On one page toward the middle, Kemal’s drawing reveals the cavity of the tree, the light gray living tissue of inner bark hidden beneath the hardened outer bark. The rendering is so close, it transforms the bark’s ridges into a topographical map. Here is a metaphysical fingerprint, a small indecipherable indication of the Creator’s existence and identity.
Seda extends her own knobby index finger, itself riddled with sloping lines and hardened bone, over an area of the drawing covered in cross-hatching, where Kemal’s pinky must have glided across the space as he drew. Like the djinn in the tree, Kemal is trapped here too. His whole life and her life with him is entombed in these pages.
“Are you okay?” Orhan asks her, his hand on her right shoulder now. Seda can not even look up at him, this young stranger, this bearer of her past. She covers her face with the hanky to hide the tears that won’t obey.
“I’ll get you some tea,” he says. She waves him away, too upset to respond. Alone with the last of Kemal’s drawings, she shuts the sketchbook, hoping to trap the mourning emanating from its pages. But the past and all its horrors have already escaped.
Seda’s eyes dart to and fro, searching for an escape, when she is confronted by a red-vented bulbul perched on a branch of the mulberry tree above her.
It is so like the tree of her childhood. It may be the same tree, even the same bulbul, a bird-ghost from her childhood, a phantom that flew out of Kemal’s sketchbook and into this Los Angeles garden.
And this is when she begins to hear it: the wind sifting through the tree’s branches, the river curdling and bubbling toward her. It gargles as it advances, spitting out blood. She tries to breathe, but her mouth and nose are full of water. Gasping, she drops the album and turns in her wheelchair. The custodian behind her is watering some bushes and the dreaded fountain has started working. Seda commands her mind to recognize these basic facts, but her heart is racing outside the reach of reason, and her body trembles and shakes. All she can see is the river screaming at her. Its liquid jaws swallow Aram’s face whole, again and again. She does not yell or move but watches in silence, as she did all those years ago. Murderess. Another whisper in her ear. Her eyes roll back into her head and everything darkens.
WHEN SHE COMES TO, the first thing Seda notices is the spicy scent of cinnamon and cigarettes. She realizes she is being carried, her body draped like a delicate tablecloth on Orhan’s forearms. She can hear his quickened steps and his panting. The citrine fluorescent light of the nursing home beats down upon them both as she hears him say, “Help me, please.”
“What happened?” Seda can hear Betty Shields squeaking across the linoleum.
“I don’t know. She fell or . . . passed out. I was getting some tea,” he tries to explain.
“I thought I told you not to let her near running water.” Seda can hear the anger in the orderly’s voice. It’s the same tone she uses when old Mr. Kalustian soils himself in the dining room.
“The fountain was off. There was no water. I don’t understand,” he says, carrying her into her room.
“There’s water everywhere, Mr. Orren,” Betty interrupts. “Do you know how I got to bathe her?” Betty asks as Orhan hoists Seda onto her bed. Seda keeps her eyes shut, silently wishing Betty would go away, but the orderly’s voice, shrill and full of reproach, keeps pounding on. “I got to let the water run with the door closed, shut it off, then bring her inside.”
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“There’s nothing to understand, Mr. Orren,” Betty interrupts. “She’s ninety. You can’t be upsetting her like this. You better go home now, Mr. Orren. That’s enough excitement for the day,” she says, checking Seda’s body for bruising.
Seda opens her eyes wide and grips Betty’s forearm in protest.
“All right.” Betty lets out a big sigh. “But he’s got to leave soon. I don’t want you getting sick from this mess,” she says. “You holler if you need me,” she adds.
When Betty is gone, Seda turns her eyes to Orhan, who is hovering above her. Desperate as he is, he has been nothing but kind and patient. She lifts her head to say something, to calm his worried face, but Orhan places his palm on her shoulder and gently pushes her back onto her pillow.
“It’s all right. You don’t have to say anything. I am sorry. I am so very sorry,” he says.
Seda holds his green-gray eyes in her stare and sighs. A lifetime of silence is suddenly weighing upon her chest and she wants to be rid of it, to cast it off, throw it into the phantom river haunting her. She reaches to him and grasps his hand.
“I killed him,” she whispers.
Orhan stands there bent over her bed, mouth agape, saying nothing.
“He didn’t fall. I threw him in,” she says.
“Who?” he asks, but Seda puts her fingers to his lips.
“It is my turn now,” she says.
PART IV
1915
CHAPTER 18
The Pretty Ones