Bone Ash Sky (20 page)

Hours later, when the women finally subsided, the gendarmes laid the tiny corpses out on the sand. All the children were dead, even those they last saw alive. The women were quiet. They caressed their children and other people's children, blessing them with Armenian psalms, fingers soft on foreheads, lips, on wide-open eyes.

Lilit shut her own eyes and refused to look. Part of her had wanted to leap up and stop the Turks, to die with those babies. But she held her mother and Minas close and he did not push her away this time. He shook with guilt, with shame. She looked at him, felt the ancient, nameless bond they shared. He knew what she was feeling, she in turn knew his suffering. Her fears, her selfishness, her private cruelties had taken shape and form, threatening to grow a face that was too much like her brother's.

The action of walking became the only constant. One leg in front of the other, dry feet wading through sand. All Minas could see in every direction was sand. The undulations and waves and Arabic inscriptions in the sand. A holy Koran. An unholy verse of thirst and pain, hunger and sleeplessness. White sky and burning sand, melting and bleeding into one another in the heat.

The ache in his muscles subsided, only to be replaced by the unbearable lust of hunger and the equally unbearable agony of thirst. Even so, the act of walking soothed, gave shape to existence. He knew it was the only thing to count on, and he needed something. The rest of the days and nights were immense and frightening: capricious, a fine broken thread between living and dying or going mad.

Killings became more common, but he never knew if or when they would happen, or for what reason. He tried to avoid any confrontations with the Turks, tried not to speak to anybody unless he had to. He kept his head down and was the first to volunteer for anything the Turks wanted done. He listened to the voice in his head and it assured him this was the only way to survive.

Mamma had stopped looking at him, as if he weren't worthy any more of her love. He grimaced and capered in front of her and she merely turned her face aside. He fed her a bit of cured meat one of the Turks had given him but she spat it to the ground. Lilit bit her lip in sympathy yet shook her head to indicate how sick their mother was, how deserving of his forgiveness. He didn't acknowledge Lilit's gesture, merely picked up the moistened morsel and ate it himself. Nobody brought food to him, nobody asked him if he was all right, if they could somehow ease his fatigue or thirst. He watched Lilit trickle some of her own saliva into Mamma's mouth, he saw Mamma smile weakly and try to kiss Lilit's hand.
And what of me?
Confronted by this secret feminine tenderness, he steeled his heart. Stupid women. They could die in their sentimentality. Only he would survive.

One morning, when they veered away from the river, he watched soldiers laugh while they stabbed and played among the bodies of women perished in the cold of the desert night. He stood close to Afet, ready for anything the Turk needed done. He'd learnt to look when ordered to, yet taught himself to see nothing with his glazed, swollen eyes. He stood and watched with an impassive face, eyes squinting tight against the glare on the horizon. No visible sign of distress, except perhaps the sun tears streaking his cheeks. He beckoned Lilit to him, held her arm tight by his side and forced her to look as well.

Their mother lay naked on the sand in full view of the prisoners and Turks. By her left side were all her clothes. She was curled into a ball, her round back like a glistening pebble on the sand.

‘We have no time for insubordination,' Afet said. ‘Let this be a lesson to all of you.'

One of the gendarmes kicked out at Mamma as if to emphasise Afet's words, yet no sound came from her. Minas was only aware of the sensation of Lilit's cool hand on his back, the current that passed through her shaking body into his. She tried to put her hand over his eyes, to spare him the sight, but he pushed her away.

‘This woman does not understand,' Afet said. ‘She questions our motives. And yet, if you do what you are told, there will be no punishment. We young Turks are not unjust.'

Mamma's face upturned now, twisting and turning to avoid more blows, her palms open to the sky
.

Afet leaned over her.

‘So, I will ask you again, madam. Where is the hidden gold?'

Not a sound from Mamma. Minas could feel Lilit shaking harder, opening her own mouth to speak. He pinched her, and continued pinching until she closed her mouth and bowed her head.

‘Once again, madam, where is the gold?'

Minas moved away from Lilit, still further into the crowd. Hiding among strangers, peering over shoulders and behind heads to catch a glimpse of the woman on the ground, watching indifferently, denying his connection, just another bored onlooker wishing it to be over soon, to stop.
My Ma?
Her body sinking, sinking, covered over by drifts of sand.

He saw Lilit look around, searching for him, wondering where he went. His mother convulsed for an instant, subsided again.
It's all her
fault. Afet said so. She didn't believe they're taking us somewhere better.
This wasn't his mother, not the mother he knew. She was filthy, blackened, a beggar. Her hands and face were dirty, like a child's. Her feet a mass of bleeding sores. A hand was clamped over her head, Afet's cloaked body over hers.

‘This is the last time I will ask you. Where is the gold you have hidden?'

Minas concentrated on her hands, her wrists, those strong fingers that had once scratched and rubbed him, massaged his tummy when he was ill.
No. That wasn't her. Not this stranger lying on the sand.

There was a sound from the huddled shape. Afet put his ear to her mouth, nodding intently. He looked toward Lilit, then scanned the crowd for Minas, still nodding. Minas nodded too. He studied his mother's fingers again, the way they clutched and clawed at grains of nothing.
Not my Ma.
Long fingers, delicately turned. He was looking so hard he jumped at a sound that seemed to come from behind his ear. The jolt of a rifle and her body jerked upward. Suddenly he felt the tiny hairs at the back of his neck tingle. He hummed, a buzzing in his ears, a wordless song of no sound,
My darling, my love, your sufferings and joys
will be many
, the shouts and cries diminished, the voice in his head loud, louder,
It's not really happening. It's not happening at all.

His legs moved before he knew why, running, running toward her to the front of the crowd. Then beside him he felt a rush of air like the felling of a sapling. Lilit was spread-eagled on the ground. A fat Chetti bent over her.

‘No!'

He heard himself say it, but the terrible motion of two bodies didn't stop. He mustn't have said it at all. The jerking, the painful burrowing, the thrust and pull would not end. Lilit fought, clutched at sand and hair. The Chetti swore.

‘Daughter of pigs. Whore. Christian whore. Wriggling. Moaning. Shut your mouth.'

His hands were now inside her. Minas looked at his own hands, held them up before his eyes. His eyes were open, were they? Better to close them. He heard faint scuffles at his feet; the song reached a crescendo amid the ringing of imaginary bells. He opened his eyes once more. All he could see were burning spaces and blind white sky and the voice in his head took over, urging him on as he ran away, while the song swelled and burst.

He turned back heavily. How much time had passed? Lilit was still and mute on the ground, bared breasts flat against her ribs. Her cache of gold discovered hidden in her vagina. The Chetti threw chinking coins up and down into the sand. Her short pale legs blossoming bruises. He watched them change from white to black to yellow.
What funny
colours. Never seen those sorts of colours before.
He concentrated on the spreading shades and wanted to cover them up; they were too vivid for churchgoing, deepening to purple and green.
Where are those summer
stockings of yours then, Lilit?

He thought of Lilit pulling up her stockings on the way to church, the sad little folds that invariably gathered around her ankles. He laughed and the other prisoners around him clicked their tongues.
He's
mad, poor thing. Lost it.
Lilit gazed up at him, reproachful. He didn't care. He hauled her to her feet and arranged the ragged skirt around her thighs, patting fabric into place like broken bread on a table.

They were nearing settlements now, sickly villages carved out of sand and powdered rock. ‘Shaddadie,' the old women whispered around Minas. Shaddadie. The name of the largest town seemed to hold some morbid significance. There were empty caves on its outskirts and the prisoners were made to sleep in one of them, they weren't sure for how long, while the gendarmes and soldiers rested.

‘Not far to go now,' Afet yelled at them from the mouth of the deepest cave. His voice grew distorted before it reached Minas, changing into the howl of a jackal. ‘A train will be along soon to take us all to Der ez Zor. You'll be well looked after there.'

More and more prisoners were herded into the cave, until there was no space to sit or stand or even breathe. Some began protesting at the entrance, and he heard shots, a muffled collective sigh, then silence. He was pushed to the back, where curved inner walls dripped condensation. He turned his head and licked at beads of moisture, fire-cold on his tongue. Old women crushed against him, all sharp bones and rotting teeth, and he grazed his chin on rock before he fell.

He was lifted, almost carried aloft by the pressure of other bodies. He craned his neck above them to try to catch a glimpse of Lilit. Sometimes he thought he saw her dark head, but it was always another girl, or a bald man, a trick of light and shade. When he finally settled against the wall, knees to chest, arms clasped tight around them, it occurred to him the cave stank of burning. A stink that penetrated into his nostrils, his ears, into his eyes. A suggestion of burnt clothes and hair and something else, something he'd never smelled before. Soft stones broke under his weight when he adjusted his position, ash stained his feet and the side of his face when he lay down to sleep. It was dark, save for the lantern strung up at the entrance of the cave, and when he lay down it too was extinguished by the shapes made by others' bodies.

He closed his eyes, although it made no difference to the uniform shades of black, curled up in his corner. Beneath him, the ground of the cave shifted and exhaled, disintegrating further into darkness.

‘Minas.'

He opened his eyes slowly, not sure if the girlish voice was part of a dream. He couldn't see anything, but felt the firm grasp of a hand on his arm. His first instinct was to shake it off and place both hands on the earrings in his nipples.

‘Minas, it's me.'

‘Lilit?'

‘I'm scared.'

He sat upright, took her two hands in his. They were cold, so cold, in the chill of the cave. It occurred to him there, in the safety of half-sleep, that neither of them had mentioned Mamma since she was killed. Or what had happened to Lilit. It was too much to bear. Too much. And now this? But her voice in his ear intruded into his thoughts.