The Dervish House by Ian McDonald Read Free Book Online Page B

widen.

    ‘This is quite extraordinary. I’ve only seen this in two places before. One was a dealer in Paris, the other was in a codex in the British Library. Sephardic I presume? Spanish, Portuguese?’

    ‘You’re correct on Portuguese. The family fled from Porto to Constantinople in the fifteenth century. The micrographic border is a genealogy of King David from the Book of Ruth.’

    ‘Exceptional,’ Akgün says, poring over the weave of calligraphy.

    ‘Thank you,’ Ayşe says. It is one of her most adored pieces. It took a lot of discreet envelopes of euro to get it away from the police art crime department. The moment her police contact showed the Pentateuch to her, she had to possess it. For others it might be the prestige they could garner, the thrill of control, the money they could make. With Ayşe it was the beauty, that cursive of beauty spiralling through Aramaic and Syriac texts to the demotic Greek of the Oxyrhynchus, the painstakingly squared-off Hebrew of the Talmudic scholars of Lisbon and Milan, the divine calligraphy of the Koranic scribes of Baghdad and Fes and learned Granada. It flowed into the organic lines of gospel illumination from monasteries from St Catherine’s to Cluny, in the eternal light of Greek and Armenian icons, through the hair-fine, eye-blinding detail of the Persian miniaturist to the burning line of Blake’s fires of Imagination. Why deal in beauty, but for beauty?

    ‘You wonder how far down it can go, writing within writing within writing within writing,’ Akgün says. ‘Nanography, perhaps? Do you think it could be like nanotechnology, the smaller it gets, the more powerful it becomes? Are there levels so fine we can’t read them but which have the most profound, subliminal influences?’

    Ayşe glances up to the balcony where Hafize is guiding Topaloğlu to the back stairs down into the old tekke cemetery. She subtly unfolds three fingers. Thirty per cent discount. Good girl. Gallery Erkoç needs every cent it can find.

    ‘Pardon?’

    ‘A nanography that slips into the brain and compels us to believe in God?’

    ‘If anyone could it would be the Sephardim,’ Ayşe says.

    ‘A subtle people,’ Akgün says. He unbends from the codex. ‘They say you can get hard-to-find items.’

    ‘One should always take the praise of one’s rivals with a pinch of salt but I do have a certain . . . facility. Is there a particular piece you’re looking for? I have private viewing facilities upstairs.’

    ‘I think it’s unlikely you’d have it in stock. It is a very rare, very precious item and if it can be found anywhere it will be in Istanbul but if you can source it for me I will pay you one million euro.’

    Ayşe has often wondered how she would feel if a life-transfiguring sum of money walked into her gallery. Adnan talks of the fist-solid thrill of the leveraged millions of his gas trades solidifying into profit. Don’t let it seduce you , he says. That way is death. Now a thousand euro suit offers her a million euro on a Monday morning, how could she not be seduced?

    ‘That’s a lot of money Mr Akgün.’

    ‘It is, and I wouldn’t expect you to embark on such a project without a development fee.’

    He takes a white envelope from inside his jacket and gives it to Ayşe. It’s fat with cash. She holds the envelope in her hand and orders her fingers not to feel out the thickness and number of the notes.

    ‘You still haven’t told me what you’d like me to find.’

    Hafize has returned from exiting Mr Topaloğlu. Her customary haste to make tea - tea for every customer; tea, tea - is frozen by those words, one million euro .

    ‘It’s quite simple,’ Akgün says. ‘I want to buy a Mellified Man.’

     
    Leyla on the Number 19, wedged hard against the stanchion in her good going-to-interview suit and business heels. Her chin is almost on the breastbone of a tall foreign youth who smells of milk, behind her is a fat middle-aged man whose hand