At the edge of the city, Kamil was met by the governor, this time not with a band but with a contingent of gendarmes. The governor looked stunned to see the train of refugees.
Kamil dismounted and went to speak with him. It didn’t escape his notice that it took the governor a good few moments before he bowed and uttered words of respectful welcome. Kamil realized that the governor hadn’t recognized him at first. No wonder. He was filthy, his clothing in tatters, and he now had a full beard.
“Thank you for meeting us,” Kamil responded. “These people need food, lodging, medical care. I presume you had word of our arrival. I sent a messenger some weeks ago. What have you been able to prepare?”
“The city elders have refused permission for them to enter, my pasha. They’ll have to go back.”
Kamil stared at the governor in disbelief. He flung his hand at the crowd behind him. “Take a look, sir,” he said, trying to keep his anger in check. “They are in no condition to go anywhere, and there is nowhere for them to go back to. They will remain here.”
At a signal from the governor, the gendarmes spread out and blocked the road. “I’m sorry, Kamil Pasha, but we’ve heard that they carry disease. We can’t risk letting them into the town.”
That, at least, was a legitimate concern, Kamil thought, his anger abating somewhat.
“I understand,” he said. “If they are not to go into town, perhaps a camp can be set up for them outside, where they can receive medical care.”
“We hadn’t expected such numbers. How many are there?”
“I don’t know. Two hundred? Three hundred? Quite a few died along the way.”
“We don’t have enough to feed them,” the governor stuttered, “or the resources to build that many houses. And we have only one doctor.”
“Surely as governor you can meet the expenses. This is a human disaster for which you are responsible.”
The governor shook his head and looked embarrassed. “These people are rebels. The government won’t allow me to pay a kurush to help them.”
Kamil flung his riding crop down in rage and strode up and down the row of gendarmes while the governor waited, his face twitching with anxiety. He could send a telegram to Istanbul, Kamil considered, but to whom? And what would that accomplish if the administration believed these people were rebels? He could pledge his own considerable wealth, but he worried that it would take too long to arrange. Still, he decided to try. He’d send a telegram to Yorg Pasha.
A crowd of residents began to gather behind the troops and on the hillsides. Surely they would help these people, Kamil thought. He saw several prosperous-looking men advance on the governor. They appeared to be arguing.
Kamil heard Vera say his name. Her face was gaunt, her eyes caked with pus from an infection, and her lips were chapped raw. She had trouble articulating her words. “I might have a solution,” she said. “Come with me.”
Kamil told the governor that he had business in town and asked him, for humanity’s sake, to distribute bread, clothing, and blankets to the refugees.
The governor nodded. “The residents are eager to help.” Shoulders sagging with relief, he went to consult with the local men with whom he had just been arguing.
Vera led Kamil to a guesthouse near the port. “Gabriel told me he stayed here when he first arrived in Trabzon. Because the roads were still bad, he left his trunk behind. He gave me this key,” she said, pulling it from her pocket, “and told me that if anything happened to him to get the trunk. It was almost as if he knew he wouldn’t survive.” She regarded the house and then led him around the back and through a gate. “That must be it.” She pointed at a windowless stone shed. The key fit in the lock.
They squeezed inside. Kamil lit a lamp he found by the door, revealing a jumble of boxes and barrels and, behind them, a chest as high as Kamil’s waist.
“Gabriel said the gold from the bank would be in the chest.” Vera ran her hands across the dusty lid, her voice thick with feeling. “He didn’t have a chance to tell me what he wanted me to do with it. I know he’d approve of using it to help these people.” She looked at Kamil, concerned. “You’re not going to return it to the bank, are you?”
Kamil had no answer. Vera didn’t have a key to the chest, so he forced the lock. They drew open the heavy lid. The chest was crammed with furs and other household goods. Puzzled, they pulled everything out and examined it, piece by piece. When the chest was empty, Kamil climbed inside it with the lamp to examine the bottom. With the tip of his knife, he scored the leather lining and pulled it up, revealing a recessed latch. He manipulated it until a soft click revealed the outline of a panel, which he pushed aside. An extensive false bottom opened to view. Kamil reached in and extracted a necklace set with large emeralds, which he gave to Vera, then pulled out a handful of gold liras.
Vera stared at the jewelry draped over her hand. “God save us,” she exclaimed.
Kamil took in the sea of gold lapping at his feet. “It seems he has.”
Kamil didn’t tell the governor where the gold and jewels came from. It was about half of what had been taken from the bank, and he wondered where the other half was. With some shame, but seeing no other solution, he let the town think it was his personal fortune. He implied that it had been left with Yakup, who had stayed behind in Trabzon. He had removed the emeralds from the necklace so they couldn’t be identified. Neither the governor nor the residents seemed to think it unusual for a pasha to travel with so much wealth. Perhaps they were simply too relieved at having the problem solved to inquire too closely.
He sent Yorg Pasha a telegram to tell him he was safe and a longer letter to him and one to Feride with a ship leaving that morning for Istanbul. There was no sign of Vahid in Trabzon, although a local doctor said he had treated a man who had lost part of his hand. The sultan’s Kurdish irregulars had vanished.
Over the next few weeks, Kamil worked together with the governor and town leaders to erect shelters and purchase food and other supplies that had to be brought in by ship. A cold fog still enveloped the town in the mornings, but later the sun burned it off, revealing fields of forget-me-nots and wild tulips amid brilliant green meadows. Birdsong mingled with the sounds of sawing and hammering. The women refugees, now mostly widows, sat outside the doors of their communal shacks in flecks of sunlight, staring into space. Only the children, resilient as spring flowers, ran exuberantly underfoot.
Some of the money from Gabriel’s chest was used to hire ships to take people to Istanbul or other Black Sea ports where they had relatives who might take them in. Some families had decided to return to their villages under Levon’s protection. A photographer disembarked from one of the ships and, carting his box and tripod through the town, took pictures of the remaining refugees.
Kamil began to think of leaving. He trusted the governor and the sizable Armenian community in Trabzon to continue the relief effort as long as the money held out, as it would for some time yet. Kamil reminded himself that he faced a murder charge. The thought was so ludicrous that he laughed out loud.
91
Vera cradled the Henchak pin in her hand. She had found it wrapped in a piece of flannel in Gabriel’s chest, along with her passport, and, pressed between two pieces of cardboard, a dried daisy she had given him before their marriage as a memento of a lovely day they had spent picnicking in the Alps. He had brought this simple, fragile flower all the way from Geneva to Istanbul and from there to Trabzon. She had been married only a single night, and all the rest had been misunderstanding and needless pain. Why had she immediately assumed that her husband would abandon her?