So I thought about it. Then I looked around the area where the temple would have stood. Parts of the temple could have been excavated and moved. That kind of thing had happened before. So I looked at the trees. Olive trees to be precise. Strong, slender trunks opening into a broad, round canopy, hard green fruit on their branches. I didn’t know much about olive trees, but I did know that they were known to live for a very long time. Sometimes millennia. And that like many things, each was unique. I glanced back down at the sketch and took three steps forward. I had my answer.
“This is it,” I said. “This is the spot.”
“How can you be certain?”
“The square. Look.”
I walked ahead another step and placed my hand on the rough trunk of an olive tree. Immediately below my palm was a branch that had grown back on itself to create a perfect hole in the trunk of the tree — a square hole you could toss a stone through.
“It matches the drawing,” I said. “If the crates are anywhere, they’re here.”
The moon had risen high enough to cast long shadows over the clearing. The remains of a foundation were visible, sections of Doric columns piled here and there, but not much else. I looked at the sketch again. Below the crates were several words in Cyrillic. I could make them out, but just barely in the moonlight.
“Can you read this?” I said.
“It is not Turkish. It is Serbian, I think. I worked there once. Undercover. It says, ‘There is poverty in love that is measured.’”
“What?”
“I don’t know. It says there are beggars, poverty in love that is measured.”
“Beggars?”
“Yes. Beggars. Beggary?”
I knew what it said right then. I understood it.
“There’s beggary in love that can be reckoned,” I said. “It’s Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra again.”
I turned it over in mind. There’s beggary in love that can be reckoned. It was a very famous line from Antony and Cleopatra. I knew it. Half the world knew it. But why had Bayazidi written it in his journal? I had no idea. I knew that both Antony and Cleopatra had probably stood in this very spot. Was Bayazidi a hopeless romantic? Was he expressing his love for his own nation? For the Kurds? For a new world order? It was unclear.
I looked down at the ground at my feet. Nothing there but a few stones and a broken column. I walked to the far edge of the clearing, then back to the olive tree with the square hole. Then I started a slow, sweeping walk around the perimeter.
“What are you doing?” Meryem asked.
I didn’t answer, I just finished my walk around the clearing before circumscribing a smaller circle inside the larger one. It took me about thirty seconds to go around the second circle, and then I circumscribed a smaller circle again. That one took me twenty seconds, and then, three-quarters of the way around the fourth circle, I found it. The roughness of the rocky earth gave way to a flat, uniform surface. It was marble with chiseled writing on it like a tombstone. A stele. I cleared away the dirt with my hand until I could see the carved letters in the moonlight.
“Can you read it?” Meryem said.
It was English, not Cyrillic. I could read it just fine.
“And I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness in the posture of a whore,” I read aloud.
“What is he talking about?” Meryem said. “The posture of a whore?”
“Follow me,” was my only reply.
Chapter 36
I led the way back along the ancient Roman road. I was thinking about the letters cut into the marble. They were precise and crisp, their edges hard, not weathered. That meant the letters were new. Not by today’s standards, my guess was that they dated back to 1955, but they were in no way ancient. And if they were new, in all likelihood they had been carved by Bayazidi. As to why the words were in English, I could only guess that a man who spoke a dozen languages found an added pleasure in quoting Shakespeare’s line in its original form. Given that Bayazidi obviously wanted to keep whoever found the journal on their toes, the whole thing made a kind of grudging sense.
“Michael, I asked you a question. What is the posture of a whore?”
“They didn’t make you read Shakespeare in high school?”
“In Turkey we read some French literature. Some Spanish. Much Turkish. English, no. We did not study Shakespeare.”
“It’s from Antony and Cleopatra again. It’s Cleopatra talking about her legacy and how a squeaky-sounding boy would play her on the stage and destroy her reputation.”
“A boy would do this? Why not a girl?”
“There were no female actors in Shakespeare’s time. A boy would have played Cleopatra. But that’s not the point. The point is, Shakespeare is breaking the fourth wall here. He’s talking directly to the audience about the stage. Bayazidi chose the line. He’s talking about the stage too.”
“I do not understand.”
Meryem walked two steps behind me as we passed several more eroding foundations and found ourselves back at the amphitheater. Instead of skirting it, however, this time I headed straight inside. The stone structure was built into the side of the hill, the seats arranged like those in a modern theater.
And I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness…
“Michael, please explain this,” Meryem said.
I didn’t want to explain anything. Not until I knew I was right. So I strode down between the rows, until I reached the bottom of the theatre. I had a pretty good idea what I was looking for. There was scrubby grass down there among the rocks, but I was focused on the four-foot-high stone stage, or more precisely, backstage. I looked for an entrance, a way behind or underneath the monolithic stones. I found it on the farthest edge. Stage left.
“Tesla’s friend was a poet,” I said. “He knew the history of this island. He knew that Mark Antony’s and Cleopatra’s romance blossomed here. He’s directing us as gently as possible. Directing us back to the theater.”
A set of stone stairs led down into the subterranean tunnel beneath the stage. I entered the low tunnel. It was pitch black so I used the glow of my watch to guide me.
And I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra…
I was backstage now. No question. Meryem climbed down beside me. Then I heard a scratching noise and smelled sulfur. A single flame lit the darkness.
“Where did you get the match?” I asked.
“On the steps. A pack of cigarettes. Perhaps a tourist left it.”
The match threw just enough light to see that we were in the middle of a tight, dark tunnel. As a rule, I don’t like tight spaces, but I could still see the way we had come in, so I was more excited than I was concerned. I pulled out the wet copy of the page from the journal again. I wanted to be sure. Meryem lit another match, the bright sulfur flare illuminating the cobwebs above us. But it didn’t merely illuminate the cobwebs. It illuminated the stones of the back wall. The old black ink bled through the wet page of the journal.
“What do you see?”
“Spiderwebs,” she said.
“See the crates in the drawing,” I asked.
Meryem looked over my shoulder.
“Yes.”
“What do you notice?”
“They are a drawing of crates.”
She was right. They were a drawing of crates. Pen and ink drawings shadowed and shaded to perfection.
“But what else?”
“I don’t know. Crates.”
“Look at the position of the crates.”
The two crates were stacked on top of each other like steps.