Anyush

by Martine Madden

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Anyush jumped.

  ‘I told you never to come in here.’

  ‘Husik … you frightened me.’

  ‘Where did you get that? Give it to me.’ He snatched the pouch from her hand. ‘So this is where he kept it! I should have asked you sooner.’ He looked around at his father’s room. ‘Close those shutters.’

  Anyush dropped the bar across the slats, plunging the room into darkness.

  ‘We have to leave, Husik,’ she said, following him outside. ‘All of us.’

  He pulled out a chair and sat at the table. His eyes roamed over the pile in front of him and settled on the side of pork. Picking it up, he unwound it slowly from its muslin wrapping. With his skinning knife, he began to carve off paper-thin slices.

  ‘People are being taken from their homes, Husik. Armenians. We have to leave. If we can get to Batum we can stay with Gohar’s relatives. We’ll be safe there.’

  He chewed slowly, his eyes moving over her in the way they did when he surprised her in the bedroom or the stable or the wood.

  ‘You have to listen to me … we don’t have much time. I heard from … from a soldier that they’re evacuating Armenians in the village. We have to leave, Husik. Now.’

  ‘Would that be the soldier you whored for in the old church by any chance?’ The floor timbers groaned as he sat back in his chair. ‘You really thought I didn’t know? About you and the Turk-man? There’s nothing I don’t know about you, Anyushi.’ He speared some meat onto the tip of his knife and offered it to her. ‘No? It’s good,’ he said, eating it himself. ‘Sit down, you look pale.’

  She gripped the back of the chair nearest her.

  ‘I was probably there every time you fucked him. I even know the sounds you made. Only someone very stupid would take on another man’s whore and his child, but it pays to be stupid sometimes, Anyush. I got what I wanted in the end. I got you.’

  He pushed the pork away, wiping his hands across his thighs. ‘You never make those noises with me, Anyush. Maybe we should try now, eh?’

  He stood up and came towards her. ‘What do you say? See if you’ll scream for me.’

  ‘Please, Husik,’ she said, placing a hand against his chest. ‘I know what you must think of me but–’

  He laughed and the baby whimpered somewhere in the back room.

  ‘We have to leave, Husik. There’s no time for this now.’

  ‘Where were you really going, Anyush? Running off with your captain?’

  ‘No! It isn’t like that.’

  ‘Really? What’s this on the table then? And this?’ With a sweep of the knife, he tipped the leather pouch onto the floor. ‘What’s he ever done for you, Anyush, aside from putting a child in your belly and running away? He was never there for you. Never protected you the way I have.’ The marks on her neck had almost disappeared, and Husik traced their faint outline with his finger. ‘I know what my father tried to do. He was a dangerous man, Anyush. Greedy. He wanted you for himself; I’ve always known that. He killed my mother when I was seven. Beat her so badly I didn’t recognise her. Kicked her in the belly until she lost the child she was carrying and locked me in the room with her so I couldn’t go for help. The same room where you so cleverly found his money. I sat in a corner and watched my mother die. He told everyone she bled to death when she lost the baby, but she died because of him. Not you though. He was never going to touch you, Anyushi.’

  ‘No,’ she said, backing away.

  ‘You should thank me for all those things I did to him. Didn’t you dream of doing them yourself?’

  ‘No, Husik … not your own father–’

  ‘He killed my mother!’ Husik roared, plunging the knife into the table. ‘He deserved to die. He would have killed you too.’

  ‘No–’

  ‘Don’t walk away from me.’ He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards him. ‘You’re mine, Anyush. Understand?’

  The trapdoor to the potato cellar was just inside the front door, and he dragged her over to it, pulling the iron ring and opening it wide.

  ‘No, Husik, please! Not in there I beg you.’

  ‘In you go, Anyushi-bai. Plenty of time to think in there.’

  ‘Husik … no!’

  He dragged her over to the opening and kicked the back of her knees so that her legs folded beneath her. With a final push, she fell into the hole. The potatoes were stacked almost to the opening and the drop wasn’t far, but she landed on her ribs and rolled down towards the dried mud floor. Over her head Husik’s face grinned down at her. ‘Say some poetry, Anyush. Helps pass the time.’

  The trapdoor slammed shut, sealing her into the darkness with the dust and potato mould. Panic took hold. She scrabbled up the mound, slipping and clawing her way to where a frame of light backlit the trapdoor. But the potatoes rolled from under her and she lost her footing, tumbling helplessly onto the mud below.

  ‘Husik!’ Her voice was no more than a whisper. She couldn’t catch her breath. Rolling onto her knees, she tried to fill her lungs but the air seemed too heavy and her heart beat like a bird’s. She was going to suffocate. Locked in under the ground while her child called out above. Lale. She held the image in her mind. Behind her, she could pick out tiny slits in the dark, vents cut into the underside of the porch steps to prevent potato rot. She crawled on her belly towards them and pushed her face against the slices of air.

  ‘Husik!’ she shouted. ‘Let me out, Husik. Please.’

  Above her, the sound of distant laughter. With an effort, she steadied her breathing and crawled again to the top of the potato mound until her head was just under the trapdoor. Digging in her feet for purchase, she raised her hands until they were flat on the underside of the hatch. She pushed upwards and the door gave slightly before falling heavily shut. Again she pushed hard and this time the door lifted so that shafts of light poured into the hole blinding her.

  ‘Oh no you don’t!’

  Husik stamped the trapdoor shut again, sending shock waves down her arms.

  ‘Husik, please,’ she sobbed. ‘Lale needs me.’

  A shadow moved over the frame of light and she heard a chair being scraped across the boards. It creaked on the trapdoor when he sat on it. ‘No place like home, Anyush.’

  Showers of dust fell onto her face as he thumped his feet in time to a song. She pressed her hands over her ears.

  ‘How are you doing in there, Anyushi?’ he asked after a while. ‘You’ve gone very quiet. One of the things I always liked about you, your quietness.’

  His words were coming thick and slow and she realised he was drunk. After a while he fell silent. Something like an empty bottle rolled across the wooden floor and came to a stop. Shifting position to ease the stiffness in her limbs, Anyush fell into a waking doze.

  Loud knocking woke her with a start. She was confused. How long she had been shut in? The chair over her head creaked as Husik got up to open the door. A single gunshot rang out, then a thud as something heavy fell across the trapdoor. Warm drops dripped onto her shoulder and face.

  ‘Looks like this one had planned on going somewhere,’ a voice said.

  ‘Not any more,’ a second voice laughed. ‘Look what I found. The bastard was throwing his money around.’

  ‘Piece of shit like his father. Take those spoons. And the meat. Check if anyone’s hiding in the back.’

  Don’t cry, Lale. Please please don’t cry.

  ‘Bedroom’s in a mess. Someone left in a hurry.’

  ‘What’s at the back?’

  ‘Cool room probably.’

  ‘Take the food.’

  Dear God, dear God, dear God …

  ‘On second thoughts, forget about it. It won’t last in this heat. Come on. We’re finished here.’

  The footsteps moved over her head and went outside. She stayed huddled in a ball under the floor as minutes went by, hours maybe. She lost track of time. She could feel Husik’s blood caking on he
r skin. Then into the dark, tugging gently at her consciousness, came the sound of Lale’s lonely cry.

  She had the weight of Husik and the door to contend with and neiither would budge. Again and again she tried, slipping helplessly down the potatoes each time. Husik’s body blocked the light so completely that she was becoming disorientated. She focused on the slits of air at the base of the mound, lighting her prison like candles in the dark. Lale’s crying was more urgent now, loud enough for anyone passing outside to hear. She crawled to the space under the trapdoor once more and dug her feet to the ankles in the potatoes. Taking a deep breath, she pushed and kept pushing. The trapdoor lifted enough for Husik to roll a little to one side and give her room to squeeze her head and chest out. With the remaining strength left to her, she pushed her husband’s body off the hatch and pulled herself clear. Dizzy and disorientated, she sat on the floor for a moment, her energy spent. Husik lay beside her, his mouth open and a blank look on his face. Her dead husband. The man who knew she had deceived him and wanted her anyway. Leaning across, she touched his cheek. It was already cold. She wanted to feel something for him. Sorrow or gratitude. Pity even, but she was numb. She felt nothing only a great emptiness and a wish to be gone.

  Diary of Dr Charles Stewart

  Mushar

  Trebizond

  July 18th, 1916

  The past weeks have been hellish. It started when Manon called to the house visibly upset, to say that Paul had been arrested. Spying and assisting fugitives was the charge, along with others the Jendarma were unwilling to discuss. I went from the Vali’s mansion to the City Prefect and every other influential official I could think of. I called in every debt, every favour until the Jendarma agreed to release Paul into my custody. It was conditional on him remaining in the village under my supervision and not returning to the hospital in Trebizond. An informer had told police that Paul paid the captain of a coaling ship a large sum to smuggle Professor Levonian to Batum in Georgia. Since then the Municipal Hospital has been closed and the remaining staff suspended with the result that the only medical facility for miles is ours.

  I collected Paul at the Trebizond jail and we rode to the village in silence. Exhaustion and anger put paid to any conversation we might have had. We were almost at the village when Hetty came running on the road towards us.

  ‘Charles!’ she said. ‘They’ve taken them! They’re gone!’

  ‘Who are gone?’I asked, dismounting.

  ‘The schoolchildren. They’ve taken them all. Even the little ones.’

  ‘Who took them?’Paul asked.

  That morning in school the mudir had barged into Hetty’s classroom accompanied by Trebizond gendarmes. He said they were taking the children, and when she asked where, he wouldn’t answer. She stood in front of the door and refused to move until he told her. They were being brought to another town, the mudir said, where their mothers were waiting for them. The children began to cry, pushing up against Hetty’s skirts and clinging to her, but the gendarmes took them away.

  I gripped my wife’s cold hands and asked which road they had taken.

  ‘They wouldn’t tell me. I said I would see them safely into their mothers’ care but I was not allowed. They were … most insistent.’

  ‘Did they hurt you? If they so much–’

  ‘No, no, Charles, I’m fine but I followed at a distance. They took the road south. To Gümüşhane.’

  Paul made to remount his horse but I grabbed the bridle.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ I said. ‘You’re in enough trouble already. Where are our own children, Hetty?’

  She said that Gohar hadn’t come that morning as arranged, so she had sent the children to the stable loft to look out for her.

  ‘Bring them into the house,’ I told her. ‘Keep them there until I return.’

  Moments after I left, the first woman arrived. Her baby was three months old, perhaps four, and she told Paul that she wanted to give her child into the care of the khanum. Hetty was dumbfounded, but, moved by the girl’s distress, she took the child. The next woman came shortly after with a newborn, and the floodgates opened after that. By the time I returned, the house was full of crying babies while soldiers stood in the garden waiting to seize the mothers at the first opportunity. Paul was talking to a young recruit not much older than Thomas. I saw the boy shrug indifferently and follow the line of weeping women to the village.

  Inside the house, Milly was dragging a pair of drawers across the flagged kitchen floor and Robert followed with a bundle of linen in his arms. Hetty was standing in the middle of them nursing a baby and issuing orders. ‘Put them over there, Milly, beside the others. Thomas, help Robert fold the sheets into those drawers and when you’re done bring in milk from the cold room.’

  I wiped my bleeding lip, trying to hide it from her.

  ‘Dear God what happened to you, Charles?’

  She handed the baby she was carrying to Eleanor and went to fetch some iodine. Paul came in from the garden looking agitated. ‘We have to do something,’ he said. ‘They’re marching all the Armenians out of the village.’

  I stared into the bowl in Hetty’s hand, blood from my lip discolouring the water. I couldn’t argue with him.

  On every road from the village I had witnessed people being herded like cattle: women and children, old people who should have been in their beds, the sick and the frail marching without provisions or water. Many had been walking in bare feet with no protection from the sun.

  Ozhan’s men had been prodding and lashing out at them, and when one had started to beat one of the Zornakian twins with the butt of his rifle I had tried to intervene. Grabbing the muzzle I’d shouted at him to stop but two more had descended on me and a hail of blows had rained down on my head. Someone had called them off and I’d looked up to see Nazim Ozhan standing over me.

  ‘Go back to your hospital Dr Stewart,’ he’d said.

  ‘You have no right to take these people. No right. It’s inhumane.’

  ‘On the contrary, I have every right. This is my country and I will not be dictated to by interfering foreigners. Government business is none of your concern. Take my advice Dr Stewart, stick to what you know best. Dr Trowbridge has already caused enough trouble for giaours like you.’

  ‘Why are the babies here?’ I asked Hetty, looking at them lying in baskets and drawers and on sheets on the floor.

  ‘The infants can be left behind if someone is willing to take them,’ she said dabbing at my lip. ‘But we need wet nurses. And help with feeding the older ones.’

  There was still no sign of Gohar and nobody had any news of Anyush. I stood up and reached for my hat.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Paul asked.

  ‘To get help.’

  ‘You’re wasting your time. The Vali will do nothing.’

  I told him that Abdul-Khan’s brother was a patient of mine and I intended going over the Vali’s head and approaching the colonel directly. Paul insisted on coming with me.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘I’m not sitting around while Ozhan and his butchers wipe out the entire village.’

  ‘You’re under house arrest. Unless you want to go back to prison, you will stay here.’

  ‘And do nothing? Like you’ve been doing for God knows how long?’

  We faced each other in that small room, hurt and anger unspoken. It dawned on me then that I knew nothing of this country. I should never have come to this godforsaken place. But if there was any hope of redeeming myself, it was with Abdul-Khan. If I rode hard and luck was with me then I might persuade him to see reason.

  ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I did nothing. I was wrong about everything.’

  Paul shook his head.

  ‘But I’m going to see Abdul-Khan. I’m going to ask him for a letter of protection for the villagers and as many of those in Trebizond as I can get.’

  ‘It’s too late for letters, Charles. Don’t you understand?’

&
nbsp; ‘I’m going anyway and I want you to stay here. As a friend I’m asking you. If you leave the village, they’ll arrest you, and Hetty and the children will be left alone. Please, Paul, stay in the house with them. You’re the only person I trust. I’m asking you … begging you … stay here and keep them safe.’

  In the open door of Khandut’s cottage, Anyush stood with the baby slung in a shawl at her breast. A single chair was knocked over in the middle of the room, but Gohar’s bed under the ladder was neatly made and everything else in its usual place. To her right, the door of Khandut’s room was open, and Anyush walked inside. The bed was at an angle to the wall, as though it had been pushed off centre. The covers were crumpled and stained. On the floor a small pile of clothing was half-hidden under a pillow. She picked up Khandut’s underclothes. One of her stockings was just visible in the darkness under the bed and something black and solid a little further in. She bent to see what it was. A shoe. Just one. Gohar’s shoe.

  ‘Mummy.’

  ‘Not now Milly. Go and have a look through the window for Paul. Any sign of Manon? Thomas, is that child still crying? Did you try spooning in the milk?’

  ‘I did, but he won’t take it.’