Page 93 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

closer until her face was just a blur. “Listen, listen,” she said. “People have been

drowned for saying much less.”
Arkady could make no retort to that. She was only telling the truth. He
thought that was the end of the matter, but as he was leaving she told him not to
come back. She said jealousy lent people uncanny powers of detection, and that
it was better not to be so close within the tyrant’s reach if he wanted to go on
living. He protested—without the wages she paid him, he, Giacomo, and
Leporello could hardly keep afloat—but she shook her head and motioned to

him to be quiet, mouthed, For your own good, scattered a trayful of lokum on
the floor, shouted, “That’s enough clumsiness from you” loudly enough for the
guards just outside the door to hear, and sent him on his way, flinging the tray
after him to complete the dismissal scene.
He didn’t like that, of course, Lokum’s taking it upon herself to decide what

was for his own good. He could drown if he wanted to. In the weeks that
followed that unfillable gap in his funds drowned him anyway—unpaid bills and
nobody willing to employ him without speaking to Lokum, who refused to show
him any favor. Giacomo and Leporello spoke less and stared out of the windows
more. Arkady knew that they weren’t getting enough to eat but Giacomo wasn’t
the sort to complain and Leporello dared not. Giacomo’s fever didn’t take hold
until Arkady missed three rent payments in a row and the trio were evicted from

the building with the views that Giacomo was so fond of. Arkady was able to
find them a room, a small one with a small grate for cooking. It was a basement
room, and Giacomo seemed crushed by the floors above them. He wouldn’t go
out. He asked where the door was and searched the walls with his hands.
Leporello led him to the door of the room but he said, “That’s not it,” and stayed
in the corner with his hands reverently wrapped around a relic, the key to their

previous flat: “The key to where we really live, Arkady . . .” How Arkady hated
to hear him talk like that.
—

GIACOMO AND LEPORELLO had stolen the key between them, Leporello putting on
a full acrobatic display and then standing on his back legs to proffer a genteel
paw to the landlord while Giacomo made a getaway with the key. In his head

Giacomo pieced together all those views of the same expanse. Sometimes he
tried to describe the whole of what he saw to Arkady, but his fever made a
nonsense of it all. Arkady took the key from Giacomo to put an end to his
ramblings, and he threw the key into the fire to put an end to the longing that