Kemal waits an eternity for her eyes to reach his face. Her eyelashes quiver with hesitation and fear. Silently, he wills her to look at him. Just once. So that the spell of fear can be broken.
“I’m going to touch your chin now,” he says. His hand floats up to her face. He places his thumb on her chin and slips his forefinger underneath its soft underbelly. He is holding her chin now like a delicate flower. He only needs to lift it a few inches until she can face him, but those few inches span a lifetime and several continents. And he cannot do it. Does not want to. She must lift her chin herself, of her own free will.
“Please look at me,” he says. Once again he is pleading with her: to see him, to love him.
CHAPTER 30
The Handmaid
“IT IS ME,” he repeats over and over again, like the words are some sort of salve.
And what if it is you? Then what? You with your man’s beard and soldier’s uniform. You, who calls me by that other name. You may be you, but I am another matter. I am no longer.
“Where is everyone else?” he asks.
Gone. They are all gone, she thinks, still staring at his khaki uniformed chest.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
She makes her eyes smaller with hate and fixes them on the epaulet on his chest, a signifier of death and killing. She throws her head back and spits straight at the brass medal. He flinches but doesn’t move, allowing her saliva to linger on its target, then dribble down over a buttonhole.
“I was conscripted. I’ve been fighting in the south. I have had nothing to do with the deportations. I am not ashamed. Nor proud. I did it because I had to.”
His hand reaches into his coat pocket.
“I have something of yours,” he says. He is holding a pale blue fabric in the palm of his hand. He holds it out to her. The linen is soft and worn from a thousand uses, but she recognizes her initials embroidered in Armenian in one corner. It is the kerchief she gave him the night he followed Hairig, the night she refused him.
Seda feels her chin releasing. He is waiting for her to meet his stare. It is a small thing, this thing he wants. When she finally looks up into his face, something inside her breaks. Her body relaxes and she crumbles into him. She buries her face into his chest and cries, silently, with her open mouth resting against his beating heart. He strokes her quivering back like he once did by the river all those years ago.
Seda pours all her agony into him. He is an empty vessel, a container for her grief. Whoever he is—Kemal, soldier, ghost—the apparition tries to comfort her. He tells her to hush. And she does, eventually, pulling herself away from him.
His choices are deplorable, but then so are hers. The Lucine he wants is dead and gone. Now there is only Seda, the handmaid.
Seda squats down to the floor, scooping what is left of the flour into a single mound. With her finger, she spells her new name, Seda, and then with her eyes locked on Kemal, she points to herself.
“You’ve changed your name?” he asks.
She nods. He pauses, as if he’s trying to understand the meaning of this.
“You want me to call you Seda?”
She nods again.
“An ironic name for one without a voice, don’t you think?”
She underlines the name in flour.
“All right,” he says. “But why won’t you speak to me?”
There is no way to answer this question. To tell him that all the words in the world have betrayed her and she in turn has turned her back on them is impossible. She wants to tell him that though she cannot control her own actions or the actions of others, she has complete control of the little piece of flesh that lies dormant, housed in her mouth full of teeth.
“Has something happened to your tongue? Your throat?”
She shakes her head no.
“Then perhaps I can coax your voice to come out again.” He steps closer to her.
He understands nothing. This Kemal is just like the other, full of impossible dreams. Still, when he looks at her in that way, her body feels boneless and weak. She walks to the wooden door that leads to the courtyard and opens it.
“You want me to leave?”
She holds the door open in confirmation.
“All right. But can I come back tonight?” he asks at the door.
She says nothing.
“I will come when Hüsnü is with the woman Fatma,” he says before disappearing.
CHAPTER 31
Finding Faith