Читать книгу Last Letter from Istanbul - Lucy Foley - Страница 20

Through the open windows come faint strains of music with a foreign flavour: Russian and American imports. It is a relief not to be out on the streets; for the time being this cramped apartment is a place of sanctuary.

One November evening, a couple of years ago, she and the boy had stayed late at the school: she planning the next day’s lessons, he reading at one of the desks. They were travelling home when a series of huge explosions rattled the windows of the tram. All of the passengers crouched low in their seats, bracing against the onslaught. Perhaps some, like she had, had been at Mahmut Paşa the day the English planes came … or had heard stories of it from others, stories steeped in gore.

Then someone had pointed to the sky and they saw it ablaze with coloured light; green, red, gold. It took her a while to recognise that these were fireworks, like those she had seen at Eid Mubarak a lifetime ago. It was some display by the Allies, no doubt – no one else in this city had anything to celebrate. The boy had asked if they could go and watch. Together they had climbed the cobbled streets of Pera to get a better look, past the doors of meyhanes and restaurants. The boy lingered outside these, caught by the faint sounds of revelry within – she tugged him on.

From here it seemed the colours were everywhere, the Golden Horn lighting up with reflected fire. The boy gave a shriek of delight. She had been thrilled at this unexpected show of emotion, this sign, perhaps, of a brief respite from the things that haunted him. She had actually worried that they might remind him of that terrible night. After this re-assurance, she had begun to enjoy the fireworks too.

How democratic they were, for anyone who chose to watch them – though she doubted this had been the intention. They seemed to be lost on their intended audience, in fact, who seemed too absorbed by their business inside the meyhanes. Then without any warning one of the doors had opened and a chaos of khaki-clad bodies had been disgorged into the street in front of them, some clutching spilling glasses of beer.

Nur had pushed the boy behind her, but had not had time to prevent one of the men stumbling into her, catching her hard on the shoulder. Involuntarily she had shoved back with both hands, merely trying to keep him from knocking her down. He had toppled and briefly tried to right himself before his momentum had got the better of him, sending him crashing backward to the ground. She had stood there stunned by the act, by her sudden, unexpected power. His fellow soldiers had been beside themselves with glee – laughing and pointing, slurring insults at him where he sat in the pool of his spilled beer. Then the fallen one had looked up, and she had seen that the shock had sobered him; that his expression was pure menace. She had humiliated him, she understood this look to mean, and she would pay.

She had turned to the boy. ‘Run.’

They had fled back down the way they had come, through the cobbled streets. The men had pursued them for a while, alternately laughing and shouting orders. But the men were drunk, and she knew the streets better – knew a secret shortcut through a series of interconnecting alleyways that would take them back to the tram stop.

They had escaped, but she still has a queasy fear of one of them recognising her in the street one day and demanding retribution. If she were arrested, what would become of them all … the boy, her mother, her grandmother? She looks at them all now, and decides it is not worth thinking about.

As the sky beyond the windows loses the last of its light, she heats a basin of water on the stove and begins to wash her mother’s hair. She has a bar of soap scented with Damascene rose that she keeps for this purpose. The aroma is famed for its ability to soothe and heal. It reminds her of her mother, too. The woman she used to be – who would ask the girls to crush the petals into her skin and hair before her bath, who wore pure attar oil dabbed behind her ears. Who wore gowns of pink silk and read French novels.

From the corner, her grandmother speaks. ‘You won’t get anything out of her. Worse than an infant today.’

‘She has suffered so much, Büyükanne.’

‘So have we all, girl.’

Her mother stopped speaking on the day they had word from the front: Missing, presumed lost. They knew as well as anyone that the notice meant dead. Her brother survived only within the bureaucratic chaos that meant the exact circumstances of his death were not yet clear. Sometimes, in the early days, Nur had allowed herself to believe that he was alive. There were rumours of Ottoman men being taken as prisoners of war. If she did not feel his death, might it not be real?

Now she sees that this was just a fiction she had created to delay pain. She did not feel his death because they had been denied the absolute certainty of it: that was the cruellest thing of all.

From somewhere beneath them comes the eerie, distorted wail of an infant. The walls might be made of thick card, not stone. Above and below can be heard, with peculiar domestic intimacy, the sounds of other lives. Most of the time the voices are indistinct, as though they are travelling through water.

Her mother’s eyes have closed. If one were to look briefly she might appear to be in a state of bliss. But her breath comes too quickly. Beneath the purplish lids there is restless movement, as though projected there is a play of images that only she can see. Nur has some inkling of what those scenes may be. They are the same that wake her mother at night, from which even in her sleep she is not safe.

She is trying not to think about how much more hair there used to be. Her fingers discover absences, patches of bare scalp where whole sections seem to have vanished. She sluices warm water, creates a silky white lather. She inhales, exhales, hears the hitch of her breath and tries to smooth it. She understands the importance of remaining calm. Knows how powerfully the fingertips, those tiny repositories of sensation, can convey emotion. She tries instead to convey only her tenderness, her love.

She fills another cup of water to rinse away the foam. The colour has changed, too. It used to be a magnificent colour: somewhere between brown and red. A great sweep of it, with the shine of metal. Depending upon the quality of the light it would gleam bronze or copper. Now it does not reflect anything at all. This, of course, may be merely to do with age. A cruelty, yes, but a natural one that comes to all. And yet it happened so quickly – in less than a year.

She tips the water. There is a small sound as the water drenches her mother’s scalp, which could be a sigh of pleasure or pain.

‘Is it all right for you, Anne?’ But there is only silence.