Maggie Gee - Virginia Woolf in Manhattan

VIRGINIA

‘It sounds like an ape, a foremother! No, it’s ridiculous, I wasn’t a mother, I had no talent for looking after. You can’t foist motherhood on me.

( More gently ) ‘I never learned to look after children.’

ANGELA

‘Do you object to followers? ( Cheering up .) If you won’t let us be your daughters, we’ll just traipse after you, unacknowledged.’

( She follows Virginia to the ticket office, which they have reached at last. They pick up guide-books. Virginia reads hers .)

ANGELA

‘I know quite a lot about it already.’

VIRGINIA

We entered the body of Aya Sophia through tremendous doors, twelve feet high. It was huge, and cool, full of light and people. It went on forever. It was a city.

‘Who was Saint Sophia, by the way? I’m sure she must have been hideously tortured to deserve this kind of edifice.’

ANGELA

‘Aya Sophia wasn’t a person. It means “Sacred wisdom”, Virginia.’

VIRGINIA

‘ Sapientia in Latin … Yes. Wisdom is female. I was never wise.’

The temple stretched above us, airy, colossal, essentially unchanged from a century ago, though the wheels of lights which hung from the roof were now electric, not candles. But far above the lights, reappeared like phoenixes, two golden mosaics flickered like flames — Mary the Mother gazed down at us, child on her lap, calm patient face, and I recognised her with joy and sorrow, the eternal absence I could never fill, the mother I always had to find again. When we came before, there was only blank plaster; the Christian murals had been painted out by Mohammedans who thought images were sinful. Atatürk, ‘friend of history’, had restored them, according to my guide-book. People were gazing up, but thoughtfully. These were aesthetes, not religious enthusiasts. Watching them, one thought ‘those wars are over’.

According to Angela, alas, they were not.

An American guide gave a loud commentary somewhere at the back of the church. ‘This is the Omphalos. What we call the umbilicus. The spot where the child was joined to his mother at the beginning of the world. The Romans crowned their emperors in this circle. They believed that everything started here …’

Yes, the mother. But I had to escape her. All through my life, ‘my mother’, ‘my father’ …

I wanted to go up to the gallery where I had gone with Vanessa, when Aya Sophia was still a working mosque, so the women had to watch the men from above. ‘Angela,’ I said, ‘come upstairs with me.’

ANGELA

‘Where are the stairs?’

VIRGINIA

‘There weren’t any last time I came, just a sloping stone ramp that spiralled up sixty feet or so. Empress Theodocia used to drive up it in her chariot. Such a shameless display of power, to drive one’s chariot right through a temple! I’m sure they’ve installed a lift by now.’

ANGELA

What followed was something I will never forget.

‘RAMPA’, it said on the notice. But when I looked right, I saw a sloping tunnel. As a girl, I could never use the underground. I asked a guide if there was any other way up, but she shook her head. This was it.

It was pinkish-grey, low-ceilinged, cobbled. It must have been there since Theodocia’s time. Waiting for me for two thousand years.

As I stepped over the threshold, my courage failed. ‘Does it go on like this? No windows?’

VIRGINIA

‘It will be fine, you’ll see. I just remember being young, walking up, with Nessa, arm in arm, and in a hurry. Not wanting to miss anything.’

ANGELA

(

walks to the first turn, then stops

)

‘Virginia, I can’t do it. You go ahead. I’ll sit and wait.’

VIRGINIA

‘What’s the matter?’

She was trembling, and breathing fast.

ANGELA

‘Nothing. I’m going to try.’

I didn’t want her to see my fear. I took a deep breath, made for the first turn, and rounded it, but it went on ahead of me, narrowing slightly, and no more windows, and would go on forever, no hope, I thought, and no Edward in the background to help me, and if I go on, I will never get out. As I turned and fled, I bumped into Virginia, and her body was surprisingly warm and solid. ‘I can’t,’ I told her. ‘I’m claustrophobic.’

And then we were together, back at the beginning. Virginia looked into me, into my fear, with those piercing orbs, without flinching.

‘Perhaps I am afraid of being born,’ I said. I tried to laugh, but my heart was beating, and a light breeze told me my skin was wet. ‘My mother told me I was born too fast.’

VIRGINIA

And so I took Angela’s hand. I helped her to be born, though I had never had a baby. I saw how she suffered, but for me it was easy. ‘Step by step,’ I said. ‘Step by step, and we’ll get to the top.’

Her hand was shaking, but she did what I said. We reached the first turn, and the last window. ‘Don’t look back,’ I said. ‘Trust me. If we just go on walking, we will get there.’

ANGELA

Step by step, she led me on.

VIRGINIA

I could feel the tension in her arm. She started to pull away and go back. I talked to her quietly, as if she was a child. Some nonsense, ‘It’s all right, good, you’re doing well …’ I no longer remember what I said. There was just my will-power carrying us, some womanly force that would make things happen, Theodocia’s chariot, Nessa and I, driving us up towards the light.

ANGELA

I will remember her voice for ever. It was soft and low, a sweet murmur. It kept me going, like a golden thread, and the gentle pressure of her hand on mine. But another voice tried to drag me down. ‘You’ve gone too far, you can never go back, you will burrow on through the dark forever.’

VIRGINIA

I could hardly bear her mute dependence, but I took the burden, I found a smile, my legs were strong, we went on walking. Suddenly there was a hole in the wall, I suppose an air-shaft, not really a window, and through it we heard the voices of children, sweet and clear and echoing. She stopped for a moment — I thought she’d given up — but then I saw she was breathing, smiling.

ANGELA

‘I’m all right.’

VIRGINIA

So we carried on up — only three more turns — the voices of the gallery were coming to meet us — and she was no longer pulling at me, but I kept her hand in mine to the end, and we walked together, free-er, faster –

ANGELA

And then we were out. The glory of it! Light, freedom. Light, light. The world all about us. She had brought me through it.

I felt as if I had been — reborn. I was laughing, crying. There’s no other word for it.

‘Thank you, thank you, Virginia.’ I took her other hand and held it.

VIRGINIA

(

laughing and pulling away

)

I thought she was going to dance with me! ‘Please don’t mention it.’ Yes, I had helped her. Still, after a second, I broke away.

We went to the balustrade and looked down. Busy tiny people, wide hoops of light. Massive pillars supporting our world. ‘This dome has fallen many times, I believe.’

ANGELA

‘I’m glad you didn’t say that before I went in the tunnel. Why did it fall?’

VIRGINIA

‘Earthquakes. War … human beings, always conquering things, destroying things. Warring religions, of course. Pagans, Christians, Muslims. British, French, Germans. It goes in cycles; build, demolish.’

ANGELA

‘But everything here feels so — permanent. So monumental. As if nothing could change it. One moment, then another moment. Everything feels inevitable. I know cities fall. And civilisations. I can do it in my head, but I can’t make sense of it, not physically, in my own human body. Which tells me this will go on for ever.’