Bone Ash Sky (23 page)

Lilit accepted the offer of the jacket.
Jacket,
she said to herself.
That's
the word
. She looked at the Turkish man without blinking.
Waistcoat,
she murmured in Armenian.
Baggy trousers. Belt of watered silk.
Her hand went out to finger the shiny crescent buckle, the gleaming pistol at his waist, but she stopped herself just in time.

They walked quickly as the sun balanced red on the horizon. In the dusk, full-skirted women and their many children sat on the verges, enjoying the creeping rumour of a new season. Light arced from the sea behind the citadel. Another walled city.
Where have I seen one like this
before?
Palms were outlined against the sky like the pencil drawings she had seen Minas do.
Minas
.
Now where is he again?

She turned her attention to the wet, shiny street. Tiled courtyards in the centre of houses were sprinkled with water to settle the dust of day. She remembered home now in a pale flash of images, the Turks of Van building watercourses and aqueducts, bathhouses adjacent to their mosques. Now she and the man passed shallow pools in gardens, glimpsed through elaborate stonework walls, and fountains in public squares. She stopped and concentrated on the sight as something valid and true, palpable reality to cling to. Her smooth forehead marred by the effort of thought. The Turkish man thought to bring her a tin cup of water and for this she was grateful, draining it and holding her hand out for more. She drank and drank, water pooling at the corners of her mouth, dripping down her chin. Women came with buckets to sluice their courtyards and children skidded on the wet road, avoiding her. He led her away by the arm.

‘Please,' she said in Turkish when they had passed the curious stares.

‘Yes?'

‘What is this place called?'

‘Der ez Zor.'

‘I'm sorry I spat at you.'

He stopped, looked at her. Really looked at her, in the eyes.

‘Why did you?'

‘I don't know.'

He put his arm around her waist when she stumbled, she noticed he didn't flinch at her filthiness and it endeared him to her.

‘
Bey effendim
, would you prefer if I walked some paces behind you? I must smell so bad you'll be embarrassed—'

‘No. They'll think you're an escaped slave if I'm not nearby. Who knows what they would do to you. Anyway, I don't mind your stink.'

She nodded, keeping her gaze to the ground.

‘What happened to your eyebrows?'

‘The soldiers shaved them off. Wanted some fun one night.'

‘Did they hurt you?'

‘They moved on to a girl from Moush who cried and screamed. Cut off her breasts. She was more interesting than me.'

He concentrated on her eyes again as she spoke, and nodded carefully as if he didn't believe her.

He brought her to a mere wall, a facade of peeling paint amid garbage from the street and the crush of people. In the centre, a tiny door. She hesitated, in an instant felt the dawning suspicion of loss and a bubble of panic.
Minas.
She remembered where he was now. Her fingertips tingled with the effort of being again in the world. For a moment, the grapple of sensation, the struggle of remembering, then the Turkish man pulled her to him in the crowd. Lips tight against her ear. Teeth the white of almonds when he smiled.

‘You're home.'

When the door opened, as if by invisible hands, all was splendour and beauty and peace. No further thought of Minas, of her mother. Papa and his magic clocks the stuff of heroic legend, Lake Van a far-off fairytale. She stood in the centre of a courtyard among tiled fountains in diamond patterns of black and white. Drops of water silvered on the flagstones. A ginger cat lay in a puddle of sunshine on the largest fountain's rim, uncoiled itself and stretched. Lilit knelt down and cupped water in both hands, wetting her chest and arms. She turned and smiled at the man. Sun sparkled on her face. Then he hit her.

He had been so deferential as they walked, so solicitous of her comfort. As soon as he saw the other woman look down from the hidden quarters upstairs, raising her glittering veil and her eyebrow, he hit Lilit squarely on the cheekbone. She assumed he did it so the other woman would look upon her more kindly and would spare her future blows. Was she wife, servant or concubine? She looked like a mixture of all three.

Lilit looked at herself in the only mirror that night after he slept. He had taken her to his bedroom and, as she watched him draw the soft curtains around the bed, moving around her gently in the half-light, she had surprised herself by feeling both hopeful of being treated well and afraid of what would come next. But he hadn't touched her; said he could wait until the time was more propitious, it now being the waxing of the moon. She was glad of that. He merely brushed her forehead with his little finger and turned over to sleep.

The other woman was nowhere to be seen. Before he blew out the lamp, Lilit ventured to ask him. ‘
Effendim
, the other woman, with the veil? Is she your wife?'

His voice was muffled by pillows. ‘My dead brother's wife. Now mine. She is my first wife. You may be next, if I like you.'

She couldn't settle when he fell asleep; the mirror flickered whitish at her in the dark. She hadn't looked at herself since she left home, and gasped when she saw her face. Thin lines where her eyebrows once were, a growing raft of black stubble. She wept at her reflection; there were too many shadows and recesses in this new, sepulchral face. No stars outside, no street lights. Only the moon swelling silent through the window. She examined her neck grown scraggy, breasts so slack, jumped up to catch a glimpse of her painful stomach. Her breath frosted as she leaned her cheek against the mirror. She wiped the gleaming surface with her little finger, a stroke for memory, just like that.

In the morning, she lay on the divan in a soiled nightdress one of the servants had given her. The Turk asked her to call him Suleiman, not
Effendi
, not
Bey
, neither Sir nor Master. She nodded and closed her eyes, embarrassed by her ugliness. She was clean now, except for the dress.

After he hit her last night in the courtyard she'd been led away by one of the other women, older, fatter – another concubine or slave, she wasn't sure – and made to sit in a steam-filled room with a bucket of scalding water and an ancient scrubbing-brush. In a corner, razors and soap and pumice stones lay in a pile. She knew these were for getting rid of all her hair. She shuddered when the woman pointed to them, then at her armpits and groin and legs. She set to work, sobbing with the pain, hoping nobody could hear. The woman looked in on her at intervals and replenished the water level in the bucket, pouring the dregs over her as though she felt it was all taking too long.

The woman came in again finally after a greater length of time and spread Lilit out on her stomach, pressing her down hard on the slippery floor. She took Lilit's chin in her hand and showed her a small green vial she held; Lilit read the label as best she could, making out the Arabic phrase:
Oil of Lebanon.
The woman let go of her chin then and straddled her, massaging her back with the cedar-scented oil, working her way up from the buttocks to the tiny bones of the neck. The weight of her elbows was unbearable, but Lilit bit her lip and did not cry. The woman then turned her over onto her back, still looming above, fat face painted with red lips and gold lids and a moustache too close, sweat dripping into Lilit's eye.

She sat on Lilit's stomach and grasped both breasts in her hands, laughing and kneading them, saying something in Arabic Lilit did not understand. She pointed to her own flabby mounds under her housedress and shook her head. Lilit opened her mouth to cry out; the woman's fingers were tight, pinching her nipples, she tried to put her arms up to stop her, but the woman leapt up and was gone. She was left to rinse herself of oil and wait, naked, dripping sweat in the steam, for someone to come and dress her.

Now she suspected the nightdress belonged to Suleiman's second wife, the one she saw as she arrived; a cast-off she'd not even bothered to wash.

Suleiman sat cross-legged on the rug, smoking a water pipe. Its fragrance reminded her somehow of the peach orchards at home. She poked out her bare foot, studied the way it emerged from the threadbare cotton folds.

‘Now, listen carefully,' he said. ‘From this day on, your name will be Lale. Do you remember that? Yes? Good. Lale means tulip in our language – but I suppose you already know that. Yes? And you're not to speak anymore – ah, ah – Armenian. Just Turkish, all right?'

She looked at him, squeezing her eyes together so she wouldn't cry. His eyes were lowered, fiddling with the coals in his water pipe.

‘So, Lale, my girl, tell me in your own words. How did you come to be here?'

Lilit felt this were somehow a test, an evaluation of her intentions.

‘We were forced out of our homes in Van.'

‘Why? What did you do wrong?'

‘There was no reason. Except, I suppose, that we're Armenian.'

‘Come, come – there must have been a reason. Was your father involved in political activities? I hear Van was a hotbed of subversion.'

She could hear her own voice grow softer, more indistinct, as if part of her half believed him.

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘Well, then, what happened to you on the way here?'

‘I was beaten and robbed of my money.'

She remembered something else had happened to her, wanted to tell him, wanted him to understand, yet wasn't sure how to say it. He didn't give her time.

‘Your family?'

‘All dead, I think. All dead.'

‘What about that boy I saw standing beside you at the square? He looked just like you.'

Her eyes glazed over. She tried to recall his face, the little boy who was taller than her now and stronger, too, but the only thing she could remember were two spots of blood on a ragged shirt. She spoke so quietly Suleiman had to lean closer to hear her.

‘I don't know what's happened to him.'

‘What about the rest of your family? Mother, cousins, aunts? Couldn't they make the journey?'

‘They were killed. The gendarmes tied them together, one behind the other, and shot right through them.'

The woman with the glittering veil walked through the corridor. Suleiman didn't raise his head, didn't indicate he was aware of her presence. He looked at Lilit properly for the first time that morning.

‘You're making it up. Turkish soldiers would never do that. Unprovoked. To civilians? Impossible.'

Something in Lilit – a residue of her former self, an abstract sense of injustice – made her get up and put her face close to his.

‘They were murdered!'

He hit her. She refused to back down, screaming, standing up again after he knocked her to the ground. He hit her again. When he was finished, she crawled across the floor to the side of the divan, leaning her back against it. Her face was numb, her ribs hurt with a pain that seemed to wait, crouching, for her to lower her guard. She felt her elbow carefully with her other hand.
I hate you,
she said to herself, not trusting her voice to speak it aloud.
I despise you, you imbecile Muslim.