I was watching our shadows as we walked towards the gates. Did they look frail and elderly? Were both of us slightly bent forward, from writing? I pulled my shoulders back and looked at her. We had pitied the women of the Harem, but I suddenly knew they wouldn’t want to be us. No, they would have pitied Woolf’s childlessness.
‘What are you staring at?’
‘Nothing. I was wondering what the women of the Harem would have thought of you, Virginia.’
‘I would have been beyond their comprehension. And what would they have thought of you?’
(They would have asked her if she had a husband, and when she said ‘Yes’, they would have asked ‘Where is he? And how old is your child? She isn’t with you?’ They might have thought she had missed the point.)
‘Have I tired you out, Virginia?’
‘Certainly not!’ She struck out towards the arch more energetically than before.
We walked over the gate’s massive threshold, a great metal sill, burnished in the middle to dazzling smoothness by the endless passage of the little people, their shoes humbly passing and polishing. Thousands of shadows of the living and the dead. We are cotton-fluff: dandelion; we blow on the wind.
Aya Sophia glowed into view, its central dome like an enormous gold-tipped breast on a cream and pink, sprawled, stucco body.
New York is a man, I thought to myself, cool, straight, confident.
And Istanbul’s a middle-aged woman. Watery. Supple. All tides and inlets.
‘Of course the wives plotted against each other. It was politics, and that’s what male politicians do – oh look at the queue for Aya Sophia.’
The queue stretched out in restless motion towards the flowerbeds and fountains of Sultanahmet Park, which rose and fell, rose and fell, bowing and aspiring to the Blue Mosque in the distance. A shifting succession of people crossed the bright expanse of paving-stones in front of the water, flickering and fading like the fountains.
So many people. Ants, midges. Why should I mind so much about Edward? Surely I would find another man.
‘It wasn’t a story of sisterhood, was it?’
‘Sisters do feel rivalry.’
Now we were in the queue behind a young Chinese man who was doing a full Kung Fu routine to pass the time. He kept doing lunges, and shouting ‘Ha’, which was wearing.
‘I never had a sister. I imagined I would love her. Were you really jealous of your sister? Did you ever, for a moment, hate her?’
‘I didn’t dare to hate her, you see. After Mother died, Vanessa mothered me. Even before, I ran to her for kisses. For me, Nessa always meant kisses. But we were both artists. Of course, I was jealous. Artists are always jealous of each other.’
‘I hope you don’t think I am jealous of you. I’m not, I promise. I admire you, Virginia. You’re like my mother, honestly. All modern writers look to you. That’s what you are, our foremother.’
I felt so hurt when she hooted with laughter. The sweating Chinese man paused mid-kick and looked at her sharply, but she was oblivious.
‘It sounds like an ape, a foremother! No, it’s ridiculous, I wasn’t a mother, I had no talent for looking after. You can’t foist motherhood on me.
(More gently) ‘I never learned to look after children.’
‘Do you object to followers? (Cheering up.) If you won’t let us be your daughters, we’ll just traipse after you, unacknowledged.’
(She follows Virginia to the ticket office, which they have reached at last. They pick up guide-books. Virginia reads hers.)
‘I know quite a lot about it already.’
We entered the body of Aya Sophia through tremendous doors, twelve feet high. It was huge, and cool, full of light and people. It went on forever. It was a city.
‘Who was Saint Sophia, by the way? I’m sure she must have been hideously tortured to deserve this kind of edifice.’
‘Aya Sophia wasn’t a person. It means “Sacred wisdom”, Virginia.’
‘Sapientia in Latin … Yes. Wisdom is female. I was never wise.’
The temple stretched above us, airy, colossal, essentially unchanged from a century ago, though the wheels of lights which hung from the roof were now electric, not candles. But far above the lights, reappeared like phoenixes, two golden mosaics flickered like flames – Mary the Mother gazed down at us, child on her lap, calm patient face, and I recognised her with joy and sorrow, the eternal absence I could never fill, the mother I always had to find again. When we came before, there was only blank plaster; the Christian murals had been painted out by Mohammedans who thought images were sinful. Atatürk, ‘friend of history’, had restored them, according to my guide-book. People were gazing up, but thoughtfully. These were aesthetes, not religious enthusiasts. Watching them, one thought ‘those wars are over’.
According to Angela, alas, they were not.
An American guide gave a loud commentary somewhere at the back of the church. ‘This is the Omphalos. What we call the umbilicus. The spot where the child was joined to his mother at the beginning of the world. The Romans crowned their emperors in this circle. They believed that everything started here …’
Yes, the mother. But I had to escape her. All through my life, ‘my mother’, ‘my father’ …
I wanted to go up to the gallery where I had gone with Vanessa, when Aya Sophia was still a working mosque, so the women had to watch the men from above. ‘Angela,’ I said, ‘come upstairs with me.’
‘Where are the stairs?’
‘There weren’t any last time I came, just a sloping stone ramp that spiralled up sixty feet or so. Empress Theodocia used to drive up it in her chariot. Such a shameless display of power, to drive one’s chariot right through a temple! I’m sure they’ve installed a lift by now.’
What followed was something I will never forget.
‘RAMPA’, it said on the notice. But when I looked right, I saw a sloping tunnel. As a girl, I could never use the underground. I asked a guide if there was any other way up, but she shook her head. This was it.
It was pinkish-grey, low-ceilinged, cobbled. It must have been there since Theodocia’s time. Waiting for me for two thousand years.
As I stepped over the threshold, my courage failed. ‘Does it go on like this? No windows?’
‘It will be fine, you’ll see. I just remember being young, walking up, with Nessa, arm in arm, and in a hurry. Not wanting to miss anything.’
‘Virginia, I can’t do it. You go ahead. I’ll sit and wait.’
‘What’s the matter?’
She was trembling, and breathing fast.
‘Nothing. I’m going to try.’
I didn’t want her to see my fear. I took a deep breath, made for the first turn, and rounded it, but it went on ahead of me, narrowing slightly, and no more windows, and would go on forever, no hope, I thought, and no Edward in the background to help me, and if I go on, I will never get out. As I turned and fled, I bumped into Virginia, and her body was surprisingly warm and solid. ‘I can’t,’ I told her. ‘I’m claustrophobic.’
And then we were together, back at the beginning. Virginia looked into me, into my fear, with those piercing orbs, without flinching.
‘Perhaps I am afraid of being born,’ I said. I tried to laugh, but my heart was beating, and a light breeze told me my skin was wet. ‘My mother told me I was born too fast.’
And so I took Angela’s hand. I helped her to be born, though I had never had a baby. I saw how she suffered, but for me it was easy. ‘Step by step,’ I said. ‘Step by step, and we’ll get to the top.’
Her hand was shaking, but she did what I said. We reached the first turn, and the last window. ‘Don’t look back,’ I said. ‘Trust me. If we just go on walking, we will get there.’
Step by step, she led me on.
I could feel the tension in her arm. She started to pull away and go back. I talked to her quietly, as if she was a child. Some nonsense, ‘It’s all right, good, you’re doing well …’ I no longer remember what I said. There was just my will-power carrying us, some womanly force that would make things happen, Theodocia’s chariot, Nessa and I, driving us up towards the light.
I will remember her voice for ever. It was soft and low, a sweet murmur. It kept me going, like a golden thread, and the gentle pressure of her hand on mine. But another voice tried to drag me down. ‘You’ve gone too far, you can never go back, you will burrow on through the dark forever.’
I could hardly bear her mute dependence, but I took the burden, I found a smile, my legs were strong, we went on walking. Suddenly there was a hole in the wall, I suppose an air-shaft, not really a window, and through it we heard the voices of children, sweet and clear and echoing. She stopped for a moment – I thought she’d given up – but then I saw she was breathing, smiling.
‘I’m all right.’
So we carried on up – only three more turns – the voices of the gallery were coming to meet us – and she was no longer pulling at me, but I kept her hand in mine to the end, and we walked together, free-er, faster –
And then we were out. The glory of it! Light, freedom. Light, light. The world all about us. She had brought me through it.
I felt as if I had been – reborn. I was laughing, crying. There’s no other word for it.
‘Thank you, thank you, Virginia.’ I took her other hand and held it.
I thought she was going to dance with me! ‘Please don’t mention it.’ Yes, I had helped her. Still, after a second, I broke away.
We went to the balustrade and looked down. Busy tiny people, wide hoops of light. Massive pillars supporting our world. ‘This dome has fallen many times, I believe.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t say that before I went in the tunnel. Why did it fall?’
‘Earthquakes. War … human beings, always conquering things, destroying things. Warring religions, of course. Pagans, Christians, Muslims. British, French, Germans. It goes in cycles; build, demolish.’
‘But everything here feels so – permanent. So monumental. As if nothing could change it. One moment, then another moment. Everything feels inevitable. I know cities fall. And civilisations. I can do it in my head, but I can’t make sense of it, not physically, in my own human body. Which tells me this will go on for ever.’
‘You see, I have been so far away. That place where all of us must go. And when I came back, they had all vanished. It was as if we had never been. New York had forgotten Roger, and Duncan, and Vanessa. They had all – flickered out. The images they meant to capture for ever were in the stacks, or sold, or lost. And the streets were so straight, and everything so new, and the sun so bright – it all felt – shallow. Why did they ever work so hard?
‘Now the whole world looks like flats for a play.’
Of course it was different for Angela. She still had husband, daughter, a home, not that she’d learned to value them. She was clinging to the brightness of her last stretch of youth, she thought her choices would last forever, though soon a narrower corridor would take her. She dared not loosen her hold on space, she dared not loosen her grip on money. ‘Are you ready to go down again?’
The way down was easy, just an ordinary staircase. By the barest margin, I had passed the test.
At the bottom, the sun poured through the great doors. Just for a second, we remained in darkness. She took one of my hands, and pressed it on the wall. It was a moment I will not forget. So brief, this sense of being one with her. What was she giving me, a gift or a curse? I could hardly hear the words she whispered.
‘Only the stones. Only the stones. The stones remain, but we are just shadows.’
(Though just then, Angela was painfully real, probably because I had seen her suffer. One would have liked to say, ‘Nothing much matters. So save your marriage. Give Edward the money.’)