Bone Ash Sky (15 page)

Neighbours' houses were strange and unfamiliar, leering at him with lighted faces, slanted Turkish eyes. He trudged his way between them, traversing fields and orchards separating the city from Aykesdan, finally stopping at the town square. The mediaeval walls of the old city grinned, conspiratorial. He regarded the empty displays of the bakery, the butcher, the seller of sweets and wine. His face reflected in curved glass, wavering, as if underwater. None of their windows were lit, not even upstairs in the sleeping quarters. A voice in his head wheedled, then spoke with authority.
A food vendor never starves.
He thought of ways to break into the baker's – never liked him anyway – to steal some flour, at least. The voice egged him on.
There must be sacks and sacks of it; he' ll
never miss it.
His stomach ached with a hollow pain, like death.

He walked to the back of the row, in a narrow alley where refuse was thrown, where stray dogs and cats marked out their territory. They hissed and spat at him, one dog barked, half-hearted, then resumed snuffling in the filth. He filled his pockets with whatever he could find. It was hard to see in the dark. He picked up a moist cake, mouldy on one side; it could be scraped off and toasted in the fire. A worm-eaten peach the animals hadn't yet found. He forced himself not to taste the food, even when his stomach began growling and saliva gathered thick and slow under his tongue. He'd wait till he took it home, present his gifts with a flourish to his mother and sister.

There was a noise of boots, the sharp
tap tap
of clubs and rifles echoing on the paving stones of the square. He fell to his knees in the rotting squelch, heard men shouting in Turkish. He crawled closer. The moon shed a weird, spectral light onto the square, houses and shops around it black, muffled, their protests mute and ineffectual. He flopped down on his belly, using his elbows to propel him closer still, hidden by the shadow of the building. The officer who could be heard shrieking sidestepped the prisoners, who now held each other's hands like little boys. He banged his club down on the ground each time he finished a sentence. When he turned to give orders, Minas glimpsed the side of his face, an open mouth with the glitter of gold eye-teeth in the moon's gleam.

The officer directed his men to prepare the prisoners. Minas's blood battered in his veins, thrashing through his arms, into his heavy, useless legs.
Prepare for what?
He watched the Armenians being bound to each other with thick rope. Made to hang their heads, some forced to kneel with a blow from a rifle butt or the jab of a pistol in the ribs.

He scanned the length of the company with his eyes. The butcher was there, still wearing his soiled apron. It was hiked around his waist like a skirt. Minas's godfather, too, his spectacles smashed but still managing to balance on his face. His nose emitted a dark-brown liquid, but he didn't wipe it away. The priest, lips moving in silent prayer. Lilit's boyfriend was there, with a torn shirt and bloodied chest. A wet circle spread slowly at his groin. He whimpered at intervals, amplified in the acoustics made by the flat square and the amphitheatre of buildings.

Next to Yervan, a grey-haired man. One eye open wide, the other pulpy and closed, swollen from a blow.
Oh, no, please God, not my
Papa.
He knelt with the rest of the men, his blue cap pushed low over his ears. He was stiller than the other fidgeting prisoners; he seemed to be asleep, kneeling upright, or even praying with the priest. Minas struck at his own thighs, blocks of wood.
Get up! Get up, you coward!
But he continued to lie flat on his belly, eyes and ears strained to every movement. He tried to catch Papa's gaze. He watched the patient face, dwelling on it from afar, wanting to memorise every detail of its expression. He watched the men being lined up against the wall of a building, kneeling with their backs to the gendarmes and to Minas. He could no longer see Papa's tired, trusting face. A shot rang out, echoing long on the cobblestones. One man fell, dragging those on either side down with him to the ground. Another shot. The butcher was thrown forward, his head hitting the wall. Then another. Yervan slid to the ground, neatly, as he had done everything in his life. The shots grew louder and Minas put his hands over his ears. Papa fell onto Yervan's stomach.
How could that be?
He heard another shot.
Not my Papa
. Another shot, and another, a cacophony causing the stray dogs to throw back their massive heads and howl. He heard himself sobbing, too: a strange bubbling sound he was remotely aware of, as if coming from someone else. He didn't hide his face, didn't stop watching as the men were finished off in a volley of fire, slumped against each other, crushing the still-living to death with the already killed. He held his palms to his cheeks. He'd soiled himself.

The dogs grew quiet. Minas stopped crying; or at least, couldn't hear the sucking in and out of his breath anymore. He couldn't see Papa, his body was too entwined with other men's limbs and the gendarmes and soldiers, standing over the bodies, poking at them with their swords, checking if they were dead. The officer drew his pistol and stared at it. For a moment Minas thought he would use it on himself. Instead he lowered it once more as he strolled around the bodies, firing a last round into each man's head.

When he collected himself enough to run home, it was dawn. Pale light fingered the roofs of houses and tops of trees, suffusing the hills with shattered hope. As he left the town and made his way to the outskirts he came upon a withered, ancient woman sitting by the side of the road. He didn't want to stop in case she needed help, didn't want to look at her in case she was sympathetic to his own pain and he burst into tears again. Yet he forced himself to slow down when she raised her arm at him. Her legs were bare and swollen, as if she'd been walking for days, and she sat with them stretched out before her in the dirt. A vein on her left foot beat like a pulse. She wasn't wearing a scarf and was completely bald, the dome of her head sunburnt and peeling. She was muttering something to herself and he bent closer, against his better judgement, to hear what she was saying.

‘Oh my sweet Virgin, help me, the Turks are coming to cut my throat.'

Her eyes were glazed, darting about and alighting on nothing.

‘My people have left me behind and fled into the mountains.'

She focused on his face for an instant and put her arm out to him again. The way she held it outstretched, so straight and still and unflinching, made him angry and frustrated and sad all at once.

‘My boy, do you know where they've gone? My boy?'

‘No.'

He surprised himself by kicking out at her and watching as the dust rained over her inert, lifeless legs.

‘No. Don't bother me, old woman. I don't know anything.'

He began running away from her.

‘No,' he repeated. ‘No! No! No.'

He was still muttering the same denial to himself when he ran down onto the gravel road that passed his house. ‘No,' he said, and kicked at the loose stones in front of him. ‘No,' he repeated, louder now, as he slowed down and bent double, holding his side. ‘No,' he murmured, panting and sweating, and it seemed the word came from somewhere outside of him.

Home appeared the same as before, squat and silent and screened by willows. He passed close to the whitewashed wall marking their southern boundary. It was a living pattern of sunshine and shadows; he remembered Lilit pointing it out to him when he was not yet at school, content to lie with her in the long grass for hours watching. Now he stopped and stared. It couldn't be the same now Papa was gone; it should be struck down, subdued, in mourning. This happy movement was travesty. It was like any other day, a morning of no import, the sky a high blue bowl upended above him. Green summer light played on the white wall. A swallow darted back and forth, making infinitesimal alterations to its daubed nest. Feathers, twigs, mud with flecks that sparkled like the lake in the distance.

He lunged forward, hammered at the wall with his fists. This went on for a perhaps a minute, or an hour, until his knuckles were torn and bleeding. He stepped back, surveying them as if they belonged to someone else. There was no pain. The shadows continued to flicker. He put his hands down and turned his attention to the house again. The yellow shutters were closed, smoke curled in a lazy plume from the chimney. Home was ignorant of Papa's death; smug and complacent, it couldn't help him now. He kicked at the wall one more time, smacking at grapevines overhead as he climbed the worn steps to the front door.

His mother and sister were still up when he burst into the room, whey-faced and drawn, waiting. Mamma ran to him, shook him hard. She didn't seem to notice his bloodied hands, the filth that stuck to his clothes. He glanced at Lilit for an instant; her eyes saw everything.

‘My son, where were you all this time?'

He lied, looking up at her wrinkled forehead.

‘As soon as I heard the news, I ran straight back to tell you, Ma.'

He told her a column of men had been taken by gendarmes and marched to the top of the hill overlooking the lake. His father was among them. He heard rumours they were being deported to a labour camp, far away into the interior of Turkey.

He watched his mother from the open door as she turned and distributed whatever she could find in the cupboards. Her movements were slow and easy, yet her face suddenly contorted in a spasm of helplessness. If it were not for the distortion of her features, he would not have thought she registered at all.

‘Did you hear me, Ma? He's gone. He might never be back.'

She didn't answer. She was calmer than he expected, tipping the last of their dry cornbread into his open palm and a gulp of cognac to Lilit: customary food of death and burial, though she knew nothing of what had really happened.
Ancient sacrifice,
came the voice in his ear and he slapped his forehead to drive the sound away.

Lilit grabbed his arm.

‘Do you know if Yervan's among them?'

‘What do I care about your boyfriend,' he bellowed. ‘It's Papa I'm worried about.'

He hit her in the face, feeling all the rage and pain and disgust for the Turks who had killed his father find its outlet in the force of the blow. She stood there, unmoving, her eyes staring into his. When he drew back his hand, she untied her apron slowly. With shaking fingers and a swift glance at her mother over her shoulder, she was clattering out the door and down the path. Mamma stood in the middle of the room, holding her face in her hands. When she raised it to Minas, it was washed clean of any emotion.

‘Run after her, my boy. It's dangerous out there.'

Lilit made for Yervan's property. She plunged through fields of flowers, registering now at the edge of her awareness what those colours really meant, in all their shades of blood, from scarlet to deep blue, the arterial purple of emperors. Death, not love; pain in all its guises. Once they were tiny red banners of joy. Her cheek pulsed, she stripped the flowers and pressed their petals to her face.

When she got to the farm, she ran to the stable and pushed the thick doors open with both hands. Nothing. Even the hens were gone. She went to the house, her heart beating high in her throat. Maybe Yervan's parents were merely sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea, and would frown upon a young woman bursting in on them like that. Maybe Yervan was there, too, and would not be pleased to see her like this.

She stopped in the courtyard when she saw a crumpled shape lying on the ground. There were large stones scattered about, spattered blood nearby, and the object lay like a heap of old clothes, face down. The clothes were dirty, as if they had been dragged to where they lay. She didn't want to stop and examine the body; she already knew it was Yervan's father from the fine gold-seamed waistcoat he wore. Nobody else could afford a waistcoat like that. Not in time of war. A beat, an instant of quiet. She could hear her blood pounding in her ears. Could she hear him trying to say something? She peered closer against her will, breathing hard. His skull had been smashed open. She felt her voice fizzing out of her in a high, crazed laugh, tried to quell the sound by clutching at her throat. ‘Oh my God, my God,' she could hear herself screeching. ‘Yervan's father's been stoned by the Turks.' Her voice was long and loud in the silence. ‘Oh my God, my God,' she whispered, and the hysterical laughter burst out again until she vomited the bread her mother had given her into the dust at the dead man's feet.