That there are three tiny, dark freckles about one of her eyes – though he can never remember which. Like a constellation. No, like a signature, the mark of a master artist proud of his work. He is surprised at himself. He does not normally give way to such ridiculous notions.
That often when he is speaking she frowns at him. He cannot decide if this is her concentrating upon her translation of his words – which he doubts because she is so proficient – or that she is marshalling her dislike of him, of what he stands for. Which seems the more likely.
That her smile is a hard-won thing, but that when it comes it is unmitigated pleasure, all the better for the difficulty in winning it.
There are many other things beside, too many to enumerate. He feels that he could write a paper on them – far more fluently than a treatise on the strains of Mesapotamian malaria, which he is currently attempting.
Difficult to diagnose a complaint in oneself. Even, or perhaps especially, if one is a man of medicine. The best way is to list the symptoms precisely, dispassionately, and then attempt to look upon them as one might the same in a stranger.
He goes to the cupboard, retrieves the precious flask, and pours himself a sparing quantity. He holds the whisky in his mouth, enjoying the burn of it, the clarity it brings to his thoughts.
If he were to list his symptoms now? Anticipation. Heightened awareness of the self and one’s own shortcomings. Heightened awareness of perfection in another; everything in them appearing fascinating, novel. Increased heart rate. Disturbed dreams. Anxiety. Strange, irrational bouts of euphoria.
He senses that a hundred doctors in the same number would diagnose one complaint. He would do so himself … observing these effects in a stranger. But as for himself? Impossible. It cannot be; he cannot allow it to be. Because, if it is, he is in a great deal of trouble.
Snow
The snow takes the city by surprise; a month ago it had been warm. It sweeps from the north of the Black Sea under clouds of palest lavender. It silences the world. It perfects the streets, blanketing unsightly piles of refuse and dirt. The street cats slink through it furtively, as though not wanting to draw its attention upon them. The stray dogs are suspicious of it, fearful: they growl and whimper – one brave pack leader tries to paw the flakes out of the air.
It is beautiful, otherworldly. In some places, perhaps, it becomes mundane, but not here where it visits rarely. Nur steps out into it, a swift breath in at the cold. She wraps her scarf a little higher about her face, and plunges into the swarm of white.
Kerem watches from a window. At one time he might have seen beauty in it – he can hear the delighted cries of children from the street. As he watches, several small figures emerge, clothes dark against it, wrapped in what appears to be every item they own. They kick at the fresh fallen powder, scoop it up into their arms so it fountains down. He sees Nur stop and talk to them and then he sees or perhaps hears her laughter.
He blinks. Because all he can see are the broken bodies of so many men; freezing hard as stone – but not so hard that the dogs will not be able to tear into them. There is a tightness, high in his chest. He closes his eyes and turns from the glass. He will light a cigarette, and then he will go and speak with his friend in the Eyüp coffeehouse.
The boy watches it, from the window of the house on the Bosphorus, transfixed by how it seems to melt into the water, or to be swallowed by it. There have only been three proper snows in his lifetime; it is a miracle. And how quickly the opposite bank is transforming from dark green to white. He would like to go out into it, but he knows that he will not be allowed. His old self would have run and jumped in it, would have built figures from it.
For the doctor, it is still a miracle. He has not seen snow like this for several years. By the time they arrived at those villages beside the Caspian Sea the snow was old and brackish. To those living there it had long ago become a nuisance, not a novelty. This is like the snow of childhood, blanketing the peaks overnight so that he would wake to a world transformed. The red deer moving through it, suddenly exposed. All of the colour gone. A new, more essential beauty. It seemed possessed of its own light, even after darkness fell. He could see it there glowing out at him, like a secret.
He is in the grip of some uncertain emotion.
‘Would you like to go outside?’
He has his answer before the boy has even spoken.
‘Sister Agnes, I’m taking him out. Could you fetch me some blankets?’
She widens her eyes at him: what madness is this?
He ignores the look.
It is colder than he has expected: the wind funnelled in across the water feels as though it comes straight from Siberia.
‘Are you warm enough?’
‘Yes.’ It comes muffled from beneath a layer of blanket.
‘We don’t have to stay out here for long.’
It is slow progress; there are already several inches of cover and the wheelchair is unwieldy, even with the small weight within it. In a few minutes, in spite of the cold, George is damp with sweat.
He remembers something, from childhood.
‘Look up, into it falling.’
‘I cannot.’
The boy, he sees, is so tightly swaddled that he is fixed into position, face forward.
‘All right. Look, I’ll help you.’ With no small effort he tilts the heavy chair back towards him on its wheels, so that the child is facing the sky.
Above
