MEMOIR

The professor took a slight paused, taking out a white handkerchief from the right pocket of his trousers and sniffed heavily on it twice till he felt comfortable snorting out some mucus accompanied with a little catarrh. Emma wasn't thrilled that he stopped halfway to clean his nose and waited after he was done getting the foul liquid out of his nostrils.

"Then, what happened after my dad found out that my grandfather passed away when he got home and his two brothers already met their deaths in the war?",

Emma asked with a tactical effort to make sure that the professor continues the story of the past without any distractions to hinder her desire to know what fully occcurred in the past before she was born.

"After that, He became downcast for a long time before the final exams were to be written by those leaving the esteemed campus as a result of the sad news of his brothers death and I was beginning to feel a whole lot worried about his mental state which was almost affected by the trauma of losing almost everyone except for your uncle, the youngest of the boys in your grandfather's family since he only had boys as his children born to him by his wife who died earlier than him leaving the four boys to his care till he himself passed away, leaving behind two boys to look over their family treasure, the Garzaville mansion—",

"Wait a minute, is the house really that important and worth selling in the market?"

Emma intruded with an unexpected question.

"Back then, it was kind of competitive with the leading stylish decors in the world at that time, like the European household interiors and the Italian decor but has currently surpassed these two as presently. According to your father, his late dad really loved Spanish taste for architectural buildings and had his entire fortune to build a mansion of Spanish class including antiques and decors in Geneva. Then he named it the Garzaville Hacienda and it has survived for a very long time majorly because of the kind of natural stones used by the Spanish architect invited by your grandparents to have it built for him, making its worth now very grand and profitable if ever it gets sold. I asked your late father if he had any idea of what kind of stones was used and he told me it was Marble mixed with pure Jasper, and some other precious gems that I couldn't remember which fatefully was shipped from Tashkent in modern day, Russia.

"A house made of gemstones? That's interesting. No wonder Uncle is bent on buying that house"

She murmured to herself as soon as he mentioned the gemstones used to erect the house she onced lived when she was still a toddler.

"What are you mumbling quietly in deep thought?

The professor asked with a suspicious look which startled Emma.

" Huh.... Nothing, Prof. I was thinking about something. Please continue",

She said shyly which wasn't convincing enough but he took a sip from a teacup beside the plate and went on talking from where he had made a stop to wet his dry throat.

"As I was saying, Jones wasn't himself when he got back from Switzerland and had to struggle hard with boredom despite my efforts in making him lively for him to feel better and forget the past but it was actually the Dean's niece, Christine Lawrence that brought him out of solitude. How she came to befriend us both was quite a bit romantic and rather fortunate because it was two months to our final exams in the school and he was still battling to get his mind straight off the negative thoughts of being the only one to shoulder the burden of taking care of the assets of his late father including his younger brother, your Uncle Harry. As time went on, she later fell for him eventually and I could tell that he loved her too inside him for she was the cheerful woman of his dreams, who loved outdoor adventures just like he does but they became miles apart the day after graduation and never did told each other how they felt before we all went our separate ways after the graduation ceremony. Two years later, I visited him to inform him of my current situation at home which was similar to his although the house given to me by my late dad was nothing compared to the Garzaville Hacienda which amazed me greatly with its peculiar gigantic size as well as the exquisite way it was built along with some accessory structures especially the guest house, including the maze garden at the back of the house and he was coincidentally working on a project to build a marvelous horse stable using the same style as his late father did in the vicinity that he planned on transforming into a center for horse racing of which he shared with me during my first vacation in the house. He was really happy to see me there even though he was alone since Harry was never around to help him out with the work and it was indeed his greatest desire to transform the stable into a Sporting event center for house racing fashioned in Spanish style but for some reason, the dealer in charge of shipping the stones to Switzerland from the Soviets Republic told him that they were running short in supply of the exact kind of stones and should use materialize homemade materials even though it wouldn't be long lasting and durable like the gemstones used in building the house. For this reason, he went to Tashkent the fifteenth day of my stay in Geneva, taking me along with with him in a ship and this trip to Tashkent was to be significant in our lives but I'll be forced to say that, it was the beginning of the tragedy in your father's life.... ",

"How so?",

"Because it was during our search on how to gain direct access to the main source of where the gemstones came from that we stumbled on the origins of a race of people already going in extinction by the time we arrived there. Gaining legal control over a small mining firm that would have a constant supply of gemstones from the mountains of Tashkent was a good idea and a perfect solution for our plans to be realized, not to mention that the stones worth a fortune itself if you were to sell it on the local market and it was for these reasons we scoured everywhere especially the remote regions and the local farmers, looking for someone who knew the eastern terrain and the east landscape of Tashkent very well and who will lead us to where the natural stones originated from so that we could legally set up a licensed mining firm in Tashkent to provide building materials to be shipped to Switzerland directly from the main source instead of involving middlemen. Amongst others who helped us including the merchant who helped us out in finding an old village who knew the place, only he and I knew that the stones were made of pure refined gemstone that could be sold to make a huge profit but that wasn't our goal like the old farmer we found living in poorest village of Tashkent suspected at first when we first came to him. Thanks to Jones and the merchant who served as interpreter between us and the farmer, we were able to convince the farmer that we were honest people who did not come to cause harm to the people living there in any way and that all we wanted was a local tour guide to guide us through the mountains to the place we wanted to know. Reluctantly, he agreed though I suspected he accepted to help us because he fancied Jones, your father in some way I couldn't explain but nevertheless through the interpreter, he told us everything he knew about the mountain dwellers that once traded the stones and other items with the neighboring villages many years ago, their culture, the level of civilization they attained at the epoch that they were in existence and heights of the empire grew at that time including the time they didn't have a king before they do. Your father noted everything down in his journal which he gave to me through the men who carried the casket containing the remains of the undead emperor back to me in Paris when you were a little girl. By the way, here it is",

He said opening his briefcase and dropped an old book on the table , not large like the hefty book Emma saw at the library but it was bigger enough than a normal diary.