The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
came out to greet him, threaten him, or even stare at him. When he reached
the last house, he paused before knocking at the wooden door.
A voice invited him in. He pushed the door open and saw a one-room
hut, at the center of which was a small fire in a stone oven. Four men sat
around the fire: they all had forked white beards without mustaches; they
wore white turbans and robes; they had long faces, deep and watery eyes.
They looked as though they had been sitting there for centuries, figures out
of time, tried by fire, still watchers and guardians of secrets. “Are you looking
for Hajji Porat?” one of them asked in Tajik.
Kulin nodded, and three of them stood up and left, without saying a word
or changing their expressions. The one who remained looked up at him
gravely. “I am Porat. Sit, please, and drink some tea.” The man poured weak
tea from a battered aluminum pot into a grimy ceramic bowl and passed it to
Yuri with both hands.
“You’ve been told who I am, why I came here?” Yuri asked.
“Of course. You wish to see about building a museum of Tajik culture.
An unusual choice for a location, I would say, outside the city, on a hillside
prone to avalanches and mudslides. An altogether unsuitable location.”
Kulin suddenly grew uncomfortable at having to explain the entire situation
to Porat. The man who arranged to send him on this mission had told
Yuri that Porat understood and accepted the exchange. Kulin was merely a
courier, chosen for his intelligence, anonymity, ambition, and fluency in the
region’s languages. Kulin cleared his throat and was about to speak when
Porat held up a long hand.
“You do not need to tell me. I know the real reason you are here. I was told
you would be carrying Akbarkhan’s photograph. May I see it, please?”
“Hajji Porat, I’m not sure that you—” Porat raised his cane and brought it
down with both hands on Kulin’s bowl of tea, shattering the pottery with the
sound of a gunshot.
“I can imagine what he will look like. What you will have done to him. I
am prepared. Let me see the picture.”
Kulin pulled the picture from between two pages in the Tajik phrasebook
and handed it to Porat. It showed a young man in a hospital bed, a hand
77