The Water Diviner (29 page)

‘No boiled egg, then?’

Ayshe laughs. ‘No. None at all. Close your eyes.’

Connor obliges. She places something in Connor’s fingers. ‘Try this.’

He pops it into his mouth and chews. It’s creamy – yoghurt, perhaps? But the sharp tang of pungent garlic is utterly unfamiliar to his palate, and the dried mint, though fragrant, is unexpected.

‘It is called
cacik
.’ Ayshe wants his verdict. ‘So?’

‘Yes. Well.’ He swallows. ‘Interesting.’

‘I learned to make this from my grandmother using yoghurt from sheep’s milk.’

‘Are there no cows in this country?’

‘None that I have seen,’ she adds dryly, handing Connor what feels to him like a small cigar. ‘Now try this.’

He bites into it and the deep-fried silky-thin
yufka
pastry disintegrates in his mouth. At its centre is a warm and tasty filling of tart cheese and chopped parsley. ‘Oh. This is quite good!’ he exclaims, surprised to find he likes it. Connor smiles, opening his eyes. Ayshe returns the smile, and her green eyes glint. She’s enjoying this.

‘
Sigara börek
. It is my speciality. And Orhan’s favourite.’ Next, she hands him a fork. ‘Now, dessert.’

Connor peers suspiciously at the malformed piece of fruit dripping syrup into the dish. ‘And what is this, then?’

‘Poached figs in rosewater with pistachio and spices. Smell the cinnamon, the way it warms you.’

Obediently shutting his eyes again, he takes a bite. ‘Oh, my word. That is delicious. What’s in it again?’

‘A thousand years of loving food.’ She hesitates. ‘How is it that a man who can feel underground rivers cannot see what is before his eyes?’

Connor opens his eyes and looks at her. ‘I see well enough.’

Ayshe holds his gaze and feels herself dissolving. ‘Today, you did not presume too much.’

Her soft hand rests on the bench, fine fingers splayed out on the marble. Reaching out, Connor places his weathered hand on hers.

Ayshe lifts Connor’s palm to her lips and kisses it, then places it gently against her cheek. Her heart races. She has never touched any man other than her husband in this way. But the sensation of Connor’s skin against hers makes her want to arch her back, to yield.

‘I have no room in my heart for two men. Since you have arrived, he is fading, and it scares me.’

Connor stands and gently turns her to face him. He bends his head and touches his lips to hers, wrapping his arms around her waist and drawing her towards him. Ayshe tilts her chin and returns the embrace, lips parting slightly, softly.

Connor feels the soft pout of her breasts pressing into his chest, and the dip at her waist where his hands rest. Desire and passion are useless indulgences in the Australian outback, and Connor has never had the time or the inclination to succumb to either. But he wants this woman with an intensity that terrifies him. It rises from his abdomen up his torso, filling his chest and making it hard to breathe.

Ayshe takes his hand to lead him from the kitchen. ‘Come.’

The only light in Ayshe’s room is the pale blue moonlight that floods through the lace curtains. It whispers across the starched white sheets and pools on the two figures that lie, outstretched, on the bed. On the floor, one pair of worn leather boots are cast aside, removed hurriedly with clumsy fingers and tossed onto the rug. Tucked neatly beneath the fringed edge of the woollen bedspread, the finely tooled burgundy court shoes are placed side by side, small leather buttons unfastened carefully, deliberately.

Ayshe and Connor lie facing each other on the small French bed, her head resting in the crook of his arm and her hand on his ribs. Beneath the crisply starched cotton of his shirt, she can feel his heart pounding, his breath racing. She shifts towards him and presses her cheek to his chest, tucking her head under his chin. She can smell him, warm and smoky, and feel his breath in her hair as he lowers his head to kiss the crown of her head. Inching her hands towards his waist, she slides her fingers along his smooth leather belt, searching for the buckle. Finding it, she fumbles.

‘My fingers have forgotten.’

Connor takes her hand from his belt and lifts it to his lips.

‘Please, we don’t have to do anything. I am content to look at you.’

Although he desires her so much he can scarcely breathe, he knows it would be improper to push.

‘I never thought I would lie with another man. But I can . . .’ She hesitates. ‘I can tend to your needs.’ Turgut had been virile, and it hadn’t always been possible for her to serve him as a wife should. It had been Natalia who had spoken to her of the other ways a woman could bring a man pleasure.

‘Not if I can’t tend to yours.’

She wrestles with her conscience and resists. ‘I must not.’

Connor tries to hide the disappointment in his voice. ‘Good. So we lie here.’

She turns her face up to his and kisses him tentatively as Connor presses his hand against the small of her back, drawing her hips to his.

Needing to feel his skin on hers, Ayshe reaches up to the tiny pearl buttons that hold her long-sleeved shirt closed. Fingers quivering, she pops them one at a time until the turquoise-blue silk falls open. As she exposes her perfect ivory skin, the curve of her breast, Connor is captivated. His voice catches in his throat, thick and husky.

‘Oh . . . You are beautiful.’

He strokes her breast with his weathered, square fingertips, and Ayshe moans involuntarily. Opening her emerald-green eyes, she gazes at Connor as she lowers her hand and presses it against his groin, feeling him stiffen beneath his coarse cotton pants.

They lock eyes, hands now still. Ayshe breaks the silence.

‘We should sleep now. It will be light soon.’

Connor kisses Ayshe lightly on the lips.

‘Yes, we should.’

He lies back on the pillow, watching her as she closes her eyes. The moonlight skims the dip of her waist and the swell of her breast as she lies beside him. He wants to be with her, to tend her. But she is strong, so strong, and caught between two worlds, neither of which he can hope to understand.

Ayshe senses Connor’s gaze and opens her eyes.

She kisses him and smiles.

S
he rocks and grinds against him as he bucks beneath her.

His broad hands encircle her tiny waist. She rises and falls astride him, one of her hands resting against the hard muscle of his lower belly. She fingers the serpentine trail of short, dark hairs that cover his abdomen, feeling the sinews in his pelvis contract as he thrusts hard inside her.

A blinding flash. The deafening roar of artillery unleashed. The burning slash and splatter of shrapnel embedding in mud and flesh.

He looks up at her face. Hair falls across her brow, shielding her features from his gaze.

Another blast; the ground rocks beneath them. She doesn’t flinch, is deaf to the mortal sounds of battle around them. Wet, persistent, she continues to slide along him. She bends forwards, then throws her head up, flicking her long hair back.

‘Edith?’ Through the haze, he is confused. Edith is in Rainbow. Edith should not be here.

He feels blood – hot, wet – coursing down his face. Raising a hand to his brow, he feels the wound: ragged, deep. Bone through mangled flesh. The apparition that is Edith continues to ride him. He is rising, swelling inside her as bullets and shells whiz by.

Turn to the left. ‘Is that Henry?’ His head is cleaved in half; the one, remaining bright blue eye is blank. Dull. Dead.

A cry. To the right. Ed. Gouts of blood oozing through his tunic, running in a sheet down the left side of his head. Not long for this world. Ed lifts a hand, beseeching, pleading.

Art turns away, fixes his eyes on the figure astride him, feeling himself pulsing, bursting. She lifts his bloodied hands to her breasts and he releases inside her, climaxing with a groan.

T
he woman lowers her skirt and dismounts the young man who lies prostrate on a soiled and frayed divan. The low bed is protected from general view by a crudely fashioned curtain made from a rough sheet of old hessian that she now draws back. She wanders off, disappearing into the darkened depths of the labyrinthine building.

Swaying, disoriented, the man swings his legs to the edge of the bed and waits for his head to stop spinning. He sits up, fumbling as he closes the front of his trousers and slides his feet inside a pair of worn leather slippers. He reaches for a faded khaki tunic emblazoned with A.I.F. regalia where it hangs on a peg. Clumsily putting one arm then the other into the jacket, he attempts to stand, tripping on one of the figures that lie supine at his feet.

The timber-panelled room is dimly lit, its floor a jumble of stained old mattresses and cushions and worn
kilim
s. It is difficult to see through the haze from the opium smoke, which rises in rings and whorls from the pipes that rest in the insouciant fingers of the men who sprawl on the floor in a tangle of limbs.

He finds his feet and weaves his way through the recumbent figures towards a wooden door at the opposite side of the room. Limping, he reaches for a stick that rests against one wall and opens the door, flooding the room with early morning light. Squinting his glacier-blue eyes against the sun, Art stumbles into the street, leaning heavily on his shepherd’s crook.

Roosters crow to welcome the morning, their cries echoing along the narrow, dusty lanes. Chickens peck at loose grain in the street as a fat white cat with one green and one blue eye sits on a stoop, cleaning itself. An old woman wearing a black dress with a garish fringed scarf wrapped around her head is bent double, sweeping her front step and casting water from a cup like seed to keep the dust down.

Oblivious to the sounds of the town awakening, Art is in a waking dream. He lifts a hand to scratch at the lice that inhabit his matted, light-brown hair. An angry, jagged red scar crosses his forehead, and his trousers – baggy and white in the local style – are stained and ragged, held around his emaciated waist by an A.I.F. webbing belt.

He stops stock still in the middle of the street, spellbound by the sight of a mangy dog so thin her ribs protrude from beneath her matted coat, feeding her three puppies. The dog lies, resigned, beaten, its eyes dim, as the three small dogs fight and tug at her nipples.

An interjection breaks into his reverie. A bovine man leading a donkey laden heavily with fat sheaves of wheat is trying to pass.

‘Watch out! Watch out!’

Art staggers back against the whitewashed stone wall, raising his hands and responding in Turkish. ‘Yeah, all right, brother. All right. Keep your bloody shirt on.’

The ground undulates beneath his feet. Slumping back against the wall as the man shakes his head and pushes his way past, Art shuts his eyes, feeling the wet night chill in the stones seeping into his spine as the rays from the morning sun warm his face. A noisome stench cuts through his opiate stupor. Across the lane, a young woman uses a huge wooden paddle to chop and turn bricks of manure, drying them in the sun for fuel. By her feet, a basket woven of dried reeds is slick with the remains of the dung, gathered in her home the night before, to add to the rancid muck – excrement from bird, beast and human alike.

He turns and starts walking up the hill to escape the foul miasma. Carefully placing one foot in front of the other, Art tries to maintain his purchase on the slippery and uneven cobblestones, one hand reaching out to steady himself against the wall, the other clutching the top of his wooden stick.

Another narrow street intersects the lane. The air here is full of the warm and yeasty smell of freshly baked bread. Through a plate-glass window, a stack of fat, golden brown loaves the shape of lemons teeters precariously. Outside the shop, a group of women stand in a cluster, waiting to be served by the flour-covered baker. Their heads are covered with brightly coloured scarves fringed with delicate lace edges. They laugh and chatter, their nut-brown faces deeply creased with wrinkles, enjoying the reprieve from the day’s chores.

As Art limps past, the baker leans out from the stoop of his shop, raising his hand in greeting and calling him over. The young man sways and stumbles as he diverts his course, shuffling over to the bakery door where the women recoil and move aside as he passes. He takes the broken heel of bread offered by the baker, and acknowledges the gift with a hand raised to his brow.

‘Health be on your hands.’

The baker smiles kindly, nods his head and responds with the customary salutation. ‘Health be on your head.’ The irony of the blessing is never lost on Art.

He slumps down in the doorway of the neighbouring shop and sinks his teeth into the crunchy crust, savouring the still warm, cloud-soft bread, and is surprised to find his stomach rumbling. He chews, rolling the salty-sweet dough around his mouth. Art’s abject existence relies entirely upon the benevolence of others; he is a familiar presence in the streets of Afion and he survives on the alms offered to him by the shopkeepers and those who live in the small houses that line the streets – small gifts of food, clothes and the occasional coin. As the years have passed, his life force has dimmed to a flicker; his physical needs have been pared down so utterly through deprivation that sensations like hunger and fatigue no longer register on his blunted consciousness. He swallows, feeling the last of the bread passing down his throat and into his stomach.