Nine Summers Page 25

  At the end of the tour, Ahmed, unlike many guides we observed later, didn’t stand near the bus door expecting tips. He seemed embarrassed.

  The following morning, just as we were getting ready to move off, Ahmed knocked on the hull. ‘I hope you don’t mind. You suggested I drop in.’

  ‘Of course not, come aboard.’

  ‘I can only stay a very short time. I’m going to visit my grandfather, I have a parcel to give him from my father.’

  ‘Where does he live?’ I asked. ‘In a small village about 50 km from here. Not the sort of village tourists go to. He’s very old, and likes me to visit when I’m in Turkey. He doesn’t have much family in the village any more. Most of our relations are either in the big towns or in Germany.’

  ‘Were you born in Germany?’ Felix asked. ‘Yes, so were all my brothers and sisters. We speak German to each other but with our parents we speak Turkish, so our Turkish is not as good as our German.’

  ‘I’ll go down and make coffee,’ I said. ‘It’s occurred to me,’ Ahmed said, ‘that maybe you’d like to come with me to visit my grandfather. He likes to have visitors. A friend lent me his car for the day. We can have coffee there.’

  Felix looked at me, then turned to Ahmed. ‘Yes, we’d love to. We can leave Bodrum tomorrow.’

  We climbed into a small battered car, and crawled along the crowded Bodrum streets until the road took a steep curve at the edge of town. Like most drivers in Turkey, Ahmed put his foot right down on the gas, which didn’t stop him talking, while Felix and I kept our eyes glued to the road.

  An hour or so later, we entered a village of dusty white houses with peeling plaster, and precipitous streets. Suddenly, Ahmed stepped on the brakes. ‘Ah, there’s my grandfather, sitting at that café with his friends. Lucky I saw him.’ Four old men sat at a table, sipping coffee and laughing. As soon as the old man saw Ahmed, his crumpled face beamed and his eyes twinkled with good humour. He must have been a handsome man once. His steel-grey hair was still thick but his leathery skin hung loose on his neck and arms, his fingers were clawed, and a walking stick rested against his chair. He looked surprised to see us, and before Ahmed had a chance to introduce us, the grandfather turned to his friends. From the expression on his face we guessed that he was showing off the grandson who spoke a foreign language, had soft hands, was well dressed and didn’t labour under a brutal sun.

  Ahmed hugged the old man and handed him the parcel he’d brought with him. He introduced us as Australians, perhaps implying that we were friends. He translated the old man’s ‘welcome’ to us, impressing his grandfather’s friends with his skills as an interpreter. The café owner brought out strong Turkish coffees and sweets. The grandfather wanted to know how we liked Turkish food and suggested we stay for a meal, but Ahmed explained that we had to get back. We stayed for over an hour, then thanked everyone, shook hands, and set off back to Bodrum.

  Ahmed, undeterred by the dust and potholes along the road, his foot firmly on the gas, continued to talk.

  ‘My grandfather would like me to marry a Turkish girl and stay here, but all of us Turkish guys who grew up in Germany don’t like to take out Turkish girls in Turkey, because before you know it, you’re forced to marry them. So we go out with girls who are tourists. But some of the guides go out with older European women who like to have a young Turk for the summer. Sometimes, they invite them back to their countries for the winter. But I don’t like to do that.’

  ‘Do you feel more German or more Turkish?’ Felix asked as Ahmed slowed down going up a hill.

  ‘It depends. In Germany the Germans say we’re Turks, in Turkey the Turks call us Germans. They think we’re all rich because we live in Germany. We don’t really belong to any place, no place we can call “home”. If I could speak English like I speak German, I could get a better job in Germany and then I wouldn’t have to come here every summer and be a guide.’

  ‘Thanks for taking us to meet your grandfather, Ahmed,’ Felix said, as we stepped out of the car back at the marina. ‘We really enjoyed going with you. I hope we see you again when we come back to Bodrum.’ We shook hands and waved as Ahmed drove off.

  ****

  David, Anne and the girls came to visit us for a week, and we spent the time along the Carian coast, in the Gulf of Gökova. The Sehir islands were a good introduction to cruising in Turkey. There is a legend about the beach on Castle Island, in the Sehir group, that associates it with Antony and Cleopatra. Apocryphal it may be, but one version relates the story of how Cleopatra came here to be close to Antony, who was busy preparing for the battle of Actium. To please him, she had shiploads of fine, white sand brought from North Africa to create a splendid beach. Another version is that Antony imported the sand to delight Cleopatra. Both versions agree that they frolicked in this romantic cove before all was lost at Actium. The girls enjoyed the story. Research suggests that the sand on this beach is typically African, unlike any other in this area.

  Knidos, further along the Carian coast, attracts a lot of tourists. In ancient times it also attracted a multitude of visitors who came to see the famous statue of Aphrodite by Praxiteles, the renowned Greek sculptor. This sculpture’s particular fame is attributed to the fact that it was the first known sculpture of a nude woman. (Sculptures of nude men had been commonplace and thus of little interest.) Tales abound of how her enamoured admirers came to view her magnificent posterior through the back door of the shrine. Although Aphrodite has long since disappeared, an endless stream of people still visit Knidos.

  After we farewelled the family, we sailed on to Keci Buku, a bay surrounded by pine-covered hills. It was quiet, and an easy place to anchor. We jumped into the water to swim, or motored in the dinghy to a waterside restaurant. We moved from bay to bay, inlet to inlet, often returning to the same spot, depending on how crowded it was.

  We avoided marinas and bays near discos, but each year they proliferated. Often, a camaraderie was established among yachties who wanted to get away from the noise, and we’d hear via the grapevine of quiet spots to moor.

  Anchoring in very deep water usually entailed taking lines ashore, tying them to trees or rocks, as well as dropping an anchor. If we did this in the morning when it was calm, it wasn’t too bad. Felix would climb a rock or tree and tie up while I cajoled Galatea into reverse without veering right or left. But a sudden stiff wind could make it difficult for me. Once, Felix climbed a rock, fell, injured his knee and couldn’t move. At the same time the anchor disengaged itself, the engine refused to start, the wind veered and Galatea made for the rocks. Luckily, an English boat came to our rescue.

  Some of our favourite coves and inlets were in Skopea Liman on the Lycian coast in Turkey. In Wall Bay, where we cooled off in crystal water, it was a short climb to a summer shack we frequented for meals. Erected at the start of summer, and taken down at the end of the season, these shacks consisted of four posts, a rush awning and a few long tables and benches. The primitive kitchen with an open wood fire was a few metres away. In summer, these ‘eateries’ sprang up like mushrooms in the most popular coves.

  At Wall Bay, a Turkish mum did the cooking on an open fire, aided by her three children under 13 who acted as waiters, and Dad, a heavy man with a rotund belly and a good-natured moustachioed face, who chopped the wood.

  Goats grazed there undisturbed, the tinkle of bells announced their arrival. When they were in need of a scratch, a drink or a feed, they came up to the tables and let us know in no uncertain manner what they wanted.

  We were never alone in Wall Bay. It was a favourite place for people who wanted to escape the sound of discos. The light at dawn and dusk was a dazzling array of orange, yellow and dark pink; the trees and hills reflected moving images in the water.

  At the end of summer we sailed back to Bodrum and put Galatea on the hard.

  ‘Our sixth summer over,’ I said wistfully, ‘but back to our gorgeous pad in London.’

  ‘Yes, I’m looking forward to it.’ F
elix gave me a hug.

  chapter eleven

  London was in the throes of a beautiful autumn. The leaves were ochre gold and crisp, the squirrels scuttled busily up and down the trees as if winter were almost upon them, and people in the park were soaking up the last of the sunshine.

  We were into our routine of booking concert and theatre tickets, visiting galleries and reading. Felix had signed up for courses in medieval history and photography. I planned to have yet another go at painting.

  But Felix had difficulties swallowing. He made an appointment to see Dr Hunt.

  I was also finding it harder and harder to use my left arm, and kept dropping things. My right arm wasn’t great either. We made another appointment with the neurologist. Meanwhile, we continued making more plans. Sometimes I wondered whether continuing this frenetic activity was a way of pushing aside what really worried us. How long did we have? Felix knew I couldn’t talk about it, so we didn’t. It suited us to go on joking that one day we’d either crash or drown together.

  We had two days in Paris, then set off to Bruges in Belgium on the spur of the moment to test the ‘Eurostar Experience’. Bruges in winter was almost as good as Venice without tourists. Its attractions, apart from Bruges itself, were Flemish paintings, mussels, waffles, wines and Belgian chocolates. Not necessarily in that order.

  However, these little Channel jaunts weren’t enough. A friend who had recently returned from Uzbekistan raved about Samarkand and Bokhara, so we felt we should look into it. I tried to phone the Uzbek tourist office, but nobody answered. I tried for three consecutive days without success. Not one to give up easily, I tried the consulate and was amazed to get a reply. Their advice was to keep trying. I tried twice more, then decided we really didn’t want to go that badly.

  Some days later, we were walking along back streets near Wigmore Hall and saw a shop window with ‘Uzbek Tourist Office’ written across it. There were no lights inside and the door was a clapped-together wooden contraption with a sign that seemed to say ‘Open at your own risk’. We noticed a man with long, stringy black hair, narrow eyes and a prominent Adam’s apple inside. We knocked on the glass and he came to the door. The man looked at us suspiciously, then tried to open the door. After a few shoves he managed it, and looked astounded when we said we wanted to know about trips to Uzbekistan.

  He invited us in, switched on a light and motioned us to sit.

  ‘We’d like to know whether you have group tours planned for Uzbekistan,’ we said.

  ‘You vont to go to Uzbekistan?’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘Ah, you are very velcome. Ve are a friendly people.’ Could have fooled us.

  ‘How does one arrange it?’

  He shuffled lots of papers. ‘Here!’ he said, handing us a leaflet in Russian or Uzbek. ‘But we can’t read this.’

  ‘Ah, yes, ve must do it in English,’ he said. The phone rang. He listened until it stopped, then turned back to us.

  We gave him our name and address, and asked him to let us know when he had any further news about tours to Uzbekistan. Then a face peeped out from behind a dark, velvet curtain. We saw only one eye, the side of a big nose and half a heavy moustache. Our man nodded to him. We decided to leave quickly, and agreed that it had been a mistake to leave our name and address. In any case, we felt that we’d now been to Uzbekistan.

  It was a bad winter, bitter cold outside. From our front window we overlooked the frozen canal. Ducks waddled on the ice, occasionally plunged into freezing water to forage for food, then stepped up onto the ice again. The tree trunks were bare and black. The gardens and the nursery behind our building were blanketed white and the sky was a monotonous grey. We read by the fireplace. We didn’t like to go out, but we had to.

  Felix’s difficulty with swallowing had worsened. The scan had shown a lymphoma pressing on his oesophagus. He was reluctant to start radiotherapy again, but he knew he must. We had to cancel our planned trip home to Sydney. Apart from that, we tried to continue life as usual — we read a lot and went to plays, concerts, classes and lectures at the art gallery. We worried silently and pushed ourselves, but our hearts were not in it.

  Felix had an early appointment at the Marsden. It was still dark when we streamed out of the tube among crowds wrapped in thick parkas. We knew the way well; we could sleepwalk there.

  Dr Hunt ordered a barium swallow, a CT scan and bone marrow and blood tests. Once they were completed, there would be another appointment to decide on the plan of treatment. Meanwhile, he put Felix on antibiotics for the terrible cough.

  After the appointment we took the tube to Piccadilly Circus to see an exhibition of 200 Modigliani drawings. It was wonderful. But Felix looked tired, and the cold was making his feet and toes unbearably painful. He had also started a migraine.

  During the following days, we returned to the hospital almost every day for tests, and finally, for a treatment-planning session with Dr Hunt. The treatment would entail daily radiotherapy to the oesophagus for three weeks.

  I felt guilty about my own problems. I had terrible pain in my neck and shoulder, and found it hard to sleep. I couldn’t hold a hairbrush with my left hand. Now my right was going the same way. Felix insisted on making an appointment with the neurologist Dr Zitka, whom I’d already seen several times. He was short and rotund, a gentle person with an open, friendly face and a sense of humour. We felt at ease with him. He agreed that both arms were deteriorating and he wanted me to see a neurosurgeon. Felix phoned a neurosurgeon he knew in Sydney for reassurance.

  Dr Zitka arranged for a combined consultation with the surgeon, Dr Crooks, at the Royal Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen’s Square. But before that he ordered a bone scan, MRI, X-rays…

  I had never had an MRI before. The thought of going into a tube, like a corpse sliding into a tunnel for cremation, then keeping still for twenty minutes, horrified me. Felix knew I panicked in the dark or in confined places. ‘Honey, I’ll go into the room with you and I’ll hold your foot and be there the whole time.’

  ‘Is there no other test they can do?’

  ‘Not really, they have to do this. It takes magnetic resonance images of your neck. It won’t be as bad as you think, provided you keep your eyes shut. If you do panic, you just have to say so, and they’ll stop and take you out. But the lower part of your body will be outside the tunnel so you’ll feel my hand on your leg and foot all the time.’

  Felix gave me a sedative before we went to the hospital. The nurse was gentle and told me to get changed and take off any metal objects. She asked if I had false teeth. I smiled. Sometimes I thought my teeth were the only reliable part of my anatomy.

  ‘There’s a microphone and you’ll hear my voice, and any time you want to tell me anything, you can speak and I’ll hear you in the control room. When we turn on the machine, there’s a loud hammering sound that is unpleasant but normal. We’ll need to do this several times for a few minutes each time.’

  I nodded. Felix gave me a peck and a hug. I felt my heart pound. I changed into a pale blue gown and then, with Felix holding my hand, walked barefoot into the room. The machine was in the middle. I climbed onto the long, thin stretcher. The nurse covered me with a blanket, then fixed triangular pieces of stiff foam on both sides of my neck and head. I was terrified. Then I started to roll into the tube. I shut my eyes but wanted to cry out, jump off. I could feel Felix holding my foot and ankle.

  ‘Are you all right, Mrs Huber?’ I couldn’t answer.

  ‘If you’re all right, we’ll start in a minute.’

  I whispered, ‘Yes.’ Then the thumping started. Felix stroked my leg, my ankle, my foot and squeezed my toes, and made me feel alive. The hammering went on and on. I squeezed my eyes shut to make sure I didn’t see how close the tunnel was to my face. I thought of dawn at Smith’s Creek and the scent of gum leaves.

  ‘You’re very good, Mrs Huber. We’re nearly finished with the first program.’

  The thum
ping was turned on and off twice more.

  ‘That’s it, Mrs Huber. You were very good, we’re finished.’

  They rolled me out. I burst into tears.

  Outside it was cold, but the sun was shining. Traffic crawled along Oxford Street, car exhausts belched fumes and choked the air with stench, music blared from shop doors, people spewed out of the tube station. I looked up at a blue sky and felt as if a rock had been lifted from my chest. Felix walked slowly, looking desperately tired. A week of radiotherapy had already taken its toll.

  ‘Where shall we go to celebrate that the MRI is over?’

  ‘You’re tired, let’s go home,’ I said.

  ‘No, we can either go to a matinee, or to a gallery.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to?’

  ‘Yes, sure.’

  ‘Well, Kushner’s Peristroika is on at the National this afternoon. We could just make it, get the tickets and have a sandwich there.’

  ‘Good idea, let’s go.’ We walked down into the tube.

  Dr Zitka sat behind his desk while Dr Crooks, the neurosurgeon, inspected the X-rays and MRI. When he had finished, he turned to us. He looked young and energetic, a cheerful Irishman with a gung-ho manner. ‘Dr Zitka has told me about you, and given me your history, and I’ve looked at the MRI and X-rays. You obviously have pressure on a nerve, which is causing the loss of power in your arms and wasting of muscles.’ He paused and looked at me, then continued, ‘To relieve this pressure, I’d need to remove three discs and fuse four vertebrae, C3 to C7, then transplant a piece of your hip bone into the neck, and fix it with a titanium plate and screws.’