by Defne Suman
As he was replacing one of them, a photo of Edith as a young girl fell out from between the pages. It was from a long time ago, before they’d met. She was wearing a white dress and had the hint of a smile on her face, and she was positioned in front of a fancy studio backdrop of deer and trees. With a spy’s reflexes, or perhaps a lover’s, he tucked the photo into the sweaty pocket of his waistcoat.
Edith had gone back down to the garden. ‘Leave everything and run to the quay,’ she shouted in her deep voice. ‘The fire is coming. Get ready to run. Quickly! Do not dawdle. You must go to the waterfront immediately, all of you – now! Yes, now! Tora!’
Her butler Christo and the other servants had already returned home to their families. Juliette, together with Jean-Pierre and his family, had taken refuge in the French Consulate three days ago. Citing the refugees in her garden, Edith had stubbornly disregarded her mother and Avinash’s insistence that she go with them.
When they reached the quay, neither Avinash nor Edith could believe their eyes. There were ten times more people than when they’d last been down there. They were all but stacked on top of each other, their arms raised in the air as if asking God for help. Whenever anyone saw a horse and rider approaching, they hid their daughters. Hundreds of people were trying to crowd onto boats at the shore. Some of the boats capsized right away. The oars of those that stayed upright were being pulled hard in the direction of the European ships anchored some distance away. The surface of the sea was littered with bloated bodies. Boys from the Muslim neighbourhoods were jumping into the water with knives in their hands, cutting necklaces and rings from necks and fingers and stuffing them into their pockets. The soldiers holding the two ends of the harbour did not interfere.
Avinash helped Edith into a British motorboat that was waiting just beyond the barricade set up by the cavalry. Without wasting any time, the captain turned the bow towards the dark waters of the open sea and started the engine. Hearing the engine, people charged out into the road from where they’d been hiding in dim corners of nearby restaurants, forgetting about the cavalry, the barricade and the machine-gun fire. Edith screamed at the sight of them, seized the rudder from the captain’s hands and gestured frantically and wordlessly at the desperate people on the shore, as if she were mute.
The collar of the captain’s white uniform glowed in the darkness. ‘I am sorry, Miss Lamarck,’ he said coldly, ‘I am under strict orders from my superiors not to take anyone except British citizens and their families on this boat.’
‘Fuck you, you animal! Don’t talk to me of your superiors.’
Like a wild tiger, Edith launched herself at the captain, screaming curses she had never before uttered. She was going to throw him into the sea with the bloated corpses and fill the boat with refugees. She could hear the poor souls yelling their entreaties, could hear their children wailing. She and the captain struggled. The small boat rocked from side to side.
With one swift movement, Avinash grabbed her in his strong arms and squeezed until she was still. The captain grumbled and went back to his rudder. After straightening his collar, he took a cigarette from his waistcoat pocket and lit it.
‘Goddamn you, Avinash!’ Edith shrieked as she wriggled to escape his arms. ‘Goddamn all of you! What are you doing, abandoning all these people? They will burn to death here! Don’t you see? Let me go. I will go back. Let me go! I don’t want to leave. Don’t take me away. Merde! Don’t put me on a goddamned British ship. Take me back to Smyrna. Emmène-moi à Smyrne!’
Avinash did not loosen his hold. The bow of the motorboat sliced through the water, away from the screaming herd.
Having used up all the swearwords in all the languages spoken in Smyrna at that time, Edith, sobbing, surrendered to her lover. ‘Avinash, I beg you, do not take me away from here! Leave me here. Let me burn with these people. I belong here. This city is my country. Having seen what I’ve seen, I do not want to live as a ghost who’s been rescued.’
Her sobs ceased abruptly and from her throat came a hoarse sound like a yelp. She covered her mouth with both her hands. The motorboat was now far enough from the shore that she could see the full horror of what was happening to Smyrna.
From within Avinash’s embrace, Edith stood rigid and stared at the land they had left behind as if spellbound. Flames swelled like a pack of rabid dogs, a red monster with four huge arms opened wide, taking the city into its fiery clutches. Trying to protect her, Avinash hid her face in his chest, but Edith pushed his hand away and turned towards the city. The sharp lines of her face softened in the red light reflected off the water; she looked like the girl in the photograph Avinash was carrying in his waistcoat pocket. Without taking her hands from her mouth, she blinked several times. Two teardrops rolled slowly down her cheeks onto her lap.
The fire reared up from the city’s hills like an ocean wave, preparing to swallow beautiful Smyrna and its children in one gulp.
They had reached the Iron Duke. A crowd of people packed into a small boat had seen a rope ladder being thrown over the side of the British battleship and had begun rowing with all their might towards it. Waving their arms, they were shouting something with one voice, though it was impossible to understand what.
Edith hung onto the rope ladder with the last of her strength as she transferred from the motorboat and made her way up the side of the battleship. Midway up, she stopped, looked back, and came face to face with a two-year-old baby who’d been thrown to her.
‘Take this baby with you, lady! Save my child, madam, se parakalo, madam!’ The mother’s screams split the sky.
The cloth wrapped around the child had fallen open as she was thrown, leaving her naked, dirt-encrusted body exposed. There was a delighted expression on her tiny face as she flew through the air, and when her eyes were on a level with Edith’s, she opened her mouth to laugh. Perhaps she remembered happy days when her father had tossed her into the air like this and caught her as she fell.
Edith let go of the ladder with one hand to catch the little girl, lost her balance and almost toppled backwards into the sea. As the baby plummeted towards the water, the tiny child’s laughter turned to tears. She hit her head on the side of the rowing boat and disappeared underwater. With a shriek, the mother jumped into the sea, brought her baby’s bloody face to the surface and kissed her. Then, with her daughter in her arms, she sank into the depths.
As Edith watched this horror unfolding from halfway up the rope ladder, the other people in the rowing boat paid not the slightest attention. They were entirely focused on trying to climb the ladder themselves, pushing and shoving each other as they struggled to grab onto it. The captain of the motorboat Edith had fought with earlier had taken an iron pipe from under the rudder and was now smashing their hands, forcing them to drop off the ladder and into the water one by one. Seeing this, Edith stopped climbing. This time she really was going to strangle the captain. But as she tried to descend, her hands slipped and she fell into Avinash, who was on the bottom rung. ‘If you don’t hurry up,’ he said, ‘many more people will lose their lives because of the false hope this ladder is giving them.’
As soon as the two of them stepped onto the deck, the ladder was hauled up and pails of boiling water were hurled over the side onto the heads of the people in the rowing boat, to get them away from the Iron Duke.
Edith was breathing fast as she made her way to the front of the ship and leaned on the iron railing. She could not bear what she was seeing. If she jumped overboard from there, would she die immediately? Even from that distance, she could feel the heat of the flames. If her forehead was beaded with sweat, the crowds on the quay must have been suffocating. People were leaping into the sea, ten to twenty at a time. Some had grabbed hold of the iron mooring rings used by the fishermen and were managing to keep their heads above water, but Turkish soldiers were hitting their hands with iron pipes as they passed, just as the British motorboat captain had. The hands that let go of the rings stayed on the surface for a while, gesticulating
in the air as if bidding farewell to the crowd. Then they sank out of sight, disappearing into the dark void.
Avinash came up behind Edith, put his arms around her waist and wet her neck with his tears. They could hear all too clearly the howls coming from the shore. From everywhere, sirens wailed and bells in church steeples rang as they burned, but nothing could suppress the screams rising from the quay. Neither of them had ever in their lives experienced such acute sorrow or despair. They clung to each other to keep themselves upright. In the ballroom of the Iron Duke a military band had begun playing a polka. The insatiable flames jumped from the beautifully ornate Théâtre de Smyrne to the Café de Paris and from there to the Kraemer Palace. As the hotel’s roof collapsed, the majestic building vanished forever.
Bread-Baker’s Square
Panagiota woke to the sound of dogs barking. There were screams and other noises coming from the square. Was there a fire? She ran from her bedroom to the bay window in the living room.
Yes, fire! Oh, my God! It had engulfed the Armenian district and was now heading straight towards them. The flames, whipped up by the wind, were licking the rooftops and the church domes like a many-tongued monster, twisting into houses and coming out of windows as bright red smoke, then rising into the sky as a copper-coloured cloud.
Muhtar, the neighbourhood’s beloved dog, passed under the window. Holding his short tail high and with his nose lifted to the red sky, he was racing from Menekse Street to the square, barking all the while, as if he was on a very important mission. Five yellow dogs followed behind. Birds, thinking the bright sky portended daybreak, had begun to chirp in the branches of the lemon tree under the bay window. Cats were abandoning the rooftops in droves.
Panagiota ran barefoot to her mother and father’s bedroom.
Katina jumped out of bed. Akis grabbed the revolver at his bedside.
‘What’s happening? Are you all right, kori mou? Is there someone at the door? Have they come to ransack our house? Kala ise, daughter – did they do something to you?’
Gun still in hand, Akis pulled his trousers on over his pyjamas. Katina had begun digging inside the pillowcase for her gold, unaware that Akis had already taken it and hidden it in a sack of wheat. People were screaming outside.
‘There’s a fire, Papa!’ Panagiota shouted. ‘Fire, Mama! We have to leave – quick, or we’ll burn to death!’
Akis abruptly stopped buttoning his trousers. A fire, huh? This was actually good news in a way, because it meant the gangs hadn’t come to loot the neighbourhood. They all rushed to the bay window. Half of the sky had turned orange, and the houses across in the Agia Katerina neighbourhood were bathed in a tangerine light, as if the sun was rising.
Akis made some swift calculations. ‘It’s spread from Basmane up to Agios Dimitris. What bad luck – the wind’s changed direction, so it’s coming towards us now. Still, we have time.’
Turning away from the window, he glanced at Panagiota, trembling in her thin white nightgown. In the reddish light, with her slender white body and her black curls falling over her breasts, she looked like a Chinese porcelain figurine. Her hair was sticking to her neck and chest, sweaty from her uneasy sleep. How delicate and beautiful she was; how vulnerable.
‘Kori mou, go quickly to your room and get dressed. Cover yourself well. Wear a cloak if you can, something to hide your hair and even your face.’
Panagiota’s teeth were chattering. Akis took her in his arms and squeezed her thin form tight, as if he were wringing it. ‘Nothing will happen, my beautiful daughter. I’ll be right beside you. Come, ela, run now and get dressed. I’ll go and see where your mother is.’
Her father smelled of olive oil, bluing and flour.
Panagiota stood for a long time in front of her cupboard, looking at her dresses. She took out a few, held them up to her body, rejected them and threw them onto the bed. To anyone unaware of the situation that night, she’d have looked like a normal girl who couldn’t make up her mind what to wear for a stroll along the quay. Finally she chose an old grey dress that reached down to her ankles. She’d seen that some of the women camping at the quay were wearing trousers and now she understood why. Because they were more difficult to remove, trousers were a deterrent: the soldiers and bandits would go for an easier target instead. Her trembling got worse. No, now was not the time to think such thoughts. Her father, the great Akis, would protect her. No one would be able to lay a finger on her.
The whole neighbourhood had gathered in Bread-Baker’s Square. Adriana, her brothers and sisters, her mother and father, Fisherman Yorgo, his wife Eleni and son Niko, old Uncle Christo, Warehouseman Petro, Akis’s coffeehouse friends, the women Katina chatted with in front of her door – all of them had turned their faces to the dome of the sky, half of which was red. They were carrying out rugs, radios, framed pictures, photograph albums, sacks of flour. Gypsy Mimiko was trying to say something to Akis from over by the coffeehouse, but his words were lost amid the crackle of the approaching fire.
It had never occurred to Panagiota that a fire might sound like the thundering rush of a great river. The howling of the flames suppressed everything else – the sobbing and shouting of the people in the square, the rumble of buildings collapsing, the barking of the dogs, the chirping of the birds. The only other sound was the continual tolling of a distant bell, from the steeple at the Church of Agia Ekaterini perhaps, its urgent, unceasing ringing more insistent than the sirens of the fire department, its entreaties enough to freeze a person’s blood. Then the flames must have reached it, for the huge church bell rang out one last unearthly shriek, and fell silent.
‘I hear sirens,’ said Katina.
She and Panagiota were clasping each other tightly. The heat was unbearable. Their foreheads and necks were wet; sweat trickled between their breasts like ant trails. Katina was wearing all her jewellery and all the jewellery from Panagiota’s dowry chest under her dress. She unhooked the delicate gold chain and crucifix from around her daughter’s neck and put it around her own neck. Women were being robbed of their jewellery in the middle of the street, and she couldn’t bear to think of anyone touching Panagiota. She remembered what Akis had told her about the cemetery at Daragaci before they went to bed.
People were shouting, ‘To the quay, the quay! Everyone run to the quay. Quickly!’
‘Auntie Rozi? Has anyone seen Auntie Rozi? She’s trapped in her house like a prisoner – someone needs to rescue her.’
The streets suddenly filled with people – hunched over, eyes wide. The refugees who’d been sheltering in the churchyards at Agia Ekaterini and Agios Dimitris were fleeing the flames and had made it this far. Some were carrying bundles on their backs, others had grannies and grandfathers in their arms. They were dumbstruck, running from hell.
Seeing them, Katina remembered the dream she’d had during Panagiota’s birth. As she’d hovered between life and death that night, she’d found herself in a place full of flames, where people, horses and other animals were dying in agony. She’d thought it was hell, but now she understood that it was this very night that she’d seen.
She sensed that death was imminent. One of the two of them would die this night. She begged the Holy Mother Mary to take her own life and spare Panagiota.
A young priest came past, from the direction of the French Hospital, with a line of people trailing after him. Katina dashed over to join them, pulling Panagiota along with her, but Akis grabbed his wife’s wrist and stopped her. ‘What are you doing, vre woman? Following a priest on such a day – do you want to get us all killed?’
They’d got as far as the bakery. The deliciously sweet smell of bread lingered still. Panagiota couldn’t believe that it was only a few hours earlier that she and her father had stopped there and bought two loaves. Then they’d sat in their living room with the bay window and eaten that bread dipped in bean juice. It was like a slice of time from another life.
That girl was not her. That girl had a future she could dream
about; she was a fool who didn’t realize the value of what she had. Raising her head, she glanced over at Menekse Street at the far end of the square; at the house where she’d spent her childhood, her entire life; at her father’s grocery shop. She would give anything to go back a few hours, back to the moment when she’d sat with Akis and Katina at the dinner table, content in the unshakeable belief that the life they knew so well would remain as it was forever. She would never again tire of that life, even if one day passed without a grain of difference from the last. With deep sadness, she realized that she had lost the most precious of all things. That life was over. No matter how this night ended, they would never again peacefully sit and eat bread dipped in bean juice in their house with the blue door.
The great roaring noise had got louder. The fire was getting nearer; soon it would engulf them all. Suddenly from the direction of Agios Tryphonas came the thrum of hoofbeats. Everyone began rushing into the side streets, yelling, ‘The Turks are coming!’ Akis gestured to Gypsy Mimiko with his head and the two men, their faces as red as sour cherries, both grabbed their wives and daughters by the arms and began to run in the opposite direction of the quay, towards the British Hospital. The way was dusty and smoky. Adriana’s little sister Irini was crying in Adriana’s arms. Aristo was carrying Auntie Rozi on his back.
As she jumped over the railway track, Panagiota’s dress got caught on a loose nail and she fell and hit her forehead on the wooden track. Katina screamed. Panagiota immediately tried to collect herself and stand up, but her head was reeling. ‘I’m fine, Manoula. Keep running.’
A warm trickle of blood was running down from Panagiota’s cheekbone. Katina pressed the hem of her skirt to her daughter’s face. Then suddenly she let go of the skirt and, sobbing, embraced Panagiota. Mother and daughter stood glued together in the middle of the winding railway track, under the red sky. Katina knew she was holding her daughter in her arms for the last time. When they finally separated, she took off the sapphire ring which her mother had given her and slipped it onto Panagiota’s slender white finger. Her mother had told her that the stone brought good fortune.
