Under the Sun (64 page)

Do show this to John [Chanler] or any priest. But I'd rather it doesn't go any further.

Bless you, Bruce

 

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 17 May 1988

 

Dearest Gertrude,

The horse!
⁸⁵⁴
Obviously she has to be an Arab mare, not perhaps up to competition standard, but breedable. What I suggest is this, you and I go dutch on the purchase, the fence needed to prevent her getting in the garden, a prefabricated wooden stable, saddle etc. We also go dutch on her upkeep – with the proviso, if money matters go wrong (and if they don't get rid of Mrs Thatcher we shall have a Labour government) there will be a ‘safety-net' so that the horse doesn't have to be sold for ‘economic reasons'.

I get better by the day – although the neuropathy in my legs makes me very tottery. Yesterday, I went to the neurologist who said he could treat it right away, but with steroids – which is obviously out! The nerves should heal entirely within five years.
⁸⁵⁵

Fondest love, Bruce

 

On another outing, he crossed Duke Street and called at Artemis where Adrian Eales worked, a former Sotheby's colleague who had bought Holwell Farm from Elizabeth. Chatwin specifically asked for an engraving
, The Melancholy of Michaelangelo,
by the sixteenth-century artist Giorgio Ghisi. By rare chance, Eales had the print in stock. The price: £20,000. Chatwin told him he was building a collection for Elizabeth. He was then wheeled to the Ritz where he had rented a room. During the afternoon more dealers were summoned to his bed. When he was finished, he turned to his friend Christopher Gibbs with an ebullient eye. ‘Tomorrow, musical instruments, women's clothes and incunables!'

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 26 June 1988

 

My dear Gertrude,

Everything seems to be going to plan. You mustn't worry about the horse because I am not going to consider the horse unless we have a full time groom. I am fairly certain we have the money for it.

I have been buying your daughter the beginnings of an art collection which I hope will be wonderful.

In New York we bought the wax model for Giovanni da Bologna's Neptune
⁸⁵⁶
which has to be one of the most beautiful small sculptures in existence. We are making arrangements to give it to the Bargello in Florence with the use of it in our life times. We also bought an incredible German drawing of the mid fifteenth century.
⁸⁵⁷

With lots of love Bruce

Michael Ignatieff was sent a rare first edition of Isaac Babel's
Red Cavalry
not long after making a visit to Homer End. Early in July 1988 Ignatieff wrote to thank Chatwin – ‘few books are more precious to me than that, and few friends more beloved than you. So I will always keep it on the topmost shelf of the heart and think of your absurd and loveable generosity.' Ignatieff went on eloquently to express the concerns and fears which he shared with Chatwin's family and friends. ‘I came away from my visit with you full of dark and strange thoughts. You seemed in a realm of exultation – extreme physical dilapidation seems to have sent you shooting up into the sky with the angels. And your talk – adorable as always – was as wild as I've ever heard it: vows of purity, orthodoxy, crofts in the Shetlands, the art of the sublime, and the UR virus all contending, barging each other aside in your speech. Over it all hung an unmistakeable air of
Nunc Dimittis
, cheerful, joyous even, but hard to bear for those of us who would much rather prefer for you to remain with us a bit longer instead of ascending into the smoke or the monk's cell. Even harder to bear was some feeling – forgive me if I'm wrong – that you are in the grips of something, mastered by something, a fever, a conversion, an intoxication, I don't know what to call it, that is forcing its pace on you, forcing you to accelerate, to struggle breathlessly behind it, chucking away your life behind you as you pursue it. Over everything you said there was the image of Time running, running, and you at your wit's end to catch up.

Oxford Team for Research into Infectious Tropical Diseases, Oxford University | 7 July 1988

 

Aids Panic

In a review of three American books,
And the band played on, Crisis: Heterosexual Behaviour in the Age of Aids
and
The Forbidden Zone
, Mr John Ryle (LRB, 19 May) begins: ‘There is no good news about Aids. With a total of 85,000 cases reported at the beginning of this year the World Health Organisation estimate of the true figure is nearer 150,000. Their global estimate for HIV infection is between five and ten million. Most HIV-POSITIVE individuals have no symptoms and don't know they are infected: but the majority of them – possibly all of them – will eventually develop Aids and die; in the meantime, of course, they may infect anyone they have sex with and any children they bear.' This is hogwash. The word ‘Aids' is one of the cruellest and silliest neologisms of our time. ‘Aid' means help, succour, comfort – yet with a hissing sibilant tacked onto the end it becomes a nightmare. It should never be used in front of patients. HIV (Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus) is a perfectly easy name to live with. ‘Aids' causes panic and despair and has probably done something to facilitate the spread of the disease. In France, not even M. Le Pen could do much with le Sida. He had a go, but was made to look completely ridiculous. HIV is not some gay Gotterdammerung: it is another African virus, a very dangerous one, presenting the greatest challenge to medicine since tuberculosis, but one for which a cure will be found. Any virus, be it chicken-pox, mumps or HIV, will create a kind of mirror image of itself known as an ‘antibody' which in time will stabilise the infected person. That should be the pattern. But HIV is a very slippery customer. There is no positive evidence of antibodies at work, only negative evidence that a great many infected people are alive. In one case in the US an infected person suddenly became HIV negative. We should, in fact, take Mr Ryle's own figures. There have been 800,000 infected persons in the United States, of whom 80,000 have died. That means nine survivors to one death. This can mean only one thing: that some mechanism, pharmaceutical or otherwise, is keeping them alive.

One point cannot be emphasised too strongly. An infected person must never use anyone else's toothbrush or an electric razor. We all have gingivitis from time to time.

What is most horrifying about Mr Ryle's article is the callous cruelty with which he condemns hundreds of thousands of people to death. If a young man who has just been told that he is HIV positive got hold of the article, the chances are he might commit suicide. There have been many such cases.

Bruce Chatwin

Dedication written in
The Songlines
on Strehlow's visit to Homer End, 9 July 1988

 

For Kath with love beyond the grave, Bruce.

Dictated by Bruce Chatwin | Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 25 July [1988]

 

Dear Harry,

Since we met my life's taken a number of zig-zag directions. I've had malaria anaemia semi paralysis of the hands and feet – all now better but I'm still a wheelchair case.

On the intellectual front I've been collecting Russian icons, trying to arrange to become an Orthodox Priest
⁸⁵⁹
& have evolved certain notions about virology which I'm told by the professors will transform their discipline. Anyway I'm an Oxford don & member of the team for research into tropical medicine.

This means that any TV appearances are out at present, but in the autumn we might reconsider outside the framework of Peter's series. I promise to give you an exclusive. Best, Bruce

The Radcliffe Medical Foundation | ‘Expanding the Frontiers of Medicine' | Manor House | Headley Way | Headington | Oxford | 25 July 1988

 

Dear Cary,

We live in a time of new viruses: a time of Pandora's Box. Climatic change is the motor of evolution, and the sweeping changes in climate that have affected many parts of Africa offer ideal conditions for a virus that may have been stable over many thousands of years to burst its bounds, and set off to colonise the world.

The most pressing medical problem since tuberculosis is HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus), vulgarly known as Aids. The word Aids should never be used by the medical profession, since it plays into the hands of the gutter press, and causes panic and despair: in France, not even M. le Pen could do much with ‘le S.I.D.A.' There is, in fact, no cause for panic. H.I.V. is not a late twentieth century Gotterdammerung: it is another African virus.

My friend, David Warrell, is Professor of tropical medicine and infectious diseases at Oxford University. He is one of the finest clinical physicians in this country. He has spent many years in the Far East, working in the field to advance the study of cerebral malaria. He is a world authority on snake-bite; but he has recently returned to Oxford to lead a team of researchers into HIV.

As you probably know the virus constantly mutates and there seems little hope at present of preparing a vaccine. Excellent results have been achieved by the laboratories in describing the virus; but in the future we shall have to look elsewhere. The stable form of the primordial HIV must exist in Africa, and we intend to find it. The pessimists will say it is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The problem may be simpler: that of the archaeologist who knows where to dig.

Once the stable virus is found, it may be possible to produce a vaccine. In any case, the answer will probably not come out of the laboratory, but from the field.

The Oxford Team runs a two-fold operation. It has a programme of laboratory and clinical research based in Nairobi, the aim of which is:

a) to alleviate the sufferings of those stricken by the HIV disease in Kenya and Uganda;

b) to keep a watchful eye on any new mutation of the virus;

c) to find the ‘primordial' virus.

Back in Oxford we have a most urgent need to build an isolation unit of twelve or fifteen beds, in which exceptional cases can be flown in, observed and nursed under optimal conditions. Of course, this would not be confined to ‘foreigners': the exceptional case might come from Oxford nor would it be confined to HIV cases alone: any virus from anywhere in the world that showed peculiar characteristics would be included. The team intends to study dengue fever, lassa fever, rabies, cerebral malaria and fulminating chicken-pox. All this will cost money, but the sums needed immediately are not immense. The Oxford Team is expert in making money go a long way – although in this field of research there will never be enough.