Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

I wasn’t putting up with that. ‘We don’t use language like that anymore, it’s considered anti-Semitic.’

VIRGINIA

‘We were never anti-Semitic. Never. One is allowed to detest one’s own in-laws.’

ANGELA

‘There are famous synagogues in Istanbul, you know.’

VIRGINIA

‘But very few Jews.’

( Pause .)

ANGELA

‘How do you know?’

VIRGINIA

‘Because I’ve been doing it too. The thing with the … thing.’

ANGELA

‘What thing? No thank you.’ (The flight attendant was offering coffee, but I never drank it after 3 PM)

VIRGINIA

‘Yes, please. Strong. The thing, the thing, the modern thing, the … computer. I’ve been internetting. On the computer in the lobby. There are only 17,000 Jews in all Turkey, in a population of 80 million. Or should that be eight hundred million? That’s about point something per cent.’

ANGELA

‘I say, Virginia. I’m impressed. Nevertheless, statistics aren’t the whole story. There are thousands of, um, Jews married to Muslims, or secret — Jews — from centuries back. ( Sotto voce ) By the way, do you mind not saying “Jews”?’

(I mean, it was obvious. We were surrounded .)

VIRGINIA

(

blankly

)

‘Not saying Jews?’

ANGELA

‘It might sound silly to you, but we prefer “Jewish people”.’

I knew it would sound silly to her.

VIRGINIA

(

hooting with laughter

)

‘Why on earth?’

ANGELA

(

irritated

)

‘Oh, you wouldn’t understand. It’s about … respecting difference.’

Even as I said it, I knew it sounded weak. But my diaphragm tightened with embarrassment when she used these terms in her ringing tones.

(The other one was ‘Africans’. That had taken half an hour to explain. Virginia would not let it drop. ‘I don’t understand how it can be an insult when Africa is a continent. Why are they ashamed of a continent?’ ‘That’s not the point, Virginia, they’re not. It’s about what people choose to be called.’ ‘That’s idiotic. It’s … unphilosophical. A table can’t choose to be called a chair.’ ‘A table doesn’t have feelings, Virginia.’)

Though famously sensitive, it seemed Virginia was only sensitive to her own feelings. Whole categories of people didn’t count for her. Me, for example. Did she see me as human?

Yet she made my judgements feel less secure. ‘Aren’t you tired, Virginia? I’m not up to talking. I thought that I would watch a film. Look, the controls are in your arm rest.’

VIRGINIA

‘Thank you, no, this is too exciting. The plane is a film, and we are in it.’

They were addicted to cinema, these modern people! At home, at table, or on tiny machines on the streets of New York — now even on a plane they couldn’t do without it. We were flying headlong through the air, ten thousand metres up, according to the pilot, surely that was excitement enough? But no, they were all glued to their films.

They were so much lonelier than we had been, each lost in the story of his own choosing. Even the children were attached to wires, laughing and gasping to their solitary rhythms as we sped above whatever ocean it was, Atlantic, surely, or possibly Pacific.

(Except the Jewish children, that is. They looked — livelier, talking and playing, hugging their parents and each other.)

Back in the 1920s, 1930s, people were rooted in reality. Loyal to reality, one might say. True, sometimes Leonard and I read through meals. Were we addicted in our own way? But — ordinary people weren’t, one thought. Meals got cooked, dishes got washed.

In this new century, it wasn’t so. The whole populace was lost in fancy.

Angela was putting her headphones on. They made the shape of her head like a monkey. ‘If you don’t mind, Virginia — ’

Two seats away, a fierce little boy was twitching in time to gun-shots. Martial music swelled from his screen. Part of me was curious to share his excitements — but no, like ‘TV’, I would find it a mixture of soporific and overwhelming. Better to live on the wave of the moment.

An American was talking in the row in front. He had a lot of opinions about Turks. ‘You see they have a different sense of morality. They love their Allah, I’m not saying they don’t. But they’d cheat you as soon as look at you …’

I was — completely in the midst of life. Partly because Angela was rather stout, so I felt the pressure of her arm, and the Jewess with the baby had sharp elbows which she waved around as she fed her child, and we all played bit-parts in the comedy above the clouds as the Jews performed their primitive rituals –

How agreeable to feel relatively modern, for once!

But as I watched the couple to my left I started to like them, for they loved one another. It was unmistakable, their tenderness; and the same was true of the wider group, who constantly made contact with each other; they almost seemed like one family, and not Leonard’s squabbling, divided one. Maybe religion did unify people. Like the New York Christians, bobbing in bliss. Maybe believers were happier than us.

Until, that is, the Christians fought the Jews, the Jews the Mohammedans, the Mohammedans the Hindus …

And the rhythms started to become soothing, till in the end, they smoothed me to sleep.

I laid my head on the breast of the night.

ANGELA

When she put out her light, it was gone midnight.

(Gerda, also high in the air, flying in the opposite direction to New York, was trying to balance her book on her tray while eating the extra chocolate mousse she had persuaded her neighbour to yield. Gerda was happy. On her wrist she was wearing Mum’s gold bracelet, which had magic charms of animals, deer, pigeons, a friendly dog. ‘That’s a nice bracelet,’ the woman said; she had a daughter around Gerda’s age.

But Gerda hardly noticed. ‘I’m reading,’ she said, which was just a Fact, and not Bad Manners. She was far away, in a world of crowing cocks and candles, and faint green stains on the waves at daybreak.

Here Mr. Carmichael, who was reading Virgil, blew out his candle. It was past midnight.

… But what after all is one night?

Still Mum always told her to be polite, and with a sigh, Gerda briefly stopped reading the ‘Time Passes’ section of To the Lighthouse to say ‘Excuse me, thank you for my pudding.’

… what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave.

Night, however, succeeds to night.

ANGELA

And only when Virginia was asleep — I was afraid she would read my secrets on my face — only then did I do what I wanted to do.

For among the films on offer that night I’d seen one choice I never expected.

A film I knew all too well, though even three years ago, hard to watch. The Palace of Ice was a documentary made to raise awareness of global warming, starring a father and daughter who sleighed across the Arctic.

So long ago. Or so it seemed. But what is three years, after all? Is it possible that then we were a close family? So recently, such an ache ago.

Three years. Gerda was, let’s see, nine or ten. Edward must have been forty? It was Edward’s idea. They made the film together.

But who had to deal with all the problems? With the furious school, who never accepted that travels in the Arctic were educational, with tracking down extra-warm thermals for Gerda, and patient lists of everything she needed — all right, to be fair, she made the lists, but I found it all, I ticked it all off! Who had to extract school-work for her to do on the trip from the self-righteous primary school teachers? ‘She may be bright, but she does need to work. It’s not good for children to feel exceptional.’ But even as they said it, I knew that she was, and I knew they knew it, for they let us go.