“I am the man now. Hairig said so. Besides, Kemal and Demi have been helping me.”
“Kemal? What do you mean he’s been helping you?”
“He came a few minutes ago. He wanted to talk to you, but I told him to get to work, which is what Hairig would have done.”
“Where is he now?” Lucine asks.
“Working in the courtyard.”
Lucine puts the baby back in Anush’s arms and heads out. Despite the darkness, she can see the two men in the back corner of the courtyard. Kemal is hard at work pulling wet wool out of one of the cauldrons. Demi the half-wit holds the wooden stirring spoon and stares at a spot on the floor in front of him. Bedros’s haphazard dyeing of the wool has obviously upset Demi, whose obsession with Hairig’s dyeing started at an early age.
“We use two cups of vinegar for a pound of wool. Two cups,” Demi says, holding two fingers in the air.
“Hello, Demi,” Lucine says, not daring to look at Kemal.
“There are five hundred and seventeen threads of green silk,” Demi responds. “That’s twenty-two pounds. That’s forty-four cups of vinegar,” he says.
Kemal stops what he is doing and looks up at her. “Hello,” he says.
“Five hundred and seventeen,” Demi repeats, visibly upset.
“Bedros has hurt his face,” she says, holding up her handkerchief as proof. “You shouldn’t let him use the tools.”
“That boy is a tyrant,” Kemal says. “You should have seen him trying to stir the wool.”
“What are you doing here?” she says. “The sun isn’t even up yet.”
“Six cups of vinegar isn’t enough,” Demi says, wringing the wooden spoon like a wet cloth.
“I came to talk to you,” he says, lowering his voice. He rests his hands on the cauldron.
Lucine’s heart begins to race.
“Only six cups. Only six,” exclaims Demi.
“Sometimes I envy the silkworm,” Kemal says, resting his elbows on either side of a cauldron.
“You envy the silkworm?” she asks, disappointed.
“I know it sounds funny, but think of it,” he says, staring into the cauldron. “Wool starts out growing on the back of some poor sheep. It’s the same thing, just displaced and altered. But silk is different. It comes from the boiled cocoons of silkworms. We clean and dye the murky cream-colored thread and weave it into the fabric of some magnificent kilim.”
“Not all kilims are magnificent,” says Lucine.
“Every kilim has an admirer,” he says, fixing his eyes on her.
“But not all cocoons are boiled. Some silkworms become moths,” says Lucine.
“That’s just it. Neither, the moth nor the cocoon, has any of the properties of the silkworm. The worm stops existing all together. Either way, it transforms into something entirely different,” he says, with triumph in his voice.
“So you don’t envy the silkworm for its beauty,” she says. “You envy its ability to transform.”
“Yes. Transformation can be just as powerful as beauty,” says Kemal.
“Did you get the book?” he asks.
Lucine nods.
“And the drawing?” he asks.
“Yes,” she manages, trying not to look at him.
“And?” Kemal says.
“Thank you,” she says, finally meeting his stare. “But . . .”
“But what?”
“The picture looks nothing like me,” she says.
“Nonsense,” he says.
“My hair is not that thick and long. And my mouth . . . well, you’ve drawn it so it’s slightly open like a fish’s,” Lucine says.
“It’s how I see you now,” he says, eyes burning.
“Like a hairy fish?” she teases.
“Like a woman.”
“Demi,” Lucine says, peeling her eyes away from Kemal. “Go and ask Anush for a piece of fresh baked bread.”
“We need thirty-eight more cups of vinegar.”
“You’re right, but Kemal will take care of it,” Lucine says, gently prying the wooden spoon from Demi’s hand.
Lucine waits until Demi is gone before turning back to Kemal.
“I don’t know what to say to you,” she says.
“I have more to say to you,” Kemal says, stepping toward her. “Since I started to sketch you, I can sketch nothing else.”
“You’ve been sketching me?”
Kemal nods. “I see everything differently. Everything. You’ve taken my eyes, my vision, captive.”
Lucine stares into the objects of her thievery. Kemal’s eyes are two large chestnuts, rich dark brown shells hiding something more tender and sweet inside.
She feels the warmth from his breath, but the euphoria is immediately replaced with a sense of guilt and foreboding. Didn’t Hairig say to stay away from him? A sin against God.
“We are being deported,” she says.
“I know. I came to warn you.”
“It’s too late. Hairig has been arrested,” she says.
Kemal’s face darkens at the news. “When?” he asks.
“Yesterday.”
“Sometimes I wonder if our kismet is like this wool. If God is arbitrarily dyeing it one color or the other.”