What I noticed in the lobby was the number of men. Most of them seemed to smile at me. Another world, a populous world, a world that seemed to welcome strangers. Hotel workers, I gleaned, quite soon, by their synchronised smiles as more guests arrived, their mild jockeying over errands. The men were all identically smart, in crisp white shirts, black ties, black trousers, gleaming shoes despite the dusty pavements. This hotel was half the size of the Wordsmiths Hotel in New York, but there were three times as many men working there.
One of them, I thought, was looking at me strangely, a small, stocky man with golden skin and a poised, balletic way of walking, his shoulders back, like an acrobat. I had watched him lift a case as if it was a feather. The lobby phone rang, and he answered. Now he was definitely looking my way. I was sitting by an enormous cactus. Perhaps it was Angela on the phone.
‘Was that my colleague, ringing for me?’ I asked him, and he mimed incomprehension, then came and stood quite close to me.
‘Slowly, please. I have little English.’
‘Telephone call? For me?’ I pointed.
‘You want to make telephone call?’
‘No.’ He was smiling at me very warmly. His face was jolly, like a smiling bun, lightly gleaming, and he smelled of lemon. His teeth were slightly stained, I noticed. I felt sympathy: my teeth were bad. ‘Would you like Turkish tea?’ he asked, and before I could answer, he said ‘I invite you.’
‘Well – ’
‘It’s free.’
‘Thank you. I am just waiting for a friend.’
‘I am Ahmet,’ he said, with a small bow.
‘I am Mrs Woolf. Virginia,’ I said.
At that moment, Angela arrived. Without a word, she hurried me out into the night, though I half-raised my hand to wave goodbye to him.
‘I was having a conversation,’ I said.
She ignored me. ‘Look where you’re going,’ she said. ‘I am going to take you through the Hippodrome. I do not want you falling over.’
I saw no signs of a Hippodrome as we marched uphill past laundries and gift-shops, but her face did not encourage questions. I thought about Gerda. I hoped she was tough. I was starting to feel pity for Angela’s daughter.
Men sat outside their businesses on plastic chairs, drawing deep on red-tipped cigarettes. They talked to their friends; their eyes idled. Many held small, curved glasses of golden liquid.
‘What do they drink?’ I couldn’t stop myself asking. ‘Tea,’ said Angela. ‘Turkish tea. Everyone here drinks Turkish tea.’
‘That is just another generalisation.’
She looked annoyed. ‘Never mind, it’s true.’
Would I have got away with a riposte like that?
It didn’t matter, I was happy again. Such a cheerful thought, that everyone drank tea, that Turkish tea could please everybody. In New York, I had been paralysed by the number of choices in every café, the urgency with which each young American spelled out his particulars: ‘Large skinny decaf latte, three sugars.’ Then when it came: ‘No, I wanted it wet.’ They were mad with choice, so it seemed to me. The bony walls of the self were so thin that something essential might be crushed if a purchase did not reflect their whim.
Here things were slower, more communal. Cats and people wove about like smoke. I looked in vain for the golden kittens. The shops were small and all of them were open, although it was nearly 8 PM. Sacks and boxes spilled on to the pavement – it was untidy – it was human. Shopkeepers chatted to customers.
‘The Hippodrome,’ Angela announced. We were climbing up into a rectangular open space with an enormous mosque to our right. Above us, violet sky. Things flickered across. Owls, bats? Only a few people on the edges.
‘This is where the Romans had chariot races,’ Angela said. ‘And there’s the Blue Mosque. By day, it’s crowded. We might go together.’
I thought, perhaps I will go alone.
‘Aya Sophia’s down there,’ she waved vaguely, ‘and that’s the Topkapi Palace. Once we’re sat down, we’ll make a plan. There’s so much you should see, Virginia. So little time before the conference. And of course, I need to finish my paper.’
At the far end of the Hippodrome, the crowds began. There were minor key bells and a scream of metal as a huge tram like an ocean-liner hove up the main street from the sea below, its bright windows crammed with people. We turned to follow in its wake. ‘I could help you with your paper,’ I said.
‘I doubt it,’ she said, ‘it’s … specialised.’ Then ‘Come to think of it, though, perhaps you could. Yes, a read-through would be useful.’
‘If the paper’s about me, I’m a specialist,’ I said, and laughed at my wit, but she did not.
‘You have to understand,’ she said, and then ‘ – no, I can’t possibly explain it.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, just something about the conference. Something about the academics. Don’t say you’re a specialist.’
‘I need to know about modern academics!’
She looked perplexed and cross, and the crowds pouring down the street were so thick we could hardly make headway, let alone converse. ‘I know this will sound strange to you, but they won’t believe what you say about your work.’
‘Because – because I am dead?’ It was obvious. ‘Because they won’t believe it’s me?’
‘No, nothing as simple as that, Virginia.’
When the trams hove past, the crowds squashed back on to the pavements, and elbows, shoulders, feet shoved us. I was surrounded, enveloped, by Turks, I had lost my edges, I was almost Turkish.
‘It’s because – some modern scholars think authors don’t know anything about their work,’ she panted, over her shoulder.
‘That doesn’t make sense. We are the ones who wrote it.’
‘It’s not about sense. Or sensible. Sense is considered to be old hat. Rather a dull, Anglo-Saxon idea. This is a concept. A critical concept,’ she said. ‘You can’t expect to understand it, Virginia, so don’t dismiss it before you do.’
‘It’s obviously ridiculous.’
‘You see? I knew you would sneer at it. It’s “The Death of the Author”. It’s – well, it’s French.’
‘But I’m the living embodiment of that. I’m a dead author,’ I said, and started laughing again, because, really, it was quite funny.
‘You don’t know everything about your work. It’s the intentional fallacy,’ she said. ‘That is a critical concept, too.’
‘You mean we don’t know what we’re doing?’
She nodded. ‘It’s not what I believe,’ she added. ‘I just ought to warn you.’
‘Our conscious intentions do not count? I see the influence of Dr Freud.’
Her eyes were defiant, and slightly nervous.
‘Then how can critics know their own intentions? Maybe, unconsciously, they want to kill us. Yes, of course. Then they have the power.’
‘No, Virginia. That’s just – glib. I hope you won’t say that at the conference.’
With that she hared ahead of me, furious, her strong calves powering her on through the crowd, seemingly indifferent to whether I followed.
Odd how they hated a judgement from the past, these modern young people, so sure of themselves!
‘Can we go on a tram?’ I tried to change the subject. She pretended not to hear me. I said it louder, trotting to catch up with her.
‘Not tonight, Virginia.’
‘Why not?’
‘No.’
Her job was mostly saying ‘No’ to me.
Soon she plunged into a net of bright tables in a small street entirely lined with restaurants. Black-and-white waiters bobbed in and out like magpies. A lot of the diners were speaking English. She sank into a chair, and motioned me to join her. ‘Will you be warm enough?’ she asked. ‘Look, there’s an outdoor heater thingy. They’re not ecological, but they work. Edward would be furious! First, I need a bucket of wine.’ Suddenly friendly, she smiled at me. ‘I’ve got my notebook. Let’s make a plan.’
We were two women, making a plan, this freedom to sit and eat and drink wine had become normal, all over the planet; all around us, younger women did the same thing. I liked the new world where this could happen. I wanted this moment of warmth to linger. ‘Thank you. I would like wine, Angela.’