The Winter Thief

52

The new day dawned bright as a baby’s eye, with a cloudless pale blue sky and the promise of warmth. A week had passed in which Vera alternated between a kind of blank-eyed existence helping Father Zadian’s housekeeper, Marta, in the kitchen and a searing impatience to act. In frustration, Vera had stalked into the yard, taken an ax, and swung it over her head with all her might into the block. Her hands and shoulders still ached from the blow.

The following day, Marta asked Vera to accompany her on her weekly shopping rounds. Marta’s figure was sturdy as an amphora, her graying hair braided and pinned in a circlet at the back of her head, but her red-cheeked face and eloquent brown eyes retained a youthful eagerness. Being Christian, she didn’t veil her face. Marta hired a small boy who followed behind them with a big, cone-shaped basket on his back. In the mild air, the greengrocer had spread his wares on the sidewalk outside the door of his shop. He beamed with pleasure at Marta’s approach.

“Just give me the best, Gosdan,” Marta told him sternly. “We’ve been doing business for twenty years, and you always try to cheat me.”

“Marta.” Gosdan crossed his arms and puffed himself up in mock offense. “Never, never have I cheated you. I would rather cut off my right hand. Take these leeks.” He held out one of the fat green stems. “Thick as a sausage and just as tasty.”

Marta didn’t take the proffered vegetable. “You’ve obviously never cooked anything”-she leaned in and peered at him-“and sometimes I wonder whether you even eat. You’re getting as thin as that meager excuse for a leek you’re trying to sell me.”

Gosdan slapped his stomach with both hands. “Hard as a rock,” he announced.

“Well, give me two okka of sweet apples,” she relented. “Sweet, mind you.”

“Like you.” Gosdan selected the apples and put them in a bag made of folded newsprint. He filled another bag with Jerusalem artichokes. Into the boy’s basket went three cabbages, a brilliant white cauliflower, and another two okka of onions. The greengrocer carefully placed the bags on top, then added a leek and an orange from the south.

“So you remember me and come back,” he told Marta, who smiled and thanked him. “I’ll add the rest to the parish bill. Come by again soon. You could fatten me up with one of your apple cakes,” he suggested wistfully. He held the basket while the boy slipped his arms through the leather straps and balanced the load on his back.

Marta gave Gosdan a flirtatious smile, then lowered her eyes and stepped into the lane. Amused, Vera followed, trailed by the boy, plodding slowly under the weight of their purchases.

“Marta,” Vera asked, “did you ever meet my husband, Gabriel?”

“No, but I’ve heard much about him.”

Vera noted the caution in her voice and wondered what it was about Gabriel’s mission that kept everyone silent. She stopped and swung around to face Marta. “No one will tell me anything,” she burst out. “Why is that? He’s my husband. Don’t I have a right to know what he’s doing?”

Marta wouldn’t meet her eye but signaled to the boy to take a rest. He slid the basket from his shoulders and settled himself under a tree. Marta guided Vera into a wooded clearing beside the lane. “It’s unseasonably warm today,” she complained, wiping her face with her apron.

Vera turned her back. She didn’t want to talk about the weather.

“Your husband and his friends have founded a socialist community in the Choruh Valley. It’s called New Concord,” Marta told her. “Didn’t you know?”

Vera nodded. She had heard about the New Concord Project. Gabriel had collected money for it in Geneva and had encouraged people to emigrate there, but she had no idea that was the reason they had come to Istanbul.

Marta pulled Vera close. “Then you should know everything.” She continued in a low voice, “The authorities captured a shipment of illegal guns and the Ottoman Imperial Bank was robbed. Someone blew it up. They think Gabriel was responsible.”

Vera’s shock was apparent on her face, and Marta tightened her grip on the girl’s shoulder.

“There’s more. Father Zadian says the palace sees these as signs of a revolt. The sultan might send troops to wipe out New Concord.”

“That’s terrible. Does Gabriel know this?”

“Probably not. Listen to me. Gabriel wasn’t responsible for the explosion. Abel set it without his knowledge.”

“What?” Vera took a step backward, tripping over a root and almost losing her balance. Sosi’s brother, Abel, she had learned, had been Gabriel’s driver before being murdered by Vahid’s men.

Marta’s voice was taut with urgency. “Some people think that if the sultan cracks down on Armenians, it will get Britain and Russia involved on our side. Your husband’s commune is expendable. They’re outsiders. Whatever happens, the socialists will be blamed for it.”

“What people? What are you saying?” Vera shouted. “How could anyone want that?” A woman passed by in the lane, pulling a child by the hand. She peered at them curiously.

Marta looked after the woman with an anxious face. “I shouldn’t have told you.” She grasped Vera by the shoulders and shook her. “You mustn’t tell anyone that I told you.”

“Who is doing this? Who?”

Marta released Vera and walked away, shaking her head. The porter watched them from the lane.

Vera ran after her. “Is it Father Zadian?”

Marta made sure the boy was out of earshot. “People think we won’t get an Armenian state without outside help,” she answered in a low, hoarse voice. “But they’re terrible, terrible fools.”

“How far away is the Choruh Valley?”

“Several days by ship and then through the mountains. It’s on the Russian border. You’re not thinking of going there, are you?” Marta asked her in a concerned voice.

“Of course I am. Someone has to warn Gabriel.”

Marta’s face sagged. “Yes, you must go to your husband.” There was resignation and a deep sadness in her voice. “Not knowing can destroy a person. I am married still, although I haven’t seen my husband in fifteen years.”

“But…” Vera stopped herself from saying that he must be dead.

“He might have been killed in the war, but he might also be in captivity. I dare not be fully alive until I know he is dead. Can you understand that?”

“You must love him very much.”

Marta cocked her head and smiled quizzically. “That wasn’t our way. I barely knew him until we were wed, and he left for the war ten days later.”

“So, why?”

“Because loyalty is more important than love.”

“Even if he’s alive, your sacrifice is meaningless if he doesn’t know about it.”

“His relatives know. The Lord knows.”

“But you’re unhappy,” Vera pointed out, wiping a tear from Marta’s cheek. “What about Gosdan?” she asked. “He seems like a good man. After fifteen years, no one would blink an eye if you decided your husband wasn’t coming back and wanted to marry again.”

Marta blushed. “You don’t know this community.”

“There are worse things than some neighbors’ unkind words,” Vera told her. “Fifteen years is more than should be asked of anybody.”

Marta looked up at the light filtering through the trees. Their dry leaves rattled in the breeze that had sprung up. “There’s a lodos coming. I can feel it.”

“What’s a lodos?”

“When it gets suddenly hot like this in the winter, it means a wind will blow in from the southwest. It brings wind demons that dance on the water, kicking up their heels. They drill aches into people’s heads and sit on their lungs. They can even make your eyes bleed. That’s the lodos. We’d better get home. We still have to stop at the butcher.”

By the time they got back to the road, the wind had picked up, a strange, airless breeze that felt suffocating. The boy was asleep under the tree, his legs sprawled in the wild sage.

After they had walked along the lane for a while in silence, Marta said, “Your husband is a brave man. I don’t know anything about socialism, but he’s working for our people, and I respect him for that. Armenians have problems here, discrimination, unfair taxes. Sometimes the Muslims turn on us. We hear about it,” she whispered. “Who can know why? Perhaps someone wanted his Armenian neighbor’s land. It won’t happen here. We get on well with our neighbors. But I sense a difference in the air, as if a lodos were coming. Sometimes your breath gets stuck in your throat.” She looked around. The boy, with his heavy load, had fallen behind.

Just then a gust of wind sent the boy and his basket sprawling. Onions, apples, and cabbages rolled in every direction. The women ran over and helped him up. They gathered the produce and mounted the basket again gently on the boy’s back. Vera hadn’t realized how heavy it was until she held it while the boy inserted his arms into the shoulder straps. This too should end, she thought with a pang of pity for the skinny lad. They hurried, one on either side of him, back to the rectory.