But two days later, the news in the coffeehouse is that, by some miracle, the man survived. That they are searching for the perpetrator. There have been executions for much less. Is he afraid? He does not know what that means, any more. For a couple of days, he remains at the apartment – though he is almost certain that the man could not have seen him, and even if he had was too drunk to remember his features.
In the early morning a small band of British soldiers pound their way through the streets of the neighbourhood, making ‘enquiries’. This, apparently, means ordering half-dressed, barefoot men into the cold street and humiliating them in front of the secret gaze of their neighbours, interrogating them as they shiver on the spot.
‘Nur.’ He goes to rouse her, but sees that she is already awake. ‘They cannot know that I am here.’
He sees the suspicion in her expression; once it would have made an impression upon him, but now he is used to her looking at him like this. It is better, in fact, than the times he catches her watching him secretly, as though trying to work out whether it is really him.
At first he thinks that she is going to refuse. It was foolish – he sees this now – to commit the act so close to home. He would not have wanted to implicate Nur in it, no matter her disloyalty. But she nods her head.
From his position on the roof he hears how they talk to her, the degradation of it. According to the old way of things they should not even be able to demand an audience with the women of the house. He imagines that even if they are aware of this edict they probably take great pleasure in flouting it.
‘No,’ he hears her say, ‘there is no one else here. My brother was lost in the war.’ He hears the tell-tale give in her voice at the lie; but they do not know her like he does – or thought he did. It was not worth it for this, the humiliation of his sister, of the men in the street. The act was petty, ineffectual. In the hours afterward it had plagued him more than it should have done, a burr upon his conscience. He kept seeing it again in his mind, the defenceless – albeit shameful – state of the officer as he had made his move. It had been cowardly, beneath him. That was what had disquieted him, he tells himself, not so much the likely death of the man as the unheroic part he himself had played in it. And then to discover that the man had survived, that the debasing of himself had been for nothing.
So his next act must be significant. It should be meticulously planned in advance, orchestrated with bravery and conviction – not upon the whim of a moment, with all the grandeur of a pickpocket stealing a wallet. It must be something that will draw a line between the man all those years ago, and who he has become. Something that will prove as much to himself as to the enemy.
An idea occurs to him.
It would solve several problems at once.
At first his mind recoils from it.
Then he returns to it. Worries at it, as he might a bad dream that has terrified him.
Nur
Kerem is distracted these days, secretive. He comes home late at night; he has not mentioned the issue of the hospital again. She does not think that this means he has forgiven her: only that he has more pressing matters on his mind. There was this morning, when the British soldiers came. The army has had no presence in their uneventful streets since the very beginning of the occupation. Something of significance had drawn them here.
If it is what she suspects, it is not the cause she objects to, precisely. She is afraid for him – that is the heart of it.
There have been those murmurings of resistance since the beginning of the occupation. There are even rumours that there are women involved. If her situation had been different, if it had not been for her mother, the boy, she might have been tempted to join them herself.
She has no loyalty to the Allies: there is no doubt in that. She is under no illusion that the doctor proves the exception, not the rule – and even then she suspects that he may not be so open and blameless as he seems. She has seen how the nurses at the hospital look at her, his fellow doctor, too: as though she is an imposter. She thinks, too, of the British soldiers who chased her and the boy – a woman and a small child – on the night of the fireworks. She thinks of the things she heard from her rooftop lookout on the first days. Yes, even with her responsibilities at home she might once have been tempted to join the resistors in some small capacity. Before the boy’s illness, before the inevitable compromise that had to be made with her conscience, before a personal tie had to be put before national duty. But even if she had joined them she knows that she would have kept some sense of proportion, of self-preservation. This is the thing that she fears her brother lacks. And she realises that her fear, when it comes to Kerem, is not one of not loving, after all. It is one of loving too much.
The Traveller
Bulgaria, Sofia, by morning; the last major stop before my destination. Here a fresh horde of passengers embark and now familiar faces in the carriage are replaced by new. I feel a strange sorrow at the loss. Though we have hardly spoken to one another, a silent accord had been established,
