Last Letter from Istanbul

by Lucy Foley

  When they catch sight of her, all talk stops. She would like to believe it is because they have felt the hot touch of her anger. She knows the truth is that she is a spectacle, a curiosity. As she makes her way to the door she feels their eyes upon her: an intruder in their sanctuary. Then one says something, a little too loudly for her not to hear, but too quiet for her to make out. Laughter follows. By the time she has made it to the door her self-possession has almost deserted her.

  The same nurse, wearing the same air of vague disapproval, comes to meet her.

  ‘I’ll tell the doctor. He may not allow a visit so early. The’ – a fractional pause – ‘patient may not be ready.’

  Nur waits, feeling chastised, beneath the silent scrutiny of the white-robed figures.

  It is the first time she has entered the house in five years. When her chest begins to burn she realises that she has been holding her breath. The smell of the place is the thing that catches her first. There are new notes: something antiseptic, the nostril-sting of detergent, the unmistakable, indefinable smell of sickness – something stale. But beneath all of this there is the scent of her home. Familiar as a loved one.

  The nurse has returned.

  ‘Follow me.’

  She hesitates.

  The nurse beckons her forward with an impatient motion.

  Nur suspects the woman thinks her a little mad. She imagines that she must look a little mad – particularly when she steps over the threshold, and the act alone summons the sting of tears.

  But there is also curiosity. It is immediately clear that the selamlik, visible through the open door off the hallway, is almost untouched. Here the men used to gather: her father and uncles and other guests, later her brothers. She risks a step nearer. She is almost certain that she can still detect the scent of her father’s particular brand of tobacco. The room is full of ghosts.

  The haremlik is a different matter. It has been colonised by the living – and the dying. The room that was once the exclusive sanctuary of women is now a sleeping place for foreign men: sick ones, but the enemy nevertheless. It has been renamed, too. This, the nurse explains, leading her briskly through, is ‘the ward’. Temporary beds line both walls. All about her are prone forms, more or less dressed than the robed man she met in the gardens. An expanse of livid flesh draws the eye, though. She cannot help but look, sees a figure who has been very badly burned, resists the involuntary impulse of pity. This man has fresh linen, a Bosphorus breeze through an open window. All the comforts her former home can provide. And he is alive; albeit barely. Her brother, for all she knows, did not even have a funeral shroud.

  Beyond the haremlik is the sofa, the masterpiece of the house, with its tiled garden and mosaic floor. She sees that at some point the fountain, visible through the open doors, has ceased to flow. Powered by some miracle of hydraulics fed from the Bosphorus outside, it was her father’s pride. He used to say that the sound of the flowing water was the most peaceful he knew, a mimicry of the great channel just beyond.

  All of it is so familiar and so strange. How is it that inanimate wood and stone feel so like some extension of bone and flesh? She moves into the sofa, looks instinctively toward the great windows. There is the view she remembers.

  Upon one of the divans in the sofa she sees a pile of books. Herodotus, a couple of English novels. Her father’s books. Enemy hands, enemy eyes have perused them.

  ‘Hello.’

  Nur turns. The English doctor stands in the doorway, a slight frown. She stifles her anger. For the first time she is properly aware of the extraordinary position necessity has left her in. At best, one avoids even being seen by the occupiers. At the very least, one avoids being noticed by them. And she has wandered voluntarily into their midst.

  ‘He’s a tough little chap,’ he says, leading her through. ‘I’ve heard grown men cry from the pain of it. Not a whimper from your son. He’s had a deal of morphine, so he won’t be himself. But he has been awake today.’

  She follows him, silent. The less she says, she thinks, the better. This way he may not see her hatred. And this way she may still be able to look at herself in a mirror and not see a traitor.

  The boy is on his own, in what used to be her father’s study: he is a slender white hillock beneath the sheet, only the fine fronds of his dark hair visible above it. Here is another assault of memory: it comes in the scent of old paper and tobacco, which somehow remain years after the source of them has gone. He sits up in bed, looking at her with eyes that have a curious, unnatural brightness.

  ‘I thought he’d prefer to be in here, you see. Not out in the ward with the men. Though I may have to move him, if there is a need for a quarantine case.’ He looks about at the walls, which bear the pale rectangular reminders of the paintings that once hung there.

  ‘I think this used to be a study, or perhaps a library. It has that scent to it.’ Curious that he should have noticed it too. ‘This was a house, you see.’

  ‘Yes,’ Nur says. Here is where my father used to sit and read for hours. Just beyond is the room in which my mother and grandmother and I and my aunts and my cousins drank rose-scented sherbet, and had the luxury of being bored. Afternoons – filled with the murmur of women and the smoke of perfumed cigarettes – that felt as though they would keep happening forever.

  ‘Nur hanım?’ The form beneath the sheet stirs, a face emerges. His skin is still bleached of colour, but it has lost the yellowish cast.

  The doctor helps him to sit, with a care that she decides is nothing more than professional creed, arranging cushions behind him.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asks.

  ‘Hungry,’ he says, in English.

  She laughs – she cannot help it – and at exactly the same time she hears the English doctor’s bark of a laugh, too.

  Her face is hot. Some nameless unpatriotic slippage has just occurred.

  The doctor clears his throat. ‘He is doing very well, everything considered. I shall leave you two, now.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll be outside. On the terrace, if you need me.’ For a large man she is impressed by how silently he moves, a doctor’s trick, perhaps.

  ‘I brought you something.’

  She hands it to the boy, gratified to see the new animation in his face, the small flicker of childish greed at the prospect of a present. He unwraps it.

  ‘Do you recognise it? I brought it so it would remind you of home.’

  It unfurls from the paper; an exclamation of colour against the sterile white of the bedspread. He traces the gilt thread with a slow finger. He nods, solemn. ‘Thank you.’

  She allows herself to believe that he is, truly, pleased with her gift. ‘It doesn’t hurt too much?’

  ‘No. He,’ he points at the door through which the man has gone, ‘gave me the medicine. I can see colours behind my eyes.’ He shuts them, to illustrate this.

  ‘Well, that’s for the pain.’

  ‘I know. I’d like to be a doctor, one day. Why are you frowning?’

  ‘Not a chef de cuisine?’

  ‘Oh.’ He thinks. ‘Perhaps both.’ And then, seriously, ‘Am I coming home?’

  ‘As soon as you are well enough, I promise.’ The same question has been on her mind. She will remove him from the Englishman’s care as soon as she can be certain he is free from danger.

  ‘To your home?’

  She frowns. ‘It is your home now, too. Not just my home.’

  ‘Oh.’ This seems to satisfy him somewhat.

  She wonders what has brought this on. She supposes it is the first time he has spent any significant time away from her, or the apartment, since that dreadful night. He is still not quite himself, she notices. Some of his sentences disintegrate into incoherence. When she begins to fear she is tiring him, she decides to leave.

  She goes to find the doctor. She knows she must thank him, however much she would like to leave without it. It is not just her innate politeness; it is a sa
feguard of sorts. She needs to make sure that he will treat the boy as well as he would treat one of his own men.

  He is smoking a cigarette. Behind him is a waterfall of green: the wisteria. The last of the summer flowers are still scattered about his feet, purple leached to pale brown. And beyond the wisteria the merciless beauty of the Bosphorus. It seems incredible to her that this was once a view she took for granted.

  ‘I wanted to thank you,’ she says.

  He withdraws the cigarette and blows smoke over his shoulder, so that it cannot land on her. The fingers which grip the cigarette are articulate, rather elegant. And yet, she reminds herself, they are the hands of little better than a butcher. She has eyes, she can see the uniform; he may be a doctor now, but he is a soldier too. His title is still an elegant euphemism for murderer.

  ‘It will need to be several weeks, at least.’ His voice is slightly roughened by the tobacco.

  ‘Weeks?’

  He nods, grave. ‘More, if possible: I would like to keep an eye on him. This case – I fear it has all of the hallmarks of the worst kind, cerebral. And he is very young.’

  ‘But he seems so much improved, already.’

  ‘I know that this is a difficult thing for a mother to hear, but I must tell you that he may never be completely cured of it. The virus often lives on, in the body. The best we can do is monitor him now, whilst he is still in such danger.’

  She cannot absorb it. She will need to repeat it all to herself, later, to make sense of it.

  ‘Surely he cannot stay here for that long. I cannot imagine that it would be allowed—’

  He interrupts swiftly. ‘I am in charge of this hospital. And I say that we have room for him here.’

  ‘Oh …’ She is at a loss. With no small effort she forces herself to say it: ‘Thank you.’

  He gives a slight smile, just enough to show the teeth. His incisors are slightly too long. The teeth of a predator, she thinks. She does not smile back.

  ‘I had meant to ask you,’ he says. ‘Where did you learn such excellent English?’

  This pretence of interest – as though they are equals. Or, more likely, it is meant to patronise: as one might congratulate a pet upon the learning of a trick. ‘My father sent me to the British school.’

  My father, the Anglophile. The reason for so much of our trouble.

  A bank account seized; a house sequestered; a whole family suspected of enemy espionage. Even with her father dying, hardly capable of any treachery even if he had wanted to be. Even after his death, in the first year of the conflict, they had remained beneath suspicion. Even with her brother fighting for their country in the war. The state’s suspicion had cast a long shadow.

  ‘Would you like a cigarette? I can make you one.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, so taken aback that she forgets to immediately refuse. She doesn’t smoke them now; they are too expensive. Her grandmother, in the time before, had worn a small pair of golden tongs on a chain about her waist. When she rolled herself a cigarette there was a ritual to it. First came the tobacco, stored in an embroidered silk bag, then a leaf of fine pink tissue paper from the tiny book she kept about her person. She would roll the tobacco into a tiny, neat tube – no small feat with hands as gnarled as hers. Then those tongs would be used to lift it, lit, to her lips so she need no more stain her fingers. There was a grace to her movements that Nur knew she would never possess; she did not have the patience.

  He is still waiting. She senses that he would like to continue the conversation, that within that little metal box is also the proffered possibility of an impossible accord. She wonders if he realises this too.

  ‘No,’ she says, ‘thank you.’

  He can afford to appear generous if he wishes: he is the occupier. He makes the rules. These possibilities are closed to her. His freedom to act in this way, in any way he wants, is only another means by which to wield his power. And for this pretence of friendship she decides to hate him a little more.

  George

  ‘I’m going to help you to sit up.’

  He arranges the pillows, careful with his movements lest they cause any pain. The boy watches, silent. The fever-glaze has gone, there is a new curiosity. This, the advent of consciousness, is the first time he has really seen the boy. Before that he was a case, an urgent one.

  His eyes sting. He rubs them, and they only feel worse. He waited with the child through the night, watching for any sign of the fever mutating, worsening. He has done the same a hundred – a thousand – times before, beneath canvas in the Mesapotamian desert, in a temporary barracks beside the Caspian Sea: a marshland place so famously rife with the disease that Alexander the Great sent his unwanted generals there to die. He has watched men return entirely to themselves only to fall suddenly, fatally, back into the clutches of the thing.

  He is still not certain that the boy will survive; he chose not to tell the mother this. He senses that she has suffered enough; she wears it upon her like a cloak.

  ‘Is there pain?’

  A hesitation. He thinks perhaps the boy does not understand. He gestures at his head, his stomach, pantomimes a wince.

  ‘Some pain,’ the child says, articulating as precisely as a judge. It is said bravely: I am suffering, but I am not going to complain about it. Beneath his eyes are bruise-like impressions. Not, George thinks, so much the mark of his recent condition as a more general, long-term malaise: poor nutrition, general fatigue. He saw it in the faces of the Russian children on the refugee ships. He does not know the mother at all, but he has some idea of the sort of person she might be. He can imagine that not being able to feed her son properly would pain her.

  Now the boy is looking about himself, with wonder and poorly concealed fear. He understands. He has experienced the same phenomenon almost daily across the span of the last five years. At least now he is static, for however long it may prove to be. When they were on the move it could take a good ten minutes of careful thought. He would stitch together the memories of the previous day – adding these to the ache in his legs, the temperature of the air trapped beneath the canvas. Even then, one could not always be certain. The desert could be a different place from one day to another.

  ‘You are in the hospital,’ he says. ‘You have a rather bad case of malaria.’ He stops, not sure how much the boy understands.

  The child blinks, tries to shift himself to sit up.

  ‘No, let me help you. There.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Then, rather formally, ‘I’m sorry. My English is not good.’

  He has to work not to laugh. ‘It’s a sight better than my Turkish, I can assure you. I’m impressed that a boy of – how old are you? How … many years do you have? Eight?’

  ‘Seven.’

  He is taken aback. Eight had been a wild overestimation, to flatter the child. He had thought five at the very most. Malnutrition, most likely, has stunted the boy’s growth.

  ‘You are a soldier?’

  ‘I’m a doctor.’

  ‘You are in the army?’

  ‘Yes, but my job is slightly different to the others’. I’m there to save lives.’

  ‘For the soldiers in your army.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘You saved other soldiers?’

  ‘Several.’

  Mere skeletons, George remembers, in a worse state, if that was possible, than their own men. Ruined by frostbite and dysentery. The Ottomans had won Gallipoli. They had won it with sheer numbers. Men used like bullets; launched toward the enemy, never expected to return.

  The boy is looking up at him with a mixture of fascination and fear. George wonders what tales he has heard of the British army. Nothing good, that is for certain. A sudden inspiration. ‘Do you like animals? Animals, you know?’ He makes a puppet from his hand, his fingers four running legs.

  The boy nods, suspicious.

  ‘And birds?’

  Another nod.

  ‘There was a desert we passed through. The M
esapotamian desert. And then, suddenly, the rains came, and it wasn’t a desert any more. Suddenly there were flowers – orchids, such a bright purple that they looked like tiny coloured lights in the grass – and thousands of birds came to feed from the insects that came for them. Can you imagine it? Thousands.’

  The boy does not say anything. George isn’t even sure he understands. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. The memory is, really, a selfish indulgence. He remembers the particular green of the grasses: it was like seeing the colour, really seeing it, for the first time. ‘And there were great plump birds called partridges, and smaller ones, grouse. And in the swamplands there were boars. Boars. Do you know what that means?’

  The boy shakes his head.

  ‘Like a pig, but with lots of hair, and tusks.’ George finds himself pushing back the front of his nose to make a snout, grunting. He feels ridiculous. He has no idea what Bill would make of this, if he were to come in now. But he is rewarded when the boy smiles for the first time since his arrival at the hospital.

  ‘You saw it? That animal?’

  ‘Oh yes, of course.’ He didn’t, actually. They remained mythical: which made a kind of sense; it was the land of myth. There, oil seeped up through the ground unchecked, a concentration of ancient power. The locals paid it no heed; it was of little use to them. Later, when they travelled through the Paitak Pass with the Persian mountains sheering up before them, palely-red, impenetrable, they climbed a narrow road built originally by Alexander the Great on his way to India. Some of the very stones on which they trod had been laid by men more than two thousand years ago. It was impossible, knowing this, not to feel your own utter insubstantiality. One small footnote in a much larger narrative that contained nobler campaigns, greater bravery, more impossible feats. There was some comfort in it, too. When you were so aware of your own smallness, it seemed to matter less if you were soon to drop dead a few miles up the road of the malaria you were suddenly certain you had contracted.