On the first day, when he was overseeing the placement of the hospital beds, he was certain that he could detect the sound of an infant crying outside: a thin wail, rising and falling. Unnerved by the sound, he followed it into the garden and discovered the seat creaking mournfully back and forth on its hinges in the wind. Almost as though – an uncanny thought – someone had only just vacated it.
George is a pragmatist, an atheist. Yet he found himself unable to quash the idea of spirits left behind.
The ward has been set up in the largest room: painted pistachio-green and hung with still life scenes: dusky grapes spilling from a platter; fat peaches with the delicate fur gorgeously rendered. They make the mouth water. There were times in the Mesapotamian desert when he would dream of fresh things like these – though his dreams were perhaps more humble. A head of lettuce. Taking the whole thing in his hands, biting into it as one might an apple and feeling it cold and wet on his tongue: the antithesis of all the desert was. If he could have this one experience, he felt, he could put up with any number of deprivations.
This room has a feminine feel to it: the colours, maybe. He knows little about Ottoman life, but has learned this one thing: that in many houses, grand or meagre, there is often an area reserved exclusively for the use of the women. A sense of trespass. He knows that if he were able to vocalise this sensation he would be laughed at. This is the way of things, how it has been since the dawn of man. There is no such thing as trespass for the victorious. All before them, conquered, has become their own. To say otherwise would be almost a form of treason.
In the streets his attire makes him indistinguishable from the rest, for better or worse. He has seen how the people here react to the different uniforms, that they respond worst of all to British khaki. There are liberties taken. But some soldiers, many, regard this as only their right.
Is it not the worst sort of shame, to be ashamed of one’s own people?
A knock on the door of the study. It is a young sub-lieutenant, Hatton. Even after four years of war and nearly three of occupation, he still looks like a boy. The fair smudge of moustache is perhaps intended to bely this; it does not. He is rather red in the face. Fleetingly George wonders if this is the problem; sunburn. He saw terrible cases on the desert marches, shade several hours away, the skin blistering and peeling away in layers.
‘Good day, Hatton. How may I help?’
There is no answer at first. But as the sub-lieutenant stands before George the colour seems to intensify. He shifts his weight between his feet. Ah. George has a sudden premonition of the complaint.
Hatton fastens his trousers.
‘We cannot cure it, I’m afraid,’ George explains, ‘but we can manage it.’
‘But if I were to have,’ the patient takes a breath, ‘relations with the same partner …’
‘Unless she is being treated too, then no, it will not help matters.’
‘She says it cannot be from her. But she’s the only one …’ He coughs. The next words are strangled by embarrassment. ‘She’s the only one … ever.’
‘I think in that case,’ George says, ‘you best desist.’
‘But I love her. And she – says – she loves me.’
And how many others has she promised the same to? He doesn’t say it. This poor dupe has been punished enough.
‘What is her name?’
‘She was a Russian princess, before the Reds came!’
‘Was she, indeed? Goodness.’ And yet being an ex-Russian princess, it seems, is no immunisation against the herpes virus.
The patient leaves, clutching his prescription. George is amused by his insistence upon the former rank of the woman, as though this might make his unfortunate circumstances seem somehow less sordid.
Then he remembers that he is in no position to judge. The familiar shame visits him. The smile leaves his face.
The Boy
He sits in a patch of sun on the stone steps of the apartment building, playing with the stray cat he has befriended. It has beautiful eyes, large and palest green, ringed with black as though it were wearing kohl eye makeup. On occasions he has seen it angry and frightened, doubled to twice its size, eyes staring, breath hissing. For something so small it makes a rather impressive display. But when it is very happy, as now, it treads the air with its paws like a baker kneading bread, and flaunts its white stomach as though it hadn’t a care in the world. Its favourite thing is for him to stroke the soft triangle of its chin, its sensitive whiskery cheeks.
He is so intent upon it that he does not hear Nur hanım return. As she passes him he starts guiltily. He should be reading one of his schoolbooks, not the book of food, which is open before him. When she does not say anything about this he knows that something is wrong. He looks up at her. It is not that she has been crying. He would be more likely to see this whole city topple into the Bosphorus than he would to see Nur hanım weep. But her face frightens him all the same because it is like a mask.
‘Nur hanım,’ he asks, quietly. ‘Are you all right?’
She looks down at him, but he has the strange impression that she is not actually seeing him. ‘Yes,’ she says, rather crossly. ‘Of course.’
When she steps inside she pulls the door shut with such ferocity that it jumps back open again with a clang. The cat springs to its feet in fright, lets out a warning hiss. He thinks how much easier animals are to understand, how much more eloquent and truthful they are with mere actions than humans
