The Towers of Trebizond (21 page)

"What was it about?" he asked.

I told him. "Trebizond, mainly. Then he went on to the country behind it, but I haven't read all that yet."

"Oh," said David; and added after a moment, "Do you know, I think it must have been by me, the bit you found. It was typed, I suppose."

"No, it was written, in Charles's hand, with a lot of corrections and things. It was by Charles. It was his style, too."

"What did you do with it?"

"I was going to send it to his people, but I haven't yet."

"Have you got it with you? If you have, I might put it with Charles's other papers and notes that I have. It ought to go into our book. It may be a copy of something I wrote; from what you say, I think it probably was."

David was looking at me to see how this went. But he knew that it would not seem likely to me that Charles should have copied out in handwriting, with a lot of alterations and corrections, something which David had made up about Trebizond.

"No," I said. "Charles made it up. It's the way he writes. And I think I had better send it to his people, they might like it. If it is a copy of something by you, you must have the original, so you won't want it."

"But it may be Charles's own, as you think it is. In that case, I ought to have it for our book, with his other papers."

"You said he scarcely got anything down, so there can't be many other papers."

David looked more and more bothered.

"The less he wrote, the more important it is to have anything he did write, if he really wrote this, which I can't be sure of till I see it. Have you got it with you?"

"You don't need it," I said, "because a lot of it was in the
Sunday Times
the other week. I expect you have that. If not, I can give you mine."

"Oh that," said David. "You saw that"

"Yes."

I was getting sorry for David, his position was so awkward, so I changed the subject.

"Is that your car?"

"It's Reggie Carson's, actually. He went home on leave from Izmir, and let me use it while he's away. He's disqualified for driving in England for a year; he did something silly and got nabbed. I find it pretty useful. I thought of going to see the Cappadocian caves tomorrow, and then on to Konya. Would you care to come?"

"Well, I wish I could, but I'm pushing on to Iskenderon as quickly as I can make it. I'm meeting someone in a yacht that may come in any day now. But I don't see that I can get there on the camel in much less than four days, and I can't afford the train fare."

"Cleaned out? I cashed a cheque on Reggie before he left. Look here, shall I drive you down tomorrow? You could leave the camel here and pick it up later on. Or have it brought after you by a camel driver; there are plenty about. We could arrange that easily, if you like. I suppose you can come by some cash when you meet your yacht,"

"I hope so."

"Well, let's do that. If we start early, we can make Iskenderon by the evening. Look, let's dine here; it's not a bad place."

So we went into the restaurant and dined, and we had the food which I had envied the man in the phrase book when I was in Trebizond. I was growing fond of David, and felt glad that he had come into my life, to be so helpful and kind and pay for my dinner and drive me to Iskenderon and arrange with a camel driver to see to the camel and pay for my night's lodging, which I saw he was going to do.

Over dinner we talked, and I did my best to relax his nerves, as he seemed rather tense'. I told him about aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg vanishing, and aunt Dot's note, and we speculated about what they were doing now, spying or fishing or converting Caucasians, or sitting behind bars answering questions, or digging for salt. And I told
him
about the Trebizond sorcerer and his potion, and about my Turkey sickness, and the kind Turks who had been good to me, and about the interesting antiquities I thought I had seen on the road, and he told me that I could not have seen most of those things, the way I had come, and that I had probably been a little delirious.

"I wonder you got here at all," he said, "having fever and riding all that way on that camel in this heat."

I thought that perhaps he wished that I had not got here at all. Presently he said, "Whose yacht is it you're meeting, by the way?" and I told him which press lord the yacht belonged to. I could see he was uneasy that it was a press lord's yacht, and that he did not care for me to hob-nob just now with the press, or with the passengers on this yacht. He said after a minute or two, "Look, Laurie. Will you do me a favour and not mention to any one anything about my book—mine and Charles's, I mean? I don't want it publicized at present, if you don't mind."

"Just as you say."

"Well, don't forget, will you. There's a reason."

"Yes."

"I mean, the book arrangements are still fluid, and in more or less of a muddle," he went on, in case I thought there was some other reason. "And I'd rather premature news of it didn't get about. The position's rather tricky, you see."

I thought tricky was quite a good word myself.

"I mean," he went on, "when there are two collaborators, and one of them suddenly dies. I have to straighten it out, I mean. One wants very much to be fair to Charles; though he hadn't yet contributed much, he had his part all planned; and in the circumstances one's inclined to lean over backwards to give him more than his strict due, if you see what I mean."

I said nothing; I watched him flounder. , "As a matter of fact, it would help me a good deal if you would hand me over that manuscript you have, and let me check up on it."

He kept throwing away his cigarettes half smoked and taking new ones, in an uneasy kind of way.

"You see," he said, "I really am supposed to be taking charge of Charles's papers. I told his father I would."

"Well," I said, "I'll look it up. I'm not sure exactly where I put it."

I was by way now of being kind, and soothing the poor chap. I did not want to torment him, only to keep him on a string a little longer, so that he might do kind acts for me.

He went on doing these. He ordered more wine for me, and a liqueur with our coffee, and told me all about the Cappadocian cave dwellings, and I told him about St. Basil, who had done so much for Caesarea in the third century and practically rebuilt it, and who, with Origen and Clement and St. John Chrysostom, is my favourite Christian Father, the prayers and liturgies they composed being so admirable and full of dignity and light and
sophia
, and the further the Church got from them the less light and
sophia
and dignity it seemed to get, falling into things such as sentimentalism and exaggeration and puritanism and pietism and the Reformation and the Counter Reformation and revivalism and Lourdes and Lisieux and reliquaries and pictures of the Sacred Heart in convent parlours and Salvationism and evangelical hymns, and many more such barriers to religion, which daunt those not brought up to them and keep them out, like fundamentalism and hell fire. And I told David, who did not care, but listened to oblige me, what wrong turns the Christian Church had taken after the first, making it so difficult for us all, and David, who knew the whole business to be nonsense anyhow, gave me more wine, which encouraged me to go on telling him about these Church matters about which he could not have cared less, and the more I talked the more I grew sure that what was keeping me from the Church was not my own sin but those of the Church. If Father Chantry-Pigg had been there, he would have looked severe and told me otherwise, but he was not there and aunt Dot was not there, and I had the Church to myself, and could tell an atheist about it and he had to listen because of wanting to appease me.

When I had explained to David about the Church for some time, I felt sleepy and full of wine, and said that now we would go and find a camel driver who would take charge of my camel and bring it after me to Iskenderon. So we asked the manager of the hotel in which we were going to sleep where was a camel driver, and he sent a porter out with us to find one and he was a well-known camel man and trustworthy, and was setting out for Iskenderon next morning early, with other camels, so I gave the camel into his charge and he told me the address in Iskenderon to call for it at in three or four days, and I told him it must not be excited, as it was a little mad, and must not have affairs with the other camels, but must just be kept trotting quietly along, unloaded, because it needed a rest after all it had been through lately. Then I patted it and bade it good-bye for the present, feeling delighted that I should be spending to-morrow bowling along in a car, with someone else driving, and me sitting back looking at the interesting country, and the road would climb up towards the Cilician Gates and through them, and so down to the plains and to the Gulf of Iskenderon, and by then it would be evening, and we should drive round the head of the Gulf to Alexandretta on its southern shore, and moored off Alexandretta would lie the press lorďs yacht, twinkling with lights in the smooth dark sea, and Vere would have left a message for me at the Mediterranean Palace Hotel, and we should meet either that evening or next day, that is, if the yacht was already there. This would all be so much better than sitting on the camel for three or four days while it lurched along tiring my legs and back, that I grew fonder and fonder of David, and felt almost inclined to give him Charles's manuscript at once, for even if I did this he would still go on with his acts of kindness in order that I should not tell people what I knew. However, I decided to wait for a little while, till we had done the drive to Iskenderon, he buying food and drinks for me all day, and stopping when I wanted to look at anything, though usually one has little power over the driver, who is very loath to stop, whether for lunch or to look at anything, he feels impelled to drive on and on, and I feel the same when I am driving.

The day went by as agreeably as I had planned. No one could have been nicer than David was to me, and he knew a lot of archaeology, so we stopped and looked at Seljuk archaeology and Hittite archaeology and Roman archaeology, and we stopped for lunch and for drinks and for coffee, and spent quite a long time seeing Tarsus, where we were so hot that we had a bathe in the Cydnus, in spite of its having formerly been so cold that bathing in it had almost killed Alexander during a campaign, and, apparently, quite killed Frederick Barbarossa, and it seems rather surprising that this emperor should have been given to bathing, but I have a theory that all our Ancestors bathed, and that we have invented the theory that they did not. Anyhow, the Cydnus was not too cold for David and me, and after it we thought about Cleopatra sailing up it to Tarsus to meet Anthony, and about the ancient famous university of Tarsus, and about St. Paul, of whom I told David, for he did not know much about this missionary before, and he pretended to be much interested, and said he might read St. Paul's letters sometime, as I told him they were full of interest. I remembered that Father Chantry-Pigg had said that his father the Dean, who was so interested in St. Paul and had been writing his life till death ended this task, had visited Tarsus and spent a long time in it, sorting out all the Pauline remains and looking into what had been the university curriculum at that time, and, as he had been an imaginative dean, he reconstructed it, and all the university buildings, and made a plan of them for his book, and a list of the subjects studied. Archaeologists ought always to have the help of people like Dean Chantry-Pigg, because they imagine and reconstruct so well, or anyhow so freely, though I felt that David might scorn his reconstructions. While I told him about St. Paul, I felt that a little perseverance on my part might easily persuade him to enter the Church, whose doors he never darkened but for architecture, weddings and funerals, and I thought aunt Dot would have said I ought to go on with this good work while he was so malleable, but I did not, owing to thinking he would not make a good churchman, but would become immediately lapsed like me.

So we drove to the Alexandretta Gulf after dark, and round it to Iskenderon, and the Gulf pushed deeply into the shore and lay shut in it like a dark, shining river, spangled with lights from ships and boats and from the shore. A battleship lay in the bay, all lit up, and it looked British. Nearer in shore there was a yacht, and this was lit up too, and we could read its name, and it was called Argo, and this was the yacht of the press lord who was Vere's friend, and there would be a message waiting for me at the Mediterranean Palace about when we could meet. David said we would both stop there that night, and he meant that he would not desert me until I had met my yacht friends and acquired money.

But what I saw when we entered this hotel was Vere standing at the reception desk and giving a note to the reception clerk, and so we met, and then nothing else seemed to matter.

At eleven o'clock Vere returned in the launch, with some other yacht passengers, to the Argo, and I went too, to meet the press lord and his other guests. But before that I said good night to David and thanked him very much for his kindness to me, and gave him Charles's manuscript, which he had certainly earned. I told him I should not speak about it to any one, which he probably did not believe, and he was right, for here I am writing all about it, but anyhow such matters never remain secret for long, owing to tittle tattle and people being so little trustworthy and so quick to think the worst and not having mostly read what St. Paul wrote about charity and St. James about bridling the tongue, which is full of deadly poison and is set on fire of hell. So all was guessed or suspected presently about David and Charles and the book, without my help. I did not feel it was any business of mine, and I thought, live and let live, David can do as he likes about all this, it is between him and his conscience and he must find his own way through it and I shall not tell tales.

I cashed English bank cheques on three kind Argonauts, including Vere, so now I had plenty of Turkish liras again, enough to be able to push on south on the camel into Syria and Jordan when the Argo sailed away, which would be in three days. Till then Vere and I enjoyed the pleasures of the charming pretty Frenchified town curving round the gulf, set with palm trees and very gay. We drove to Antioch in a dolmuç, along a road that began as a wild steep mountain zig-zag and ended by prosily ambling through flat cultivated fields, till there was Antioch, Antakya, a Turkish town of tiled houses on the slope of a hill. Golden Antioch, Seleucid and Roman Antioch, was a remote ghost brooding high above us on the hill where the citadel had stood and the great walls climbed about it; we drove up to it, and British archaeologists were busy digging up mosaic pavements. We drove down again to Antakya, saw the tiny early church in its rock cave on the rocky hill side, and drove out to the groves of Daphne, once the haunt of votaries of pleasure from Greece and Rome, very licentious, and a perpetual festival of vice, so Vere and I went to see it, but it must have been better once, when all the temples and shrines and orgies were there. Now there were cascades and stone steps and a steep hill with woods going down to a valley, and terraces with people sitting playing tric-trac and drinking drinks that were mostly soft, and it was not so much more licentious than other laid-out landscapes with woods and steps and cascades, and there did not seem very much for the votaries of pleasure to do there, except that votaries of pleasure seem to create their pleasures round them wherever they go. But Vere and I thought that all those waterfalls, and the shade of the trees, made the place rather dank and like Cintra or Scotland, so we did not spend long in Daphne, but drove back to Antioch and explored the medieval Turkish quarter, where there is much more pleasure in the crooked winding streets and deep arches and little tiled mosques, and donkeys and camels hitched to rings in the open squares which had once been caravan halts, and trees growing about, and carpenters and potters and goldsmiths and coppersmiths all working away in tiny shops in their trade streets. Here we bought Roman and Byzantine coins, which we gave to each other, then we dined in a garden restaurant under tree lamps, with the Antakya radio also in the trees and blaring down at us, then we went to the Turizm Hotel for the night. When we walked in the streets boys howled at us and shook their fists, and a German archaeologist whom we met in the hotel said that Antakyans did not care about the British, they only liked Germans, and this was an old tradition because of the Dardanelles attack, but we thought it was just rude boys being spiteful to foreigners, and we did not really care, because we were so glad to be together, and we each understood what the other said, and we laughed at one another's jokes, and love was our fortress and our peace, and being together shut out everything else and closed down conscience and the moral sense. We used to wonder how long we should live in this doped oblivion if we had been married, and I supposed that the every-day life which married people live together after a time blunts romance, but we did not think we should mind that, if we had all the other things, even the tedious things, to do together, and could plan our holidays and argue about the maps and the routes and one would read aloud from a guide book while the other drove and we would be very fair about equal turns of driving and equal shares of everything, and I suppose we should like our children, and marriage would still be our fortress and our peace, just as love was now when we could be together but could be a sadness and a torment when apart.