Anyush (12 page)

Anyush

T
he hanging of old man Aykanian marked the start of everything that was to come. While the year wore on and events beyond the village were already casting a long shadow, Anyush thought only of Jahan. In the weeks after the hanging, they met whenever they could at the ruin, but more gendarmes had been drafted in from Trebizond and it was difficult for her to go out alone. Everyone was being watched and people were suspicious of each other. Two weeks went by when she saw nothing of Jahan at all. Her mother and grandmother kept a close eye and it was often impossible to get away. One afternoon Jahan came to the clinic to buy quassia for mosquito bites. Anyush was so happy to see him that it was hard to concentrate on what she was doing. The clinic was full that day and she had to behave as if he was just another patient in a long line of the sick and the hungry. Jahan watched her whenever she came and went into the room so that she was sure someone would notice, but Dr Stewart was busy with a patient, and the nurses were working elsewhere. She handed Jahan the brown glass bottle of quassia and he whispered that she should meet him that evening at the ruin.

The day had been unusually hot and still, and, although the sun had almost set, heat rose in waves from the headstones in the graveyard like a silent and deadening tune. Jahan was waiting in the doorway, and, without speaking, they pulled their clothes from each other, impatient with buttons and laces and ties. The cold stone was deliciously cool beneath her as she lay shamelessly, her body arching in need of him and her breath broken for the want of him. But he would not give in so easily. Pinning her arms to the floor, he stroked himself along her thighs and belly until she called out for him. Then barely entering her he withdrew again, repeating it over and over so that, in the bliss of this torment, she felt herself drawn to the very edge of what she could bear. He suddenly stood up.

‘Don’t stop …’ she begged, but he had already pulled her to her feet.

Turning her away from him, he pressed her towards the wall and pushed her feet apart with his boots.

‘Now …’ he said, his breath hot in her ear as she felt him enter her from behind and heard her own voice cry out.

He hesitated as if to prolong the moment and then surged inside her, touching off long shuddering waves that threatened to break her apart. She closed her eyes, abandoning herself to the joy of it.

Afterwards, they lay together, bathed in the light from the setting sun. She could feel his eyes on her as she watched the evening sky outside.

‘You know you’re extraordinary,’ he said, kissing the skin of her neck. ‘Not like any woman I’ve ever known.’

‘Don’t.’

Confused, he sat up to look at her.

‘Don’t make me feel any more shameful than I do already.’

Something darkened in his face, but she reached up and lightly touched the corner of his mouth.

‘It’s not that I’m sorry for what we’ve done. I’m not. But I’m ashamed
of the way I behave when I’m with you. At the things I’m willing to do.’

‘I thought you wanted this.’

‘I do,’ she said, stroking the dark skin at his jaw. ‘I can’t help myself.’

He pulled her into his arms again and they lay curled into one another, looking through the door at the headstones. For the first time unwelcome thoughts crept into Anyush’s mind. What would become of her if she was caught? How would she keep this from Sosi and Parzik? After what had happened to Kevork, Sosi would never forgive her, and Parzik would be unable to keep it to herself.

She felt Jahan’s lips graze her cheek.

‘Don’t think too much, Anyush. Talk to me. Tell me about this place. What kind of church was it?’

‘Armenian,’ she said, looking up at the dome above their heads. ‘It was burned when my mother was a child.’

‘Does she remember it?’

‘She was very young, but she tells me she does. She said there were gold paintings on the walls and on the dome.’

Flaking plaster and the cone-shaped mounds of swallows’ nests were all there was left to see on the crumbling ceiling above them.

‘The weather must have destroyed everything the fire didn’t,’ he said, looking above him.

‘I’m glad the paintings are gone.’

‘You prefer that it’s home to bats and birds?’

‘I’m glad no one’s watching.’

‘You mean the Heavenly Host?’ he laughed.

‘Don’t mock. And don’t make fun of me.’

‘I would never make fun of you.’ He sat up and gripped her by the shoulders. ‘I love you, Anyush. I can’t remember what life was like before I met you.’

Unexpected tears stung her eyes.

‘I didn’t have the first idea what I was doing in Trebizond but now I do. I was meant to find you. Something wonderful came from that terrible day in the farmyard. You have become my world, Anyush. Tell me you feel the same.’

She nodded, and he took her in his arms, kissing her more tenderly than before. Lying back on the cold stone floor, they put from their minds all that was happening beyond the little church, beyond the borders of the village, beyond the boundaries of birthright and war. All that was sensible and prudent in his nature and hers was pushed aside. With the selfishness of lovers they thought only of each other. She loved the way he looked at her, the way he said unspeakable things with his eyes and clever things with his mouth. He loved the wildness in her and her disregard for convention. They were the limits of each other’s existence, citizens of a country all their own. They were in love, and because it was forbidden and endlessly precious, they risked everything for it.

Anyush

‘Y
ou’re dripping water all over the place,’ Khandut said. ‘Get the mop and clean it up.’

Anyush skirted around the puddle and went to climb the ladder to the loft.

‘Kazbek’s laundry is not going to wash itself and your grandmother has conveniently fallen asleep again.’

Gohar was dozing on the day bed under the stairs.

‘I’m going to the village with the eggs. Make sure those clothes are ready by the time I get back.’

She wrapped a scarf around her head and slammed the door behind her.

‘Is she gone?’ Gohar asked, opening her eyes.

‘Yes.’

‘Good because we need to talk.’

Something in her grandmother’s tone gave Anyush pause.

‘Sit down. I can’t talk to you when you look as if you’re about to flee.’

Anyush pulled out a chair and sat at the table facing her.

‘I’ve seen you. With the soldier.’

Water was dripping from Anyush’s hair, falling in drops by the leg of
the chair. She watched it darkening the wooden floor.

‘I went to the beach looking for you. You’re lucky it was me and not your mother. I take it by the look of him he’s Turkish?’

Anyush nodded and the old woman closed her eyes.

‘I thought … I hoped you would know certain things but it’s clear to me that you do not.’

‘I know what I’m doing.’

‘You know nothing! How could you when I’ve brought you up that way? I’ve tried to shield you from the terrible things I’ve lived through and it seems I’ve succeeded.’

She sighed. ‘You have eyes and ears, Anyush. You are well aware of the way we live. How could you do that to yourself? And with a Turk?’

‘Jahan is my friend.’

‘No Turk is a friend to Armenians! Why do you think Armenians cannot buy land, only work it for some Turkish landlord until we’re too old or too broken to be of any use any more? Oh our men are good enough as war fodder, or for the labour gangs, but for nothing else! We’re mules to them, Anyush. Less valuable than the dogs on the street.’

The loose-rimmed lids beneath Gohar’s eyes were swollen and red as though she had been crying. Anyush had never seen her grandmother cry.

‘There hasn’t been a single generation of Armenians who weren’t burned or tortured or had their women raped by the Turks,’ Gohar continued. ‘I hoped you would escape. You are educated and clever so I thought you would know better. But now … Anyush, what have you done?!’

‘
Tatik
…’ Anyush got up from the chair and crouched at her grandmother’s feet. The old woman looked at her as though she had stolen the blood from her veins. Anyush couldn’t bear it. She laid her head in Gohar’s lap and the old woman began to stroke her hair.

‘Who owns this house, Anyush?’ her grandmother asked.

‘Kazbek,’ the girl murmured.

‘And who built this house, the house you’ve grown up in?’

‘Kazbek I suppose.’

Gohar moved her hand away. ‘Sit up, Anyush. There are things you need to hear.’

They sat opposite each other at the table as Gohar told her granddaughter the story of the house. It had been built by Anyush’s grandfather, Aram, on his own land, family land for generations. When Anyush’s father was nine years old, the Turks issued an order declaring that Armenian taxes were to be doubled. Twice what the Turkish farmers were expected to pay and twice what the family could afford. Gohar’s husband worked hard to raise the money but it was never enough. The land and the house were taken and sold to Kazbek for a fraction of its value. For the rest of his life Aram lived with the shame of paying a man he hated for something that was in fact his.

‘It killed him,’ Gohar said.

‘But Kazbek is Armenian. How could that be?’

‘Kazbek has a pact with the Devil and the Devil looks after his own!’ Gohar looked behind her as though he was listening beneath the loft stairs. ‘The story I told you about my mother and sister,’ she continued, ‘that they were killed in a fire … it’s not the whole truth.’

She sighed, looking through the window in the direction of the sea.

‘My sister Haroun was unmarried and lived with my mother in Andok, near Sassoun. From the moment of her birth she was never normal. She didn’t look different from anybody else, but her mind never developed beyond that of a six-year-old child so she lived with my parents into her middle age. I was married by then, living here with your grandfather and my two sons. As I’ve often told you, Andok is a very beautiful place, tucked into the foothills on the slopes of Mount Gebin with a small
forest between the mountain and the town. The story I’m about to tell you happened in 1894 and I remember the year well because one of my sons, your father Koryun, had just become betrothed to your mother. It was the month of August. There hadn’t been rain for weeks and the heat was terrible. The Sultan, Hamid the Bloody as he was called, had just dissolved the parliament in Constantinople and suspended the Armenian National Constitution. Of course in Sassoun and here in Trebizond people took little interest in what the Sultan was doing. That was the pity of it. Like now, all the Armenian men were gone. Some had been conscripted into the army, but most were in hiding because of the massacre earlier that year in Gelie-Guzan. One day, Turkish soldiers arrived in Sassoun. They rounded up all the women and children and chased them into the forest. The villagers thought they were safe there, and they didn’t try to run or climb onto the mountain - not until the soldiers set the forest alight and shot everyone who wasn’t burned alive. My father had died in his sleep two years before, but my mother and sister weren’t so lucky.’

Anyush knelt at her grandmother’s feet not knowing what to say. She wasn’t sure she believed the story. What if it was only a tale, a fable to warn Armenian children against the evil of the Turk? It had never been mentioned before and Khandut never spoke of it.

‘You need to know this, Anyush. You need to realise what you’re doing.’

‘I know what I’m doing. Jahan is not like that.’

‘He’s a Turk and capable of things you couldn’t begin to imagine.’

‘If you knew him as I do–’

‘I pray to God,’ the old woman said, closing her eyes, ‘that I never will.’