The Love of Stones

by Tobias Hill

  It is not a pure thing, the love of stones. I have never thought of it like that. Whatever else jewels mean – the memories and wishes they are bound up in – they always become tainted with something else. It is the irrevocable power of what is precious. I walk through the City of the Black Walls and think of the Three Brethren, its hooks and spurs. But then I always do.

  The alleys open into a gold market, a warren of shops all selling the same charm bracelets and medallion-woman necklaces. I have no time or inclination to buy here, but at the end of the arcade is a lapidary’s workshop with a window full of unset gems. Inside, two men with fine white beards offer me a Roman signet. It is a good seal, worked from carnelian, to which wax won’t stick; but the carving isn’t older than the lapidaries themselves.

  I give them back the signet and buy an old Persian talisman instead, a pale turquoise inscribed with Cufic script. It is tenth or eleventh century, maybe twelfth, no later. The lapidaries ask for five dollars and I give them fifteen. It is worth many times that. Their living is more or less honest, and so is mine.

  Outside I catch a glimpse of the sun. It is past noon now. I walk against the crowd, moving east, and then the crowds give way to sudden desertion. I begin to turn the wrong corners. They lead to dead ends, crannies, rookeries. A man slumped on a rotten sofa with his hand on his scabbed penis. A rubbish heap full of newborn kittens and the smell of warm meat. The street children tug at my trousers, trying to lead me away. I go on without them for five minutes, ten. The alleyways are deserted. The sound of the plastic trumpet horn fades away.

  I round one last corner and the city wall is in front of me, black and broken. The fortifications have crumbled away down a sheer cliff. I walk to the edge. The ground breaks up at my feet and I put a hand out to the basalt blocks to stop myself from falling.

  Half a mile away the Tigris crawls. It is low in the heat, and the landscape is flat and dull around it. In the far distance there are mesas where the river basin rises to the mountains. I have walked across the old city, from west to east. I turn around, looking back the way I have come.

  This is a quiet quarter. Somewhere there is a cage of birds, the nasal me-me of small finches. Nearby there is a woman’s voice singing to the rhythm of her work. In the narrow streets I can hear the creak of a rusty bicycle being pushed along, foot by foot.

  It echoes against the high walls, coming closer. An old man limps out of the alley to my left. He is wearing a blue cardigan and a red baseball cap. He has no bicycle. The noise is coming from his false right leg.

  Halfway across the clearing the man stops and leans back. The woman is no longer singing, and the cagebirds have gone quiet. Everything waits on the sound of the old man’s prosthesis. He turns his head and looks at me. Square on, unsmiling. Then he leans down with a grunt, hauls the limb around ninety degrees, and starts walking west. He leaves behind the faint whiff of alcohol. It hangs on the air until he is out of sight, and the finches begin to cheep again.

  I watch him as he goes. He isn’t exactly an advertisement for the benefits of alcohol. Still, the first thing he makes me think of is good, cold beer. The second thing I think is that an ex-pat would be useful here, anyone who I can share a language with. I think how a bar might be the place to find them. I have seen no drinking bars in Muslim Diyarbak’r.

  The smell of alcohol is still on the air, an invisible, human vapour trail. I follow it. It is not something I am good at or take pride in, following old men down alleyways. Still, I have done more difficult things. I walk a corner behind him, back to the main street, listening for his rusty leg. After a couple of false starts he turns right and goes into a restaurant. I wait for a few minutes, then go up to the shopfront. There is a Pepsi-Cola sign over the door. A name, Sinan Lokatasu. A second notice has been hung in the window. In small letters someone has written:

  Welcone to the best pleace in down town,

  and below it, in big blunt script:

  BEER SERVED HERE.

  I open the door. It is light inside, the sun falling down a broad shaft of stairs. There is a Formica bar, four tables, a microphone on a chipboard platform, two waiters lying asleep on rows of chairs. Towards the back, a couple of men in blue overalls are playing a game of backgammon. The one-legged man is standing beside them, talking in an asthmatic monotone. He doesn’t look up when I come in, nor does anyone else.

  I sit down at an empty table and wait for the waiters. A heavy-set man in a white apron walks in from the back, looks at me and away. I watch him trying to evade my presence. There is nothing else to do in here but look at people sleeping or playing backgammon. Eventually he wanders over, nods his head back, and waits.

  I smile. ‘Hello. Do you have a beer?’

  ‘No beer.’

  He sniffs. Part of me, the weak part, wonders if I still smell of sweat. I don’t lower my face to find out. I nod towards the shopfront, and the sign in the window.

  ‘“Beer served here” – no?’

  He looks at me sullenly. He has full pouting lips, thick eyebrows, a beauty spot high on the right cheek. Pantomime features. With a wig on he would make an excellent ugly sister.

  I raise my voice. Only a little. ‘I would like one beer. Please. Lütfen.’

  ‘No beer–’ As he says it one of the waiters starts to talk. He does it without sitting up or opening his eyes. His voice is mild but not quiet. The pantomime man listens, asks a question back, then looks at his watch and shrugs. He wipes his hands on his apron and points at the stairs. ‘Go up. Please.’

  I go up. At the top of the staircase is a terrace. Vines break up the sun into a manageable heat. I walk down between paper-clothed tables to a chair overlooking the main street. There is no one else on the terrace and I sit, enjoying the sense of space. The tablecloth in front of me is smudged with old food and windblown grime. The whole place feels like an evening venue, its staff resting before night. I try to decide how long I can make myself wait here, for ex-pats who may never come, and people who may know nothing.

  I weigh up my patience. In the window of the building opposite is a sign for a Doktor Gürsel, Operator. A line has been crudely drawn through the final word. Shadows move behind the blinds. On the Doktor’s roof sits a silhouetted crow. Black as a weathervane.

  ‘Your beer.’

  I look up. It is the sleeping waiter. I don’t recognise his face, only the mildness of his voice.

  ‘Thanks. I was beginning to think it would come in a paper bag.’

  ‘No.’ He smiles at me. I realise that even when they are civil or kind, few people smile in Diyarbak’r. ‘Not in a restaurant. Are you here for long?’

  ‘In Diyarbak’r? No.’

  ‘No. For business?’

  ‘Yes. Your English is very good.’

  He smiles again. ‘No, no.’ He stops talking as if he meant to say something else. I watch his face. His eyes are dark and bright as the tan of his skin. Like his voice, they are easy things to covet. Easy to desire. I feel a flush of lust. I know it doesn’t show. I wait for him to say something else.

  He holds out his hand. We shake and he sits down. ‘My name is Asian.’

  ‘I’m Katharine. I know an Asian in Istanbul.’

  ‘Yes. It is a common name. Joe Public. It means Lion. I am also from Istanbul.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. This is my grandfather’s restaurant. He needed help. Most people here, they are trying to get to Istanbul or Ankara, always west. But I came – the other way.’

  ‘East.’

  ‘Yes. East.’ The noise of the street rises. I look away, over the tubs of vines. On the pavement below, a man in an îma headcloth is shouting at someone else, out of sight. Two more men hold him back. His voice breaks, as if he is on the verge of crying. Behind me, Asian talks in his quiet voice.

  ‘It is not a good place to live.’

  ‘The old city is beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, but most of the people in Diyarbak’r are Kurds. They don’t
want us here. For them it is a war.’

  I turn back. The beer is open on the table and I take a sip from the bottle. Asian starts to bow and move away and I wave him back.

  ‘Wait – will you sit with me? I need someone to talk to.’

  ‘Of course.’ He sits down again. The wind flutters at the tablecloths. He is younger than me by a year or two, maybe more. I watch him trying to think of something to say.

  ‘Where are you from, Katharine?’

  ‘England.’

  ‘England. London?’

  ‘Near London.’

  ‘London! I would very much like it.’

  ‘Maybe. Go in summer.’ I put down the beer. Lean forward. ‘Asian, there is someone I am looking for here. I’ve come a long way to find her.’

  He shrugs. ‘If you tell me her name …’

  ‘Glött.’

  ‘The German?’

  I sit back. Smile the easy smile of relief. ‘You know her.’

  He shrugs again. ‘Everyone knows her.’

  ‘Everyone? I’ve just spent all morning trying to find likely people.’

  ‘Oh well, maybe not everyone. Also, not everyone likes her. Katharine, forgive me, my grandfather doesn’t like me to, but – may I have some of your beer?’

  ‘Sure.’ He pours a mouthful of lager into the unused glass. I watch him drink. It feels like an intimate gesture, this sharing of alcohol, in a city where I know no one. ‘Why don’t people like her?’

  He stops drinking, smacks his lips, smiles. ‘Ahh. Why? Actually, most people like her very much. It is only the old Turks, the Atatürks, you know? The German woman has land in her own country, farms, factories. Every year she flies labourers north from here. She has her own aeroplane – a very rich woman, you know? Ver-r-ry rich. But most of Diyarbak’r is Kurdish, so most of her workers are Kurdish. They come back from Germany with their own money. They set up their own Kurdish businesses. The old Turks don’t like that. You see? But everybody else loves her.’

  ‘Where does she live, Asian?’

  She is in the old quarters, where I knew she would be. Asian draws me a map. He does it carefully, taking his time. He asks me to come back before I leave. I tell him I will. I don’t know if it is true.

  When he has finished the map I kiss him goodbye. The skin of his cheeks is soft with unshaven down. From the back of the restaurant the one-legged man watches me go, head back, drinking.

  It is late afternoon before I find the house. I duck under a striped stone archway. Sunlight falls acutely across one side of a broad courtyard.

  It is a beautiful place. There are trees in the yard, old cedars. The ground under them is paved with broad black flags. Female basalt, which is more porous than the male. Which will remain cool under the feet of its owners, even at noon on a hot day. The walls are built from male stone. Closer-grained, black and white, hung with jasmine. There is a pool with lilies and slow earth-coloured carp, umber, ochre, loam. Beyond them, an open atrium with a small fountain and stone benches. Between the seats are two doors.

  The second-floor windows are empty, dull with grime. Still, there are spyholes in the doors. A camera above them. From somewhere in the house comes the sound of a wooden flute, a repetitive phrase. The longer I stand listening, the less sure I am whether it is a flute or a bird.

  I walk across the courtyard and knock at the middle door. The birdsong stops in mid-phrase. There is no other sound from inside the house, no voices or footsteps. When the door opens I am half-looking away, back at the courtyard with its water and light.

  In the doorway is a giant. Even without his turban he must be more than a foot taller than me, and I am not a small woman. His face is dark, aquiline, Semitic. I find myself focusing on the size of his hands and the features of his face, as one would with a baby. His bulk and silence catch me off guard. He waits for me to collect myself.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m looking for a woman called von Glött. Is this the right place? Do you speak English?’

  He makes a movement which is half a nod, half a bow.

  ‘My name is Katharine Sterne.’

  He waits, one hand on the door. I see that he is holding something in his other hand. It is smooth as the barrel of a gun.

  ‘I am in the jewel trade. Pearls.’

  Nothing in his face acknowledges me, but he takes his hand off the door. The object in his other hand is not a weapon but some kind of woodwind instrument. There are holes drilled through the red grain.

  He ushers me in. The hallway is whitewashed stone. The arched ceiling is low and badly lit. There is a smell of mothballs. From somewhere far away comes an American accent. The sound of shooting.

  ‘Please.’

  I look round. The giant is hunched over, waiting. In the passageway his strength becomes ludicrous, turned back on itself. I follow him down the corridor. On each side there are statues, Persian and Babylonian, cryselephantine and alabaster. Ottoman skeleton clocks, ticking at one another from long shelves. There is a sense of accumulated wealth, the residual beauty of old empires.

  The giant walks fast. His feet are bare and soundless. From somewhere comes the sound of Americans again, and the end of the hall comes into sight. There is a curtain of black beads, light clicking through them. The giant parts the strings and I step through.

  Inside, an old woman is watching television. She sits with her back straight in a room full of kilims and sofas. Her hair is a steely chemical blonde. She is wearing an oyster cashmere dress and big fleece-lined slippers. The television is massive. On it, Arnold Schwarzenegger is the Terminator. A landlord in a string vest knocks at his door. Arnold looks up from a stolen book. Behind him, Diyarbak’r sunlight burns through a fretwork screen. A gin and tonic ticks on a brass side table.

  I glance round and the giant is gone. When I look back the old woman is already watching me. She is fine-boned, like old china. Her skin is almost translucent.

  ‘Who are you? Are you tax?’

  Her German is upper-class eastern. Nothing urban, not Frankfurt or Berlin. In London they would call her a sharp old bird, but there is something intrinsically Germanic about her. It is partly the dark elegance of her clothes and make-up, the Gothic blackness of her one rope of pearls. And it is partly a strength. She looks resilient and brittle as diamond. Contradictions which are true all the same.

  Her eyes are shrewd and bored. It would take very little to make her throw me out, and all I have to offer is one conch pearl. Now I am here, it doesn’t seem like much. I need to get her attention quickly, and to keep it. I choose my words and stick to English.

  ‘I like your house.’ When she says nothing I try again. ‘I always thought that people who admired stones surrounded themselves with beautiful things.’

  ‘Stones?’ She barks at me, as if I might be deaf or inattentive. ‘I can’t stand stones.’ In English, her accent is stronger than Schwarzenegger’s. On the screen, the Terminator is walking through a haze of crossfire.

  ‘Jewels.’ I take two steps into the room. Three.

  ‘Jewels, yes. And I do. Everything I have is beautiful. My taste is immaculate.’

  ‘Really. What went wrong with your carpet slippers?’

  There is a pause, long enough for me to wonder if I have misjudged her. She pulls herself up on the sofa, as if she is preparing to spit. Instead she takes a small, precise drink of her drink and smiles, slightly. ‘Since you ask, I am waiting for new slippers. From Paris.’

  She puts the drink down heavily. I can’t tell if it is anger or drunkenness or simply bad coordination. Her head wobbles as she watches me. She is very old. ‘Evidently you are not tax. They usually come from Germany and they always know how to dress. And they are never so rude. You are extremely fortunate, my dear, that I have a sense of humour. What is your name?’

  ‘Katharine Sterne.’

  ‘What are you doing on my property?’

  I walk over to the table, and put the conch pearl next to her gin. The light glows agai
nst its raw pink flush. The old woman picks it up with extreme care, as if she could break it between finger and thumb, like the egg of a tiny bird. Although it is not a brittle jewel, the pearl. Delicate, but with an organic strength. The roundness of the nacre is more resilient than the planar growth of a crystal. I start to describe the jewel, its weight and source, and Glött silences me with a hand.

  Gunfire and background music boom from the television. When the old woman has seen all she wants to of the pearl she closes her hand around it. Looks up at me again. Pats the sofa beside her.

  ‘Come. Sit. Am I to understand that this is a gift? Or I will pay you five hundred dollars. No more.’

  ‘I didn’t come here for money.’

  She opens her hand again. The pearl glows against the grey of her skin. Her head leans to one side and she smiles again. ‘This is charming. Charming.’

  ‘I came here to talk to you.’

  ‘And you get what you want.’ Her hand closes. ‘I think so, Katharine Sterne.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes. We will drink first, talk later.’ She scrabbles around in the sofa cushions until she finds a remote control. She bangs it three times against the side table, calls out, mutes the television – all at once: ‘Hassan! Tea. Food. Milk.’

  There is a whisper of sound from beyond the bead curtain; nothing else to see or hear. I imagine the giant, moving through the mansion on his great bare feet. But the old woman is talking to me again and I turn back. ‘My name is Eva von Glött. While you are here you will call me Glött or ma’am. You want milk with your tea. You are English?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She is rolling the pearl between her fingers and palm, like the last nub of a bar of soap. On the wall behind her is a picture of a man in forties monotone. He is faded by exposure and Eastern heat. A handsome face, clean-shaven, smiling clear out of the past. A German army uniform. ‘Such beautiful things, pearls. Do you like diamonds, Katharine?’

  ‘Like is probably the wrong word.’

  ‘I knew it. Diamonds!’ Her laugh is unattractive, a high beauty-parlour giggle. ‘Diamonds are merely glorified coal. In heaven the angels will throw diamonds on the fire. And coloured jewels are all vulgar. Baubles. They are all stones, and why would I want to wear stones? Do I look like I need to be weighed down? Am I going to float away? When I die, I will have enough stones on my chest, thank you. But pearls–’