“But people aren’t trees,” Vera protested. “People can do things differently. They could themselves take up the ax.”
Monsieur Agopian stared at her for a moment, then said gently, “Young people always believe that survival is their God-given right, if they even think about it at all. But as we get older, we realize how weak and vulnerable we are-and the people we love.” He glanced at the door through which his wife and daughter had disappeared.
Vera nodded, her suspicion of the publisher suddenly softened by understanding. He had so much more to lose than she did. But she couldn’t ask him to help her find Gabriel and Sosi, and she knew that she had to leave. She wished she could report Sosi’s imprisonment to someone in authority she could trust. There seemed no one left in the world who matched that description.
47
Kamil, accompanied by Feride, carried Elif’s limp body into the infirmary and laid her on a bed. Her hair, face, and hands were crusted with dried blood and her clothes stiff with it. There were no other patients in the room, and Kamil told the hospital director to lock the door. Feride held Elif’s hand.
“Elif is a woman,” Kamil explained to the director. “I want no one but you to see to her.”
The director didn’t seem surprised. “I thought he seemed rather odd, not a boy, not a man. I wondered for a moment if he had been castrated. No matter. Let’s tend to her.”
He called for hot water, bandages, salve, and a tisane to be made from some herbs from his garden. While Kamil waited by the door for the supplies, the director pulled over a mangal to heat the area by the bed. When the hot water arrived, Feride washed Elif’s face and hands, which were covered with cuts. The deep ones began to bleed again. The director smoothed on a salve, then wrapped Elif’s hands in bandages. He examined her face, but when the blood and filth had been washed off, it appeared as pale and unmarred and distant as the moon.
Gently, Feride peeled off Elif’s shirt and trousers, exposing her fragile, birdlike chest, her small, pointed breasts, and hips slender as a boy’s. On the inside of her thighs, Feride saw two ragged scars in the shape of carnations, as if the skin had been scraped or burned away and had regrown pale and puckered. She wondered what could have caused them. There were no recent wounds that she could see, so she tucked a quilt around her.
Kamil sat beside Elif’s unmoving body and found that his mind had gone entirely blank. He had been too busy with work to protect the two people he loved most in the world. Now that it was too late, he understood that none of his work counted for even a kurush against their lives.
“Why isn’t she awake?” Feride asked the director.
“I don’t know,” the surgeon admitted. “Did she fall or bump her head?”
“She walked here with me, but she hasn’t spoken in some time-since we were in the vineyards. It’s as if her body was there but she wasn’t in it.”
“What happened in the vineyards?” Kamil asked. “Why was she so covered in blood?”
Feride told them of the attack and what she thought she had seen in the vineyard.
“She couldn’t have killed three men by herself,” Kamil said, his speech slow and thick.
“Maybe I just saw her standing over the bodies,” Feride admitted. “I’m not sure now. It was dark and I was frightened.”
“I’ve seen the bodies,” the director said. “The police brought them here. A woman of her size would have been no match for them. Likely they were killed by your men and Elif Hanoum witnessed it.”
“Nissim was the Camondo family’s boatman. Someone should let them know,” Feride suggested, her voice flat.
“I’ll take care of that, chère hanoum.” The director gently raised one of Elif’s eyelids to examine her pupil. He slapped her lightly on the cheek, but there was no response. “It’s shock. I’ve seen it happen to men after battle.”
“How long does it last?”
“Sometimes they wake up and it’s over. Sometimes it’s a lifetime.”
Kamil bowed his head until it rested on the quilt beside Elif’s matted hair.
48
Vera told the Agopians that she wanted to visit a friend in Kurtulush, and they allowed her the use of their coach. By finding Sosi’s family, she hoped to find Sosi, her only link to Gabriel. She had no idea how big the district was, but she had a plan.
She asked the coach to stop outside a house that she had picked at random. Late-afternoon shadows pooled in the cobbled lanes that wound up the hill from the small square. The house was quiet, its lace curtains shutting out the street, a cat snoozing on the windowsill. A young girl peered out and, seeing the strange coach, turned back inside. The door opened, and a man emerged and called out to the coachman.
Vera placed a neatly folded note addressed to Monsieur Agopian on the seat, then slipped out of the carriage on the side away from the house and disappeared into the lane. After walking for some time up and down the slopes of Kurtulush, she spied the belltower of an Armenian church.
Out of breath and sweating in her borrowed coat, she knocked on the door of the adjoining residence. It was opened by a man wearing a priestly robe. A curtain of gray hair and a long beard framed his face. Below his alert eyes were pouches of fatigue. Vera introduced herself in Armenian and told him she was looking for the family of a woman named Sosi.
The priest’s eyes shifted behind her as if to make sure that no one had overheard, and then he pulled her inside. In the dim light of the parlor, he bade her sit on the sofa, while he stood by the door. “I am Father Zadian. Why are you looking for Sosi?”
Vera considered what she could tell him. “We employed her at one time and owe her back wages.”
“I see.” Vera could tell from the tone of his voice that he was suspicious. “May I ask what service Sosi performed for you?” he asked. “And what is your name?”
Vera hesitated but decided to trust the priest. “My name,” she said finally, “is Vera Arti.”
“Are you related to Gabriel Arti?” The priest sat down in a chair opposite her.
“He’s my husband,” she said, her voice betraying her excitement. Someone else who knew Gabriel. “Do you know where he is? I’m looking for him.”
“He’s in the east.”
Vera was stunned. She had thought he was in hiding or perhaps under arrest. It had never occurred to her that he would simply continue his project, leaving her behind in the hands of the secret police. He would have had to make a choice, a difficult choice, of that she had no doubt, but in the end he had chosen the movement. As she absorbed this news, she monitored her heart but found only a cramped emptiness where there had been joy.
“Where in the east?”
“The New Concord commune.” The priest seemed surprised. “You didn’t know?”
“I was…” She forced herself to go on. “I was being held by the secret police, and I just escaped.” As she uttered it, she realized it seemed a fantastic claim.
The priest drew in his breath and muttered a quick prayer. She saw him glance at her expensive coat.
“I went to the only person I knew in the city.” She told him about the kindness of the Agopians.
“Do they know you came here?” the priest asked.
“No.” She thought of the note she had left in the carriage for Monsieur Agopian in which she had thanked him for his help and explained that, not wishing to put his family in any difficulty, she had decided to leave Istanbul. She hadn’t said where she was going. He might worry about her, but he would be relieved.
“I don’t want to speak against them,” Father Zadian said. “They’re good people, and God knows we all have to make our peace with the powers above us, but, well, it would be best if you didn’t let them know too much.”
“I understand. They don’t know my true identity.” It reinforced what she already suspected. She remembered Monsieur Agopian’s fable of the accommodating fig tree.