The Snake Stone

by Jason Goodwin

“Most kind of you to come. Aram’s been throwing out hints these past few weeks, and my collector’s instinct tells me what you’ve brought. You aren’t an addict, too?”

  Yashim smiled. “I do not collect coins, doctor.”

  “Good for you! I caught the bug in Greece—time on my hands. It’s nothing much, but I’ve been making a collection of late Byzantine coinage. All those states and little kingdoms which grew up after the crusaders sacked the city in 1204. Silver obloids minted by the Morean despots, for instance. This, I suspect, may be the one I’m missing.”

  Dr. Millingen slid the coin from its pouch onto his leather-topped desk and prodded it with his finger. “I knew it. An angelus. Damn, but Malakian is clever. I’ll wager he had this coin the whole time.” He looked up and pulled a face. “A collector is a very weak man, wouldn’t you say? Six months ago I would not have given five piastres for this coin. Now it arrives to close a gap, and Aram Malakian will have me paying through the nose.”

  “Well, I suppose if Malakian always supplies you with your coins, he can’t help knowing what you are looking for,” Yashim pointed out.

  “Ah, no.” Millingen wagged his finger. “That’s part of the game—when I remember to play it properly. I don’t rely on Aram, you see. There are other dealers, though I admit he’s the best. Sometimes I think they operate a ring, pool their information. So I have to lean on friends outside the bazaar, too. You’d be surprised. There’s a monk in Filibe who helps me, and an old friend in Athens. A doctor, like me. But Malakian! He’ll ruin me!”

  Yashim smiled. “I’m afraid he only asked me to bring it over. He didn’t mention money.”

  “Not a word!” Dr. Millingen laughed again, and ran his hands through his curls. “The old fox! He knows I’ve been sitting here with my tongue hanging out. And in a moment I’ll put this angelus with the others and complete the set. And then how could I ever let it go again? Oh, Yashim efendi, I’m afraid our old friend has quite deceived you. You have just sold your first angelus.”

  Yashim smiled. “I am afraid, Dr. Millingen, that it is I who have perhaps deceived you. I was glad to bring you this coin, but really it is some information that I want.”

  Millingen waved his hand. “Fire away,” he said affably.

  Yashim found himself hesitating. “At the palace, they will speak for me.”

  Dr. Millingen leaned forward slightly. “Yes, Yashim efendi. I believe I know you.”

  Yashim felt encouraged. “I knew the unfortunate Monsieur Lefèvre, as well. The man who was killed.”

  “Ah, yes. Bad business, that.”

  “He told me you had met once.”

  Millingen looked surprised. “It’s quite possible. Who knows? I’m afraid he was rather beyond recognition this morning.”

  “You examined the body.”

  “An autopsy. It means to have a look for oneself—from the ancient Greek. I never liked the postmortem stuff, to be honest. I’m a doctor, not a pathologist: it’s my job to save lives.”

  “Lives may be saved if we can find out who did this.”

  Millingen looked dubious. “A dark alley, in the middle of the night? You can rule out witnesses. Those dogs make enough noise to wake the dead. Anyway, this is Pera, not Stamboul.”

  “Efendi?”

  “It would take more than murder to get the Perotes out of their own houses on a dark night. Haven’t you noticed—the people here are colder than a Scotch welcome?”

  “But the cause of death—and the time. You reached a judgment?”

  Millingen frowned. “Yes, I did. It was somewhat spectacular—the trunk was hacked open, from stomach to sternum. But he was actually killed, I suspect, with a blackjack: a powerful blow to the base of the neck. He was almost certainly unconscious when they cut him open. Spatchcocked, you might say, like a widgeon or a teal.”

  “But why?”

  “Purest speculation: whoever killed him wanted to attract the dogs. Quite decent plan—although it’s the dogs, ironically, which help me suggest a time of death.”

  “How’s that, Dr. Millingen?”

  “The teeth marks. Some are older, which caused a loss of blood when the body was still fresh. Then an overlapping set of marks, sometimes a parallel set. The dogs tend to feed by night, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Last night the body was pulled apart. And of course there are other indications, like the state of decomposition, desiccation of the eyeballs, and such. He couldn’t have been killed much later than the night before last; possibly, I suppose, a little earlier. I’ll be suggesting a time of death between noon Monday and, say, six o’clock on the Tuesday morning.”

  Not good, Yashim thought: that put him and Lefèvre together, alone, at a time when he could have been killed.

  “How soon can you make your report, Dr. Millingen?” He hoped it sounded casual.

  Millingen smiled. “Between you and me, it could be tomorrow. But the ambassador’s given me a week.” He glanced down at the coin on his desk. “I wish you luck, Yashim efendi. These sort of crimes are the hardest to resolve.”

  Yashim nodded. He liked Millingen’s air of detachment: it was a professional air. The manner of a man trained to notice things. “Dr. Millingen, you’ve been among the Greeks. You have some experience of their—ambitions.”

  Millingen frowned. “I know many Greeks, of course. But their ambitions? I’m afraid I don’t quite—”

  “No, forgive me,” Yashim said. “There’s a society, a secret society, I’ve learned a bit about recently. The Hetira. I wondered if you’d heard of it?”

  “Umm.” Millingen reached forward and picked up the Morean coin. “Secret societies.” He shook his head and chuckled. “The Greeks are a very charming people. But…I got to know many of them years ago, in the Morea. They were all involved in the struggle for Greek independence, of course—I went to Missilonghi with Lord Byron.

  “What was it that Lord Byron used to say? The Greeks don’t know a problem from a poker. The truth is, they’d intrigue over a potato—and when I say they were involved in the struggle, I don’t mean they went out to win it. Most of the time they fought each other. Very disappointing. Byron wanted them to be like classical Greeks, full of the Platonic virtues; and they aren’t. Nobody is. They’re a good people, but they’re like children. A Greek can laugh, cry, forget, and want to kill his best friend all in the space of an afternoon!” He leaned back and smiled. “When I was a boy, we used to make ourselves dens in the bushes. We’d have Bonaparte marching through the garden, and we’d be ready to take him on—and his army. That’s the Greeks all through. They make themselves secret worlds. It’s politics, if you like—but it’s play, too.”

  He held the coin between finger and thumb and flicked it so that it spun round.

  “A Greek’s a brave fighter on the battlefield—the battlefield that exists in his own head. He slaughters Albanians, routs the Turks, and battles Mehmed Ali to the very gates of Cairo! He’ll take on the world, like Alexander the Great—except that afterward he smokes his pipe, drinks a coffee, forgets, and sits like an old Turk. It’s what you call kif, isn’t it? A state of contented contemplation. The Greeks pretend they don’t have it, and to look at them sometimes you’d believe it—but they’ve got the kif habit worse than anyone.” He closed his eyes and let his head drift slowly; then he snapped awake and chuckled again. “But do you know why he doesn’t fight? I’ll tell you this for nothing. A Greek can never obey another Greek. They’re all in factions, and every faction has a single member.”

  Yashim laughed. What Dr. Millingen said was unanswerable: the Greeks were quixotic. No one could deny that the little kingdom of Greece had been founded largely in spite of the Greeks’ own efforts. Eleven years ago, in 1828, an Anglo-French fleet had destroyed the Ottomans at Navarino, and dictated the terms of Greek independence to end a civil war that had been dragging on for years.

  “A secret society, doctor?”

  Dr. Millingen had begun to let the coin run across the back
of his hand, weaving it in and out between his fingers.

  “In my experience, there are many Greek secret societies. It’s in the blood. Some are for trade. Some for family. In the kingdom of Greece, so I’ve heard, some agitate for a republic, or socialism.”

  “Yes, I see. And the Hetira?”

  “I’ve heard of them. You are a friend of Malakian’s, so I’ll tell you what I know: it’s not to be repeated, if you understand me. The Hetira are anti-Ottoman, in a fairly subdued way. Most secret societies are, or they wouldn’t exist. But the Hetira really despise the kingdom of Greece. They believe that the kingdom was constructed by secret negotiation between the Ottoman Empire and the European powers, to keep Greeks in the Ottoman lands quiet.”

  “A conspiracy?”

  “Between a cunning sultan and compliant foreign ambassadors. For the likes of the Hetira, Greece is nothing more than a sop to European opinion. In the meantime, they indulge a dream. They want a new empire. Greeks don’t live in Greece alone. Trabzon, Izmir, Constantinople: they’re full of Greeks, aren’t they?”

  Yashim watched in fascination as the angelus rippled between Millingen’s knuckles. “But also Turks. And Armenians, Jews. What of them?”

  The doctor turned his wrist, and his fingers closed around the coin. When he opened his hand, it had gone.

  Yashim smiled and stood up. “That’s a pretty trick,” he said.

  “Missilonghi was a very long drawn-out affair.” Dr. Millingen laughed. “As I say, we had time on our hands. But interesting company.”

  He flexed his fingers.

  The ancient coin winked in his palm.

  36

  “WHO is it now? Any more builders, and I swear I’ll scream. You’re quite fat enough, Anuk, put that pastry away. Read this, Mina sweetie. Tell me if it’s spelled properly. If it’s not a builder we’ll see him.” She opened her arms. “Yashim!”

  Preen went into a mock swoon. Nobody in the room paid the slightest attention except Mina, who looked up and smiled. Preen snapped out of her swoon and threw her arms around Yashim’s neck. “I thought you were a builder! I might not have recognized you anyway. It’s been months.”

  Yashim grinned. Preen’s sense of time had always been elastic, stretching or shrinking according to her mood; but she lived in a world that was more vivid and extravagant than his, where the boundaries between reality and make-believe were fluid. Long ago, as a boy, Preen had been trained as a köçek dancer, as sultry and provocative as any of the köçek “girls” who danced at weddings and parties and reunions in the great city of Istanbul. No one knew exactly how or when the köçek traditions had evolved: perhaps they had danced for the emperors of Byzantium, perhaps they had come with the Turks from the steppe; but they were, like the dogs or the gypsies, as much a part of the city as the sunshine or the damp.

  Preen had not lost her zest, nor her sense of humor, when she set aside her wigs and bustiers in favor of a bristled scalp and loose pajamas. There was gray in the bristle now, and her face bore no trace of makeup beyond a little rouge, some antimony, and a touch of the eyebrow pencil and the kohl. She was wearing an embroidered scarlet waistcoat. Two of the fingers of her right hand were permanently crooked, the result of an accident involving an assassin and a tricky flight of stairs.

  “Months, Preen? More like a week.”

  “A week for me—it’s a month! I don’t have time to sleep, Yashim, honestly.” Her fingers fluttered to her eyes. “Do I look tired?” She sounded chirpy, but Yashim was familiar with Preen’s methods, her underlying anxieties.

  “Tired? You’re crackling with energy, I can feel it. You look like a new—”

  “I am a new woman, Yashim.”

  They both laughed.

  “It’s true—that accident was the best thing that could have happened to me. It made me think. Face it, Yashim, I was getting too old to dance every night.”

  “You were dancing as well as ever.”

  Preen smiled. “I’ve seen too many dancers grow old, Yashim. The theater will be something different.” She pronounced it tay-atre, the French way Yashim had used when he first explained the idea. “I’ve got jobs for three of the older girls when we open, selling tickets and sherbet and coffee.”

  Yashim had been astonished by Preen’s talent for organization. Gone was the dancer who worked for tips from clients, who fretted about her vanishing good looks, who slept and danced and whiled away whole days in the hammam. As soon as she had grasped the idea of a theater she had set about it with enthusiasm. She tracked down good premises in Pera, found a team of builders and bent them to her will, planned the bill and organized the décor—all in the space of a few months. Preen had an unexpected streak of steel. She took no nonsense, brooked no contradictions. But she lavished praise where it was due.

  She lavished it on him, of course. Yashim only hoped that he was right: that Pera could support a theater. It would be something between an English music hall and a Parisian revue; he had read about such places. Many people would disapprove. Yashim, if he were honest, disapproved slightly himself. But for Preen’s sake—and the sake of all her tribe—he hoped it would work.

  “I came into a little extra money,” he said, holding out Alexander Mavrogordato’s purse. “Can you use it?”

  Preen turned her head away. “We despise it, Yashim. You know that.” Her arm snaked out and he dropped the purse into her hand.

  “Thanks. Do you want a coffee?”

  “No. But I’ve got a favor to ask.”

  “You surprise me. Shall we not despise the money, after all?”

  “Better not. A wealthy boy, Preen. Greek, rather good-looking.”

  “Mmmm.” Preen arched a delicate eyebrow. “Sash, skirts, and hairy legs, too?”

  “More like lace-ups and a stambouline, I’m afraid. And whiskey breath.”

  Preen turned her head and traced a pattern idly on her scalp. “Academy boy?”

  “That’s my guess.” Since Greek independence ten years before, many rich Greeks had been sending their sons to be educated in Athens. “Alexander Mavrogordato. The bankers.”

  “Ah, those Mavrogordatos,” Preen said roguishly, as if there were any others. Then her expression changed. “We might need the purse, at that.”

  37

  YASHIM laid the basket on the floor and fished out three onions and a handful of zucchinis. He pulled down the chopping board and set it on the little high table where he kept his salt, rice, and dried spices. He took a sharp knife from the box beside him and honed it on an English steel that Palewski had given him once, as a surprise. Cookery wasn’t about fire: it was about a sharp blade.

  He ripped the outer skin from the onion using the blunt edge of the knife. He halved it and laid the halved pairs face down, curves touching. The knife rose and fell on its point. The board gave a momentary lurch and rocked to one side; Yashim continued chopping. He swept the slices to the edge of the board. The board rocked back again. Yashim raised one edge and swept his hand beneath it, dislodging a grain of rice.

  For a few moments he stared at the tiny grain, frowning slightly. Then he glanced up and poked his finger into the spaces between the rice crock and the salt cellar and the spice jars at the back of the table. A few grains of rice stuck to his fingers. He moved the crocks and jars to one side, and found several more.

  Yashim rubbed the tips of his fingers together, opened the lid of the rice crock, and looked inside. It was almost full, the little scoop buried in the grain to its hilt.

  He looked around the room. Everything was in order, everything left as the widow would have left it after she’d been in to clean, the shawls folded, the clothes bags dangling on a row of hooks, the jug of water standing in the bowl.

  But someone else had been in here.

  Searching. Looking for something small enough to be hidden in a crock of rice.

  Yashim picked up a folded shawl and spread it out across the divan beneath the window. He picked up the rice jar and t
ipped it forward, spilling the grain onto the shawl. Nothing but a mound of rice. He looked inside the jar. It was empty.

  He put the rice back into the crock with his two hands at first, and then with the little scoop. He brushed a few grains of rice off the rim and replaced the lid.

  The Frenchman, Lefèvre. How long had he left him on his own? Two hours, three. So he’d woken up and wanted to make something to eat.

  Lefèvre didn’t cook. Didn’t know olives from sheep droppings.

  I believe everything I read in books.

  Yashim frowned.

  He went to his bookcase and looked along the shelves. The books were in no particular order, which told him nothing. Perhaps they had been disarranged, perhaps not. He tried one or two at random, and they slid out easily.

  He pushed the jars back to the wall and carried on chopping the onions.

  He sluiced olive oil across the base of an earthenware dish.

  He halved a lemon and squeezed its juice into the oil. He dried his hands on a cloth.

  He went to the bookcase and ran his finger along the middle shelf until he found the book.

  It had been a gift from the sultan’s mother, the valide. She’d received it unbound, no doubt, in a thick manila wrapper. Before she passed it on she’d had it bound in imperial green leather, with the colophon of the House of Osman, an egret’s feather, worked onto the spine in gold leaf. Title and author, stamped on the spine in gold.

  GORIOT—BALZAC. It was a rare gift.

  At the embassy Lefèvre’s satchel had contained half a dozen books. They were the very books the terrified man had spilled out apologetically across the floor, before he died. Except for one, Yashim remembered. There had been a paperbound copy of Goriot, slightly tatty around the spine, which he hadn’t seen before.

  He pulled the Balzac from the shelf and opened the leather cover.

  Lefèvre, at least, had found a hiding place.

  You hide jewels on a woman’s neck. A man can lose himself in a crowd.