Virginia Woolf in Manhattan (43 page)

‘What did she imagine? A place of transformation; a place where anything could happen. There are Gypsies; there are secret assignations; you can sleep for days without being woken; you can escape from the city into the wilds. Finally, you can change, if you want, if you dream the right dream, from a man to a woman. Her hero goes to bed a man: three days later, he wakes up a woman.

‘She imagines a city without fixity. Unlike New York, where Woolf never went, it is not a city of right angles and rectitude, a city with a rigid matrix. Orlando’s city is all being and becoming, not one where categories fix us in the past. It is not orthodox, or puritanical. Long may your city remain free, and fluid.

‘We know that
Orlando
was dedicated to Vita Sackville-West, Woolf’s lesbian lover. Yet we know how much Virginia loved her husband. It’s a book that says: we can be male or female. We can find the male and female in ourselves. We can have lovers of either sex. Heroes can be men or women. Writers can be women or men; they can be happy as either, and happy with either.’

(There was a shuffling going on in the front two rows. Oh, it was Moira, she had shouted something, she was waving her hand, obviously indignant. I had touched on a nerve, I managed to ignore her but part of me heard it, all the same: ‘Literature’s not about happiness!’)

‘I admire this novel greatly,’ I continued, ‘and yet, I still don’t think it is her greatest achievement.’

‘Remember she was born to privilege. Her father, Leslie Stephen, editor of the
Dictionary of National Biography
, was one of the best-known public intellectuals of his day. She grew up doing no domestic work, in a house that was run by servants.
Yet somehow, in
A Room of One’s Own
, she steps completely outside herself; outside her class, outside her time. For me, the end of
A Room of One’s Own
is Virginia Woolf’s greatest achievement, because it links us, the lucky ones – me, your teachers, each one of you students, everyone here in this room today – to all those less lucky human beings of the past; our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers; those women whose chances, and hopes, are over. In perhaps her greatest act of creation, Woolf’s imagination lets them live again. She says they can be redeemed by us. That through our lives, they can come back to life.’

I stopped to catch my breath, and take stock of the room. Yes, I could feel it gathering. We were together. It was warming, melting. I looked for Gerda; yes, she was there. I still couldn’t see Virginia. Time to produce a clincher.

But I was suddenly blank; I felt alone. I needed others; I needed Virginia.

Keep their attention. You can’t fail now
.

And then a hand went up from the floor. Two-thirds of the way back, so not a lecturer, but she looked too old to be a student. I fell upon it, a temporary respite. Her face was worn. Greying hair, a cheap jacket. Could not wait till the questions at the end.

‘Yes?’

‘I am sorry for ask, but please, can you read it for us, this text,
Room of One’s Own
. I have no English books. Here they are very expensive. I like very much what you say, and I want – how to say – I
long
to read it.’

The room was quiet, attentive. It took courage for the woman to say it. By an irony, I had prepared a long quote, but it was on the last page of my written paper, the paper that I had decided not to give, and I’d torn it up, thrown it down on the floor. I dared not fumble through the mess at my feet.

‘I had intended to read a passage, yes. But, a small problem. Can any of you help me – Professor Melike, one of your colleagues maybe? I don’t seem to have it with me. It’s the passage about Shakespeare’s sister.’

The front rows rustled and muttered, uncomfortable. Shrugs of apology, raised empty hands. OK, this was going to end in bathos.
Not the end of the world
, I told myself – but yes, an opportunity lost. I smiled an apology to the brave questioner.

‘No joy at the front? Sorry about that. I think I will end there, and take questions.’ I stepped back from the lectern. I waited for applause.

But there were feet, loud feet on the wooden steps that led up from the hall to the stage. Fast heavy feet. I looked up, startled. Red hair, flashing like a squirrel in the sunlight. Pale face, Gerda’s beloved face. Her shoulders were pulled back, soldier-style. She smiled an unnaturally wide, scared smile.

‘Gerda! Darling, what are you doing – ’

‘It’s Ok, Mum. It’ll be all right. I’ve got it, see. I will read the passage.’

I thought: my God. I thought: this is great. And then: what if Gerda reads the wrong bit? ‘I’d better do it sweetie, thank you.’

But gently, firmly, she pushed me aside. She was bigger than before, taller, older, but she was still just a teenager,
my
teenager, my lovely daughter – rash, buoyant, terrified. She smelled of chewing-gum, fear and cheap soap.

She touched the microphone. A thundercrack. The audience was open-mouthed. Melike was frowning, speaking over her shoulder, half on her feet, was it an incident?

‘I am her daughter,’ she said to the hall, one pale finger pointing in my direction. ‘It’s OK, I’m not a nutter. I’ve got the book. Now I will read it. It’s brilliant, actually. You’re going to love it.’

There was a wave of friendly laughter.

Then she began. Her voice was nervous, at first, yes, she went too fast, but as she spoke, it steadied, strengthened; the words carried her, the words became her, they walked confidently, gracefully through the hall, they were Virginia Woolf, alive and with us (
where was Virginia, I thought, briefly
?) – they were Shakespeare, too – and Shakespeare’s sister.:

I told you … that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her … She died young – alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the cross-roads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here to-night, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh …

Her clear young voice rang out through the hall. I searched the rows.
Yes, but where was Virginia?

This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so – I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals – and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think …

The common life which is the real life
; yes, we made up a whole, somehow, we tiny atoms of human life, in the longer view we were part of one another …

… if we … see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves … if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone … then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare’s sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down …

Through Gerda’s mouth, those magnificent words. I prickled with tears. They have laid down their bodies, our mothers, our grandmothers. Lorna, my mother: I missed her still, with her frail dark roses, her frightened eyes, her ready laughter, her love of books, her painful pride that I became a writer, though I knew she would have liked to write herself. Somehow Virginia had spoken for her, this young working-class woman who might have crossed her path, for they had both walked on this earth together. And yet she also spoke to Gerda, Mum’s granddaughter, who could travel the world, who might write stories we could not imagine, strange shapes, marvels, new forms of life that would escape from bookshops.

‘Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her forerunners, as her brother did before her, she will be born …’

Had Virginia left the room?
I still could not see her. Would she mind Gerda reading her words, in an accent so very different to hers?

‘As for her coming … without that effort on our part, that we cannot expect … But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile.’

The clapping broke round us like the sea. It was for Gerda, for Virginia, for me, for whatever had brought us all together.
The students were clapping furiously, lifting their hands above their heads: the staff, at the front, more contained, more modest, but Professor Melike was looking happy. Suddenly a warm hand pressed into mine. Gerda was taking a bow alongside me. She hissed, ‘Mum, was that all right?’

‘Perfect, darling. Now I’ll have to take questions.’

‘I’m off, it’s OK.’

‘
How on earth did you get here?
’ But the applause was starting to settle. ‘Never mind, tell me later. Don’t go far. Do you hear me?’

‘
Latahz
.’

Gerda was backing away, she kissed her hand, like a physical pain I watched her grow smaller as she clattered down the stairs again. Then, with relief, I spotted Virginia. Had she been there all the time? Had she heard my daughter?

‘Thank you,’ I told the microphone. ‘Now I am happy to take questions.’

The usual silence, people watching each other. ‘And please – I want questions from the students. Don’t let your teachers take up all the time!’ Slightly sulky expressions on some of the faces in the first two rows, student laughter at the back.

I scanned the room. Who would start us off? My God, Gerda was heading for Virginia. She was stumbling along a row of smiling faces. Now she and Virginia were sitting together. Something caught in my throat to see it. Yes, there they sat, she had dared to join her, my child’s red hair by that familiar face, and their lips were moving, they were talking to each other. Virginia was whispering to Gerda!

Then the youth with the beard at the back raised his hand. A microphone was ferried to him like a baton. ‘I have read
A Room of One’s Own
,’ he said. ‘This is only for women, or for men?’

The expected hostile Islamic question. ‘Not just for women,’
I said, robustly. ‘No, she is writing for everyone. It’s important that men share the work Woolf is speaking of. For women to flower, men have to help.’

But he was looking indignant, shaking his head, beckoning the microphone back again. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, pointing with his free hand to his chest. ‘I love this book. I love Virginia Woolf. I am, I am already helping!’ Smiles and laughter from the students around him. I saw that he was popular. Yes, I had misunderstood. It was the beard. I felt myself flushing.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Er – I didn’t see where you were coming from.’

Another hand at the back, this time a girl – or was it a boy? She had short hair. Her English sounded slightly American. She spoke clearly and slowly. ‘Virginia Woolf talks about a man turning into a woman. She thinks she is – androgyne.’

‘Androgynous,’ I corrected. ‘Go on.’

‘But in real life – we can’t. Parents don’t let us. The society don’t let us. It’s just the dream, isn’t it?’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said, though I didn’t. But I heard the anger in her voice. ‘Biology is still destiny, up to a point. But the dream is helpful, isn’t it? And when we are reading or writing, we surely can be both male or female – even if we still can’t be at home?’

It wasn’t enough. How could it be? She had given back the mike, but she was whispering to the girl beside her, voluble, articulate, indignant. One day, maybe, her thoughts would be a book. Her own book, not mine or Virginia’s.

Another student hand went up. A handsome boy with thick black hair, beckoning the mike with a confident flourish. ‘It’s not true men can’t be girls, in Istanbul. There is transsexual district, in Pera. If you are brave, you can operate!’

He was drowned out with laughter, but hung on to the microphone. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s not a joke. For us, maybe. But
it happens. Virginia Woolf can do it with words, she is lucky. Other people need doctors. Or better laws.’

Some people were nodding. The room felt alive. A shimmering movement ran over the faces. My contact lenses playing up again. I blinked, refocused. There was a breeze. Did it matter that we had strayed from the text?

Yes, a hand sticking up at the front. Oh no, it was her, that familiar face, five years older, thinner, more ravaged. Moira Penny, half-struggling to her feet, the woman who had screamed at me like a banshee one morning in a café when she felt neglected. A terrifying scene I would never forget. I had realised that day, in the acid sunlight, as her face fell apart into cubist hatred, what toll is demanded for admiration.

(
Had Virginia ever felt the same about me?
)

She beckoned the microphone with a white hand, spectral, bony as the claws of a bird. What would she say? I could not stop her. That hair, that dark, chemical red, thinner now, plum-dark, almost purple, such a cruel contrast to Gerda’s bright mop.

She rose in her seat, listing away from upright. She was ill, I saw, she had to cling on to the chair in front of her for balance, she was hopelessly crooked, but then I had a split second of doubt; was it the room, was the room off balance? The curtains in the long windows were blowing, bellying out and then retracting.

I found I had retreated behind my lectern, not consciously, but I needed protection, I held on firmly to the polished wood.
I have done my best, she cannot hurt me
.

‘Professor Moira Penny,’ she rasped. (
She had attained professorship. At what cost? For God’s sake, at what institution?
) ‘Thank you for your … series of remarks,’ she began. She made it sound like ‘silly remarks’. ‘You spoke about Virginia Woolf almost as if you knew her.’ (
Well I do know her
, I thought,
as it
happens
.) ‘This is a very
subjective
approach. For the students listening, it may have been surprising that
there was a complete absence of theory
.’ She was getting louder; the microphone squeaked, a painful sound like a giant bat, and her clothes were dark against the sunlight that flooded through the gaps in the curtains. ‘Forgive me if I
missed anything
, but I did not notice a
single citation
!’ Louder still. She was becoming shrill. Professor Melike was turning round. Moira Penny loomed black behind her. ‘I myself have written extensively,
close, detailed
analysis, on
Orlando
.’ Pause. I noticed her hand was shaking, which explained the fretful, jittery backdrop of small explosions from the microphone – or was that thunder, outside the window? ‘One would have thought it almost literally
impossible
to speak about Virginia Woolf at the present moment without referring to the collection of papers I both edited and contributed to last year, called – ’ There was an anxious pause as she stopped, pulled a face – no, worse, it was meant to be a smile, her lips pulled back from her teeth, her tongue – and hauled up a gigantic plastic shopping-bag, in which she rooted, and retrieved, at length, a slim volume which she held close to her eyes – ‘
Liminalities and a Reading of One’s Own: Confusions and Elucidations on the Threshold of Woolf’s Room
.’ She nodded, satisfied, and looked around the room, as if the title had proved her point. But she had not finished. She raised the microphone. A sudden, agonising burst of howl-round, sudden as a thunderstorm. For a minute, the whole room seemed to shake, people looked startled, it was all going wrong, some of the students were giggling. She looked straight at me. A sudden scream, the violent squawk of a roused macaque. ‘
Why do you always ignore my work? Why do you mock me and abuse me?
’