by Tobias Hill
Someone is in the room of boxes. I hear them before I am close enough to see anything, a muttered voice carrying through the quiet house. I have time to think it doesn’t sound like Glött before I turn into the last corridor. At the end is the stone room door. It is open as I left it, and inside is Martin.
He is bent over the desk. From this angle I can’t see his face or hands, but there is something unpleasant about the language of his body: a hunched eagerness that makes him look old. Miserly. The desk-light greens his hair. As far as I can see he is alone. He is talking to himself, a whisper of concentration.
In his hands are a jeweller’s loupe and a baroque pearl. A Lost Oddity. He squints down at it, face clenched. There is a small, harsh sound that makes me think of stone workshops, and after a moment I realise that Martin is grinding his teeth.
The lamp is so close to his hair that he must be able to feel it, but only his hands move, and his jaw. The tray of pearls is still on the desk. And there is more to observe in what I cannot see: the iris quartz Buddha is not where I left it. I think of the chair, its tracks in the dust, and this morning’s missing jewels. It would be interesting to know how much Martin has taken. I could move in on my bare feet and be by his shoulder before he knew I was there. Just to see his face.
I stop myself. Not because I am afraid of Martin. But at best I am a thief watching a thief. A kind of voyeur, watching a man steal from someone who loves him. I’ve never been in the position of needing to do the same. I don’t know – I don’t know how I can be sure – that I have not done worse things than this. I hold myself back, feeling my wet hair cool in the dark. Its braids and leashes.
He puts down the loupe and rubs his eyes with the heel of one hand. With the other he holds on to the pearl. He looks at his watch, puts the pearl in his shirt pocket almost absent-mindedly, and stands to go.
I start to walk again before he has time to look up. I make sure he hears me. He has plenty of time to turn round, smiling with his fox-teeth. The stone girl! How are you? Are you still on duty?’
‘Yes.’
‘You do work hard, don’t you? So what do you think?’
‘About what?’
‘The stones, of course. The collection. Eh?’
‘It’s unique. I didn’t know you came up here.’
He shrugs. ‘Sometimes.’
Now I’m beside the desk. The Lost Oddities rest by my right hand. Some of them are more lost than others. ‘Where’s Helene?’
‘Beautifying herself. I don’t want to talk about her.’
From below us comes the sound of Hassan’s flute. A simple phrase, repeated, developed. I don’t look away. ‘Fine. What do you want to talk about?’
‘You. I see you are making yourself at home, Katharine.’
For a moment I think he is talking about the state of the stone room. But he is looking at me, not at the archives. His eyes settle on my feet and hair. My breasts. Like flies, I think.
‘But we both are, aren’t we?’
It offends him more than I intended. For a second he looks genuinely angry, I can see it moving through the muscles of his face, like a spasm. Then the smile creeps back. He looks at his watch again, for my benefit. ‘As you say. Will I have your company for dinner?’
‘I need to eat.’
‘Good. I’ll look forward to it,’ he says, although his face disagrees.
I watch him leave. When I’m sure he’s gone I sit down and count the baroque pearls. There are two missing, along with the smiling Buddha. Everything else is as it was. The drawers littered across the floor. The locust seeds balanced in their scales.
I look up at the archives. Their faces stretch away, out of the lamp’s light. Somewhere in them is evidence of the Three Brethren. It is like a game. Pick the right drawer and find a reason for going on. Pick wrong and you discover everything you were never looking for. A drunk with a prosthetic leg. A rape scene carved in agate. A boy stealing pearls from an old woman who loves him. Ugly things. I’m still there when the stone room clock strikes seven.
I’m late to eat, and underdressed. Martin has put on an evening suit and a heavy blue gold watch, and both Helene and Eva are wearing pearls. A single cultured string on the girl, a thick, dark rope on the woman. For my own part, I’ve managed to put on a pair of shoes. It is like this every night in the stone house. I sit at the low-lit table and watch them, the old woman, the young couple, dressed for a party that no one is celebrating. Hassan serves the food.
‘So,’ says Martin, not looking up from his portion, ‘Katharine, you are enjoying our family jewels?’
‘Stones.’
‘Jewels.’ Nodding as he contradicts me. ‘A word from the Latin jocus, a jest. Meaning, in your language, a joke, a jeering merriment, a ridicule. An idle tale.’ He cuts his meat. ‘What idle tales can you tell us, Katharine?’
Glött butts in. ‘Katharine! You are the only one not wearing pearls.’
Wait your turn, I want to say, and don’t. She isn’t drinking yet. Her eyes are sullen in the dimmed light. Helene looks up as if the entertainment has arrived.
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ I say.
‘Well it’s true.’
‘Really. I don’t see Martin wearing his.’
‘Martin,’ says Eva, pulling herself up, ‘is a man. He has no pearls.’
‘You’d be surprised. So he gets a Rolex, but we have to wear the excretions of shellfish. In this heat.’ There is wine opened. I pour for myself. ‘I don’t think it’s quite fair on us. Is it, Helene?’
She fingers her necklace and says nothing. The conversation lapses, as it always does. Hassan brings egg and lemon soup, stuffed vegetables, kebaps sprinkled with fresh sumac. Good things, well made. Nothing expensive or imported except the wine. Opposite me, Martin and Helene eat with the appetites of lovers. Glött consumes little herself. After the first course is cleared away Hassan serves her a glass of hot milk. She drinks it slowly, without apparent pleasure or displeasure.
Helene pushes away her plate. Her hair has gone lank in the evening heat. She smokes while Martin finishes. She is smiling, but her eyes are bored; the smile is just for show. I wonder how much she knows, or cares. When Martin is finished he sighs so loudly that it sounds like a kind of belch.
‘Danke, Eva!’ His face is florid from wine. Dressed up, he has the sharp, useless look of a stockbroker or a lawyer. His German is lax, but his voice smiles for him. ‘That was remarkably delicious.’
‘It was the same as always.’
‘On the contrary. You are too modest, as usual.’ He talks across me, over me. I do nothing to show I understand. ‘What do you have planned for this evening, Eva? We could play cards, the three of us. It’s still early. And you could show us your pearls.’
‘Tomorrow. There is a good satellite film tonight.’
‘We could watch it together.’
‘No.’ Glött is stirring her milk. She doesn’t look up, and so she doesn’t see Martin’s face. The hardening of anger in the muscles as he stands.
‘Tomorrow then.’
He waits for Helene to put out her cigarette before saying goodnight in English, in German. After they have gone Hassan takes away the crystal and porcelain. When it is cleared he doesn’t come back. I am alone with the recluse. There is no sound in the kitchen but the warm hum and rhythm of dishwashers. Distant traffic through the open windows.
‘You are extremely rude.’ Her voice is loud in the quiet. I look up and she is watching me with bright, unhealthy eyes.
‘About what?’
‘About–’ She makes a grab for her necklace. Shakes it. ‘I will have you know that these are pearls from the Margaritafera freshwater mussel. They are extremely rare. The mussel can live for a century. A hundred years to make one good pearl. That you should respect.’
‘I’m sorry, Eva. I can’t help it if I don’t like pearls.’ She says nothing. I watch her, shut up hard and grey. An oyster in her last life or the next. ‘“I will ha
ve you know”?’
She sulks for a minute more. When she smiles I’m glad of it. ‘One day you will realise you are not always right.’ She holds up her drink. ‘Hassan makes this for me. Do you know what it is?’
‘Pearls crushed in vinegar.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Boiled milk. We have cows in England too.’
‘You see? Ha! You are wrong already. It is milk with powdered orchid root. You should try it. It would put some colour in your cheeks.’
‘I don’t want colour in my cheeks.’
‘You could do with it. How are my stones?’
‘Not good.’
‘What can be not good about stones? Do they need more colour in their cheeks? I am prepared to be surprised.’
I could choose not to tell her. I could leave tomorrow and go back to Istanbul and start again. It is a kind of failure I am used to, and Glött wouldn’t know what was happening until the day she went into the stone room and found the drawers empty, and Martin gone. It would be easier, at least, for me.
Even so.
‘Martin is stealing the jewels.’
‘You are being stupid,’ she says. She is untangling the ropes of her pearls. Combing them out.
‘No. He’s stealing them and he’s doing it fast. You asked me to work on the collection and this is all I have found. At this rate, I don’t think I’ll have time to catalogue it all before it becomes uncollected again. I’m sorry, Eva.’
‘Why? You think I don’t know?’ Her voice is tired, singsong. Her hands work at the pearls. ‘You are being stupid.’
‘What are you talking about?’
She talks fast, whispering. ‘For God’s sake. I don’t care what he does. I would rather have him here. He is precious to me.’
‘More precious than your father’s jewels?’
‘Of course!’ She laughs. ‘Of course. You think I can’t afford to lose a few stones?’ Glött glances up from her pearls. She isn’t a sharp old bird any more, but a sadder, blunter kind of animal. ‘I am sorry but I find I pity you, Katharine Sterne.’
‘Really? Well, that’s very kind of you.’ The anger pushes me upright. ‘I’ll remember that tomorrow, while I waste my fucking time on your vanishing collection.’
‘No one is keeping you here. Don’t blame me for what you choose.’
Then I choose to leave. I almost say it. The words are in my mouth, on my lips. I don’t say them because there is something here I need, if I can just find it. If I just knew where. Just knew how. My life circles itself in these questions. But I already know I’m not going anywhere tonight, and so does she.
‘Goodnight, Eva.’ I say it as quietly as I can. She watches me all the way to the door. The corridors are unlit. I think of her as I walk. Her tall form bent at the empty table. When I come to my room I keep going, all the way to the main door. I step out into the courtyard.
There are no lights. My eyes adjust. I take three steps past the fountain and stop, the night air stops me. I can hear it, the sounds it carries. Water in the fountain. The tiny call of a gecko on the wall above me, to-kay, tokay. The background noise of cities.
On the far side of the courtyard I make out a bench, white stone under the trees. One hand up to ward off branches, I cross the yard, sit down, close my eyes. Somewhere in the old city streets a dog is whining. Soft, a ghost in the darkness. It reminds me of things there is no value in remembering. The male basalt of the walls is warm against my back.
I don’t know if I sleep. When I open my eyes, my hands are cool and the stone around me is damp, as if a light dew has fallen. Hassan is standing beside me. He is bent forward under the trees just as he stands in the hallway, as if even the outside world is too small for him.
‘You made me jump,’ I say, although it isn’t true. I’m not surprised to see him. It may even be that I was looking for him here, halfway between the house and the city. I don’t know my own mind. Not tonight, perhaps not ever.
‘Did Eva tell you to find me?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Will you talk with me?’ I move up the bench. When he sits down my head reaches to his shoulder. Up this close, I can see he is old. The flesh of his hands is already receding between the bones.
He makes no sound. It makes him easy to talk to. ‘This is a beautiful space. I wish I’d come out here more often.’
‘You are leaving?’ His English is stilted and studied. His voice is deep but there is a lilt to it. A grace. He is a graceful man.
‘I wish I was. Have you ever noticed the air inside the house? It feels of nothing. It has no sound. Why is that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Nor do I. Some types of stone have that effect, of course. But it feels like a trap. I feel like I’ve fallen into a trap here, but I can’t remember how.’ I stop myself whispering. ‘Where are you from, Hassan?’
‘The mountains.’
I turn towards him, watching his profile. ‘Are you Kurdish?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you happy, working for Eva?’
He sighs inwards. Smelling the air. Jasmine and cedars. ‘I was young when I began. It was many years ago.’
‘You must know her better than anyone. And she must know you.’
He doesn’t answer. I stop talking. We sit listening again. A yardbird jucks somewhere nearby.
‘I wanted to thank you. For the flowers.’
‘They were nothing.’
‘And the incense. Those were kind things.’
He shifts against me. I feel the warmth of the muscles in his thighs. ‘You are a guest. And I am glad to have met you.’
I can’t see if he is smiling. ‘Hassan, have you heard of the sirrusch?’
‘Yes.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means nothing. It is a monster. The head of a dragon, the feet of an eagle, the body of a dog.’
I press my hands against the stone bench. ‘Did Glött ever tell you what I’m doing here?’
‘You are looking for something. She says it is a beautiful thing.’
‘It is.’
‘Things are beautiful for a reason.’
‘No. Jewels have no reasons.’
He shrugs. ‘There are different purposes. Some flowers are beautiful to spread themselves. Some to trap.’
I laugh. ‘Trust me, I’m not trapped by what I’m looking for.’
‘There is a story my mother told. Sindbad’s eighth journey.’
‘There isn’t one.’
‘All the same, she told it. Sindbad is old. His house is full of young merchants feasting. One of them tells Sindbad of a land to the far east. In the land is an emperor. In the emperor’s palace is a harem. In the harem is only one concubine. She is the most beautiful woman in the world. The most beautiful thing on earth. Since her birth no man but the emperor has seen her. Not even her own father.’
A gecko creeps across the wall beyond him. Its skin is pale, exposed against the dark basalt.
‘Sindbad sails to the land with many jewels and a single faithful retainer. The emperor is twice as old as Sindbad and ten times as fat. He is pleased with the jewels Sindbad gives him. Because of the gift he makes Sindbad an adviser in his palace. One night, Sindbad orders his retainer to find a way into the harem. The retainer ties a rope round his master, lowering him to the tower window. Sindbad sees the concubine oiling her hair, and having seen her he goes away content.
‘But now the world becomes ugly to him. The concubine is the most beautiful thing on earth. Even though he is an old man, Sindbad wants only to see her again. Everything else fades from his sight. In this way, in a year, he goes blind.’
I watch his face. The gecko above him. It hunts in small movements, an inch up, an inch right. Monstrous in its vertical world.
‘Sindbad asks the retainer to take him back to the harem. The retainer refuses. Now Sindbad begs him. So again the retainer ties the rope around him. He lowers the blind Sindbad t
o the window. When the concubine appears, Sindbad finds he can see her. It is midnight. As he watches, she takes off her robes to sleep. Nothing Sindbad has ever seen has been so beautiful. He opens the window, unties the rope, climbs inside. The concubine has never seen anyone with such love in their eyes. She sleeps with Sindbad all that night. In the morning the guards find him there. He is imprisoned and sentenced to a bad death.
‘Through bribery the faithful retainer releases him. By ship they return home to Basra. Sindbad is no longer blind, but he is changed. He finds no pleasure in his own city. His feasts and the stories of his friends mean nothing to him. He is weary of the world, because he knows he will never see anything as beautiful as the concubine again. And so, in the end, he dies.’
‘What happens to the woman?’
He stops, catching his breath. ‘Nothing happens to her. She lives as she has lived.’
‘I liked it better when Sindbad lived happily ever after.’
‘As you say. It is just a story.’
‘Like the sirrusch.’
He says nothing. A plane goes over, invisible in its dark distance.
‘I’m looking for a jewel called the Three Brethren. There are some papers here. Finding them would mean a great deal to me.’
I watch him nod. He doesn’t look at me.
‘Do you know where they are? Hassan?’
He stands up, brushes down his robes, and nods again. It is all one quick movement. As soon as I say goodnight he is gone.
I sit alone in the warm dark, thinking of the Brethren. I can turn it in my mind like a riddle, or the pattern of a screen saver: A triangle four inches square. Two hundred and ninety carats in eight jewels. Four pearls, three balas rubies, two of nothing. One diamond in a half diamond.
I think of Eva. So scared of loss that she will let a man steal from her. Just to have him near. I pity her; but then she pities me. When it comes to pity we are evens. The gecko turns back on itself, a white glyph on the black stone wall. It stops quite still, readies itself, and strikes.
