The Snake Stone

120

When Yashim woke it was late. The thunderstorms had cleared away as if they had never been, and a hot afternoon sun was already tracing a pattern of slanting shadows across the room.

He got up slowly, feeling light and hungry. There was a loaf of bread that was no longer fresh; he broke off a piece and chewed at it, and then in self-disgust he put the bread down and riddled the stove. He blew on the embers and fed their glow with trickles of charcoal from his fingers, listening to its dry rustle, feeling its insubstantial weight, wondering as he watched the glow spread how something so light could generate so much heat. He placed his hand flat above the stove and savored the burning heat on his palm.

He looked into his vegetable basket. In an earthenware dish, under a domed lid, lay a slab of crumbly white cheese, beyaz peynir.

He skinned two onions and chopped them roughly, then sprinkled them with salt. He sliced the tops off two tomatoes and chopped them, with peppers, garlic, and a bunch of wilted parsley. He mashed the cheese with a fork.

He split the stale loaf lengthways and rubbed the insides with a cut tomato and a garlic clove. He drizzled them with oil and set them at an angle over the heat.

He dipped the onions into a bowl of water to remove the salt, and tossed them into a bowl along with the peppers, the tomatoes, and the parsley. A drop of oil fell onto the coals with a hiss. He sprinkled the salad with the crumbled cheese and a big pinch of kirmizi biber, which he had bought after the desecration of the apartment-usually he made it himself, with a big bunch of dried chili peppers crushed in a mortar, rubbed with oil and roasted black in a heavy pan on the coals.

He poured a generous lick of olive oil over the salad, added salt, and pounded peppercorns in the mortar. Clink-clink-clink.

He stirred the salad with a spoon.

He took the toasted bread from the fire and set it on a plate. He washed his hands and mouth.

He ate cross-legged on the sofa, the sun on his left hand, thinking about the dark burrows under the city, the huge cistern like a temple, and the wavering light that had pursued him through his dreams. The light he’d seen in Amelie’s eyes.

I am doing this for Max, she’d said. Fulfilling his desires. Following his instructions as if he were still alive; as if, like Byzantium itself, he still had the power to direct and to control the actions of people in the living world.

Yashim spooned up some of the vegetables with a chunk of toasted bread. I am doing this for Max.

For Max: for the man whose grossly mutilated corpse both he and Dr. Millingen had examined days ago. A body without a face, but good teeth.