Last Letter from Istanbul: Escape with this epic holiday read of secrets and forbidden love. Lucy Foley
so often, Babek would let out a low moan. It wasn’t a human sound. And he lay where he had been dragged; his limbs at odd angles.
He was not sure whether Babek could hear him, but it seemed important to keep talking. He could feel sleep pressing in, promising a respite from the cold which had found its way into him, deeper than it ever had before. He was lucid enough to know what this meant. It did not matter that he had somehow escaped being wounded – the cold would kill him with just as little mercy as the flesh-rupturing path of a bullet. So he talked: of home, of their return. It would not do to dwell on the things both of them had seen: the feasting dogs; the indignity of the bodies left out without a proper burial – when a Muslim man should be interred as quickly as possible. Even if he had the energy and strength left to do it he could not have buried them all. He would not think, either, of the treachery of the Armenian, the man who had been in their midst, and eaten with them, and drunk tea with them, and promised to help them. And for whose body they had searched in the snow, mourning the loss of one of their own. So instead he talked of the city they both loved; the orange blossom in spring, the first tiny bright green leaves on the fig trees, the smell of freshly brewed coffee and warm baked bread.
He tried to remember what it was to be warm. He talked to Babek of a summer’s trip to the Princes’ Islands. A secret beach he knew where the water was so clear that you could still see the bottom even when it was as deep as a house was tall. And then the feeling of the hot sand beneath your back, the sun drying the damp from your skin with the tenderness of a lover’s caress. Sand with tiny pieces of broken shell, pink as a fingernail, the inside of your lip. He was so cold now that it was difficult to form each word – each had to be forced out on a little huff of breath, so that he almost felt he could see the letters in the freezing cloud as it left his mouth – but he thought he did the job well enough. If only he could feel the meaning of the words, though. Please, he thought, if this is really how it ends for me … let me feel that tender warmth one last time.
He tried now to think of his sister and his mother and grandmother. He had thought that if it came to it, if he found himself on a precipice, all he would need to do would be to think of them, and he would be able to keep himself going. He had not realised how difficult it would be not to die.
His friend’s moans had ceased now. It was some relief. Perhaps the pain had lessened, slightly.
‘Your wife, Babek. Think of how proud she’ll be to have a war hero for a husband.’
Would his own family be proud? They would be relieved, certainly, to see him home. He tried to summon their faces to him but found that he could not do it. The cold seemed to have worked its way inside his head.
‘They’ll come for us soon. It cannot be too long. We’ll be taken home.’
That word. It seemed to encapsulate everything that was good; everything that was the opposite of this place. His cheeks stung; the tears freezing upon the skin.
Time had become fluid, elusive. It seemed that they had been here for many days, many nights. But when it began to grow dark he realised that it could only have been a few hours. The loss of the light made him feel more alone. He reminded himself that Babek was with him. He looked over at his friend. Babek was sleeping now, his chin upon his chest. He looked almost comical, like a broken doll, his limbs splayed. He wondered how long he had been talking to himself, taking comfort from the mere idea of a conversation. He saw that the jacket that he had lent to Babek – because he needed it far more – had fallen open. Feeling rather like his mother – how she had fussed over them when they were little – he leant down and pulled the lapels up so it covered him properly.
He continued to talk to Babek, even though his friend slept, because it was a way of keeping awake himself, and one of them had to be conscious in case reinforcements came for them – or the Russians came back.
A little while later, as it was growing dark, something occurred to him. It was too horrible to contemplate properly, so he shunted the idea away. But it clung to him, to the edges of thought. And finally he looked over at his friend, looked properly this time, and saw that he was dead.
This evening he, Bill, his fellow medical officer, and Calvert, an officer they met in Baku, are having dinner in a new Pera restaurant. Russian: all the new restaurants seem to be, set up by the more fortunate of the refugees who have fled across the Black Sea from Lenin’s Revolution.
At night the city becomes more than ever a place of two distinct halves. Stamboul slumbers early while the lights of Pera, just across the Golden Horn, seem to burn brightest in the smallest, darkest hours of the morning. Here the meyhanes and jazz clubs fill with Allied soldiers and naval officers. And there are also those other establishments which choose not to outwardly proclaim the sort of entertainment offered. They do not need to; their renown is spread quickly, secretly, among those who have a taste for such things.
Inside the restaurant is a fug of smoke and steam, a clamour of voices and crockery. Beneath it all, not loud enough to do anything other than add to the racket, comes the thin wail of a violin. The man playing it has one of the most tragic faces George has ever seen, and he wonders whether he was chosen specifically for this, rather than his indifferent skill with the instrument. The maître d’hôtel meets them, sweeps them to their table in the other corner of the room.
Calvert is not impressed. ‘The French always get the best seats,’ he says, darkly, indicating a table several rows across where three blue-uniformed figures sit smoking and laughing. There exists among the so-called Allied forces an atmosphere of mutual distrust.
‘What’s so special about that table?’ Bill asks.
Calvert raises one fair eyebrow. He points to the place beyond the table. There, George sees now, sits a rudimentary wooden structure with a platform a few feet from the ground. ‘It’s closer to the stage. They’ll be able to see right up the skirts.’
He looks round for the maître d’hôtel.
‘Do you know,’ George says to Bill, ‘I completely forgot to tell you. The strangest thing happened yesterday.’ He describes the woman on the jetty. Already the idea of her is like something not quite real, a fragment of a dream.
Bill frowns. ‘You should report that.’
‘Why?’
‘Could be espionage. There are resistance groups, you know. The Teşkilât-i Mahsusa, the Karakol. You heard about the fire at the French barracks at Rami?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well, all of the Algerian soldiers escaped miraculously unharmed. It’s thought that they were in cahoots with the Turkish resistance.’
‘I thought of all that – briefly. But I don’t believe it was for a second. A solitary woman, for goodness’ sake, washing her feet.’
‘Still, you should make a formal note of it. She’d be the perfect choice to scope it, because we wouldn’t suspect her. At the very least it’s British property. She trespassed.’
‘Mmm.’ He is rather wishing he hadn’t said anything. He knows already that he will make no such report. He wonders whether, given the opportunity, Bill would also tell him to turn in the little boy who spat on his shoes.
They are brought chilled glasses of that Russian spirit, which tastes to George like a distillation of nothingness, a void. But it goes well with the food. Particularly caviar, which he ate for the first time in that godforsaken place on the shores of the Caspian Sea, bubbles of salt bursting upon the tongue, a concentration of the sea itself, at once delicious and slightly repellent. But isn’t that the same, he thinks, for all tastes deemed refined? The sourness of champagne, the bitter of coffee, the fleshy gobbet of the oyster. Does one enjoy them as much for their taste as for one’s ability to overcome this brief repulsion, even fear?
Calvert sucks back an oyster, drains his glass of vodka,