Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (28 page)

Surely there was more vitality here than in the richer parts of Manhattan, where frail young men walked their waisted poodles and the fashionable women went out without trousers, and when you looked closely they were thirty years older than their long thin legs and blonded hair. Two decades might have been scraped off their faces but it just made them fainter, they were being erased, and I thought of Manhattan with the exits blocked, crashes in the tunnels, traffic-choked bridges, and I wondered, would New York sink under the sea while the Turks
leaped up like a school of dolphins?

(Then I remembered Central Park. The fresh green leaves, the springy joggers, the Spartan glamour of some of the people, elegant, polished, unstoppable as robots, fit as greyhounds, determined to win. And the mesmerising power of the big corporations, the black buildings blocking the sun … No, Americans and Turks might be evenly matched.)

I was walking downhill into the end of the afternoon. My yellow coat danced beside me in shop windows. Surprise! A young man outside a barber’s with the same striped pole we used to have in London – maybe we borrowed them from Turkey? – suddenly stretched out his arm and said ‘Hallo, lady. How are you today?’ He had thick black hair and his eyes were slightly crossed, there was a cushion of flesh around his waist – but I saw his muscles underneath his red shirt, and the teeth in his smile were young and white, I evaded his arm and slipped past him, gasping – I had left him behind, he was in the past, or was he shouting after me? – I found I was patting & stroking my hair – I hurried on, dazed by the light, past the random poems of strange hotels – The Coliseum,
The Rose Bouquets
– & their charming amateur attempts at decoration: asymmetrical trees hung with orange lanterns, a wooden hotel with baroque Spanish casements, a tree-trunk snaked around with fairy-lights. Anything could happen on this winding, plunging street, whereas in New York, there was no room for error, the roads ran straight to the neat horizon –

– but none of that mattered, I was here on this planet –

– the yellow-pink evening illuminated the wide washed blankness above the city, sunlight glinted on the radial cobbles, the broken kerb-stones, a plastic chair; a brown hound sneaked the eyed beak of a fish; the mosque began its call to prayer and
the birds circled the chasm in the buildings through which the road ran down towards the sea – & all this had always existed in me, and I in it, and it would last forever – just round the corner it would soon appear, the vision of water I was longing for, the Sea of Marmara, so blue, it would be, now the storm had passed and the sun was out, and there would be fishermen, broad backs bent, their corded arms against the brightness –

But I looked at my watch, and it was half-past six. I would have to turn back, to meet Angela, and in any case, I saw Leonard frowning, ‘Virginia, you are too excited.’

Walking back uphill – it was harder going up, and I was perspiring in my yellow coat – I found myself thinking of the cross-eyed barber. Yes, I would have to pass him again. And I felt – what was that strange feeling? But the red-and-white pole stuck up unattended, there were just two black tom-cats outside it, bristling, padding around one another like boxers –

Presents, I remembered, and dived into a shop with a little flotilla of red Turkish flags and something very blue in the window – but ah, it was all modernity – shimmering cases for telephones, fluorescent cigarette lighters. But there against the glass, a waterfall of light! Rows of small round white and turquoise eyes on blazing glass disks of cobalt blue. Yes, they were instantly familiar, they were charms against the evil eye, Nessa was pulling me by the hand through the hectic theatre of the Grand Bazaar, plunging through stalactites of gilt and bead-work –

(we had walk-on parts
the brief play was over)

Then I saw the hat, on a pile in the corner. It was casual, youthful, nothing like the navy-blue swan of a hat I’d been forced to leave behind in New York; this was a happy, summery,
cream straw boater. I put it on, and in that dim corner, in that dirty mirror, I was twenty-four years old again! ‘I’ll take it, please.’ A rush of pleasure. ‘And two of the charms.’ (They would bring good fortune. Writer’s luck – one needed it.) An immensely old woman with a scored brown face took my money, wreathed in smiles.

So much to tell Angela! So much to see!

– But I could guess what she had been doing. The thing these modern people always did, switch on their machines and fret at them. If it didn’t work she would be losing her temper, as she did in front of me in New York, in the restaurant of the Empire State Building. ‘This fucking, fucking thing,’ she said loudly, but she was annoyed when I started laughing. ‘Virginia, you’re embarrassing.’ I was embarrassing! She was embarrassing!

While I was breathing in the evening air, Angela was tethered to her London friends, or worrying about her editors – (she had so many editors, her agent, first, then her publisher, then her American editor – did these modern writers not edit themselves?). She was a chained monkey, night and day, dancing to the tune of her accordion.

The laptop thing came with her everywhere, on her knee, like another baby, her real baby, now Gerda had flown. Perhaps it had always been her real baby. Had Gerda always felt alone?

62

Gerda is walking past the Plaza Hotel where Eloise lived in that wonderful book. She stops and stares, a laser beam of longing. Here a girl could live on her own, waited on by compliant adults, next to the park – skating rinks, cafes with caramel milk-shakes, hills, rocks. Where Dad had taught her to rollerblade (true, that was seven years ago).

It is only early afternoon. I am fine, thinks Gerda, I am wonderful. Yes it is a blow that Mum is not here, because the stupid cow has flounced off to Turkey. Yes, Mum told her pals in the lobby but didn’t bother to inform her daughter …

But Gerda’s subconscious is working overtime.
Had
Mum, in fact, mentioned Turkey? Why had Gerda assumed the conference was here? How on earth did you get from New York to Istanbul? Should she just give up her quest and go home? Would Mum be cross that Gerda had spent so much money – so much of
Mum’s
money – flying over here?

Once again, suspicion is gnawing at Gerda, a heavy shark tracking her under the pavement, snapping its jaws at her hurrying toes.

Mum did tell me. Ages ago
. She was really thrilled they had invited her.

Yes, it was an international conference IN TURKEY. How had she forgotten! Retard! GAY! DIMWIT! LOSER! (Though ‘Gay’ was sexist.)

Gerda is still walking unnaturally fast as she leaves the white fountains of the Plaza behind. She is smiling in order not to cry, and focusing on the positive. Her namesake in Hans Andersen
had to travel solo all round the world, probably for years, on a boat, in a carriage, on the back of a reindeer: therefore she, Gerda, can bear another journey. She has still got Mum’s card, she can fly to Turkey – but where IS Turkey? And how do you get there?

Her courage falters. But look, she’s at the park, and the driver of one of the be-plumed carriages winks at her as he pats his horse.

She’s a pretty girl with curly red hair, but as he straightens up he sees she’s crying, and a lot younger than he had thought, rather too young to be winked at, in fact, and he straightens his face into something paternal.

Soon the sun will be leaving the park.

(Gerda is crying because she has realised that without a phone, with no computer, she has no way of booking that flight.
Where is my mother? Why isn’t she here? Why is she never where I want her to be? Why did both my parents go away and leave me
?)

Gerda stops and blows her nose quite long and hard on the brown paper napkin from the hamburger joint. She congratulates herself on having a hanky. She tells herself she is doing fine. She has come to the park because here she had been happy. After a brief walk, she’ll check in to a hotel. Later this will seem like a Great Adventure. Even now it’s an Experience, better than rotting away at school (but she suddenly remembers her History teacher, Miss Larman, who also taught Latin, and knew a lot, though she wasn’t popular, but Gerda liked her because she was clever, and now she is gone, Gerda misses her. In fact, she misses – anyone at all.

Anyone At All who cared about her.

No-one At All was Thinking about Her.

Which is fine, because I won’t Think about Them
).

She walks on down into the park’s green bowl, waiting to feel happy as she looks around her at knots of small children
playing in the playground, children with mothers, children with fathers, leaping and shrieking against yellow-green grass or queueing to play on climbing frames or see-saws, but after a second, she turns her head away, she has grown too big, she walks on towards the trees.

Though Gerda felt too big to go into the playground, other people watching her – other lonely people – see only a small, isolated figure with a silly pink case and bright red hair.

63

Virginia is musing on the Istanbul pavement, an interesting figure to a middle-aged tourist who jerks past her in a yellow taxi, seeing a tall, elegant woman with full lips and a cream straw hat. Certainly a woman of distinction, standing alone, waiting for someone. Actually, she is in a brown study, thinking of the blindness of each generation.

Angela doesn’t see her own addiction.

And my generation? What didn’t we see? What did the people who came after us say?

At that moment, I was nearly knocked down by a young man rolling down the street like thunder, pulling behind him an enormous cube of shadow that completely blocked the pavement. All I saw for a moment was darkness, and his angry face as he lurched to a halt, he was shouting at me in what must have been Turkish but what I could read were his eyes, full of hatred, I raised my hands to protect myself – then realised the cube was a mountain of rubbish, and stepped into the street to let him pass, saying ‘Sorry, sorry,
pardon, pardon
’, though why did I think my French would help me? – perhaps his face softened, but he had rushed on, and then there were people shouting behind me and a giant lorry had nearly hit me, its brakes squealing, then crunching metal, I covered my ears and hopped back on the pavement and a surge of adrenalin made me run, I knew for a fact I could not run, but as in a kind of dream, I was flying up the road, my legs were light and strong
as steel, I was hardly panting, I was laughing with pleasure as the lights danced past me in a coloured chain and people stepped out of my way, startled.

I stopped a block or so from the hotel. Blood coursed round my body, strong as a river, my cheeks were warm, my lips were warm. I hugged myself. I patted my arms. I thought, briefly, clearly, ‘I love my body’. I had not felt that since I was a girl.

Why did I feel it then? And the answer came, as an owl hooted and the sun sank down below the roof-top. You were threatened by the angry refuse-man, then nearly killed by the passing lorry. You saved yourself. You were strong. You ran.

I wanted to tell Angela, but I knew she would tell me off for being careless.

Then I thought something else, quite clearly:
I do not want to write about it. I want to be here. Here in the moment
.

Being alive was all that mattered.

The birds were calling for the setting sun, wheeling in clouds above the busy city, looking to settle on the terracotta roof-tops. Surely they had let me out of the darkness so I had another chance to be alive?

One day, perhaps, I would meet this Gerda, who’d been sent away to school as if she were a boy. Angela talked about her intermittently, usually protesting what she was about to do for her: emails, money, holidays. She had red hair, she adored reading.

And Gerda writes, according to her mother. The young are interesting, and need our help. Tonight at supper I will ask about Gerda.

I had come back safe. I was nearly home. Then I looked at my watch and began to hurry.

64

Gerda saw her father on every corner. The pink suitcase, though light, was a nuisance. It didn’t feel right on a walk in the park, and the wheels made a self-important fol-de-rol of chattery, stuttery noise on hard surfaces (and yet, Dad’s army knife was inside, which he had told her would keep her safe, and Mum’s gold bracelet was on her wrist, gleaming in the late golden sunshine).

Then she actually saw him – a tall, skinny figure with a quiff of pale hair like a ruff of feathers, fifty metres ahead in the last of the sunlight, an egret-father, yes it was Dad, a magical presence,
I have made him come by sheer longing
, a voice whispered in her ear,
it must be true, such things can happen
–

Bending over his bike at the turn of the path, yes, his red jacket, his big boots – but as she started running, he actually vanished; she looked again, he had disappeared, he had slipped away up through the dark trees.

She could feel the air cooling as she left the path, but through the trees, she saw the sun still glinting on the islands of granite that broke through the grass, and hope broke through, because there, oh joy, the red of his jacket, there, surely …

She started to run, and nearly stumbled on a grey rootball that clutched at her foot, and she broke her nail as she stopped herself from falling, but she mustn’t lose him. Gerda ran on.

65

I was thinking too much, and hurrying too much, my good luck charms clutched against my body, concentrating on the mental map that had got me back where I started from, but I had not learned the basic rule for navigating Istanbul on foot –

‘
Oh no! Look where you’re going, Virginia!
’

I knew it was too late even as I shouted, I saw she had no clue, as she stepped into space, that the pavement she was on ended abruptly, with a two-foot drop down to gravel and dust. She was wearing a hat, which promptly fell off; she knelt quite neatly in the gutter, facing the hotel as if in prayer, a middle-aged woman in a yellow coat, the late sunlight picking up the brown in her hair, which definitely made her look younger than before.