Under the Sun (52 page)

 

Dearest Diana,

Lovely to get your card. I couldn't think who would be writing from the Lygon Arms. Shades of my great-aunts
⁶⁸⁶
who would go to paint watercolours in the Cotswolds!

The weather here is alternatively lovely and tempestuous. But my room is always warm and, in a way, I rather welcome a storm. From the window I can watch the cypresses lashing about and the frothing waves a hundred yards away. After a storm though, I begin to get a bit chesty: but then everyone else does, so I'm not alone. I now realise the full enormity of this book, which seems to stretch before me like an endless tunnel. The only thing to do is press on regardless without looking back even, and then – only then – see if one can sort out the mess. It may take years.

I'm glad I came here. The winter in England is going to do me in, and I simply cannot summon up the concentration for a big work. They were after me the other day to write a piece for
Granta
on the
Belgrano
. I spent four days or so, fretting, getting unbelievably angry, and writing such drivel that, in the end, I had to give up. I cannot write about what I cannot know. The only letters I seem to get are from Australians: they're wonderful correspondents, as indeed they have to be. My great friend Nin Dutton is coming over in the summer, and I hope to spend some time with her in Prague. Otherwise, the only date is Midsummer's Night in Finland, where I have to make some kind of speech. The trouble is that this place fills up around the middle of May: so I will have to find somewhere else. Maybe Patmos even?

I know it's bad of me, but I'm not really inclined to leave Greece. I wish you'd come here in late April . . . Let me know because I'll have to make sure there's space. I'm sure there is.

Love to everyone. XXXB

PS I'm writing to Tom Maschler to see if he'll send me a copy/proof of Francis [Wyndham]'s book.
⁶⁸⁷

 

c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardarmyli | Messinia | Greece | 1 March 1985

 

My dear Tom,

Lovely to hear from you. I'm stuck in here for at least another three or four months. In fact, the only date I have at present is in Finland, on Midsummer's Night, where I have to make some kind of speech. Otherwise, I don't intend to do another thing but write this long (How I dread the word ‘long'!) book. Should we say it's longer than anything I've attempted before. It is, I suppose, a novel: though of a very strange kind; but as I have the most unbelievable difficulty slotting all the bits in, I'd really rather not talk about it. One thing I'm sure of, is that it won't be ready for publication this autumn. The fatal trap, I've discovered, is to think one is a ‘writer' and to go in for all the paraphernalia that surrounds writerdom. So for what it's worth, I'm keeping things a bit close to my chest.

I'd love to see a proof of Francis [Wyndham]'s stories (or novel) depending on which way one looks at it. If you have one handy, you couldn't put it in the post. He's terrifically bucked by the care and trouble you've taken, and I know that all his friends must be very grateful to you.

Directly I have something to show – which will be when I dare go over what exists and do a re-write – I'll of course send it on to you.

as always Bruce

c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardamyli | Messinia | Greece | 1 March 1985

 

Dearest Nin,

Well, I was a saying to myself ‘why don't I go trotting off to the post office and see if there's a letter from Nin,' and Joan Leigh Fermor knocks on the door and says, ‘I've been to get your post' and there was a letter from Nin. Well, this is good news, about the trip.

I'd dearly love to go to Prague with you, but May 31st is a wee bit early. I'm not that keen to leave Greece so soon. On the other hand it could be that I won't be able to bear Greece another moment (unlikely!). The only fixed date I have for the whole of the summer is Midsummer's Night, in the arctic circle (or near it), in Finland – which does mean that I will be drifting round London and/or Paris in the 10 days or so before. I may not go to London – or for that matter to England – for the whole of next year. I have a US advance and fee from teaching at a US university in the Fall, and may very easily take what they call a tax-year. I can't promise it, quite, but can you signal if you want to borrow the London flat? There is somebody in it, on the understanding that he'll get out if I need it. But before even moving in that direction, the question is whether you want it. London is a nightmare of expense in June; and I wouldn't dream of staying in a hotel.

But if I didn't see you in England, we could have a fine time in Paris. This book is real Slow-Boat-department (how wonderful that yours is done!) but I do have a sense of it now and it does move in a more or less orderly progression. I was torn, terribly, by my decision not to come back to Oz this winter. But I think it was wise.

Foreign perspectives are often the best. I have a lovely room here: a view of olives and cypresses and the sea. Most days are clear and lovely, but tonight we have a Siberian tempest, and I have to run the gauntlet of 300 yards of muddy path in drenching rain, to go and cook Circassian chicken for Philip Sherrard,
⁶⁸⁸
expert on Greek poetry, with a wife who drones on about the Golden Section in Greek Art.

Next day. As I wrote the sentence above there was a knock on the door and it was Philip Sherrard who had lost the stupid wife in the storm and was afraid she was at the bottom of a ravine. We had to go out with torches, but she had taken refuge in a chapel and was subdued for most of the evening. He, on the other hand, was not: he banged on and on about what was in my book? What was my definition of a nomad? And so on. It then turned out he was a creationist, who seriously (I think) believed in 4004BC as the date of all things. At that point I clammed up: ‘There is one thing with which one simply cannot cope,' Konrad Lorenz once said to me, ‘and that is plain stupidity.'

They went this morning and I have spent the day at my typewriter in the company of my Cistercian monk (or his fictional equivalent) on the beach north of Broome.

I may come to live in Greece: or at least have a hideout here. It's wonderfully anonymous in the winter, especially, and in the winter the cheapest bucket-shop fares to Australia are via Olympic Airways from Athens.

All my love to you and Tisi (it took ages for my postcard to get there!).

xx Bruce

 

And still they gazed and still the wonder grew

That one small head could carry all he knew.

Hotel Theano | Kardamyli | Messinia | Greece | [April 1985]

 

Dear Murray,

This'll have to be a quick one since Paddy and Joan [Leigh Fermor] and I are going on an expedition to Arcadia and I want to catch the post.

Many thanks for the Shiva N[aipaul] piece
⁶⁸⁹
which I read without agreeing with it. The white Land Council heavies are, as you said, ludicrous in their pretensions and self-deceit: I ran up against the biggest operator in the business who had got an Aboriginal Council to buy him a plane. Of course S[hiva] N[aipaul] should never have been banned: but reading his piece you end up thinking he actually wanted to be banned in order to air his particular prejudice. The Land Rights Movement is not all bad; not all doomed; things do go better when they get back to the outstations. Instead of adopting a high-and-mighty tone about the historical process etc he should have discovered what incredibly artful dodgers they are. Aboriginal Australia was – and still is – one of the world's most astonishing phenomena – the anthropologists and linguists are still only scratching the surface.

Enough of that! My news – and this is
DEAD
secret for you alone! – is that I have been offered a trusteeship of the London Nat Gall – following in your footsteps!
⁶⁹⁰
In fact, honoured though I may be etc, I think I shall turn it down. The idea of being present for at least 8 meetings a year in London fills me with terrible despair. My only reason for embarking on such a thing would be literary . . .!

I know, from reproductions, that
Afternoon in Naples
[by Cézanne]! Idiots! Why didn't they buy a sketch?

I'm leaving here in the weekend and going to a friend's house in Spetsai
⁶⁹¹
. Then quite an adventure to stay with the Abbot of Chilandari monastery on Mount Athos for 2 weeks. Derek Hill is taking me – and has been every year for the past 15. Athos is obviously another atavistic wonder – then E. and I may drive to Finland via Hungary, Poland etc.
⁶⁹²

All this depends on the progress of work between now and June. I now have a huge pile of paper – which has to all get under control.

Letters from now on best to Homer End, Ipsden, Oxford.

Funny I was thinking of Nov 7 for Delhi.

Much love to Margaret and yourself. B

Spetsai | Greece | 12 May 1985

 

All well. Adored your letter as always, but am so inundated and fatigued by words that I can't face anything grander than a p.c. – even to those I love the best. Greece in springtime is glorious but vaguely lethargic. Tomorrow I shall be halfway to 90!
⁶⁹³
An ‘Australian' book inches forward – para by para.

Much love B

 

A week after his 45th birthday Chatwin set out to fulfil a boyhood ambition: to visit Mount Athos. In 1980 he had wanted to come with James Lees-Milne (‘No, Bruce, I said, you can't') who had known intimately Chatwin's boyhood hero, Robert Byron. Along with
The Road to Oxiana
,
The Station
was one of Chatwin's ‘sacred' texts: Byron's account of his 1926 sojourn on this 30-mile-long Greek peninsula – the spiritual centre of Orthodox Christianity – in the company of David Talbot Rice, Chatwin's art tutor at Edinburgh. Next, Chatwin turned to Derek Hill who had visited Athos 15 times. On 21 May they arrived at the small port of Ouranoupolis from where ferries depart for the two-and-a-half-hour journey to Daphni, below Mount Athos.

Mount Athos | Greece | May 1985

 

Strange to relate, the evening after I had posted the previous p/c, I found myself in the frontier village of Athos, Ouranoupolis, having dinner with an Austrian lady who lives there: the companion of an aged Mrs Loch
⁶⁹⁴
(born NanKivell).
Her
name Hanchin – something like that!
⁶⁹⁵
She began to describe what she thought one of the most beautiful places in the world – the lake, the mountains – and do you know where it was . . . where she had stayed with Eileen Bell
⁶⁹⁶
etc. XXX B

Postcard, Stavronikita Monastery|On Athos, but as from 77 Eaton Place | 5 June 1985

 

I think of you often. Am having a fearful battle with my ‘Australian' book. Really very difficult – and the end by no means in sight. I daren't go back, either, in case I am tempted to tear the whole thing up. Any chance of seeing you in London or Paris/Aug/Sept. Then I am supposed to teach at Vassar but will probably chicken out.

Postcard, fresco of Last Supper at Stavronikita Monastery | Mount Athos | Greece | 5 June 1985

 

Sorry to have missed you in London: but as you see, I've been out of the world a bit. Not too seriously! I'll be coming to NY in the Fall. As always, Bruce

Chilandari | Mount Athos | Greece | 6 June 1985

 

Among the stranger coincidences is the fact that the vintner, a wonderful Medieval character, Father Damian used to work at Brinton's:
⁶⁹⁷
a young novice – also of Serbian origin – was born in Barnt Green
⁶⁹⁸
and was apprenticed at Milwards in Redditch:
⁶⁹⁹
an experience that gave him his monastic vocation. XX Bruce