The snake stone yte-2

by Jason Goodwin

  Palewski nodded. “Until the crusaders arrive.”

  Lefevre closed his eyes and nodded. “Ah. Ah, 1204, yes, the shame of Europe. I would call it a rape, monsieur: the rape of the city by the brutal soldiers of Western Europe. Her diadem flung into the dust. It is pain for us to speak of this time.”

  He selected a delicacy from the tray.

  “And yet she is a woman: she recovers. She is a shadow of herself, but she still has charm. So she seeks a new protector. In 1453: the Turkish Conquest. Let me say: she becomes Istanbul. Mehmed’s whore.”

  It was Yashim’s turn to blink.

  “The Turks-they love her. And so, like a woman, she becomes again beautiful. Is it not so?”

  Lefevre peered into a silence. “But perhaps my little analogy displeases you? Alors, it can be changed.” He spread out his hands, like a conjurer. “Istanbul is also a serpent, which sheds its skin.”

  “And you collect those discarded skins.”

  “I try to learn from them, Excellency.”

  Palewski was studying the tray, a scowl now plainly on his face. “Good meze, Yashim,” he said.

  “All dolma-” Yashim began; he meant to explain the theory behind his selections, but Lefevre leaned forward and tapped Palewski on his knee.

  “I have traveled, Excellency, and I can say that all street food is good in the Levant, from Albania to the Caucasus,” he remarked.

  Palewski glanced up. Later, he told Yashim that the sight of his face at that moment had brought him the first pleasure of the evening.

  Lefevre licked his fingers and wiped them on a napkin. “The singular contribution of the Turks-I believe this is correct-to the degustation of civilized Europe-you’ll forgive me, monsieur, I am merely quoting-is the aromatic juice of the Arabian bean: in short, coffee.” He gave a laugh.

  “I shouldn’t believe everything you read in books,” Palewski said, with another glance at his friend.

  “But I do. I believe everything I read.” Lefevre wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue. “A professional habit, perhaps. Letters. Diaries. Travelers’ memoirs. I choose my literature carefully. Trivial information can sometimes turn out to be very useful, wouldn’t you agree, monsieur?”

  Yashim nodded slowly. “Certainly. But for every useful scrap of information, you must reject a hundred more.”

  “Ah, yes, perhaps you are right.” He leaned back, touching his thumbs together. “Have you ever heard of Troy?”

  Yashim nodded. “Sultan Mehmet once laid claim to Trojan ancestry,” he said. “He presented the fall of Constantinople as a revenge on the Greeks.”

  “How interesting.” The Frenchman pinched his lower lip. “I was about to suggest that one day we will uncover the ruins of the city that Agamemnon sacked.”

  “You believe it exists?”

  Lefevre laughed softly. “More than that. I think it will be found exactly where legend has always placed it. Scarcely a hundred kilometers from where we sit-in the Troad.”

  “Are you to dig for it yourself?”

  “I would, if I could get permission here. But for that-and everything else-one needs money.” He smiled pleasantly and spread his hands.

  A breath of air stirred the curtains, and a ring chinked softly on the rail.

  “Of course,” Lefevre continued, “sometimes these things may just drop into your lap, if you read carefully and learn where to look.”

  He took a sip of champagne. Palewski got up and opened the second bottle with a pop.

  “I’m afraid you must find us very careless with the past,” Yashim said. “We don’t always look after things as we should.”

  “Yes and no, monsieur. I do not complain. Carelessness of that sort may be a godsend to the archaeologist. One has only to go to your Atmeydan-the ancient Hippodrome of the Byzantines-to see that all its monuments remain intact. With the exception of the Serpent Column, of course. The column has lost its heads, which is no fault of the Turks.”

  Palewski suddenly picked up his glass and drained it.

  “Nobody remembers anymore, I shouldn’t think,” Lefevre went on. “But the bronze heads were wrenched off the column little more than a century ago. To think what their eyes had witnessed, in the centuries since they stood beside the Delphic oracle!” He half turned toward Palewski. “It was foreign vandalism, Excellency.”

  “Disgraceful,” Palewski murmured.

  “Yes.” He frowned and leaned forward, pointing at Palewski. “Do you know, I recall a story that it was perpetrated by compatriots of yours! Young bloods in the Polish diplomatic, a century ago. I am sure I am right. Still, as I say, you never know what may drop into your lap unexpectedly. And profitably, too, for all concerned.” He paused. “I think it so often pays to believe what you read.”

  In the silence that followed this remark, Yashim produced his main dish, a succulent agro dolce stew of lamb and prunes, followed by a buttery pilaf. Lefevre rubbed his hands together and pronounced it excellent. He had seen-and smelled-it cooking on the brazier. They drank off the second bottle while he outlined his plans to leave Istanbul and make a tour through the Greek monasteries in the east. “Trabzon, Erzerum. Wonderful men, ignorant men,” he told them, shaking his head.

  ‘I must say, Excellency, this has been a delightful evening. They say a visitor is starved for good company in Istanbul these days, but I see no sign of it. No sign at all.”

  He left shortly afterward, when all the champagne was gone, insisting that he could see himself home. Yashim took him down to the alleyway, led him to the Kara Davut, and found him a chair.

  “One of these days-” Lefevre called out with a wave; and then the chairmen hoisted him onto their backs and trotted away, and Yashim didn’t catch the end of his farewell.

  He turned and made his way back up the alley, thinking over the evening’s conversation. For a moment he had the impression that something had moved at the top of the alley, where a small votive candle burned in a niche; but when he turned the corner the alley was dark, and he heard only the sound of his own footsteps. Once, before he reached his door, he turned his head involuntarily and glanced back.

  Palewski whipped the door open as Yashim reached the top of the stairs. He had the vodka bottle by the neck.

  “It wasn’t the first time he mentioned those serpents’ heads, Yashim. He was like that when we met.” Palewski seemed struck by a thought. “Do you know, if he ever asks to see me again, I’ll say no. I certainly won’t let him out of my sight,” he added paradoxically, uncapping the bottle.

  Long ago, in a moment of exuberance, Palewski had led Yashim to a vast armoire that stood at the head of the stairs in the Polish residency. Turning the key in the lock, he had swung back the doors to reveal two of the three bronze heads that had once adorned the Serpent Column on the Atmeydan. They had goggled at them in horror for a few minutes before Palewski abruptly closed the door and said: “There. It’s been eating me up for years. But now you know, and I’m glad.”

  “Even Lefevre isn’t going to look into that big cupboard for the serpents’ heads, my friend.”

  Palewski jerked at the bottle so fast that a splash of vodka landed on his wrist. “For God’s sake, Yash!” He glanced wildly at the door. “That Frenchman would be through it like a dose of salts.” He licked his wrist. “Profitable for all concerned, my eye. He smells them, and I’ve got no idea how.” He poured two shots and knocked his back. “Ah. Better. Cleans out the system, you know. It’s my guess that the man’s some sort of thief, Yashim. He knows too much. I’m sorry I brought him. I just couldn’t shake him off.”

  “My dear old friend, we need never see him again.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Palewski said.

  And he did.

  9

  “You are not what I had expected,” Madame Mavrogordato said. It was not a reproach. It was a statement of fact.

  She sat bolt upright in a carved wooden chair, her jet-black hair piled up and stuck with pins. She had t
he face of a Cappadocian god, with straight black brows and chiseled lips. Yashim blinked and swayed a little on his feet. Madame Mavrogordato was not what he had expected, either.

  On balance that was a good thing, but today the balance was fine. Yashim’s temples throbbed. His mouth was dry. Palewski was probably right, and the sultan was really dying from that champagne. He wished he had ignored the note and gone to the hammam first-he should at least have eaten some soup. Tripe soup, best. Palewski, having gone off cautiously down the stairs in the middle of the night, would still be comfortably asleep in bed.

  The note had been delivered by hand, very early. While men consulted Yashim about money in one way or another, and sometimes about death, women summoned him more rarely. Women were usually worried about their husbands, their servants-or a mixture of the two; and sometimes they wanted nothing more than to satisfy a curiosity about Yashim. He was attached to the palace; he lived in the city; so they invented little troubles and called him in to brighten up their day. In normal circumstances, even the Christian women would have thought twice about summoning a man to their apartments; but Yashim was above suspicion. They called him, politely, lala, or guardian. In a city of a million people only a handful of men deserved the title, and most of those worked in the women’s apartments in the sultan’s palaces.

  Madame Mavrogordato did not call him lala. She would never have servant trouble.

  The Mavrogordato mansion stood alone behind high and fire-blackened walls in the Fener district of Istanbul, halfway up the Golden Horn. Yashim lived in the Fener, too, but that hardly made them neighbors: his home was a small tenement apartment above an alley. During the Greek riots eighteen years ago, the district had been ravaged by a fire; beyond the blackened walls, the mansion itself was entirely new. So, too, were the Mavrogordatos.

  Quite how new, it was hard to say. Certain old Greek families of the Fener had for centuries provided the Ottoman state with dragomen, governors, priests, and bankers; but many had been linked to the Greek independence movement, and after the riots this so-called Phanariot aristocracy all but disappeared. The Mavrogordatos belonged to a circle of wealthy families who did the same sort of business the Fener aristocracy had done, and even their name seemed quite familiar. But it was not quite the same name, and they were not the same people.

  Yashim bowed. Madame Mavrogordato’s black eyes flickered toward an enormous German grandfather clock, which stood against the wall of the dark apartment.

  “You are late,” she said.

  Yashim glanced at the clock. Beyond it, another clock stood on an inlay side table. Behind Madame Mavrogordato an American clock hung on the wall, with a little glass panel through which you could see the pendulum rhythmically reflecting back the subdued light in the big, closely shuttered room. Between the windows stood another grandfather clock. Its hands showed a little after ten.

  “Why don’t you wear the fez?”

  “I am not a government employee, hanum. I am almost forty years old and I believe I am old enough to choose what I find comfortable. Just as I like to choose who I work for,” he added coolly.

  “Meaning what?”

  “I live modestly, hanum. I would rather be busy than idle, but I can be idle, too.”

  Madame Mavrogordato picked up a silver bell at her elbow and shook it. An attendant appeared noiselessly at the door. “Coffee.” She glared at Yashim for a moment. “I do not permit smoking in these rooms.”

  She indicated a stiff French chair. The attendant returned with coffee, in a silence measured out by the ticking of Madame Mavrogordato’s four clocks. Yashim took a sip. It was good coffee.

  “It may or may not surprise you to learn that I, too, have lived modestly in my life,” Madame Mavrogordato began. She picked up a string of beads from her lap and began to thread them through her slender white fingers. “That time, I hope, is past. Monsieur Mavrogordato and I have worked hard and-we have sometimes had the good fortune that others lacked. I am quite sure you understand what I mean-as when I say that I will not allow anything to jeopardize that good fortune.” The beads slipped through her fingers one by one. “You may have heard that Monsieur Mavrogordato is a Bulgar. It is not true. He comes from an ecclesiastical family, formerly in Varna. I am related to the Mavrogordato family by blood, and Monsieur Mavrogordato by his marriage to me. Early on, I recognized his talent for finance. He is good at figures. He enjoys them. But he is not a bold man.”

  She looked Yashim squarely in the eye. Yashim nodded. Monsieur Mavrogordato obviously was a Bulgar. Yashim didn’t mind. Left to his own devices, he supposed, Monsieur Mavrogordato might yet be totting up the church accounts in some provincial viyalet. Instead, he had become a merchant prince in the capital of the Ottoman Empire, steered by the woman whose slender claim on the Mavrogordato legacy had provided the necessary leverage. A woman whose boldness was scarcely in doubt.

  “My husband is a moderate man of thoroughly regular habits. It falls to me to maintain a household that is quiet, orderly, and appropriate. Anything that disturbs Monsieur Mavrogordato in his work also disturbs us here.”

  Madame Mavrogordato, Yashim noticed, had not touched her coffee.

  “I know very little about business,” Yashim said.

  “It is not necessary that you should. What I require is a certain-intelligence. And discretion.” She paused. Yashim said nothing. “Well?”

  “I hope, hanum, that I am discreet.”

  Her lips tightened. “Yashim efendi, my husband was visited yesterday by a Frenchman. He asked for a small loan. In the course of the discussion, the man made certain offers which were in some sense disquieting to my husband. Later, I was able to detect his agitation.”

  Yashim blinked. “Offers, hanum?”

  “Offers. Promises. It is hard for me to say.”

  “You think that your husband was being blackmailed?”

  Madame Mavrogordato’s face remained impassive, but she twisted the string of beads in her hands so tightly that Yashim half expected them to break. “I do not think so. My husband has nothing to be afraid of. I believe that the Frenchman was proposing to sell him something.”

  “You believe-but you’re not sure?”

  “My husband keeps nothing from me, but he found it hard to recall exactly what the man said. If, indeed, he said anything at all. It was more a question of-of the tone. As if he were hinting at something.”

  “Maximilien Lefevre,” Yashim said.

  Madame Mavrogordato looked at him sharply. “That’s right. What else do you know?”

  Yashim spread his hands wide. “Very little. Lefevre is an archaeologist.”

  “Very well. I-that is, my husband and I-would like you to find out a little more. If possible, I would like you to encourage Monsieur Lefevre to conduct his-research-elsewhere. I resent disturbance.”

  Yashim put out his lower lip. “I can try to find out something about Lefevre. But I should speak to your husband.”

  Madame Mavrogordato’s eyes were iron black. “It is enough that you have spoken to me.”

  She picked up the bell and tinkled it. A servant appeared, and Yashim rose to leave.

  “One thing,” he added as he reached the door. “Did your husband give him that loan?”

  Madame Mavrogordato worked her jaw and glared. “That-” she began, and with that hesitation Yashim realized that she was far younger than he had originally thought; not yet forty. “I–I never asked.”

  10

  As Yashim followed the footman down to the hall a door opened and a young man stepped forward.

  “One moment, you,” he said. “Go along, Dmitri. I’ll see the fellow out.”

  The young man was in his early twenties. He had a thick mop of black hair and was strongly built, with broad shoulders and a big jaw that hadn’t lost its puppy fat. He was dressed in a well-cut stambouline, a starched collar with a silk cravat, black stovepipe trousers and a pair of slim black leather pumps. He was almost as handsome as his mother-t
he resemblance was very striking-but his eyes were smaller, harder, and there was a contrasting softness around his mouth that Yashim liked rather less.

  “Good morning,” he said politely.

  The young man scowled and stared at Yashim. “I saw you come in. You were talking to Mother.”

  Yashim raised an eyebrow and made no reply.

  “Did you talk about me?” the young man asked abruptly.

  “I don’t know. Who are you?”

  “My name’s Alexander. Mavrogordato,” he added bullishly, as if he half expected Yashim to deny it.

  Yashim thought for a moment. “No. No, we didn’t discuss you at all. Should we have?”

  The young Mavrogordato gave him a suspicious look. “Are you being clever?”

  “I hope so, Monsieur Mavrogordato. But now, if you will excuse me-”

  The young man reached out and grabbed Yashim’s sleeve. “Why are you here, then?”

  Yashim looked down slowly at the hand on his sleeve and frowned. There was a pause, then Mavrogordato let go. Yashim brushed a hand across his sleeve.

  “Perhaps you might wish to discuss it with your mother. Please don’t detain me again.”

  He stepped around the young man. As he passed, he felt his breath on his face, sour like a tavern.

  11

  Holding the lamp in one hand, Goulandris surveyed the shelves that lined his little cubbyhole in the Grand Bazaar. Now and then he reached out to knock the books into line and close the gaps. Satisfied, he returned to his stool, set the lamp on the desk, and blew out the flame.

  A shadow fell across the desk. Goulandris glanced up, without enthusiasm.

  “The shop is closed,” he said. He moved his head to see better, but the figure in the doorway stood against the light. “Come back tomorrow.”

  He turned his head again, hoping to identify the man at the door. If he came tomorrow, it would show that he was eager: Goulandris wanted to be able to recognize him again.