The Snake Stone

by Jason Goodwin

  Yashim wondered if the boy remembered he was following him. They crossed the bazaar quarter. In front of the Patriarchate at Fener the crowd thinned. The little boy flung himself uphill, following a maze of alleys where Fener gave way to the Jewish settlement at Balat to reach the summit. There, not half a mile from Yashim’s home, and about fifty yards shy of the hilltop on the farther side, he stopped and looked around for the first time.

  Yashim caught up with him, panting from the effort.

  “You move fast,” he said. “I had no idea we were going so far.”

  The little boy’s eyes slid from Yashim’s face to a low, whitewashed building across the street, and back again. Yashim turned his head to look. There were no windows, only an outside staircase made of stone, with a rendered balustrade, climbing from the street to a small wooden door.

  The boy heaved himself up onto a low wall and sat, kicking his legs, with his chin in his hands, looking at the door. Something easy and practiced about the movement made Yashim think he had done it many times before. Finding a place to sit, swinging his legs, watching. Waiting.

  Yashim glanced back at the little door, high up in the blank wall across the street.

  “It’s through there, is it?”

  The taut little face didn’t move.

  “Stay here, then. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The boy’s glance dropped to the ground. Stay here. Is that what Xani used to say? Were those the words his father used?

  Yashim glanced about. The street was empty. He crossed to the stairs and climbed up. At the top he looked around. The boy was gone.

  Beyond, over the roofs, he could see where the hillside dropped to the ancient walls of the city, those great brick-banded walls that had been built by the emperors a thousand years before, and beyond them the hills of the Belgrade Forest.

  The door was bolted, the hasp secured by an iron padlock.

  Yashim hesitated. He glanced back to the wall where the boy had sat, and reached into his shirt.

  Long ago, in another life, Grigor the archimandrite had shown him how to pick a lock. Yashim slid the bolts and the door swung open without a sound.

  75

  THE crowd absorbed her, as Amélie had known it would. She stayed close to a group of women in charshafs, holding the shawl up close to her face, her hand touching her nose, as they walked lumpily down the Golden Horn. Porters came past, bowed beneath terrific parcels, sacks of grain, chests.

  In front of the Spice Bazaar she changed direction and began to make her way up the street that led from the New Mosque to the ancient Han of Rüstem Pasha. The crowds were thinning now; around the han, where merchants sat cross-legged in front of their shops, she attracted the odd glance. It was hard for her to walk like a Stambouliot woman, and now she was walking on her own.

  At the han she turned into the cobbled lane that ran beneath the walls of the Topkapi Palace. Glancing up, she recognized the enclosed balcony from which the sultan had always inspected marches and processions; ahead, she could make out the swooping eaves of the fountain of Ahmed III, its marble paneling chased with Koranic verses. The sight made her feel thirsty.

  76

  IT took Yashim a moment to focus his senses as he stepped through the doorway. Outside he had been hot, breathless, caught in the dust and the heat of sloping alleyways where the ground balled in broken rubble beneath your feet and the sounds of the city were never far away.

  But as his eyes adjusted to the faint light from overhead, his ears were tuned to a new and gentler sound, the bubbling of water and its liquid echo from the walls and roof. The sweat cooled on his skin, and he raised his arms to embrace the air. When he breathed deeply, it felt as if the air were cleansing him from the inside. He felt an urge to laugh, to step forward through the dim light and plunge himself into the glistening black pool that was spread out at his feet.

  Yashim brought his arms across his chest, rubbing his hands up and down.

  The big tank was fed, as far as he could see, by a spigot set in the wall, and at various points around its edge the water shimmered over into smaller tanks, like basins. In the great tank the water seemed black until it spilled across the lip: this is how the water is divided, he thought, observing the way the basins were set against the walls, each basin higher than the next, each one letting the water gurgle across its lip to the basin below.

  Yashim went forward cautiously, balancing on the broad rim of the great tank.

  He glanced back at the spigot. Water was pouring from it in a steady stream. It seemed impossible that a single spout like this could serve so many people across the huge city—the standpipes and the fountains. Unfaltering, never-ending, the stream twisted and flexed as if it were alive. Looking around, Yashim could see the small openings set in the walls where the flow was channeled out across Istanbul, a series of little black mouths, like snake holes. Some of them were stopped with rags. Some were open.

  Yashim shuddered involuntarily. It was cold in the siphon.

  On the lowest basin of them all, about six feet beneath the tank where Yashim was standing, lay the mouth of a low tunnel, far larger than all the rest, into which the water skimmed so broad and shallow that its motion was imperceptible.

  Yashim descended from basin to basin, treading on the rims, feeling the air grow colder with every step.

  The tunnel puzzled him. Even if all the outflows, the little pipes, were blocked by rags, the tunnel would never come close to overflowing. The largest amount of water that could flow down it came from the spigot above. He glanced up. Its discharge was no thicker than a man’s arm.

  As he watched, a silver ball dropped from the spigot and floated gently across the great tank.

  And at the same moment a great shaft of light illuminated the tank and the basins of water, and sent huge ripples of their reflection across the walls and roof.

  The door swung open.

  And in the eruption of the glare, Yashim did the only thing he could.

  He ducked down and made a dive for the tunnel.

  77

  FAR away, at the other end of the city, Amélie stood back and shielded her eyes with her free hand, like a woman trying to see far off on a sunlit day.

  Very slowly she turned her hand to let her eyes travel upward, every moment revealing more details of the celestial form of the greatest building ever raised on earth.

  She saw the great bronze doors that were cast two thousand years before in the sands of Tarsus. The pilasters, sculpted from marble, gleaming white in the sun. The windows of the tympanum, black and small and crisp, their decorative ironwork all but invisible in the glare, and the great arch curving above them, slender as a bird’s wing, strong enough to assume the weight of the great dome.

  She saw, and did not see, the graceful minarets that fluted upward from the squinches of the dome.

  She saw the red ocher of the great drum overhead, pierced with windows to admit the light. She saw the lead cappings of the dome.

  And at the top, high above, she saw a silver crescent on its slender rod, a crescent that stood where the cross had stood for a thousand years, before the last days of May 1453.

  In the last days, the cross had glowed with an eerie light. It had been concealed by fog. It saw the sky turn red and the crescent moon glow like a sliver in the dark, with the Ottomans readying themselves outside the walls, preparing for a final assault.

  Slowly, Amélie lowered her hand.

  She had seen the Pantheon, in Rome: a tribute to Roman strength and the Romans’ faith in concrete. She had seen the shattered remnant of the Parthenon. She had lain awake at night, willing herself to dream of the Pyramids, whose massive and enigmatic bulk she had met with in the great work of the Napoleonic savants.

  But Aya Sofia was a case apart: the last and grandest gesture of the ancient world.

  And the world had been trying to measure up to it ever since.

  She raised her arms, to frame the vision between her two hands. Th
ere was, she thought fiercely, only one more thing that remained to be done.

  She began to walk forward, toward the Great Church.

  78

  YASHIM pulled himself into the tunnel like a snake disappearing into its hole. Light from the doorway danced and sparkled on the walls: ahead lay only darkness.

  Two steps. Five steps. He was deep inside now, crouched in the dark. He turned around, with difficulty, resisting the urge to press his back in panic against the low roof of the tunnel. Breathing hard, he looked back at the mouth of the tunnel, toward the light.

  He saw a pair of sandaled feet approach the rim of the great tank. The man knelt down. Yashim could see his knees, and the arm reaching into the tank. The man stood up. He began to move along the rim of the tank as Yashim had done moments before. He took a step down, and stopped. After a moment he moved on, disappearing from view.

  The man was coming down the basins like a semicircular flight of stairs, stopping and opening the little pipes as he came.

  Yashim took several steps backward, shrinking farther into the darkness of the tunnel.

  As he watched, an orange light began to flicker against the side wall, close to the opening. He had not realized that the man was carrying a torch.

  Yashim’s mind raced, riffling through a pack of images. He saw the boy waiting for his father on the low, stone wall.

  He saw the sun setting. The boy at the door of the siphon, calling his father’s name. A little hand closing around a silver ball. A dented little hollow ball like the one that had fallen from the spigot just minutes before. It seemed an age.

  Yashim worked himself around, facing the darkness. Feeling the horror of a light at his back. Feeling the weight of the tunnel on his bent neck.

  He put out his hands, touched the rough masonry on either side, and began to creep forward into the dark.

  79

  FAISAL al-Mehmed nodded his head gently at the faithful as they slipped off their shoes and proceeded, in chattering groups, into the Great Mosque for prayer. For himself, he wished that they did not chat so much; he wished, above all, that they had washed themselves in the fountain before they took the step of entering the holy precinct—but there it was, he was an old man and people had changed. Maybe, he told himself, every old man believes that the people have changed; but maybe every old man is right. For every generation from the Prophet (peace be on him) did seem to be doomed to be less reverent than the next. After the Prophet (peace be on him) came four men who were good men, and great warriors, men who had expanded the Domain of Peace beyond all limits—and yet they were men, and had died at the hands of men, and at the end of the four there had come confusion, and divisions within their house.

  A Turk with a black mustache and a fez and a heavy belly kicked off his slippers and bent, awkwardly, to pick them up and hand them to Faisal al-Mehmed.

  Faisal tucked them away. The fat man went into the mosque.

  Faisal al-Mehmed hoped the man would remove his fez. He himself wore a green turban, signal of his descent from the Prophet (peace be on him). When men saw the green turban, wherever it was, even far from the mosque, they would be reminded of the Prophet (peace be on him), and so they would adjust their behavior accordingly. A man could not be near a mosque every moment of his life, and Faisal was well aware that very few men could be close to his mosque, the greatest mosque in all Islam; some had traveled many miles, even across whole lands and peoples, to visit this place. But those who were descended from the line, wearing the green turban—they were legion. Their turban was a precept. And that was good, a blessing upon the faithful.

  Faisal al-Mehmed turned his attention to the courtyard. Even he would have to admit that the courtyard of Aya Sofia was not perfect, as the courtyard of the Sulëymaniye was sublime. It had its fountain, where men were sitting in silence, washing their hands and feet; but it was a truncated court, without a colonnade to provide the faithful with shade, and the white marble threw off a fierce glare in the morning sun.

  He squinted into the bright light. It seemed to Faisal al-Mehmed that a woman was coming across the court, a tall woman who walked with immodest ease, unveiled. His eyebrows met in a black frown. He looked again, shielding the side of his face. It was unthinkable—but there she was, a woman, a very beautiful woman, making her way past the knots of men standing in the courtyard, waiting for the hour of prayer, toward the fountain. He scanned the courtyard, looking for the man who was with her. How could he allow such a thing! Already, some of the men had stopped talking and were staring after her. And now, Faisal al-Mehmed saw, she was unlatching her shoes, as if she were a man, preparing to wash.

  It was too much. Sometimes madmen did appear at Aya Sofia—ranting dervishes, perhaps, from the hills, strange, bearded fanatics from the deserts, once even a naked man who had come rushing into the precincts of the holy place, laughing and clapping his hands. It was not the gatekeeper’s place to judge them, for they were all of God’s creation: who was to say that the mad were not greater men, who had looked on the face of God and found rapture? So said the wise. God, they said, took care of His people, but a madwoman? A man should be taking care of her. It was very shocking.

  He began to hobble forward. He raised a trembling hand. Already, the men were standing around the woman, watching her, dumbfounded. Somebody spoke to her. She looked up and smiled and shook her head. Her scarf slipped back an inch.

  The gatekeeper began to run. He waved his arms. “No! No! Haram! Haram!” It is forbidden!

  One of the men pointed to the woman’s hair. The others looked around at the running gatekeeper, then back at the woman.

  “See!” a voice cried out. “She is an unbeliever.”

  The woman had put up her hands. She was backing away. A ring of men gathered behind her. She turned. They began to shout.

  The gatekeeper took her by the arm. “What is this, you foolish daughter?”

  A stone landed at their feet. The gatekeeper looked down at the stone, then swung around. There was quite a crowd now. Some of them were shaking their fists. Somebody stooped down and another stone whizzed through the air. Faisal al-Mehmed tugged at the woman’s arm.

  He saw the fear on her face. A look of surprise.

  “This is forbidden, don’t you understand. You must go!” He shook her roughly. He was pulling her away; the crowd parted, but only just. People were shouting. The muezzin began to cry from the minaret, and to the men below it seemed as if some hideous miracle were being enacted, some challenge had been issued. The shouting grew in intensity. Faisal al-Mehmed was afraid now.

  A hand reached out and plucked away the woman’s scarf. Somebody spat. The woman shrank closer to the gatekeeper, who waved his hand ahead of them, trying to clear a path.

  “She is a mad Giaour! Only mad! Please, good people, let us pass. She is going!”

  The crowd surged around them, angry, yelling faces, men jostling for a better view: Faisal al-Mehmed’s voice was lost in the hubbub.

  The crowd surged around them as he took the woman to the narrow gate. Faisal al-Mehmed began to pray, his voice echoing the voice of the imam overhead. “There is no god but the One God!”

  The gate was thronged with worshipers arriving for prayers. It seemed to Faisal al-Mehmed that they would be cut down before they ever got through.

  80

  YASHIM slid his feet through the water, one hand trailing against the wall of the tunnel, the other outstretched in front of his face.

  He tried not to think. All his life he had had a horror of confinement. Even as a little boy he had fought like a wolf if his playmates tried to pin him down. He never followed them, either, into the caves they used to explore around his home on the Black Sea coast: there were rockfalls sometimes; tales of miners, trapped underground, used to visit him at night. Once had he been trapped himself. Confined, unable to move, staring wild-eyed at the men and the knife. The horror had risen in his gorge—and his life was changed.

  He tried no
t to splash; it seemed to him that the level of the water had risen, that it was by his ankles, but the cold was so intense that he could not be sure. All that mattered was to get deep into the tunnel, away from the torchlight.

  If only the pipe would curve.

  A few steps farther on, his hand came up against a curved edge. He stopped and groped around. As far as he could tell in the dark, the channel forked; he was between two openings, both the same size, both carrying the current. He squatted down and glanced back.

  For a dizzying moment he felt that he was staring at a solid wall, as if the tunnel had sealed itself behind him, and he reached out in a panic. The movement of his hand revealed to him the existence of a faint glow, which seemed to hang in the air in front of him. As he watched, it grew brighter, an aureole of faint light surrounding a pinprick of flame in the darkness.

  The waterman was coming down the tunnel.

  Yashim felt sick. He squeezed his eyes shut and fought the panic, fought the thought that he was being pressed deeper and deeper into the ground.

  It’s a maze, he murmured to himself. Only a maze. In a maze, you must follow a rule.

  Two tunnels. One bore to the left: it might descend the hill toward the Fener. The other, tending to the right, presumably took a line to the south. Yashim tried to picture the shape of his city, the rise and fall of its hills. One or both of these pipes might lead to another siphon, where the water pooled at a lower level than the tank it came from. Sooner or later, if that were the case, the pipe would start to grow full of water, like a curving reservoir, and he would have to stop moving.