‘That’s terrible,’ I said.
‘I had a third son,’ she went on. ‘He was my favourite, but he died in the war. Dunkirk, you know! He was very brave. I had a letter from his officer. Very brave, he was! He was on the deck . . . covered in blazing oil . . . and he threw himself into the sea. Oooh! He was a sheet of living flame!’
‘But that is terrible!’
‘But it’s a lovely day,’ she smiled. ‘Isn’t it a lovely day?’
It was a bright sunny day with high white clouds and a breeze coming in off the ocean. Some yachts were beating out towards The Heads, and other yachts were running under spinnaker. The old ferry ran before the whitecaps, towards the Opera House and the Bridge.
‘And it’s so lovely out at Manly!’ she said. ‘I loved to go out to Manly with my son . . . before he died! But I haven’t been for twenty years!’
‘But it’s so near,’ I said.
‘But I haven’t been out of the house for sixteen. I was blind, love! My eyes was covered with cataracts, and I couldn’t see a thing. The eye surgeon said it was hopeless, so I sat there. Think of it! Sixteen years in the dark! Then along comes this nice social worker the other week and says, “We’d better get those cataracts looked at.” And look at me now!’
I looked through the spectacles at a pair of twinkling – that is the word for them – twinkling blue eyes.
‘They took me to hospital,’ she said. ‘And they cut out the cataracts! And isn’t it lovely? I can see!’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s wonderful!’
‘It’s my first time out alone,’ she confided. ‘I didn’t tell a soul. I said to myself at breakfast, “It’s a lovely day. I’ll take the bus to Circular Quay, and go over on the ferry to Manly . . . just like we did in the old days.” I had a fish lunch. Oh, it was lovely!’
She hunched her shoulders mischievously, and giggled.
‘How old would you say I was?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Let me look at you. I’d say you were eighty.’
‘No. No. No,’ she laughed. ‘I’m ninety-three . . . and I can see!’
Darwin quotes the example of Audubon’s goose, which, deprived of its pinion feathers, started out to walk the journey on foot. He then goes on to describe the sufferings of a bird, penned up at the season of its migration, which would flail its wings and bloody its breast against the bars of its cage.
Robert Burton – sedentary and bookish Oxford don – devoted an immense amount of time and scholarship to showing that travel was not a curse, but a cure for melancholy: that is, for the depressions brought on by settlement:
The heavens themselves run continually round, the sun riseth and sets, the moon increaseth, stars and planets keep their constant motions, the air is still tossed by the winds, the waters ebb and flow, to their conservation no doubt, to teach us that we should ever be in motion.
Or:
There is nothing better than a change of air in this malady [melancholia], than to wander up and down, as those Tartari Zalmohenses that live in hordes, and take the opportunity of times, places, seasons.
The Anatomy of Melancholy
My health was menaced. Terror came. For days on end I fell asleep and, when I woke, the dark dreams continued. I was ripe for death. My debility led me along a route of dangers, to the world’s edge, to Cimmeria, the country of black fog and whirlwinds.
I was forced to travel, to ward off the apparitions assembled in my brain.
Rimbaud, Une Saison en enfer
He was a great walker. Oh! An astonishing walker, his coat open, a little fez on his head in spite of the sun.
Righas, on Rimbaud in Ethiopia
. . . along horrible tracks like those presumed to exist on the moon.
Rimbaud, writing home
‘L’Homme aux semelles de vent.’ ‘The man with footsoles of wind.’
Verlaine on Rimbaud
Omdurman, Sudan
Sheikh S lives in a small house overlooking the tomb of his grandfather, the Mahdi. On sheets of paper joined with Scotch tape to make a scroll, he has written a poem of five hundred stanzas, in the style and metre of Grey’s Elegy, entitled ‘Lament for the Destruction of the Sudanese Republic’. He has been giving me lessons in Arabic. He says I have the ‘light of faith’ on my forehead, and hopes to convert me to Islam.
I say I will convert to Islam if only he will conjure up a djinn.
‘Djinns’, he says, ‘are difficult. But we can try.’
After an afternoon of combing the Omdurman souk for the right kinds of myrrh, frankincense and perfume, we are now all prepared for the djinn. The Faithful have prayed. The sun has gone down, and we are sitting in the garden, under a papaya, in a mood of reverent expectation, in front of a charcoal brazier.
The sheikh first tries a little myrrh. A wisp of smoke curls upward.
No djinn.
He tries the frankincense.
No djinn.
He tries everything we have bought, in turn.
Still no djinn!
He then says, ‘Let’s try the Elizabeth Arden.’
Nouakchott, Mauritania
An ex-Légionnaire, a veteran of Dien Bien Phu with grey hair en brosse and a toothy grin, is outraged at the US government for avoiding the blame for the My Lai massacre.
‘There is no such thing as a war crime,’ he said. ‘War is the crime.’
He is even more outraged by the court sentence that condemned Lieutenant Calley for the murder of ‘human Orientals’ – as if ‘Oriental’ needed ‘human’ to qualify it.
His definition of a soldier is as follows, ‘A professional man, who, for thirty years, is employed to kill other men. After that, he prunes his roses.’
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it . . . but by sitting still, and the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill . . . Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.
Søren Kierkegaard, letter to Jette (1847)
Solvitur ambulando. ‘It is solved by walking.’
Atar, Mauritania
‘Have you seen the Indians?’ asked the son of the Emir of Adrar.
‘I have.’
‘Is it a village, or what?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s one of the greatest countries in the world.’
‘Tiens! I always thought it was a village.’
Nouakchott, Mauritania
A scatter of concrete buildings dumped down in the sand and now surrounded by a bidonville of nomads, who, like Jacob and his sons, have been forced into settlement ‘when the famine was sore in the land’.
Until last year’s drought, about 80 per cent of the people in this country lived in the tents.
The Moors have a passion for the colour blue. Their robes are blue. Their turbans are blue. The tents of the bidonville are patched with blue cotton; and the shanties, cobbled together from packing cases, are bound to have some blue paint somewhere.
This afternoon I followed a wizened old crone who was picking over the garbage dump in search of blue rag. She picked up one piece. She picked up another. She compared them. She chucked the first piece away. At last she found a scrap which was exactly the shade she was looking for – and she went away singing.
On the edge of town three tiny boys stopped booting their football and ran up to me. But instead of asking for money or my address, the tiniest began a very grave conversation. What was my opinion of the war in Biafra? What were the causes of the Arab-Israeli conflict? What did I think of the persecution of the Jews by Hitler? The Pharaonic monuments of Egypt? The Ancient Empire of the Almoravids?
‘But who’, I asked, ‘are you?’
He saluted stiffly.
‘Sall’ ‘Zakaria sall Muhammad,’ he trilled in a high-pitched treble. ‘Son of the
Minister of the Interior!’
‘And how old are you?’
‘Eight.’
Next morning a jeep arrived to take me to the Minister.
‘I believe, cher Monsieur,’ he said, ‘that you have met my son. A most interesting conversation, he tells me. I, for my part, would like you to dine with us, and to know if I can assist you in anyway.’
For a long time I prided myself I would possess every possible country.
Rimbaud, Une Saison en enfer
Mauritania, on the road to Atar
There were about fifty people on top of the truck, huddled against sacks of grain. We were half-way to Atar when a sandstorm hit. Next to me was a strong-smelling Senegalese. He said he was twenty-five. He was stocky and over-muscled, and his teeth were orange from chewing cola nuts.
‘You are going to Atar?’ he asked.
‘You too?’
‘No. I am going to France.’
‘What for?’
‘To continue my profession.’
‘What is your profession?’
‘Installation sanitaire.’
‘You have a passport?’
‘No,’ he grinned. ‘I have a paper.’
He unfolded a soggy scrap of paper on which I read that Don Hernando So-and-so, master of the trawler such-and-such, had employed Amadou . . . surname blank . . . etc. etc.
‘I will go to Villa Cisneros,’ he said. ‘I will take a ship to Tenerife or Las Palmas in the Gran Canaria. There I will continue my profession.’
‘As a sailor?’
‘No, Monsieur. As an adventurer. I wish to see all the peoples and all the countries of the world.’
On the road back from Atar
There were fifteen passengers crammed into the back of a canvas-hooded pick-up. All of them were Moors except for myself and a person covered in a sack. The sack moved, and the drawn and beautiful head of a young Wolof peered out. His skin and hair were coated with white dust, like the bloom on purple grapes. He was frightened and very upset.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘It is finished. I was turned back at the frontier.’
‘Where were you going?’
‘To France.’
‘What for?’
‘To continue my profession.’
‘What is your profession?’
‘You would not understand.’
‘I would,’ I said. ‘I know most of the métiers in France.’
‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘This is not a profession that you would understand.’
‘Tell me.’
Finally, with a sigh that was also a groan, he said, ‘I am an ébéniste. I make bureaux-plats Louis Quinze and Louis Seize.’
This he did. In Abidjan he had learned to inlay veneer at a furniture factory that catered to the taste of the new, black, francophile bourgeoisie.
Although he had no passport, he had in his bag a book on French eighteenth-century furniture. His heroes were Cressent and Reisener. He had hoped to visit the Louvre, Versailles and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. He had hoped, if possible, to apprentice himself to a Parisian ‘master’, assuming that such a person existed.
London
With Bertie to a dealer in French furniture. The dealer had offered a Reisener commode to Paul Getty, who had called on Bertie for his expertise.
The commode had been over-restored to its original condition.
Bertie looked at it and said, ‘Oh!’
‘Well?’ asked the dealer, after a long pause.
‘Well, I wouldn’t put it in the maid’s bedroom. But it’ll do for him.’
It is good to collect things, but it is better to go on walks.
Anatole France
My possessions fly away from me. Like locusts they are on the wing, flying . . .
A lament on the destruction of Ur
Timbuktu
The waiter brought me the menu:
Capitaine bamakoise (fried catfish)
Pinta de grillée
Dessert
‘Good,’ I said. ‘What time can I eat?’
‘We eat at eight,’ he said.
‘All right, then. Eight.’
‘No, Monsieur. We eat at eight. You must eat before seven . . . or after ten.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘We,’ he said. ‘The staff.’
He lowered his voice and whispered:
‘I counsel you to eat at seven, Monsieur. We eat up all the food.’
Christianity was planted here about a century ago, not personally, by Cardinal de la Vigerie, Archbishop of Carthage and Primate of All Africa. He was a connoisseur of burgundy and had his habits made at Worth.
Among his agents in Africa were three white Fathers – Paulmier, Boerlin and Minoret – who, shortly after saying Mass in the forbidden city, had their heads struck off by the Tuareg.
The Cardinal received the news in his landau on the sea-front at Biarritz.
‘Te Deum Laudamus!’ he cried. ‘But I don’t believe it.’
‘No,’ said his informant. ‘It’s true.’
‘They are really dead?’
‘They are.’
‘What joy for us! And for them!’
The Cardinal interrupted his morning drive to write three identical letters of condolence to the mothers, ‘God used you to give them birth, and God used me to send them as martyrs to Heaven. You have that happy certainty.’
In a paperback copy of Tristram Shandy bought in the secondhand bookstore in Alice, this was scribbled in the fly-leaf, ‘One of the few moments of happiness a man knows in Australia is that moment of meeting the eyes of another man over the tops of two beer glasses.’
Yunnan, China
The village schoolmaster was a chivalrous and energetic man with a shock of glinting blue-black hair, who lived with his childlike wife in a wooden house beside the Jade Stream.
A musicologist by training, he had climbed to distant mountain villages to record the folksongs of the Na-Khi tribe. He believed, like Vico, that the world’s first languages were in song. Early man, he said, had learnt to speak by imitating the calls of animals and birds, and had lived in musical harmony with the rest of Creation.
His room was crammed with bric-à-brac salvaged, heaven knows how, from the catastrophes of the Cultural Revolution. Perched on chairs of red lacquer, we nibbled melon seeds while he poured into thimbles of white porcelain a mountain tea known as ‘Handful of Snow’.
He played us a tape of a Na-Khi chant, sung antiphonally by men and women around the bier of a corpse: Wooo . . . Zeee! Wooo . . . Zeee! The purpose of the song was to drive away the Eater of the Dead, a fanged and malicious demon thought to feast upon the soul.
He surprised us by his ability to hum his way through the mazurkas of Chopin and an apparently endless repertoire of Beethoven. His father, a merchant in the Lhasa caravan trade, had sent him in the 1940s to study Western music at the Kunming Academy.
On the back wall, above a reproduction of Claude Lorrain’s L’Embarquement pour Cythère, there were two framed photos of himself: one in white tie and tails behind a concert grand; the other, conducting an orchestra in a street of flag-waving crowds – a dashing and energetic figure, on tiptoe, his arms extended upwards and his baton down.
‘1949,’ he said. ‘To welcome the Red Army into Kunming.’
‘What were you playing?’
‘Schubert’s “Marche militaire”.’
For this – or rather, for his devotion to ‘Western culture’ – he got twenty-one years in jail.
He held up his hands, gazing at them sadly as though they were long-lost orphans. His fingers were crooked and his wrists were scarred: a reminder of the day when the Guards strung him up to the roof-beams – in the attitude of Christ on the Cross . . . or a man conducting an orchestra.
One commonly held delusion is that men are the wanderers and women the guardians of hearth and home. This can, of course, be so. But women, above all, are the guard
ians of continuity: if the hearth moves, they move with it.
It is the gipsy women who keep their men on the road. Similarly, in the gale-lashed waters of the Cape Horn archipelago, it was the women of the Yaghan Indians who kept their embers alight in the bottom of their bark canoes. The missionary Father Martin Gusinde compared them to the ‘Ancient Vestals’ or to ‘fidgety birds of passage who were happy and inwardly calm only when they were on the move’.
In Central Australia, women are the driving force behind the return to the old ways of life. As one woman said to a friend of mine, ‘Women are ones for country.’
Mauritania
Two days out from Chinguetti we had to cross a gloomy grey canyon with not a green thing in sight. On the valley floor there were several dead camels, their desiccated hides flapping rat . . . tat . . . tat . . . against the ribcages.
It was almost dark by the time we’d climbed the opposite cliff. A sandstorm was brewing. The camels were restless. One of the guides then pointed to some tents: three of goat-hair and one of white cotton, about half a mile away among the dunes.
We approached slowly. The guides screwed up their faces, trying to decide if the tents were of a friendly tribe. Then one of them smiled, said ‘Lalakhlal!’ and put his camels into a trot.
A tall young man drew back the tent-flap and beckoned us forward. We dismounted. His robes were blue and he was wearing yellow slippers.
An old woman brought us dates and goats’ milk, and the sheikh gave orders for a kid to be killed.
‘Nothing has changed’, I said to myself, ‘since the days of Abraham and Sarah.’
The sheikh, Sidi Ahmed el Beshir Hammadi, spoke perfect French. After supper, as he poured the mint tea, I asked him, naively, why life in the tents, for all its hardship, was irresistible.
‘Bah!’ he shrugged. ‘I’d like nothing better than to live in a house in town. Here in the desert you can’t keep clean. You can’t take a shower! It’s the women who make us live in the desert. They say the desert brings health and happiness, to them and to the children.’
The Songlines Page 18
