I found out later that Baron Der Stepanian owned a business that exported carpets to France. The family had lived in Paris during the war, and when they came back, they brought French furniture and a phonograph with them. In their house I learned Armenian again and picked up a little French as well. Je m’appelle Zabelle.
That first afternoon Digin Der Stepanian led me by the hand up the stairs and showed me to my room, which had a tall bed and a balcony overlooking the street. She asked me to call her Mayrig. The word wouldn’t come out of my mouth, so I called her Auntie instead. She studied me with big, pity-filled eyes, as though I were the last orphan dragged half-dead from the desert.
After she left I sat in the middle of the bed, which felt like a cushioned board on stilts. Then I opened the wardrobe, where I found seven dresses in my size, cotton stockings that matched the dresses, and neatly folded sets of underclothes edged with lace. The clothes were beautiful, but they worried me.
I wasn’t a servant, and I wasn’t a Der Stepanian. Like a distant cousin from the countryside, I had to be dressed properly and taught manners, except that we shared no blood. I was an honored houseguest, who had done nothing to deserve the honor. Where else was there for me to go? I would have to be careful. That first night when I lay down in the French bed, I was afraid I would roll off in my sleep, waking everyone with a loud thud. So I pulled off the blankets and slept on the rug.
Dalita Der Stepanian was about my age. Stepan and Barkev were younger and spent most of their days at school, but Dalita and I didn’t go out much. We went to church on Sundays and to the baths with Auntie. Three mornings a week I had Armenian lessons with a white-bearded priest. A woman from the church came twice a week to teach me and Dalita to work lace and to embroider. Dalita’s lace was such a mess of different-sized knots and loops that the woman gave up and we concentrated on embroidery. Even this was taxing for Dalita, though, so I finished off most of the pieces she started.
Sometimes Auntie’s sisters and cousins would stop by for tea, or we would go to their houses. But most afternoons Dalita and I brushed and braided each other’s hair. She gave me a pair of tortoiseshell combs, and we borrowed necklaces and bracelets from her mother. We played the phonograph—only the saddest music, about people suffering from love. We wore scarves at our waists and danced across the carpet in our velvet slippers. Dalita adored the French singers because she had fallen in love with a boy in France and claimed her heart would never mend. I liked the Turkish songs, which were filled with melancholy and passion.
I spent a lot of time in my bedroom, staring out the balcony window down onto the street. One beautiful spring day I opened the glass door and the wooden shutter and moved a stool out onto the balcony. The sun was hot on my face, and the air was breezy and fresh. Before long the facing neighbor sent a servant to report to Auntie that I was displaying myself like a harlot. Of course, Auntie didn’t use these words when she asked me not to sit on the balcony, but one of the maids told me later.
Time went by. Although it was never discussed, I knew I was not meant to live with the Der Stepanians forever. They figured that I was around sixteen years old, which seemed to me like the time to get married. But I was without dowry, without family, and would have to depend on the Der Stepanians to find me a husband. It wasn’t for me to say anything, so I waited for them to bring it up.
I didn’t know any men, except for the Baron and the gardener. So when I daydreamed about a husband, it was in the vaguest terms. Would he be rich? Would he be poor? Young or old? Would he have a mustache and a pocket watch? Would he smell like tobacco or peppermint oil?
One afternoon I was standing inside the balcony window, holding the curtain to one side, staring down at the street. Each man who passed in the street I considered as a possible husband. This one was too fat, that one too old. A group of students went by, carrying their satchels filled with papers and books. They looked too young. Then the peanut seller, who peddled his wares on our street at the end of the day, came along. He was thin as a reed, browned by the sun, and very handsome. Suddenly he was looking straight up at me. I jumped back from the window.
The next day I waited for him to pass, and sure enough, he waved up at me, although he couldn’t possibly have seen me through the lace curtains. Every day I watched for him. He gazed up at my window as he went by, and before he rounded the bend of our street, he’d cast back a glance. Soon I began to pull back the curtain slightly, so he could see me. I checked all the neighbors’ facing windows before I did this.
My whole being leaned toward the moment in the late afternoon when he would be beneath my window. When I closed my eyes while the phonograph played, I imagined I was Leyla, and it was his voice singing, “Desires with longing are sacrificed, Leyla. If I die before my love fills your heart, This is the bitterness of separation my soul, Leyla.…”
“Greetings, my beautiful one!” he shouted up at me one day.
I grabbed the wooden shutters and pulled them closed. Even though my heart was thumping like a rabbit in a box, the sound of his laughter made me smile.
There was a knock on my door. Could the neighbor have gotten news across the street that fast? I didn’t think so. It was Auntie.
“Zabelle, sweetheart,” she said, “I’ve been wanting to talk with you. Come into my room.”
I followed her across the hall to her chamber, where we sat on a long sofa. She was so lovely, with her blue black hair and long curling eyelashes. There were lines at the corners of her mouth, and a few around her eyes, but she would be beautiful even as an old woman.
“It seems that you are now of an age to consider marriage, dear,” she said.
I nodded in agreement.
“Well, someone has approached my husband to ask for your hand.”
I immediately thought of the peanut boy. But he was too poor. He would never dare talk to Baron Der Stepanian.
Auntie continued. “It was Baron Seferian.”
I wanted to faint. I knew who he was. He had stopped to talk with the Der Stepanians as we were leaving church several weeks in a row. The bony, long-toothed spice merchant who had hair sprouting from his nose and was almost bald. I was sure he would smell as musty as ground turmeric.
“He is a childless widower, dear, and could take good care of you.”
I tried to be calm. A childless widower, a spice merchant with a big house and many servants, a man who would take care of me. Old enough to be my grandfather, with big yellow teeth and hair on the knuckles of his hands. Auntie couldn’t really mean for me to marry him.
“Auntie,” I asked, “Isn’t he old enough to be your father?”
“Sweetheart, you’re so pretty, and bright, that it’s a shame for you to be married to someone so old. But without family, without dowry, or prospects… I don’t know what we’ll be able to find.”
I stared at the toes of my slippers.
She sighed. “We’ll tell him no.”
I prayed, and prayed, and prayed that the next offer would be a better one, because it was one I couldn’t refuse. In the meantime I kept up my afternoon meetings with the boy from the street. I got bolder because I knew time was short. He offered me a bag of nuts, and I leaned over the railing as he tossed them up to me. He begged me to tell him my name. I just laughed.
One afternoon Auntie asked me to pour tea for a guest I hadn’t met before. Vartanoush Chahasbanian was, Auntie explained, a distant relative of hers from Adana. I didn’t pay much attention to the woman. There were all sorts of people in and out of the house in the afternoons, and she must have been a very distant relation, because I’d never heard mention of her before. That evening Auntie raised one of her crescent-shaped eyebrows at me and told me that Digin Chahasbanian was looking for a wife for her son. The son lived in America, and Digin and the lucky girl would be leaving in a matter of weeks to join him.
So this was it. Digin Chahasbanian would stop by again later in the week, as I had passed the initial inspection. It went wi
thout saying that if she wanted me for her son, I was theirs.
When she returned, I studied Vartanoush Chahasbanian from under my lashes and out the sides of my eyes as she and Auntie talked. Dalita, who knew the story, stared at the woman and kept checking for my reaction. My future mother-in-law, I said to myself. Her white hair was pulled into a bun at the top of her head, her mouth was drawn up like a string purse, and she dressed in widow’s black with a simple gold chain around her neck. When she talked about her son, Toros, it was clear that she was proud.
She handed a photograph to Auntie, who passed it to me. I looked at it for a moment. His hair was parted on the side, with gray at the temples. The ears stuck out a little, but it was a handsome face. He wore a suit, with a vest and a tie, and the shoes were gleaming. Definitely a better match than old Seferian. I thought Digin Chahasbanian might find me rude if I studied the picture too long, so I passed it to Dalita.
When Auntie showed her cousin to the door, Dalita turned on the phonograph. French love songs. She said, “He doesn’t look bad, but I don’t want you to go to America.”
That was the part I liked best about the prospect, but I didn’t tell Dalita. That night I lay in my bed, thinking, This is my husband, Toros Chahasbanian. My name is Zabelle Chahasbanian. And America! A new country, an ocean away from what had been lost.
All the arrangements were made. My papers, the marriage by proxy—so when I left Constantinople I would already be a married woman—and the trunk I would need for the clothes and things the Der Stepanians had given me. Digin Chahasbanian wanted a picture of me to send to her son. It wasn’t sure that the photograph would get there before we did, but still I went to the studio to sit on a big chair in front of a dark screen.
For the picture, I wore an ivory silk dress with a beaded flower on one shoulder, a dropped waist, and lace all around the hem. That was Auntie’s going-away gift to me. My satin shoes matched the dress. I had on a double strand of pearls that Auntie loaned to me and the combs from Dalita. The exploding flash scared me, but I kept a smile on my face.
Every afternoon I waited for the peanut seller. The summer was almost over, and the days were getting shorter. We never talked much—how could you talk from the balcony without shouting into the street? We just waved to each other, smiled, said a few words. I knew he was called Berj, but I still hadn’t told him my name. He was the kind of handsome that seemed dangerous, with a crooked smile and black eyes.
It was a pity he was poor. He had a very hard life, carrying his wares up and down the streets. Who knew where he lived. I must have looked like a princess to him, in that elegant house, wearing fancy dresses, with no work required of me. He couldn’t have known that I was an impostor, not rich at all, but an orphan living on someone’s goodwill.
The final day before my departure, I finished packing the trunk. On the very top was my tin cup from Hadjin, the only thing that remained from my family’s home. After the clasps on the lid had been snapped shut, I tied a red velvet ribbon to a lock of hair in the back of my head, close to my neck, and clipped it off with the scissors. I wrote on one of Auntie’s scented notes, “Tomorrow I go to America. May the light be with you.” In a small scarf I knotted the hair, the note, and three gold coins. Maybe he couldn’t read, but someone could read it for him.
It was nearing dusk when he came by, and I was waiting on the balcony, looking at this street in Constantinople for the last time. I saw the mistress of the neighboring house peer out at me from her window, but I didn’t care.
“Berj,” I called, “this is for you.” I tossed the small bundle down to him.
He caught it and brought it to his lips, then thrust it inside his shirt. “Thank you, O nameless beauty!” He dropped to his knees in the middle of the street, almost upsetting his tray.
“Get up, you crazy fool.” I laughed. “My name is Zabelle.”
“Zabelle!” he shouted. “Zabelle, the lovely, the queen of sunset and summer and angels. O merciful God, thank you for blessing this day with Zabelle!”
Just then the neighbor flung open her window and screeched at me, “Get back in the house, you shameless hussy! And you,” she shouted down at Berj, “I’m going to get the police after you!”
He flashed his crooked smile at me, then sped down the street and out of sight. I shut the balcony door behind me, and went to find Auntie in case the neighbor’s maid was already on her way across the street.
The next morning breakfast was a somber affair. Red-eyed Dalita sat next to me and rested her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her waist but felt as though I had already departed.
The Der Stepanians accompanied me and Digin Chahasbanian to the pier. Dalita gave me a handkerchief she had embroidered herself. Auntie was crying and promised that she would write to me. Digin Chahasbanian and I climbed the ship’s ramp. As the ship headed out to sea, I stood at the rail with my new mother-in-law, watching the city of Constantinople grow smaller and more distant. Across the ocean, my new husband and my American life were waiting.
CHAPTER FOUR
Holy War
(WATERTOWN, 1927)
I stood on the ship’s deck, watching the lace-topped waves roll by. The salt wind blew strands of loose hair in my face and pulled on the edges of the thick shawl I wore over my coat. The ocean spread so far and wide in all directions that I felt like a grain of sand in God’s shoe. Below deck, the old woman was ashen faced and miserable. I brought her water, crackers, and thin soups, which were the only things she could keep down. She asked me to read from Psalms, while she lay on her bed with her eyes closed. When she slept, I finished embroidering red plums on a pair of wedding towels I had begun at the Der Stepanians.
We came into the country through Ellis Island in New York. Bigger and busier than the Istanbul bazaar, the hall was filled with people speaking languages I’d never heard before. On solid ground, my mother-in-law’s color improved, and she pushed her way through lines and questions without uttering a word of English or bowing her head.
Soon we were on a train bound for Boston, where Toros Chahasbanian—my husband and her son—was waiting for us. Outside the window, ice-slicked trees and white fields dotted with pastel wooden houses sped by. It was a new world for me, and my eyes were wide. But my mother-in-law sat opposite me, brooding like a disgruntled hen. Every time I glanced away from the window, she was staring at me with suspicion and distaste. I could tell she was having second thoughts about having chosen me for her son, but what could she do now?
As for me, I still thought an unknown husband in America was preferable to the spice merchant that I left behind in Constantinople. Vartanoush Chahasbanian was a lint picker, but I was young and full of hope. I was sure I could win her over.
Once she started talking, my mother-in-law didn’t stop. She launched into a series of lessons on household management, towel folding, and the proper way to conduct oneself as a young wife. I was expected to sit and nod my head, taking it all in like a water pitcher. When she started reciting a recipe for cheoregs, my pride got the best of me. As a cook for the Aziz, I had learned a few tricks of my own and wanted to impress her.
“If you add a little sugar to the yeast and water, the dough will rise better,” I said.
“What?” demanded my mother-in-law. “Is the baby bird now to teach the mother bird to fly? I, who have been making cheoregs since before your parents even thought of you, I am being told how to make dough rise?” Her face was as red as a tomato, and it looked like her head was going to pop off from the pressure of her blood.
I lowered my eyes and stared at my innocent, folded hands. Any Armenian will tell you that the Turks have the best curses, and I was running my mind over a string of choice Turkish insults for the likes of Vartanoush Chahasbanian. When I glanced up through my lashes, she was staring at me with smoke pouring out of her ears and nostrils. It was as though she could hear my thoughts or see the phrases passing over my face, and her anger was about to set the train compartment
on fire.
Then she reached out and slapped me with all her might. Her palm scorched its print into my cheek. I felt my teeth shift in my head and tears smart into my eyes. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction, though, of seeing me cry. It occurred to me that if Auntie had known what a beast this woman was, she might have let me marry the peanut seller.
When the train pulled into the station, I searched the crowd for my husband. I spotted him at the same moment that his mother began wailing, “My son! My son!” He was clean shaven and modern in a brown suit and an overcoat, with white hairs at his temples, and ears that I recognized from the photo.
“Mayrig!” he called, trying to push his way to the front of the crowd. His breath ballooned on the frozen air.
“My son!” Vartanoush gingerly climbed down the steps and into his arms. I was left to heft our bags to the platform. I waited until they separated from their embrace. Toros looked at me, and I dipped my head in greeting.
His mother flicked the back of her hand at me. “Yes, son, this is the wife I brought you.” She sighed. “This is Zabelle.”
I looked at him closely. There was no trace of his mother’s malice in his eyes. His face was handsome. He was old, but not so old. He was Toros Chahasbanian, American grocer. My husband.
“This,” Toros said, turning the knob and pushing open the door, “is the water closet.” He pulled a chain on the toilet, and water came churning down a pipe into the bowl.
Vartanoush was impressed by all the conveniences in our new second-floor apartment: the water closet, the icebox, the modern stove. Steam heat clanged from radiators in each room, keeping the whole place summer warm in the dead of winter. Sun streamed in the high windows, and the furniture was spare, making the place feel very large. The apartment lacked a woman’s touch, but Vartanoush took from her bags lace doilies for the armchairs and a lace runner for the sideboard. Then she started dinner, over Toros’s protests that she should rest.
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