The Snake Stone

by Jason Goodwin

  “How?”

  Lefèvre smiled. It was not a broad smile. “Because they pay,” he explained, rubbing his fingertips together. “I turn valueless clutter into something like money—and people, I find, are careful with money. Don’t you agree?”

  “I’ve noticed it,” Yashim said.

  “Some people do get the wrong idea. They think of me as a grave robber. Quelle bêtise. I bring lost treasures to light. I bring them back to life. Perhaps, if it is not too much to say so, I can sometimes restore their power to inspire men, and challenge their view of the world.”

  Is that right? Yashim wondered. Or could it be that Lefèvre—and men like him—simply chipped away at the foundations of a people’s culture, scattering the best of it to the four winds?

  “You understand me now a little better, monsieur.” Again that smile. “But all the same, I will do as you suggest. Tonight, after dark, I shall go aboard the Ca d’Oro.”

  21

  ARMED with a black malacca cane and a pair of Piccadilly boots, Dr. Millingen locked his door carefully and went down the few short steps into the street. During his medical studies at Edinburgh he had taken to rambling with other long-haired youths through moorland and mountains. They had declaimed poetry together, admired the awe-inspiring scenery, and ruminated on Adam Smith, Goethe, the tyranny of princes, and the long-term effects of the French Revolution. These days, in spite of the protests of his Turkish friends and clients, he walked half an hour at most, believing that mild exercise improved his circulation and shook up his liver.

  The Turks, as a rule, avoided exercise. One of his clients had once observed that he had others to exercise for him: a household of servants to bring the pipes, the coffee, or the evening meal. He had even hinted, as delicately as he could, that Dr. Millingen was committing an injustice, intruding in another’s sphere by attempting any physical effort for himself. As for taking a strenuous walk, it led to the risk of being jostled in the street, or of apoplexy; and because an Ottoman gentleman could hardly be expected to appear in the streets without his retinue, the annoyance would be shared by his household. Short of taking a second wife, this gentleman liked to insist, there was no easier way of sowing disharmony and vexation through a man’s home than by following the doctor’s curious prescription.

  The doctor himself did not throw himself into these walks with unalloyed enthusiasm, either. Though often steep and even staired, the streets of Pera were not the Lammermuir Hills; the gloomy alleys of the port could hardly be compared to the dark aisles of his beloved pinewoods; and where the corncrake skimmed across the fields at dusk, or the roebuck barked imperiously across the wild glens, the fauna of Pera, like that of Istanbul itself across the Horn, was lazy, underfoot, and had fleas.

  Dr. Millingen faced the street, flexed his stick, and began to walk.

  Nobody ever could say how, or even why, the dogs had come to Istanbul. Some people supposed that they had been there always, even in the time of the Greeks; others, that they invaded the city at the time of the Conquest, dropping down from the Balkans to prowl through the blasted streets and the ruins in the fields, where they formed into packs and carved out territories for themselves that still held good to the present day. But nobody really knew. Nobody, Dr. Millingen had realized long ago, much cared.

  Not a breed, but all alike, these rough-coated yellow dogs with short legs, large jaws, and feathery, curving tails spent most of the day slumped in all the alleys, gateways, thoroughfares, and backstreets of the ancient city, with one eye closed and the other lazily absorbing the activities of the people around them. It took a visitor to see them properly, and a relatively recent resident like Dr. Millingen, trained in habits of scientific observation, to see them with a forensic eye; to everyone else they were so much a part of the fabric of the city, so perfectly integrated into their own mental map of a district, that had all the dogs simply vanished from the streets one night, people would have had only the uneasy impression that something had changed; and nine out of ten Stambouliots would have been hard pressed to say what. The dogs did not impinge. They almost never bit a child, ran amok in the market, or stole the butcher’s sausages. You stepped over a dog sleeping in a doorway; you skirted a muddle of dogs sprawled in a patch of sunlight in the middle of the road; you tossed in bed when the howling and barking of the dogs at night grew more than usually intolerable; and you never noticed that they existed at all.

  Now and then, perhaps once in a hundred years, the authorities woke up to the omnipresent nuisance of the dogs and attempted to round them up: they were carted off into the country, dumped on islands, driven—surprisingly meek—into the Belgrade woods or out of the Edirne gate. But either they all came back or they simply grew again, like the lizard’s tail or moss in the masonry, the same yellow, rangy, ribs-sticking-out mangy curs, with fleabites and battle scars and their own distinct parishes. And nobody minded them, either. Like puddles after rain, or shadow, or the blazing sun at noon, they were simply there; and they scavenged the city streets and kept them clean.

  A soiled crust, a dead bird, a heap of vegetable refuse, old bones, peelings, scraps, rinds, rotten fruit: they missed nothing and wasted nothing. They could eat anything—even shoes. But they rarely tasted fresh meat.

  Dr. Millingen had once suggested, in the course of a consultation with the sultan himself, that with five hundred oka of the cheapest horseflesh and five ounces of arsenic, the sultan could rid his metropolitan subjects of an interminable nuisance, the whole race of mangy dogs—dogs, as he understood it, whom Muslims regarded as unclean animals; and the sultan, cocking his head sharply to register his surprise, had replied that he supposed the dogs, too, were a part of God’s creation. “You would think it very barbaric, would you not, if I were to order all the English doctors in Istanbul rounded up and fed with poisoned meat? It is the same with the dogs.”

  Dr. Millingen could think of several arguments in reply, but he could not argue with the sultan’s tone.

  Advancing at a brisk pace along the street, he swung his cane from side to side and glared suspiciously at the yellow dogs; while they merely yawned, or scratched their fleas, and pretended not to notice Dr. Millingen.

  22

  VENICE and Istanbul: the client and the source. For centuries, the two cities were locked together in trade and war, jockeying for advantage in the eastern Mediterranean. Istanbul had many faces, but one, like Venice’s, was turned to the sea. Like Venice, too, the greatest thoroughfares of Istanbul were waterways; people were forever passing from the city to Üsküdar, from Üsküdar to Pera, and from Pera to the city again, across the Golden Horn. The famous gondolas of Venice were no more central to life in the lagoon than caïques to the people of Istanbul, and while the Venetian gondola had its champions, most people would have agreed that the caïque was superior in point of elegance and speed. Even after dark, the caïques swarmed around the landing stages like water beetles.

  “Forget the ship’s boat,” Lefèvre said quietly. “It’s better that I leave from here unnoticed. Galata is all eyes.”

  They left Yashim’s lodging after dark, moving quietly on foot through the deserted streets. Lefèvre shouldered the satchel, which apparently contained everything he possessed. The narrow streets of the Fener were silent and dark, but Yashim led his companion through them by instinct, now and again pausing to feel for a corner stone or to put his hand gently on the other man’s shoulder. Once, a big dog growled out of the darkness, but it wasn’t until they reached the landing stage that they met with any other sign of life: the city could have been uninhabited.

  Down by the stage, Pera twinkled out across the black water of the Golden Horn. Lamps bobbed gently on the stems of the caïques drawn up against the quay, where a handful of Greek boatmen sat among the coils of rope, the creels and nets, murmuring together and smoking pipes that glowed red in the dark. Lower down the Horn a few ships rode at anchor, with lanterns at their prows. The water slapped darkly against the pilings w
here the caïques were moored.

  A boatman uncoiled himself with catlike ease and stepped forward.

  “The Ca d’Oro? I know the ship. She’s moored off the point. Both of you?”

  Yashim explained it was just one passenger, and fixed a price. He shook hands with Lefèvre and watched him settle himself into the bottom of the caïque, the satchel on his knees. Then the boatman tapped out his pipe, stepped into the caïque’s stern, and pushed off with a practiced flick of the wrist, which sent the frail craft skimming out into the darkness.

  Yashim raised a hand in farewell, certain that the Frenchman would see him framed against the low lights of the landing stage. He thought of his friend Palewski: he’d be pleased by the story. Better pleased by the reflection that neither of them would ever have to see Lefèvre again.

  He smiled to himself. The light of the caïque had blended into the darkness, so he dropped his hand and turned and went home.

  23

  FROZEN at an angle just wide enough to admit a visitor on foot, the carriage gates of the Polish ambassador’s residency rusted on their hinges, escutcheons peeling on the iron shield. They seemed, like Poland itself, to represent an idea: certainly they had not opened to receive a carriage since the eighteenth century, when Poland succumbed to the territorial ambitions of her greedy and more powerful neighbors. A Janissary guard had once been stationed at the gates, but the Janissaries had been brutally suppressed in 1826, and afterward nobody thought to replace the sentries. Visitors, in truth, were few and far between.

  Turning in at the gate, Yashim was surprised to find himself silently challenged by a sentry, who stood with folded arms, blocking his way. He was small for the job, and had a dirty face; he held a stick across his chest and a look in his eye that brooked no opposition.

  Yashim bowed politely. “My name is Yashim. Is His Excellency the Ambassador at home?”

  The little sentry shouldered his arms, swung abruptly on his bare heel, and walked stiffly toward the front door, where he took up a position at the foot of the steps. Yashim passed him with a nod. At the top of the steps he pushed the door, which opened with a creak.

  “Don’t bother knocking, confound you,” said a voice from the darkened hall. “Just push in, do.”

  Yashim obeyed. Stanislaw Palewski, Polish ambassador to the Sublime Porte, was leaning on the banisters, waving an arm in ironic salute.

  “Oh—it’s you, Yashim! That’s all right. Come inside. Ever since I lost the key I keep finding total strangers wandering around the house.”

  “I thought you were being rather well guarded.”

  “Guarded? I suppose you mean the Xanis. Ye-es. The little boy shows promise. More than I can say for his father. Come upstairs.”

  Yashim followed his old friend to the sitting room, where they rang for tea. Yashim tucked his feet up in one of the ambassador’s leaky leather armchairs while Palewski fell to pacing between the untidy bookcases and the portrait of King Jan Sobieski. Marta arrived with a tray, and Palewski nodded distractedly. Yashim poured the tea.

  When Marta had left, Palewski turned around and said: “What do you make of Marta, Yashim?”

  Yashim raised an eyebrow. “Marta?”

  “My housekeeper.”

  “I know who Marta is, Palewski. I’ve known her for years.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Well, I’m a bit worried about her.”

  “You think she’s ill?”

  “Ill? No, I don’t think so. It’s just that there’s something—she’s started—oh, I don’t know, Yashim, but she’s gone a bit odd. Dreamy, half the time. I come around a corner and she’s there, leaning on a broom, staring into space. And tears.”

  “Tears?”

  “She bursts into tears. I ask something, and she goes all red and darts away. Fact is, Yash, I’m beginning to think that she’s not happy.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you think that’s why she got the Xanis in?”

  “The family in the coach house? Yes, for company. You might be right.”

  Palewski looked dubious. “Can’t say they’re much by way of company. Mrs. Xani seems to spend the day inside sweeping the coach house, and the children muck about in the courtyard. The boy doesn’t talk, for some reason. I don’t think he’s dumb, just won’t talk. It’s rather odd. But Marta seems very fond of children, so I don’t complain. It was her idea to get them in the first place. Put a roof over their heads. The little girl likes to help her cook.”

  “What about the father?”

  “Xani? Moved in, all gratitude and smiles. Then he went and joined the watermen’s guild. He became a su yolu. So much for all those little repairs he was going to do.”

  “Xani joined the watermen? I thought you had to be born into the job.”

  Palewski shook his head. “As a rule, that’s true. But if a waterman dies without a successor, they let someone buy his way in. As long as he’s Albanian, that is. I suppose he had a cousin or someone to propose him. But look, enough about Xani,” he added, waving a hand. He seemed to have forgotten about Marta for the moment, so Yashim told him, instead, about Lefèvre’s mysterious arrival—and departure.

  “And the forty piastres?” Palewski arched his brows. “I don’t suppose you’ll be seeing them again, either. Really, Yashim, you should have made that scoundrel pay up.”

  Yashim sighed. “I did try.”

  “But not very hard.”

  “No. Not very hard.” How could he explain to his friend how the sight of Lefèvre’s pathetic satchel had changed everything between them? “I’ll think of it as a tax. The city is better off without a man like Lefèvre in it.”

  Palewski nodded. “I wonder what he got away with this time,” he said.

  Yashim turned his head and stared out the window. The sky was blue with a touch of heat. Wisteria leaves rustled against the window frame, and a little bird swung on a twig, grooming itself in hurried bursts. “He didn’t have anything, as far as I could tell,” he said quietly.

  Palewski snorted. “That’s what you say. I’ve half a mind to go upstairs and check on the wretched heads. He probably got the caïque to drop him off somewhere. I wonder what he came for, anyway.”

  “Mmm,” Yashim murmured. “Books, I suppose. Old manuscripts.”

  “Old books? That would hardly explain his funk. I think he must have been angling for something bigger than that, and they set the heavies on him. What’s the matter?”

  Yashim had looked around suddenly, frowning.

  “One odd thing happened while I was coming over this morning. The captain of the Ca d’Oro, I saw him outside the fish market. I thought it was him. It was just a glimpse and I lost him in the crowd.”

  “Sailing delayed?”

  “No, I looked. The Ca d’Oro has gone.”

  Palewski put his fingertips together. “Well, you know what Pera’s like these days. More Italians than an organ-grinder’s funeral. More everyone. Half of them foreign and the other half Greeks pretending to be.”

  Yashim smiled. Twenty-five years before, when Palewski first arrived to take up his post, foreigners were rare even in Pera. Nowadays the streets were full of them—sailors, tailors, storekeepers, hatters, forwarding agents, old soldiers, and even Protestant priests. Being a foreigner didn’t mean much anymore. Many of them were the dregs of every Mediterranean port, too, men whose past didn’t bear much scrutiny: they fetched up here to practice their dodges and deceptions without the slightest fear of getting caught. The Mediterranean was like a purse, and Pera the seam at the bottom where the dust and fluff collected.

  Centuries ago the Ottomans had allowed foreign ambassadors to judge and sentence their own nationals—an errant sailor, a thieving valet—in the intelligent belief that the foreigners understood one another better than they could hope to do; they didn’t want foreign miscreants clogging the wheels of Ottoman justice, either. Now that there were so many foreigners in the city the situation had grown out of hand. Many of the pe
ople claiming extraterritorial rights were scarcely foreigners at all—Greek-born Englishmen, for instance, whose papers were in order but who had never been closer to England than the Istanbul docks; Corfiotes who could claim protection from the French ambassador, without speaking a word of French; island Greeks who flew the colors of the Netherlands on ships that never sailed beyond the Adriatic. Half the native shipping in Ottoman waters was formally beyond Ottoman jurisdiction. And it was almost pointless to expect the British ambassador to sit in judgment over some Maltese cutthroat who waved his naturalization papers in the face of the Ottoman police: the British didn’t even maintain a jail in their embassy grounds.

  “I’m sure you could find a dozen Italians who look like your captain, roaming the streets here at this very minute,” Palewski was saying. “It’s either that, or the shipowners had to replace him at the last minute.”

  “That’s unlikely—the ship’s registered in Palermo, so the owners—” Yashim paused. He had been going to say that the shipowners would be far away in Sardinia or Naples or Sicily.

  “Probably some local Greek firm,” Palewski observed placidly. “Neapolitan colors, extraterritorial rights, the whole shebang. Switched the captains over for some reason or another.”

  The thread of anxiety that had been running through Yashim’s mind ever since he caught sight of the Italian at the fish market went taut. He pressed his lips together.

  “Cheer up, Yash, it’s not your funeral.” Palewski said. “Anyway, the Greeks are born to the sea. They’ll get our unsavory friend back in one piece.”

  “The Greeks—yes,” Yashim said slowly. Lefèvre had wanted any foreign ship, any ship at all—just as long as it wasn’t Greek. But that had been in the evening, when he had seemed more dead than alive. The next day he’d been quite snappish about the whole thing. He must have been simply overtired, overwrought.