The Silence of Scheherazade

by Defne Suman

  As she passed the French Hospital, where she worked, Meline covered herself carefully. From behind the ramparts of Kadife Kale a purple light was delicately tearing at the darkness. At this deserted hour of the morning, she thought it best to avoid the twisting back streets of Agia Katerina and Agios Dimitris. She would go down to Trassa Street and walk along the wide straight road there. Perhaps she would find an early coachman and get home as the sky lightened. After that, everything would be all right. She would make some coffee, wake the girls, and prepare their breakfast as if the day were just beginning. She touched the money bag hanging round her neck. She would count out her husband’s gambling debt into Mahmut Aga’s hand herself, one coin at a time.

  When she came to the high walls surrounding the courtyard of the French Hospital, she speeded up. There was not a sound on the street. As soon as she turned the next corner, she would leave the hospital behind. It was just then, precisely at that corner, that she came face to face with Midwife Marika. The young midwife let out a scream at the wholly unexpected sight of Meline standing before her in the early morning darkness. It briefly occurred to Meline to keep her head down and simply hurry on past the midwife she herself had trained. How could she explain her presence outside the hospital at that hour? While she was struggling to mutter something in Turkish before slipping away, Marika again screamed out.

  ‘Oh, Midwife Meline! Oh my God, Midwife Meline! You’ve come at exactly the right time. Oh, Mother Mary, Panagia mou, I thank thee. Quick, quick! We’re in a really difficult situation, an emergency.’

  With no idea what was happening, Meline found herself suddenly in the maternity room in the basement of the hospital. In the dim light, she could see a pregnant woman lying with spread legs raised on the green birthing chair in the centre of the room. The woman was unconscious – or was she dead? Nurse Liz was standing at the woman’s head, pressing a cloth soaked in vinegar to her forehead, wrists and ankles. The nurse’s tiny lips were moving constantly; she was clearly praying.

  When all hope had been lost for the mother and her baby, Midwife Marika had fled the maternity room and run out into the street, perhaps to cry, perhaps to think up some plan to conceal her defeat, or perhaps to escape and never return. At any other time, Midwife Meline would have punished her young colleague most harshly for having left the maternity room while the mother’s heart was still beating, but, fortunately for Marika, Meline was in no state that morning to concentrate on anyone but herself.

  She hurried over to the mother and grabbed her wrist. The pulse was about to fade.

  ‘Liz, run, light all the lamps and bring one here. Hang it on that hook above us. Hurry, run! Marika, tell me quickly what you have done so far.’

  Marika began to cry. ‘I went to her house for the delivery. She’s from our neighbourhood. She’s had twins before, so I thought it would be an easy birth. Her cervix didn’t dilate. Hours passed. Ah, Midwife Meline, I should have brought her here straight away. I should have called you. Oh, what have I done? What have I done!’

  Meline examined the woman’s stomach, the opening of the cervix. Nurse Liz had lit all the lamps and was standing at Meline’s side with a carbide lamp that gave off a bright white light. Marika had attached an oxygen mask to the woman’s mouth.

  ‘When you say hours, how many exactly? The cervix is dilated to nine centimetres. Where did the birth begin – at her home or after you brought her here? How many centimetres was the cervix dilated when she came here?’

  Marika mumbled something, but Meline was no longer listening.

  In her mind a plan was forming. Like fate, that plan had begun to weave a web.

  Could she make it happen? Was it possible?

  God willing, anything was possible.

  She turned to the women standing around her.

  ‘That’ll be all, Marika. You’ve done everything you could. Now go upstairs and get some rest. You too, Nurse Liz. Do not allow anyone to disturb me. Tell the other nurses not to come into this maternity room, not to even come down to this floor. If I hear so much as a footstep or even a whisper, I will have you all fired. That’s it. Now go; leave me alone. You’ve made enough mistakes already. I will work alone and try to save at least one life.’

  Meline was the hospital’s head midwife and the younger ones were accustomed to taking orders from her. Especially now, with Marika fully aware of what a big mistake she’d made, it was very easy to get rid of her. Once her footsteps and Nurse Liz’s had receded down the corridor, Meline rolled up her sleeves.

  She had realized a while ago that the baby had died from lack of oxygen. With her skilful hands she drew the dead baby from between the legs of the unconscious mother. Blood flowed from the woman’s uterus. Meline held the baby in the air and examined it. It was a girl with red hair and a tiny nose. The purple face and clenched fists made it look as if it was angry at the merciless ways of a world where life ended before it had begun. Its blood-crusted body was still warm and the umbilical cord still pulsed, though weakly. After cutting the cord, Meline slapped the baby on its back, in one last attempt. But its tiny face was already dark purple, and its body, disconnected from its mother, was quickly cooling. Placing the baby on the counter beside her, she rapidly sewed up the woman’s torn flesh. The oxygen passing through the tube to the lungs had not been enough to save the baby, but it had kept the mother alive. The gush of blood from the womb was subsiding and the pulse was getting stronger.

  After making sure that the mother was alive, she washed the child’s corpse. Its face was now very dark. Wrapping it in a clean pink blanket, she hurried out of the maternity room. It was God’s gift that there were no other births in progress on that floor just then. Was this not a sign from Almighty God that her plan would be fruitful?

  If she was going to save a life, the time to do so was now.

  She raced towards the door at the end of the corridor that opened onto a back street and with the dead baby in her arms ran all the way to the orphanage. If Edith’s daughter was still there, if Edith’s daughter was still alive, that would mean that Almighty God approved of what she was about to do.

  She made it to the chestnut tree in the courtyard. And, yes, the tiny one was still there where she’d left her. No one had woken to her screams. Meline knelt down and took the baby in her arms, shaking the dirt from her blanket. Not a sound came from the baby.

  Oh God, had she died? Had her lungs collapsed from hunger and the cold? The baby still hadn’t made a sound; her face had turned purple. Meline patted her on the back. With the last particle of her strength, the baby let out a noise.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Holy Mary, Almighty God! Thank you! She’s alive!’

  Time was running out. The darkness was lifting and a pinkish light was filling the courtyard. Opening the blanket, she took Edith’s naked daughter in her arms. Keeping one eye on the orphanage windows, she wrapped the lifeless baby in the yellow blanket and placed it under the chestnut tree. Swaddling Edith’s daughter in the pink hospital blanket, she hurried back out onto the street. A group of gypsy women had settled cross-legged on the ground. They were sitting around a cloth they’d spread out, passing a marijuana pipe between them and reading each other’s fortunes from cards they’d set out in front of them. They didn’t notice Meline coming out of the orphanage courtyard and slipping through the back door of the hospital, which she’d left open a crack.

  She rushed along the corridor with Edith’s baby in her arms, hoping she was still alive, and entered the maternity room. The woman was still unconscious, lying there with an oxygen mask on her mouth. Pushing aside the straps of her white nightgown, Meline exposed the woman’s breasts and stuck the baby’s half-opened lips onto one of her nipples. In a primal instinct for life, the baby’s lips clasped the nipple. When the first drop slipped down her throat, she opened her tiny fists and touched the naked skin of her new mother with the tips of her red fingers.

  *

  When Nurse Liz and Marika heard the bell ri
nging in the waiting room and ran down to the maternity room, they found Meline sitting on a stool with the baby, wrapped in a pink blanket, in her arms. The mother was still unconscious, but her cheeks had some colour now, and her breathing was regular. Nurse Liz screamed; Marika, crossing herself, knelt in front of the baby.

  Midwife Meline lifted her head and smiled. She was worn out but not sorry. Almighty God had wished it to be this way.

  She had saved a life.

  The life of this little child whom she had saved was worth the world.

  The women hugged each other. While they were congratulating Meline, the baby began howling at the top of her voice. The midwife said in a tired but calm voice, ‘Nurse Liz, let’s arrange a room for Kyra Katina upstairs. Take the baby to a wet nurse until the mother wakes up. When she wakes, you may turn the baby over to her.’

  While Nurse Liz was putting an identification bracelet on the baby’s arm, giving the day and hour of birth, Meline walked to the door.

  ‘With your permission, I shall go home and prepare breakfast for my daughters before school. Midwife Marika, she is in your care now. You did well. Kalimera sas. Good day.’

  Farewell

  Panagiota was taken aback by the crowds at the quay. Adriana, who’d been watching the refugees flowing into the city from the window of her house since yesterday, laughed at her friend’s innocence.

  ‘Ah, Panagiota mou, what universe are you living in? While you’ve been rolling out pastry for your spanakopita these last two days, everything’s changed; the mountains have come to the sea. Ela, here, meet your new neighbours, the city’s new residents. That ship over there is ours too. It’s full. Apparently, it set out to conquer Constantinople, then came back. The soldiers on the ship say they will never, ever set foot on land and are demanding to be taken back to Greece – that’s what I heard.’

  Panagiota squinted at the mass of people camping on the shore. She was surprised but didn’t give it much thought. There was something about the crowds – the bare-bottomed children; the young women with heads covered by black kerchiefs – that scorched her heart, but at least they had escaped from their villages and made it this far. They were safe now. They could stay there until the war was over and everything was calm, then go back to their homes. The weather was good, Smyrna was bountiful. Or if they wished to leave, they could get on the ships that would come from Greece and leave. Mana Ellas would save her children. And in the meantime, there were many charitable people like Adriana’s family, and churches and schools, that would take care of them.

  Like the genie in Aladdin’s lamp, love had been summoned from its hiding place in the corner of Panagiota’s heart and was now suffusing her whole being. Her eyes saw only beauty and goodness. And lines of Greek soldiers marching towards the docks. She didn’t notice their skeletal bodies, the wounded chests beneath their torn shirts, their bloodied feet in holed boots, their crippled legs that they dragged along with great difficulty, their lustreless eyes, their lice-infested hair and beards. She saw only what reminded her of Stavros.

  Three times she took steps towards tall men with green eyes, and each time Adriana grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.

  ‘Panagiota mou, what would Stavros be doing here? Why would he be among the soldiers getting evacuated? His home is here. He wouldn’t come down to the quay. He’d go straight to his mother’s house like Minas did.’

  Adriana was right, but Panagiota had a feeling – and if she’d thought about it a little, she’d have realized that she’d always carried this feeling in her heart – that Stavros would leave her. His volunteering for the army had made her miserable but at the same time had confirmed the old suspicion that pierced her heart like a thorn: it was her fate to be abandoned. She could not have known that this feeling was a result of events that had been set in motion long ago, years before she was born, and that had been passed to her from another, had seeped into her essence. With a logic that was both simple and limited, she considered cause and effect to be entirely contained within one’s own lifespan and so believed that this fate was the outcome of some deficiency in her character or something she’d done wrong. She thought that she deserved to be abandoned because she wasn’t good enough, or smart enough, or pretty enough or whatever it was she needed to be.

  Now, as she searched with anxious eyes for Stavros among the soldiers streaming towards the ship anchored in front of Punta, from a dark crevice of her subconscious a voice was whispering that she was about to be deserted once more. Drawing a handkerchief from her breast, she wiped the sweat from her brow and took her friend’s arm. The two girls left the chaos of the Punta dock behind them and walked towards the Café de Paris. The quay was full of ladies swinging their hips and showing off their tightly corseted waists as they paraded along the waterfront. Their wide-brimmed hats were trimmed with ribbons that were tied under their chins in bows, in colours chosen to match their parasols.

  There were no parasols to twirl for Adriana and Panagiota, nor hats on their heads. At any other time, Panagiota would definitely not have come down to the quay dressed as she was, but today she was following along with her friend and had had no time to change. She was wearing a loose-fitting blue dress that she’d had on while helping her mother in the kitchen. The skirt came down to her ankles and her hands still smelled of onions. Her big toe stuck out like a small hill at the tip of her pink satin shoes. Even when she took the shoe off, the mound didn’t disappear; it was imprinted on the shoe. Uneasily, she grumbled, ‘Let’s not sit down at the Café de Paris. Let’s eat our ice creams while we walk around.’

  ‘Whatever you want, Panagiota mou – it’s your birthday!’ said Adriana with a wink.

  Her friend’s good humour had returned. Splendid! A walk on the quay cured all. With gratitude, Panagiota watched the blue water sparkling in the sunlight. The hills on the horizon spread over the sea like supine whales. Sailing boats rocked in front of colourful fishing boats and from far away came the familiar chug-chug of a motorboat. The setting sun, as round as a cannonball, was turning everything it touched to gold. Her heart filled with happiness.

  Her darling Smyrna!

  The duty of this most beautiful of all cities was to remind people, even in their most sorrowful moments, of the beauty of the world. She wanted to hug Adriana. Minas had returned, Stavros was on his way home – everything was going to be wonderful!

  They walked arm in arm with light steps, ice cream cones in their hands. As they passed the Théâtre de Smyrne, they raised their heads to read the wide black letters spelling out the name of the film across the arched entrance: ‘Tango de la Mort’.

  Adriana licked her lemon and cherry ice cream and poked her friend. ‘Did Pavlo take you to the cinema, girl?’

  Trying to hide her smile, Panagiota made a tour around her ice cream cone with her pink-tipped tongue.

  Adriana squealed in excitement. ‘Look at you – you’re blushing! He took you, of course! You, naughty girl! Oh, who knows what those dark seats saw.’

  ‘Adriana!’

  ‘Come on, come on, ela filenada. You’re not going to keep secrets from me, are you? Tell me, how far did you let him go? He is your fiancé after all, right? Did you pay a late-night visit to a dance hall or what?’

  ‘Adriana!’

  Now that Adriana had got started, she wouldn’t stop. ‘He must have taken you for a ride in a carriage, yes? And of course he chose a covered carriage, right? Wait! Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess. You went from here to Kokaryali in a covered carriage. And when you got there, you ate red mullet at one of those cafés in the sea, dangling your feet in the water. Oh, the shore there smells so deliciously of sea urchins and mussels! Then, let’s see… maybe to the meadows. Naturally, as a good Smyrna girl, it was your duty to show your guest from Ioannina the picnic places. And since you’d gone all that way, you couldn’t return without first alighting from the carriage and taking a walk to get some fresh air. Such a beautiful spot, with the mountains cove
red in olive groves and fig trees, the occasional solitary house, an abandoned barn… and beds of hay in the barns. Yes?’

  ‘And how do you know all of this?’

  Panagiota asked this question, which was supposed to be her counter-attack, in a tone that told Adriana she’d guessed everything exactly right. Both of them began to laugh. As she nibbled the tip of her ice cream cone, Adriana made up a song about love in the hay and began singing it at the top of her voice. Panagiota hid her face in her hands.

  They were walking towards the harbour and had almost reached Kraemer’s.

  ‘Aman, aman…

  Making love in the haystack

  Wrapped up so tight!’

  ‘Adriana!’

  ‘Making love in the haystack

  All through the night…

  Aman, aman.’

  Panagiota cut her short by grabbing her wrist. Adriana was just about to object when she noticed that her friend’s face had suddenly lost all its colour. She stopped singing and turned to see what Panagiota was looking at.

  Hundreds of soldiers were packed onto the wharf. From somewhere in the mass confusion, Pavlo emerged, dressed in a spotlessly clean khaki uniform, and came running towards them. A large cloth bag the same colour as his uniform was slung over his left shoulder; in his right hand he carried a small grey bag with his initials embroidered in red thread in the corner. Weaving between the soldiers and the villagers, he arrived at Panagiota’s side. Sweat was dripping from his cheekbones; his forehead shone like a mirror.

  ‘Panagiota! Where have you been, for God’s sake? I’ve been searching for you for hours.’