Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 26 June 1986

  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 – even words to one’s dearest! – becomes positively stifling. Coupled with the hideous complications of our post – I may have told you, three or four months’ worth, presumably scattered somewhere on the streets of Kathmandu.

  The news – no longer new – 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 ‘Journey 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 ‘ha! ha!’ – 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 mine777 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. ‘The old man looked at his palm and blanched,’ says Elizabeth. ‘Bruce 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 ‘some 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: ‘On 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 Fasquelle779

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 16 August 1986

  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

  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 ‘constantly 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: ‘Now 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: ‘As for the cover there is a black and white engraving of an aboriginal family by – God bless and trust him to see – William Blake.’

  His parents were already on the Continent in a camper-van, motoring south to their holiday home in Provence, when, says Hugh, ‘Margharita had another of her psychic “There’s something the matter with . . .” moments – 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. ‘He 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 ‘an HIV positive 46-year-old travel writer’. Two days later, the ward registrar Dr Richard Bull wrote in his medical notes: ‘Patient 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 ‘in 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 ‘that he may have AIDS’ – and made Elizabeth aware ‘he has not a good prognosis ’ – the exact nature of his illness was concealed from Charles, Margharita and Hugh: ‘Family to be told he has pneumonia.’

  ‘To 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. ‘He would not let down his father.’

  In Zurich, wh
en he first received his diagnosis, Chatwin had asked Elizabeth to keep the news from his family. ‘He minded terribly,’ she says. ‘He 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 | ‘but still in hospital’ | [13 October 1986]

  My dear Gertrude,

  So very many thanks for your sweet letter: this is the first one I have written since ‘the 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.

  That is the worst of the news! Otherwise things are very cheery. Your eldest daughter has become a real nurse. I am very well looked after: really, our National Health Service for all its faults is a wonder. Where else can you get the benefit of the first rank research brains for free?

  I cannot tell you how grateful I am for your support when I was in Zurich. It meant so much to me because I was beginning to panic. I went to Zurich thinking I’d picked up some Indian amoeba. Concentrating so hard on the book I had no idea how ill I was, but I never expected this! I bought a lot of watercolours and was intending to go up into the mountains to paint, but one day I could walk, the next not.

  By the time this reaches you, you’ll be out of the eye operation.780 As you say, one does steadily fall to bits, but you are so wonderfully brave and seem to take everything in your stride as I must learn to do.

  With all my love and a thousand thanks.

  Bruce

  To Ninette Dutton

  In an Oxford hospital but as from Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 17 October 1986

  Dearest Nin,

  Lovely to get your letter, Cheered me up a lot. Tisi told me, very discreetly that there was someone in your life – and so it should be. I’m delighted for you. This is a scribble written flat on my back – because O misery – I have caught in China an extremely rare (i.e no white man has had it) fungus of the bone marrow which as you know produces red corpuscles. I was in Switzerland trying to recuperate from having finished and delivered the book when the thing struck like a whirlwind. E. came out and we flew home just in time. The hospital staff thought it a wonder I lived through the night. But after 5 weeks of drugs, blood transfusion and expert care, there is talk of my going home. But alas, no wintering in Australia! because my blood has to be monitored constantly. So that is the news from this end. Something I never dreamed of, but will survive. E. is being marvellous. Much love, Bruce

  To Charles Way

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 25 October 1986

  Dear Charlie,

  Good for you! Of course in your hands I thoroughly approve of the BBC adaptation.781 The one thing I slightly dread is that they choose readers who are unaware of what a Welsh – and more particularly what a Border accent is. They should be sat down for an hour or so in a pub in Hay-on-Wye and then they’d know for sure. The radio Book at Bedtime for In Patagonia was so horrible that I threw my portable radio away and refused to listen to any more instalments. All faked-up, Englishjoking South America. Really chilling!

  I’m thrilled to think that I may, after all, see the play. Apparently, in Hereford at least it was sold out . . .782

  As always B

  To Murray Bail

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 3 November 1986

  Dear Murray,

  Where am I? you ask. The fact is I very nearly croaked. In China I have to have caught a very rare fungus of the bone marrow: so rare that it is not described in medical literature and only known to 10 peasants in Western China (now dead) and a single killer-whale cast up on the shores of Arabia. I am, therefore, an A1 medical curiosity. I’d been feeling rather low all summer, but not that low and thought, naively, that it was probably some Indian amoeba from the drinking water at Rohet. I finished the book – title The Songlines – which, to all the publishers distaste, I insist on calling a novel. I handed in the manuscript and left the very next day for Switzerland, thinking that a combination of mountain air and walks would revive me, and that first rate medicine was always at hand. Fat chance! The next thing I knew, on my first day in Zurich was that I could hardly walk along the street. I found by a miracle the great expert in tropical diseases783 and the moment he looked at my blood, he exclaimed ‘I cannot understand why you’re alive.’ Then the fun started. E. flew out and flew me home, to an Oxford hospital, where I was not expected to live through the night. It was not unpleasant. I was hallucinating like mad and was convinced that the view from my window – a car park, a wall and the tops of some trees – were an enormous painting by Paolo Veronese.784 Can we ever escape ‘Art’? Then roughly six weeks of blood transfusions, and a drug that had to be administered intravenously and made me feel terrible. I’m out now; spend most of the day in bed. But the doctors are pleased with me – so far! – and although my legs are still numb from the knees down I can totter about half a mile. But no Australian visit. They want to monitor my blood count once a week for at least a year (they may relent, depending on my ‘progress’). The real test comes when they take off the second anti-fungal drug (a pill, Thank God!). Then we shall really see. Sorry to weary you with this doleful and ego-centric tale, but the self is all I can think of. Reading early tales of Gogol in new edition of the Garnett translation, Chicago Univ press (2 vols). But this morning I’ve employed a researcher to begin a new work.

  Love to M[argaret]. E is wonderful at coping.

  As ever B

  To Nicholas Shakespeare

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [November 1986]

  My dear Nick,

  Yes. Quite a drama! A fungus of the bone marrow that destroyed all my red blood corpuscles. Known only among 10 Chinese peasants and the corpse of a killer whale cast up on the shores of Arabia. Obviously , therefore, I caught it in China last winter. I’d no idea I was so ill: because I was finishing the book (now in proof) I blocked it out almost completely and went straight off to Switzerland. The ‘thing’ struck 2 days later and, within five I couldn’t walk. However, the right drug was found. Be lovely to see you sometime. Do give a call one evening.

  Bruce

  To Jonathan Miller785

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [November 1986]

  I am very serious about Bajazet.786 I believe there’s some way that Racine can be made to work for a non-French audience through being declaimed/intoned in the bravura passages with the help of music. Having just finished a new book, I’m relaxing. So you call me, Bruce

  To Ninette Dutton

  9am | Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 13 November 1986

  Dearest Nin,

  An hour ago E. and I were complaining that the Greek (Mount Hymettus, my eye!) honey we had bought at vast expense tasted of precisely nothing, when the postman arrived with your package.787 We had a piece of toast each, in my bedroom, at home – and finished our breakfast with something quite delicious. Thank you and bless you. It hardly leaked at all: all we got were sticky fingers when opening it.

  I’m at home feeling quite normal and, though I tire quite easily, I had yesterday an eight-hour working day with the copy editor from Cape’s. We had a fearful struggle changing back to the original the changes made by the Americans to the copy. They refuse, for example, to admit use of the pronoun ‘which’, replacing it invariably by ‘that’ – which as we know makes prose so flat. Anyway despite my slightly numb and wobbly legs – apparently inevitable when one’s legs were reduced to spindles
– we went for a short holiday in Cornwall788 – a change for E. who, after bringing me an extra hot meal to the hospital every day for six weeks, was, to say the least, exhausted.

  I have got to the stage when I’m fed up with reading and longing to start some new work. I’ve read Bob H[ughes]’s blockbuster The Fatal Shore: it has a kind of Tolstoyan sweep to it. What a tale! As fascinating about the mentality of the English in the 18/19th centuries as of the origins of Oz. Other news is that Werner Herzog intends to start filming the Viceroy of Ouidah (title change to Cobra Verde) in Feb. The script deviates wildly from the book: but so what! Precisely as it should be to make a good film.789

  With much love from E. and I, Bruce

  To Charles Way

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 14 November 1986

  The BBC would want L[ouis] and B[enjamin]’s intimate thoughts – and how corny they must want them to be. The point being that the writer, if he is not brought up in that milieu, cannot write about what he cannot know – or occasionally guess at. I don’t envy you the task. Am out of hospital and proposing to work today for a couple of hours, as ever Bruce

  To Derek Hill