Last Letter from Istanbul
Page 22
The image on the lid depicts a reclining odalisque, flattering the Westerner’s idea of the Ottoman woman, anachronistically flanked by two Egyptian sphinxes. ‘MURAD TURKISH TOBACCO’, the type proclaims proudly. Below a bold invitation: ‘Judge it for yourself!’, weathered to hesitance by the years. The colours on the tin are mere reminders of themselves, those once primary brights, the enamel paint disintegrating.
I discovered this particular tin in a drawer of the desk in the study. I remember how, sitting at his desk, I attempted to prise off the lid. Even though I put all my strength into it I could not find any give in the metal; it was welded shut by rust. This, naturally, only made me the more determined. Finally it gave – and suddenly, all at once.
It was not tobacco, inside, but sand. The discovery felt like a trick, a practical joke. Some of it had scattered onto the floor. I spent an hour collecting grains from where they had embedded themselves into the rug and excising them from between the floorboards. They were a pale colour; there were tiny shards of shell caught amongst them. The pink of fingernails, pinker, the inside of your lip. This was not the greyish sand of an English beach. I knew that this was the relic of a warm place, where the light got into things.
There isn’t sand in here any more, though. Now it contains something altogether more precious.
Nur
‘You have been to see the boy today as well.’
‘It is important, Büyükanne. He is very unwell.’
‘You have seen the English doctor too, then, I suppose. There must be some way in which he wants to gain from this. I cannot understand, otherwise, why he would help.’
‘He is not English, he is Scottish. And …’ quickly, realising the thing that she should have said first, ‘he helped because I begged him. I believe he felt a certain duty.’
‘I wonder.’ Her grandmother closes her eyes, pantomiming deep thought. ‘How many doctors do you think would travel across the Bosphorus in the middle of the night to an unknown neighbourhood to help a foreign woman? And then to take the child in, no doubt against orders …’
‘I believe that he is not a bad man, despite everything.’
‘But he is also one of the same men who incarcerated your brother, for four years. And you have seen what that has done to him, who he has become.’
‘No, he is not the same. He was never involved in that: he was in Mesapotamia, and Persia.’
Her grandmother gives her a look.
‘You have talked to him.’
‘Only as much as I have had to, to appear civil.’
‘You need to take care, canım.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know that life has been difficult for you these last few years. And I know that we do not always make it easy for you. And perhaps sometimes it is not clear that we see what you are doing for us. I do see it, though, my darling girl.’
The affection takes Nur unawares. She has to press the heels of her hands to her eyes to stop the tears that are suddenly fighting to appear.
‘And I know that the loss of a husband … and of the little one.’
‘Don’t—’ Her grandmother is the only one who knows of the second loss. Nur feels now that she is wielding it unfairly.
‘I sometimes think it would have been better if you had not married at all. One more loss for you. And when one has lost a husband there goes with it a certain … variety of affection that cannot be replaced by family.’
Nur thinks that there is little point in explaining that she does not recall experiencing such a thing in the short time with Enver.
‘And I only think—’
‘Well,’ Nur says, sharply, ‘I think that if one spends too much time sitting, and thinking, and doing nothing else, one is liable to fantasise.’
She feels even as she says it that she has gone too far. She waits for her grandmother’s wrath, known and feared since childhood. And yet to her surprise it does not come. Instead there is a strange noise, a small hitch of breath. Concerned, she looks at the old woman. And sees – miracle of miracles – that she is weeping.
‘Büyükanne …’
‘I do not say it because I am afraid of the shame. Though of course it would be great, if anything were suspected. I say it, little Nur, canım, because I am afraid for you.’
Spring
It carries with it all the wonder of the new season, the surprise of a magic trick – as though it did not come every year. The leaves upon the trees are the Platonic ideal of green, the original green, from which all other shades are imperfect iterations. On the ground beneath them, a memento mori, lie the desiccated skeletons of their predecessors.
The air smells of things growing. In the middle of the day the sun has the breath of summer in it. For some, this year, the breeze carries the scent of change. Mustafa Kemal’s rebel government at Ankara is putting more pressure upon the Allied occupiers; the tail, some joke, has begun to wag the dog. The Turkish police take their orders from Ankara, now; there are petty squabbles over passports and customs. The Allied commanders receive a courteous note informing them that on April 23rd, parades celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the National Assembly will take place in the city. They agree, and the parades go ahead without incident, because they know the trouble that will result if they do not. In doing so they perhaps acknowledge that they are no longer quite in control.
The street sellers have moved on from chestnuts. Now they offer fresh mussels plucked this morning from the shores of the Black Sea, almonds on ice – buzda badem – so that one tastes all the hidden creamy sweetness of the flesh.
In barracks across town men yearn, as perhaps at no other time of year, for their own lands. For cherry blossom beside the Seine, for strolls across the Downs, for a riot of wildflowers along the Ligurian coast.
For nowhere is the perfection of the season felt so powerfully as at home.
Nur
She and the boy have taken a short walk in the gardens of the house, he stumbling slightly on legs unused to the exercise. The doctor is nowhere to be seen; the nurse let her in to the boy with a sneer of disapproval. She felt this disapproval linger in the very air of the place, so she suggested they go outside. They have come to see the wisteria, newly in bloom, the scent of all her memories of the season. It is one hundred years old, her father told her once: maybe older. It can outlive generations. And yet it is a surprisingly fragile plant, too. Some shock will occur, perhaps even something beyond the gardener’s understanding, and the end will come to it swiftly. It will wither and die and never blossom again. But this morning it is as beautiful as she has ever seen it.
‘Hello.’
The doctor is sitting where she had not seen him, a book in his lap, hidden behind the fall of blossoms.
‘Hello,’ the boy says, and then looks up at her, a silent reprimand for her rudeness.
‘Good morning,’ she says, finally. It is strange. A few months ago there was a new accord forming between them, a lightening. And yet now when she sees him she feels a convulsion of fear behind her ribcage, a constriction in her throat. Everything they say to one another seems newly weighted, a thousand other possible meanings open to interpretation, misunderstanding.
She cannot fully understand this change. It is to do with her grandmother’s warning, perhaps, and also her knowledge of her brother’s new vocation, how it throws her own actions into unflattering, guilty contrast. And yet there is more to it too: an awareness that has nothing to do with anyone else; that is the exposure of some heretofore undiscovered aspect of herself.
‘I wanted to tell you,’ he says. ‘I have the day off, and I’ve been doing some exploring. I discovered the boathouses beneath the house.’
She is suddenly struck by a memory. A story her father once told her.
‘You’re smiling.’
‘Oh.’ She rearranges her features. ‘I was reminded of something.’
‘What?’ The boy is looking up at her. His English has improved
, she notices. He will like the story, she thinks: this gives her licence to tell it – as would not be the case if the boy weren’t here. So she tells them, stopping every so often to translate for the boy.
One night her father woke to what he thought was an earthquake. Fine streams of plaster were raining from the ceiling, her father said, the chandeliers were swinging. But it seemed somehow specific to the house, as though it were being shaken in the fist of a giant. So he wondered if a vessel had collided with the shore: only a couple of weeks ago a cargo ship had taken a bend in the channel too narrowly and sheared the entire facade from one of the yalis, leaving the rest intact, the rooms newly denuded. But beyond the windows the world was still and dark, no ship in sight.
It seemed to him that the epicentre of the thing was coming from somewhere underneath him, from the boathouses beneath the kitchen. With some trepidation he went below. There he saw a huge black shape, rising out of the water, thrashing itself about in agony or rage. He could make out the distinctive shape of the sheening body, the fin and tail. It must have followed a shoal of fish in through one of the arched entrances, he realised, and become trapped. As the water flashed from her, silver, she seemed made of moonlight, and her frantic motions appeared like a graceful dance.
Just as he began to formulate a plan she found her escape route, and plunged beneath, back out into the night. The water closed over her seamlessly, hardly a ripple. It was as though it had never happened.
‘And perhaps it never was,’ she says, remembering her father’s love of a good story.
‘A dolphin?’ The boy is staring, wide-eyed. At first she thinks she has frightened him, then she realises it is excitement. She can see that from now on this idea will become an obsession.
‘You must not go down there,’ she says. ‘One day, perhaps, I will show you.’ She does not mean now, while it is a hospital. This is a reference – though she is not sure the doctor realises it – to an imagined future time, when by some miracle the house might be returned to her, and they might live in it once more, all of them. She turns to the doctor and finds that he, too, seems to have been transfixed by the story. His eyes do not leave her face.
‘We will leave you,’ she says, quickly, and turns to usher the boy back toward the house.
‘Wait.’ She stops: but only because it is a plea, not a command. ‘I have this afternoon to myself, too,’ he says.
For a terrible moment, Nur thinks he is about to suggest that they spend it in each other’s company. He would not ask it, surely? But the English have different ways, different interpretations of propriety. She is suddenly aware of how little she knows, despite her command of the language. She is marshalling her excuses, when he says, ‘Where should I go? Where would you suggest? Your favourite place in the city.’
She is relieved. At least, almost exclusively so. She wonders, incredulous, at that small part of herself that is not. Well, she reasons, she is old enough now to understand that there are some aspects of the self that one can understand no better than a stranger.
She thinks of the cemetery at Eyüp – but immediately dismisses it; she cannot send him there. She suspects that its melancholy, so oddly soothing to her, would not have a universal appeal. And it belongs to the people here; they walk within it, they lie beneath its soil. To share it with a foreigner would be a disloyalty.
Then she recalls a day from childhood. Her father, herself, her brother. The islands that to her until that point had been semi-mythical. Glimpsed far off in the Sea of Marmara, wreathed in mist, beyond the furthest reaches of the city. A small village of white shuttered houses. The rest of it a wild place. The scent of herbs and brine. At this time of year it will be perfect. She can give this to him.
‘Do you want to be where there are people, or where there are none?’
‘Oh,’ the quick grace of his smile. ‘None.’
George
He takes the ferry, an hour’s journey.
When he has reached the point where the land starts curving away upon itself, he knows he has walked the length of the island. She told him that the best swimming spots were here, and this place seems to him as good as any. The vegetation is dense, with no clear opening; he will have to force his way through. He makes a shield of his arms, drives himself bodily into the thicket. Branches snap back against him, some catching his skin with thorns. He concentrates on the blue glimmer ahead, the promise of it.
At one point, forcing his way through a resistant patch, he plunges forward only to rock back on his heels in horror, finding himself perched above a twenty-foot drop. Even if he had survived the fall, he would have been too badly injured to climb back up. There is something horribly fascinating in the idea: would he be found before he perished? Probably not. To have survived it all: the Ottoman onslaught, malaria, sandfly fever, the perilous crossing of the Caspian – only to be extinguished here in this benign spot. He wonders for a moment if this could have been her motive in sending him here.
Ahead of him the path is still a mystery. He is aware of the danger now, the thought that he could have been plunging so recklessly forward seems incredible. He moves more gingerly, alarmed when the footing fails him, sending him skidding across loosened scree. Gradually, mercifully, the bush thins, and he knows how lucky he has been in his choice of route: sees the whole formidable face of the cliff above and to the right of him. Now, immediately below, he can see the thin swathe of sand.
He moves more quickly, surer now of his footing. He is released into sunlight, his feet sinking into softness. The full heat of the day returns. Only now does he realise that his shirt is torn in several places, blood beading from long scratches upon his arms. He takes off his shoes and socks, already filling uncomfortably with grains. But the first contact of the sand is blistering against the soles of his feet and he is forced to hop his way across the beach toward the water, laughing at himself as he does, at the spectacle he must create. The cold of the water is welcome balm. He knows that he is alone but, remembering Bill, makes doubly sure before he begins to remove the rest of his clothes. In the unforgiving light his body is revealed to him as spectacularly pale.
The scent of the herbs, the sound of the waves hitting the encircling arms of rock, the sheer size and radiance of the sky, the blue of a gas flame. He laughs and hears his voice echo back at him. In the reverberation it sounds uncertain, as though the sound is asking for the place to accept him, to allow him to become part of it.
In the early afternoon small iridescent jellyfish arrive in great numbers, massing along the waterline. He feels a vague squeamishness about them. He skirts the edge, looking for a clear patch. Every so often he thinks he has found it but as he peers down into the weeds and pebbles they emerge gradually from the depths like an optical illusion. He can almost imagine that they are just blots on the vision. But not quite. The heat has built to a crescendo, the water beyond the treachery of the jellyfish beckons him, navy blue. Finally he plunges, wades in through the mass of soft forms, chin up, gaze fixed straight out to sea. Waits for the first sting upon the exposed skin. It does not come. Something like real happiness passes through him, not just the giddy relief of escaping injury. It is something more; a feeling that this place has now sent its message of acceptance.
He swims until he is exhausted; later he lies on the sand. The fierceness of the heat has gone now, this is a golden warmth – amiable and attentive, drying the last of the seawater from his hair and skin. This is the first time he has been alone for such a long period of time. Not lonely: that emotion is a familiar friend. One of the things the last few years has taught him is how lonely it is possible to be while surrounded by an entire regiment of men. This, his own company, feels like a luxury by comparison. It is a gift that he does not deserve – and he knows this. It is a selfishness. But he will not think of that now.
He takes the last remaining pinch of tobacco from his tin, rolls himself a rather meagre cigarette, and lies propped upon his elbows. His feet burrow deep i
n the sand to discover a cooler layer, untouched by the sun. The sun is warm upon his shoulders. He feels the brief, guiltless happiness of an animal.
His last thought, before he drifts into sleep, is that this is the gift she has given him.
When he next opens his eyes he has forgotten where he is. The light has changed; dusk is on the approach. He realises he has forgotten the ferry timetable he looked at by the quay, and isn’t absolutely certain when the last leaves. He will have to exert himself now, or risk spending the night here. As if to emphasise his predicament, he hears the inquisitive whine of a mosquito near his left ear. He swats it, but it or another returns within seconds. Soon there will be thousands. He has spent the whole of his war covering himself carefully from their attentions; the one time he did not he contracted malaria. He shrugs quickly into his clothes, wonders how he could have been so reckless. His tobacco tin lies open, empty upon the sand. He reaches for it and after a moment’s hesitation he uses it as a scoop, filling it with white grains and shells. There is no one here to see him but he feels sheepish all the same about this strange act, so unlike him. It is a sentimental act. In it he is imagining a future self that might one day open the tin and be returned to this place of warmth.
On the ferry back he sits sun-dazzled, slightly burned, chafed with salt and sand. A few feet away a little boy stands and tosses crumbs of bread into the air for the seagulls. George has never much liked them, but now he sees the majesty of their construction: the poise with which they ride the air, matching the speed of the ferry exactly. Then, with precise, hinged motions of the neck, snatching the morsels with what looks like an arrogant ease. The boy is delighted by them, hopping on the balls of his feet. He must be six or so, and very slight. He looks as though a too-strong gust of wind might snatch him up. George is half-ready to pitch forward and catch him. The sight of him is a mingled pain and joy.