Authors: Martine Madden
Anyush (27 page)
A
nyush’s plan was to stay under cover of the trees until she reached the village. If she could make it to the Stewarts’ house, Dr Stewart would know what to do. Lale was hungry and eagerly took the breast as Anyush picked her way through the scrub. Husik had shown her little-known tracks through the wood and she moved now into the darkest part of it. Her progress was slow as the light was blocked by the tightly woven greenery overhead. Where had the path disappeared to? Behind her was as dark now as in front. She stopped to look around, panic rising within her.
‘Which way, Lale?’
What was it Husik had said about getting lost? Something to do with the river? Listen for it. But she could only hear the crows and her heart pulsing in her ears. She closed her eyes and imagined herself in the branches of a tree, right at the very top, away from the humid murmuring of the forest below. And there it was, the faint sound of water flowing over stones. The trees began to thin as she moved towards it and weak sunshine threw her surroundings into a gloomy twilight. She could see the river now, laced like a silver ribbon around the wood. Changing direction, she kept it on her left and stayed well inside the treeline. The
village wasn’t far away and there was more light here and she had to be careful. Lale looked up at her when she stopped suddenly. Voices. On the near side of the river and moving closer. She ducked behind a fallen tree, slipping her nipple into Lale’s mouth.
Heavy footsteps and the sound of breaking twigs came close to their hiding place. ‘Hold on there a minute. I need a piss.’ There was fumbling on the other side of the trunk and then urine sprinkling on leaves. Drops fell on Anyush’s clothes and face. On and on it went, longer than seemed humanly possible. It slowed finally and came to a stop. She could hear him fixing himself and the sound of his boots breaking the leaves. It was only then she realised Lale had come off the breast. The tiny chest moved against her own and she saw her daughter’s mouth widen into a cry. She pushed her finger between Lale’s lips, but not before a small sound escaped her. The footsteps halted.
‘Come on. What’s keeping you?’
‘I heard something.’
‘What?’
‘A noise. Around here somewhere.’
‘Too many onions. You’ll kill off the wildlife.’
They laughed as Anyush pressed herself into the trunk. He had stopped just in front of them. She could see the side of his face and beard as he looked around, straining to listen.
Please God, please God, please God.
Muscles like tree roots stood out on the back of his neck and his hand hovered over the knife at his belt.
‘What’re you doing in there? Come on. We’re going.’
A gust of wind shook the leaves and whined in the branches overhead. He took one last look into the greenery and walked away.
P
aul returned to the house with a small woman who frowned at the scene that met her in the kitchen.
‘I think you know Bayan Efendi,’ he said to Hetty. ‘She’s going to help with the babies.’
Bayan Efendi was someone Hetty had met many times before. Small and thin, she was a midwife, healer and herb woman. Despite the heat she wore many grubby layers of black and her headscarf was worn low on her forehead in the local manner. Her pale face was wrinkled and coarse, and nobody knew her age exactly but she had presided over the births in the village for as long as anyone could remember. A pungent mixture of smells emanated from her, wood-smoke, henna and something altogether less agreeable.
‘Where are the other women?’ Thomas asked, holding a crying baby in his arms. ‘The wet-nurses?’
‘Bayan Efendi has excellent nursing skills,’ his mother said.
‘But how are we to feed the babies?’ Eleanor asked.
‘We’ll have to feed them ourselves.’
The midwife began speaking in Kurmanji, her eyes darting from face to face.
‘She is saying she’s not afraid,’ Paul translated. ‘She has brought many of the soldiers into the world and will see them out.’
Five dirty fingernails waved dismissively in the air.
‘She says Captain Ozhan’s wife will start her confinement shortly and there are no other midwives. She says she’s not afraid of him.’
Every face turned to look at the unsmiling, odoriferous, unprepossessing little woman.
‘We are grateful, Bayan Efendi,’ Hetty said. ‘And honoured.’
On the midwife’s instructions the cow’s milk being fed to the babies was replaced with goat’s milk and the older children fed a mixture of puréed rice and water. In what seemed a relatively short time an order of sorts was established. The sour smell of Bayan Efendi seeped into every room and seemed to be to the infants’ liking. They cried less and slept in their drawers and baskets or dozed in the older children’s arms. Only Millie wrinkled her nose and complained about the awful whiff.
‘Manners, Milly,’ Hetty said with a smile.
Paul found less to smile about. On examining the baby with diarrhoea, he agreed with Hetty that this was a case of cholera. In such close proximity to the other children and in the awful heat, it could spread swiftly through the house with catastrophic results.
‘We have to isolate her,’ he said. ‘Has anybody else handled this baby?’
Everybody shook their heads, except Eleanor.
‘Go scrub your hands thoroughly. Only one person should care for the child.’
‘Let me look after her,’ Hetty said. ‘I’ve been trying to give her water but she hasn’t taken much.’
‘Keep trying. I’ll burn the soiled diapers outside.’
A
nyush could see Dr Stewart’s house from her hiding place behind the trees. There were soldiers standing in the front and back gardens waiting for the women coming and going through the door. Most of the mothers were crying. They went in with their babies and came out alone.
Earlier on, she had skirted around the village under the cover of the wood, to where the roads divided west to Trebizond and east towards Batum. Hundreds of women and children, young and old, had been walking westward, a long line stretching as far as the eye could see. Some had been pushing carts loaded with bits of furniture, but most had been on foot, blindly following those in front. A couple of soldiers had walked at the back, lashing out with whips at the stragglers. The eerie quiet had been broken by a child’s crying and the pitiful keening of an old man. Anyush had watched as the line passed, looking for Gohar and Khandut. The people she’d recognised were from north of the village and her mother and grandmother had not been among them. Slipping into the cover of the wood again, she had made her way back to the Stewarts’.
From her hiding place Anyush saw three soldiers knock loudly on the Stewarts’ front door. Leyla, the Stewarts’ maid, opened it.
‘Call the
doktor
,’ one of the men said.
The girl disappeared, returning moments later with Dr Trowbridge.
‘
Merhaba
,’ the Englishman said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘
Merhaba, doktor sahip
,’ the soldier bowed. ‘We have come to search the house.’
‘For what reason?’
‘We are looking for Armenians,
Doktor
. The resettlement convoy is leaving and we want to be sure no one is left behind.’
Two of the three men on the doorstep were young, not much older than Anyush, and the third was somewhere in his middle years. He salaamed to the giaour in the traditional manner, but his voice betrayed an ill-concealed dislike.
‘Where are you bringing these people?’ Dr Trowbridge asked.
‘Gümüşhane,
sahip
. And Bayburt.’
‘What for?’
‘I am only a poor soldier,
Doktor
. They say “bring people here”, I bring. They say “look in the
doktor
’s house”, I look.’
‘Dr Stewart is away. I cannot give permission in his absence.’
The soldier pulled his lips into a smile as his eyes swept over Eleanor and Milly who were watching from the hallway. ‘That is a shame,
Doktor
, because we have been told by Captain Ozhan that the house is to be searched. It would be most unfortunate if we had to break windows and doors.
Dr Trowbridge looked at the men, then dropped his hand from the doorframe and stood aside. ‘Go where you want. There is no one here of any interest to you. But I should warn you that there is a case of cholera in the house.’
‘Cholera?’
The soldier stood down from the step.
‘Yes. One of the infants has contracted it. It has spread, but most of the adults are still on their feet. I was just about to burn these.’ He held up a pail of soiled cloths, and the soldiers jumped as though it contained poisonous snakes and the dreaded disease was seeping through every window and door.
‘It will not be necessary,
Doktor
. I will take you at your word.
Teşekkür ederim
.’
‘Clever, clever Dr Trowbridge!’ Anyush whispered. ‘No one will enter a cholera house. I wonder who he’s hiding?’ She could think of only one person and hoped fervently it might be her. ‘Gohar! Of course it is.’
There were no more soldiers in the garden and any minute now she would leave the tree cover and make a run for it. Dr Trowbridge was still outside, and he made a fire and stoked it with wood until the flames rose high. He emptied the contents of the pail onto the fire.
Anyush slipped back beneath the trees. If what he had told the soldiers was a trick, then surely the babies’ clothes would be washed not burned?
A small woman in black emerged from the house and joined him. It was the midwife who had delivered Lale.
‘Another baby has the sickness,
Doktor
.’
‘Same symptoms?’
The woman nodded.
‘Put it with the baby from this morning. How is that child faring?’
‘Not well,’ the midwife said, following Dr Trowbridge into the house.
Anyush slid along the trunk of the tree until she was hunkered down with Lale hidden in the valley between her stomach and knees. He hadn’t
lied. There
was
cholera in the house. Bending her head, she touched her forehead to her daughter’s. ‘What are we to do, Lale?’
The baby’s dark lashes fluttered away her mother’s tears as the birds grew quiet and the midday sun beat down.