I'm writing this in a smoking tea-house waiting for the bus to take me and the Tibetan porters on a Penelope Memorial Walk.
Over the years I've heard so much about Kulu from her. On my first night, in the village behind Kranti's house, there was a dance of young boys in pleated white skirts (like evzones)
770
with cockades of monal pheasant feathers. The silver trumpets looked entirely Celtic, and the village houses with their dragon finials and mica-glinting roofs could easily be the Heorot
771
in
Beowulf
.
I said, months ago, that I'd go to Elizabeth's sister's wedding in Upstate New York on May 10. Since Delhi is about half way round the world, I'm going to slip off to Japan for a week (I have a Japanese publisher!). Then to England â at last! I do hope this catches you before you leave and that I'll find you both in London around 20 May.
Much love
Bruce
To John Pawson
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 30 May 1986
Â
1. Part of my anxiety about the shower stems from a previous experience. For my (or rather Christopher Gibbs') cubby-hole in Albany, John Prizeman
772
installed just such a shower with a zinc tray underneath. That, however, did not prevent it leaking and, over 10 years or so, causing dry rot damage to the tune of some thirty thousand quid â for which we were mercifully insured, but it did cause a very unpleasant scene.
2. [Can you ask] your people to rip out the existing shower as soon as possible or at least to make sure there are no drips. I also, as you may remember, have had an altercation with a dreadful woman downstairs over a leak when the plumbing was being put in.
3. We have used, very successfully, in the big room here an off-white which is Sanderson's 7-13 P, and I would like to repeat the same in the flat.
Otherwise all is well. I'm sorry I didn't come over: but with a lot of friends from abroad in London, I was on the run. Work on the book recommences this morning.
All my love to Caius,
773
Bruce Chatwin
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 25 June 1986
Â
Dear Sunilito,
I have you terribly on my conscience: the truth is, at the end of the day, when I've written myself into a standstill, I develop such a horror of words that to write a simple thank-you letter is worse than Tantalus rolling the stone. It absolutely goes without saying how incredibly grateful we are, to you and Shalini, for âthe winter', no less.
I have not been entirely idle on your behalf, however. I have talked to Shelley Wanger at
House and Garden
who is very interested in the Sarabhai house
774
â and positively wishes you'd write that famous letter. I have made tentative enquiries about the most discreet of âhouse photographers' [Derry Moore] and believe he would love to do it, and work with you. So, the ball is in your court!
I have also been to Smythsons.
775
There seem to me to be two possibilities: one an elongated address book with a green leather binding and space for oodles of numbers; the other a slightly more portentous affair with marbled end papers, less space, and more gilding. The choice is yours. Either's fine by me. But how to get it out to you?
The book creaks on, at snail's pace: but it is some book. I'm not too discouraged because it really is
about something
. E. is well, and obviously cock-a-hoop to be back among the sheep: not without the usual attendant dramas!
Japan was the nastiest place I've ever been, except, of course, to where I then went, the USA. The most decadent corrupt country in the world, well on the way to ruin, if you ask me. Europe on the other hand strikes me as being rather less hopeless: certainly with the Libyan bombing,
776
the scales have fallen from people's eyes. Paris without Americans was unbelievably charming â and the French, to my surprise, were revelling in their absence.
No possibility, I suppose, of your visit here!
Much love, to you and Shalini
Bruce
To Ninette Dutton
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 26 June 1986
Â
Dearest Nin,
I'm sorry for the apparently endless delay in writing. The fact is that I've been straining to get the first draft finished: and by the end of the day, the nausea for words â even words to one's dearest! â becomes positively stifling. Coupled with the hideous complications of our post â I may have told you, three or four months' worth, presumably scattered somewhere on the streets of Kathmandu.
The news â no longer new â was that our best of all possible friends Penelope Betjeman, dismounted her horse while leading a trek in the Western Himalaya, sat down to rest on a mossy bank covered with violets and wild strawberries, hooted with laughter at her pony as the Tibetan boy tried to lead it up the path and, then, as he looked up, he was in the nick of time to see her curl up like a child going to sleep. Perhaps half a second and that was that. I was starting out on a trek of my own. We had saddled up, brought the provisions, when I bought
The Times of India
and found a perfectly beautiful third leader describing the death of the daughter of the Founder of the Modern Indian Army, Lord Chetwode. It was called âJourney to the beginning'. She had been there with her mother in 1933 and couldn't really think of anywhere else as home. Her ashes, in accordance with Hindu custom, were half saved in a brass pot: so ten days later, I and her friend Kranti Singh stood on a rock in the river Beas, her favourite river in the world, and tipped her in. The ashes, I have to say, were not like the Western world's idea of ashes. They were bits of skull and bouquets of budding English oak from the ex-Resident's garden, the pheasant-eye narcissus and Tulipa cashmeriana. Anyway they all went into the rushing snow-water and we let out a loud Penelope-ish âha! ha!' â and that was that!
After leaving Kulu, I went down to Delhi by plane with a vague idea in my head that since, in a week's time, I had to be at my sister-in-law's wedding, it might be possible to make a stopover in Japan. Which it was, and which I'm afraid I hated. Such a treadmill, and so poisonously ingrown, that after the exhilarating breezes currently coming out of China, I profess myself a Sinophile and a Japanophobe (if that's a word!). Not that rather wonderful things didn't keep happening to me: but the $96 to the airport with no cheaper way, struck this mean old bastard with horror.
Then the USA where as you'll know the really pleasant surprise was seeing Tisi [Dutton] about the only one too! What a madhouse! I was completely put off kilter by a friend of mine
777
for whom I had said, three years ago and in a moment of extreme weakness, that I'd write an article on her Tuscan tower, where I sometimes write. She needless to say wanted it in
House and Garden
so she could rent it to the rich. I was left holding the can, with an ultimatum that it had to be done by the end of the week: so all my days and quite a lot of the nights was consumed writing this wretched piece, which because it was so wretched was inordinately difficult to do. Alas! our planned lunch with T[isi] fell through. I hope she
does
get going with Bob and Victoria Hughes.
778
They were here last weekend, reading the book too, with snorts and guffaws, so that was also quite encouraging. Robyn D[avidson] and Salman are in a split-up situation of high oriental drama. The passions of the Thousand and One nights have been generated and it'll take quite a long time for the episode to simmer down . . . must end.
Elizabeth sends fondest love and I, B. When's the American lap?
PS Invitation to the Perth Festival in Feb. Think I'll miss. We may have a bit of time then: and if so will come anyway.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
HOMER END: 1986-8
When in India in April Chatwin had visited Penelope Betjeman's pyre in a bushy glade below Khanag. As he sat, pausing for breath, at the top of the Jalori pass, an old sadhu sitting outside a shrine had asked to tell his fortune. âThe old man looked at his palm and blanched,' says Elizabeth. âBruce got a terrible intimation of mortality.'
Since his return to Homer End in May he had suffered from night sweats and asthma. Over the summer, he developed a hoarse voice and noticed âsome vague skin lumps'. Looking tired and drawn, he worked hard on his book, determined to finish it before finding out what his illness was.
One hot day early in August 1986 Elizabeth drove Chatwin to Reading. She wrote to her mother: âOn the way back B had a horrible attack when he started to go blue & was just gasping. He can only go for little slow walks & is always cold & sits wrapped up with a heater on all the time. He's very weak & looks awful & sleeps a lot. He's only got a tiny bit more of the book to do & most of it is at two typists, one seems to be fast and the other very slow. Maybe by the end of this week he'll be able to go away. We think Switzerland wd be the best place.'
He finished
The Songlines
ten days later, 17 years and 3 months after signing the initial contract.
To Jean-Claude Fasquelle
779
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 16 August 1986
Â
Dear Jean-Claude, Many thanks for your letter. Yes. A new manuscript exists. There'll probably be some teething problems with it, but the moment a clear copy is available, you shall have it. French title,
Les Voies-Chansons
. This is an idea I've been mulling over for about 20 years and, now it's done, I feel completely done in. My next plan is to come and learn Russian at the Confrérie Jésuite Orthodoxe à Meudon! When and as I feel a bit stronger.
As always, Bruce
Â
Too weak to work with Elisabeth Sifton on the manuscript in New York, Chatwin arranged to meet her in Zurich where he flew on 17 August. The next day he was admitted to a clinic in Muhleba chs trasse âconstantly coughing up and with acute diarrhoea', according to the report of Dr Keller, the Swiss doctor who treated him. By the time Sifton arrived, Chatwin was back in the Hotel Opera where he had booked her a room. They worked on
The Songlines
every morning for five days, and then he said: âNow I must get well. You can go now.' Sifton refused to leave until he had telephoned Elizabeth. When Elizabeth turned up on 1 September, he was unable to move, although he did manage, two days later, to write a note to Deborah Rogers: âAs for the cover there is a black and white engraving of an aboriginal family by â God bless and trust him to see â William Blake.'
His parents were already on the Continent in a camper-van, motoring south to their holiday home in Provence, when, says Hugh, âMargharita had another of her psychic “There's something the matter with . . .” moments â this time with Bruce. She stopped and telephoned Elizabeth. The outcome was, they changed their itinerary. “We cancelled our holiday and turned
left
for Zurich.” '
On 12 September, hugely dehydrated and coughing up sputum,
Chatwin was helped onto a plane by Elizabeth, Charles and Margharita. âHe came very near to dying on the flight,' says Elizabeth who accompanied him back to Heathrow. There, an ambulance waited to drive him to the Churchill Hospital in Oxford.
At 3.34 p.m. Chatwin was admitted to the John Warin emergency ward for infectious diseases. He was identified simply as âan HIV positive 46-year-old travel writer'. Two days later, the ward registrar Dr Richard Bull wrote in his medical notes: âPatient told he is seropositive, has pre-AIDS but true AIDS not yet certain.' Chatwin would cling to that uncertainty.
On 26 September, from a biopsy, the Radcliffe laboratory identified as
Penicillium Marneffei
a mould fungus that is a natural pathogen of the bamboo rat in South Asia. It was then known only, as Dr Bull wrote in his report âin Thai and Chinese farmers'. Not long from those parts, this discovery cheered Chatwin, who metabolised his illness into something rich and strange.
His Evaluation Sheet reveals that while doctors did discuss with Chatwin âthat he
may
have AIDS' â and made Elizabeth aware âhe has not a good prognosis ' â the exact nature of his illness was concealed from Charles, Margharita and Hugh: âFamily to be told he has pneumonia.'
âTo me it was all very simple,' says Hugh Chatwin, who, in common with Charles and Margharita, would remain in ignorance of Chatwin's illness and sexuality until his last months. âHe would not let down his father.'
In Zurich, when he first received his diagnosis, Chatwin had asked Elizabeth to keep the news from his family. âHe minded terribly,' she says. âHe always thought he could tell his mother but not his father. “I don't want him to think badly of me.” He hoped he could hold out until they had found a cure.'
At this stage, the doctors preferred not to make known the result of the brain scan. This revealed no deleterious effect upon the left side of his brain, the generative side; but some damage to the right side could be expected to impair his ability to reason.
To Gertrude Chanler
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | âbut still in hospital' | [13 October 1986]
Â
My dear Gertrude,
So very many thanks for your sweet letter: this is the first one I have written since âthe collapse'.
Trust me to pick up a disease never recorded among Europeans. The fungus that has attacked my bone marrow has been recorded among 10 Chinese peasants (China is presumably where I got it), a few Thais and a killer-whale cast up on the shores of Arabia. The great test comes when we find out whether I can go on producing red blood cells on my own.