Orhan's Inheritance (9 page)

“What your grandfather didn’t understand is that strength comes in different disguises. It does not always ride a mighty horse or wield a shiny sword. Sometimes we have to be like a riverbank, twisting and turning along with the earth, withstanding swells and currents. Enduring.

“You,” Hairig says, pointing his finger at her, “are like my brothers. Strong and fierce. But sometimes it’s better to be like the river.
Gu hasganas
? Do you understand, Lucine?”

“That is how I survived,” he says, closing the leaflet. “I may have shamed my father by refusing to fight along with my brothers, but what matters is I survived and my mother lived to see it. And the same will happen with your uncle Nazareth,” he says, smiling at Lucine and stroking her hair. She gives him a weak smile and wills herself to believe him.

“I wooed your mother with the help of these books,” he says, waving the volume in his hand. “There was a time I could recite whole poems to her. She didn’t expect that from a merchant. Did I ever tell you how we met?”

Lucine nods. It is a favorite story among the family, retold so many times that she is almost sure she witnessed it herself. He begins it anyway. “She came into your uncle Varouj’s store in Constantinople with her mother. She was planning to leave for that music school in Paris within weeks and needed fabric for her fancy new dresses. I was there delivering wool and taking inventory. I’d been in that store a thousand times, surrounded by rare silks and deep wools. I had been swimming in a sea of color for so long, nothing really stood out anymore. But the moment she stepped inside, every color and cloth in the room was crisp again and focused. Like someone had finally cleared my vision by giving me a pair of spectacles. Oh, I am not ashamed to say that I was love-struck immediately. Of course, it took a lot of hard work, especially with your grandmother, to take me seriously as a suitor,” he says. “I didn’t speak French and I had never been to a proper school.”

“Kemal touched my cheek.” The words spurt out of her mouth like discarded watermelon seeds. They drop into his story, interrupting it, staining its familiar beauty with their unwanted presence. Her words make Hairig’s mouth fall open and the kindness in his eyes disappears.

“What?” he says, his breathing shallow.

“He was only trying to . . .”

“What? He was only trying to what?” Hairig demands to know.

“Comfort me,” Lucine says, eyes lowered.

“Stop.” His voice is steady and firm. “Stop before I get any angrier.”

“But you’ve always liked him,” she offers, still not daring to look up.

“I like succulents as much as I like tulips, but you don’t see me planting both in the same patch of land.” Hairig’s body shoots up from the divan. “You stay away from him. This is no time to disgrace the family. There is an ocean of spilled blood between us, the blood of my brothers included.” His hand, still holding the leaflet, shakes violently.

“He is an employee, a common villager, and a Turk.” Hairig spits the last word out like a piece of phlegm. He takes Lucine’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her head until her eyes meet his. “Just because we live side by side, does not make us the same,” he says.

Lucine wants to object, but he holds her in his stare until she winces from the shame.

“It is a sin against God. We are Christians first, Armenians second, and only after, Ottomans. He doesn’t even have a last name, for God’s sake.

“Don’t disappoint me Lucine,” he says finally. “My heart could not take it.”

When he’s gone, Lucine thinks about his words and wonders where the longing in her own heart fits into the order of things.

The next four days are spent in a familiar fog of house chores, away from the courtyard and the river, away from her father’s averted eyes and far away from Kemal. A tray of green beans for de-stringing, a carafe of coffee for Mairig’s headache
,
a game of marbles with Bedros, and sometimes, when Anush allows it, a sweet cuddle with the baby. Lucine likes to press her nose into the soft fold of Aram’s neck, to breathe in his sweet tangy smell. She is
enduring
the way Hairig prescribed. But it is not enough to quell the foreboding and excitement of her nights, when she lies awake alternately reliving the moment when Kemal’s palm pressed her cheek and the dreaded night of Uncle Nazareth’s abduction.

On the fifth day, Lucine is busy soaking lentils, delighting in the way the smooth little pebbles slip through her fingers, when Bedros walks into the kitchen. His dark mass of hair, jutting in every direction, hangs well past his earlobes, covering the left side of his face where his scar hides. Even his eyes, so black they lack irises, wear an expression of neglect. In his hand, he holds the wooden slingshot.

“Kemal said to tell you thanks,” he says.

“What?” She can hardly believe what has just come out of the child’s mouth.

“For the book,” he says. She suddenly notices a small volume in his left hand. “I didn’t know he could read English,” says Bedros. “Anyway, he says thanks for lending it to him.”

“Yes. Yes, he can read English,” she lies, struggling to think of something else to say, but Bedros has moved on, the way children do. She runs her fingers across the volume, knowing that the same palm that caressed her cheek has fingered its pages. She knows, without opening it, that the book does not belong to Kemal. Most of the Muslim villagers cannot read, and Kemal is no exception. She knows, without opening it, that the book belongs to her teacher, Miss Graffam, the missionary. It’s not just the leather binding that is exquisite and foreign but also the title,
The Missionary Herald,
written in English, which gives the owner away. The thought of Kemal sneaking into the American girl’s school and taking a book for her makes Lucine’s chest swell with gratitude, and she smiles at his daring. She is about to tuck the volume in her apron, when a single leaf of paper floats to the ground.

Long graphite pencil marks, dark and light, weave seductively across the page, creating an image of her hair, wild like it was that morning. Hidden in the mass of hair is an image of her face, her deep-set eyes, mouth slightly open, an image at once familiar and disturbing. Lucine marvels at the skillful drawing she knows to be his and blushes when she tries to think about how carefully he’s looked at her. She folds the sheet of paper twice before tucking it in her sleeve.

“What’s wrong with you?” Anush is standing at the doorway. Aram sits on her right hip, sucking at the dimpled fingers of his right hand.

“What?” Lucine says, startled.

“I said, what’s wrong with you?” Anush repeats.

“I’m being helpful. Soaking lentils.”

“Since when are you helpful?”

“Since always.”

“I’m surprised you haven’t got your nose in a book.”

“I’m not allowed to go to school, remember?” Lucine holds the tiny volume low so it remains hidden under the table.

“It never stopped you before.”

“There are people disappearing out there, Anush. The priest has lost his mind, and Mairig refuses to leave her room.” And Kemal has stroked my cheek, she almost adds. “How would you have me react?”

“Well, you can stop sulking, for one thing. There’s no need to be walking around like you’ve got a noose around your neck. You’re scaring Bedros.”

“She is not.” Bedros materializes from behind a bulgur barrel. The sight of him, disheveled and dirty, makes the sisters forget their differences. It is clear that despite their best efforts, the child suffers.

“Your pants are falling off your hips,” Anush tells him.

Bedros shrugs.

“Come on.” Lucine places the volume in the pocket of her apron and puts an arm around his shoulders. “Let’s go take your pants in.”

She arranges four Easter cookies in front of him, two plain and two with walnuts, while she works on his trousers. “You need to eat more, Bedros,” she chides gently. “It will make you big and strong.”

The boy nods, his mouth full of sweet dough. “When is Mairig coming out of her room?” he asks.

“Soon. Maybe today. Tomorrow the latest,” Lucine says, dragging the needle back toward her. The truth is she has no idea when her mother will resurface.

Just then the sound of the town crier comes floating through the window, stopping her hand.

“All Armenian men between the ages of twenty and sixty must report to a town meeting. Town meeting at the square. Seven thirty tonight! The rest of you start preparing for relocation. Each family will be given one oxcart for their possessions. Take only what you need.”

He shouts at the top of his lungs, repeating the phrases over and over again, until finally he goes hoarse. Bedros, who is only ten and shouldn’t quite understand the meaning of any of this, lowers his chin to his chest. Lucine stands up without a word, dropping his trousers at her feet, and goes looking for Hairig. Surely now he will take action. She finds him standing outside their chicken coop, huddled with several other Armenian men from the village.

“We were better off under the sultan,” says Gevork the apothecary.

“Nonsense,” says Hairig. “The Young Turks have established a constitutional monarchy.”

“Don’t be naive, Hagop,” says Arzrouni the blacksmith. “They are more like a dictatorship, always preaching about expansion, about Turkey being a great land united by language and religion. Where does that leave us?”

“There is nothing we can do but show up,” says Gevork the apothecary. He is still wearing the silly white coat he ordered from England, the one meant to give him the authority of a Western doctor.

“No,” says Arzrouni. “We need to flee at once. There are men in the mountains who will help us.”

“What men?” her father interrupts.

“Murad the Brave and his men,” someone answers.

“Murad and his like are revolutionaries,” says Hairig. “Fighting the Ottoman army with a handful of guns is tantamount to mass suicide. That’s exactly why they don’t trust us. Violence only invites more violence. We need to show them we are loyal subjects of the empire.”

“Loyal subjects are not removed from their homes and deported,” says Arzrouni.

“It is only a temporary relocation,” says Hairig. “I say we go peacefully so that we can return to our homes when the war is over.”

Their hushed tones and gesturing hands remind Lucine of the few remaining chickens trapped in the coop. But it is their eyes that scare her the most. In them, she sees a paralyzing and all-consuming fear. This is what Hairig means about being like a river.

Lucine turns on her heels and walks toward the house. She takes the stairs two at a time, gaining momentum, until she swings Mairig’s bedroom door open.

“You have to get up now,” she says to the ghost of her mother, pulling the covers up and back. “They want to take Hairig.”

“Take him? Where?” asks Mairig.

“They’ve called a meeting. He will go. You know he will go. It’s time for you to get up.”

“He can’t go. What will we do without him?”

“Get up. Please, Mairig.”

An hour later, Mairig emerges from her cocoon, trembling fingers picking at the cross at her neck. “Don’t go,” she tells him, but Hairig is already kissing each child on the forehead. He is dressed in his finest three-piece suit, his brushed fez sitting at an angle on his head. He whispers something into Bedros’s ear but says nothing else. Nothing about the dyeing of the wool in his absence, nothing about provisions, nothing about future plans, nothing to his daughters or his dumbstruck wife.

At daybreak, Mairig is still sitting at the oak table with a bowl of lamb stew warmed up thrice over. When she finally notices her daughters standing at the doorway, she rises. Walking past them, she says, “Don’t cut Bedros’s hair. Promise me.”

CHAPTER 9

Under the Mulberry Tree

THE NEXT MORNING,
Mairig’s headache disappears, along with her evening robe. The cream-colored Easter frock she dons makes her look like a china doll meant for preening. But Mairig wears it to prepare the oxcart.

“I want everything ready for when your father gets back,” she says, her voice cheery.

The Armenian families of Karod are all preparing their oxcarts for what the authorities call relocation. They push the rumors of mass graves along the routes out of their heads and prepare for survival. The Melkonian wagon is nicer than all the others, with a proper door that swings outward, tiny mustard-colored tassels hanging from the window openings, and a brown velvet cushion in the front for Firat, the Turkish coachman Mairig manages to hire. She pulls a wire frame along the back, over which Anush places a blue comforter for privacy and to keep out the wind. They lay two wool mattresses in the bed of the wagon for warmth. Over these, they place a steamer rug with soapstone, a hot-water bottle, and enough food for a few days. Everything else must fit in the foot-and-a-half space between Firat and the wagon. The suitcases and provisions are piled one on top of the other until they form a wall between the coachman and his wares. Lucine places a sack of dried figs in the back, wondering how long the makeshift cushions in this springless wagon will serve as a source of comfort.

The memory of Kemal’s hand on Lucine’s cheek presses itself upon her again and again. Each time she pushes it away, it surfaces back up pounding at her chest.

“That’s enough,” Mairig says finally. “The rest we can do when your father gets back.” Lucine does not ask her when exactly that will be.

“Now get your things ready for the bath,” Mairig adds.

“Do I have to go?” asks Lucine. “I don’t want to walk all the way across town just to sit in the bathhouse with all those giggling naked girls and women.”

“No one will be giggling,” says Mairig.

“Is it safe to be walking about freely across town?” Lucine asks, appealing to Mairig’s fears.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Mairig. “It is Wednesday, our bath day. There is no law against bathing. We may be on the road for days.”

Mairig and the girls make their way down a wide, unpaved road that winds through the Armenian quarter past the two-story houses, the great domed church, narrowing at every turn, so that by the time Mairig and the girls approach the market, it is only as wide as a single cart.