Orhan's Inheritance (6 page)

“You see, the house he’s left you is not in very good condition. Barely standing, really. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but it’s got a lot of sentimental value for my family. My father and aunt live there now.”

The old woman exhales audibly when she’s confronted with the photograph. She recoils back from it when Orhan holds it out toward her.

“I am prepared to offer you more than what the property is worth,” he says. “All you have to do is sign this agreement stating you will take payment in exchange for the property. It’s incredibly generous, given that the house rightfully belongs to my family.”

“I don’t want your money,” she says, her eyebrows knitted together with scorn. “If I sign, you’ll leave and never come back?” she asks.

Orhan nods. “You have my word,” he says.

“Give me your pen,” she says, without looking at him.

Orhan exhales, letting all the air trapped in his chest out. He extends the legal papers and a plastic pen in her direction and waits for her to sign.

CHAPTER 5

The Staff of Moses

IT IS A
nothing pen, the kind of pen people discard without thinking, but he holds it out to Seda like the staff of Moses. If a wooden staff could part the Red Sea, then surely a plastic one could do the same. And the sea of her past is red indeed. She’s managed to stay away from its shores all her life, to ignore its gurgling sounds, its demand for more sacrifice.

Mrs. Vartanian points a finger at the young man’s back, yelling,“Turk eh.” A few residents look him up and down, then turn away. Betty was right. He is handsome in a rugged sort of way, with insistent eyes set deep in his square skull. He smells of cinnamon and cigarettes.

“What’s going on here?” Betty is standing above their hunched figures.

Seda immediately spreads her hands over the documents. “None of your business,” she says.

“Those look like legal papers,” says Betty. “Does Ms. Ani know you’re signing those?”

“Don’t be a busybody,” Seda snaps.

“It’s not really right to ask little old ladies to be signing things without legal counsel, is it?” Betty says to Orhan, ignoring Seda.

“She doesn’t need legal counsel,” says Orhan.

“Last I checked, I’m an adult,” says Seda. “I can sign whatever I damn well please.”

“It’s only a small matter,” Orhan says.

“Then you won’t mind if she sleeps on it,” says Betty.

“I don’t need to sleep on it,” says Seda.

“I think you should leave now,” Betty says, grabbing the documents from Seda’s lap. “Visiting hours are over.”

Orhan rises to his full height, still staring into the orderly’s dark eyes. “You don’t understand,” he says.

“All the same, visiting hours are over,” she says, handing him his documents. “You’re gonna have to come back tomorrow.”

Seda, still holding the pen, stares at the documents in the young man’s hands. Without removing his eyes from the orderly, Orhan bends his lanky frame down to Seda’s ear.

“
Ak gün ağartır, kara gün karartır.”
It is a Turkish proverb spoken in the tongue of her forgotten past. A white day sheds light; a dark day sheds darkness.

“The days are white now, Mrs. Melkonian,” he says in English. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And she swears she can see the thin white sheet that hangs between her past and his future go flapping in the wind.

Before Seda can say another word, he is gone and Betty is pushing her chair again.

“How dare you?”

“How dare I what?” says Betty, casually.

“You know what!”

“I’m only looking out for you, Ms. Seda.”

“I don’t need you to look out for me. I’m perfectly capable of looking out for myself.”

“Is that right?” asks Betty.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“I seen this TV show last week, where some con man romanced this widow and swindled her out of her savings.”

“Did I look like I was being romanced to you?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t know what you mean.”

“All the same, you should tell Ms. Ani about whatever this is.”

“This has nothing to do with Ani.” Seda can feel her face burning and her voice rising. “What I tell and don’t tell my niece is none of your business.”

“Whatever,” says Betty, stopping in front of Seda’s doorway.

“No, not whatever. You are an orderly,” Seda says, pointing her finger. “Your job is to bring me my food and pills. Bathe me. Not to give me legal advice.”

“Is that so?”

“That’s so. When I need help, I’ll ask for it. Otherwise, leave me alone.”

“Fine,” says Betty, closing the door behind her.

Good, let her leave, Seda thinks. A closed door is a rare blessing around here. Tomorrow. All this will be over tomorrow. The young man will come back and get what he needs, then go back to Turkey before Ani or anyone else notices him.

It’s as if Kemal put every painful memory in the shape of that ancient house, wrapped it like a Christmas present, and forced his grandson to deliver the gift. Well, she would return that thing right back to where it came from.

PART II

1915

CHAPTER 6

Normal

LUCINE WAKES UP
as she always does, to the slow rhythmic sounds of Anush’s ivory comb. The gentle scrape and pull is her own private rooster call. She opens her eyes to the thousands of tiny particles that dance in the light from their only window. They dodge and duck and swirl around to the music of her older sister’s comb.

Anush is seated in her usual place, before the oval mirror. She wears an emerald silk dress with gold filament at the neck and wrists, an Easter present from their parents. Her black hair cascades across her shoulders, a dark, wide cloak of vanity.

“Will you help me with the braid?” Anush asks.

Ordinarily Lucine would groan and refuse, but now that the world is changed, she cannot bring herself to decline. She slips into her own dress, which is cinched at the waist and mercifully nothing like the emerald silk of her sister’s.

“Sit down. It’s easier that way,” Lucine says.

She parts and weaves the three ropes of Anush’s hair, over, under, and in between, until a long tight snake winds its way beyond her sister’s shoulders and down to the back of her chair. In the village, where most women cover their heads, Anush’s exaggerated locks are considered indecent or Western, depending on whom you ask. Today, together with the rich green fabric of her dress, Anush’s illustrious mane seems even more out of place, like an unsuppressed laugh during the liturgy.

When the braiding is done, Lucine remains standing behind her sister. The blue haze of the morning has burned off. In this new light, Anush’s rosy complexion stands in stark contrast to Lucine’s own tawny skin. They are an unlikely pair. Anush, the elder, pressed and tamed and trusting, sweet like her name professes. Anush of the many ribbons and even more suitors.

“Now you sit. Let me do your hair,” says Anush.

“What for?” asks Lucine, pulling her unruly locks into a tight bun.

“To look pretty, silly,” she says, rising from the chair.

“I don’t want to look pretty,” Lucine says.

“Why not?”

Because it’s stupid to worry about one’s hair when the world is turning inside out.
“I just don’t,” she says.

“You’re fifteen. You need to start taking an interest in your appearance,” Anush says. “Besides, it’s Wednesday.”

Lucine starts at the news.
Wednesday already? Has it really been one week since Uncle Nazareth was taken away?

“Wednesday,” Anush repeats by way of explanation. “Our bath day.” She places a hand on Lucine’s shoulder and ushers her into the chair before the mirror.

Lucine’s heart sinks at the thought of the hushed whispers of the community bathhouse, the thought of village women arching their eyebrows as they relay Nazareth’s plight to one another.

“Don’t worry, Mairig says we aren’t going today,” Anush reassures her. “But I thought we should make an effort anyway. Cheer things up a bit.” Then, changing the subject, “You’re really very pretty, you know. I will never forgive you for inheriting Grandmother’s green eyes.”

“Are you sure we are not going to the
hamam
?” Lucine asks.

“Yes, of course I’m sure. Now sit down. We will just pull the sides back,” Anush continues, pulling Lucine’s unruly curls away from her face and fixing a small pin at the base of her skull. “There, a compromise. This way you look properly reserved from the front and free from the back.”

“How stupid. Who’s going to look at me from the back?”

“Oh, I know someone who is always looking at your back.” Anush smiles at Lucine’s reflection.

“Who?” Lucine can feel her face reddening.

“Oh come now, Lucine. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed Kemal lurking behind you on our walks to school.”

There was a time, long ago when Lucine had not yet given up sucking her thumb, that Kemal, the Turkish boy whose father works for Hairig, was her closest friend. Though he was a few years older, Lucine used to tease him profusely, getting a keen sort of pleasure from beating him in a race and pulling at his ears. But she must have offended him somehow, because he hardly ever spoke to her anymore, preferring the company of her charismatic uncle. Whenever she tried to engage him in conversation, Kemal would either look away or turn bright red.

“We all walk together. If he’s looking at anyone, it’s probably you,” she says.

“Nonsense. Every time you cross the courtyard, he drops the wool or spills the dye.”

“That’s ridiculous. Besides, he doesn’t count,” Lucine says. “He’s like an extension of Uncle Nazareth.” She regrets the words as soon as she speaks them. The mention of their uncle’s name hangs in the now stagnant air like a sorrowful melody. He is gone, and there are no more practical jokes and no more laughter. There is no one to spread the balm of frivolity over their all-too-serious lives.

“He’ll be back before the end of the summer,” Anush says. “You’ll see.”

Lucine fights the urge to take Anush’s braid in her hand and whip her with it.

Instead she says, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. As Ottoman subjects, our men must serve in the Ottoman army. It’s normal.”

Lucine winces at the word
normal.
She wonders how her sister has managed to forget the way the gendarmes woke them in the middle of the night, how they dragged Nazareth by the collar of his nightshirt and kicked him out the door. She wants to explain the difference between real soldiers and unarmed labor battalions. Uncle Nazareth says there is nothing normal about a government licking its wounds from the Balkan wars by making a scapegoat of its Christian Armenians. Every defeat the empire suffered meant more nationalism, more ethnic conflict, and more violence. Her people would never be Turkish enough or Muslim enough to be blameless.

“We better get the boys ready for breakfast,” Anush says. It is understood. Anush will take care of six-month-old Aram, while Lucine will attend to Bedros, their ten-year-old brother. In the seven days since their uncle’s disappearance, Lucine and Anush have taken over their mother’s role while she hides in her room, mourning her brother’s loss.

She hasn’t left her bedroom since that night.
A
headache
is how their father describes it. Tending to her is an unpleasant but necessary task—emptying her bedpan, bringing her food—but the thought of her mother sitting in the stench of her own filth is unthinkable.

Lucine places her hand on the doorknob and prays that her mother is still sleeping. When Mairig sleeps, her eyes don’t stare vacantly into the distance, her mouth does not betray the dark roads where her mind roams. When Mairig is sleeping, Lucine can pretend that she will soon get up from under her embroidered coverlet and resume mothering.

The door squeaks open despite all of Lucine’s precaution. The air, trapped by the red velvet curtains, is thick and sticky. Mairig’s head is propped up at the center of her pillow, like a rare jewel. She blinks at the wall when Lucine stands before her four-poster bed. Lucine waits for Mairig’s gaze to land on her. When it doesn’t, she breathes a sigh of gratitude, thinking today Mairig will not put her despair into words.

“He was all I had left here. The only thing I brought with me. That and my dowry. Silk dresses, tablecloths, gold and him, body and mind.”

Lucine ignores her words. She bends down and retrieves the bedpan with both hands, careful not to spill anything on Mairig’s Persian rug, the one she brought with her from the city.

“I’ve got nothing left here that is my own,” Mairig continues. “Nothing from that life before.” She is referring to her other lives again. The life she lived in Istanbul and the one she was meant to live in Paris. The lives in which her hands worked at a piano instead of the rearing of children, where she was not limited to hobnobbing with missionaries but instead conversed with composers and actresses.

Lucine can’t understand why Uncle Nazareth’s presence made it all bearable, but it did. She can’t understand why she and her siblings are not enough for Mairig. Why she needs her brother, the missionaries, and all kinds of news from the capital. What Lucine does understand is that her mother’s unhappiness began long before Nazareth disappeared. She can trace it back even further than her own birth, back to the moment her parents met and fell in love. Falling in love had derailed Mairig’s life; Lucine has heard the story many times. Uncle Nazareth’s disappearance is only the last episode in that derailment.