‘You must not go down there,’ she says. ‘One day, perhaps, I will show you.’ She does not mean now, while it is a hospital. This is a reference – though she is not sure the doctor realises it – to an imagined future time, when by some miracle the house might be returned to her, and they might live in it once more, all of them. She turns to the doctor and finds that he, too, seems to have been transfixed by the story. His eyes do not leave her face.
‘We will leave you,’ she says, quickly, and turns to usher the boy back toward the house.
‘Wait.’ She stops: but only because it is a plea, not a command. ‘I have this afternoon to myself, too,’ he says.
For a terrible moment, Nur thinks he is about to suggest that they spend it in each other’s company. He would not ask it, surely? But the English have different ways, different interpretations of propriety. She is suddenly aware of how little she knows, despite her command of the language. She is marshalling her excuses, when he says, ‘Where should I go? Where would you suggest? Your favourite place in the city.’
She is relieved. At least, almost exclusively so. She wonders, incredulous, at that small part of herself that is not. Well, she reasons, she is old enough now to understand that there are some aspects of the self that one can understand no better than a stranger.
She thinks of the cemetery at Eyüp – but immediately dismisses it; she cannot send him there. She suspects that its melancholy, so oddly soothing to her, would not have a universal appeal. And it belongs to the people here; they walk within it, they lie beneath its soil. To share it with a foreigner would be a disloyalty.
Then she recalls a day from childhood. Her father, herself, her brother. The islands that to her until that point had been semi-mythical. Glimpsed far off in the Sea of Marmara, wreathed in mist, beyond the furthest reaches of the city. A small village of white shuttered houses. The rest of it a wild place. The scent of herbs and brine. At this time of year it will be perfect. She can give this to him.
‘Do you want to be where there are people, or where there are none?’
‘Oh,’ the quick grace of his smile. ‘None.’
George
He takes the ferry, an hour’s journey.
When he has reached the point where the land starts curving away upon itself, he knows he has walked the length of the island. She told him that the best swimming spots were here, and this place seems to him as good as any. The vegetation is dense, with no clear opening; he will have to force his way through. He makes a shield of his arms, drives himself bodily into the thicket. Branches snap back against him, some catching his skin with thorns. He concentrates on the blue glimmer ahead, the promise of it.
At one point, forcing his way through a resistant patch, he plunges forward only to rock back on his heels in horror, finding himself perched above a twenty-foot drop. Even if he had survived the fall, he would have been too badly injured to climb back up. There is something horribly fascinating in the idea: would he be found before he perished? Probably not. To have survived it all: the Ottoman onslaught, malaria, sandfly fever, the perilous crossing of the Caspian – only to be extinguished here in this benign spot. He wonders for a moment if this could have been her motive in sending him here.
Ahead of him the path is still a mystery. He is aware of the danger now, the thought that he could have been plunging so recklessly forward seems incredible. He moves more gingerly, alarmed when the footing fails him, sending him skidding across loosened scree. Gradually, mercifully, the bush thins, and he knows how lucky he has been in his choice of route: sees the whole formidable face of the cliff above and to the right of him. Now, immediately below, he can see the thin swathe of sand.
He moves more quickly, surer now of his footing. He is released into sunlight, his feet sinking into softness. The full heat of the day returns. Only now does he realise that his shirt is torn in several places, blood beading from long scratches upon his arms. He takes off his shoes and socks, already filling uncomfortably with grains. But the first contact of the sand is blistering against the soles of his feet and he is forced to hop his way across the beach toward the water, laughing at himself as he does, at the spectacle he must create. The cold of the water is welcome balm. He knows that he is alone but, remembering Bill, makes doubly sure before he begins to remove the rest of his clothes. In the unforgiving light his body is revealed to him as spectacularly pale.
The scent of the herbs, the sound of the waves hitting the encircling arms of rock, the sheer size and radiance of the sky, the blue of a gas flame. He laughs and hears his voice echo back at him. In the reverberation it sounds uncertain, as though the sound is asking for the place to accept him, to allow him to become part of it.
In the early afternoon small iridescent jellyfish arrive in great numbers, massing along the waterline. He feels a vague squeamishness about them. He skirts the edge, looking for a clear patch. Every so often he thinks he has found it but as he peers down into the weeds and pebbles they emerge gradually from the depths like an optical illusion. He can almost imagine that they are just blots on the vision. But not quite. The heat has built to a crescendo, the water beyond the treachery of the jellyfish beckons him, navy blue.
