could tear down the minarets, exchange the crescent for the cross, but Suleyman’s Muslim city would still survive, nestled into the very fabric of the place, submerged like the cisterns of Byzantine Istanbul.
This city, Yashim reflected, was very resilient. A survivor.
Like Lefevre himself.
108
“I didn’t think we’d see each other again,” Grigor said.
“We still share this city.”
Grigor sighed. “In space, Yashim, and time. But here?” He jabbed his thumb to his chest. “Or here?” And he placed his index finger to his temple.
Yashim bowed his head. “We share-certain responsibilities, at least.”
“To whom?”
Yashim heard the sneer in Grigor’s voice.
“To the dead, Grigor.”
Grigor put up a hand and ran his fingers through his beard.
“Experience has taught me that we should keep to our own spheres. Our own circuits. There are boundaries in Constantinople: beyond them we trespass at our peril.”
“You told me before that the church is concerned with the things of the spirit,” Yashim answered carefully. “Caesar wants obedience. But God wants Truth, isn’t that so?”
Grigor made a dismissive motion with his hand. “I don’t think God is very interested in your sort of truth, Yashim. It’s very small. Who did what to whom-who talked, who was silent, the year 1839. God is the Eternal.”
“We have long memories, though. Ideas outlive us.”
“What are you saying?” Grigor growled.
“Byzantine treasure, Grigor. The relics. I know where they are.”
The archimandrite glanced out of the window. “You, too?”
“Would you pay me for them?”
Grigor was silent for a while. “What I would or would not pay is beyond discussion,” he said at last. “It would be for the Patriarch to decide.”
“What did the Patriarch decide-the last time?”
“The last time?”
“Lefevre.”
“Ah. Monsieur Lefevre,” Grigor echoed, placing his hands flat on the table. “Doesn’t that answer your question?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I think,” Grigor said, rising, “that I will forget we ever spoke. Do you really know where the relics are?”
“I’m not even sure that they exist.”
“Believe it or not, I’m glad you said that, Yashim. For old times’ sake.”
109
Yashim walked slowly back to his apartment, mulling over Grigor’s words. If Grigor believed the relics did exist himself…But that was not what Grigor had said.
He turned at the market, to start uphill.
“Yashim efendi!”
Yashim stooped to the gradient.
“Yashim efendi! I knows what they takes from you-and this is not ears! What for you’s deaf today?”
He raised his head and turned around. George was standing in front of his stall, hands on his hips.
“So! You eats in lokanta this days? You forgets what is food? Little kebab, little dolma makes like shit!”
George had made a remarkable recovery, Yashim noticed.
“You sees a ghost, Yashim efendi?” George bellowed, thumping his chest. “Yes, I am a thin man now. But this stall-she is like womans! Happy womans, to see George again. So she-she is veeerrrry fat!”
Yashim strode up to George’s stall. “What happened?” he asked, gesturing to the great piles of eggplants, the cucumbers and tomatoes spilling out of baskets, a pyramid of lemons.
“Eh,” George sighed, absently scratching an armpit as he surveyed his stock. “Is mostly shit, efendi. My garden,” he added apologetically, cocking his head at a basket of outsize cucumbers curved like thin green sickles. “Today, I gives away everything for nothing.”
Yashim nodded. In the week George had been in hospital the vegetables on his plot would have run riot.
“But”-and George’s voice became hoarse with conspiracy-“I finds one beautiful thing.”
He dug around in the back of his stall and came out bearing two small white eggplants in the palm of one massive hand, a thread of miniature tomatoes in the other.
“Is very little, you see? No water.”
Yashim nodded. “These are so pretty I could eat them raw.”
George looked at him with a flash of concern. “You eats these raw,” he said, jiggling the eggplants in his hand, “you is sick at the stomach.” He shoved the vegetables into Yashim’s hands. “No lokanta, efendi. Slowly, slowly, we gets better again. You. My garden. And me, too.”
Yashim took the gift. On his way up the hill he thought: George left his garden for a week, and now he is back.
The sound of the muezzins caught him halfway up the hill. The sun was fading in the west behind him; ahead, darkness had already fallen.
Across the Horn, Yashim considered, the French ambassador would soon be writing his report.
At his door, at the top of the stairs, he paused and listened.
There was no sound: no rustle of pages being turned, no sigh. No Amelie.
Yashim pushed the door cautiously, gently, and peered into the gloom. Everything was in its place.
He went in slowly and fumbled for the lamp; and when it was lit he sat for a long time on the edge of the sofa with only his shadow for company.
Amelie had gone, leaving nothing behind. Only a sense of her absence.
After a while Yashim leaned forward, his eye drawn to his shelves.
Something else, he noticed, had changed. The Gyllius, too, was gone.
110
Auguste Boyer, charge d’affaires to the ambassador, had not been sleeping well. Drifting off to sleep, he would remember with a start of shame his own appearance at the courtyard window, drooling onto the cobbles: the ambassador could easily have seen him. Asleep, he dreamed of faceless men and wild dogs.
Yashim’s arrival shortly after Boyer had dressed, and before he had drunk his bowl of coffee, collided unhappily in the attache’s mind with the memory of Lefevre’s bloodless corpse.
“The ambassador cannot possibly be disturbed,” he said vehemently.
“He’s asleep?”
“Certainly not,” Boyer retorted. “Already he is settling various affairs, in discussion with embassy staff.” Like the chef, he thought: there was a luncheon planned. Provided, of course, the ambassador was awake. Boyer’s tummy began to rumble; he pulled out a small handkerchief and coughed.
