The Water Diviner (8 page)

Orhan grabs Connor’s sleeve and drags him up another laneway. He gestures towards a grand mansion on the crest of the hill ahead.

‘There, sir. My hotel.’

The once opulent building has seen better days. The approach is shaded by towering trees – chestnut, cypress, plane – all that remains of what must have been, in its prime, a well-tended and manicured garden. Fresh rose-pink and white paint disguises the deep fissures in the concrete render covering the brickwork on the lower storey. But the mask slips above street level. Here, the old paint fades and peels and the plaster is riven by a crazed lattice of cracks and crevices. A spill of weeds cascades from the mossy tiled roof and pigeon-dropping stalagmites teeter above the top edges of the window frames. At the entrance, a faded oval sign is penned in curlicue Ottoman script and English: ‘
Otel Troya
– Troy Hotel.’

Although the building now lacks any pretension, Connor can’t quell a hot flush of intimidation. He has seldom seen, far less entered, such a stately building.

‘Sir! You are welcome!’

Orhan darts up the stairs and holds the front door ajar, gesturing for Connor to enter.

He raises his hand to his head, mops the beads of sweat from his brow. It was Lizzie – always Lizzie – who gave him strength. She would have hooked her arm in his, held her head high and led him through that door. She was just a country bride, but when she entered a room she was a queen. Heads turned to watch her pass. While Connor stood back, stoic, silent, Lizzie held court. Where he stumbled and faltered, confounded by small talk and social niceties, Lizzie warmed to strangers and they warmed to her. Within minutes of meeting someone, she’d lean in, resting a gentle hand on their forearm, inviting them into a conspiratorial aside. When the evening ended and they climbed back up into the buggy to take the long ride home, Lizzie would do so having made a handful of new friends. She had a warmth about her that was foreign to Connor. He is a man who finds more comfort in solitude and silence than in the company of others.

Standing on the hotel’s bottom step, he is petrified. He feels the void at his side. She is never far from his thoughts. But now, he needs to feel her hand on his, gently urging him forward.

‘Come in, sir! You are home!’

He shuts his eyes, mounts the stairs.

If only I were.

T
he foyer of the Otel Troya is silent.

It has taken four years but the war has quietly, unwittingly suffocated this hotel. Keys hang on hooks behind the counter like cocoons; dusty, dormant and waiting for the long winter to pass. Walls that once were white are now tobacco-yellow and the lace drapes are stained and beginning to fray. A group of Thomas Cook tourists wave from a picture frame behind the reception desk. Beside it a photograph of an Ottoman patron with a proud moustache, and another of a band of musicians brandishing their instruments, recall happier times at the Troya. Absent are the familiar aromas of oriental hospitality: roasted coffee beans, eggplant baking and lemon cologne liberally splashed on the hands of guests. All lingering traces of the life that once filled these rooms have been trampled into the fraying rug at the base of the stairs. Despite the bleak times, the hotel ledger lies optimistically open on the desk, pen poised by its inkwell. A vase of pink damask roses staves off the musk of dust and desperation.

From upstairs comes a giggle and a hurried ‘Shh.’

A woman bedecked incongruously in blonde wig, black beaded cocktail dress, stockings and patent leather high-heeled court shoes backs out of a doorway and into the first-floor hallway. Natalia is hopelessly overdressed for the morning, let alone the job at hand. She is carrying one end of a rolled-up carpet. A nudge from the opposite end punches her in the midriff and pushes her into the corridor, tottering in her heels.

‘Wait. Give me a moment,’ she blurts out through a mouthful of blonde hair. She speaks schoolgirl French with an Eastern European accent. ‘Who is going to buy this moth-eaten old rag anyhow?’

‘Quiet,’ comes the reply, also in French, from inside the room. ‘It is my father’s favourite. We cannot let him hear us.’

As the rug snakes its way into the hall the door opens wide to reveal a small study with an oak desk and captain’s chair. On one end of the desk is a brass microscope surrounded by teetering stacks of glass slides. The study walls are lined with half-empty bookcases, the gaps like forgotten moments or stolen memories. The rug is not the first thing to have been excised from this collection. Nor will it be the last.

Ayshe stands in the doorway clad in a long fawn dress and coarse cotton scarf. She is strikingly beautiful. Her grace, the poised way she holds her head high and her lilting French betray her privileged upbringing. Despite this, she labours without complaint.

Struggling to get a good grip on it, Natalia drops the other end of the rug.

Ayshe laughs and exclaims, ‘You are like a drunken sailor. You keep steering me the wrong way!’

‘Do you speak this way to all your hotel guests?’ Natalia asks.

The Turkish woman replies with a smile, ‘Yes. Come on! Pick it up.’

‘So much bother! I wouldn’t give you a piastre for it.’

‘It is silk, Natalia,’ Ayshe explains in a whisper. ‘The highest quality, from Baluchistan.’

The Russian woman grins lewdly. ‘It reminds me of a man I had from Baluchistan. He nearly split me in two!’

‘I don’t want to hear!’ Ayshe says, feigning embarrassment and trying to quell her laughter.

‘Ayshe Hanim, this is not a time of silk,’ explains Natalia, gently. ‘It is a time of bread. That is what everyone is queuing up for. You can’t eat silk carpets. You should hang on to it.’

‘I’ll take what they give me. I don’t have a choice.’

Ayshe casts her emerald eyes along the corridor and listens for the shuffle of her father’s slippers on the boards. All clear.

‘They are only things, Natalia. Just things . . . Now, go left,’ she whispers. Natalia goes right. ‘No,
your
left.’ They choke on their laughter as they edge towards the staircase with the rug hanging limply between them.

Natalia teeters on the steps, only the weight of the carpet keeping her from tumbling backwards down the first flight and through a wooden screen.

‘Careful. If I roll an ankle I might have to spend the rest of the week on my back.’

The two women look at each other from opposite ends of the rug, worlds apart yet united in compromise. The young Turkish beauty selling off her family’s belongings and the older, overdressed Russian widow bartering with the only thing she has left to her. They smile, a gentle smile of understanding and affection, before bursting into uncontrollable laughter.

‘On your back. Oh, you poor thing,’ Ayshe manages to blurt out.

‘Could be worse,’ replies Natalia as she drops her end and sits on the steps to gather herself.

The front door rattles. The two women stand and smooth their dresses with their palms. Natalia straightens her wig with a tug and automatically curls her fingers through the side locks. A serious man in his late thirties, wearing a burgundy fez, a suit and a self-important moustache, lets himself in. He swoops across the foyer to the counter with a proprietary air and speaks in Turkish without raising his eyes or his voice.

‘I heard you two chirping from the street. What if there had been guests, my dear?’

‘I don’t see any, do you, Omer?’ replies Ayshe flatly, the light mood ruptured. ‘I asked Natalia to help me.’

Natalia retreats upstairs, knowing where this conversation is heading. ‘It is fine, Hanim. Now the big man of the house is here you don’t need my help.’

As part of his morning routine Omer glances at the guest register, closes it, and then checks the keys. There is only one missing from its hook, the same one as always.

‘That Russian woman brings shame on this household,’ he blurts out, loud enough for Natalia to hear before she reaches the sanctuary of her room. She doesn’t speak fluent Turkish but Ayshe knows she will recognise the disapproving tone.

Ayshe cuts Omer off before he has a chance to wind up.

‘You know we don’t have the luxury to judge. She brings in money. Sometimes it is that simple.’ She points to the buckled rug on the stairs and deflects him. ‘Here, will you help me with this?’

Omer softens, genuinely concerned.

‘What next, Ayshe? The beds? The sheets? How do you propose paying the creditors when there is nothing left to sell?’

He holds her gaze as he takes off his suit jacket and places it on a hook. ‘Ayshe, what then?’

She shrugs and the corners of her mouth turn up ever so slightly in good-natured resignation. It is in Allah’s hands. She has no real plan and knows it. She presents a good front to the world, but in her quietest moments, she struggles to control the quavering sense of anxiety that has embedded itself deep in her heart. Allah may have something in mind for her, but she wishes he would give her a hint of what that might be.

‘Leave this to me,’ sighs Omer as he shoulders the carpet and carries it out through the breakfast salon and into the courtyard.

Ayshe stands alone in the foyer and looks at the glass evil eye hanging on the wall, its black pupil set in a pool of indigo blue and pearlescent white. Momentarily she imagines herself drifting in a great expanse of water halfway between Europe and Asia. She treads water, waiting for the tide to turn in her favour, but every Stambouli knows the currents in the Bosphorus are fickle and treacherous.

Suddenly what sounds like the Sultan’s Army crashes through the front door. Orhan. Despite herself, she smiles. Her eleven-year-old son is one of the few things remaining in her life that still give her joy. He is an only child and it is a mystery to her how one small boy can make such a racket. His eyes gleam with a level of unbridled excitement usually reserved for such occasions as watching a firework display; a rare event these days.

Scarcely able to breathe, Orhan runs to his mother and wraps his arms around her waist while he blurts out his news. ‘Mum, mum. I found a foreigner. An Englisher.’

She holds Orhan tightly and inhales the scent of sea air and spices from his hair. She pictures the route he has come home by, along the wharf at Eminönü and through the Egyptian Bazaar, running up the hill past men smoking outside the coffee house.

‘My clever little man. I could eat you,’ she replies, now also excited.

Ayshe looks up as a long shadow crosses the stoop, preceding a tall, broad-shouldered man who steps through the open door.

Connor removes his hat and wipes his brow with his forearm. He is sweaty and puffing from the ascent up the hill and still struggles with a debilitating sense of displacement. He hesitates as his eyes adjust to the soft light, letting them wander over the faded glory of the Troya. This place has seen better days, that much is clear. He spots Arabic calligraphy on the wall beside a photograph of a man sporting a moustache, uniform and fez, but the hotel does not feel as alien as Connor had feared. Almost European, he dares to think. Although in truth his expectations are grounded in exotic bedtime tales of harems, crusades and caves of riches that open on command. For him, the Constantinople he has passed through is a closer match to how he imagined this city. But he has no reference point for the modern – if somewhat down-at-heel – hotel he has just entered, far less the breathtakingly beautiful woman standing before him.

The woman seems to sense his hesitation. ‘Hello. You are welcome. I am Orhan’s mother, Ayshe Hanim.’

The boy wriggles away from her. Her warm smile cuts through the fog of Connor’s grief and apprehension like a spotlight. As Ayshe steps towards him, smoothing her slim-fitting dress and tucking a stray lock of hair back under her scarf, this Australian farmer is completely disarmed.

‘Yes. Ah, I need a room . . . Your boy said you . . .’

Ayshe smiles. ‘You are from England?’

‘I am from Australia.’

‘Australia?’ Ayshe bristles, visibly thrown by the revelation. Her warmth evaporates like mist on morning breath. She tilts her chin up defensively and raises her eyebrows. ‘I am sorry, Orhan has made a mistake. We have no rooms free.’

Connor looks past her at the board of room keys behind the reception desk and then glares at Orhan. The boy looks puzzled; confused.

Dumping his case on the floor, Connor raises his voice, fatigue and pent-up frustration threatening to bubble over. ‘Your son has dragged me halfway across this wretched city with the promise of a room –’

Before he has the opportunity to finish the sentence, a smiling man appears from the adjoining salon and pushes past Ayshe. ‘Welcome to the Troy Hotel, sir. Where Achilles himself would have stayed – if he had visited Constantinople.’

He pauses in his patter, anticipating a laugh that does not materialise. ‘We are busy but I am sure we can find you a room.’ He opens the hotel ledger and runs his finger down the page.

‘Ah, yes. You are in luck. The boy was right. Our best room is now vacant. Mr . . .?’

‘Connor. Joshua Connor.’