Free The Snake Stone by Jason Goodwin Page B

drill, a screw digging deeper and deeper into the fabric of the city, penetrating its layers one by one.
    If you turned it so that the coils bit deeper into the ground, if you traced the sinuous curves of the serpents’ bodies from the tail up, you would bring the fanged monsters closer. And eventually you would find yourself staring into those pitiless hollow eyes and the gaping mouth, into the dark side of myths and dreams: terrorized, and then devoured. Yashim glanced back at the Egyptian obelisk. It seemed cold and reserved, careless of its fate. The Roman column was nothing but a platitude: empires decay.
    But between them, the green-black coils of the brazen serpents referred to a dark enigma, like a blemish in the human soul.

25
    A LEXANDER Mavrogordato glanced automatically down the street and then rapped on the door with the knob of his cane. After a while he heard the shuffle of feet inside. He knocked again.
    The door opened.
    “Yashim efendi,” he said.
    The old woman nodded. “He just came in, I think, efendi. Please, mind your head.”
    Alexander Mavrogordato ducked, though not quite deeply enough, and stepped down into the little hall, rubbing his head. “Where do I find him?”
    The old woman pointed up the stairs. Mavrogordato climbed heavily. On the landing he paused, then pushed open the door.
    Yashim looked up in surprise.
    “You mind if I come in?” The young man’s tone was aggrieved, as if he expected a rebuff.
    “Not at all,” Yashim replied pleasantly. “You are almost in already.”
    “My mother told me where to find you,” Alexander Mavrogordato said, advancing into the room. He looked around and went over without stopping to the stove, putting his hands on the table, fingering the pots. Then he wheeled around and came over to the books, absently running his hands across their spines.
    “Mother says your job’s done.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a purse. “Here.”
    He threw it across to Yashim, who was sitting on the divan, watching the performance with interest. Yashim put up an arm and closed his fingers on the purse. A Phanariot purse: heavy and musical.
    “Your mother is too kind,” he said. “What exactly is she paying me for?”
    The young man whipped round. “It doesn’t matter. She thinks she overreacted.”
    Yashim lobbed the purse back. Mavrogordato was taken by surprise, but he caught it. Then he fumbled the catch and the money fell onto the floor.
    “In which case, there’s no fee.”
    Mavrogordato stirred the purse with his foot. “I don’t think you get it, do you? My mother doesn’t want to know about—about anything.”
    “I see. We never talked. She never scolded me for being late, or asked why I didn’t wear a fez, or told me not to smoke.”
    “That’s right,” the young man replied guardedly.
    “Oddly enough, do you know the only thing she really never did? She never discussed a fee with me. Now take your money, Monsieur Mavrogordato, before I start remembering that you were ever here.”
    Yashim didn’t move from the divan. The young man kicked viciously at the purse, so that it thudded against the wall.
    Then he flung out of the door, slamming it behind him.
    The trouble with children who were told exactly what and what not to do, Yashim reflected, is that they grow up unable to think for themselves.

26
    T HE night watchman who patrolled the streets of Pera was used to the barking of the dogs. As he approached in the faint gleam of his own swaying lamp, the mangy animals would raise themselves from the shadows, from the doorways and the curbs, and their ritual protest carried on long after he had passed by. It was a matter of form, without moment: an unthinking ceremony that had long ago ceased to have any meaning for either the dogs or the watchman.
    So it was that as he turned into the road which led past the French embassy, he was surprised by silence. For a few moments he stood still, scratching his head, while the lantern