His family will not have been prepared for it. Undoubtedly, since the war spared him, they may have decided that he had luck on his side: a common enough fallacy.
George looks again at the figure on the bed. The strangeness of this experience has not left him, not since that day at medical college in Edinburgh, when they were first let into the room with no less than thirty cadavers – old and young, fat and thin, male and female – but all alike in one terrible respect. Far more akin in death than they would ever have been in life. The idea that these forms had once been living, breathing, thinking, loving. It seemed so … unlikely. The experience became even more uncanny, he would discover, when you had actually known the person. In the dissection room, that day, he had become an atheist.
He walks out into the garden of the hospital. The heat has slipped from its daily peak, the air is heavy with the scent of warm fig leaves. The afternoon has taken on the bluish tint beneath which it will slip, imperceptibly at first – and then suddenly, all at once – into evening. The Bosphorus, drowsy, purplish, only faintly stirring, ranges before him across to the Asian shore. Not such a bad place to die, he thinks: at the meeting of continents, in the cradle of civilisations, beneath this infinite sky. So different to the sky at home, hemmed and softened by cloud. The cemetery is in a good spot, too. They had to bury some of the first prisoners of war handed back to them: the most malnourished, the most diseased. The family will have somewhere to visit.
He makes himself a cigarette. For a man with no religion, this is something of a ritual. He lights it, draws on it, and with the first exhalation expels the thing into the air. It has worked in far more trying times than this.
The Boy
The older lady frightens him. She reminds him of what he has learned of the sultans of history. Some of them were not averse to drowning little boys in order to make sure, for example, that their sons became rulers. But perhaps sometimes they did it just for a whim, when things got boring in the imperial harem. Nur hanım did not teach them this at school, but small boys have ways of learning things. They put them in sacks, he knows, like unwanted kittens. The old woman has no son, and no throne to protect – but he is not absolutely sure that he wouldn’t put it past her. She seems to live in history, too: she talks more often of the past than she does of the now. In her presence he slows his steps, lowers his voice. She is to him unfathomably old. To him Nur hanım is old – and yet this lady is infinitely more so.
He does not think she likes him very much. He has heard himself referred to by her as ‘the boy’. Only ten days ago she discovered him playing with some small animals of green stone that were, apparently, extremely rare and precious. The trunk of the elephant had, unfortunately, parted ways with the body. There would probably not be significant qualms about the drowning. He is most nervous when they are alone in the apartment together, like today.
He has decided to make stuffed cabbage leaves: a new recipe from the book. He and Nur are meant to be making these together. She does not like him using the stove. But she is delivering her embroideries to the seller at the bazaar, and it is raining heavily outside, so there will be no one playing in the street. The morning stretches interminably before him in the way that hours do when one is young and has so many of them left to use up.
A careful perusal of the recipe has told him that he will not need to use the stove too much. Most of this is in the preparation. Besides, it always seems to be Nur who burns herself against the handle of a pot, or scalds herself with steam – not him. He begins to set out his ingredients: the rice, the onions, the cabbages, the nuts and raisins, the olive oil. He has climbed onto the stool, and is just preparing the pot for the cabbage when he hears something that makes his skin prickle with fear.
‘What are you doing, boy?’
He turns and sees her in the archway. One hand leans her weight heavily upon her cane, the other holds aloft one of her cigarettes. The mingled scent of these and the oud that she wears at throat and wrists is uniquely hers.
‘I – I’m cooking, hanım.’
‘At the stove?’
‘Yes.’
She raises an eyebrow. He braces himself for the reprimand. To his surprise, it does not come. She blows out a thin stream of smoke.
‘What are you making?’
‘Lahana dolması, hanım.’
‘Ah. They are my favourite. I suppose you were making them for me?’
Nur hanım has always been rigorous on the importance of telling the truth. ‘No.’
Her eyebrows come together. He feels that despite his best efforts he may not have said the right thing.
‘And how are you making them?’
He shows her the book.
‘Oh.’ She shakes her head. ‘No, one does not require a book for such a recipe. Such things are simply known.’
He watches as she unties the scarf from about her neck, and begins to remove the dazzling rings from her fingers. He has an uneasy premonition. If he were not standing on the stool, he would take a step back.
‘Are you frightened of me, boy?’
He wavers. This time he is determined to get it right. ‘No.’
‘Good.’ She moves forward. The cane is forgotten, resting against the wall. When she wills it, it seems, she is rather steady upon her feet. ‘I am going to help you make them.’ She shakes her sleeves back from her
