Under the Sun (21 page)

Heaven knows what we can do about the money situation. If you like why don't you flog those chairs back again if you feel it would solve anything. Also if you feel like it, I have a mustard pot that could go.

I am not particularly keen on entering India with cash on the black in Kabul if I am only coming in with a rucksack. I simply can't think why you can't arrange your money problems in India in advance. I shall take about £150 of my own, but I am not keen on the idea of being searched. Please get in touch with Robert [Erskine] and ask him what he does over his picture buying. I cannot believe you would have to get the rates of the bank.

I sold the dagger
²⁵⁰
for about £120 which I have in cash. The bed shop was closed and so I shall probably arrange it
²⁵¹
on my return through Paris. On the other hand I have become more and more anti-possession minded except perhaps for 2 little portable things, that I really may scotch it. You can also flog the Anglo-Indian chair of mine which I certainly don't want and never really liked, though I would like the money to go towards the thing I bought in Christies, which is
marvellous
.

. . . The other thing is that I think the best thing would be to get the flat off my hands, so when O.
²⁵²
arrives back if it's not before you come out, what do you think about setting that up too? Or perhaps you might find out from the Grosvenor estate what they have going in the way of one-roomers or two roomers.

The writing is not coming along too badly. I have done two chapters in the rough. I have a new method and am leaving whole sections very rough and charging on to finish and absorb all the material before cutting and polishing. As you know I make no promises as to when it will be finished but it should be by November. Where the hell's name am I going to stay in England? I really cannot see why I shouldn't have the use of the house and my study until I go, and I think you'd better warn Monica
²⁵³
accordingly, though Lord knows I don't find her exactly palatable company.

Margaret Mead plainly the Queen of Hags

Love B

Chora | Patmos | Greece | 12 August 1970

 

Dear E.,

God how the time flies. Have written nearly 40,000 words and that isn't fast enough. I keep on getting terribly stuck for two or three days at a go, and then it starts to come right again. Am just rewriting the first three chapters again for the fourth time.

This letter is being posted in London by M. Van den Bosch, the Belgian Ambassador, who is leaving for London tonight. We have had some really sweltering windless days and Chora sizzled. Tremendous drama when Bessie Schwartzenberg's mother collapsed of a haemorrhage caused by heatstroke and died at once. Then Bernard Camu reported to have skin cancer in New York and they are all leaving at once. Magouche Phillips
²⁵⁴
is here and quite wonderful, a great relief after rather a procession of fine looking but dreary ladies. I couldn't have been more pleased when Maxime McKendry left. God what a bore. Forever reminiscing about amusing
boites
on the Left Bank in the old days when we were young and gay. Then followed by alcoholic soulful looks. If you see Ron [Gurney], can you put some coriander and cumin in a little package as I want to do the
fainting imam
.
²⁵⁵
Also you couldn't I suppose send me another little Schaffers
²⁵⁶
as mine disappeared from the room together with my penknife, but I don't think I can make a fuss about it. I shall go from here to Samos, then to Smyrna and Istanbul when you are about to appear, then come back here for a fortnight or so; after that I can use Peter [Levi]'s room in Athens until I am ready to go to London. Iain [Watson] and Miranda [Rothschild] hate Istanbul so that is that. God alone knows what they'll do about it all.

Magouche is very funny about her ex-husband and yesterday we went on very long walks. Letter from my Romanian admirer. I seem to think he was the station master of the logging railway, or he may have been an archaeologist or the beekeeper. I can't be sure but have sent him a postcard.

I really think the answer is NO to Straker. It
²⁵⁷
is quite unsuitable to be worn out in the open at all, and I won't have it rained on by all that filthy Edinburgh. Apologetic regrets. It would swamp him anyway.

Must get on with Martin Buber.
²⁵⁸

xxxxxxxxxxxx B

Kardamyli | Messenia | Greece | [30 August 1970]

 

Dear E.

I am sitting on the terrace of Paddy and Joan Leigh Fermor's
²⁵⁹
house in the Mani. Quite heavenly here. The whole Taygetos range plunges straight down into the sea and eagles float in thermals above the house – a low arcaded affair of limestone beautifully marked with red karst. Olives and pencil thin cypress clothe the terrace between the mountains and the sea. From the house one can dip into the water. Magouche Phillips and I came here from Patmos having spent 2 days in Athens to get my teeth seen to
²⁶⁰
. We were both rather glad to go. Apart from the nannying that went on, Patmos is the most enervating place – bar Edinburgh – I have ever spent any time on. One was really ready for the Revelation.
²⁶¹
Beautiful though it is – the wind howls – or it blisters in the sun, those pinnacles of jagged rock finally pierce through to the subconscious. Smart English girls of brittle conversation burst into tears after a week. No food or water, but above all that terrible feeling of not being able to get off which is psychologically devastating. If I hadn't had something to do I would have gone mad. As it is I
have
done – in the
rough,
five chapters each of about 12,000 words, despite constant interruptions. I am not exactly thrilled by all of it – and it can be polished and resorted later, but still it is something done instead of flailing about.

I am coming to the conclusion that there is no point at all in coming back to England in the autumn. Llama Ghika
²⁶²
has got to be in Athens all the time which bores her stiff and I can sit in a sort of penthouse they have – or in Peter [Levi]'s room which is the nicest room in Athens facing Lycabettus, the Parthenon, Hymettus and the sea. Going back to England would only disrupt the book further and make me a month later in India by the time one had got there and I really do think it will/or can be ready in its first draft by
November
(early). I would then send a copy to London – and get them to annotate a version and have it sent to India somewhere. Anyway going back to England is bound to cost £200 at least by the time one has fiddled about. I suggest therefore we meet in Salonika – if you pass through Salonika on yr Istanbul voyage + 1 winter suit and some cold weather clothes for Turkey in winter.
Gloves
, my windjammer
rucksack
– the one I had for Mauretania and boots and new laces and socks. Also you'd better bring my camera en route. I don't know quite what to do about money, but I believe I do get £1,000 on delivery of the manuscript. The other thing that has struck me is that
I
might establish non-residence in England this year in case any decent money ever came from it. Apparently I can – for a time – become non-resident without you at all – and after next July 15 would anyway be entitled to 3 months in England. Anyhow we can discuss it. I do suggest that you pre-pay a cable to the Nash's in N.Y for permission to get out the Inca Poncho before you leave – and apprise Oliver [Hoare] and Ferdy Mayne
²⁶³
that I don't want the flat. We should rescue the
bed
and the
Navaho
carpet – and that spit roaster (but I'm not sure about the latter because it's on the H/P with the frig). Anyhow I'd be prepared to let the whole thing go and those beastly cushions if I did not have any expense of any kind to
pay
. If you can't arrange it I suppose H.P.C. [Hugh Chatwin] can be called in if necessary. If the Maori
²⁶⁴
sells, it sells. If it doesn't I'm not sorry because damn it it is still a very good work of art. Robin Symes
²⁶⁵
was in Patmos with a couple of King's Road shits. Don't wear well in the sun those antiques boys – they acquire a fake patina. I do want that Maori piece paid for and collected at Christie's – a great buy quite beautiful – also the Arctic Tern is at Pollack Blue Boar Yard
²⁶⁶
and should be ready mid Sept if you had time.

Very entertaining
here
. Much more my style than those brittle conversations about blokes and sofas.

write c/o Nikos Ghika, Kricozotov 3, Athens

xxxx B

PS Let me have yr dates + itinerary soonest. May want to meet you
Igoumenitza
if I go to see the
Vlachs
.
²⁶⁷

Corfu | Greece | [September 1970]

 

Dear D

Patmos was buzzing with the helicopters of
your
friends. Visits from Jackie and Lee
²⁶⁸
disturbing the Revelation. Would to God that Greece was preserved as overleaf – as it is bad Beaulieu-sur-Mer in summer – with an overdose of hippies – decapitations under LSD on Spetsai – and new love from island to island for the rich. May go direct from here to India – await the yellow caravan of ladies in Salonika, Love B

 

Postcard, ancient houses of Istanbul | Turkey | 28 September 1970

 

[Elizabeth's handwriting] B just getting his train ticket to Paris & should be with you in a week. This is a marvellous place – we leave Wed for Anatolia & beyond.

[Chatwin's handwriting] Overeating here – stuffed mussels with hazelnut sauce. Starvation trip on train without sleeping car. Discipline needed in Stratford, please work all day – exercise at weekends.

XX B

Postcard, compote service of gold encrusted with diamonds, Topkapi Sarayi | Istanbul | Turkey | 28 September 1970

 

If only you had the money for this
and
Wemyss Ware. Much love Bruce and Elizabeth

Yenikoy 177 | Istanbul | Turkey | 1 October 1970

 

Dear Paddy,

. . . Unfortunately, I have to return to England because our tenant
²⁶⁹
ratted two days before Elizabeth left with Penelope and the rest of the caravan for India. The house cannot be left untended, and I go on the Orient Express tomorrow. I'll look out the Comparative Dictionary of Indo-European languages for you in Blackwell's, and would like to give you some of it as a present anyway. Do let me know if you have already done anything about it.

I escorted the caravan of ladies and their one sensationally ineffective gentleman across the Bosphorus. I dread the result. The cars lost each other for five days in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. One attempted rape on Penelope and her friend by a Turkish infantryman in a maize field near Edirne. Penelope selflessly offered herself instead of the girl. Offer finally accepted as rescue came. Not before the soldier himself had offered five Turkish lire, his week's pay, for the younger specimen. In Istanbul two exposures behind bushes, from sailors; but if the ladies will picnic in Gulahane park on a Sunday . . .

I have just returned from watching a party of fishermen hauling a drowned horse from under Galata Bridge, and am now going to the hammam.

As ever Bruce

Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 15 October 1970

 

Dear E.,

Have just had your letter from Malatya. That John [Nankivell] does sound unbearable and spoilt. I'm very sorry I simply can't send 100 dollars as the financial situation is as you said rather desperate. I have decided to go down to barricade myself into Holwell because it is terribly confined here. Linda,
²⁷⁰
I must say, keeps the place like a surgery except that the flies in the upper room are appalling and make it impossible. I shall occupy the bedroom. Stayed in London with the Knight and Olda
²⁷¹
in their very agreeable new house in Fulham Road area.

Drama in excelsis about my teeth which were the cause of real anxiety. For a week they made tests on the tissue of the gum to make sure it wasn't
cancer
. The teeth may have to come out anyway and the gold filling removed. Incompetently done in the first place and rubbing for years caused it. I had visions of half my jaw coming off, and got rather alarmed. Mr King has been very good about it all, but I have to have about six sessions before they will be able to clear it up. The cost! I shall probably have to flog a few things to keep going, and might sell the Pomeranian suite. Sandy
²⁷²
thinks he's sold the Maori, but then he permanently seems to think he's sold it and no money is forthcoming. The Nashes are here. The Arctic Tern has arrived back and looks marvellous.
Vogue
delighted with the piece I dashed off in a morning and are paying £200 for it.