Young Turk (21 page)

‘Not tonight ...’

‘I can’t sleep here ...’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s cold ...’

‘I brought a blanket.’

‘You’ll need that ...’

‘Don’t worry about me.’

I spent that night and all next day on deck. Whenever I went to the toilet or to wash, I became bilious. The deck was the only place where I felt relatively well.

To the relief of Old Fuat, who had countless sick people to attend to, Saadet stayed by my side much of the time. She made sure I took in some liquid and kept me clean. Often, but particularly when she stroked my forehead to make me sleep, the deep excitement swelled up in me. I suppressed it as best I could. I didn’t want to offend her, particularly as I couldn’t tell whether her touch – always tentative – was because she didn’t want to get too close to me – my mother was like that – or because she didn’t want to encourage my desires.

The night before we reached Naples, the sea calmed down. My stomach settled. The world retrieved its colours. Couples started coming up on to the deck again. Those of us who had taken refuge there were urged to return to our dormitories.

I felt sad leaving Saadet. As we made our way to the hold, I clung to her hand.

Suddenly, someone shouted, ‘Hey, you! Enough! Enough!’

I turned round. It was Mueller Hanιm, the elderly woman who kept picking arguments with people. She was neither highborn nor Turkish, but had insisted on being called
Hanιm
, ‘Lady’, instead of the prosaic
Bayan
, ‘Madam’, as if, Old Fuat had remarked, the title would lighten her evident anguish.

I looked about wondering whom she was addressing.

Saadet had also turned round. ‘Talking to me?’

Mueller Hanιm mimicked Saadet. ‘Talking to me?’

She was a German musician who had been given asylum in Turkey – and a teaching post in the Conservatoire – in the thirties, when Atatürk had opened our doors to the intellectuals hounded by the Nazis – so Old Fuat had informed us. She was not Jewish, but a Catholic who had opposed Hitler’s racist laws. She was returning to Germany, via Italy, to find out whether any relatives had survived. Like many people on a similar quest, she was not very hopeful.

Saadet decided to ignore her and walked away.

Mueller Hanιm screeched, ‘Don’t you turn your back on me! Pawing the boy for days! Have you no shame? Let go now!’

Saadet faced her, flustered. ‘Now, just a minute ...’

Mueller Hanιm strode over to us. ‘Up here like couples for conjugals! Smell of death still in the air – and all you think of is fornication! And with a child!’

Incensed, Saadet slapped Mueller Hanιm. ‘You poisonous ...’

Mueller Hanιm started hitting out. ‘You think copulation is the antidote to death? An affirmation of life? A lotus you eat to forget those brutally slaughtered?’

Saadet tried to ward off Mueller Hanιm’s blows. ‘He’s poorly! All alone!’

Some passengers rushed to separate them.

Mueller Hanιm flailed uncontrollably. ‘You think life is worth something? It’s worth nothing! Nothing!’

Some men pulled Mueller Hanιm away. A couple of others held Saadet.

Mueller Hanιm went on shouting. ‘Forget life! Join the dead!’

Saadet shouted back. ‘This boy needs looking after!’

‘He could be your son!’

‘Yes! He could be ...’

‘Then let him be! Go look after your own!’

‘I can’t!’

‘Evil, you are! Like the rest!’

Saadet’s voice broke as she retorted, ‘My son is dead!’

Mueller Hanιm froze. She stared at Saadet in horror. ‘Dead?’ Her body appeared to drain away. She folded into herself. ‘Oh, God, no!’ Her legs splayed and she collapsed. ‘Sweet Jesus, no ...’ She grabbed Saadet’s arm. ‘Oh, I’m sorry ... Forgive me ... Please ...’

Saadet, confused by Mueller Hanιm’s sudden disintegration, tried to extricate herself from her grip.

But Mueller Hanιm clung to her arm. ‘Is that why ...? Are you going where ... your son ... How did he die ...? Where were you ...?’

Saadet wailed, ‘Does it matter?’

Mueller Hanιm sobbed. ‘I had a son, too ... I ran away ... I thought he’d be safe ... without a communist for a mother ... Is that what you did – run away also?’

Tears began to run down Saadet’s face. ‘I was careless ...’

Mueller Hanιm stared at her, puzzled. ‘Careless ...?’

Saadet repeated the word bitterly. ‘Careless.’

She turned to me. Hurriedly, she kissed me on the forehead. ‘Excursion tomorrow. See you in the morning.’

Then she ran off.

Mueller Hanιm, curling like a hedgehog, wept unrestrainedly.

I walked away.

I was shocked. Saadet had had a son. I felt jealous, though he was dead.

He had died because she had been careless.

That shocked me even more. How could a parent be careless?

Naples harbour was an even larger cemetery for ships than Piraeus. The city itself, still in the throes of clearing up its bomb damage, was like a vast building site. Consequently, we could visit only a few of the sights. To assuage our frustration, the guide decided to take us to Pompeii.

At first, Saadet did not want to go. She felt I would be all right because Old Fuat, having managed to take the day off, had joined the excursion and would look after me. But then, mindful of my disappointment, she came along.

The areas where archaeological work had been interrupted because of the war had been cordoned off. Moreover, as there was still a shortage of qualified attendants, only some sectors were open to visitors. The same applied to the museum.

Yet, as I walked through Pompeii’s ancient streets, I had the feeling that I was in a living city – and, strangely, one that I knew well, as if I had visited it recently. Old Fuat was not surprised; he had heard that in some people, past and present desolations commingle. Thus I felt that the inhabitants were only temporarily absent, perhaps on an outing or having their siesta, and that, in a few moments, they would emerge and go about their daily business, paying little attention to Mount Vesuvius above them, which was busily preparing their deaths.

So I roamed the ruins as if expecting a recurrence of that eruption on 24 August 79 ce, when ash and pyroclastic rubble engulfed the city in a matter of hours. I registered only odd details, like the distortions in a road or the shape of the amphitheatre uncannily mirroring the volcano’s crater, or the colonnade in the Forum that looked as if it had been built only yesterday. And wherever I stood, Vesuvius, snorting and blowing smoke like an Edward G. Robinson of volcanoes, kept warning me that it had last erupted just three years before, in 1944, and might do so again on a whim.

Then Saadet screamed.

An interminable scream.

It was the scream, I imagined, of a person set on fire. The scream that persists until the blaze vaporizes the victim’s saliva. The scream Pompeii had left behind for posterity. The scream the martyrs of the Spanish Inquisition tried to raise in
autos-da-fé
when they were unable to beat down the flames consuming their bodies with hands that had been tied to redemptive crucifixes. The scream of countless innocents reduced to ash in extermination camps.

I spun round.

Saadet was running – away from the museum. She looked panic-stricken. Every few strides, she changed direction as if only by fleeing nowhere could she feel safe.

I had been in the museum shortly before, but had seen nothing unusual: some pottery, some artefacts, a man and a child preserved by petrified ash.

Old Fuat, who had been smoking outside the museum, chased after Saadet.

I followed.

When we caught up with her, she flailed and screamed in frenzy.

Old Fuat, locking his arms around her, whispered soothingly, ‘Sssshhh ... Sssshhhh ...’

Gradually she calmed down. She began to cry.

Old Fuat lowered her on to the grass. He folded his jacket into a pillow and made her lie down. ‘Cry, dear heart. As much as you need. We’re here.’

I sat down, too, and held Saadet’s hand. She didn’t pull away.

We stayed like that for some time. Saadet dozed off. Now and again, she shivered.

Then our group began to assemble.

Saadet stirred. She kissed Old Fuat’s hand and hugged me; then, seeing that we still looked worried, she tried to explain. ‘The figure of the boy ... preserved in ash ... I couldn’t help it ... I thought of my son ...’

The next day, Saadet kept to herself.

I invented countless excuses to get up to the third-class deck where she had withdrawn, to keep an eye on her. Much of the time, she sat on a bollard and stared into herself. She had not spoken since Pompeii.

I felt bereft. We were on our penultimate day. In less than forty hours, we would reach Marseilles and go our different ways. In all probability, I would never see her again, never enjoy the feeling of being like a son to her.

But the next morning, she called me over. Though still strained, she looked more composed. We spent the day playing cards and dominoes, chatting, sunbathing and snoozing.

Then, after dinner, when people had vacated the refectory, she asked Old Fuat to join us. She had brought a notebook and a pencil. ‘Let’s keep in touch. Give me your addresses.’

Old Fuat and I did so eagerly.