He raised his head and turned, eyes closed, feeling for the outside wall of the stairs, where the steps were widest. He set his back against the curve and began to descend. A festoon of cobwebs brushed his hair, so old and dusty that they hung in strands, like the matted hair of a dervish. He jerked his head away.
For a few moments he stared back, incapable of believing what he was seeing. Understanding that he could see.
He glanced up the steps. At the top, where the wall ran across the stairs, a thin vertical bar of light had opened in the angle of the two walls.
Yashim scrambled back down the spiral stairs. Amelie was still lying where he had left her. Her breathing was shallow and her skin felt like ice. He took her in his arms and sat her upright, then slapped her cheeks.
After a while she began to moan.
He dragged her to her feet, holding her arm around his shoulders, his other hand encircling her waist, and began to half drag, half carry her up the steps. The movement seemed to bring her around. He felt her stumbling on the last few steps, and when they entered the corridor he was able to take the lead, holding her firmly by the arm and murmuring encouragement.
“We’re almost there, a few more steps. There’s a way out, you’ll see the light soon.”
He got behind her as they reached the spiral staircase and helped her climb. Her movements were slow and heavy, and he remembered how hard it had been for him to move when he crawled out of Xani’s pit, when every muscle had weighed a ton and all he had wanted to do was fall asleep. Sometimes Amelie did seem to drift away, and he had to brace himself and catch her as she slid back on top of him. But at last he saw the darkness starting to dissolve.
She sat quiet while he put his shoulder to the stone. A little grunting noise gradually changed into a low growl as the stone began to move and the bar of light widened inch by inch.
Before it was six inches wide, Yashim paused and put his eye to the crack.
He was looking across an expanse of cracked and polished marble toward a vast barred window, about fifteen yards away. The light hurt his eyes. Looking up, he saw a domed ceiling. Something about the scale of the building and the dusty blackness of its walls reminded him of someplace, but for a moment he could not imagine where he was.
He pushed again. The wall, he saw, was mounted on a pivot, so that as one end swung out the other swung inward. Soon he was able to squeeze himself into the gap and use his back and legs to turn the stone, and it was then that it rushed in upon him.
They had found a way into Aya Sofia.
Not on the ground floor, and nowhere near the old high altar. The spiral stairs had been built inside one of the vast pillars that supported the great dome, and they were emerging much higher up, in the deserted gallery that stretched out beneath the quarter domes of the greatest building of the ancient world.
119
Faisal al-Mehmed ran his eyes along the low shelves that surrounded him in his booth outside the Great Mosque, and shook his head. So many shoes! In weather like this, everyone wanted to go into the mosque; nobody wanted to come out. But as soon as the rain stopped they would rush upon him, demanding to have their shoes again, causing confusion.
Faisal al-Mehmed abhorred confusion, in a holy precinct above all.
A movement in the crowd made him look around. A man and a woman he didn’t remember seeing before were emerging from the doorway, into the torrential rain, and already, he noticed, they were soaking wet. The woman could barely walk: the man had one arm around her, and in the other he held her hand.
Faisal ran a hand down his beard and nodded. So many people came to this mosque without a pious thought-merely, even, to shelter from the rain. Where was the piety, in using a mosque as shelter? True piety was oblivious to rain.
Faisal smiled a benediction on the couple, for in his heart he understood that they possessed Enthusiasm.
120
When Yashim woke it was late. The thunderstorms had cleared away as if they had never been, and a hot afternoon sun was already tracing a pattern of slanting shadows across the room.
He got up slowly, feeling light and hungry. There was a loaf of bread that was no longer fresh; he broke off a piece and chewed at it, and then in self-disgust he put the bread down and riddled the stove. He blew on the embers and fed their glow with trickles of charcoal from his fingers, listening to its dry rustle, feeling its insubstantial weight, wondering as he watched the glow spread how something so light could generate so much heat. He placed his hand flat above the stove and savored the burning heat on his palm.
He looked into his vegetable basket. In an earthenware dish, under a domed lid, lay a slab of crumbly white cheese, beyaz peynir.
He skinned two onions and chopped them roughly, then sprinkled them with salt. He sliced the tops off two tomatoes and chopped them, with peppers, garlic, and a bunch of wilted parsley. He mashed the cheese with a fork.
He split the stale loaf lengthways and rubbed the insides with a cut tomato and a garlic clove. He drizzled them with oil and set them at an angle over the heat.
He dipped the onions into a bowl of water to remove the salt, and tossed them into a bowl along with the peppers, the tomatoes, and the parsley. A drop of oil fell onto the coals with a hiss. He sprinkled the salad with the crumbled cheese and a big pinch of kirmizi biber, which he had bought after the desecration of the apartment-usually he made it himself, with a big bunch of dried chili peppers crushed in a mortar, rubbed with oil and roasted black in a heavy pan on the coals.
He poured a generous lick of olive oil over the salad, added salt, and pounded peppercorns in the mortar. Clink-clink-clink.
He stirred the salad with a spoon.
He took the toasted bread from the fire and set it on a plate. He washed his hands and mouth.
He ate cross-legged on the sofa, the sun on his left hand, thinking about the dark burrows under the city, the huge cistern like a temple, and the wavering light that had pursued him through his dreams. The light he’d seen in Amelie’s eyes.
I am doing this for Max, she’d said. Fulfilling his desires. Following his instructions as if he were still alive; as if, like Byzantium itself, he still had the power to direct and to control the actions of people in the living world.
Yashim spooned up some of the vegetables with a chunk of toasted bread. I am doing this for Max.
For Max: for the man whose grossly mutilated corpse both he and Dr. Millingen had examined days ago. A body without a face, but good teeth.
121
“It’s you.” Dr. Millingen leaned forward and turned up the wick; a warm, soft light spilled across the room.
Yashim placed a bag on the floor beside him. “Madame Lefevre?”
“Very weak, after her ordeal. But she is a fighter, Yashim efendi. I am sure you know that.”
He leaned forward and picked up a coin that lay dully on the leather desktop.
“A survivor? Yes. Like her husband. Your old friend Meyer.”
Dr. Millingen frowned and glanced at the door. “I have already arranged for Madame Lefevre to be repatriated,” he said, holding the coin to the light. “She leaves tomorrow, for France.”
“A French ship?”
“ L’Ulysse. She’s berthed at Tophane, on the quay.” He leaned back, bringing the coin with him. “My man will be seeing her aboard. No more accidents, Yashim efendi.”
Yashim said coldly: “Accidents? But it wasn’t my idea to send her into the cisterns, Dr. Millingen.”
The coin began to run through Dr. Millingen’s fingers.
“I suppose you know she found nothing,” Yashim said.
“So she told me.”
Yashim stepped forward and spread his hands. “The clues added up. You would have had your relics, had they been there. But they weren’t. I don’t believe they exist,” he added, shaking his head. “Lefevre was a salesman.”
Dr. Millingen considered Yashim thoughtfully.
“I agree with you,” he said at las
t. “And yet, as you say, the clues added up.”
“The trouble with clues-you can make them point wherever you like. A few old legends, a rare book-Lefevre only had to choose a theme, et voila! A story he knew how to sell.”
Millingen frowned. “But I told you-he got nothing from us until the relics were found.”
Yashim smiled. “On the contrary. From you he got everything he needed. Authenticity, Dr. Millingen. I believe it is called provenance. Your interest alone raised the price-for others.”
“But Madame Lefevre-she believed the story, too.”
“Did she?” Yashim thought of Amelie in the lamplight, sinking to her knees in the dark water. “I think, Dr. Millingen, that the only person who may have believed in the whole charade was you. It was you who once told me that a collector is a weak man. Do you remember? You with that coin of Malakian’s I brought-the missing coin in your collection-eager to own it, at almost any price. Maybe you couldn’t be sure of Lefevre. Why should you trust him? But in the back of your mind you hoped he might be right.”
The doctor pursed his lips, making no effort to deny it.
“So you persuaded Madame Lefevre to pick up the trail.” Yashim clasped his hands together across his chest. “I don’t know if that meant you were weak. But it made you unscrupulous.”
“Steady on,” Millingen growled.
“You could have offered her money for the relics. She needs money, I’m sure.” Yashim remembered Amelie in the water, wading from him, turning her lovely head to say that she was doing this for Max. For a dead man. “But I think you offered her something else. Something that mattered more to her even than money.”
The fingers turning the coin fell still. “I wonder what you’re going to tell me, Yashim efendi. I’m very interested to know.”
“I don’t think Amelie ever really believed in the relics herself. And I don’t think you did, either. But you wanted to be sure, Dr. Millingen, didn’t you? So you devised a trade, risking one life for another. That’s your business, isn’t it? Life.”
Millingen didn’t move. Yashim cocked his head and said: “You promised her Maximilien Lefevre.”
122
Millingen placed the coin on the desk with a loud click.
Their eyes met.
“Lefevre is dead,” Millingen said. He was watching Yashim now, trying to gauge the effect of his words.
Yashim nodded slowly. “It wouldn’t be the first time, would it? Lefevre, dead.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Dr. Millingen.” Yashim frowned impatiently. “It’s a question of identity, that’s all. He told me that himself.”
“He told you-what?” Millingen’s tone was scornful.
“Byzantium. Constantinople. Istanbul. They’re all real names. All real places. Lefevre was fascinated by them, too: three identities, woven into one-just like the snakes in the column, on the Hippodrome. They are all the same place, of course. Just as Meyer and Lefevre are the same man.”
Millingen made a gesture of impatience. “I don’t go in for metaphysics, efendi. I’m a doctor-and I know a dead man when I see one, too.”
“That body, in the embassy,” Yashim said mildly, “was certainly dead. It just wasn’t who we thought. It wasn’t Lefevre at all.” He cocked his head. “Who was it, Dr. Millingen? I’m very curious. Was it a corpse you procured for the occasion? Or just a hapless bag-carrier, in the wrong place, at the wrong time?”
Millingen began to tap his finger on the coin.
“Well, it’s not the most important thing now,” Yashim said peaceably. “You were happy to let the world believe that Lefevre was dead.” He looked up and smiled. “You thought the Mavrogordatos would be satisfied, I suppose. Is that what he hoped, too?”
Millingen bent his head and frowned at a corner of his desk, but he did not open his mouth.
“But he couldn’t count on your help, could he? Not after Missilonghi. So he did the trade: his life for the relics. The last, lost treasure of Byzantium, spirited away by a priest at the altar as the Ottomans invaded the Great Church. A chalice and plate-if they still existed. And the collector in you couldn’t turn him down.”
Dr. Millingen leaned his elbow on the desk and shaded his eyes.
“Some people think,” he said slowly, and there was a tremble in his voice, “that it was the Holy Grail.”
Yashim looked at him in silence. “You’ve kept him hidden,” he said at last. “In the port, perhaps.”
Millingen heaved his shoulders, shrugging.
Yashim frowned. “He hid the book at my apartment. There’s not much trust between you, is there?”
Millingen gave a scornful bark. “Only a fool would trust a man like Meyer,” he said.
“Amelie did.” Even as he spoke, Yashim remembered the three snakes. The three cities. Meyer. Lefevre. And a dead man.
But Lefevre was not dead. He was still alive. He had one identity that was not fulfilled. One skin he hadn’t cast.
“You both needed someone to carry out the plan.”
“That was his idea,” Millingen said, dragging his palms down the side of his face. “He wouldn’t trust me. And I couldn’t let him go. He left the book with you, and sent for his wife.”
Yashim bent forward and leaned his palms on the edge of Millingen’s desk.
“What was your deal, Dr. Millingen? Why is Amelie going home alone?” His legs felt weak. “Because she failed?”
Millingen nodded gently. “I’m afraid, Yashim efendi, that Dr. Lefevre has died, after all.” His voice sounded ragged and old.
Yashim flushed with sudden anger. “I don’t think so, Dr. Millingen. This time he can’t run away from who he is. Madame Lefevre has something else to sell.”
He knelt on the ground and unlaced the bag.
Millingen leaned forward. Yashim brought up something wrapped in a cloth and laid it on the far side of the desk. It was about two feet long, and it sounded heavy.
Yashim put a hand on top of the object. “I hope you understand me, Dr. Millingen. Madame Lefevre risked her life. I don’t think she should have to go away alone.”
Millingen’s eyes were like gimlets.
Yashim flicked the cloth open.
Millingen started back, as if he’d been stung. He glanced up into Yashim’s face, then back into the deep-set eyes and the cold frown.
“The Serpent of Delphi,” he said. “I don’t-where did you get this?”
“I can’t say where,” Yashim said. “But I’ll tell you why. Madame Mavrogordato never tried to kill Lefevre.”
“But that’s not true! Her people simply got the wrong man, as you say, and-”
“No, Dr. Millingen,” Yashim said softly. “That’s your mistake. Madame Mavrogordato never quite found out who, exactly, Lefevre was. She suspected, but she wasn’t sure.”
Millingen frowned. “Then who was trying to kill him?”
“Let’s just say he trod on a serpent’s tail,” Yashim said, “and it bit back.”
Millingen threw up his hands.
Yashim looked at the snake’s head.
“I am giving you this for two passages on the Ulysse, to France.” He blinked. “Dr. Lefevre goes home, with his wife.”
123
It took Yashim less than ten minutes to reach the theater, but he was aware as he arrived that he had traveled farther than he knew. A crowd had gathered on the street outside-the same crowd, he noticed with amusement, that turned out for street brawls, house fires, or public executions: the usual Greeks craning their necks for a better view, and the customary Turks in fezzes standing gravely with their hands by their sides; foreign loafers in tall black hats, who ran their fingers hopefully through their pockets, exchanged glances with busy-looking madrassa students in turbans, who had come to protest and had been intimidated by the nature and variety of the crowd. Much of the movement in the crowd was supplied by foreign ships’ crews, who seemed to haul themselves in toward the main gate by in
visible warps. One knot of sailors Yashim recognized by their curious brimless caps, embroidered in gold with the word Ulysse.
Yashim worked his way slowly and unobtrusively forward in their wake until he reached the gate itself, where tickets were being sold in an atmosphere of ribald misunderstanding. A small, preternaturally wizened old man in a small turban was carefully examining the money people thrust toward him, with the help of Mina, whom Yashim recognized, leaning over the old man, volubly judging the quality of the coin by her interest in the faces of the men who tendered it. It looked like a full house.
Yashim found Preen backstage with beads of sweat on her forehead, pounding the air and talking very fast to a small, fat man wearing the biggest turban Yashim had ever seen. She caught sight of Yashim and stayed him with a gesture, still talking anxiously to the fat man, whose eyes appeared to be closed.
At last the fat man nodded solemnly, his whole turban tilting to and fro like a shipwreck, and withdrew.
“Chaos!” Preen muttered. “Pandemonium!” She smiled suddenly. “Always a good sign, Yashim. Where have you been?”
Yashim murmured a reply, then stepped back to allow a woman in European dress with a monkey on her shoulder to address Preen in a low, urgent voice. Preen gave her some brisk assurance, then wheeled to face a deputation of musicians, who were complaining that they didn’t have space to perform. Mina came in, looking flushed and triumphant, and whispered something in Preen’s ear. Preen nodded absently. Mina waved at Yashim.
Yashim took a seat at a cafe table to watch the performance. It was vulgar, loud, and a great success. The lady ventriloquist and her monkey; a snake charmer; an extravagantly pretty girl dressed as an odalisque, who sang and danced and, later, reappeared to be sawn in half by a Russian magician; interspersed with several interesting tableaux vivants-a Frankish home, a wolf hunt in the Carpathians, and an assignation in a Persian garden, in which scene the lady seemed to be represented by a small jeweled slipper. In the meantime the audience was served with coffee, tea, sherbet, and chibouques by slim, pantalooned dancers, and everyone talked nonstop, between applause.
The snake stone yte-2 Page 27
