The Towers of Trebizond (7 page)

Father Chantry-Pigg said that he had heard in Istanbul that a party of Seventh Day Adventist pilgrims was journeying to Mount Ararat for the second coming of Christ, which was due to occur there this summer on the summit of this mountain. It had been due in this same spot on earlier occasions, and pilgrims from all over Europe had several times travelled there to meet it, but it had been delayed, and now it was really due. If we climbed Mount Ararat, as Father Chantry-Pigg intended to do, we should find the pilgrims waiting as near the top as it was possible to get, collecting pieces of the ark, singing hymns and preparing their souls against the Coming. It seems that life on Ararat has always been immensely strange.

"Not at all an agreeable mountain," said aunt Dot, who had been up it with my uncle Frank in 1920. There had been pilgrims that year, too, she said, waiting for the Second Coming; many of them had come from the Caucasus, where strange races and religions had been used to congregate once. There would of course, be no Caucasian pilgrims now. Those poor Caucasians, said aunt Dot, we must get to them somehow and she and Father Chantry-Pigg looked secretive and determined, and as if they were planning to crash the curtain. Crashing the curtain is a very popular enterprise, like climbing Everest, but more private; a lot of people try it, and some succeed in getting in, but not all get out again, they are just swallowed up quietly, and no more heard, though sometimes years later they are spewed out, rather the worse for wear. Of course the best plan is to be a scientist or engineer, and become missing, but most people want a less long visit than that, just a dip in and out, such as ambassadors and their staffs get when they are appointed to Moscow; they just have time to collect copy for their Russia books, then out again and write them. I supposed that if aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg were set on crashing the curtain in order to convert Caucasians, I should have to go too, though I did not think Dr. Halide would, but I would rather stay in Turkey, which became more and more pleasant the farther we got down the Euxine sea, the intimidating Black Sea, so-called, said my Turkish guide-book, on account of its storms and high waves, which arise so sudden that many people have perished.

But the days we were on it, it was not black and had no storms or high waves and no one perished. It was dark blue, shading to light green near the coast, and all along the mountains ran, and the forests on them, and every now and then a little port, made by the trading Greeks long ago, and, but for the ports, the coast was what the Argonauts saw when they sailed to fetch the Golden Fleece, and those who are good at Greek history give the year of this as 1275, but no one seems sure, which always vexed me when I was a child, and vexes me still. And, when the weather was clear, a faint shadow loomed on the Euxine's northern side, which was the shadow of the Crimea; when I commented on this to the captain of the ship, he and the first officer gave the Crimea a dirty look. Turks do not believe in peaceful co-existence with Russia, they never have, and Father Chantry-Pigg agrees with them. Fortunately for most of our voyage Russia was out of sight. Aunt Dot looked towards the Crimea through her glasses, and sighed after that menacing shadow, and I sighed too, because of those orchards and palaces and seaside villas that I might never see.

But on the southern shore all was animation, for from each little port boats rowed out to us full of people, full of bundles, full of hampers of food and fruit for the passengers on the steerage deck, or full of animal carcasses, live fowls, donkeys, pigs, sheep and female goats, immense tyres, trucks, metal tools and bundles of planks, to be conveyed by the
Trabzon
to the ports along the shore. They rowed back with landing passengers, but more embarked than disembarked, and the crowds on the decks grew, and were most amiable and cheerful. I would have liked to go on shore at all these ports, but this was not allowed, and I could only sketch them from the deck. I decided that I liked Turks very much.

When we anchored off Inebolu, the B.B.C. recording van chugged past us in a motor launch, on its way to some other port, where it would record more native life. Perhaps we should catch up with it at Trebizond, which is really the social hub of the eastern Euxine, though Samsun is now a more important port. Trebizond, having once been for seven years the last bit of the Byzantine empire, has cachet and legend and class, besides being so near to where Xenophon and the Ten Thousand marched down from the mountains, and went mad from a surfeit of the local honey. Perhaps the Billy Graham missioners would also be there, and perhaps the Seventh Day Adventists, having a rest before they set out for Ararat and the Second Coming, and no doubt a lot of writers scribbling away at their Turkey books. And, of course, a number of British and Russian spies. Life in Trebizond, I thought, would be very sociable, animated and peculiar.

So, really, was life on the
Trabzon,
what with the Van Damms, the ship's officers, the Turkish tourists who strolled on the decks and looked in at the cabin windows at the other tourists dressing, a party of university students from Istanbul, the arrivals of people and animals from every port, the Islamic devotions conducted on the steerage deck, the Christian devotions conducted on the cabin deck, and the spies who murmured to one another in corners in various tongues. Aunt Dot made it her job to converse with Turkish women, on whatever deck they might be found. The university students made it their job to practise their English on us and the Van Damms and tell us about Turkish literature which, it seemed, was in a very thriving and interesting state. Several of them, both male and female, wrote poetry, and were inclined to recite it to us in Turkish, with prose renderings of its meaning in English. They read us other Turkish poets too, and so did Dr. Halide, and they asked Father Chantry-Pigg, whom they admired, whether he did not find them extremely good.

"Obscure," he said, for he found most modern poetry this, and actually modern poems in Turkish were not much more obscure to him than modern poems in English. Aunt Dot was indifferent to verse, she thought prose better.

"Obs-cure?" they enquired. "What means that? You like?"

"He means he doesn't understand," I explained.

"Ah," said Dr. Halide, who was very patriotic for the New Turkey. "I will translate."

I told her that would be no use, Father Chantry-Pigg still wouldn't understand. "He doesn't understand most English modern poetry, either," I said.

They looked at the priest, whose eyes were now closed in sleep or prayer, with pity, and without surprise. They knew that the Church, being backward and reactionary, had been left behind in the spectacular progress of Atatürk's modern secular Turkey. Imams, priests, patriarchs, prophets, Turkey had left them all behind, and doubtless Britain had too, though not so far behind as Turkey had, Turkey having got further on.

"We study English poetry," they said. "Dylan Thomas, Spender, MacNeice, Lewis, Eliot, Sitwell, Frost, Charlotte Mew. It is very like ours, yes?"

"Yes," I said. "Very like."

"It is better, less good, much about the same?"

"Much about the same," I said.

They looked disappointed, for they knew that theirs was better. "English writers," they said, "come to Istanbul and speak at the British Institute on the Poem. Also the Novel. You speak?"

"No," I said.

"You write?"

"Sometimes."

"Excuse. Why then you not speak on the Novel and the Poem?"

"I shouldn't be able to think what to say. I believe it has all been said."

They agreed that it probably had. "Yes. We have heard."

"You understand the Poem of to-day?" they asked, for Turks do not stop asking questions.

I said I understood some of it.

"You like?"

I said I liked some of it.

Perceiving that the topic of the Poem was unlikely to be soon exhausted, aunt Dot changed it to that of the Turkish Woman, and this was one of their subjects too. Turkish speakers, they said, especially women speakers, such as Dr. Halide (who, tiring of all this juvenile babble, which was extremely familiar to her, had strolled off to chat with the First Officer, a handsome man who admired her)—these women speakers travelled abroad and lectured in London, Edinburgh, Paris, New York and Milan on the Woman. For she too, like literature, politics and education, flourished greatly in the New Turkey.

"Lawyers, doctors, teachers, writers, judges, painters, dancers, modistes, beauticians," they said. "And many other important women. Some virgins, some wives. In Turkey to-day, it is no matter. All get about."

"Isn't that nice," aunt Dot agreed. "And these important women, are many of them Moslem or not?".

"Not," they chorused; but added, "Nevertheless, some are," and they seemed to regard with respect the important women who were so behind the times. The youngest of them said, "There is my aunt.
She
is very religious Moslem and very important woman; she teaches in Robert College."

"And you students? One understands that you have largely left Moslemism behind, it's so bound up with old-fashioned tradition and all that. But what about Christianity? Dr. Halide is a Christian, you know, and you can't call
her
behind the times. It's a most progressive religion actually. Have you ever considered it?"

"Too old. It is over, long past. Dr. Halide caught it in Britain, where it is much about. Here it is the past. The Greek papas—
ού μην
!"

The speaker, a chubby Greek youth in spectacles, threw a scornful glance at two Greek clergymen eating cheese and olives in deck chairs near by, and feeding a goat with the rind and skins. It was apparent that they too had been left behind by the new Turkey.

"My parents, yes," he amplified. "Ourselves, no. It is the same with the mosques. They contain the grandfathers of my friends."

"And up in the galleries, our grandmothers," his friends added. "Our mothers, some. Our aunts, few. Except only the aunt of Mihri. Most aunts, and many mothers, are lawyers, teachers, doctors, modistes
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
"

"Of course, the important women," aunt Dot interrupted. "Now, did you ever hear of the Church of England?"

They looked politely vague. "You too had a church," they supposed. "We have still," aunt Dot rapped out.

At this point Father Chantry-Pigg, who had been dozing in his chair, woke up and took a hand.

"Only," he gently said, "the eternal Church of Christendom. The one holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. You know of it?"

It seemed to strike a bell.

"The Catholic church, yes. There are many in Istanbul, isn't it? We have seen."

"Only one example of
our
branch of it," Father Chantry-Pigg explained. "The Anglican communion has a church in a small meydan off Istiklal Caddesi."

"We have not seen," they regretted. "It is very fine?"

"No," Father Chantry-Pigg answered, "it is not very fine."

He looked sad that it was not very fine, that it was less fine than most of its companion churches of other communions.

"Still," aunt Dot briskly put in, "it is the best Church to belong to, because it has the most truth."

They looked polite, but one could see that they did not think this was saying much.

One of them remembered something.

"It is the Church of Billy Graham? There was a large meeting in Taksim Square. They sang many songs. It is your Church? Yes?"

"No," said Father Chantry-Pigg, sharply. "It is not. Those people are mainly American Baptists."

"Yes, yes. Church of America. America is the great friend of Turkey. That Church too has truth, is it?"

"All Churches have some," aunt Dot told them, before Father Chantry-Pigg could deliver himself on the matter. "But what," she went on, getting back to the Woman, "what about all those women down there "—she waved towards the steerage deck, where at the moment the male Turks were meeting in prayer—" and the women in country villages and small towns all over Turkey, who go about muffling their faces, and mayn't sit down to meals with men, or walk with them, or pray with them, or play games, or sit in the cafés and gardens, or bathe in the sea, but do the hard dull work, and walk by the donkey while their husbands ride—yes, what about the
un
important women?"

"They are still backwards," the students cheerfully dismissed their oppressed sisters. "They
look
still backwards. Kemal Atatürk commanded them to look forwards and wear hats, but they are very simple women and wear still shawls and rugs and do as the men say. In time, they will cure. All that, it is not Turkish, it is from the Greeks before the Conquest. It is Byzantine."

"Not true," said the Greek young man. "It is Moslem. The Greeks were not so."

Waving this aside, the Turks spoke of Ankara, the great progressive capital, where women went unveiled and free, as in Istanbul, where there was a large famous university, and many great public buildings. Of course we were going to Ankara?

Aunt Dot said we were.

Then they told us about Ankara, its government buildings, the President's house with a swimming-pool, its embassies and consulates, its great restaurants, its Atatürk museum, its Atatürk model farm, its new Atatürk mausoleum, where the founding Father is to lie, its houses of business, its noble streets of shops, its multitudinous Americans, its racecourse, its Genelik Park, its colleges and schools and institutes, its railway station, its boulevards, its illuminated signs, its hotels. Ankara, in short, was the New Turkey, born of the Great Revolution that had so stirred their parents thirty years ago, and it seemed odd that they had not turned against it. In Britain, the revolution which had stirred the parents would have been definitely out, reaction would have set in, and the statues of Atatürk on his horse would have been mocked. Young Turks seemed to have more piety.

They went on telling us about Ankara, but the only thing I wanted to see there was the Seljuk citadel in which the old town lies, and the Roman Temple of Augustus, and the view from the acropolis, and perhaps the Hittite things in the museum, though I do not care for Hittites. Modern Ankara was obviously a bore.