The Water Diviner (35 page)

‘Where have they all gone?’

‘They knew what was coming and chose to leave before it arrived.’ Hasan dismounts his horse. ‘Come – we will find food here.’

Connor joins Hasan as they move through houses and courtyards, gathering staples left behind when the villagers fled. Honey, a stale loaf of bread, onions, a can of olives, tomatoes growing on a small plant in an empty oil tin at someone’s doorway, and apricots and plums ripening in an orchard.

The sun is lower on the horizon now, its rays skimming across the yellow fields. Connor turns to Hasan. ‘Should we rest here tonight?’

‘No. The Greeks are too close, and they are moving in this direction. This village will be a target.’ He slips his left foot into the stirrup and swings his leg across his horse’s back. ‘We should find somewhere else.’

As Connor mounts up, Hasan nods towards a range of low wooded hills visible beyond the expansive fields. ‘Over there we will find shelter.’ Kicking their horses into a gallop, the two men race across the plain towards the distant forest.

Connor’s head rings with the deafening buzz of a cicada chorus as he passes beneath the dark canopy of pine trees lining the roadway. His horse’s shoes clang as they strike the marble slabs that pave the ancient boulevard, crushing stands of wild thyme and oregano growing between the cracks and releasing a sweet scent into the warm, still air.

On either side of the road, the stumps of what once were majestic columns and their bases stand; all around them, fluted column drum fragments and enormous chiselled blocks of marble lie haphazardly in the undergrowth like the discarded toys of a giant child. Visible through the trees is a monumental wall constructed of massive rectangular stone blocks, each as high as Connor’s waist. In places, olive trees with trunks so fat a man couldn’t wrap his arms around them grow from chinks in the wall.

Connor turns to Hasan, who rides silently beside him. ‘Greek or Roman, do you think?’

Hasan shrugs. ‘Someone’s empire.’

A steep hill rises to the left of them. From a distance, it appears as if someone has taken a bite out of its side. As Connor moves closer, he sees rows of stone seats arranged in steep tiers around the semicircular depression. Next to him, Hasan turns his horse off the paved road and onto a narrow goat track that meanders between the fallen ruins, heading for the amphitheatre. ‘We can rest over here.’

The men tether and unsaddle their horses and cross the cracked marble floor of what was once the stage, their boots grinding through the fallen gravel that partially covers the paving. They move around the ruins, gathering branches and pieces of timber to burn.

The shadows are lengthening and the cool chill of night begins to cut through the heat of the day. Connor quickly builds a small fire in the lee of a fallen column drum. Hasan has a small pan taken from the village into which he chops some of the tomatoes and onions. He places the pan on the coals and sits with his back against the lowest row of seats, his legs stretched out on the paving. He offers Connor a small tin of wizened black olives after he has taken a few for himself.

Connor shakes his head, wrinkling his nose. ‘Still haven’t developed a taste for those.’

Chewing on the bitter olives contentedly, Hasan spits the pips onto the paving. His eyes are fixed on a faint light flickering far in the distance.

‘The first Australian I met – not to shoot at, to talk to – was a thief.’

Connor laughs. ‘That’d be right. We were all convicts, you know.’

‘I met him at Lone Pine. This man waves a white cloth, calls out and walks straight across no-man’s land. We see he is carrying something. A thousand Turkish guns are on him, two thousand Turkish eyes. But still he walks. He reaches us and drops one of our wounded into our arms.’

‘Why the devil would he do that?’

‘He was very brave. But very stupid.’ Hasan raises his eyebrows, shrugs. ‘He and I sat on sandbags and we shared a cigarette. And then he walked back.’

‘And no one shot him?’

‘No, they were too stunned.
I
should have, though. It was only when he reached the Australian trenches that I realised he had stolen my cigarettes.’

Both men laugh.

The flickering light on the horizon is suddenly joined by others. Tiny bursts of flame bloom against the backdrop of a perfect, glowing, peach-pink sunset.

Hasan points towards the source of the light. ‘They’re a day behind us, at the most. I will ride with you as far as Afion. But then I must go on to Ankara.’

Connor nods.

‘Tell me, Joshua Bey. If by some miracle you do find your son, what will you say to him?’

It’s a question that Connor hasn’t even considered. His only thought is to find Art. Past that, he doesn’t know what he’ll do.

‘I suppose . . . I will tell him to come back home. It’s where he belongs.’

Hasan nods, his brow furrowed. He changes the subject. ‘The food will be cooked now.’ He stands and moves to the edge of the fire, using a forked stick to lift the pan off the coals by its handle. He brings it back to where Connor sits and tosses him the loaf of bread. Connor tears off a fist-sized piece and breaks it into smaller morsels, dipping them into the pan of soft and sweet-smelling cooked tomatoes.

‘Smells good.’ The tomatoes have disintegrated into a thick and juicy sauce that soaks into the dry bread. It is delicious. Or perhaps he is hungrier than he thought.

The two men eat in silence, scraping the pan clean with their bread. The sun has long since dipped below the horizon and night envelops the mountainside.

Hasan passes Connor a saddle blanket. ‘Now, we rest.’ He gestures towards the ominous glow of fires on the horizon. ‘But we will not be spending long here. Tomorrow we wake at sunrise and ride to Afion. From here, it is not far.’

Connor rolls up the saddle blanket and wedges it against the base of the amphitheatre’s lowest step, moving his body towards the heat of the campfire. He rests his head on the blanket. The smell of horsehair and sweat is comforting and familiar. As the damp of night descends, he lifts his collar to protect his neck from the chill of the stones and buttons his coat up to his chin.

Although he never admitted it to Lizzie, Connor always enjoyed the times he was compelled to spend the night sleeping under the stars. If he was searching for water a long way from home and reached the end of the day without success, he would quietly rejoice when it became apparent that he would have to make a fire and roll out his swag to slumber under the expansive dome of the velvety blue night sky. The stars spun above his head and seemed to press down upon him. Lying on sand that was still warm from the sun’s searing heat, he felt utterly inconsequential, his life meaningless when measured against the immensity of the universe. Humans have barely scratched the surface of the place Connor calls home. In the great southern continent, life is an interminable battle against natural forces that seem determined to wipe humanity from its face. And he likes that. Sometimes it is good to feel as if he counts for nothing in the scheme of things.

But here, even the sound of the night creatures is comforting. Crickets gently buzz and whirr; an owl hoots softly. Everything seems to move in concert with the deep breathing of the two men lying under the stars.
People belong in this landscape
, Connor thinks. Against his back, Connor feels the grooves worn into the marble by the passage of countless feet over thousands of years. The gravel that lies in drifts around the ancient stone platform is not stone crushed and weathered over millennia. Instead it is man made. He realised earlier as he bent down to gather firewood; what looked like chunks of bright orange and pale grey soil were actually fragments of ceramic. Some pieces were as tiny as match heads; other, larger pieces looked like the rims of shattered bowls or broken handles and spouts. So many people have moved through this land – discarding and abandoning so much as they passed – it is no longer possible to distinguish between the creations of man and things born of nature.

He loves the terrible grandeur of his homeland. But here, in this fertile and abundant place that has been nurturing humans for tens of thousands of years, Connor experiences an unexpected and quite serene sense of belonging. Despite the horrors of today – trauma and violence beyond anything he could have imagined – he feels at home in this land.

Connor’s limbs grow heavy as he succumbs to sleep under unfamiliar stars.

B
loodcurdling screams. A broken line of Turkish soldiers charges across no-man’s land.

Stumbling and faltering, they step on the mangled limbs and body parts of dead and dying men, pressing faces, noses, into the ghastly mud. Thick red ooze wells up over the edges of boots, sucking on bare toes bound in rags and worn leather soles. It hasn’t rained for months; the dirt is saturated with the lifeblood of thousands of dead soldiers.

There. Like a piece of liquorice wending through the deranged landscape: the Anzac trenches. Almost within reach.

Henry and Ed run like rabbits, ducking and darting as the advancing troops close in.

Art hangs back behind his brothers, heart pounding. He could pass the boys
. . .
longer legs
. . .
has a few years on both of them
. . .
hell, faster runner. In a chase over the flat neither of them could touch him. But he can’t turn his back on them. All but holds his arms out, herding them to the relative safety of the trench.

Need to know they’re safe.

I promised.

Almost safe. Relief. They’re over the edge, beneath the firing line. Out of harm’s way.

Now, my turn.

Legs pump, eyes darting. Bloody obstacle course. Barbed wire, severed limbs, bomb craters.

A banshee scream. The ground disappears from beneath his feet. The hot rip of metal through flesh.

Heat, blinding light. Lungs compressed.

Ears hurt.

Can’t see. Feel nothing.

White.

Something now. Through the grey.

Whine. Ears buzzing. Something. I hear something. What is that?

‘Art?’

‘Artie!’

‘You all right, Artie?’

No. Go back.

Ed and Henry.

You were safe.

Go back.

They crawl across the mud towards him, clutching their rifles.

‘Bugger off, the two of you.’ He’s poleaxed by the searing pain from where the flesh hangs from his leg in ribbons. Ground tilts, head spinning. Breath catches in his chest. ‘Leave me.’

‘Yeah, whatever you say, mate.’ Henry.

On their feet now. Crouching, zigzagging towards their brother.

Art lifts his head. A trail of bullets spatters in a line towards them. The firing stops.

‘Leave me!’

From a nest of sandbags, a Turkish gunner heaves another bandolier towards the barrel of his machine gun. Bends, peers down the sights.

‘No! . . . Leave! . . . Go!’

The Turk squeezes the trigger as Henry and Ed cross the last patch of blood-sodden earth and reach their brother.

White hot flashes from the muzzle.

The gun spits bullets.

They hit their marks.

T
he sun warms Art’s face. His eyes close gently against its glare.

Head tilted slightly towards one shoulder, his arms are outstretched, one palm turned down towards the ground, the other cupped and turned towards the heavens, his lips curled gently into a beatific smile. Tiny blooms of condensation form in the chilly dawn air as Art exhales. Slowly spinning on the ball of one foot, the other propels him in a circle, pushing off a small woollen prayer mat.

Art’s threadbare tunic has been discarded, exposing his emaciated and ruined torso to the feeble rays of the morning sun. His belly is as hollow as a greyhound’s, his ribs and collarbone so prominent they cast shadows on his sallow and scarred skin.

His foot slips. A cascade of gravel and eroded mortar trickles and bounces down the steep sides of the crumbling castle wall. He stumbles, one foot hanging into the void. Instinct kicks in. On the wall top, his toes scrabble for the rug’s rough edge. The coarsely woven wool flaps in the wind that eddies between snaggle-toothed ruins.

Art rights himself; looks down from his vertiginous eyrie. Far beneath his feet, the russet-coloured roofs of the houses at the base of the peak look like playthings, the people walking along the winding streets and alleys as inconsequential as insects.