by Tobias Hill
‘Business? I am in the business of money, like everyone else. What business are you in, Katharine Sterne?’
‘Jewels.’
‘No! You are in the business of money. Jewels are just the flavour of it. Jewel-flavoured money, political-flavoured money, pickle-flavoured money – it is all the same. All business, mine and yours. Jewels most of all.’
I know she is wrong. About me, she is wrong. I don’t say it. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘If I wanted to talk about myself, I would live in Paris. I don’t want to talk about me.’ Glött stubs out her cigar in a dish of rice-patterned porcelain. When she looks up her eyes are blackened, ashy. ‘I want to talk about you.’
I shrug. ‘There is nothing to tell.’
‘Of course there is.’
I sit back. The sofa gives off a sour animal must.
‘Eh? You think you are ordinary people, the things that you do?’
‘More or less.’
‘More or less!’ She stops and drinks. Over the lip of the glass, her eyes stay on me. ‘More less than more. Are you married, Katharine Sterne?’
‘No. Ask me another.’
‘Never?’ She is genuinely surprised, staring. It makes me laugh as I shake my head. ‘You have family?’
‘A sister.’
‘You are close?’ She is gauging me. A lie detector in pearls. I shake my head, no. ‘So you are alone. Why do you want the Three Brethren?’
It catches me off guard. Not the change of direction, but the astuteness of the question. It is what I would ask myself, if I could.
‘Because–’ I am thinking of my own head. Opening it up, like the back of a watch, the shell of a crab. My whole life clear, a mechanism in flesh. But it isn’t like that. It is never so easy. ‘I just do. Because it is perfect. The perfect jewel.’
‘Ah? Perhaps you are right.’ Glött is no longer looking at me. From the back of the sofa she digs out a cigar case of dented silver. She extracts a fresh panatella and matches, lights up, smokes. ‘Tell me, have you heard of the Crown of the Andes?’
‘No.’
‘No?’ She puts on her surprised face again, a pantomime expression. It reminds me of Yohei. Sweets from strangers. ‘I understood that you were an expert in stones.’
‘Stones, not crowns. Ring the Queen Mother.’
She looks away from me as if I have failed her. ‘I hoped to find that you knew a little more than this. The Crown of the Andes was made by the conquistadores of Spain. It was an artefact of their conquest of the Andes, or that is what they intended it to be. They put into it the finest of everything they took. It was carved whole from a single piece of gold, a hundred pounds of Incan ore. This was four centuries ago. They set their crown with four hundred and fifty-three emeralds–’
‘You think emeralds are vulgar.’
‘They are, of course. But if you pursue vulgarity with great enthusiasm it comes to have a certain rank style. Four hundred and fifty-three emeralds, of which the largest was forty-five carats. That stone having been taken from the Incan King Atahuallpa himself.’
Smoke gathers around her as she talks. From outside comes the sound of a truck changing gears, years away.
‘For centuries most jewellers in Europe thought the Crown of the Andes was a myth. It was considered to be a Holy Grail of stones. But it was legendary, not mythical. It still exists.’
‘Really.’
‘You don’t believe me? It even has its own secret army to protect it. The Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception.’ She puts the cigar down in the porcelain dish, taking care not to break the lit ash. Sighs out smoke. ‘The Crown of the Andes. I don’t know if it is the perfect jewel. But there are many objects, many artefacts, that could make that claim. Don’t you agree?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe certainly. Then I will ask you again. Why do you want the Three Brethren?’
It is so easy to underestimate the old. I open my mouth to answer and find I have nothing to say. I sit there, blinking in the light and smoke. She begins to cough, and it is only when I look at her that I see it is laughter.
‘There. That’s better. What is the time? Where is my watch?’
I find it for her. It is an International. Old gold, old leather. There is a smudge of mouse-shit across the buckle. Glött peers at the small face. ‘My God, what time does it read?’
‘Almost two,’ I say, but she knows, is not listening. She doesn’t need my help. Already she is tottering up out of the sofa. Her anger boils up again out of nothing.
‘What do you think we are doing, sitting here talking when you should be working? Why didn’t you tell me? You are here to catalogue stones, not to listen to music. Are you prepared?’
I shrug. She peers down at me, as if I were another watch-face to be distrusted. ‘You don’t look prepared.’
‘I’m as ready as you are. Shall we go?’
And we go. She walks fast but stiffly, as if her legs refuse to bend. If she finds the stairs difficult she doesn’t say. I go up three flights behind her, watching her work against her age, as if I could catch her. As if I care so much or intend to be here, one day, when she falls.
There are more windows on the upper floors. As we walk I catch glimpses of a flat roof garden in a landscape of eaves. Beyond Glött’s house, the old town and the new. Buntings of peppers drying in the sun, orange and red and old-blood black.
‘I will expect a preliminary report from you this evening. You will eat with us at eight o’clock.’ Below I see the central courtyard. Doves with splay-feathered feet shuffle round the pool like inmates. Hassan is under the trees, hosing down the basalt paving.
‘Us?’
‘I have a relation staying. Martin.’ Her voice warms to his name. She doesn’t mention the girl. ‘Supper is served in the kitchen. Hassan will come for you. You have something to wear? Jewellery?’
‘No.’ We reach the end of the hall. There is only one door. Eva takes out a ring of keys and fusses through them. ‘I can find my own way’
‘I find it odd you carry nothing with you. A lady should always have jewellery. For those times she misses the feel of gold. If you wish to borrow something of mine, you may do so. Anything you see.’
‘Thank you,’ I make myself say, although the generosity jars a little. It feels too easy, like bait. ‘You don’t come up here often?’
The door unlocks. She gives me a quick stare. I follow her inside.
It is quiet as a library – quieter, that is, than somewhere simply left empty. It feels as if it has been locked for many years longer than I have been alive. There are skylights through which faint columns of sun fall. Under each light stands an urn and plinth. The nearest pair are Blue John crystal. They catch the sun and turn it purple.
It is not what I expected to find in Diyarbak’r, this place. Glött’s room of stones is like all the gemmological archives I have known. There is always this hush. Always the drawers, cut stones at the top, uncut by the floor. There is always a smell of preservatives, although jewels need no preservatives. I feel at home here. More than that, I sense a commonality. The impulse in this room reflects something in me. A kind of love that no longer requires people.
By the drawers rests a set of librarian’s steps. It is skewed backwards, a staircase to nowhere. In the centre of the room is a single leather-topped desk. I walk over to its fossilised clutter. A chair tucked in neat as a shirt. Two green glass lamps. A manual typewriter. A parcel with a Berlin address, mummified in wrappings and dust. A German newspaper yellowed as old ivory, dated Christmas 1903. The headline: AMERICAN FLYING MEN.
An empty bottle of claret, the glass beside it quarter-filled with dust. I pick up the glass. It smells not of wine but of calvados. Eighty-five years old, the essence of apples.
‘My father cared a great deal about stones.’
‘I can see that.’ The wooden strata loom above me. Altogether it is a massive collection. A lifetime’s achievement.<
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‘I never liked them.’
‘You said.’ I put down the glass. On the floor by the chair, tracks in the dust. ‘Someone has been up here.’
‘Here? Not for a very long time. Now, to business. I mean to sell all of this, as soon as I know what price I can get for it. You will see that my father catalogued everything as he went along. He liked people to think he was a consistent man.’
I leave the desk. Each drawer has an identification plaque of yellowed plastic. They are all in German, Gothic script. The terms I know in a number of languages. Beryl and chrysoberyl, quartz and cryptocrystalline quartz. Pyroxene 3-22. Amphibole 99-129.
‘Which, unfortunately, he was not. Do you have any German, Miss Sterne?’
‘Some.’
‘Your knowledge of stones will make up for your inability. You are free to work in English.’
‘Fräulein–’
‘Glött. Please.’
‘Glött. I’m afraid I don’t see what you need me for. Everything here appears to be in good order.’
‘Appears.’ She coughs or laughs, again it is hard to tell. ‘You think I brought you up here to admire the view? How can it appear, when you have not looked at the stones? Eh? Look.’ She yanks open a drawer, the stones rattling in their cavities. Picks them out clumsily, a child playing havoc with a box of chocolates. Drops them into my hands.
The light is better beside the urns. I turn the gems in my palms. I can see what they are already, all the usual suspects. ‘Your father had a good eye.’
‘They are valuable?’ I hear her moving in.
‘Depends. Probably not in the terms you mean. They’re jewel-quality. These are onyx, this is bloodstone, with some kind of signet carving. Ah. More agate, more jasper. Moonstone.’ I look back at the identification plaque. ‘But this is wrong. The moonstone isn’t a quartz. It shouldn’t be here.’
‘A prize for effort. Nothing for observation.’
The old woman leans on the urn beside me. I could tell her that the stone lip is delicate, that Blue John is fragile, but she wouldn’t care. Her hands are white on the purple crystal.
‘Pick any drawer here, you will find the same thing.’
‘Why?’ I look around. The urn rocks on its plinth and I put a hand out to stop it falling. ‘I mean, how did this happen?’
‘Because my father was a useless man.’ When she talks loudly I can smell her breath. Tobacco and oil. I try not to flinch away. ‘I have spent much of my life putting his life right.’
‘And what do you think I can do here? Recatalogue the whole collection?’
‘That is what we agreed. My help for yours.’ She watches me, waiting. I look up at the shelves again. In the disorder they hide, they become mythic. They are the pile of wheat and barley. The field to be cut, husked and baked into bread by morning. The stable heaped with shit. I don’t try to stop myself as I begin to smile.
‘What is it you find so funny?’
‘The idea that anything in here could be found.’ I try and take in the room with a one-handed gesture. It isn’t enough, which is the point. ‘Fräulein, this isn’t possible. It would take a team of professionals many months to do this. Alone, it would take me years.’
‘And you don’t have time?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘We had an agreement.’
‘No. We didn’t.’ I watch her eyes. They catch the light, shining.
‘You want it, don’t you?’
For a second I don’t know what she means. She leans towards me. Tobacco and oil. ‘You want the Three Brethren?’
A claustrophobia rises up in me. Glött walks back towards the door. Her voice echoes against the room’s hard surfaces. ‘It is up to you, of course. But it seems a pity. To come all this way. My father’s papers are all here, all the accounts, the records, the details you are looking for, the Brethren transaction: it will be here somewhere. Everything is.’
‘I can see that.’
I stand quite still. She gives me time. I am trying to decide, not whether I will stay, but why I veer back from doing so. It is not the collection so much as the feeling that I am being forced into something. In the doorway the old woman waits.
‘What if I find the transaction tomorrow?’
‘Then you must go and get your jewel. Of course.’ Overhead, a pigeon walks across the roof tiles. The ticker-tape of its footsteps starts and stops. Stops. Starts.
‘And if I don’t?’
She smiles. Blue-white teeth, brown-white, ivory. I think of them after she is gone. The colours of pearls and skin.
It takes a considerable amount of time to find nothing. Time has never been my problem before, but these things can change. Glött’s collection reminds me of something from a folk tale, as if I could walk out tomorrow and find that a century has passed.
Nothing is where it should be. By evening I have redistributed a rubble of minor gems, butter and honey ambers and ruin agates. But the drawers are full of the unexpected. They are Cornell boxes, exhibits in an exhibition. In one I find a carving knife, its blade sharpened almost to nothing, a lick of steel. In another, a chess case full of mothballs, boxes inside boxes. In Diamonds 6 I come across a sealed jar. It contains what the alchemists used to call a Tree of Diana: a crystal of silver, its tiny struts and spars suspended in liquid like a laboratory foetus. And on the desk papers, repeated again and again, is a faded sepia signature, R. F. von Glött. The man who cried over the Brethren.
I was wrong about him. He had no eye for stones, only the money to buy what he liked. And he liked everything. Loved without discrimination. His character is all around me, preserved in his stones. If any of them has value, it is only because money goes to money. It is hours before I discover there are real jewels hidden here.
In a wall of drawers marked Miscellany I find a piece of violet coral the length of a child’s fingerbone. Aballa, which is a spherical diamond, the crystals intergrown into unworkable hardness. In the desk’s middle drawer, next to an American revolver, are ten Islamic manuscripts illuminated with ochre and welts of gold. I record their presence along with everything else, hammering on the typewriter. I take nothing, although the balla alone could fund my search for some years. Today I am the honest lapidary bent over her loupe. I don’t want money from Glött, just information. I only ever take what I need. This is what I tell myself.
At four o’clock there is a bang at the door. I turn round and the old woman is leaning there, a cocktail glass slopping in each hand.
‘What have you found?’ She is already drunk. I put down my loupe, walk over, and take the drinks out of her sticky fingers.
‘Thank you. Nothing.’ I sip the glass. She is watching me, rouged and expectant.
‘It is a frozen margarita.’
‘I know what it is.’ I stop myself. The reality of the work has made me sullen. ‘It’s delicious, Fräulein.’
‘There are more in the kitchen. I made a mixer …’
‘Fräulein – Glött–’
‘Eva.’
‘Eva. I have to work.’
‘Of course, of course, you are looking for your lost brothers.’
‘Brethren.’
‘Brethren!’ She laughs, head back, not far from hilarity. ‘Aha. You make me feel young, Katharine Sterne. I must thank you. You are remarkably old.’
I shake my head, not understanding. She talks through me. ‘Now! I will make you another deal. Drink this drink with me, and I will make a toast.’
I give her back a glass. She holds it as if she is drying her nails. Glött in party mode is a different creature from the recluse, brooding over old music and the philosophy of pearls. We toast.
To your Three Brethren. That they fall in your way.’
‘That they fall in my way.’
‘Cam cam’a dêil, can can’a.’
I try to copy her words, and fail. We both laugh. ‘What does that mean?’
She frowns and knocks her glass against mine lik
e a hammer. It doesn’t break. ‘Not glass to glass but soul to soul.’ Then she smiles up at me. ‘I will see you at supper.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Maybe certainly!’ She goes. I listen to her on the stairs. She doesn’t fall. I would be no help to her if she did. I get back to my own work.
When the daylight is gone I stop. There is more I could do, it is only the stones which require natural light, and I haven’t written anything that might remotely be called a report. Still, Glött isn’t going to sack me. Whatever position she is in, wherever that places me, we are not employer and employed.
At the door I look back at the fossilised room. The lamps lean forward in the gloom like animals sleeping. The house is quiet around me as I walk back through its corridors. Somewhere there is a window open, I can hear Diyarbak’r. When I reach it I stop. Lean out.
Cities seem more alike at night, and also more beautiful. They can also seem less dangerous, although this is deceptive. The air is sweeter. What smells, smells less. The night light is kinder, more human. In the dark, Diyarbak’r is sixties blocks, neon lights, yellow cabs. The people in their evening clothes, the women in their evening gold. I see men, walking arm in arm. Brothers in arms. It feels like a long time, days, since I have seen people so alive in themselves. It could be Rio de Janeiro out there or Bangkok, Tokyo or Istanbul. It could be anywhere.
It is a long way back to my room. Twice I take wrong turnings. There is a complexity to Glött’s house which makes me think of drawings by Escher. Aqueducts along which water runs backwards. Staircases that end at their beginnings, all their laws broken.
It is past seven. The flowers outside my room are gone. Incense burns in their place. I lock my door and lie down on the bed. Close my eyes. Behind them I see the miniature courtyard. It comes to me before I am wholly asleep. Not a dream, but something more urgent. I can see the tree in the night air, the trunk in its dark lift-shaft of space. The leaves pressed against stone.
It is weaker than a dream. I try and push it away and immediately it is gone. For a space of seconds I am left with nothing. Not awake, not asleep, but trapped in between. Against the pillow, inside my skull, the sound of blood comes beating upwards from my heart.
