The Love of Stones

by Tobias Hill

  Alexander, Valentin, Elena. Their father gets up to find more food, opening bare cupboards. I talk while he is turned away. Giving him time to choose how he will turn to face me. I am becoming Japanese, I think. ‘It’s great to see you again, Pavlov. Will the children be back soon, and Anna?’

  ‘Anna. Yes.’ He turns back. In his hands is a can of sardines. His eyes are lowered, although his face is otherwise still smiling. ‘You see, I myself have political asylum. The police of Japan, however, have decided that my family do not. They are not “high risk”. It’s okay. Every month I will send them money. In Georgia they will be rich as thieves with all the things I send them.’

  He sits down and begins to open the can, scrolling the metal back. When he is finished he puts it down carefully, gravely, as if there is nothing more to be done with it.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Pavlov,’ I whisper. ‘I didn’t know. I wish you had called me. What can I do?’

  He shrugs. ‘Nothing. Perhaps I should be looking for a jewel, like you, instead of a place for my family to be with me in safety. I think it would be easier.’ He starts to smile again and then thinks better of it. The vodka is on the table, frost congealing on the bottle, and he pours again for both of us, his face lengthening into a terrible sadness.

  ‘Pavlov.’ I reach out. His hair is coarse. I cradle it. ‘You have done too much for me.’

  ‘No, no.’

  ‘If there was something I could give you back…’

  But I have nothing left, I almost say, and stop myself. The man who has less than nothing smiles again. The sun comes in, briefly, across the Formica table. ‘You gave me work. This month, I needed to work. But you do not have to give back anything, Katharine, just because I give you something. This is not America. We have free lunches here.’

  ‘I need to help you too.’

  He reaches across, takes hold of my arm, shakes it. ‘Then you will keep in touch. I need friends, my dear. So you will call me when you have found what you are looking for. Will you do that for me? Will you promise?’

  I promise him.

  The bullet train south costs almost everything I have. From the window I watch the climate changing. The snow receding into rain, the rain to late autumn sun. Farmers in the fields round Himeji still burning old scrub to stubble. From downtown Okayama, a night bus runs across the Great Seto Bridge where it arches over the Inland Sea. There are children awake in the seats behind me, their eyes and mouths reflected in the glass. They whisper of pearls and monsters and whirlpools.

  At Takamatsu I sit in the town square, drowsing, and wait for the morning bus. When it leaves I am the only passenger. The driver sings along to taped shamisen music. He motions me up to the front. ‘Shikoku is green,’ he says, gesturing out at the hills of unbroken pine forest; as if, being foreign, I might also be terminally colourblind. Aoao, he says, smiling – green-green – and it is. The road smells of tar and cedars, figs and oil. Bush warblers sing in the trees. The driver gets out a timetable and writes notation for their call, one-handed, as he drives. He waves it at me, nodding, as if written birdsong is what I have been travelling for. I take it. We stray towards the road’s edge and away.

  At noon he stops at a hill town that clings tight around a river gorge. From the only shop he buys us fried chicken and seasoned rice. It is the first food I have eaten in two days. The rush of it leaves me dizzy and I close my eyes, hearing warblers in the forest, wind-chimes in the town station.

  I am asleep when we reach the coast. The next time I open my eyes the trees are gone, and seabirds wheel overhead. There are orange groves beside the road, and then, as I pull myself upwards in my seat, the Pacific Ocean. Waves crash along dark sand. At times the forest comes down to meet it, the road verging back into the pines. By the time we reach Kôchi city it is late afternoon, and I get out and walk between the resort dive shops, the souvenir emporia full of nudes carved in coral, turtleshell perfume bottles, Tosa fighting-dog figurines. I buy a bag of dried octopus and a can of hot coffee for the driver and sit with him on the sea wall, while he talks about his love of music too quickly for me to understand.

  There is no scheduled stop in Tosa. The driver drops me on the main street and U-turns away, grinning madly back, the bus swerving a little on the empty road. The sun is cutting off early behind the inland hills, and I take my jacket out of my bag and put it on. There are shops at the roadside, a post office, a bar, nothing open. There is still one light showing faintly at the end of the street and I walk up to it.

  The sliding doors are unlocked. Inside sits a sealmaker. He looks up at me as I come in, nods as if I am a regular, goes back to work. He carves name-characters into a length of onyx. On the wall above him are a pair of tusks, the grain still white: black-market elephant. The hooded work-lamp shines through the old man’s fingers. Their pink flesh lit down to the bone.

  When he has finished he smiles up at me and I give him the address on its computer-printed paper. He motions me to sit, takes parchment from his desk. An old woman comes up from the back with green tea and bean cakes. The seal-maker pours ink into a writing plaque, wets a brush, and draws me a map. It takes half an hour. I cover the distance it shows in twice the time.

  The main street rises out of town. I follow it up over the hillside and find, not marked on my instructions, the beginnings of a seaside attraction. A Ferris wheel and hot-dog stands are lit up in the semi-darkness. Beyond them, dark on dark, a promontory curves away to the east. There is only one light, at the tip, demarcating it from the sea.

  It begins to rain, warm against my skin. I put the map away, folding it between the pages of my last notebook. When I look up, the promontory light is still there, fixed. I go on towards it, following the coast road out onto the headland.

  * * *

  The Palace, 1838. The forecourt sand frozen to ice; the waiting room still stained with soot. Along the servants’ passages, the echo of unanswered bells. Stairs broad as cathedral steps. A hall of mirrors and nine clocks. A salon at the end of it busier than Ludgate Hill at noon.

  Daniel and Salman standing by the door where the maids left them. A stranger would not have recognised them as brothers. One stood with his head cocked, his back stooped like a servant, or a man uneasy with his own height. The other waited with his hands folded behind his back.

  Worker’s hands. Salman knew it. Next time I am here, he thought, I shall wear gloves, like a gentleman. He watched the room, the crush of sexes at tables of waisted decanters, brandied cakes and crystallised fruit, and thought of his hands. The right was stronger than the left. The backs of both were marked with burns, like liver spots, as if jewels had aged them. Eight months ago, a spilt crucible of silver had caught his left wrist. Now you are hallmarked, sir! George had shouted across at him.

  Hallmarked. Salman watched the ladies, the sleekness of their ringleted hair, and wondered what their marks would be. Where they had come from, and how far, to reach lives of pleasure. Uncalled-for, Jane’s voice echoed back to him. You are a jeweller, you should know pleasure.

  And I will, he thought. I am almost there now. Crossing the palace threshold, he had felt the thrill of money like a tug of static. An undercurrent of raw financial power. He held his hands tighter. ‘Why do we wait?’

  ‘Because we are nothing here. Be calm.’

  ‘Look at them.’ Salman’s lips hardly moved as he spoke. A ventriloquist hiss. ‘Livestock at a trough.’

  ‘I thought this was what you wanted.’

  ‘It is what we are entitled to. Whether these deserve it is another matter entirely.’

  A bout of men’s laughter drowned him out. At three o’clock, the air was already inked with the sepia of cigars. A man in foreign-tailored clothes stepped towards them through the haze.

  ‘Baron Stockmar.’ He straightened, neat as a cocked gun. The man at the marble table, Daniel remembered. He was so thin, it made Daniel cold to look at him. Beside him, his brother bowed from the waist.

  ‘Salm
an and Daniel Levy–’

  ‘Goldsmiths to the Crown, yes.’ He looked at them as if he found it hard to believe. ‘Yes. Will you have a drink? Something warming. This way. This way.’

  The chandeliers were lit. Outside, Salman saw, it was already dusk. A pipe had burst, and spars of yellowed ice hung down beyond the windows. Stockmar paused at a dumb waiter to pour them brandies. Salman watched his brother drink too quickly, tasting nothing himself, only feeling the burn as they began to walk again. Conversations reached him through the crowd in mislaid fragments.

  ‘… A hundred days of ice …’

  ‘And the northern poor, you say, believe the Queen poisons their bread?’

  ‘Disraeli! So articulate that he articulates nothing. I was…’

  ‘Elle a peut-être du sang bleu mais elle pisse jaune…’

  A door set flush into mirrors. A servants’ hallway without natural light. The Baron stopped at a bare wall, produced a key, and led them through.

  The noise of the court was shut out behind them. They had come into a sitting room, poorly lit, stagnant with the smell of locked windows. Salman let his eyes adjust. In the window seat an old woman slept, a book slumped open on her knees. Victoria Guelph sat straight-backed in an embroidered chair, a silk glove on her left hand, rings on her right. On the sofa opposite her a man was talking, a tray of limestones in his lap. As Salman watched he smiled and raised one to the Queen. Delicately, as if it were a cupcake.

  ‘Your Majesty?’ Baron Stockmar bowed. She looked tired, thought Salman. Owl-eyed as a child kept without sleep. It seemed curious to him that a queen should be so human.

  ‘Mister Chambers. Your pardon. The Queen has further visitors.’

  The man with the limestones glanced up at Stockmar, taking him in, still talking in a deadly monotone. ‘Extinction is all, Your Highness. Extinction makes a necropolis of the earth. These impressions of lost creatures are the proofs and epitaphs of a scientific truth. Christians, Mohammedans or Hindoos, we stand on the bones of more lost species than will ever walk the earth again–’

  Stockmar took a step forward. ‘The brothers Levy, Your Majesty. Goldsmiths to the Crown.’ The Queen blinked wanly at him. The Semitic jewellers, Majesty.’

  ‘Oh?’ A light crept into her eyes. ‘Oh–’ She stood up quickly. Flurried, brushing her skirts out. ‘We had forgot all about it. We have waited so long. Please, will you sit? Mister Chambers, I am sorry. It was so kind of you to explain about the necropolis …’

  With the expression of a man who knows he has lost, Mr Chambers stood and bowed out as the brothers took his place. When Salman looked up Victoria was smiling at him. ‘Now. You must tell us your story. Stockmar says you are from Babylon.’

  ‘Baghdad.’ He sat still, observing her plush and glitter. The way it made her seem both smaller and unreal, a five-foot doll in champagne satin. A lapdog under the chair, a rim of teeth smiling up at him. ‘A more recent city, Your Majesty.’

  ‘And you were given a jar. With jewels in it. And you came here to work for us.’

  His life reduced to sentences in a foreign tongue. Salman nodded.

  ‘Such a wonderful story. Where is the jar now?’

  ‘Broken, Your Majesty. Left behind.’

  She turned to Daniel. ‘And how do you like London?’

  ‘We–’ Daniel coughed at the sound of his own voice. ‘Well, Your Majesty’

  ‘Indeed.’ Close up, her eyes were protuberant. Her mouth twisted, almost hare-lipped. While his brother spoke, Salman looked at her rings. Assessing their quality, as if that too were part of her; and it was. ‘You do not note the extreme weight and thickness of the atmosphere?’

  ‘No, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Recently we have found we prefer the countryside. Do you know Scotland?’

  Daniel shook his head, wretched. ‘No, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Oh.’ Abruptly she turned back to Salman. ‘You admire our rings. What is your professional opinion of them?’

  He smiled. Given his own ground, and ready for it. He narrowed his eyes to the rings and paused, making her wait, making them all wait for him until he sat back, a doctor giving diagnosis, tasting old opium on his breath.

  ‘They are in excellent taste, naturally. This and this –’ he pointed, not touching ‘– are European. Made this century, and most likely in France. The diamond was recently removed and recut in London, to the English fashion. It is –’ he breathed in, close to the jewel ‘– Brazilian, though the structure is almost as fine as an Indian stone. Mined in the highlands, perhaps at Tejuco. Here now, in the pearl ring, the gold is of a purer carat. It is either Saracenic or Oriental. I believe it is from India, and an heirloom of Your Majesty’s grandmother. The brilliant is well balanced. Most of the pearls are passable.’

  ‘And the emerald?’

  Salman held out his right hand. As if she had been prompted by a tutor, Victoria began to take off the rings, tugging them over her thick knuckles. She dropped the emerald band into Salman’s palm and looked up as he stood. Holding the jewel to the chandeliers, turning it under his lapidary eyes. Left bare, her fingers closed into a fist.

  ‘With respect, Your Majesty, this is not an emerald. You will note the dullness of the colour and the absence of flaws. All emeralds have imperfections, called gardens, which enhance their beauty.’ He returned the ring and sat. ‘That stone is olivine. A superior specimen of an inferior gem.’

  She leant forward avidly. ‘What is your favourite stone? Mine is rubies.’

  ‘In India, the ruby is known as the Lord of Stones.’

  She paused, her mouth gaped open. As if, he thought, I have performed magic. Read minds. In the lapse he could hear the older woman sleeping. His brother shifting, insignificant beside him. From outside, distant, the echo of clearance work from the waste grounds of Parliament.

  ‘Stocky? Be very kind, will you, and wake Lehzen. We wish her to fetch the new jewel.’

  Her mouth had shut tight. It changed her face, thought Salman, bringing out something else in her. More of a hardness, less vacancy. He felt the Baron step closer behind the sofa. ‘Majesty?’

  ‘The ruby brooch.’

  ‘Yes. If Her Majesty would consider some less important jewel.’

  ‘Indeed not. We wish to show the brooch.’ Her eyes swivelled up and settled on Stockmar.

  ‘I find the idea ill-advised–’

  ‘Enough. We wish it. Lehzen?’

  ‘Eh.’ There was a thump. Salman looked up in time to see the woman haul herself out of the window seat, winded by sleep, her book fallen to the floor. Hooper’s new tragedy, he saw. ‘Your Highness?’

  ‘Lazy Lehzen, you are always asleep. The ruby brooch. Bring it quickly please.’

  ‘As fast as I am able, Your Highness.’ Her voice was accented like Stockmar’s. She slowed as she crossed the room, peering back at the visitors, reaching to adjust a forgotten pair of spectacles.

  ‘If our story interests Your Majesty,’ said Salman, bowing forward, ‘there is more to it.’

  ‘Oh?’ Her eyes left Stockmar reluctantly, her cheeks flushed. Salman saw that her anger receded more slowly than it had begun. He talked smoothly, treading with care. His hands opening together, like pages.

  ‘In Baghdad I was trained by an Arabian lapidary, a man who worked in the city’s old bazaar. It was through this Arabian that I was given the jar of jewels. Thus when we came to London, my brother and I were already trained in the business of jewellery. Our work here was not at first with Rundell and Bridge’s. We owned a small jewellers on the new Commercial Road, where my brother was shopman and I the smith. You see, Your Majesty, we were goldsmiths in our own right. We intend to be so again.’

  There was a sound from the servants’ door. More visitors, thought Salman. My time is almost out. His brother shifted on the sofa beside him. Daniel in the limelight, already dying to be out of it.

  ‘In which gems did you do business?’

  ‘Cairngorms, amet
hysts, topaz.’ He held the names out to her like confections. Her lips, he saw, were wet. He felt the proximity of success. A champagne sensation of elation, his chest filling with its ribbons of bubbles. ‘Jewels tailored to our customers, who were poor people, as we were also. Our best cargoes of stones were brought in by the East India docks, just as we had arrived ourselves …’

  ‘Yes.’ She was watching him, fascinated. Salman could hear her breathing. ‘You are good men. Good men. We know how to appreciate real worth.’

  ‘You are most kind–’ A movement at the door interrupted him. The woman, Lehzen, had come back already. She was breathless, a case in her pale hands. Salman leant forward, trying to hold the Queen’s attention. Meeting her eyes, but already she was turning away. He smiled, all teeth.

  ‘Lehzen?’

  ‘Yes, Majesty, I have it.’ In two hands, Lehzen held a box that could have been carried in one. It was triangular, each panel filled with cloisonné. A fashionably medieval style, Salman observed without caring. Knots of flowers. Iris, convolvulus, narcissus.

  ‘Really most kind, Your Majesty. If we might inform you when we have our own premises. It would be an honour for us to present Your Majesty with our first–’

  He broke off. The Queen was opening the box. Smiling into it, as if there was something inside which could understand expression. Extracting a weight of stones and gold. She was speaking again as she put it on. Salman found he could no longer follow her voice.

  The air sang in his ears. He bent towards the jewel. It was a massive arrangement. A triangle of rubies, but also of pearls. A double geometry. The organic jewels were fastened with gold spines and bows, hooklets and wires. The balas rubies were held in by claws. At their centre was a clear stone. Cut in the shape of a pyramid.

  ‘Is it not beautiful?’ She was smiling at him. Eighteen years old, alive with it. ‘We knew you would appreciate it. Bridge says the diamond alone is thirty carats.’