The Towers of Trebizond Read online

  I thought of aunt Dot, and knew that she would have asked the wife to ride and refused the man, which would have been no use, so she would have told him what she thought of him and ridden on without either of them and without the kurus. But you have to accept Turks and the Moslem religion as what they are, and it is useless as well as rude to come to a country and quarrel with the habits of the population; Turks might as well come to England and object to women going first through doors, and in fact there seems no good reason for this, since the only reason for doing things for women should be that they are less strong and less good at doing them for themselves, and this applies to standing, and walking long distances, and carrying loads, and changing wheels, but not to going through doors, and the right way to behave at doors is for whoever is nearest the door to go through it first, as it really could not matter less.

  Anyhow, this male Turk mounted the camel's hump, and we trotted two kilometres to this obscure village where he lived, and he asked me to put him down at a café so that he could have a rest and take some refreshment after his tiring journey. I said, "Oh what a hot day it is," for this was in the Turkish phrase book and I often used it, and I hoped he might offer me some coffee, for Turks are usually very kind and polite to strangers, but he did not, so I rode on along the road, and it grew still hotter as the sun got higher, and I put up my umbrella, as for a little way there were no woods. Very soon I began feeling dizzy and strange, and when I came to I was still on the camel but in a coma, and this was the Turkey sickness, or possibly it was partly the camel sickness, and one made the other worse. I had had attacks of it before. So, when the road went through woods again, I got off and lay down on a mossy patch by the stream in the shade of trees, and I thought I would rest there through the heat till it was evening, and ride through the night instead.

  I wished I had kept a few of aunt Dot's bottles and pills, in case any of them were good for the Turkey sickness, but the only bottle I had was the green potion I had got from the Greek sorcerer in Trebizond. So I took a small flaskful of this, and lay down on the moss and shut my eyes and relaxed, and possibly I passed out, for it seemed to me that I had landed at Cerasus from the Argo and had wandered up from the coast into these woods that climbed the mountain sides, and had eaten myself full of ripe cherries and of azalea honey, so that I lay in a swoon, pretending to be dead, because the barbarous Pontic natives, the Mossynoici, were all about, and I saw the boys they kept, fattened up on boiled chestnuts and tattooed all over with bright flowers, just as Xenophon had said eight hundred years later, and I saw that the Mossynoici did not change at all, for they were still having loving intercourse with women in public as they lay about the woods, and I thought, this would never do if it was Hyde Park. I wondered which of the Argo heroes I was, but I could not remember, and I did not know if I was a hero or one of their mistresses, for they must have brought some of these, since the mistresses of heroes used to go everywhere about the world with them, and were in every army and every ship, and we do not really hear enough of their doings, as they are taken for granted in histories. They went on the Crusades, and with the Greek armies to besiege Troy, and when during the ten years they grew too much older they sailed back to Greece and some younger ones came out; and they marched with Xenophon's Ten Thousand and must have got drunk on the Trebizond honey, and they marched all about France with our army during the Hundred Years' War, and with Wellington's army about the Peninsula, where the Spanish and Portuguese soldiers liked them very much, and with the Royalist troops during our own Civil Wars, where Cromwell did not like them at all so he had them massacred, and some of them came over to Britain with the Romans and the Saxons and the Jutes and the Vikings and the Normans, but not enough, so that British women were largely used to supplement them, which is why we are such a mixed race. Yes, I thought, women have been everywhere with armies, making themselves useful, because soldiers need love, but now the women who go with armies are not encouraged to be so useful to them, they are called Ats and Wrens and Waafs and Wracs and are kept behind the battle lines and are only a small consolation to the troops, though soldiers still need love. But the Argonauts lay about the Pontic shores with their women and ate ripe cherries and chestnuts and rested in the deep woods beside streams, tired with the Turkey sickness and with all that sailing up the Pontus through choppy seas that lurched like a camel, and though Jason longed to reach Colchis and the golden fleece as I longed to reach the Alexandretta gulf, which would be calm and blue and hot and full of ships and in one of them would be my dear love, Jason had rested, as I was resting through the noon heat, bitten by mosquitoes, in a deep wood beside a stream, and let time drift by him.

  So I lay in a dream through the hot hours, and when I came to there was more coolness, and I saw that it was six o'clock, and though I felt languid I felt no fever any more. The camel was on its knees near by, ruminating as usual. I got on it, it lurched to its feet, and off we went. At the next village I stopped for some coffee and raki and yoghourt, which in Turkey sickness is a great support, then rode on through a lot of the night, up and down over hills and through woods, and the camel, who was rested and frisky and perhaps drunk again, heard a horse trotting behind us, and as, like most camels, it hated horses extremely, it gave a loud roar and put on a great spurt of speed and ran and ran for kilometres.

  So the night wore on, in alternate riding and resting. At midnight I lay down in my sleeping-bag and mosquito net and slept for four hours, then on again till seven, when we stopped for breakfast at a roadside café and rode again till the sun was high and hot, when I lay by till evening. This became my routine, and the days and nights went by, and I got them rather mixed up, still having some fever and feeling pretty dazed, and this was partly the potion, which made the world melt away into a hazy dream and the far past became mixed with the present, so that I got confused about when and who I was and what I was doing. In fact, my whole journey was confused, and remembering it is odd, because I could not tell how many days it lasted, or what places I saw on the way, or to how many Turks I sold rides. Sometimes I thought I was on the Argo, beating up the Euxine, which lurched like the camel, for there's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in, turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine, and sometimes I thought I had escaped from it and was hiding in the woods from Medea and longing never to have to board the Argo again. I remembered how Euripides had made Medea's nurse complain,

  Oh how I wish that an embargo

  Had kept in port the good ship Argo . . . .

  But now I fear her trip will be a

  Damned business for my Miss Medea, etc., etc.

  And then I thought I was not from the Argo at all, but an emperor of Trebizond escaping from the Turks and from Mahomet the Conqueror, and I would kick the camel with my heels to make it run.

  It seemed to me that I passed wonderful Roman and Greek buildings, aqueducts, temples, theatres and arches, and sometimes whole cities, either in ruin or as fresh as new, and dazzling in white marble and paint, and sometimes they were Byzantine or Seljuk, or even Hittite, but the Hittite ones must have been built up by the potion, because there never is so much Hittite showing above the ground, it has to be dug and delved for and never looks fresh, but I hurried by what I thought were Hittite buildings, for fear there should be Hittite characters about, for no one can like Hittites, they are full of gloom and menace and too long ago, like Assyrians.

  So I cannot tell what I actually did see and pass. There were mountains and rocky heights and steep roads up and down, and great flat stretches, and woods and open spaces, and villages with wooden houses and women working on patches of dry land and among scrawny vines, and sometimes I stopped in cafés to rest and eat and drink, and every one was kind and helped me and gave me more than I could spare the money to pay for, and I grew fond of Turks. Once on a mountain side I came to a hut by itself, and I went into it and lay down, with the camel tied to a hook by the door, and I fell asleep or into a coma, and was woken by someone speak
ing, and it was the shepherd whose hut it was, but he did not mind my lying on his floor, he fed me with yoghourt and coffee and offered me some rice pilav, but I was not hungry that day, so he sat down and ate it himself, and I saw that it was his supper, and that he would have given it to me because he saw I felt ill, and because of this I almost cried, on account of Turks being so kind. I thought about aunt Dot and Father Hugh, and I hoped that Russians were being as kind to them, and I thought that Russian shepherds and their wives would be, but not the police, and it was most likely the police they would have to be a good deal with.

  After that day I began to improve, and could do more riding, and was able to take more notice of what I passed through, and it seemed to me that these rocky Turkey mountains and great plateaus became less strange and out of this world and less like mountains and plains of the moon, and when at last I rode into Kayseri, I felt able to go and see the site of Roman Caesarea, a mile off, which was not much to see, as well as to look intelligently at Seljuk Kayseri inside its Justinian walls, and at the bustling modern streets with bazaars and cafés and restaurants, where at last I ate a good meal.

  But I did not pay for this meal, on account of having met David in the square, where he was parking a car. We both said hullo, and he looked surprised to see the camel. He asked after the rest of my party, and I told him, and he laughed a good deal, because I suppose it seems rather funny, people's travel-companions suddenly disappearing into Russia and leaving one their camel to look after. Then he stopped laughing, and said in the voice one uses when a friend has been killed by a shark, "You heard about poor Charles?"

  I said I had.

  "It was pretty awful," David said. "I mean, it's not the sort of thing one expects to happen, actually. It gave me a ghastly shock when I heard. I was in Antioch at the time. Of course I flew at once to Antalya—that was where it happened—to see after things and take charge of his possessions till his father came out. My God, Laurie, it was pretty bad, meeting his father. Poor, poor old chap. I wish we hadn't fallen out. But I'm trying to forget all that. We did quite a lot of work together on the book before we parted, you know; I mean, we planned it; I doubt if Charles got anything to speak of down on paper, though I did."

  I said, "Charles did too. I found part of it in a drawer at the Yessilyurt—quite a long chunk. It was so good, I took it all about Trebizond with me."

  I was looking at David's face, which is what is called an interesting thoughtful kind of face, and, though it had become so brown with sun that it was hard to detect, I saw it turn red.

  "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 w
ould 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.