The snake stone yte-2

by Jason Goodwin

  “He hit me! The bastard!”

  “Baby killer! You murderer!”

  Yashim didn’t know what they were talking about.

  They backed out of the door together.

  Preen began to walk very fast downhill. The lane led away from the city and toward the waterfront. Before Yashim could call her back, the tavern door flew open and the Maltese party spilled out onto the lane.

  They decided they would cut Yashim up for his part in a massacre at which none of them had been present. Some of them flicked knives open. They began to run downhill.

  Yashim heard them coming.

  He needed to get Preen ahead of the Maltese by one corner, a few seconds to hide.

  He grabbed her arm.

  At the first turning he glanced at the walls: in the dark they seemed smooth, not even offering a doorway. There was an alley running downhill again, a few yards farther on: they had to make that corner before the Maltese saw them. He spun Preen to the right.

  “Baby killer! We’ll cut you!”

  The alley dropped away; there were steps, of a kind. Preen and Yashim took them three at a time. They were close to the shore.

  At the bottom of the steps Yashim bore around to the right: he had a vague idea that they could follow the shoreline and cut back up later.

  “There he is! Get him!”

  The Maltese were on the steps.

  Preen stumbled and screamed.

  Yashim caught her by the arm again and wrenched her around the corner.

  The wall on their left dropped away: they were on the quay. Ahead he could see the upright poles of the landing stage, with a single caique resting between them.

  If they could just make it to the boat-

  A man came out from an alley to the right and walked toward the caique.

  “Wait!” Yashim bellowed.

  The man did not look around. He stepped into the caique. The rower put his hand to the oar.

  Yashim and Preen were twenty yards off. The caique started forward with a lurch.

  “Wait! Help!” Yashim shouted. “Help me!” he shouted in Greek.

  He flung an arm around the mooring pole. The caique was ten feet out. The rower looked at Yashim, then back along the quay to where the Maltese had just appeared.

  The man in the caique glanced around. He nodded to the rower and the caique slid back. Preen and Yashim rolled aboard.

  As the caique shot forward again, the Maltese slowed. They jogged along the waterfront, shaking their fists.

  “Baby killer!”

  Yashim looked up to thank the man, and to apologize.

  “We need to get a watchman here,” he said.

  The man shrugged.

  It was Alexander Mavrogordato.

  43

  “Thank you for stopping.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I was looking for some people,” Yashim said.

  Mavrogordato glanced back at the quay. “You found them, it would seem.”

  “They were the wrong people.” Yashim rubbed his forehead and took a breath. “You took me off the case.”

  The young man shrugged. “Mother did.”

  In the dark it was hard to tell if he was lying.

  “Lefevre was already dead,” Yashim said. “You couldn’t have known that, could you?”

  “Why should I care? A man like Lefevre.”

  Yashim heard water dripping from the scull. “It was a coincidence, then?”

  “You are in my caique,” the young man pointed out. “That looks like a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  “Perhaps. But then-I was looking for you, too.”

  “You-you followed me?”

  “No. But I heard that you came down here sometimes.”

  “That’s not true. Who said so?”

  “It’s true tonight, isn’t it?”

  Alexander Mavrogordato did not reply. If he’d been smoking, Yashim thought, he sounded calm.

  “Who owns the Ca d’Oro?”

  The fragile boat rocked as it crossed the wake of a fisherman’s boat.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Is it one of your father’s boats?”

  “Listen, friend.” Alexander leaned forward. “I don’t know the old man’s business. In six months I will be out of here, God willing.”

  “Out of here? Why?”

  “That’s my business,” Alexander retorted. “You wouldn’t understand. The Fener. The Bosphorus. The bazaar-you think it’s the world, don’t you? You all do. And just because the sultan makes a few changes here and there, you think you’re living in the most modern place on earth. Rubbish. Constantinople’s a backwater. You’d be surprised, efendi. The rest of the world-they laugh at us. Paris. Saint Petersburg. Why, in Athens they even have gas lighting in the streets! A lot of the streets. They have-politics, philosophy, everything. Concert halls. Newspapers. You can buy a newspaper and sit and read it in a cafe, and nobody looks twice. Just like the rest of Europe. People have opinions there.”

  “And they read newspapers which have the same opinions?”

  “Amazing, isn’t it? I’m going there, friend. I’ll be married, and-I’ll go.”

  “Your wife-are you sure she’ll want to go?”

  “My wife? She’ll do what I want, of course. I’ll give her fashionable clothes, and we’ll have dinners and go to the opera, and such like. We’ll be completely free. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Yashim shook his head. The boy was right: if freedom meant taking your opinions out of newspapers and dressing up like everyone else, then it was certainly something he would never understand. A pleasure, perhaps, he would never be entitled to enjoy.

  “Thank you for stopping,” he said. “You can drop us wherever you like.”

  Alexander growled something that Yashim didn’t catch. Probably, he thought, it was better that way.

  44

  By day, from the water, Pera resembled a huge crustacean drawn from the sea. On the Stamboul side, there were minarets and trees; but over the Golden Horn, Galata Hill was gray and dry, encrusted with roofs, the windows of buildings overlapping as they dropped to the water’s edge. Patches of greenery still lingered, where weeds and creepers had reclaimed areas cleared out by the fire that had swept through the town four years before; but they would not linger long. Rents were on the rise; fortunes had to be made; new buildings were going up every day, and the Perotes had no use, it seemed, for trees or gardens.

  Yashim walked slowly up the Grande Rue. If Pera was a sea creature, the Grande Rue was its spiny ridge, all the way from the top of the steps that led up from the waterfront to the great water tank that gave its name, Taksim, to the district beyond. It was the thoroughfare on which the foreign embassies were built; in the past decade it had become as cosmopolitan as Paris or Trieste. Yashim saw classical stone facades and big glass windows; shops here sold hats and gloves, liquor, patisseries, umbrellas, English boots. Everywhere he looked, new buildings were plundering the styles of vanished empires and lost civilizations-Egyptian motifs and Roman caryatids. It was rootless-for money has no roots-and it was profuse, eye-watering, ugly, and exciting, too, by turns.

  The giddy mix of styles was echoed in the street below. In the crowd that swirled up and down the Grande Rue were men and women of every nationality, and none: all the races of the Mediterranean, Arabs and Frenchmen, men in burnooses, men in hats, ladies in heels, broad-shouldered Slavs, punctilious Englishmen, Genoese sailors, Belgian tailors, black Nubians, olive-skinned Druze from the heights of Lebanon, pale Russians with fair beards, hawkers, loafers, actors, vagabonds, pimps, water carriers. Two dozen wandering street sellers cried their wares. A monkey jumped on a barrel organ. Even a bear shuffled its feet and looked around at the company with a pleasant grin.

  Yesterday he had wondered where the great parade had gone, when it vanished from the court at Topkapi. Not to Besiktas, where a sultan lay dying in his European bed.

  He pulled
the bell of a large gray stone building set back slightly from the street, and a gray-faced flunky in immaculate tails answered the door.

  “Monsieur Mavrogordato is at his correspondence. He won’t be seeing anyone before eleven.”

  “Would you inform your master that I am a friend of the Frenchman Lefevre? I want to see him very urgently, on private business.”

  The clerk pursed his lips and frowned. The Turk at the door was dressed in the old style, but he was dressed well. Had he been wearing the fez, like any man of business, he would have been easier to dismiss; but his turban lent him a sense of mystery, combined with that air of confidence that clerks were quick to detect. The combination might mean money. Private business, now. Certainly, his master liked to deal with his correspondence undisturbed. But he was not a man to relish missing an opportunity. Private business. Well, private business could mean many things.

  “A few moments, efendi,” he said, with a greater show of politeness. “If you will step inside, I will carry your message in to Monsieur Mavrogordato.”

  The hall was narrow and dark; there was nowhere to sit. Yashim stared out at the street through the glass panes of the door. The sunlit crowd flowed by at a steady rate; someone might stop or dawdle for a few moments, but the movement was strong and eventually picked the person up again, to vanish in the stream.

  Yashim thought of the book that Grigor had shown him, with its sleeping emperors and ancient prophecies. How futile it seemed, this Great Idea! How shallow, against the deep drift of time and events. Byzantium was long gone. He remembered the old lines the Conqueror had murmured as he surveyed the ruins of the imperial palace. “The spider weaves a curtain in the Caesar’s palace: the owl hoots in the towers of Afrasiab.”

  “Monsieur Mavrogordato will see you, efendi.”

  Mavrogordato was small and square with dark hair and a carefully trimmed mustache. He sat with his jacket on the back of his chair, sleeves rolled, his thin white hairy forearms resting on a desk covered in papers, like a shipwrecked sailor clinging to a raft. It was hard to guess his age: fifty, maybe. Older than his wife. And Yashim had been right: the boy, Alexander, took after her.

  “How do you do? Coffee? Stefan, coffee.” His voice had a rasp to it, and an accent that Yashim could not quite place. When Stefan had left the room he leaned forward, blinking.

  “You have some business interest, ah”-he glanced down at a card on his desk-“Yashim efendi.”

  “The name means something to you?” Yashim asked, cocking his head. The banker looked apologetically blank. “I thought-perhaps your wife…”

  Mavrogordato startled. “My wife?”

  There was a moment’s pause. Yashim fluttered his hands.

  “Forgive me, I should explain. Maximilien Lefevre. The archaeologist.”

  Mavrogordato frowned. “Lefevre,” he repeated. Then, in a somber tone, he added: “You haven’t heard?”

  “I knew him slightly,” Yashim said slowly.

  Mavrogordato gave a grunt. “Knew him. Hmm.” He began to tap his fingers absently on the table.

  “I’m investigating his death. Trying to establish some facts.”

  “I know nothing about that,” the banker said.

  “I didn’t mean to suggest-” Yashim raised his hands. Even in this office he could still hear the murmur of the crowd outside, the faint ringing of little bells, the rattling of carriages on the cobbles. “You had met him, too?”

  “I-he came here once. He wished to borrow some money.”

  He paused. Yashim said nothing.

  “I lent him the money,” the banker continued. “A small amount.” Mavrogordato paused, as if remembering, then levered himself briskly away from the desk. “Very unfortunate. But business must go on.”

  “Of course, efendi. If I might just ask-did you talk together? He was an interesting man.”

  Mavrogordato looked surprised. “I’m afraid I have no interest in archaeology. Dull of me, I am sure, but I am a man of business. You understand.”

  Yashim cocked his head. “How much did he borrow?”

  The banker blew out his cheeks. “If you ask me, I believe it was two hundred francs.”

  “Ah. French money.”

  “You know, these days…One can’t lend piastres.”

  “Because…?”

  “The value, it’s too unsettled.” Mavrogordato waved a podgy hand. “These are financial things, efendi.”

  “About which I know so little,” Yashim agreed. “Is that why he came to you, do you think?”

  Mavrogordato gave a deprecating shrug and picked up a paper on his desk. “I couldn’t say, efendi. I wish you luck.”

  “Thank you so much for your time.” Yashim paused, with his hand on the doorknob. “One final thing I forgot to ask-what kind of security did Lefevre give you?”

  For a moment Mavrogordato’s eyes searched the room. He gestured with the paper in his hand. “He was a Frenchman. It was only a small loan.”

  “Yes, of course. He gave you nothing.”

  As he closed the door, he saw that Mavrogordato was still watching him, blinking.

  45

  “Poor bastard,” Palewski said. He glanced through the window, where the bees were dozily buffeting the wisteria. “Don’t you find these summer evenings unbearably sad? It must be my age.”

  Outside, a stork clattered its bill; a pair had lately taken up residence on the new pinnacle of the Galata Tower a few hundred yards away.

  Palewski bent forward and retrieved the little book from the table. “Lefevre must have been very frightened to leave this in your flat.”

  “I suppose he thought of it when I went to get him a berth on the boat,” Yashim said. “It cheered him up, somehow.”

  “Thinking it was safe, yes.” Palewski could not quite rid his voice of its contempt.

  He stuck his nose in the book and began to murmur to himself. Yashim helped himself to the ambassador’s tea and leaned back in his chair, trying to recall Lefevre’s mood, trying to remember their last words. He had got into that caique-how? He could remember that he, Yashim, had been slightly impatient with the whole affair-the money and Lefevre’s petulance about the boat. After that, he hadn’t paid Lefevre too much attention. He thought he would never see him again.

  But Lefevre must have pondered the possibility. Hence the hidden book. And he had stepped into the bobbing caique and pushed off without a word.

  There were many things you could find to dislike about Lefevre, but you couldn’t fault his bravery.

  Meanwhile, everyone was shortly going to be invited to think that Yashim had killed him. It didn’t matter whether they believed it or not: just airing the possibility would be enough. Slander was raised only against the weak: nobody flung accusations at people whose power was secure. To be placed under suspicion showed a want of luck on Yashim’s part; and nobody in Istanbul, least of all in the palace, liked an unlucky man.

  Yashim raised his cup and squinted at his friend through the steam, with a sudden upsurge of affection. Palewski seemed to feel his regard, because he looked up from the book and smiled.

  “I can’t think what all the fuss is about,” he said. “I know this book. Petrus Gyllius,” Palewski explained, “was an antiquarian. Like your unfortunate friend, I suppose. Like him he was a Frenchman. Pierre Gilles. But in those days educated men wrote in Latin, so it’s Gyllius to you and me. He came out here in the reign of Suleyman the Magnificent. Mid-1500s, your days of glory.”

  Palewski had risen from his seat and was bending down by his bookshelves. He pulled out a couple of tomes, flicked through them one after another, and finally ran his finger down a page.

  “Here we are. Gyllius. That’s right. Comes out here in 1550 with the French ambassador. Stays on a few years, then all of a sudden he joins Suleyman on a campaign against the Persians. It’s an odd interlude, but he gets back the following year and then goes on to Rome. Writes his book, De Aedificio. ”

  “This book
,” said Yashim morosely.

  “Hmmm. I suppose you wouldn’t come by a copy all that easily. 1560-that’s the first edition.”

  “There were others?”

  “Oh, it’s been translated. English, French. I’ve got a French edition, though I can’t see it for the moment.”

  “No,” Yashim said decisively. “There has to be something about this copy of the book that’s unique. If only I could read it.”

  “Leave it with me, Yash. I’ll investigate. Quite enjoy it, actually.”

  “Watch out for the little notes inside-don’t let them fall out.”

  The book seemed to have functioned as a holdall, its pages stuffed with notes and folded papers.

  “Why was he murdered so brutally? They hacked his sternum in two, and split his ribs apart.”

  Palewski winced. “God! Like a Viking sacrifice.”

  “A-what?”

  “Viking, Yashim. You’ve heard of the Vikings, surely? The berserkers? Like your old regiment of the deli-people who turned mad when they went to war. These were the northern variety: red hair, beefy joints, terrific sailors. Exploded out of their fjords about twelve centuries ago. Ships carved like dragons. Primitive range of gods. Blood and thunder all summer: rape, murder, and pillage. Long poems about it to keep them happy all winter. Tough wasn’t the word. They scuffed Europe into what we call the Dark Ages. Most notable product, after widows: Russia.”

  Yashim was leaning forward, listening intently. Now he shook his head. “What do you mean, Russia? Or is it a Polish joke?”

  Palewski looked pained. “Not at all. The Vikings didn’t just sail across oceans. They used the Baltic rivers, too. Built ships which could sail on a heavy dew. But when they reached the Volga, they didn’t have to make their own water. Up the Volga, down the Dnieper. The Black Sea. Constantinople. Easy. They attacked a few times, too. Set up shop in Kiev-a good safe base for their raids down here, and it’s been the tradition ever since. In the end, of course, the Byzantines found it cheaper and easier to convert them to Orthodox Christianity-their leader took the name Yaroslav and thought he was the emperor’s little brother. But he was a Viking all the same.”