to one side, enough to leave scrape marks on the wooden floor. She pushed the side rails with both hands but the bed wouldn’t move. The headboard was too heavy. Crouching down, she put her back to it and pushed again. This time it moved a couple of inches. She tried once more and the wooden feet scraped along the floor. It was enough to allow her crawl in behind it. On her knees she looked at the wall. The wooden planks were fixed with pairs of nails and seemed even and undisturbed. Only the plank behind the top of the headboard showed any sign of wear and it was fixed solidly to the wall. She must have been mistaken. She had been so sure. With her fingertips she felt along the bottom of the wall where the shingles met the floor. Something scratchy touched her skin and she recoiled. She felt for it again and pulled it out into the light. Horsehair. Used to fill the gap between the inside and outside walls. It had to be coming from somewhere. Running her hand along the bottom slat, she stopped suddenly. She could feel a thumb-sized hollow on the underside of the last board. It came away easily and, in the space behind, she found what she had been looking for. A leather drawstring pouch containing Kazbek’s blood money.