Anyush (7 page)

Anyush

A
hazy, opal-coloured sky cleared to a cloudless blue on the morning of the wedding. Preparations were well under way by the time Sosi, Havat and Anyush got to the Setian house. At the stove in the yard Parzik’s sisters were preparing food for the arrival of the groom’s party, and the bride was sitting at the kitchen table where Bayan Setian was painting her hands with henna. Mother and daughter were singing softly to each other:

Parzik looked up when the girls came in and held out her hands.

‘Today’s the day,’ she said, smiling.

‘Today … today.’ Havat nodded.

The small house had been decorated with wildflowers, ribbons and Sosi’s straw braids, which hung in garlands above the holy pictures and around the windows and doors. A photograph of Parzik’s father and two older brothers in uniform, and another of her youngest brother, Stepan,
sat among bunches of white daisies and poppies.

‘Go on. Off you go,’ Bayan Setian said, shooing the girls upstairs to the bedroom Parzik shared with her sisters. ‘Vardan will be here, and there’ll be no bride waiting for him. And take your veil, Parzik.’

The house quickly filled with the village women who brought trays of food and small gifts. Parzik’s godparents, Elsapet and Meraijan Assadourian, had arrived earlier and, as the family elders, would give her away. Elsapet was a small, dark-eyed woman lost in the folds of her many black layers. Her head trembled on the stalk of her thin neck and her bony hands plucked constantly at the fabric of her skirts. Her husband Meraijan was very tall for an Armenian, and it was from him that Parzik inherited her height and beak-like nose. For the occasion of his god-daughter’s wedding he was wearing a white side-buttoning shirt, dark wool trousers and a cotton arkhaluk, the brightly embroidered traditional Armenian tunic tied about the middle with a large-buckled belt. Meraijan was the village elder, the man who settled disputes, negotiated with the Jendarma and officiated at all Armenian ceremonies. Nothing happened in Mushar without his permission or his blessing.

The single girls had started to arrive in twos and threes, and the married women gathered in a huddle of black by the tables of food, their small children running at their feet. The Tufenkian sisters had closed their shop for the day and only Khandut Charcoudian had not come.

From an upstairs window, Anyush looked down on the crowd in the street below, a sea of brightly coloured waistcoats, silk breeches, embroidered caps and red fezes. Everybody was waiting for the sazandar, the wedding band that would announce the groom’s arrival. Behind her, Sosi and two of Parzik’s sisters were finishing the bride’s hair.

‘She wanted me to wear her old arkhaluk,’ Parzik was saying, ‘the one
she
got married in.’

‘I’d like to wear my mother’s wedding costume. If she offered it to me.’

‘You haven’t seen it, Sosi. It’s so old it looks like a Persian rug. And she wanted me to put tassels in my hair and cover my face.’

‘I think it’s a nice tradition.’

‘That’s exactly what I
didn’t
want. Look at us,’ Parzik said, spinning around and upsetting the hairpins onto the floor. ‘We live in a new century. We’re from a different age. We’ll never be like our mothers.’

‘She made a nice dress,’ Havat said, nodding to herself.

‘Yes, Havi. A beautiful, modern dress like you might see in Constantinople or Paris.’

Anyush thought it
was
beautiful, and that Parzik would look beautiful in it. Everyone stood back and admired t’Rchun when she went to the mirror by the window. Her braids were wound into a coil at the back of her neck, and her mother’s pearls gleamed softly at her ears. Kohl ringed her green eyes so that they sparkled like emeralds, and her high colour lent a feminine softness to her face. Parzik had never looked as happy, or as well.

Faint strains of music drifted in through the open window.

‘They’re here!’ Anyush said. ‘The sazandar is coming.’

The music grew louder as the wedding band rounded the corner at the end of the street. There was only a handful of old men playing the instruments as all the younger men were in the army. The lead musician, Arshen Nalbandian, who ran Dr Stewart’s mission farm, played the kamanche and the duduk, and behind him came the Zornakian twins, who were married to the Tufenkian sisters and ran the shop in the village. They played the daf and the doumbek, beating out the rhythm on a tambourine and drum. At the rear came Nayiri Karapetyan, a close friend of Parzik’s father, who played the tar and the oud. Behind them all, strutting like a peacock, was Vardan the groom.

The girls crowded around the window.

‘Where’s the basket?’ Parzik demanded, pushing one of her twin sisters
out of the way. ‘He’s supposed to be carrying the basket with my shoes in it.’

‘His father has it. Look … he’s coming along after him,’ Sosi said.

Slightly stooped and thin as a whippet, old man Aykanian walked behind his son, dressed in a worn-looking arkhaluk and carrying a covered basket in his hand. He was waving and smiling, no trace on his bony features of his customary frown. Aykanian looked more like Vardan’s grandfather than his father, because he had married a young bride in his middle years and lost her after the birth of his son.

‘What are you doing, Parzik?’

Bayan Setian gripped her daughter firmly by the arm and pulled her away from the window.

‘You are not supposed to see the groom before your godparents, and certainly not in your underwear.’

Her eye fell to the hairpins on the floor.

‘Am I mistaken? Has old age deprived me of my few remaining senses or is it really my middle daughter who is getting married today? Perhaps it is you, Monug? Or you, Aghavnik? You at least have clothes on!’

The twins giggled as Sosi helped Parzik into her dress. Seranoush, Parzik’s older sister, put her head around the door.

‘Elsapet and Meraijan are asking for you,’ she said to her mother.

Bayan Setian smoothed down her skirt and glanced at herself in the mirror. ‘Finish your hair, Parzik. And make sure your feet are clean.’

While Sosi and the twins put the finishing touches to the bride’s dress, Anyush watched Vardan make his way to the Setian house. His dark hair was shiny with oil and slicked back over his ears. He wasn’t dressed traditionally as his father was, but wore a white shirt and stiff collar, a new-looking jacket and trousers and shiny brown leather boots. He was clean-shaven, except for his trimmed moustache, and his light brown
eyes were seeking out every good-looking girl in the crowd. Anyush glanced over at Parzik who was smiling to herself.

‘Come on, Anyush!’ Sosi called. ‘Parzik’s ready.’

They moved downstairs just as Meraijan opened the door on a bowing, smiling Vardan.

‘I come bearing gifts,’ he said, taking the basket from his father.

Inside was a bottle of vodka, a flask of perfume and the bridal shoes. The sazandar resumed playing, and the house was suddenly filled with music and clapping. On cue, a barefoot Parzik came down the stairs, and Seranoush followed, carrying her veil. Bayan Setian nodded approvingly as Meraijan took the wedding shoes from the basket and handed them to his god-daughter. But before Parzik could put them on, each of the twins grabbed a shoe and ran around the crowd.

‘
P’rkagin, p’rkagin
, ransom, ransom!’

The old men pulled out their empty pockets and the women turned up their bare palms, and just as the strains of the sazandar slid into a minor key, Vardan’s father stepped forward and dropped a five-livre note into a twin’s hand. Everybody clapped as Parzik was escorted to a chair and handed her shoes. The single girls gathered around her, waiting in turn to write their name on the soles. As each girl married, her name would be crossed off.

‘I hope yours is the first to go,’ Parzik whispered to Anyush when her turn came.

‘I hope not,’ Anyush said with a laugh.

‘Ay, ay, ay…’ everybody chanted, as the men tossed back large glasses of vodka.

‘Again!’ Vardan called, holding out his empty glass.

‘The church,’ Bayan Setian said, taking it from him.

Vardan and Parzik stepped outside to a cheer from the waiting crowd. The bride was fully veiled, her face and dress covered, and her hennaed
hands hidden in white gloves. She was smiling, but kept her eyes modestly cast down. The sazandar led the wedding procession in a long line towards the church, and, in the confusion, Anyush got separated from the others. Husik stepped off the street into the crowd at her back, his pale face bearing down on her like a stormy moon. They had almost reached the church steps when Anyush noticed the gendarmes. Everywhere. More of them, it seemed, than usual. They didn’t approach or interfere but stood beneath the trees, their faces in shadow.

‘I lost Sosi,’ a voice at her shoulder said. Havat grabbed a fistful of Anyush’s skirt, flower petals falling from her hair. ‘I want Sosi.’

‘She’s just there, Havi. Up ahead, see? Behind Parzik.’

‘I want Sosi.’

Taking her by the hand, Anyush skirted around the procession towards the front. Up ahead she could see Sosi’s dark hair, and she was trying to catch her attention when a man in uniform bowed to her. The captain was standing beside the lieutenant and smiling, showing all his teeth like a woman might show her pearls. His hat was under his arm so that the sun shone on his shiny black hair, and his buttons gleamed like polished diamonds. Anyush turned away, pretending she hadn’t seen him.

‘Havi … there you are!’ Sosi reached behind her and took her sister’s hand. ‘Come on, Anyush. We’re supposed to go in together.’

Diary of Dr Charles Stewart

Mushar

Trebizond

April 22nd, 1915