The Towers of Trebizond Page 19

  We went to Bethany, in the cool of one evening, but still the burning heat of the day lay about in patches on the white dusty road and on the little hill where Bethany stood, a tumble-down Arab village among olive trees, and the house of the nice Bethany family was pointed out to us at once, and it did not look very old. My mother looked at it kindly, and as if she was wondering if she ought to leave a card. She would not visit the tomb of Lazarus with me, as she did not care for tombs; I told her it was not likely to have been a tomb, but still she did not visit it.

  Next day my mother and her protector Howard, whom I quite liked, flew off to Cyprus, for they lived like birds, winging about the world with the greatest of ease. I missed my mother, but she left me very comfortably off, and I had no more money worries, but could pay for my ship to Istanbul, and my ship from there to London, and all my living expenses and the camel's as well.

  I crossed over into Israel one morning with the camel, among great difficulties and a great fuss about my papers and a long lecture from the Arab customs officer about the wickedness of Israel, and of Britain for encouraging it. He had fierce black eyes that flashed while he spoke of these things, and he told me what a terrible crime it had all been, and I agreed that it had been a terrible crime, and he begged me not to forget what a crime it had been, and still was, when I was in Israel, which really belonged to the Arabs. So I said I would not forget that, and at last he let me go across, and the camel and I paced over no man's land into the Jerusalem of the Children of Israel. This made me feel very strange, and as if I had died, for I could send no communication back to the Jerusalem I had left, I was a cut-off soul, I might have passed from earth to the halls of Zion, except that they were not golden, or jubilant with song, and seemed to have no milk and honey or social joys, though no doubt the Children of Israel find it full of these things.

  I went to a travel agent and got a passage to Istanbul on a cargo ship that sailed from Haifa in ten days, so I had these days in which to see Israel, which is a very beautiful country indeed, I went to Acre, and spent a night in an inn that looked as if the Crusaders might have spent their last night in it before fleeing from the Holy Land to Cyprus in 1291, and I bathed in a blue and green sea outside the citadel. I went to Nazareth, which was full of tourists and touting guides and fake holy places, and I went on to the Sea of Galilee, and this was so beautiful that I stayed by it for several days, stumbling about the ruins of old Tiberias and going out with the fishermen in their boats while they cast their nets, fishing alone from the shore, sleeping in a small Franciscan guest-house above the lake, with a balcony from which I could every morning watch the sun rise over the wild brown and mauve mountains on the Syrian shore. The days were very hot, I rode the camel up the shore, to Magdala and the ruins of Capernaum, and the little bays beyond, where I swam in buoyant blue water. Every place along the Genesaret shore was in the Gospels; Magdala, and the ruined Capernaum synagogue, and the sermon on the mount, and the feeding of the five thousand on the opposite shore, and the rowing on the lake, and the drafts of fishes, and the healings, and the floutings of Pharisees and sabbatarians, and the vision in the dawn to Peter and the rest as they fished, and the calling of the disciples in turn to leave their work and follow. St. Matthew, people think, sat at the receipt of customs on the quay of Capernaum, taking the dues from those who landed there. When he arose and followed, did he have time to hand over his job to someone else, or did he just take up his cash-box and go, so that for a time people landed and departed without paying anything? There is nothing at the customs now but the black basalt quay stones lying about, and the little waves of the Sea of Galilee lapping among reeds.

  In all these places that I go through, I thought, he once was, he once taught and talked, and drew people after him like a magnet, as he is now drawing me. And I thought that if David had been with me and had asked me again what he had asked me in the cloister of St. George's Cathedral, I would have answered him rather differently, for by the sea of Galilee Christianity seemed local and temporal and personal after all, though it included Hagia Sophia and all the humanities and Oriens, sol justitiae, that has lighted every man who has come into the world.

  I would have liked to spend a long time in Galilee, fishing and rowing and swimming and riding about the hills and trying to paint the changing colours of the water and of the mountains across it on the Syrian shore, sad everywhere coming on fragments of Rome and of Greece. But I had to leave it, and I did not think I should come back, it was too subversive, it filled me with notions and feelings that were dangerous to my life. I did not want Vere to come there, though Vere had not my brand of flimsy and broken-backed but incurable religion, of which I have always been ashamed, so it might work out all right.

  I rode away from Galilee early on a still, hot morning, on the road that went through Cana and Nazareth to the coast. I tried to see Château Pèlerin, which is one of the best Crusader castles, but the Israel marines were in occupation there, doing whatever foolish things marines do when they manoeuvre, and this manoeuvring, whether it is by marines or armies or navies or aeroplanes, spoils so much land and sea and sky and historic sites and beauty in every country that it does not really seem worth while, and governments should rid their minds of this foe complex which leads to so much trouble, but, if they must manoeuvre, they should manoeuvre in dull, ugly places, not in Lulworth Cove or on Dorset downs or in charming villages which they raze to the ground or in Crusader castles which jut out into the Mediterranean with the waves washing at their feet.

  I rode on to Dor, which was the Roman Mantura, and St. Jerome says it was a mighty city once, but now no more, and not even an Arab village, but just a desolate reef-bound harbour and bay and a few ruined houses, though no doubt when it is all excavated the little that is left of mighty Mantura can be made to stand up again. As it was, there was nothing to do in Dor except bathe among the reefs and in the breaking sea beyond. Caesarea, farther down the coast, was a far more magnificent ruin, and Herod's splendid theatres and hippodrome and marble temple and palace and towers and harbour walls with great columns thrust through them were being excavated and looked very grand, and when Pontius Pilate lived in the palace he must have been very happy, for Caesarea is one of the harbour cities in which one would have liked to live, and it had been the capital of Palestine, and though there was nothing in it with a roof on I spent the night there in a digging with a large-size female statue they had dug out, rather than go on to horrible Telaviv. When the sun rose I rode the camel into the sea and made it kneel down in the waves and splashed its head to wash it and make it more sane, for, though better, it still was a little mental, and then I rode on to Telaviv for breakfast. This Telaviv is a very frightful town, which I will not describe, for I looked at it as little as I could and then dashed south to Askalon in a bus to see the Philistines, and the orchards and the shallots and the melons and the ruins curving round the bay, and to find any buried treasure that Lady Hester might have overlooked. This Philistine city was full of the Children of Israel come from Telaviv to bathe in the breakers. These Israelites were very kind and pleasant and encouraging to foreign visitors, hoping that we should think highly of the State of Israel and not so highly of the Arabs, about whose faults they told us quite a lot, and, as the Arabs had told us quite a lot about the faults of Israel, we felt that we knew just how very faulty both these nations were, and also the British, about whose faults they both told us, but the Children of Israel, because they had got what they wanted, told us of these more politely. In Telaviv they kept asking me if they could direct me anywhere, but I could not think of anywhere, except out of Telaviv, as nothing in Telaviv seemed as if one could want to go to it, though this was not a thing I liked to tell them.

  When I passed the tourist office, a bus stood outside it labelled Caesarea, and it was full of American and British tourists, and a guide stood outside it touting, calling out to the people who went by "Come and see a big Roman pleasure city two thousand years old, w
ith theatres, circus, hippodrome, palaces . . . " When people passing heard of anything so gay, so much better than Telaviv, they stopped and asked how much to go there, for the Americans thought it sounded like Coney Island, and the British thought of Brighton. The guide told them how much, and some of them got in the bus, looking as if they were off to a great treat. I suppose, they said, we can eat there, there are sure to be good cafés in a city like that. And then, they said, we will go to the circus. That will make a nice day. The guide tried to make me come too, but I told him it was a place I already knew. He said, "Very fine, yes?" and I said, "Yes, very fine," and the people in the bus were pleased to hear me say this. What they said when they saw it, I did not ever learn, for I left Telaviv and rode off up the coast again to Haifa, which I reached in two days. When I asked the way to the harbour, several boys came with me and the camel to show me the way and find my ship for me, which they did with great skill and ease, and I saw that Jews were more intelligent and progressive than Arabs and would get further, but which race ought to have had Palestine, or how they ought to have shared it out, is not a thing to be decided by visitors.

  So I sailed away from the Holy Land, and got to Istanbul in the evening.

  Chapter 19

  I dined that night with Halide. We talked about aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg, who were now, it seemed, news in three continents, on account of being spies. The continents were Europe, America, and Asia Minor.

  "They have been seen," said Halide. "Everywhere in Russia they have been seen. In the Caucasus, in Tiflis, in Siberia, in Stalingrad, in Moscow, in the Crimea. They have been seen in cafés, with your Burgess and Maclean."

  "What were they doing?" I asked, hoping that they had been having a good time.

  "How should I know?" said Halide, who was not hoping this at all. "Drinking vodka, playing tric-trac, talking, telling secrets, spying. Then too, Father Pigg has been seen in churches, hob-nobbing with priests."

  "It sounds as if they were pretty free."

  "But again, they have been seen also in Siberia."

  "What were they doing there?"

  "Someone said Father Pigg was performing miracles with his relics, curing people of their diseases."

  I thought this sounded real, because who would know about the relics unless he had been seen using them?

  "They get about, then," I said.

  Halide shrugged her shoulders.

  "Oh yes, they get about, if half what is said is the case."

  "Who are the people who say they have seen them?"

  "Spies. Russian spies coming over here, and our spies who come back from there. They tell one another. They tell your Embassy. They even tell me. Or rather, the people they have told tell me. But the trouble with spies is that they are liars. It is their métier, it is how they live. So it does not do to believe what they say, but always some may be true. Your Embassy in Moscow has heard no news of them, only these on dits. The London papers work it up, and send reporters to Istanbul to write stories about them. If they discovered you were here, they would besiege your hotel, as they besiege me."

  "It would be no use. I have nothing to tell them."

  "They don't need that. They would send to London articles about how you have talked to them and what you have said. No, not what you have said, but what they invent that you have said. They have no truth, they are as great liars as the spies. They would, too, tell tales of the camel, what it does, how it pines for Dot, about its love-life and its little ones."

  "It has no little ones, that I know of."

  "Oh, what does that matter? There would be little ones in the reporters' stories. And there would be a Romance in your life."

  "Well, there is."

  "Yes, and you would read it in the papers, with names. Romance! All they mean by romance is some commonplace tale of love. What do they know of the romance of the deserts and the mountains and the sea, the great Turkey cities buried in sands that we dig out piece by piece, the roaming of nations across wild lands to build grand civilizations . . . "

  "And palaces," I added, for romance excites me, "and harems and eunuchs and fountains playing in the courts, and peacocks spreading their tails in the sun, and paved roads running down to the port where the ships go in and out with purple sails, laden with cargoes of nuts and Circassian slaves, and camel caravans coming up from Arabia, jingling their bells through Petra and Palmyra and Baalbek, heading for Byzantium and the Bosphorus, and the walls of Acre standing in the green sea, and the Sea of Galilee in the dawn, and Jerash standing with its carved colonnades in the mountains, and Tenebrae in the darkness of some great church, and Mass among tall candles, and . . . "

  "Yes, yes," Halide broke in, "but we cannot now tell all the tale of Romance, it is too long. We are agreed, you and I and Dot, and all our friends, what is Romance. But these newspaper gossips, they do not understand all that, they do not read poetry or look at beauty, they only know Love. Yes, some wretched girl who acts in films or competes in beauty contests, so that she has become perhaps Miss Istanbul, or even Miss Turkey, or Miss America, she is asked, what is her Romance, and she, I dare say, tells those who ask her of the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn and the great march of the New Turkey, but they do not listen, they write that her Romance is some man of the films whom she will, for a short time, marry. Love, marriage, what are they?"

  We both brooded over this. I wondered how Halide's affair with the Moslem man was going, and what would come in the end of my own affair to which I was hurrying back. Love, marriage, what are they indeed?

  Since we did not know, we did not discuss them further.

  Halide added, "The newspapers have even made a romance for Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg. True they are middle-aged and elderly; that matters nothing when there is Love. Are they spies, have they been kidnapped, or do they elope, that is what the journalists wonder."

  "When I get home," I said, "I will perhaps write a piece myself, about how they just wanted to see Russia."

  I went to my hotel and to bed. Next morning I called at the British Embassy. I thought they were rather cold about aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg, and it seemed to me that they had adopted the spy theory, and of course they may have been quite right, but I said, if they were spying for Russia, it would not be in Russia that they would be, but hanging round Harwell or the Foreign Office, and if they were spying in Russia it would be for us. But the Embassy, I could see, thought that it was in their past that they might have been spying for Russia, and that they had now perhaps gone there (for how without Soviet connivance could they have crossed the frontier?), because they thought their activities had been discovered. The Embassy man asked me if aunt Dot had ever belonged to the Party, or had been a fellow traveller. I said this was most unlikely, for aunt Dot had always been a liberal, and had not voted in elections lately because no liberal had stood, though no doubt the Embassy man was thinking that probably no communist had stood either.

  "She is a very keen Anglican," I said, "she goes to church a lot."

  The Embassy man said, "Actually, that is a not uncommon cover. As to that, her companion, Mr. Chantry-Pigg, is, of course, a priest, and that is a better cover still."

  I said, had not this cover been rather damaged by the Dean of Canterbury, but he said it was still used sometimes. Then he said that, according to the accounts that had come over, very likely unreliable, aunt Dot and Mr. Chantry-Pigg were doing a good deal of hob-nobbing with the Soviet police.

  I said, "My aunt hob-nobs with everyone. Father Chantry-Pigg is probably trying to convert the police to the Church of England. Or, it may be entirely the police who are doing the hob-nobbing, which is usually the way round it is, in any country. I have heard that they are also in Siberia."

  The Embassy man nodded, as if he had heard that too, and sighed a little.

  "So entirely unreliable, all this news. Spies are trained, and so very successfully, never to tell the truth, whatever it may cost them to refuse. In this case, it costs them
nothing; indeed, they receive payment for lies. Well, we will let you know if we hear any firm news; please leave us your address in England."

  There seemed no point in staying on in Istanbul, and I left it next day by sea, with the camel in the hold. I had a small ape too, which I bought from a Greek sailor on the quay side; it was a nice little ape, and I thought I would try to teach it to play chess, like the ape I had seen in my dream of the Byzantine court at Trebizond when the Greek enchanter had given me the elixir, for it is a fact that apes have learned chess, and particularly in the east. I thought I would also try to teach it to drive my car, and I supposed that the most difficult thing for it to learn would be to know when the petrol was running out. I kept it with me on the voyage and played chess with it and it was quite quick at picking it up, but always made the same moves that I had just made, and I wondered if this was the way the Byzantine apes had played too.