The Snake Stone

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.