Anyush (32 page)

Dr Charles Stewart

Mushar

Trebizond

July 22nd, 1916

Mr Henry Morgenthau

US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire

Constantinople

Anyush

‘W
e’re moving out. You have to get her up.’

Anyush looked at the lieutenant. Around her, all those who remained of the convoy were once again struggling to their feet.

‘Up now or she’ll be left behind.’

Anyush had been thinking of Lale. The strength of her five-fingered grip and the way the baby held her thumb as though she knew that some day her mother would let her go.

‘Are you listening to me? Get her up.’

He stared at the old woman, and then turned away. Gohar’s lips were closed, her fingers laced at her breast and two small pebbles covered her eyes.

‘We’re moving out,’ he said.

The Harşit river rises in the peaks dominating the town of Gümüşhane and follows the old Silk Road to the sea. Ten miles outside the town the river bends away to the west and it was here the caravan stopped to refill the empty water barrels. The marchers collapsed by the side of the road
while the soldiers plunged headlong into the cool waters of the river.

‘Fill up those barrels. Get a move on,’ the lieutenant shouted.

Three men lined the barrels up at the water’s edge and held each one under the surface until it was full and the lid hammered back into place. Another soldier pushed them up the steep incline onto the road and over to the supply wagons. Anyush sat on the riverbank a little away from the others. The sun beat down on her back and shoulders but she didn’t try to find shade. She would have liked to get into the water, to feel the comfort of it close around her but she hadn’t the strength. She looked at her hands, brown and burned by the sun. There was still a faint mark on her finger where her wedding band had been. Something moved through the wall of heat at Anyush’s back. The Ferret hovered near the empty barrels and while the others were distracted he kicked one into the water. It was caught by the current and floated slowly towards the middle of the river.

‘Hey,’ the lieutenant shouted to a soldier swimming nearby. ‘Catch that barrel.’

The soldier swam to it and put his arm over the wood, but the greasy staves slipped out of his grasp and floated away. A faster-moving current in the middle of the river caught it and pulled it further downstream.

‘Are there only women in the Ottoman army?!’ Pulling off his jacket and boots, the lieutenant sprinted down the bank and waded into the water. He swam hard, passing the barrel in a few strokes and placing himself in its path so that it bumped off his chest and bobbed between his outstretched arms.

‘Get up.’ The Ferret was standing behind Anyush. ‘I said get up.’

He kicked her hard with the toe of his boot and she tried to move away from him, struggling to get to her feet. She was shaky and dizzy from lack of water, and when he pulled her back along the road behind a group of spindly acacia trees she didn’t cry out. Nobody noticed when
he ripped open the top of her dress and pushed her to the ground.

‘Don’t make me use this.’

Pulling a pistol from his pocket, he pointed it at her head and pushed down his trousers with his other hand. Anyush lay like a corpse beneath him as he positioned himself between her legs. His face loomed above her so that she was looking into his animal eyes, one brown and one blue.

‘No!’ She lashed out at him and kicked with her legs. Like a wild animal she bucked and twisted until the cold click of his pistol sounded in her ear.

‘If I have to screw your dead corpse, I will.’

Drops of his sweat fell on her face and she became still like a broken bird. He grabbed her chin when she turned away and wrenched her head around. ‘Look at me. You’re going to remember this.’

Straightening his back, he pushed her legs apart with his knees. ‘Have a good look. I want you to know how it feels to be fucked by a man like me.’

His mouth widened into a smile, and a trace of that smile still played about his lips in the instant before he collapsed on top of her. Above him, Khandut stood like the ghost of someone Anyush had once known. Throwing the rock to one side, she grabbed the soldier’s legs and dragged him off. Anyush got to her feet. The two women looked at each other. Khandut was hardly recognisable. She was wasted and ill, and tufts of her hair were missing so that large patches of her scalp were bare. At the side of her head a bloodied ear hung by a band of skin. Anyush heard a keening sound and realised it was coming from herself. Tears she had not shed at the surrender of her child or the death of her grandmother. Khandut took her in her arms and held her. They stood together as if they had spent a lifetime holding each other just so.

On the ground, the Ferret had started to twitch. A low moaning sound came from him, as he began to crawl towards the road. In one quick
movement Khandut picked up the rock and brought it down again and again on the back of his head. Bits of bone and hair flew into her face and blood spattered her dress. Anyush watched in silence. As the life’s breath was beaten out of him, she wished only that he would be still. When the rock finally slid from her mother’s hands, very little remained of the Ferret’s head. Khandut crouched beside the body and rolled him onto his back. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she began to undo the buttons of his tunic.

‘Quickly.’ She glanced at Anyush. ‘Get your clothes off.’

Anyush sensed the lieutenant approaching before she saw him. Keeping her eyes down, she made as if to empty a stone from one of her boots. Relief flooded through her when he walked away, and panic took hold when he came back again. The Ferret’s cap was pulled well down over her eyes and the uniform fitted reasonably well, but up close she wouldn’t fool anyone. A bead of sweat trickled from her hairline. Khandut was walking ahead and sensed something was wrong. She stopped and turned around. The lieutenant was now less than two feet in front of Anyush and she had no choice but to look at him. He stared directly into her face. A look she recognised. One she had seen on other soldiers’ faces when they distanced themselves from what they were about to do. He pulled the cap from her head so that her plait uncoiled onto her shoulder. Grabbing her by the hair, he jerked her head back, exposing the skin of her neck. She could hear the whisper of the blade pulled from its sheath and winced as the sunlight reflected off the metal into her eyes. This was it. This was how it would end. Very soon it would all be over. Please God, let it be quick.

Then, the strangest sensation. Pleasant almost. Made her feel sleepy.
Her head swung free, dipping towards her chest before righting itself again. The lieutenant’s knife was clenched in one hand and her plait in the other. He retrieved the cap from the dirt and handed it to her. Throwing her hair into the scrub, he left her staring after him.

As the sun was beginning to dip in the western sky, the Shota reappeared. Once again, they surrounded the convoy, lining up along the opposite bank of the river and the near side of the valley. Murzabey was at the head of them. Anyush slipped around the back of the crowd and positioned herself so she could hear.

‘That was quite a story your captain spun at our last meeting,’ Murzabey said to the lieutenant. ‘I was going to teach him a lesson, but it seems his horse has taught him a very painful one on my behalf.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I let him go. Not many men lie to me and survive, but the colonel tells me he is not to be touched.’

‘What do you want?’ the lieutenant asked.

‘I want what is mine.’ The bandit nodded at the convoy. ‘Abdul-Khan made me a promise. You and your men ride to Gümüşhane, and I will take the Armenians.’

All eyes turned to the lieutenant. The captain had saved them from the Shota before and they prayed for redemption again. One of the women began to keen and an old man wept shamelessly. Lips moved in silent prayer and still the lieutenant would not speak. From the cholera wagon the German looked on, his camera forgotten. All around them, on every side, the bandits were ranged like bars in a cage. They had cut off all routes of escape and any hope of help. Two hundred Shota faces watched from the crest of the hill, eager for the reckoning. The lieutenant stood before them, his head bowed. Murzabey was smiling. He knew what the
lieutenant would decide. He had been counting on it. When the soldier nodded, a terrible cry rose from the Armenians at his back.

Anyush found Khandut where she had left her at the end of the line. Khandut looked at her daughter and nodded. ‘You have something I want,’ she said.

Hidden in a pocket of the tunic was the Ferret’s pistol. Anyush’s fingers closed around it but she didn’t draw it out.

‘Don’t prolong this, Anyush. No man is ever going to touch me again.’ Khandut held out her hand. ‘Give it to me.’

Anyush pulled it from the jacket and laid it in her mother’s palm. The sound from the convoy behind them was growing louder: keening and crying and the gathering words of a prayer. Khandut slipped the gun into her pocket, and, without speaking to her daughter again, she pressed herself into the crowd.

No words, no keepsakes, no memories. More lonely in that moment than she had felt in her life before, Anyush looked into the space where her mother had been.

‘You. Follow me.’ The lieutenant appeared out of nowhere. ‘Stay at my back. Don’t speak to anyone and don’t go anywhere without my say-so.’