Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (35 page)

‘No, neither of us like him at all.’

‘This is Florence Nightingale’s sitting room.’

The view from her room was dazzling. What she must have seen every morning, on waking. Wide, wide across the river. Two walls of the room were windows. There was a constant coming and going of boats. She must have seen the injured arrive, on groaning ships from the Crimea.

‘The whole big world. She was part of it, here.’

‘So this was what she fought to leave her family for.’

Escaping the tiny world of visiting cards. The middle-class harem, the prison in the parlour. But what did she escape to? Endless work. The harrow of service. Duty, like Mother.

‘Florence Nightingale taught us modern medicine. Before she came, this was just a – what do you call it? Funeral place.’

‘Cemetery?’

‘She cleaned everything, and looked after everything, and soon, no more people die. We admire her.’

‘My mother admired her, she was expert at sick-rooms. Some women are very good at looking after people. Not me.’ (Yet I was thinking: duty. In a way, my writing was also a duty. I had to do it. It harrowed me.)

‘Not my wife either. Unfortunately. Every morning, I make the breakfast.’

‘Virginia? You cared for me. When I was afraid. You cared for your sister.’

‘Oh, but one knew it would not last forever.’ (
Laughs
.)

(Yes, I had to write every day, thousands of words: duty, duty. Maybe, now, I was free at last.

Yet I had loved it more than life itself
.)

‘I read what people in your village said about you, after you, you know – ’

‘Died.’

‘Yes. Lots of them said that you were kind.’

‘Re-a-lly? I’m sure it’s undeserved …’

All the same, she did not look displeased.

Much bowing and smiling when we parted with the officer, and flattering remarks about English literature, which we were too ignorant to reciprocate. I told him I admired Pamuk, and Shafek, but I have a dreadful feeling I muddled it up and managed to say ‘Shamuk, and Pafek’. At any rate, he looked blank, and said ‘Very nice. Goodbye ladies.’ ‘Thank you, thank you’ – then I muddled through a brief pledge of British friendship for Turkey. It felt like a pound of unwanted sausages. Why must I always try to please?

As we walked away from the Barracks, we swopped notes. Virginia asked why I had been so friendly, and I tried to explain that Turkish intellectuals liked the army because they
were seen as modernising, secular. ‘They’re not the same as the government. Nothing is like it is back home.’

‘I understood the old world,’ she said, as we walked. ‘I grew up in it. Most of our friends were conscientious objectors. The army was the enemy. I was in my thirties during the Great War, which made us what we were, perhaps. But of course, I missed so much of the Second. And I’m trying to understand your world, but sometimes I think it’s impossible. I’m just a visitor – a tourist – trying to catch up, but always failing. And without writing, does one really exist? Yet must one always live for writing?’

‘Come on, Virginia, that ferry’s leaving.’

77

I think she was trying to say something important, but I had to make decisions, time was running out. Now the afternoon began to unravel. She wanted to go to Kiz Kulesi – Leander’s Tower, the Maiden’s Tower – but I was sick of fake history, and hadn’t I done enough for her? It was time to focus on the conference, which was coming closer hour by hour: in particular, what to wear. I fancied a sharp new jacket from Zara. It wasn’t hard to overrule her, especially as she didn’t know the modern city – (Kiz Kulesi was less than half-an-hour away!) – so I ushered her on to the ferry to Europe. ‘I really do have to do some shopping.’ She said ‘I’ll see Kiz Kulesi another time,’ but she sounded as though she didn’t believe it.

The seagulls squawked around the ferry, doing acrobatics in the headwind as we curved smoothly towards Pera. I started to feel high-spirited. Of course the paper would speak for itself, but I wanted my clothes to say ‘Young, hopeful’. A flash of orange? Fashionable cobalt?

‘So are we going to the Grand Bazaar?’

I realised I had just said ‘shopping’. ‘No, Virginia, just regular shops. You know, clothes shops, Next, Zara.’ Of course, she didn’t know. How could she? I started to explain, as we
disembarked, how the same chains were everywhere. In the modern world, shopping was easy. You could find what you wanted in Oxford Street, London, or on Fifth Avenue, or here.

Virginia took on her stubborn look.

‘But of course, shops in Turkey should be Turkish. These “chains” you talk about, don’t they imprison you? Why travel, if the whole world’s the same?’

‘Wait till you’ve seen how nice the clothes are. And why shouldn’t Turkish women have the same choice? Do you want to keep them in national dress?’

‘No, though I think there are more covered women on the streets than when I came here last.’

‘It’s the religious government. Erdogan’s own wife wears a veil.’

But most people here, on the tiny road that led up to the main part of Istiklal, were tourists, not a veil in sight, people were buying in English or German from the garish stalls that lined the road: key-rings, cheap jewellery, juices, sweets.

Halfway up, I noticed something. Far more people were coming down. They did not look happy. It was almost a flood. We began to find it hard to make headway. And then I heard the noise, still distant, a vague buzzing muddle of shouts, sirens. Perhaps there had been a traffic accident.

The day, which had started fresh and blue, was heating up: orange, amber. I took off my jacket, pushed up my sleeves.

‘Are they hurrying to catch a ferry?’

‘Probably. You’ll enjoy Zara. If you liked Bloomingdale’s, you’ll like this.’

Though would she, I wondered? Zara was cheaper, and Virginia seemed to enjoy spending money.

It struck me she might think me selfish to be buying clothes when Edward needed money. But this was work, after all. Youth, image, they did matter … I knew I could never explain it to her.

Istiklal! Always a festival. Each time I’d seen it, it was never still – buskers and singers, armies of the young, teenagers, arms linked, four abreast – that sense of swimming in a human river, as if the whole city was going out. I loved the mysterious lateral veins, like the deep cut down to the Museum of Innocence, half a mile below, beside the sea, or the small dark opening to the silver market, where last time I’d bought wonderful jewellery, and yes, why not buy a bracelet for Gerda, to cheer her up when she came home? I looked round for Virginia. There she was, behind me, a stately but incompetent swimmer, chin high, telegramming a smile, but struggling, now, to stay afloat as waves of people buffeted her.

‘Virginia! Virginia! Here! There’s a little silver market, on the left.’

Yes, on the left. I was looking at it.

It all clicked into focus. And then I was worried.

For the traders were almost obscuring the entrance, deep in frowning, arm-waving debate, and then, quite swiftly, the debate ended. No, they were – what could they possibly be doing? It was Saturday, sunny, the usual crowds were out on Istiklal eager to spend money, but the Heliogabalus silver
traders were closing up. Pulling the heavy grille across, shutting the door of paradise.

A sudden shock – twenty yards ahead of me, men were spilling out of a big white bus: a smashed ink-bottle spurting dark stains.

There were white buses lined up like ambulances, and dozens of men were pouring out, not doctors or soldiers, yes they were police. Dozens, a hundred hard-faced men in navy-blue uniforms with bulging holsters, guns and coshes, and I heard the shouts, just out of our sight, and felt the tension, drawn tight like a string, as people stood in doorways and waited. Dark people, both resigned and nervous, talked to each other in low voices. Others were indignant, hands jabbing. All of them were Turks, I realised, not tourists, this was their area, they had to know, they would stay and watch and learn the worst, but the tourists were leaving as fast as they could.

On the other side of Istiklal’s hill, maybe fifty metres ahead of us, were enraged or suffering human voices, and now I could no longer ignore them.

‘What’s happening? Speak English?’ I asked a fat man with beads of sweat on his forehead, outside a café, frowning at the sun. At first he didn’t hear me, he had other fish to fry, he didn’t want to bother with the nosy tourist, but then he said, briefly, ‘They stop us selling alcohol. They stop a lot of things. Religious people.’

‘Who?’

He didn’t answer, straining to see what was happening. Then ‘Government’.

‘Ah, thank you. Stop you selling alcohol? But it’s a tourist city.’

‘Yes, thank you, you are right,’ he said. ‘But religious people, they are crazy. They think everything is sin. They try to stop everything. No demonstrating. No discussing.’

‘Dangerous?’ I said, gesturing around me.

‘Danger-ous?’ he said, then understood. He laughed. ‘Not for you, I think. For us, maybe. For the students.’

‘Virginia, we have to get out. There’s the conference tomorrow! I can’t get arrested!’

‘But look,’ said Virginia, ‘It’s exciting.’

The police had lined up in a tight phalanx across the mouth of a small side road to our left. It was higher ground, which would lend them impetus. Their helmets were on, and their riot shields raised. A wall of faceless, shining plastic.

There was something in the air, something sour, I could smell it. A harsh male smell; badness fermented. Then my excitement changed to fear, a switch as sharp as milk turning. The police were covered in plastic & metal – no longer human beings at all – hiding their eyes, hands, faces. They had made themselves into a giant fist, pulled back taut to gather power. Still the angry, youthful, passionate shouts yelled on over the hill, out of our sight, behind the crowd – & the sun was too hot, and the sky overcast, a lid of thin cloud that kept the heat in. They were poking the ants, those brave, fierce voices. My anxious heart begged them to stop.

‘We’re going, Virginia.’ I took her arm. She was staring at the police, eyes fixed, immobile. I pulled her away and we hurried back along Istiklal Avenue together, struggling to push our way through the crowd.

This time we noticed the silent protesters, standing stock still on the street like statues. No shouting, no slogans, just young people – students? – with serious faces, beautiful with the stern beauty of belief, holding magazines up in the air one-handed, raising their convictions to the sun like a beacon. They were spread out, singly, ten metres apart. Each one looked inexpressibly lonely. Why did that make me feel for them? Each one embodied their own courage. We could not see them as a mob like the policemen. This way, only one at a time could be arrested. They were brave enough to be taken alone … I tried to remember each young frail profile, radiant and still as faces on a flag, though somehow I forgot to take a magazine.

Suddenly the shouting intensified behind us, there were whistles blowing, the sirens were closer. The pressure in the bottleneck increased, but now there was no hope of going forwards. And something fiercer was on the air. I knew, without being told, it was tear gas. Sour, oniony, catching at my throat. My eyes began to sting and water.

I have never liked being too close to people – the sweat of the herd about to stampede – & now that choking, chemical smell – I spotted a tiny passageway, I took Angela’s hand – we were in this together, she looked at me surprised, her flesh was dry, hot paper – ‘Quick,’ I said, & we wormed our way free, into a deep cutaway with high blind walls.

Of course I didn’t trust her to get us out of trouble – but I followed her, there was nowhere else to go. It felt dank in that passageway. Furious graffiti. We had no idea where we were going. But ten minutes later we were in a small square – not regular enough to be a square, just an opening-out, sun, the
backs of buildings, and a little café. Just what we needed. Here the air smelled sweet again. We frightened a fat pigeon on an outside table, peck-peck-pecking at a sticky red puddle.

‘That was clever of me.’

‘Yes, you did well. Do you think that’s blood?’

We ducked inside. There was a ‘bar’, but with beautiful pink and lilac lights underneath it. The serving-woman had a head of wild curls and smiled at us, elaborately friendly, almost as if she had always known us, her gaze embracing us, enfolding us. We realised we were still holding hands after our escape, and let go with a small nod of mutual acknowledgement. ‘There is music later,’ she nodded at the bar. ‘Come back later. American?’ Two young women were sat close together, drinking beers, gently chinking glasses.

‘No, British.’ We ordered ‘English tea.’

‘Having fun here?’

She most definitely liked us. We smiled and nodded. ‘Except for the riot. What’s going on?’

‘Oh Istiklal – there’s always some problems. Nothing for you to worry, though. How did you find us?’

‘We were just lucky.’

Her smile was delightful; tender, roguish. It almost felt as if she knew us, and was especially pleased we had come today.

‘I suppose that’s the end of any hope of shopping.’