The Water Diviner (33 page)

The train surges on through the forest.

Connor rests his head on a rolled-up hessian sack that smells of crushed oats and chaff dust. He dozes fitfully, lulled to sleep by the train’s rhythmic clatter as it travels along the rails. Through the slats in the side of the carriage, the dappled light of the forest gives way to the white, clean sunlight of the great central Anatolian plateau, and the tracks begin to level out. The train accelerates as it leaves the mountains and starts to cross the wide, grassy plains.

The carriage begins to heat up as the sun beats down on its roof. Connor shifts, uncomfortable, but still half-asleep, disoriented and groggy.

A sudden thwack of wood against wood next to his ear startles him awake, and he sits bolt upright.

Jemal stands, legs apart, with his great mitt of a hand wrapped about the handle of a cricket bat.

‘I found this wood in trench at Çanakkale, the same day your Australians ran away. All day, I watch them use it on the beach. Through bombs and bullets. They never stop. I keep it – to remember me of that victory day.’ He holds it in both hands, spinning it over. ‘You tell me. It is a game or a weapon?’

Connor holds out his hands, smiling. ‘Both, in the right hands. Here, give it to me.’

A makeshift ball of rolled-up socks and string flies through the air, lobbed by Jemal towards Connor, who stands at one end of the carriage with the bat. Connor swats it away and it flies back to the other end of the railway car where six of the soldiers stand poised to catch it. Many an afternoon playing bush cricket in Rainbow stands Connor in good stead, and he skilfully places the ball at their feet, just out of range of their fingertips or a catch on the full.

‘Ha!’ Connor is excessively jubilant. The soldiers laugh, but Jemal glowers, unimpressed. He picks up the ball again and flings a full toss towards Connor’s head. The Australian blocks the shot with the bat. ‘No – that’s not the way. You must use a straight arm. Otherwise it’s a “no ball”.’

Jemal advances on Connor, indignant. ‘Englishers. Always with rules.’ He reaches for the bat. ‘Give me the stick now.’

The carriage jolts as the train slows suddenly. Hasan leaps to his feet and moves to the sliding door, briefly looking out before grabbing the handle and hefting it closed.

‘Sergeant!’

He signals to Jemal to close the other. Jemal whips around, responding instinctively to the peremptory tone in Hasan’s voice, and sprints to the other door, glancing out before sliding it closed. Back pressed to the door he addresses Connor, deadpan.

‘We still want our battleships.’

The train is now crawling along at walking pace. Connor detects the heavy stench of ash, smoke and cinders thick in the air. There’s something else, too; something sweet smelling that he cannot identify. He can’t see anything, but intuition tells him whatever is going on outside the carriage isn’t good. Any sense of levity quickly dissipates as Jemal directs the soldiers to ready their weapons. Faces grim, the men slide their rifle bolts and prepare to fire.

Peering between the narrow slats in the railway car door, Connor catches a glimpse of a village in the middle distance consumed by flames, thick plumes of black smoke rolling in torpid waves into the otherwise blue sky. He turns to Hasan. ‘Greeks?’

Hasan nods, raising his eyebrows. ‘Satan’s Army, the partisans. A special regiment sent ahead to terrorise the villagers. We ruled the Greeks for four hundred years, now they think it is their turn again.’ He takes his pistol from its holster and leans against the side of the carriage, sliding the door ajar slightly to afford a better glimpse of the passing country. Jemal moves to his side and raises his rifle.

They wait.

The landscape is a flickering patchwork of smoke and flames.

The train crawls along the tracks past villagers fleeing the carnage, their faces caked in dust and soot and their meagre possessions on their backs. For a short distance, a woman trudges beside them, her expression a blank mask of shock. She is bent double under the combined load of a baby bound to her back in a papoose and a carrier crammed full of squawking chickens in her arms. Five children walk by her side, hand in hand, tears staining their grimy little faces. A boy pushes a crippled old man along in a handcart. They see very few, if any, fit and able-bodied adult men.

Inside the carriage, Hasan and his men are silent and grim, their faces set. Connor clenches his fists in impotent rage. He has never been one to watch from the sidelines when others need help. The Mallee has left him no stranger to suffering. He has seen families left destitute from the ravages of drought, fire and flood; and, on one terrible occasion, he witnessed the shotgun murder of a gentle woman and her two daughters at the hands of her alcoholic husband. But he is overwhelmed by indiscriminate misery on this scale. It is almost impossible for him to conceive that other human beings are responsible for this pain. Back home, when a settlement was razed by a bushfire or inundated with water, everyone in the district rallied together to help the afflicted. Other than the occasional scuffle at the local pub, people rarely hurt other people.

A revelation hits Connor like a thunderbolt.
Australians are too busy fighting nature to fight each other.

Australia has no borders with any other nations, no ancient rivalries with neighbours looming on the horizon like a powder keg just waiting for a fuse. Connor comes from a nation that has always fought other people’s battles. His sons had to travel halfway round the world to find someone to fight.

Through the slats in the carriage, he sees a lone child wandering barefoot amongst the long grass on the side of the rails, clutching his hands together, face contorted in fear and grief. Connor grits his teeth and grasps the edge of the sliding door, unable to contain himself any longer. He prepares to leap from the train to help the child.

‘No.’ A slab of a hand lands firmly on his wrist. Jemal. ‘You will die, Connor. And then we all die. For one child.’

Connor angrily pulls his wrist away from Jemal’s grip. ‘But he is alone. He can’t be left by himself.’

He looks to Hasan who shakes his head grimly and adds, ‘Maybe he goes to his uncle’s village. Or he finds his father and mother. Maybe his brother is coming soon and will find him. Maybe, maybe not. This is war.’ Jemal moves between Connor and the doorway as Hasan continues. ‘There will be many more children like this if we do not make it to Ankara.’

Connor drops his arm to his side and slumps back against the wall. He can’t deny the logic in Hasan’s argument. But it flies in the face of everything he believes.

He turns from the side of the train and shuts his eyes, shielding his gaze from the parade of misery outside and fighting the tears that well up.

The train, which has been making painfully slow progress through a low cutting, suddenly comes to a halt. Hasan motions for the men to stay still and quiet, and signals for Jemal to investigate. Connor follows Jemal to the carriage door. The Turk slides it open far enough to peer cautiously outside. At first, it’s difficult to see through the veil of thick black smoke that billows from the solid mass blocking the train’s passage. When a gust of wind cuts through the ghastly fragrant miasma, Connor can barely fathom what lies before him. Countless bodies have been tossed onto the track and ignited. A jumble of charred and bleeding limbs and scorched skulls burned bare of flesh entangled with garlands of burning clothes form a gruesome barrier that almost reaches the height of the train’s engine. Long hair, small limbs, large hands. Men, women and children.

The train driver has jumped down from his cabin and stands, disbelieving, before the apocalyptic tableau, his hands hanging helplessly by his side.

The silence is shattered by the crack of a single gunshot, and Connor sees the driver collapse to his knees, his head exploding in a grisly spray of arterial red.

‘Inside! Now!’ Jemal shoves Connor back into the carriage and slams the slatted door shut.

The men in the carriages hold their breath. Waiting. Listening. For a moment, all they can hear is the rustle of wind in the trees.

Then comes the ear-splitting chatter of machine-gun fire and the splintering rip of bullets tearing through timber. A wave of uniformed partisans appears along the top of the embankment, charging towards the train. Some race across the gravel with guns raised, firing and reloading rapidly, faces contorted and screaming in Greek. Others plunge down the slope on the backs of strong, stocky horses.

Hasan shouts directions to his troops, who drop to the floor to escape the barrage that peppers the carriage. Men shriek and jerk as bullets find their targets, ripping through flesh and chipping bone. The dreadful metallic smell of blood fills the train car as wounded men groan and clutch at bloodied limbs, gore oozing between their fingers to splatter on the dusty floor.

Keeping low, Connor reaches out for the injured man who has fallen beside him. The man’s face is pallid, his lips almost blue as he feebly attempts to staunch the flow of blood from the jagged hole in his left thigh, the shattered bone visible through his shredded khaki uniform. Connor grabs a hessian sack and rolls it into a pad, then presses it against the gaping wound. He knows it is futile as the fabric soaks through in an instant, the blood from the man’s femoral artery running in a sheet across the floor. As his heart tires and his blood drains, the man lies still.

The salvo lulls for a moment. Jemal levers open the door a fraction and takes aim at an partisan on horseback galloping past the train. The rider jerks backwards in his saddle and tumbles off the rear of his mount, half his head blown off.

Without explanation the Greeks withdraw from the train. All is still for a heartbeat. Then they hear the piercing whine and whoosh of an incoming mortar as it smashes into the carriage in front of them. A wall of heat and sound pummels Connor as the neighbouring railway car and most of the Turkish soldiers within it disintegrate in a hail of molten shrapnel.

Hasan, Jemal and the remaining Turks smash through some of the shattered slats with the butts of their rifles and return fire, felling some of their assailants.

Unarmed, Connor feels useless, helpless. He hears the rattle of the door behind them as it is forced open. Partisans pour in through the breach.

Hasan takes careful aim with his revolver and picks the Greeks off as they swarm into the carriage. Jemal spins on his heel and raises his rifle, shooting a partisan in the face, shattering it to a featureless pulp. Before Jemal has the chance to reload, a comrade of the man he just felled shoots him in the gut. The big man slumps to his knees, clutching his stomach.

The Greeks keep coming. They press into the carriage and overwhelm the surviving Turks.

Hasan raises his revolver, readying to shoot, but is brought to the ground by a rifle butt slammed into the back of his legs. He lies, prone, with the muzzle jammed into his cheek. By his side, Connor feels strangely detached from reality as another partisan snaps at him in Greek, forcing him to the floor, where he kneels, the soldier’s rifle pointed at his head.

An officer vaults into the carriage. He barks out a volley of orders. Most of the remaining partisans seize the fallen rifles and boxes of ammunition, and drag and kick the surviving Turks out of the carriage onto the embankment beside the train.