Last Letter from Istanbul

in front of her, because she suspected otherwise that he would take it home to share with his family. This was all very well, perhaps. But it was he who was her responsibility, and he was a six-year-old boy. One had to assume that his parents would be better able to take care of themselves.

One day he had not come in to school. She had not worried immediately. But when three days had passed, with no sign, she began to be uneasy.

She knew where he lived. Samatya, the Armenian quarter of the city since Byzantine times, in Stamboul – on the other side of the Golden Horn. She did not know exactly where, but it was a close community, smaller and even more tight-knit since the earthquake in the last century that had forced so many to leave. His parents had been well-known for a time; hopefully someone would be able to tell her of their fate. She wandered through the neighbourhood and realised that her confidence might have been misplaced: there were so few people in the streets. Hunger did this, and fear.

Turning a corner she had come across a terrible, too-familiar sight: several streets’ worth of houses razed by fire. A greasy smoke still rose listlessly from the rubble. Later, she could not be sure exactly why, but she had a sudden certainty that here was the reason for the boy’s absence. She had wandered through the ruined place, calling his name. She did not really believe that any use would come of it. But as she had passed one of the buildings on the outskirts of the catastrophe, one which had been only half-consumed by the inferno – so that the theatre-set impression of rooms remained – she had heard a noise. A small, high cry, through one of the blown-out windows. She had assumed that it was a stray cat: Constantinople had always been full of them, and they were at that time more than ever the lords of the street, the only ones who did not seem cowed by the change in the city. Then it came again, and this time there was a different, human quality to it.

Steeling herself against what she might find, she had made her way in through the empty doorframe. She had stopped short, realising her mistake. No one could remain in here. There was only death; she could smell it. A thick fog of grey soot hung suspended in the air, she felt it enveloping her. Remnants of blackened furniture stuck up in places like used matchsticks. The stench was almost overpowering. She was about to leave when the sound came again, and she looked into the dark to see a shape. A child, crouched like an animal, his eyes and teeth seeming to glow from his soot-smeared face. He looked like an entirely different boy at first, it was impossible to recognise him through the dirt. But that was not all there was to it: something had departed him. Or, she thought later, something had entered him. A new darkness, a virus of grief. It would be a long time before she saw anything of the boy he had been before.

There were rumours that the fire had not been an accident. That it had been set to teach a lesson; by those who believed – like the butcher’s wife – that the Armenians were an enemy within. She would not allow herself to believe it. Not this. No one could have meant this.

She discovered, later, that he had spent three days in the house, three days with the burned bodies of his parents. She had seen them but only as unthinkable shapes; her mind had not allowed them to be anything else. Even when she knew what they were, for certain, she had been unable to match them to the kind couple she had known. The small man with his quick smile, and his wife, whose laughter came so easily, so generously.

She had picked the boy up in her arms – he did not resist – and carried him from the house like an infant. He was almost as light as one. She had walked with him like this all the way home.

George

He remembers the scene beyond the bazaar, the ruined houses. Despite all that he has seen, he shudders.

He had been so certain that the boy was hers. She had been married before the war, it made sense. But it was more than that: her tenderness with the boy. He thinks of how, when he had told her of the boy’s condition, her hand had gone to her abdomen. He wonders at it.

He wonders, too, why she has not corrected him before. Did she think, perhaps, that he would not have offered his help so quickly if he had not believed the child to be hers? Would it have made a difference? He would like to think not. Except that he is not absolutely sure. The truth of his motives, as with so many of one’s most significant actions, remains inscrutable even to himself.

Did she think that in some way he would judge her, would think less of her?

The truth is that it is quite the opposite.

She has come every day. Each time he has noticed, learned, something new in her.

That she is a baffling, complex, mixture of confidence and hesitance, anger and equanimity.

That sometimes, when she has used a particularly difficult word, in English, she allows a momentary pause before continuing, as though waiting for him to correct her. (He never does – he is not certain that it would be well received, despite the apparent invitation, and besides, her command of the language almost outstrips his own.)

That the gloves she wears are of a very fine-looking lace, but that they seemed to have been mended rather clumsily in several places.

That, on the occasions when she has removed them, the beds of her nails have a bluish – almost violet – tint. A sure sign