Orhan's Inheritance (10 page)

Lucine tries not to dwell on the gawking villagers. Mairig lifts the hem of her cream-colored dress and walks before her daughters with her back straight. No one dares to approach her, although the cobbler’s apprentice sneers as they pass by. Lucine pretends not to hear the word
gâvur,
infidel, slip past his lips. She tries to keep her head down as she follows Mairig. She adjusts the linen bundle carrying the necessities of their bath on her shoulder. For the first time ever, Lucine longs for a head scarf. The bonnets that shield them from the blazing midday sun do nothing for the suspicious glares of their Muslim neighbors. They scream “Christian” to anyone who looks their way.

“Why are we walking toward the market?” says Anush.

“I have to see the midwife before we go,” Mairig answers.

“What for?” asks Lucine.

“I need her to keep something safe for me,” says Mairig.

“Why not give it to the reverend’s wife?” asks Anush.

“Because Iola is Greek and not Armenian,” Mairig explains, exasperated. “What’s more, she is a midwife. No one will dare touch a hair on her head if they know what’s good for their wives and daughters.”

“Why not give it to Miss Graffam?” asks Lucine.

“Because the school is too far. We cannot risk it,” says Mairig.

The market is a porous borderland between the Christians and the rest of Sivas. Here all kinds of different people trade goods and words. They forge acquaintances, rivalries, and sometimes friendships. Yet it is not the kind of place for the likes of Mairig, who has always relied on a servant to do her shopping.

Now the vendors who usually shout above one another slouch behind their sparse stalls. There’s only a handful of haggling women, and the vendors seem nostalgic for more formidable opponents. An old widow in a black head scarf answers their prayers by complaining about the price of garlic. Since the war began, food is scarce and whatever is left is triple in price. But the Melkonian women do not want for money, nor are they here to purchase food. They need only to pass this place safely.

A lemon vendor near the entrance sits in front of the bright yellow pyramid of fruit. He squeezes one golden lemon in his left hand, turning it around and around in his palm, his eyes never leaving the three women making their way toward him. Mairig looks directly in front of her, leading her daughters past him when the lemon comes flying from behind her, hitting her squarely on the back of the head. Lucine rushes to her mother’s side, but Mairig only stumbles for a moment. She presses a palm to the back of her head. Saying nothing, she turns her back on the jeering of the vendors and resumes her straight-backed walk through the market. Lucine stands frozen, her closed fists pulsing with rage. She makes a sharp turn to face the vendor, when Anush steps before her. “Don’t,” she whispers, resting her hand on Lucine’s chest.

They see Iola’s son, Demi the half-wit, first. He stands at the front door of the apothecary’s house, something he does whenever he accompanies his mother to work. Lucine blushes, remembering an old joke of Uncle Nazareth’s. He liked to say that Demi had seen more bare-breasted women than any eunuch in the sultan’s palace.

Gevork the apothecary is with all the other men of the village, but a few feet away his elderly father, one of the few Armenian men not called in for the “meeting,” paces back and forth. Normally there would be a half-dozen women bustling about, carrying news of the birth out of the house, to the expectant father and his male relations. But today, the old man waits alone. In his arms, he holds the apothecary’s precious white coat, the Western symbol to announce his status to the world.

The apothecary’s father lifts the coat up like a sacred shroud. “He left his coat. Pray for a son so I may pass it down.”

Mairig seems confused by his words. “He will be back shortly. You can give him his coat then,” she answers him. Then, “We’ve come to see Iola.”

“Yes, yes. She’s been in there all morning. My wife is inside helping. Any minute now they will come out with the child.”

A guttural scream comes from inside the apothecary’s house.

“We better go in and see if she needs any help,” says Mairig.

Inside the dark inner room, Iola squats before the wailing woman. Gevork’s mother scatters bread crumbs and sprinkles water around the room, warding off the evil eye. Iola’s seven birthing brooms hang from the walls, along with ropes of garlic. At the foot of the bed lies the Koran and the Bible, over which is the largest string of blue beads in Sivas. No one, Christian or Muslim, dares protest over one item or another.

A moaning from the mother escalates until an infant’s wail cuts through the air. Iola pulls the baby out and places it right on its mother’s chest. Pausing briefly in front of Gevork’s father, Iola makes the sign of the cross. “A son,” she says simply. “May God bless him.”

The old man hurries back into the house, and Iola turns her attention to Mairig.

“Wise at birth,” she says in Turkish. “Didn’t want to enter this black little world. Had to pry him out. His first memories will be on that dusty road, poor thing.”

“Yes, we are to leave tomorrow,” Mairig says. “I have a favor to ask,” she adds, pulling a scroll of paper from her bosom. Lucine reads the words
New
York Life Insurance Company
typed in block English letters.

“Will you keep this safe?”

Iola looks at the scroll with great suspicion. Everyone knows that few things mystify the midwife like the written word. “I don’t bear other people’s talismans,” she says finally.

“It’s not a talisman,” says Mairig, though from what Lucine understands, that’s exactly what life insurance is. If anything happens to Hairig, this piece of paper from America ensures that the family will not be destitute. At least that is how Hairig described it.

“It is a paper from a sultan in America,” explains Mairig. “It says that Hagop’s life is valuable. You can give it to the American missionary. She will keep it safe.”

Iola considers this for a minute. “We who know him shall determine his life’s value, not some sultan in another sea,” she says.

“Hagop would be grateful to you, Iola,” says Mairig. “He would want you to do this.”

“Your husband has been very good to my Demi. Give it here,” Iola says, taking the scroll. “We’ll give it to the American. Won’t we, Demi? Now you can do a favor for me. Take this,” Iola says, extending a hand out to Lucine. “Throw it in the river.”

Lucine takes the dirty rag from the midwife’s outstretched hand immediately and follows Mairig and Anush back toward the road.

“What is this?” she asks when they have crossed the central square. She can feel something soft and lumpy under the dirty rag.

“
Göbek bağı,
an umbilical cord,” says Mairig.

“From the apothecary’s son?” Anush asks.

Mairig nods.

“And why am I throwing it in the river?” asks Lucine.

“The umbilical cord has the power to influence a child’s future,” Mairig says. “If you bury it in the courtyard of a mosque or church, the child becomes devout. If it’s buried in a school garden, the child becomes educated.”

“And if you throw it in the river?” asks Lucine.

“Then the child is forced to search for his or her destiny elsewhere, far away from here.”

“Do you believe in such things, Mairig?” asks Lucine.

“I believe what my Bible tells me to believe. But just in case, throw it as deep into the current as you can, my love. May the water carry it as far away from this cursed land as possible.”

Lucine throws umbilical cord as far into the current as she can. “Where is my umbilical cord?” she asks.

“Under the mulberry tree, right next to Anush’s and Bedros’s cords,” Mairig says.

Hairig’s mulberry tree is the most glorious thing Lucine has ever seen. It emerges from the earth like the hand of God, fingers spread wide and reaching eagerly for every bit of sun, wind and sky. Its branches beckon the children’s eager limbs and its fruit moistens their parched tongues.

“Why there?” asks Lucine.

“Because your grandmother thought it would tie you all forever to the family and its land.”

“And what about Aram?” she asks.

“What about him?” says Mairig.

“What did we do with his umbilical cord?”

“Nothing,” says Mairig. “We lost it.”

“What?”

“One minute it was there, and the next it wasn’t. That whole cord business was your grandmother’s obsession. Not mine. And by the time Aram was born, she had already passed. I kept thinking we might find his cord under a cushion someday, but it never turned up.”

“That’s awful.” Lucine imagines her own
g
ö
bek bağı,
buried deep in the hardened soil of the courtyard, and immediately feels safe again. So much better than an umbilical cord traveling down a winding river or one that’s lost altogether.

When they arrive at the baths, the attendant, an unusually large woman with yellow teeth, looks unsettled by the sight of Mairig and her daughters. She sits with a burlap bag of sunflower seeds in her lap, their discarded husks at her feet. She loads one seed after another between wedged teeth, expertly cracking, stopping only long enough to say, “The hamam is full.”

“We can wait,” Mairig says.

Several minutes go by, filled with the attendant’s steady cracking and spitting. As the mountain of husks, jagged and slimy with saliva, grows, two women exit the bathhouse.

“Surely there is room now,” says Mairig.

“They were two and you are three,” says the attendant.

She opens the inner door anyway and leads them into a small changing room, where all three undress. Anush and Lucine slip on their wooden bath slippers and wrap themselves in the thin cotton sheets used for bathing.

In the vast marble hall milky clouds of steam carry gossip from one group of reclining nudes to the next. Bodies, pink from rigorous scrubbing, lie languid at the foot of the massive fountain in the center of the room. Children shriek in protest under the heavy scrubbing of their mothers’ arms. Lucine looks around the room for a familiar face, but there are none. They are the only Armenians foolish enough to brave a bath on this day.

Mairig leads her daughters past the others and stops in front of the private room they always use. But the measured kindness of the attendant has run out. She stands stoically in a cloud of steam and motions toward the communal room.

“Are the private rooms all occupied?” asks Mairig.

“The private rooms are for Ottomans,” the attendant says.

The Melkonian women take their place on one of the divan cushions pressed against the outer wall. A Kurdish woman, seated to the right of Mairig, eyes the girls’ hips with the discerning eye of a connoisseur. Anush and Lucine disrobe quickly, but the Kurd moves even quicker.

“Fine legs,” she says, patting Anush’s thigh appreciatively. “You’ll need an Osman as strong as a lion.”

Lucine and Anush ignore the muffled laughter of nearby patrons and begin unpacking. The pressed linens, bars of soap,
kese
s for exfoliating, along with the glass bottle of eau-de-cologne and the silver cup for rinsing are all dutifully laid out, but the room is suddenly unnaturally quiet. Hard stares replace the familiar chiding and clicking of tongues from village women.

Lucine slips the wooden sandals off her feet. She shuts her eyes and lets the steam provide what little insulation and privacy she can get. Anush drags the
kese
down her mother’s spine, letting gray curdles of dead skin drop down to the floor. It is not uncommon for women with eligible sons to ask prospective brides to scrub their backs. Lucine doesn’t dare look up.

There is a melting point at which everything in this world eventually succumbs. Skin, salt, fat, tears, and laughter all meld into one. In the
hamam,
Lucine is forever suspended at this melting point. She reclines, pressing her back, buttocks, and palms into the hot stone floor. The hissing steam penetrates and escapes from every surface, seducing her skin, her muscles, and the stone into submission. Then come the organs, and despite the women ogling the productive capacity of her hips, the roundness of her breasts or the strength of her thighs, despite all this, her mind goes blank. There is always a brief period of clarity when she can hear her whispering heart.

Today she listens to the slapping noises of the fountain water, hoping it will drown out the sound of her longing and her worry. The effort is futile. The heat knocks incessantly at the door of her heart. When it finally answers, in come a bevy of images of Kemal. He smiles at her from across the courtyard. He stares with compassion at her tear-stained face and laughs uncontrollably at her anger. She doesn’t know why or how, but she is sure he understands her, knows her. And this is everything.

It might be a sin against God, but God doesn’t seem to be terribly concerned with her at the moment. Where was he when they took Nazareth? When they flogged the priest and robbed him of his sanity? When they took Hairig?

Hairig. The tears are just one more form of water excreted by her body.

Not here, whispers her heart. Not here.

CHAPTER 10

Bedros and the Dress

MUAMMER BEY’S VISIT
comes on an especially hot day, one made for swimming and sitting under the shade of a tree. But the children are stuck inside. Anush hides in the back of the house where the governor cannot see her. Lucine and Bedros are relegated to the front parlor and instructed to be quiet. Bedros fashions a sword from a long branch and slashes the drawn curtains like a caged animal. He makes loud swishing noises, wielding the sword with one hand and holding his pants up with the other. Each time a limb from his branch nicks the lavender-colored silk, he turns his head, as if waiting for a reproach. A palm to the back of the head, a harsh word, or worse yet, that look of disappointment Mairig used to give them when they’d done something wrong.

“Stop that. You’ll ruin the curtains,” Lucine says, taking care to keep her voice low. “Aren’t you a little too old for swordplay?” She takes the branch from him.