The Love of Stones

by Tobias Hill

  ‘Safir.’

  ‘I know what sapphires are, brother.’ The flop and tick of pages. ‘“Gold and crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels or fine gold. No mention shall be made of coral, or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies.’”

  ‘You like her,’ said Daniel. He sat at the table, Salman on the yard steps. Their supper eaten, the plates uncleaned, meat eased from mullet bones. A cool evening, an east wind coming off the river.

  ‘Who?’

  Daniel went to the hearth, lit a taper from the coals, brought it to his pipe. When he didn’t reply Salman turned back to the book. The smell of Virginia tobacco drifted out to him.

  ‘You talk too much.’

  ‘I talk very little. You like her all the same.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  Daniel sat back down, the pipe nestled in the crook of his thumb. ‘In Iraq they say you should wed your opposite.’

  ‘You slip past my questions. How could she be more my opposite? She is English, I am a Babylonian Jew.’

  ‘Your opposite would be a gentlewoman. A lady, Tigris. Also shy, tall, fair and intelligent. I think Jane Limpus is two of those things.’

  ‘It has no bearing. I am not about to marry anyone.’

  But I wonder what is it that you are about to do, Daniel thought. He didn’t say it. He turned back towards the fire and watched the embers crack, bright as the stones hidden under them.

  There was the sound of her crying out. It brought Salman awake so quickly that he barely noticed the transition. When it came again he was already moving, out of the workroom, up the stairs. He opened the door to the room above and stepped in.

  He had never been upstairs before. It was all plain plaster and bare boards, as if it had never been lived in. It was some time before Salman noticed these things.

  Jane Limpus sat hunched forward on the floor, the curved glass of a broken lamp scattered around her. Her right leg was outstretched, both hands reaching out to cover it. Blood ran through her fingers. Hair covered her face, and when she looked up at Salman all he could see was the whites of her eyes, teeth and skin.

  ‘In the cupboard next door there is gin. Fetch it here.’

  He had no time to look at the second room, only to sense it. It was north-facing, cooler, with more furniture but no more sense of humanity or occupation. When he came back only Jane’s mouth seemed to have moved, the lips pulled further back into their rictus.

  He opened the bottle and poured the alcohol over her hands. She groaned, head twisted away. Salman watched the tendons in her neck and the blood thinning between her fingers.

  ‘Hold my foot. Hold it. Don’t touch the glass!’

  Her voice rose, shrill. Salman gripped her, the foot staining his lap. She pulled up her skirts and tore strips out of them. Her legs were white and muscular as her arms. Salman turned his face away. In his hands, the woman’s bloody extremity felt like a distinct animal. He could feel its pulse.

  ‘Now. Oh. Now.’ She leant forward again, holding out the makeshift bandage. ‘You shall have to take out the glass. I can’t see it well enough myself, you must do it for me.’

  He raised the foot. A smooth blade of lamp glass sat snug in the hard flesh of the heel. Its sunken arc was more than three inches from end to bloody end. Transparent swirls of alcohol still moved across its red surface.

  ‘You won’t let it break in me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You won’t let it break in me. You won’t…’

  He held her gaze, waiting for her to close her eyes. With one hand he held her ankle steady. With the other he took out the glass. It came easily as a bone from cooked fish. Above him he heard Jane groan again, and then her hands were down between his, winding the bandage tight around her wound.

  Sun caught in the shapes of broken glass. Salman knelt down and picked them up. They were like a puzzle, he thought. The guillotines and scimitars fitting together into something altogether different. When he had every piece he carried them outside, dumping them in a heap of oyster-shells beyond the sycamores.

  When he came back Jane was crouched where he’d left her. Salman sat down opposite. They didn’t look at one another. The September light came in around them, turning the bare room golden. From outside came the sound of Fellow. The belling of his chain.

  The gin was at Jane’s feet. She unstoppered the green glass and drank. Head back, the spirit trickling at the edges of her mouth. When she was done she put the empty vessel down, looked up at Salman and laughed. It was a short, hard sound. There was nothing gentle about it. Daniel would have noticed that.

  She shifted along the floor towards him, keeping her wounded leg straight out. The skirts rucked up around her, her calves coming naked out of them. When she reached him she kissed him hard on the mouth, holding his head against her, hauling herself into his lap.

  He put his hands back around her ankles. He felt them now as he hadn’t allowed himself to before. He closed his hands and pulled the woman around him. Her skirts were already ripped. He felt the leanness of her calves, pushing his hands up the muscled smoothness of her thighs and into her cunt.

  He reached inside her. As he felt the wetness there he thought of her foot again. The curved length of glass. The movement of the extremity, the way it spasmed like a hurt animal. He thought of it as he fucked her, the breath grunting out of her. When she cried out again he remembered how quickly he had woken and as he came he imagined the transition had only occurred in his dreams.

  Afterwards they lay together on the bare floor. The light caught in their dark eyes. They looked alike but not alike. They might have been opposites or siblings. Jane’s bandages were wet, the wound had bled. Salman laid her back and changed the dressing while she slept.

  ‘I want to show you London,’ she said, and she did. After the doctor had diagnosed no sepsis, the wound washed with soap of potash and left to heal, Jane showed Salman the part of herself that he had missed. Her London was a place he had only glimpsed, as if he had walked on a frozen river at night and seen only movements in the trapped air under his feet. He slept less: it bought him time. He went where Jane took him, down into her own oil-lit nights.

  Badger-baiting in the gypsy camps along the Hampstead Road. Barefisted boxing in the courts of the Holy Land, the greatest slum in London. He watched Jane haggle with the Jewish street vendors over their piles of macadam-stained clothes and whalebone. He ate oysters with the Jewish pimp David Belasco, who owned a hundred prostitutes, and in a crowded drinking booth on the Haymarket he met the Sephardi David Mendoza, seventy years old and once the boxing champion of All England.

  With Jane he wandered through the ruins of Pompeii at Burford’s Panorama, and made love in alleys where the old rivers ran behind the buttressed backs of buildings. The sweat of it settling in their clothes, the faint smell of each staying with the other after they were apart. And later, when their bodies were done with one another, they went back to the last house on Hardwick Place where Daniel waited. Always alone, reading or lost in thought, the Bible open in front of him. Always like a man waiting for something.

  In December they went to Wombwell’s Circus on Bethnal Green, where the Living Skeleton and the Saracen looked back at Salman from their own sideshow darknesses. And that night, in a basement in Duke’s Place, he saw a woman gouge out a man’s eyes. She did it with her thumbs. Salman turned away from it, towards Jane, and saw that she was watching with a kind of hunger. If he had known himself better, Salman would have seen in that observance a reflection of himself.

  ‘You watched.’ He said it later, in the dark of her room. Felt her shift beside him. ‘And did nothing.’

  ‘No more nor less than you.’ Her voice was dry and curious. Outside the smog had come down. From the river, the sound of fog drums.

  ‘The more I see you, the less I see.’

  ‘Such nonsense. You are talking in your sleep, my love.’

  He whispered. ‘Is
that what you want from me? Love?’

  There was no answer. When he turned to look at her Jane was already asleep. Only later, in his own dreams, did he hear laughter.

  On the second anniversary of the shop’s opening they visited the Tower of London. Salman, his brother and his lover. It was a grey January day with the wind coming down from the north-east, and the attendant watched the foreigners as if he blamed them for it.

  It cost a shilling each to see the British regalia. They stood in the dank cellar with a crowd of parents and children, some of them rich, none of them poor, all of them pressed up against the bars. The Crown Jewels sat on bare stone. Close enough to touch, thought Salman. They looked cheap to him, the lamps barely reflecting from the crusts of diamonds and the unset mound of an aquamarine. As if they were paste set in ormolu, costume jewellery for some half-forgotten game. Below him the children reached through the bars like monkeys in the market of Khadimain.

  By the time they came out it had started to rain. The attendant kept his umbrella to himself until they reached the shelter of the White Tower, when he offered it to Jane. He peered up at Daniel. ‘Mister Levy, is it? There’s the ravens, Mister Levy. You see? I warrant you’d eat them, if you could.’

  Salman narrowed his eyes against the drizzle, watching the birds. They were hunkered down. Built solid, as if flight was the last thing they were made for. The wind caught at Daniel’s voice. ‘No, sir. The flesh of ravens is not allowed to us.’ He searched for more, trying to please. ‘Though we may eat white doves.’ Behind him Salman heard Jane’s laughter, light, buoyant, like oxygen. He had heard her laugh in different ways.

  It was already dark when they reached the Commercial Road. The terrace was quiet, only the Duke still open. By its light Salman recognised Tobias Carey from some way down the road. He saw that the nightman was already looking back at him, his own eyes accustomed to the dimness. Layers of clothes gave his torso an artificial bulk. Something lay beside him in the road. Only when Jane called out did Salman recognise the sound and form of the dog.

  ‘Fellow! Heel.’ Her voice was sharp. The animal came to her, its claws clicking on the limestone paving. The nightman pushed himself upright.

  ‘Good evening, Mrs Limpus! Mister Levy, Mister Levy.’ Salman blinked. From a distance, hunched forward, the nightman took on the proportions of a raven. Out of nothing he found himself recalling Rachel’s stories. The old gods, swarming like flies above their sacrifices. ‘Two years you’ve been here now, is it? Two years. And what do you say to it?’

  It was the first time Salman had heard the scavenger speak. His voice was thick, with an accent Salman didn’t know. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes, not even the shine of moonlight from them. It was hard to tell who he was speaking to.

  ‘What do they think of what, Mister Carey?’ said Jane. Salman imagined she had moved away from him, although when he looked she was quite still.

  ‘Of what? Of this.’ Tobias waved an arm at them, beyond them, towards London. ‘I’m asking them what they think of the greatest city on God’s earth and the saeculum mirabile, Jane, the most wonderful century in human history. What do they say?’

  ‘We find we like it, sir,’ said Salman. The scavenger veered towards him. Salman caught the sweet reek of rum on his breath.

  ‘Which, Mister Levy? The city or the century? You and your brother, you’re from Mesopotamia, are you not?’

  ‘Iraq.’

  ‘The land of Babylon. I’ve always thought of London as quite Babylonian, Mister Levy–’

  He was aware of Jane pushing past him as she spoke. ‘It’s late, Mister Carey. No doubt you have work to do. Goodnight to you now.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mrs Limpus.’ The nightman watched them as they turned the corner to the yards. His head stayed as it was, turned eastwards, until the street emptied out of everything except himself.

  ‘I was dreaming of monsters,’ she said, waking him. The smell of sex was still on him. The feeling that, with her, every part of him was used up. ‘They came out of the sea. What does that mean?’

  ‘Monsters are warnings.’ He reached for her face. Cupping it.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of whatever you are afraid of.’ He watched her eyes close. Wanting to ask, not asking. A nightbird whistled over the marshes.

  The more he tried, the more he understood nothing of her. It bred an anxiety in Salman which thrived on itself. He began to walk for miles, as if he could leave his thoughts behind. Instead he began to feel an impending doom, a sense of loss long before he had lost anything. As if his love of Jane were preparing him for something.

  The first thing he came to hate about London was its Sundays. Later there were other things; Salman was never a man who lacked hatred: at times it even seemed as if it fuelled him, his sour, vivid energy. But Sundays were the first thing. He would walk along the river and feel the city closed down around him. The shops shut, the streets deserted, the smog cutting off emptiness from emptiness. On the Sundays it rained, London felt depopulated as a ruined city. That was what Salman hated. He walked through the dank vacancies of the greatest metropolis in the world and felt as if it was cheating him.

  He began to watch Tobias Carey. They kept similar hours, the lapidary and the nightman. Passing his shopfront Salman would stop and look in, as if he had a buyer’s interest in camlet and stained broadcloth. It was impossible to see if anyone sat inside, looking out.

  February, 1836. He woke before noon and went out to the pump. There were carthorses at the trough and he waited until they were gone, wind running through the dead ryegrass. He let the freezing water run across his face and arms, washing the collar grime off his neck. It was only as he was walking back across the yard to the house that he realised Fellow was watching him.

  The dog lay in its corner with its long head resting on its claws. Its eyes were fixed on Salman. There was a quietness to the gaze. It reminded Salman of the first time he had come to Hardwick Place. He thought of this only as he called the dog’s name.

  It lumbered towards him. Halfway across the yard it stopped and raised its powerful head and Salman saw that its teeth were bared. He stepped backwards, into the house, and closed the door. He didn’t call its name again.

  He spent less time with Jane, or Jane with him. Salman found it hard to tell where the separation began. He watched her when they were together, but more often, now, when she was away. She was often away. He never saw her go next door. The rooms sat silent above him as he worked or lay waiting to sleep.

  Thaw. He walked eastwards to the docks. The cabs and carts passed him at the gates and Salman stepped back for them and then returned to his place at the roadside, as if he were waiting for passage.

  I have lost nothing, he thought. Nothing, repeating it, the word twisting back on itself. As he walked home along the river he whispered the names of the old cities, places he knew only from the sound of Rachel’s voice. The words becoming a talisman: Assur and Eridu, Warka and Nimrud,

  Nineveh.

  Babylon.

  Ur.

  * * *

  ‘Look, Charlie, budgies. Sit up straight.’

  There are birds above the café counter. Their cage is stained with black and white polka dots of shit. They chirrup in time to the traffic on the Gray’s Inn Road. I watch Charlie’s mother drip egg down his front as he looks. ‘Can you see the budgies?’

  ‘Buggies.’ He opens his eyes wide, as if this is what he’s been waiting for all his life. To me the birds look like a health hazard, but then I have a different obsession. Everyone has their own white whale. For Charlie’s sake I hope his isn’t a budgerigar.

  The café is warm with morning light and the smell of frying. Outside London is blurred by condensation, softened, redirected. The loud red blob of a bus goes past towards King’s Cross. Anne’s letter is still folded in my coat and I take it out and read while I wait for my order.

  ‘Breakfast special, love.’ The waitress wears a big red name tag
which calls her Dolly Lemon. They suit her, name and tag. She is wearing an apron illustrated with garden birds. Great Tits of Britain printed across the top.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Ta. Shout when you want more tea.’

  I prop the letter against the HP sauce. Anne’s handwriting is like mine, each letter distinct from the next. She tells me her work is going well, the charity has new UNESCO funding, in a month she will be posted to China. She hopes that I’ve found what I’m looking for. There is other news, small talk, before she mentions that she and Rolf are having a baby in May. I sit in the café warmth and wonder whether I’ve been an aunt for four months.

  It makes no difference to my life. I put the letter away, the seamed envelope that I may not have been the first to open, and finish my food. When I’m done I get out Edith’s A to Z and look up Slipper Street again. I tell myself that I know where I’m going. Outside the traffic crawls around a ditch full of road-diggers, and I walk through the cars to King’s Cross and take a Hammersmith and City train east as far as it will go.

  Underground, I think of the child. Anne always said if she had a girl she would name it after Edith. It’s something she has always wanted. Her own little white whale, red in the face with the effort of it all. I can imagine her with a baby in her arms, her fierce, smiling concentration. I hope it doesn’t look like Rolf. I hope it is a lovely child.

  The carriage rocks in its loud darkness. The overnight bag sits heavy on my knees. I think of stones. I have no illusions about them or myself. The Brethren is a cold thing to desire. Jewels are not lovely, although I love them. In human terms they are functional things, beautiful in the way a shark is beautiful, or the camouflage pattern of a tiger. Nature, making something for the greatest possible use, makes something of the greatest possible beauty. And nothing has more uses than a jewel.

  At Aldgate East the subways emerge in a landscape of traffic islands. All the signposts are bilingual: A1202 and Leman Street, A13 and Commercial Road. The air is gritty and aromatic, as if you could set it alight and run machines off it. I cross over to the Commercial Road and keep going.