“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
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.”
