‘Good gracious,’ I said to one of the Greeks, ‘who was that?’
‘That was Signor Biancheri, the chef of the Casino. Every morning he comes here. You’ve never heard of him? You surprise me.’
‘You should go up to Katourian’s Place,’ the trumpeter had told me ‘but wait for an hour or two, until the sun comes up.’ So now that the sun was rising above the silhouette of the Castle, and its warm light was creeping along the quays and striking into the cobbled streets behind, I walked back across the still empty square and clambered up the steep stone steps to see for myself the city this remarkable populace had, over so many centuries, evolved for itself
I passed through barbicans and curtain walls, I clambered up shattered casements, I entered the immense gateway upon which Saladin had caused to be carved his triumphant and celebrated proclamation: ‘In the name of God, the Merciful, the Almighty, Salah ed Din the warrior, the defender of Islam, may God glorify his victories, here defeated, humiliated and spared the armies of the Infidel.’ And immediately inside, on the half-ruined rampart beside the gate, I found a second inscription, in English, upon a stone slab. ‘In memory’, it said, ‘of Katourian the musician. Erected by subscription of the Officers of Her Majesty’s Royal Regiment of Artillery in the Protectorate of Hav and the Escarpment, AD 1837. Semper Fidelis.’
On the platform beside the plaque, the very spot where Katourian is supposed to have killed himself, I spread out my map and looked down for the first time upon all Hav. The last morning vapours were dispersing, and the greyness of the night before was becoming, as the sun rode higher in the sky, almost unnaturally clear — the blue rim of the sea around, the low hillocks to west and east, the line of the escarpment, still in shadow, like a high wall in the distance. Salt gleamed white in the wide marshlands. There were patches of green crops and pasture to the north-east, and curving across the peninsula I could see the line of the canal cut by the Spartans during their long investment of Athenian Hav. Here and there around the coast, fishing-boats worked in twos and threes; rounding the southern point went the scud and spray of Signor Biancheri’s provision launch, hastening home to breakfast.
Now I could get the hang of the place, for the Castle stands on the bald hill which is the true centre of Hav, and which was for centuries the seat of its power too. To the north of it, away to the salt-flats, extended the hangdog suburb where Hav’s multi-ethnic proletariat, Turkish, Arab, Greek, African, Armenian, lives in a long frayed grid of shacks and cabins. It was marked on my map as the Balad, and it looked altogether anonymous, blank like a labour camp but for the spike of a minaret here and there, one or two church towers and brickwork chimneys, a stagnant-looking lake in the middle of it and a power station spouting smoke at its southern end. The railway track cut a wide swathe through the Balad, and parallel to it ran a tram-line, about which in places swamped dense clusters of figures, some in brown or black, some in white robes — ah, and there came the first tram of the morning, pulling a trailer, already scrambled all over by a mass of passengers clinging to its sides and platforms. I watched its lurching progress south — through those shabby shanty-streets — past the power station — out of sight for a moment in the lee of the castle hill…
… and turning myself to follow it, I saw spread out before me downtown Hav around the wide inlet of its haven. To the west, at the other end of the castle ridge, stood the vestigial remains of the Athenian acropolis, its surviving columns shored up by ugly brick buttresses. Away to the south I fancied I could just make out the Iron Dog at the entrance to the harbour, and beside it the platform of the Conveyor Bridge was already swinging slowly across the water. A couple of ships lay at their moorings in the port; on the waterfront the market was still thronged and bustling. And at my feet lay the mass of the central city, the Palace, the brightly domed offices of government, the circular slab of New Hav, the narrow crannied streets and tall white blocks of the Medina.
A red light was flashing from the prison island in the harbour, but even as I watched, it was switched off for the day, and instantly a hooter somewhere sounded a long steady blast. Seven o’clock, Hav time! Immediately, as if gates had been unlocked or barriers removed, the first traffic of the day spilled into Pendeh Square below me, and soon the din of the market had spread across the whole city, and there reached me from all around the reassuring noises of urban life, the hoots and the revs, the shouts, the clanging bells, the blaring radio music. The fishing-boats of the market sailed away in raggety flotilla down the harbour. Sunshine flashed from the upperworks of the ships, and wherever I looked the streets were filling up, cars were on the move and shopkeepers were unlocking their doors for the day’s business. A small figure appeared upon the roof of the Palace, beneath its gilded onion dome, and raised upon its flagstaff the black-and-white chequered flag of Hav (which looks bathetically like the winner’s flag at a motor-race, but was chosen in 1924, I have been told, so as to be utterly unidentifiable with the flag of any one of the Mandatory Powers).
Down the hill I went. The cicadas were chortling in the grass now, and halfway down a woman with a satchel over her shoulder was scrabbling in the turf for herbs. The great square was full of life by the time I got down there — cars everywhere, a tram rattling past the station entrance, flower-sellers setting up their trays beside the equestrian statue of Czar Alexander II in the middle. Outside the Palace gates, between the palm trees, two sentries in red jackets and crinkly astrakhan hats stood guard with fixed bayonets on antique rifles. The flag flew ridiculously up above. When I reached the station entrance, and made my way towards the hotel, I looked through the glass door of the Café de la Gare, to my right, and there with his instrument upright on the table the trumpeter Missakian, head down, was deep into a pile of beans.
3
Here as anywhere one must settle in. One must adjust one’s first impressions, which may indeed be perfectly accurate, but are sure to be partial. Already, I must say, that castle does not look quite so towering on its hill. Missakian’s morning trumpet is not quite so heart-rendingly flawless as it sounded that first morning, and the TV, if still fond of old Hollywood in Turkish, turns out to transmit programmes too in French, Italian and Chinese, not to mention brand-new American soap operas in Arabic.
Seen and heard at least from residence in the railway hotel, Hav is a city of very settled habit, living to programmes that seem inflexible. Usages of routine — ‘two o’clock sharp’, ‘as always’, ‘according to custom’ — are much favoured by Havians. Crack of dawn comes the call to prayer and the trumpet, and soon afterwards I hear the cry of the first hawker; he sells hot oatcakes in the yard behind the station, baking them in a portable oven, and always seems to have plenty of customers — many people, Miss Yeğen tells me, make a breakfast of them before they go to work. Seven o’clock, the siren sounds, and almost at once I hear the ding-ding-ding of the first tram, clattering into Pendeh Square. At eight the angelus rings from the French cathedral, and then the steel shutters of the shops clang up, one after the other through the streets. Eleven o’clock sharp on Tuesdays and Thursdays — well, generally sharp — and a long blast of the steam-whistle proclaims the departure of the Mediterranean Express for Kars (or as it used to be, and still can be with minor interruptions, for Tiflis, Rostov and Moscow…).