The Water Diviner (12 page)

Weighted fabric curtains block the entrance to the mosque. Orhan moves ahead, holding them aside for Connor to pass. Ducking his head, he enters.

As his eyes adjust to the darker space, he notices something missing. Chairs. Benches. Seats. This immense space is completely devoid of furniture. There is nowhere to sit, other than upon the intricate patchwork of carpets that covers the entire floor. And then Connor looks up. The dimension, majesty and ethereal beauty of the soaring blue-tiled dome above his head are beyond anything Connor has ever imagined. He can only assume this is the Blue Mosque Ayshe beseeched him to visit. The glossy painted tiles are so vivid, the light so clear and the dome so high that it almost seems to disappear into the heavens. In one corner, a curious turreted tower stands; Connor presumes it to be something akin to a pulpit. And facing that in ranks, rows of men kneel on the floor, alternately raising their hands then lying, prostrate, face down.

Orhan has been watching him. ‘You have a place like this where you come from?’

Connor pauses, lost for words, then answers dryly, ‘Yes, but a bit bigger.’

He turns, pulls aside the curtain at the entrance.

‘Come on. Let’s go.’

Orhan and Connor slip out through the side entrance of the mosque and away from the riot. They can still hear the angry shouts and the roar of the mob that is yet to disperse.

The odd pair walks in silence. Connor is still trying to digest what he has seen.

Orhan, Connor is learning, is incapable of keeping quiet for long. The boy fills the dead air with his tour-guide patter. ‘It was built by Sultan Ahmed.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Mosque was built by Sultan Ahmed. He was very great man. It is three hundred years old. Very old.’

‘Yes, that is very old.’ Connor is distracted and in no mood for Orhan’s chattering.

They walk across a large open plaza towards another monumental building. But unlike the sublime confection they have just visited, this building has an imposing corporeality to it, like a prison or a fortress. Heavy, rose-madder buttresses support a great, grey cupola.

Connor’s unsolicited tour continues. Orhan is just beginning to warm up. He indicates the imposing edifice with a theatrical sweep of his hand.

‘Hagia Sophia. It was church for Christians like you. But it is now mosque. This building is more old. Built by Emperor Constantine. He is why city is called “Constantinople”.’

Despite himself, Connor is curious. ‘So how old is Hagia Sophia?’

‘One thousand years and five hundred years.’

‘You mean five hundred years?’

‘No – more than five hundred years. The English I do not know.’ He writes the numbers in the air with his finger. ‘One, five, nought, nought.’

‘One and a half
thousand
years old? That cannot be right.’

‘Yes, Connor Bey. That number.’

Coming from a land that was settled by the British a whisker over one hundred years ago, this time span is almost inconceivable. Nothing Connor has ever experienced in the wide, sparse expanse of his homeland could prepare him for the scale – the consequence – of this ancient city.

Orhan leads Connor down the hill away from the Sultanahmet district and through a neighbourhood of wooden terrrace homes, keen to put as much distance between them and the mob as possible. Between the rows of houses Connor can see the reflection of sunlight off water. Gaily painted fishing caiques are moored along the shoreline of the Sea of Marmara, bobbing in the waves as fishermen on board hunch over nets, untangling, repairing and stacking them in preparation for the night ahead. Further along, a wharf extends like a finger into the channel. Fishing lines suspended from thin rods sparkle like cobwebs in a rain shower.

From a stall to their left comes the sudden clamour of a bell and the baritone cry of a street vendor. ‘
Dondurrrrrmmmmaa
.
Dondurrrrrmmmmaa
.’

Connor looks over to where a man wearing a tasselled fez and gold-embroidered velvet vest is pounding something in a tub with a great wooden paddle, intermittently clanging a bunch of cowbells hanging from his stall. He is a butterball of a man; sparkling eyes set deep in a face which has the dimensions of a pumpkin.

‘What is that man doing, Orhan?’

‘He sells
dondurma
, Connor Bey. Ice-cream.’

‘Real ice-cream? Do you like ice-cream?’

Orhan looks at Connor incredulously. ‘Yes, I like ice-cream. Everyone likes ice-cream. Do you like ice-cream?’

Connor thinks back to the number of times he has tried the iced confection; a handful at best. In the stinking hot backblocks of the Mallee, it is a rare luxury.

‘Yes. Yes I do. Should we try some?’

‘Yes. I would like an ice-cream. I am a bit . . . peckish?’

Connor laughs and hands the boy a handful of coins.

‘Is this enough?’

‘Yes, of course. You give me too much.’ Orhan returns most of the money. ‘This is money for two ice-creams. You wait.’

Connor watches the boy negotiate with the vendor, gesticulating, shoulders shrugging. He returns with two freshly made hot waffle cones crammed with an implausible quantity of gooey ice-cream. Orhan hands one to Connor with a look of deep satisfaction. ‘He would not give me good price, but I made him give us extra
dondurma
. We have big
dondurma
.’

As they walk, Connor looks at his own daunting scoop and wonders how to tackle it without making a mess of his only jacket. He smiles, watching the irrepressible joy that illuminates the boy’s face. Orhan’s black eyes gleam, and his round cheeks and cleft chin are now covered in melted ice-cream. Connor can’t help but think back to enjoying his own sons’ delight in such simple things, a time before the world of men intruded on their lives. The memory is tainted with regret. He wishes he had treasured those times more. Now, Connor feels thwarted in his attempt to honour those memories, to bring his boys home.

He sets his jaw.

He has never been one to pay much mind to what other people tell him he can and can’t do, sometimes to his own detriment. Just because he is away from home, in unfamiliar territory, he is not going to start now.

Connor needs time to think. Finding his sons’ bodies isn’t going to be as straightforward as he’d imagined. He pictured the stiff-necked British officer pontificating from across his desk.
‘Go home Mr Connor.’

Damned if I will
.

C
onnor lumbers up the hill towards the Otel Troya with Orhan darting around him like a swallow, chattering between licks of his ice-cream. As they approach the hotel entrance Connor notices Orhan’s voice trailing off and the boy falling in behind him. Connor is reminded of a sheep dog when it senses danger. As they step inside, a glowering Ayshe appears from the salon with her hands on her hips.

Connor watches a rapid-fire exchange in Turkish between the two. He doesn’t need to speak the language to know that the boy has done the wrong thing and is now trying to charm his way out of it. Ayshe is fuming and when Orhan holds out the coins he has been paid she turns and looks straight at Connor. ‘Mr Connor, I told you my son had work to do here at the hotel, that he could not help you.’

‘But Orhan said you had changed your mind and that he could . . .’ Connor looks at the chagrined boy whose eyes are boring holes into the floorboards as the ice-cream runs over his fingers and splatters on his boots. ‘I am sorry,’ Connor concedes.

‘He is eleven years old,’ spits Ayshe. ‘What else would he say? I thought you had boys.’

She turns to Orhan and speaks to him in measured English. Connor knows it is for his benefit and feels its sting.

‘Now, give Mr Connor back his money.’

‘But I’ll do the chores now. Whatever you want me to do,’ beseeches Orhan.

‘Give it back.’

‘But Mama, I got it for you,’ he whimpers offering her the money and trying to kiss her through his pistachio-flavoured moustache.

Ayshe barks out a final command in Turkish and storms upstairs.

With tears of shame in his eyes, Orhan hands the money back to Connor, who is still stunned by Ayshe’s anger. He can’t fathom what he has done to offend her or why on earth she is so thorny.

‘No . . . you keep it. It’ll be our secret. But that is the second time you have lied to me. Don’t do it again. I can’t be friends with a man who lies to me.’ He pats Orhan on the shoulder and the boy disappears into the salon, giving his mother a wide berth.

Later, in his room, light from a kerosene lantern spreads in a warm glow across the small escritoire where Connor pores over a map of the Sea of Marmara and the Dardanelles. The enormity of his task is daunting. Almost one hundred and fifty miles away by land, there’s no clear way of getting there, and although there’s always the sea route, that will be next to impossible without transport on a British ship.

He stands, turns and starts pacing, playing his options through in his mind. From downstairs, sounds disturb his reverie.

Connor steps into the corridor, curious. Music echoes along the hallway. He walks quietly down the stairs, not wanting to intrude; the tinkle and trill of a piano played competently with just an occasional discordant note and a great deal of laughter lifts his mood. Halfway down the staircase is a landing that features a wide, open window overlooking the salon. The opening is covered by a dark, elaborately decorated timber screen, carved so that Connor can see into the room through its lattice, largely unobserved by the people in the room below.

In the centre of the tiled floor below, Natalia has one hand at Orhan’s waist and the other extended and holding his. She guides him around the room, spinning and dipping in a pantomime parody of ballroom dancing. The Russian woman is wearing a multi-tiered petticoat as flouncy as meringue, with her natural auburn hair pinned back simply into kiss-curls around her crown. Lifting her feet ludicrously high between steps and bobbing her leading arm up and down emphatically, Natalia is in her element.

It seems that Ayshe has made peace with her son. At the piano, she pounds the keys theatrically, her head turned towards the dancing couple to follow their comedic circuit of the room. Connor can’t help but find his gaze drawn to her delicate waist and the feminine swell of her form as she leans forwards over her hands. Propriety requires that he avoid fixing his eyes on Ayshe when they interact at the hotel desk or in the salon, but here he finds himself in a position to appreciate her beauty fully. In profile, her straight, delicate nose dips to full lips now parted as she laughs, head thrown back, at the sight of her son and the Russian woman dancing with such aplomb. Her dark eyebrows form a low arc above almond-shaped eyes as green as freshly unfurled spring leaves. Ayshe’s hair, black as ebony, is usually secured tightly in a bun at the nape of her neck, but now it is loose and cascades like a silken veil over her shoulders.

Connor recalls a time when his own home rang with the sounds of such
joie de vivre
. He’d never forget the circus that ensued when Lizzie decided it was time to teach the boys how to dance. All three of their boys had asked lady friends to accompany them to the Rainbow church social. The only catch, as Lizzie pointed out to her eager sons, was that the ability to make a passable attempt at a waltz and a foxtrot was fairly important when attending a dance. Art, Henry and Edward had never shown any interest in learning something they deemed to be a little too ladylike for their liking. But with her mind made up and the dance only a matter of weeks away, Lizzie took it upon herself to teach them.

The first obvious impediment was the lack of music. Connor begrudgingly stood in for the orchestra, stamping out the rhythm with the heel of his boot. The second hurdle was the shortage of female dance partners. This incited a playful tussle between the three boys to reach agreement on who would dance with Lizzie and who, of the remaining two boys, had to play the part of the lady. Despite his protestations this duty fell to Ed – being the youngest was a dreadful affliction because he always ended up with the short end of the stick. As Connor watched his sons trip and stumble round the room like newborn foals finding their feet, he laughed fit to split. The boys played up deliberately, much to Lizzie’s exasperation, which made Connor break into such uncontrollable peals of laughter that he could no longer keep the beat going.

Thanks to Lizzie’s persistence and unflappable patience, by the time the boys entered the Rainbow church hall, arms proudly hooked through those of their pretty and fresh-faced partners, they could make a respectable pass around the floor.

The sound of the song ending and Ayshe and Natalia laughing and chattering in another language draws Connor back to the present. The scene of domestic whimsy before him plunges him into bittersweet melancholia.

Connor realises that Natalia has fixed her gaze on the screen that is concealing him, and he catches her eye. He immediately draws back onto the landing and pads gently up the stairs, fearing exposure and humiliation, acutely ashamed at having been discovered by the Russian woman. He returns to his room and closes the door quietly, hoping that she will keep his presence to herself rather than share it with Ayshe. It seems a feeble hope given that the women appear to be friends, but the thought that Ayshe might think he is prone to sneaking around the hallways, spying on private family moments, fills him with nervous apprehension. He finds his anxiety a little perplexing. There is no real reason why he should be concerned about what the Turkish woman thinks of him. He can’t rightly explain why he felt compelled to put himself at risk of exposure by indulging in such inappropriate voyeurism. Alone, lonely, he just couldn’t look away.