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.’
We sat outside with our tea and two large pieces of apricot pie. Every so often, the waitress came out and smiled. At intervals, panting people came hurrying through from the direction of Istiklal; the waitress talked to them, her face briefly serious. At the next-door table, a group of three moustachioed middle-aged men in vests – what people now called ‘T-shirts’ – made flamboyant jokes and swam with their hands. Then they were joined by a tall, elegant woman, a redhead, with a careful coiffure. She had a raucous laugh that didn’t go with her dress or her svelte silhouette, like a resting greyhound. The foursome sat and smoked and shouted. The kindly waitress seemed to know them well.
After a while there were no more dishevelled people hurrying through from our narrow passage. The sound of sirens and whistles faded away. This little courtyard felt like somewhere else, Italy perhaps, a theatrical world of sunlit laughter where police and rioters could not come.
The thing we had shared – fear, then relief – must have loosened Virginia’s tongue, and made her daring.
‘May I ask you a question about your husband?’
‘Go ahead.’ I was flattered. Most of her questions were about modernity, which made me feel like Wikipedia.
‘I need some wine,’ she said suddenly. I waved my hand, and the sweet girl came. ‘Two large glasses of Turkish red.’ Was it illegal yet? Evidently not.
‘Cheers!’ said Virginia, holding hers up to the light, and we touched glasses, and she smiled at me. Virginia was almost a modern woman. She drank deeply, and then again. The group next door was louder than ever. The loud-voiced woman had a smoker’s laugh.
Virginia’s question was not what I expected.
‘Angela – do you miss your husband? Physically, as it were.’
‘Physically? Do you mean – you don’t mean sexually, surely?’
She was blushing. She did mean sexually!
‘Actually, I do, Angela. Yes.’
How could I talk about sex to her! She wasn’t a girlfriend! She was … Virginia! Famously chaste, traumatised! What was that passage in ‘Professions for Women’? She said women couldn’t write about the body.
‘Why do you ask?’
‘Oh … I just wondered.’ Her eyelids dipped, she took another sip, but when she looked up again, her eyes were mischievous. ‘I have been having … feelings. Feelings I haven’t had for some time. Some time before I died, that is. One hadn’t felt – desire – in ages.’
Angela looked as though I’d shot her. Stricken, that’s the only word for it, as if I had somehow let her down. Or let myself down. A puritan! I thought. Yes, of course, these modern feminists are puritans.
But after a moment, she started to smile.
‘Virginia? Are you really? – I don’t know what to say. It’s sweet. Put it down to coming alive again. It probably gives you all kinds of feelings. Nothing to be guilty about. It’s not abnormal for – ’
She stopped.
I knew quite clearly what she meant to say. ‘Not abnormal for older women.’ She didn’t understand! I no longer felt ‘older’!
‘The point is, Angela, I find myself thinking – about the people I see in the street. And … in the lobby. Turkish people.’
I didn’t say that it was mostly one man, Ahmet, who occupied my mind. His dark-eyed charm, his currant-bun dimples. Whenever he saw me, that warm, flawed smile. Marzipan skin, sensuous lips. Under his smart work-clothes, his muscled plumpness.
All so very different from Leonard. A shiny berry, a wiry twig.
‘There’s nothing wrong with having these thoughts.’ (Though Virginia was old enough to be my mother!) ‘But don’t, you know, be too friendly in the lobby. I told you before, they won’t understand. They’ll think you’re, well – ’ I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say ‘They’ll think you’re up for it.’
And then I did. ‘They’ll think you’re up for it.’
My wine had almost gone; the blood was coursing through my veins. ‘I was wondering. I don’t know what you think – After all this time, do you think I could …?’ Perhaps I spoke louder than I meant. Would people hear? I didn’t care. ‘Why do you assume I am not “up for it”? If that is what you modern women say.’
‘Virginia?’
‘Virginia??’
‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t. I’m a writer. We’re not supposed to shun experience. So many things I have never done. I can’t be a Turk, or an American. I can never be a member of the working classes. One has to be born to it, don’t you think? But for some reason – since coming back – one has felt … “I might, perhaps, like to try that.” Try it again, as a new person. With a new person. Say, a Turk.
‘Why are you staring? I’m not a virgin. Do my readers expect me to be a virgin?’
‘A Turk? Not with a Turk, Virginia.’
‘Why not?’
Angela’s mouth had gone thin and cross. Then she laughed.
‘You’re teasing me, of course. I fell for it.’
‘No, I’m serious. I was never able to write about the body … But that’s not the point. I just – want to do it.’
‘But, Virginia! Everyone knows … It’s just not you. You can’t do it for research.’
‘Maybe I’ve become a different person. Maybe I never was that person. Why can’t I, you know, with a Turk?’
‘Of course you can’t, it’s ridiculous. Turkish men! Impossible.’
The next-door table were definitely listening. Angela’s mouth opened, then closed again. She looked flushed; confused; her shoulders drooped. It didn’t take long for her to recover.
‘It’s just so stereotypical! Older woman, western, comes to Turkey for sex! It’s a cliché, Virginia! It’s … orientalist!’
She pronounced this triumphantly, as if it clinched it. Her final ‘-ist’ sprayed the air with saliva. ‘Orientalist? Is that bad?’
(She said it as if it meant ‘murderess’. I was not familiar with the usage.)
She was smiling again, superior, maddening, her lips moving with unvoiced words, looking down that fine-cut nose at me. Why did my opinions suddenly seem flimsy? She was arrogant! And ignorant! Yes, Virginia Woolf was ignorant!
Orlando suffered from the same kind of thinking. Romantic Gypsies. Sentimental fantasies. The East with a soft erotic glow. Perhaps I should add that to my paper. Perhaps I had always been too respectful.
‘Of course you can’t know about Edward Said, he was a brilliant thinker, a profound thinker, he revolutionised the way we write about the East. But you must see it’s a stereotype, deciding to go to bed with a Turk?’
‘Would you rather I had sex with – whom, exactly? A Belgian? An African?’
‘Good heavens, here’s Ray Kuyperman. Professor Kuyperman! Come and join us!’
‘ – No, I will sleep with whomever I want to.’ But I had to break off. A tall thin man had materialised in the square behind us.
‘Ladies!’ he said, manifestly startled, almost as though we had somehow caught him out. ‘Angela Lamb! What a surprise! Of course, you are giving a reading at the conference. And one of the plenaries, I believe. But – what are you doing here?’ Rimless spectacles. Firm jaw-line. He gestured vaguely around the tables. One of our neighbours raised his hand, but Kuyperman ignored them.
‘This is Virginia, a friend of mine. Virginia, this is Ray Kuyperman, from the University of Witwatersrand. Which is in Africa, but actually he’s Belgian. He lives in Brussels most of the year.’
‘How convenient!’
‘You must be joking. The travelling is dreadful.’
‘Were you caught up in the demonstration? Is that how you came to be here, like us?’
‘Pure chance, dear lady.’
He had beautiful manners, but under the surface he was agitated. The man with the longest moustache next door was definitely trying to attract his attention, but Kuyperman seemed oblivious. The red-head’s beautiful cream silk scarf had fallen on the ground under their table. Something odd about her neck. Oh, and her hands, in flamboyant rings, heavy silver crusting the knuckles – but the fingers extended too far from the rings, and the nails, when they came, were square and broad. Those elegant legs. Those enormous feet! Of course, she was a man. Feeling shy, I looked away.
‘Are you here alone? Why don’t you join us later on? I have to go back and prepare my talk, but we’ll go out to eat, I expect.’
‘Professor!’ A chorus, rather loud, almost jeering, from the raffish group at the next-door table. ‘Academics,’ he mouthed to us, ‘I must say Hallo.’
We agreed he might call at the hotel at eight.
‘By the way,’ he said to her as he turned away, ‘You are awfully like the other Virginia, as everyone must tell you!’
She looked at him – a long, noticing look – and smiled, but said nothing.
‘Distant relation,’ I said. ‘Through Leslie Stephen’s brother, the judge.’
‘Really?’
‘I am related to the judge,’ I confirmed. (Quite true, he was my uncle.)
By now the homosexuals – for now I was sure – and the red-headed transvestite at the table next door were laughing openly in Kuyperman’s direction. As we left, one made a slight, ironic bow. Why had he not introduced us to them? Was homosexuality still taboo? Kuyperman was evidently one, but who cared?
The crush on Istiklal had eased. The police-buses were still there, but the shouting had stopped. The young people holding up their magazines had gone. I hoped they were not inside the buses. A few policemen stood around, hard-eyed.
‘He’s distinguished-looking, don’t you think?’ she asked me.
‘Who?’
‘Ray. Professor Kuyperman. I’m sure he’d love to have dinner with you.’
Evidently she was match-making. Trying to divert my attention from Turks. Marching across the Galata Bridge, she explained his work.
‘He’s a well-known scholar. Loves your books, especially Orlando. I’m amazed they haven’t asked him to do a plenary. His best-known book is Quiddities: Denaturalised Concepts of Sex, Gender and Queer Love in Orlando.’
‘Good heavens.’
‘I think he’s single.’
‘Quite.’
Back at the hotel, we went to our rooms. I thought with shame of my attempt to confide. She had simply refused to hear what I was saying. So modern women were prejudiced too. I was too chaste, I was too old, I must always be what I was before – so many boundaries around desire. Angela could not help or advise me.
So I’d have to find it for myself.
I would search for the long-lost secret garden I dreamed of when I was just a girl. Before what was hidden was stolen from me.