Galata

Chapter One

Sometimes, in mid February, it snows in Galata. It is a temperate city with a lot of rain, except for the summer. The seasons come later here, deceptively late. The summer comes when you have almost given up on it, in a brief shudder of dryness in late August. The winter too comes late, if you call snow winter, and half of the years doesn’t come at all. When it does come, it is a beautiful but a risky business. You can never quite be sure where the flooding is. A thin layer of water, even salt water, can freeze in such cold. And when it freezes, snow covers it. You only discover that when the ice beneath the snow cracks and your shoes are suddenly filled with water so near freezing it seems to have gone beyond it.

In some ways, the people of the city are grateful for the snow when it comes because it is the only time they can convince themselves that their city is not dying. They hold markets, taking care to place the stalls only on the dry land, and they look out on the frozen water of the lower squares and pretend that the thin level of snow covering it is true land; that the cobbles below are not, in fact, haunted by salt water. The illusion only ever lasts a few hours, on the occasional morning. Then the tide retreats a little, the ice cracks under pressure, the snow falls through the fissures and the city is shown for what it is again.

The people here are devoted to two different things, or two sides of the same. One is forgetting; blocking away the knowledge that their city is slowly sinking into the sea. The other is remembering; looking up at the stone angels and the high churches and the faded engravings of the dead. Trying to ignore the saltwater damage to metal signs. The festival that is coming should do both. Forgetting, and remembering. The festival should assuredly do both.

Every place has a moment when it is regarded as being born. For anywhere old, that is generally the moment when it was first recorded; the first record that still remains. For Galata that comes exactly one thousand years ago. It is a brief mention in a taxation document, and records nothing more than the cattle kept in the fields behind a small seaside village, and the estimated population. It gives no idea about the place as it truly is or was. If you are looking for that, you must look forward over four hundred years to the Reflections of Saint Mattheus, a traveller from Rome. Read what he says about the place he visited in 1464:

And we walked across the forest to the valley, to the floating city. Here they cast petals on the water in spring. The houses are built of wood and on wooden slats. The roads are rivers and thin boats float between the houses. The sun sets on the waters out to sea, and rises behind the city, between the hills. The people are dark haired and choleric. We did not dare stay the night amongst them, although they declare themselves Christian. There was illness amidst the beauty, and much of the Lord’s work still to be done.

Obviously by the fifteenth century Galata was a place to be reckoned with, a city. It benefited from being mentioned by the famous Reflections. People are attracted by beauty blended with sickness, and this city has far more than its share of dead poets.

In some ways you could say that the extract above marks the true start for the place. It encouraged the Manvilles to move in, choosing the colder beauty of this northerly city over the dry security of more southern lands. That ancient family brought money in abundance, and money attracts architects and artists and the poets, dead or otherwise. All of the greatest architecture of the place, the high gothic towers and the later neo-classical domes, date from after St Mattheus’ visit. As he notes, there was much of the Lord’s work still to be done, and the city set about this work in earnest.

†

While this visit has been said for many years to mark the true start of the city, all of that is to be forgotten soon, at least for a week. For the coming year marks the thousandth anniversary of that first mention of Galata as a clumsy village wrestling with the water. Every year, New Year’s Day is recognised with the crowning of the year’s Queen. But every hundred years, rather than a day of celebration, a week is been put aside. The seas are rising quickly now, with global warming cracking the ice-caps far away. The waters slosh around the market-place at high tide, and a full moon is something to fear, dragging the ocean upward with its distant, pulling strength. The thousand year anniversary must be marked. There will not be many more anniversaries of note, before this city sinks into the sea. It will not last another century, not unless words stop water.

Winter snow comes late here. But the rains that bother the place come early in November, and after that it seems they will never leave. The narrow boats that go up and down the rivers between the houses have cloth spread across them, and the people huddle close for warmth and leap off at the landing docks and race for the dryness of their homes or other people’s homes. Normally, December is a bleak month, despite the struggle to celebrate Christmas with fine lines of lights that are strung across the waters. This year it is all different. The atmosphere throughout December has been one of anticipation. Not for Christmas, which comes every year and is generally a disappointment, but for something far more special. The final celebration of the city, the last moments of elation. A great festival that has been planned for twenty years, a wait which has seemed an eternity for the young. The mark of a thousand years of history. A week long celebration, full of all the life this slow-breathing city can still bring together. A last brief time of jubilation, before it all falls down. There was good reason to celebrate New Year’s Eve this year. It marked the beginning of something special.

Something that will never come again.

Joseph lives in the suburbs to the east of the central city. This is what will be left of the city when the waters have fully broken through. About a dozen streets on the higher slopes. For a long time it was regarded as poverty to live here. Through the past fifty years, the value of the properties rose slightly as the people became more aware that the ancient, and therefore beautiful parts of the city are crumbling beyond repair. Now, in a last glory or madness, the prices of the area have slumped again. People do not want to buy houses or rooms that will last. They want to be able to say they were the final people to live in the great ancient river-streets of Galata. There is a certain madness in the rich.

Joseph owns a small apartment on a dull street of high houses. These are perhaps eighty years old. Their only virtue is that they have high ceilings, and tall windows. There is also a balcony in every room that faces outward. Today, the first day of the New Year, his head is burning from the memory of too much red wine. Last night he met and kissed Celice, for the first time. They were watching the fireworks when it happened. She’d loved the fact that he was a detective. He hadn’t told her how low down he’d been. He hadn’t told her that he’d quit; that it sickened him, bored him. That in a way he was glad when his parents died in quick succession, leaving him with the money to support himself.

After the kiss, she had asked him for his phone-number, writing it down on a sheet of notepaper, leaning against a hard bundle of tin foil she had found in her pocket. She had told him she was keeping that for her crown. He had told her she was already a princess, and then they had kissed again.

This morning, his hands are aching and he feels old. Because he feels old now, at thirty-five, he is wondering whether this might be love and struggling to persuade himself that it is. He’s retired, partly through choice, and she’s almost retired – she’s an artist, and to his mind that’s the same thing. She would not come home with him. He is glad of that. It is hard for him to convince himself he likes a woman who will come home with him too soon.

Sighing to himself, he looks briefly in the mirror. His forebears would recognise him as one of their own. He is dark-haired and looks close to death, he is so pale and thin. There is a gunshot scar on one arm, red and dull as he stands there in his vest. His youthful skinniness has turned into unhealthiness, although he cannot quite admit that to himself yet. When he is done with the mirror, and with washing his face in water that is a little red with rust, he opens the windows and listens carefully. It is impossible to hear the music this high up and this far away. He only hears cars. Then he dresses simply in old blue jeans and a dark jumper, goes out of the room, and gets into a caged elevator that takes him down to the ground floor.

It is not early but there are still people on these streets, making their way downwards. None of these are dressed in carnival clothes. They are only walking to the centre to watch the parade. The people who are taking part were there hours ago. Every now and then a car will drive past, but this is rare. The people are making their way towards the centre, after all. It is far more sensible to walk. After walking a little way, Joseph turns on to a more main street that has been sealed off from cars. Here there are stalls, selling pamphlets that outline the planned festivities of the week. He takes some money from his pocket, and buys one. He can afford to.

As befits a festival, the celebrations will move towards a climax as the week progresses. This festival is in certain ways almost two celebrations. There are the parades in daylight, for children and wives and people too scared of the dark. These will be filled with gold and green and blue, cheerful music intended to reflect strength. Then there are the celebrations after dark. Fire on the water, or in the sky, or held in blazing torches. In a happy way, though with his head still throbbing, he turns to the first page of the pamphlet and reads what will happen today. There were marches throughout the morning, he sees. At two o’clock this afternoon, the true opening of the festival will take place. The crowning of the Queen of Galata in the marketplace by the cathedral.

Joseph turns the corner of Bereashith street now and knows he is in the true centre of the city. Many hundreds of years ago, when the money came pouring in, this is where it fell. The Manvilles and those among them renamed the streets with Hebrew names, Old Testament names. This is beginning street. Further on and further in, there will be Sha-Mayim street and Ha-Mayim street, the street of the waters. All the streets that meet at the marketplace, confusingly, hold the same name. Every one is known as the street of Elohim. There are four of these streets, and in each of them now a parade is taking place. These are not river roads, but they are covered slightly by the tide when the moon is full, as it will be later in the week. For now, the tide stops a little way before them, nearer to the ocean.

Along the main street there are many people, and Joseph sees as he passes a church that the time is now past one o’clock. Really he should eat but he feels too giddy for food. Now he can hear the distant sound of deep drums, more threatening here without the high pitched melodies that carry less far. Here, the people from the parades are beginning to become evident. These are mainly children from the early parade of the morning. They are laughing and fighting in the centre of the streets, excited at the absence of cars. The little girls are all dressed as princesses, with tin foil crowns and blue or green dresses. The boys are also dressed royally, in clumsy cloaks made of curtain cloth, with their best shirts white underneath. All of them made their march in celebration, and all are waiting now to see the real Queen be crowned. A normal girl like them, they have been told. Only seventeen years old, chosen from among the people. All are curious to see who it might be.

Today is the only day in this year’s festival that will follow what happens every year. Every New Year’s Day, a new Queen is crowned. There is always a lot of ceremony around it that means nothing now. She is always young and, in the language of the ceremony, ‘virginal’. She must swear that for a year she will be married only to the city and to God. She is given money, which she gives to her family. For the rest of the year she goes about her business, working in the market or the home, sometimes even studying. There is nothing different about her then, except that she wears throughout the day a circlet of silver that is hundreds of years old. That is the only difference between her and the others, but it is a great one. She symbolises the city throughout the year, and the normality of the rest of her life is just a sign that life will go on.

The streets get wider as Joseph walks, and then grow narrower again as he gets into the old part of the city. Here the houses are built on wooden slats, firm foundations that regularly rot and have to be replaced. It is possible to walk to the main square, but to save time he catches a long boat along one of the canals. People sit in rows of two. He is seated next to a fat woman, middle-aged, with her hair tied in neat knots all across her head. With the cover over the boat and the fat woman sitting between him and the world, Joseph can see next to nothing. He nurses his sore head until they reach one of the dry land streets a little way from the main square. Then all of them get off, tip the boat’s driver and make their way into the crowd. Joseph is amused to notice that even the driver is wearing a foil crown, in recognition of the day.

These crowns are everywhere and in very little time Joseph begins to feel out of place. Aware that he will feel ridiculous either wearing a crown or not, he nonetheless bows to the pressure of a trader who has lain perhaps forty identical cheap circlets out on a blanket in the street, all of them woven rapidly but skilfully from tin foil and wire. He pays his money and puts the crown on his head and walks on. The music is growing louder now and very soon he comes upon one of the four processions that meet in the central square. He is in Elohim street, coming in from the north, and the procession is moving slowly. As it moves, one part of it plays music badly, traditional brass melodies undercut by the imperfect beat of drums. The people here