Her face is hot. Some nameless unpatriotic slippage has just occurred.
The doctor clears his throat. ‘He is doing very well, everything considered. I shall leave you two, now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ll be outside. On the terrace, if you need me.’ For a large man she is impressed by how silently he moves, a doctor’s trick, perhaps.
‘I brought you something.’
She hands it to the boy, gratified to see the new animation in his face, the small flicker of childish greed at the prospect of a present. He unwraps it.
‘Do you recognise it? I brought it so it would remind you of home.’
It unfurls from the paper; an exclamation of colour against the sterile white of the bedspread. He traces the gilt thread with a slow finger. He nods, solemn. ‘Thank you.’
She allows herself to believe that he is, truly, pleased with her gift. ‘It doesn’t hurt too much?’
‘No. He,’ he points at the door through which the man has gone, ‘gave me the medicine. I can see colours behind my eyes.’ He shuts them, to illustrate this.
‘Well, that’s for the pain.’
‘I know. I’d like to be a doctor, one day. Why are you frowning?’
‘Not a chef de cuisine?’
‘Oh.’ He thinks. ‘Perhaps both.’ And then, seriously, ‘Am I coming home?’
‘As soon as you are well enough, I promise.’ The same question has been on her mind. She will remove him from the Englishman’s care as soon as she can be certain he is free from danger.
‘To your home?’
She frowns. ‘It is your home now, too. Not just my home.’
‘Oh.’ This seems to satisfy him somewhat.
She wonders what has brought this on. She supposes it is the first time he has spent any significant time away from her, or the apartment, since that dreadful night. He is still not quite himself, she notices. Some of his sentences disintegrate into incoherence. When she begins to fear she is tiring him, she decides to leave.
She goes to find the doctor. She knows she must thank him, however much she would like to leave without it. It is not just her innate politeness; it is a safeguard of sorts. She needs to make sure that he will treat the boy as well as he would treat one of his own men.
He is smoking a cigarette. Behind him is a waterfall of green: the wisteria. The last of the summer flowers are still scattered about his feet, purple leached to pale brown. And beyond the wisteria the merciless beauty of the Bosphorus. It seems incredible to her that this was once a view she took for granted.
‘I wanted to thank you,’ she says.
He withdraws the cigarette and blows smoke over his shoulder, so that it cannot land on her. The fingers which grip the cigarette are articulate, rather elegant. And yet, she reminds herself, they are the hands of little better than a butcher. She has eyes, she can see the uniform; he may be a doctor now, but he is a soldier too. His title is still an elegant euphemism for murderer.
‘It will need to be several weeks, at least.’ His voice is slightly roughened by the tobacco.
‘Weeks?’
He nods, grave. ‘More, if possible: I would like to keep an eye on him. This case – I fear it has all of the hallmarks of the worst kind, cerebral. And he is very young.’
‘But he seems so much improved, already.’
‘I know that this is a difficult thing for a mother to hear, but I must tell you that he may never be completely cured of it. The virus often lives on, in the body. The best we can do is monitor him now, whilst he is still in such danger.’
She cannot absorb it. She will need to repeat it all to herself, later, to make sense of it.
‘Surely he cannot stay here for that long. I cannot imagine that it would be allowed—’
He interrupts swiftly. ‘I am in charge of this hospital. And I say that we have room for him here.’
‘Oh …’ She is at a loss. With no small effort she forces herself to say it: ‘Thank you.’
He gives a slight smile, just enough to show the teeth. His incisors are slightly too long. The teeth of a predator, she thinks. She does not smile back.
‘I had meant to ask you,’ he says. ‘Where did you learn such excellent English?’
This pretence of interest – as though they are equals. Or, more likely, it is meant to patronise: as one might congratulate a pet upon the learning of a trick. ‘My father sent me to the British school.’
My father, the Anglophile. The reason for so much of our trouble.
A bank account seized; a house sequestered; a whole family suspected of enemy espionage. Even with her father dying, hardly capable of any treachery even if he had wanted to be. Even after his death, in the first year of the conflict, they had remained beneath suspicion. Even with her brother fighting for their country in the war. The state’s suspicion had cast a long shadow.
‘Would you like a cigarette? I can make you one.’
‘Oh,’ she says, so taken aback that she forgets to immediately refuse. She doesn’t smoke them now; they are too expensive. Her grandmother, in the time before, had worn a small pair of golden tongs on a chain about her waist. When she rolled herself a cigarette there was a ritual to it. First came the tobacco, stored in an embroidered silk bag, then a leaf of fine pink tissue paper from the tiny book she kept about her person. She would roll the tobacco into a tiny, neat tube – no small feat with hands as gnarled as hers. Then those tongs would be used to lift it, lit, to her lips so she need no more stain her fingers. There was a grace to her movements that Nur knew she would never possess; she did not have the patience.
He is still waiting. She senses that
