Lucine slips the wooden sandals off her feet. She shuts her eyes and lets the steam provide what little insulation and privacy she can get. Anush drags the kese down her mother’s spine, letting gray curdles of dead skin drop down to the floor. It is not uncommon for women with eligible sons to ask prospective brides to scrub their backs. Lucine doesn’t dare look up.
There is a melting point at which everything in this world eventually succumbs. Skin, salt, fat, tears, and laughter all meld into one. In the hamam, Lucine is forever suspended at this melting point. She reclines, pressing her back, buttocks, and palms into the hot stone floor. The hissing steam penetrates and escapes from every surface, seducing her skin, her muscles, and the stone into submission. Then come the organs, and despite the women ogling the productive capacity of her hips, the roundness of her breasts or the strength of her thighs, despite all this, her mind goes blank. There is always a brief period of clarity when she can hear her whispering heart.
Today she listens to the slapping noises of the fountain water, hoping it will drown out the sound of her longing and her worry. The effort is futile. The heat knocks incessantly at the door of her heart. When it finally answers, in come a bevy of images of Kemal. He smiles at her from across the courtyard. He stares with compassion at her tear-stained face and laughs uncontrollably at her anger. She doesn’t know why or how, but she is sure he understands her, knows her. And this is everything.
It might be a sin against God, but God doesn’t seem to be terribly concerned with her at the moment. Where was he when they took Nazareth? When they flogged the priest and robbed him of his sanity? When they took Hairig?
Hairig. The tears are just one more form of water excreted by her body.
Not here, whispers her heart. Not here.
CHAPTER 10
Bedros and the Dress
MUAMMER BEY’S VISIT comes on an especially hot day, one made for swimming and sitting under the shade of a tree. But the children are stuck inside. Anush hides in the back of the house where the governor cannot see her. Lucine and Bedros are relegated to the front parlor and instructed to be quiet. Bedros fashions a sword from a long branch and slashes the drawn curtains like a caged animal. He makes loud swishing noises, wielding the sword with one hand and holding his pants up with the other. Each time a limb from his branch nicks the lavender-colored silk, he turns his head, as if waiting for a reproach. A palm to the back of the head, a harsh word, or worse yet, that look of disappointment Mairig used to give them when they’d done something wrong.
“Stop that. You’ll ruin the curtains,” Lucine says, taking care to keep her voice low. “Aren’t you a little too old for swordplay?” She takes the branch from him.
“Everybody wants me to be a baby again,” he says.
“What are you talking about?”
“Since Hairig left, everyone wants me to be a baby again. Mairig says to try not to look so grown up.”
“That’s because the soldiers only take grown boys and men,” she says, but Bedros doesn’t seem consoled.
“Don’t worry. You’re way too young to be noticed,” she says, putting her hands around his dwindling waist. “You’re practically shrinking.”
Outside, the town crier, whose voice Lucine has come to detest, repeats his now-familiar chant, “All Armenian families are to be deported into the outskirts. These measures are for your own safety. Each family will be given one oxcart for their possessions. Take only what you need. Everything will be given back to you upon your return.”
“That man’s a liar,” says Bedros.
“He’s Armenian,” says Lucine.
“He’s still a liar,” says Bedros.
Bedros has a point. This is the same man who called Hairig to the supposed meeting.
“He tricked us,” Bedros says. “Uncle Nazareth says you should confront those who taunt or trick you, but Hairig didn’t confront anyone.”
“He will. In his own way,” says Lucine, remembering Hairig’s speech about enduring.
Bedros presses his nose onto the sliver of glass where the drapes almost meet. Lucine rests her chin on the top of his head, hoping a bit of sunlight will find its way to her face. In the courtyard, bushels of wool and copper pots sit idly in the courtyard. Beyond the family’s own gated property lies the sea of flat-roofed, white-washed houses of the Armenian Quarter of Sivas. Like the Melkonian house, they have been emptied of their men. Lucine stares at the women who scurry from home to home, like chickens before the slaughter. Perhaps bed rest is a much more dignified response than running about town wringing one’s hands.
“I wish I could go outside,” Bedros says.
Her little brother hasn’t been outside since the day Hairig left. He hasn’t taken a bath, since there are no men left to take him to the hamam. He hasn’t seen a slip of sky unless it was through a glass window.