The Stone Woman (5 page)

My father was writing a note on his pad that I took to my uncle, who smiled.

“Iskander says there was no ending. That everything else is supposition. That evil tongues in the servants’ quarters manufactured tales that were untrue. He is tired and wants to sleep and suggests we continue tomorrow. We must respect his wishes, but the end will not take long.

“There was an ending, and it was of a tragic nature. Mahmut Pasha’s Circassian disappeared with the unborn child. She was never seen again. When I was little the servants used to frighten me with stories of a baby ghost whose screams were often heard outside this balcony. Ask Petrossian and he will tell you that Sabiha had her murdered. He claims he heard the story from his father. So there was an ending, even though Mahmut Pasha, like his descendant Iskander, preferred to believe that she had run away. He offered a big reward to anyone who brought him news of her, but it was never claimed.”

With these words the Baron and Uncle Memed rose, bowed graciously in the direction of my father, who had shut his eyes in disapproval, and left the room. We followed in silence.

‘W
ILL YOU LISTEN TO
my tale of woe, Stone Woman, or do your ears welcome only the voice of the Pasha and his family? I’ve been in this house for over three months. I’m well looked after and fed by the caretaker and his wife and I’m happy to be away from Istanbul, but in my solitude, I miss Hikmet more than ever before. I wake up every day long before the birds. It is still not light and the stars have yet to fade. I can’t sleep. Hikmet’s face and his voice fill my dreams and make me miserable. Look at me. I am eight months pregnant with Mahmut Pasha’s child but my heart is still heavier than my stomach.

In my dreams I see Hikmet in his soldier’s uniform. He is looking at me with bitterness in his grey eyes. They speak to me: “We trusted you, but you would not wait. You betrayed our love for a rich man’s comfort.” I plead forgiveness. I beg for mercy, but inside myself I know that his eyes are speaking the truth. I was pledged to him. I was even preparing to ask the mistress for permission to marry him, when the cursed day arrived and our lord, Mahmut Pasha, catching sight of me, began to twirl his moustache. It was the fatal sign of which I had first been warned when I was a girl of ten, and now, eight years later, it had happened. My heart sank straight to my feet.

The house maids still warn any new addition to the household that there is a longstanding tradition in this family. When the master looks at any one of them and begins to play with his moustache, it is a sign that the call to his bed will come for that night. And it always did, Stone Woman. It always did. And not just for the maids. There were a few young coachmen who received the summons. One of them ran away and was never seen again. The maids spoke often of Mahmut Pasha’s habits, but their crudeness offended my ears. I preferred to forget their stories.

I was, after all, only a kitchen maid, not even permitted near the other rooms of the house. My task was to help the cooks and make sure they had all the ingredients they needed for their dishes. When I was much younger, I never thought of myself as a person whom the master even noticed and so I was never worried like some of the other maids, those who carried their breasts like over-ripe melons.

He saw me from the window one day as I was sitting on a bench near the vegetable garden and washing cucumbers. I averted my glance from his, but he rushed down and passed in front of me. I stood up and covered my head. He smiled and fondled his moustache. O cruel fate, Stone Woman. I knew I was doomed. I wanted to run away before the night came. As luck would have it, my clean-shaven Hikmet with his dark red hair, who stood daily on guard duty outside the house, had gone back to his village to attend his mother’s funeral. I was alone. I swear in Allah’s name that if Hikmet had been there that day I would have run away with him, but it was not to be. The call came in the shape of the oldest maidservant in the house. She, who boasted of how she had warmed the bed of Mahmut Pasha as well as his father and grandfather, was now approaching her fiftieth year. In the past she had used her privileged position to lord it over the other servants. They had despised and feared her, but that was some time ago. Now she had been reduced to the status of the Pasha’s procuress, but this had made her warm-hearted. I think, deep in herself, she understood the humiliation. To try and make it easier for us she would say: “I have known three generations of this family,” she used to tell us, “and this young master is the kindest of them all. He will not be violent with you. He will not hurt you in any way as his grandfather did when his lust was aroused.”

Her reassuring words had little effect on me. I lay in my narrow little bed and wept without restraint. Later, when the old woman took me to the Pasha’s chamber, I fell on my knees and kissed Mahmut Pasha’s feet. I beseeched him to spare my honour. I whispered that I was promised to another. I confessed my love for Hikmet. I told of my desire to be a mother and to give my children the love that had been denied me. In my foolishness I thought my honesty might impress him, but it had a completely different effect. He took my pleas for resistance and this inflamed him further. He made me undress and then he pushed me back on his bed and took his pleasure. For my part, and this, I swear to you, Stone Woman, is the truth, I felt only anger and sadness and helplessness. No enjoyment did I feel, not even momentarily. The blood I saw on my legs frightened me. All the while his ungainly body, with its mounds of flesh, was heaving over me. I became inwardly angry with my parents for dying when I was only three and I cursed my grandfather for selling me like a piece of cloth to a passing merchant.

He noticed my indifference. This angered him. “Return tomorrow night,” he said as he dismissed me in the voice a master uses when reprimanding an ungrateful slave.

I returned the next night and the one after and every night after that one. My indifference only seemed to arouse him and he became ever more determined to break my will. He wanted me to say that I enjoyed him. He would look at me and ask whether I could ever love him. I never replied to these questions, but I also ceased to resist. He bought me clothes, gave me expensive jewellery and, on one occasion, dressed me in the clothes of a European lady and took me to the reception at the German Embassy, where he introduced me as his European wife, who had lost the power of speech after the tragic death of her father. He moved me to a special room in the house and I was given my own maid. One day he was entertaining some guests in his own rooms. I was seated next to him, watching the men getting more and more drunk. A few of them looked at me with desire in their eyes. Suddenly his wife, the princess Sabiha, walked into the room. She was intoxicated with anger. She stood there for a moment, ignoring his frown. She screamed abuse at him, informing his friends that he was worse than a eunuch. As he stood to escort her out of the room, she undid her trousers and lifted her tunic to reveal her most private parts. As the men averted their eyes, she shouted at her husband: “Wasn’t this good enough for you? Answer me, you sweeper of horse-shit!” The Pasha’s face had frozen in horror. Her performance had a magical effect. I have never seen men in their cups sober themselves so quickly. Then, satisfied with what she had done, Sabiha swept out of the room. Previously I had never liked her and this was long before I was chosen by the Pasha. She was rude to us and her chambermaids loathed her. After this display I began to admire her. I wanted to speak with her and explain my own despair, but I never found the courage to face her anger. I pray that Allah will forgive my cowardice.

But I could not stop thinking of Hikmet. The only time I forced Hikmet out of my head was when the master was taking his pleasure of me. I never enjoyed those moments. They told me that the mistress had sent a message to Hikmet and told him what had happened. He was never seen again. I wanted him to come to me, Stone Woman. I would have cleaned his feet with my tears, begged him to forgive me and take me with him, far away from here, but he never returned to the house. Perhaps he did not love me enough. Perhaps he was scared off by the Pasha or perhaps a pregnant purse, heavy with coins, bought his disappearance.

And now I carry the child of a man I despise. I’m sure it’s a boy and that makes me even more angry. I will not have his child. I will not bring this poor creature into the world. I will jump into the sky and I will fly away, Stone Woman. When I get tired of flying I will fall into the sea and when they find me, I will be floating on the water, like a bloated, dead fish, but with my eyes shut. I will be in a sleep as deep as the sea. Do you understand why I’m doing this, Stone Woman? To punish him. These cursed Beys and Pashas think they are gods. They believe all they have to say to a poor girl is, “I love you, have my child”, and she will be so grateful for their affection, their food, their clothes, their money that she will ask for nothing more from this world. I dreaded his touch. My worst fear was that one day the Pasha would put his poisonous seed in me and it would sprout. And yet when it happened I was no longer frightened. I became very calm. I knew what had to be done. There was no more anguish in my life.

The day I lost my Hikmet, with his soft skin and smiling eyes, the sun stopped shining for me. In Istanbul, the Pasha tried to avoid leaving me on my own. He thought his company kept me cheerful. I felt more alone when he was with me than at any other time and especially when he was filled with lust and groaned like a donkey on heat. Not a day passed when I didn’t ask myself what I should do with my life.

What shall I do, Stone Woman? You listen, but you never reply. If only you could speak. Just once. Can you see the sky tonight? There is a crescent moon, which always travels fast as if in search of a lover, but it will soon become full-blown, like my belly, and when it does I know what I will do. I will go to the cliffs and fly to join the moon. I will laugh as I leap. The distance will disappear and on that day I will know that no other man will ever enter my life again. I will laugh at the thought of the Pasha’s fat face, white with anger, when they tell him that his slave-girl has freed herself. He will know why I did this and that will hurt him even more. He will know I left this world because I could no longer bear his touch or that of his child. He will never be able to admit this truth to anyone, but I hope the secret devours his insides. I want his death to be pure agony. My only regret is that I will not live to see that day.’

I
FIRST SAW THE
strange gestures he was making from a distance. They made me smile. I knew precisely what the old Armenian was doing. Like everything else in this house, it revived memories of my own childhood. Scenes from my past were being repeated, but this time for the benefit of my son. I was pleased. Petrossian was engaged in a weekly household ritual, which he would never entrust to anyone else. He was polishing my father’s old silver shaving bowl. It was an item that had been brought back from Paris many years ago. He treasured it greatly and, for that reason, Petrossian had taken it upon himself to ensure that the bowl never lost its lustre. Normally such tasks were assigned to less important servants, but Petrossian, who always accompanied Iskander Pasha to Paris, must have known the value attached by his master to this particular object.

Orhan and the children from the servants’ quarters were watching him, trance-like, just as we used to when we were young. I walked slowly in their direction, but I knew which story was being retold even before I heard the words being spoken. I was pleased and irritated at the same time. I wanted Orhan to be part of this world, to be accepted by my father, but I wanted things to change. Here it seemed that, like the Stone Woman, everything stood still.

“And do you think, my young master Orhan, that Memed the Conqueror listened to the whimpers and the moans of his frightened old woman of a Vizier? No. He raised his hand to say ‘Enough’. The Sultan had heard enough of such talk. Now he wanted to take the city they called Constantinople. He wanted to stand erect on the old walls of Byzantium and look at Europe. Memed knew that if we were going to be a power in Europe we had to take that city. Without it our Empire would always be one-eyed. We needed Constantinople to look at what lay beyond the Bosporus.

“They say that it was a beautiful spring day when the Sultan Memed gave the orders to prepare for battle and lay siege to the city. We will build a fortress on the other side of the water to control all access to their city. It will fall. Memed the Great was sure of this and his strong will and determination infected every soldier. Mothers told their sons to go and fight for the honour of their faith. Imagine the excitement that must have swept through the army. The Sultan has ordered that we will take the city. His Exalted Majesty has ordered the soldiers be properly fed. That night hundreds of lambs were covered with fresh herbs and roasted on spits for the soldiers. The exquisite scent of grilled meat pervaded the entire encampment. I’m sure it must have reached the defenders of Constantinople...”

Why does nothing in this house ever change? When I was told this same story by this same story-teller, I’m sure it was goats and not lambs that were being prepared, and perhaps ten years from now it will be peacocks. I have stopped caring. It makes no difference and yet I could not help being touched as I watched Orhan’s face alight with excitement. His eyes were fixed on Petrossian. My little boy had entered the world of Sultans and holy wars. How different all this was from the bedtime stories Dmitri and I told him at home. I had brought him up on stories of our family, of my uncles and aunts and all our cousins in different parts of our Empire. It was a way of instructing him in the geography of our world and its cities. These were tales of happiness and adventures, designed to make him feel at ease with the world inhabited by his family.