Authors: Martine Madden
Anyush (5 page)
T
he early morning sun hung low in the sky, and the part of the meadow bordering the wood was in deep shade. From the trees came the melodies of the dawn chorus and the rustlings of animals foraging for the coming day. A light mist lay suspended on the burnt grass, wetting Anyush’s boots and the hem of her skirt. As she walked the track, she was thinking of the soldier and their conversation on the beach. She hadn’t been able to sleep thinking about the stupidity of what she had done. Anyone could have seen her with him. Someone from the village. Her friends. Her mother. If Khandut had even the smallest suspicion Anyush would be thrown out of the house, or worse. She had been beaten many times for less. Why had she brought him to the church? The trick of the wind was her discovery and hers alone. Every moment she had been with him her heart was in her mouth but she hadn’t been able to walk away. He’d talked and talked, clever words meant to impress, and to her own ears she sounded like a peasant girl with a thickened peasant tongue. Why had she risked her reputation to walk with a soldier? If Sosi found out, she would never forgive her. And for all Parzik’s talk, she would never look at another boy, except Vardan, and certainly not a Turk.
Himar, himar,
fool! Never again. She would stay away from the beach and avoid him altogether.
At the end of the clearing, the path turned to skirt around the wood and link up with the main road into the town. She looked around for soldiers or gendarmes and, seeing none, began to walk in the direction of the hospital. Close to the village, she saw someone she knew walking ahead of her.
‘Sosi … Wait!’
Her friend stopped as Anyush ran to catch up with her.
‘Where were you yesterday?’ Anyush asked. ‘I brought pilaff for Havat but I couldn’t find you.’
‘Planting potatoes for Vardan’s father.’
‘You’re working for old man Aykanian? Where was Vardan?’
‘Keeping his fingernails clean for the wedding.’
Anyush laughed. Vardan was the most vain peacock ever to wear trousers.
‘Parzik and Vardan have settled on a date, then?’
‘Day after the Easter ceremonies.’
Sosi held up the basket of straw she was carrying.
‘I’m starting on the wedding braids.’
‘Parzik will be pleased. I’d better go,’ Anyush said, ‘I’m late.’
‘Just to tell you … Husik is hiding over there.’
Anyush’s landlord’s son was good at hiding. She had seen Husik cross the forest floor, without breaking a twig, and slip his body into the smallest of places. Most often, he hid from his father, who had a quick temper, but he also stayed away from the soldiers who wanted him for the army and the gendarmes who treated him like a fool. The villagers called Husik ‘the wild boy’ because he lived in the wood and ate what he caught in his traps. His boots were made from cow leather he had tanned himself and smelled of the manure he used to cure them. His old, patched trousers were tied to his legs with cat-gut, and his shirt, many years too small and without sleeves or collar, strained across his chest. In the past few weeks he had started working for Dr Stewart, and Nurse Manon had given him
a long white coat to wear over his clothes and a pair of shoes which she kept for him at the clinic. She made sure he washed at the pump and combed his wild hair, and Husik meekly complied. She was one of the few people he would take direction from and there weren’t many. He had a temper like his father and wasn’t afraid to use his knife, but there was a quieter side to him. From when Anyush was very small, Gohar had told her to be kind to Husik because his mother was dead and his father neglected him. Kazbek was a dangerous man, who mistreated his son and beat him often. It made the boy angry, and it was only with the Charcoudians that he was in any way calm. He followed Anyush like a lamb, waiting for her, every morning, to let out the hens and help with her chores. They didn’t talk much and were companions more than friends. ‘He’s lonely,’ Gohar used to say, ‘be kind.’ But Anyush spent her time by the sea, which Husik had a fear of, so they weren’t together as often as he would have liked. As they grew older, Husik began to change. He stopped speaking to Anyush and no longer called to the house. She saw him in the distance, herding his father’s cattle or bringing a brace of rabbits to the town, but she sensed he was never very far away.
‘My mother says he’s possessed of a
jinn
,’ Sosi said, shivering.
‘Ignore him,’ Anyush said. ‘Tell Havi I’ll bring some pilaff later.’
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Mushar
Trebizond
July 24th, 1904
This is the first free moment I’ve had in many months to write in my diary and there is much to relate. The practice is thriving and I’m finding very little time for anything else. Earlier this week, I received news that my paper on ‘The Causes and Treatment of Trachoma in the Eastern Ottoman Empire’ has been accepted by the
American Journal of Medicine
, and I am more than pleased. It is only the start of my research but a promising one.
Turkey, as ever, exerts its many demands. I’ve had to learn the skills of a surgeon, an anaesthetist, a physician, a pathologist and a dentist. People here believe I can do everything from lancing a boil to determining the sex of their babies, and I haven’t managed to disabuse them of it. I’m not complaining though. I enjoy the work and need the income, and the thorny old question of money is never very far from my mind. If Hetty and I had never considered ourselves to be missionaries on arriving in this country, our state of penury means we certainly live like them. The villagers are too poor to pay, or pay with chickens and whatever else they can spare. The wealthier patients often don’t bother, or wait to see if they are cured before even considering it. We receive a small monthly stipend from Elias Riggs which is spent mostly on medical supplies and doesn’t go very far, and we’d probably starve but for Hetty’s thrift and ingenuity. She has planted maize and vegetables behind the house and we keep a few chickens and a goat. These are the mainstay of our existence and at certain times we live almost entirely on goat’s milk and turnip. Paul never calls without gifts of French cheese, or bottles of Italian wine, or Turkish delight for Thomas and baby Eleanor, even though I know he doesn’t have much himself. He also brings plenty of gossip from the town and from Constantinople. Hetty really looks forward to Paul’s visits and I think
at times she misses the mental stimulation of New York. Politics has always been a huge interest of hers, and when Paul comes to stay we sit up late into the night discussing world affairs, or whatever gossip he manages to pick up in Trebizond’s bazaars. I enjoy these evenings but Paul’s opinions sometimes surprise me. He has a particular bias towards Armenians and believes, wrongly in my view, that they are subject to all sorts of harsh rules and regulations at the hands of the Turks. I’ve seen no evidence of this discrimination and find the Turks to be a fair-minded, tolerant sort of people who love nothing better than to talk. But Paul is a soft-hearted man, the kind who always shouts for the underdog. He has a very English sense of fair play, but it is not terribly balanced.
T
he light softened in the early evening, but the heat remained, and the path along the road was dusty and hot. Anyush took the short-cut through the wood where the low red sun flashed between the trees and the birds roosted noisily. She was thinking of the conversation she’d had a few days previously with Dr Stewart.
‘You should be a proper nurse,’ he said. ‘Your talents are wasted as an assistant. Nurse Manon and I have discussed this, and we would like you to train.’
Anyush’s work at the hospital was long and sometimes unpleasant, but she never thought of it as a waste. Training as a nurse would mean moving to the Municipal Hospital in Trebizond for two years and leaving the village. Anyush had always thought she would be a teacher, like Bayan Stewart, but Dr Stewart had Nurse Manon on his side, and it was impossible to argue with her.
‘It is the correct path for you. You will have money and food and excellent training. Of course you will go.’
On hearing the news, Anyush’s mother had not been happy.
‘Dirty work! No better than a hamal.’
In the village, nursing the sick was thought to bring bad luck, but, in the
end, Khandut knew her daughter’s chances of making a marriage were poor and money was scarce, so she had reluctantly agreed to the training. Anyush would leave the village at the beginning of autumn for two years.
Following the track until it joined the road, Anyush left the wood behind her. On the seaward side, the setting sun had dipped towards the ocean, and she turned to catch the last of the light on her face.
‘
Barev
, Anyush.’
‘
Barev
, Husik,’ she said, without opening her eyes.
‘How did you know it was me?’
‘Because it’s always you.’
He walked along beside her, smelling of sweat and animal blood and newly turned earth.
‘I saw you at Parzik’s shordzevk last night,’ he said. ‘With the other women.’
‘What if I was?’
‘I heard the Mongol is to be allowed sew the hem of the dress.’
‘You seem to know a lot about the wedding, Husik.’
‘I was there to slaughter the goat. That’s all.’
Eznmortek usually involved slaughtering a cow, but Parzik’s mother couldn’t afford a cow and could ill afford the goat.
‘You stayed too late,’ he said.
‘That’s none of your concern.’
‘It’s not safe to be out alone.’
Anyush opened her eyes and looked at him. It was the first conversation of any length they’d had in a very long time.
‘Of course I was safe. There were lots of us there.’
‘They won’t protect you. There are soldiers everywhere.’
‘What if there are?!’ Anyush snapped.
Husik stared at her, his mud-coloured eyes taking in the heightened colour of her face.
‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d be around.’
He half smiled then so that she could see the gap where he had lost a tooth after one of his traps recoiled in his face.
‘Will you be at the wedding?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
The entire village would be there. A celebration the like of which hadn’t been seen since before the war. Every family felt the loss of their men, but it would be an excuse to think of something other than loneliness and empty bellies. A reason to dance. Anyush shivered.
‘Go home, Husik,’ she said.
Husik stood at the entrance to his father’s farm, watching until she rounded the bend.
Diary of Dr Charles Stewart
Mushar
Trebizond
April 9th, 1905
Today is a red-letter day in the history of our village. This morning, in the presence of the townspeople and many dignitaries, including the Vali himself, we opened the doors to our new hospital. After ten months waiting for permits, and lumber, and stone, the village hospital is finally finished. People queued to see it from early in the morning and Hetty set up a table inside the main door with sweet treats for the children and rice pilaff for the adults. Many of the villagers brought gifts of their own, grape butter in little goat-hair bags, cheese and goats’ milk. The general consensus was that the hospital was most magnificent, and Doktor Stippet and his khanum had done very well. The oddest aspect of the day was my own sombre mood. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this had somehow fallen short. Paul was first to notice.
‘Cheer up, Charles,’ he said, my son’s legs draped around his shoulders. ‘If the wind changes and all that.’
‘I am perfectly cheerful.’
‘You look miserable.’
‘Apparently I always do.’
He laughed and set Thomas down to run over to his mother.
‘So why the long face?’ he asked.
I looked at the new building, a small, two-storey stone structure built around a service courtyard to the rear and divided into male and female sides. Fully finished, it is more or less as I imagined it, but only on the outside.
‘We ran out of money,’ I told him.
From the fund Elias Riggs had given us, large portions were spent long before the foundation stone was laid. Bribes and permits, greedy builders and thieving workmen. By the time the structure was built, there was no money left to furnish it.
‘Looks very impressive from here,’ Paul said.
‘Until you look inside.’
I told him how the operating room consists of our kitchen table covered in a sheet of zinc and a mop bucket to catch the blood. How there is no way of sterilising instruments and how we’re boiling them in the kettle. How we have no X-ray apparatus, no heating, no dry room for clothes in winter, no separate rooms for contagious cases or TB cases, and most of my operating instruments I’ve had to make myself.
‘Work as usual then,’ Paul laughed.
A line of villagers was coming and going through the main door, some eating pilaff from vine leaves with their fingers and others stopping to talk to the khanum. Watching Mahmoud Agha’s wife putting pilaff into the pocket of her dress, I tried to explain to Paul that I had wanted to build something exceptional. A modern facility. He reminded me that things happen very slowly in Turkey and that everything would come together eventually. I just needed a little faith.
‘Faith?’ I said. ‘Maybe that’s where I went wrong.’
Over by the table of food Hetty was holding baby Robert in her arms while trying to prise a fistful of cookies from Thomas’s and Eleanor’s hands. She had worn her blue silk dress for the occasion and had taken extra trouble with her hair. Her cheeks were a little flushed, and as she bent to whisper in Thomas’s ear I was struck by her girlish prettiness.
‘Why don’t you give yourself a break?’ Paul said, watching her. ‘Come to town for a few days.’
For once, the idea was appealing. I couldn’t actually remember when I had last been to Trebizond.
‘Bring Hetty to the hotel for a night or two. Spoil her a little, Charles. She doesn’t see enough of you.’
I turned to say that I would, but my friend’s attention was elsewhere. He was looking at Hetty with such undisguised longing that for the first time I began to wonder if Paul Trowbridge was not in love with my wife.