What Am I Doing Here? Read online

  Table of Contents

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  Part 1 - WRITTEN FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY

  ASSUNTA - A Story

  ASSUNTA 2 - A Story

  YOUR FATHER’S EYES ARE BLUE AGAIN

  Part 2 - STRANGE ENCOUNTERS

  A COUP - A Story

  THE LYMAN FAMILY - A Story

  UNTIL MY BLOOD IS PURE - A Story

  THE CHINESE GEOMANCER

  Part 3 - FRIENDS

  GEORGE ORTIZ

  KEVIN VOLANS

  HOWARD HODGKIN

  AT DINNER WITH DIANA VREELAND

  Part 4 - ENCOUNTERS

  NADEZHDA MANDELSTAM: A VISIT

  MADELEINE VIONNET

  MARIA REICHE: THE RIDDLE OF THE PAMPA

  KONSTANTIN MELNIKOV: ARCHITECT

  ANDRÉ MALRAUX

  WERNER HERZOG IN GHANA

  Part 5 - RUSSIA

  GEORGE COSTAKIS: THE STORY OF AN ART COLLECTOR IN THE SOVIET UNION

  THE VOLGA

  Part 6 - CHINA

  HEAVENLY HORSES

  ROCK’S WORLD

  NOMAD INVASIONS

  Part 7 - PEOPLE

  SHAMDEV: THE WOLF-BOY

  THE VERY SAD STORY OF SALAH BOUGRINE

  DONALD EVANS

  Part 8 - TRAVEL

  ON YETI TRACKS

  A LAMENT FOR AFGHANISTAN

  Part 9 - TWO MORE PEOPLE

  ERNST JÜNGER: AN AESTHETE AT WAR

  ON THE ROAD WITH MRS G.

  Part 10 - CODA

  THE ALBATROSS

  CHILOE

  Part 11 - TALES OF THE ART WORLD

  THE DUKE OF M —

  THE BEY

  THE FLY

  MY MODI

  BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

  FOR THE BEST IN PAPERBACKS, LOOK FOR THE

  FOR THE BEST IN PAPERBACKS, LOOK FOR THE

  Join the critics in exploring Bruce Chatwin’s remarkable world:

  “Each piece contains a twinkle of surprise. . . . Chatwin is a writer whose extraordinary empathy with other people, his capacity to enter their personal landscapes, made his work singular.”

  — The Boston Globe

  “Irresistible . . . a vibrant mysterious collection . . . The cavalcade dazzles, and Chatwin clearly delights in the telling.”

  – Kirkus Reviews

  “Extraordinarily evocative . . . in that great tradition of British travel writers — Richard Burton, C. M. Doughty, T. E. Lawrence, Wilfred Thesiger”

  — The Washington Post Book World

  “The heart of this volume rests in Chatwin’s profiles of other people — often brief encounters that, amazingly, sketch entire lives and whole personalities in one sweeping stroke.”

  — Booklist

  “A writer of rare craft and powers of evocation . . . His terse, honed, ironic language was built to last.”

  — Chicago Sun-Times

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  WHAT AM I DOING HERE

  Bruce Chatwin was born in 1940, and was the author of In Patagonia, The Viceroy of Ouidah, On the Black Hill, The Songlines, and Utz. The last three he considered works of fiction. His other books are What Am I Doing Here, Anatomy of Restlessness, and Far Journeys, a collection of his photographs which also includes selections from his travel notebooks. Chatwin died outside Nice, France, on January 17, 1989.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto,

  Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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  Albany, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

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  Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1989

  First published in the United States of America by

  Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1989

  Published in Penguin Books 1990

  Copyright © the Estate of Charles Bruce Chatwin, 1989

  All rights reserved

  Page 367 constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Chatwin, Bruce, 1942-1989.

  What am I doing here/Bruce Chatwin.

  p. cm.

  Reprint. Originally published: New York: Viking, 1989.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-50320-1

  I. Title.

  PR6053.H395W47 1990

  824’.914 — dc20 89-78426

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  INTRODUCTION

  Like any layabout, I wanted to write but my early efforts were a failure. I don’t want to bore anyone with a confession: ‘How I became a writer’. I have many debts. I want to record the names of those who helped me before I published my first book. They are Deborah Rogers, Francis Wyndham, Tom Maschler, and Gillon Aitken.

  The fragments, stories, profiles and travelogues in this book have, with one exception – that of Mrs Gandhi – been ‘my ideas’. They can be judged by the dates. I have made changes: some to avoid repetition, some to avoid bad prose, some to revise editorial hatchet jobs. The word ‘story’ is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.

  Bruce Chatwin

  1988

  1

  WRITTEN FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY

  ASSUNTA

  A Story

  What am I doing here? I am flat on my back in a National Health Service hospital hoping, praying, that the rigors and fevers which have racked me for three months will turn out to be malaria – although, after many blood tests, they have not found a single parasite. I have been on quinine tablets for thirteen hours – and my temperature does seem to be sliding down. I feel my ears. They are cold. I feel the tip of my nose. It is cold. I feel my forehead. It is cool. I feel inside my groin. Not too bad. The excitement is enough to send my temperature soaring.

  In comes one of the people I most adore on the ward, Assunta, the cleaning lady and tea-maker.

  She comes from Palermo and has married an Englishman. She works here, not so much for money, as for love. I rejoice at the sight of Assunta because she fills the room with Southern warmth.

  She has come with a mop to swab the floor.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ she says. ‘The snake! . . . My daughter, she go to the police about the snake.’

  ‘What snake?’

  ‘Puppet.’

  ‘Puppet?’

  ‘No. No. Poppet.’

  ‘Assunta, what are you talking about?’

  She takes a deep breath and speaks in grim and halting sentences:

  ‘Mister Bruce . . . I have this next-door neighbour . . . She is an evil woman . . . My kids, they play in the garden and she scream, “Your kids make too much noise. Take them in the house” . . . She not believe in God or nothing . . . She have two abo
rtions . . . All she love is animals . . . She have dog . . . She have cat . . . She have rabbits . . . and she have Poppet . . . ’

  ‘The snake?’

  ‘So she knock on my door and she say, “Have you seen Poppet? She got out of her cage . . .” “No, I no see . . . Look for Poppet yourself . . . ”I shut the windows . . . I lock the door . . . I say the kids, you no go in the garden until she find Poppet . . . She not find Poppet . . . Anywhere! . . . Then I must go my garden shed to get something . . . Comes this terrible noise, “Sssss! . . . Ghrr! Sssss!” I slam the door . . . I shout, “Your Poppet is in my shed!” She come over . . . She open the door . . . And this snake jump out . . . And go round and round her body five, six times . . . And lick all over her face . . .’

  ‘How big is this snake?’

  ‘BIG!’ says Assunta. ‘Big as this room . . .’

  She waves the mop-handle diagonally across the room. The snake must be a python or a boa constrictor over twenty feet long.

  ‘And the head!’ she says. Her hands gesture to something the size of a small honeydew melon. ‘And horrible red eyes!

  ‘So she say, “Can I bring Poppet through the house? . . .” “No,” I say. “You go over the wall.”’

  ‘You should have gone to the police long ago.’

  ‘And the little kids playing in the street! . . . English people is mad . . . Now she knock on my door. She say, “My Poppet, she have a baby” . . . She pay £17 for artificial insemination . . . Disgusting! . . . My daughter, she go to the police.’

  1988

  ASSUNTA 2

  A Story

  It may be malaria. The temperature has gone down. Young doctors smile and ask how I feel. Now it’s my turn to be sceptical: ‘You tell me how I feel.’ I pestered them to put me on quinine but they were reluctant. If it is malaria, I know where I got it. Last spring, having recovered from a very rare Chinese fungus of the bone-marrow, I went to Ghana where a film-director friend was making a film based on one of my books.

  There were no hotel beds in Accra because the city was host to a Pan-African Ladies’ Congress. The film crew had moved to the North. My friend regretted there might be no one reliable to meet me. We called the British Council representative who volunteered to find something. I once spent a night in Accra, in the bus-park.

  Outside the airport building there were two reception committees, not one: the boys of Ghana Film Industries, the girls of the British Council. They waved bits of white cardboard: ‘Mr Chatwin . . . Mr Chatwin . . . ’ We drove off in the British Council’s white station-wagon. The boys followed in their tumbledown cars. We came to the hotel, which I think was called Liberty Hall. I was really too tired to take in the name, and I left at five in the morning. I gave the boys and girls beer and lemonade, and they shyly answered questions. I heard a loud and angry commotion at the reception desk. A lady was shouting, in French, ‘Madame, est-ce que je peux vous aider?’

  There were many hungry ladies in the dining-room. They were the delegation from Guinea and they only spoke French. I assumed the role of head waiter and my English-speaking assistant took notes on a pad.

  I announced the menu: steak, kid, guinea-fowl, chicken, fish. The ladies were very particular. One wanted her steak ‘not too cooked’. One wanted chicken with akassas and a chile sauce ‘not too strong’. The waiter went to the kitchen and the ladies clapped. Here was life again!

  I had not noticed that my face was covered with mosquito bites.

  I flew to the North in a chartered plane. I felt the film was going to look spectacular but was not much to do with my book. The star did not look like a Brazilian slave trader as much as a bad-tempered European woman. I mistimed one of my anti-malarials and forgot about it.

  A week after coming back to England I took another prophylactic and had a seizure: shivers followed by a temperature. It was not serious. I thought nothing of it.

  A week later I took another pill and this time had a shaking fit and raging fever. I had recovered by the morning. The doctors and I agreed it was probably a reaction to the pill.

  The young doctors were reluctant to put me on quinine without a go-ahead from the Professor. He is one of the most brilliant clinical physicians in this country - which leads the world. In the Far East he has made advances in the study of cerebral malaria. He dazzles me with his mind and his wisdom.

  He comes into the room with a stethoscope round his neck:

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Look at the temperature chart.’

  He looks at the chart, he looks up and grins:

  ‘I’m always mistrustful of patients who diagnose their own diseases. I suspect they may have healing powers, or selfhealing powers, of which we know nothing.’

  He goes. I lie back on the pillow and shut my eyes. The Professor has made me happier than he can imagine.

  He is a world authority on snake-bites.

  In comes Assunta with the morning tea.

  ‘Like a cup-a-tea, Bruce?’

  ‘I’d love a cup of tea, Assunta.’

  She brings the tea and we settle in for our daily morning talk.

  ‘You know, Assunta, it may be malaria after all.’

  ‘These doctors,’ she sighs. ‘They not always know . . . Sometimes you know and they not know . . . I have terrible time with my last child . . . ’

  ‘When was that, Assunta?’

  ‘My little girl is fourteen.’

  She is going to tell me another story.

  ‘My husband and I . . . we have three children . . . so I take the pill . . . and I get fat . . . I get so fat people say: “Assunta you’re pregnant” . . . I say, “I can’t be pregnant . . . I take the pill . . . I have my periods . . . Regular . . . ” But I feel something inside . . . It is not a baby . . . It not move . . . I have three babies and they move . . . So my husband, he take me to hospital . . . They make more scan . . . And one day doctor and nurses come . . . My husband come . . . He white like a sheet . . . The doctor hold my hand . . . He say, “Be calm, Assunta. Be calm . . . ” I NOT calm! “Assunta,” he say. “You really want this baby?” “Yes, now I want baby . . . ” Now really I worry . . . “What the matter?” “Be calm, Assunta,” he say. “Be calm . . . Assunta, the baby in your body have no arms and no legs. You not want child like that . . . ”

  ‘I go up and down . . . I go up . . . I go down . . . I no breathe . . . The nurse she have needle and I sleep . . . So I wake in morning and I am drunk . . . “Where am I?” I say the nurse . . . “Assunta, you still in hospital . . . ” And the nurse . . . she put in front of me piece paper . . . “Please sign” . . . I am so drunk I sign . . . O my God I sign away baby . . . O Mary forgive me! But no . . . I stay in hospital three months . . . The baby not move . . . Every week . . . Scan . . . Scan . . . Scan . . . Back . . . front . . . side . . . Always same: “Assunta, your baby, it have no arms and no legs . . . ” So comes time for baby to be born. The doctors say me, “Assunta, you want injection? . . . You not want to see baby? . . . ” “NO!” I shout. “I want see baby . . . MY baby! I see my baby! . . . With my eyes! . . . ’ So the baby come . . . And I look . . . And I see the little hand . . . My baby is normal! Normal . . . ’

  I am crying. I find it hard to cry, but I am crying.

  ‘I look at doctor and I say, “You, you, you . . . you . . . you fuckin’ bastard! You tell me my baby have no arms and no legs . . .” The doctor . . . he go away . . . I am happy . . . Happy, Bruce . . . So happy! . . . I hold my child . . . I thank the Virgin . . . I crying . . . So comes next morning . . . the nurses all around . . . I still crying . . . “Please, please tell doctor forgive what I say him . . . ” The nurses say, “No, Assunta. You are right . . . All hospital know you right . . . ”But tell doctor forgive me!” I still crying . . . So comes the morning . . . The doctor, he knock my door . . . He bring BIG bouquet of flowers . . . I never saw flowers like . . . BIG, BIG coronations! . . . And big box chocolates and little clothes for my baby. He take my hand . . . He smile
. . . ”Assunta, you right to call me fucking bastard!”

  1988

  YOUR FATHER’S EYES ARE BLUE AGAIN

  My mother has come back front her cataract operation. For years she has felt hemmed in by the murk. The colours amaze her.

  ‘Your father’s eyes are blue again.’

  My father has the most beautiful blue eyes I have ever seen in a man. I do not say this because he is my father. They are mariner’s eyes, level and steady. On the Malta convoys they scanned the surface of the sea for mines, or the horizon for an enemy warship. They are the eyes of a man who has never known the meaning of dishonesty. They have never tempted him to anything mean or shoddy.

  My mother’s eyes are brown and lively, with suggestions of Southern ancestry.

  When my mother, Margharita, was in hospital he found a photograph I had feared was lost. He had it taken at Hove in 1940 before going to sea. The photo shows the clear blue eyes, that can only be blue, gazing squarely at the camera from under the patent leather peak of his naval officer’s cap. My mother kept it by her bedside. I would kiss it before going to bed. My first memory of him is on my third birthday, the 13th of May 1943. He took us bicycling near Flamborough Head, the grey Yorkshire headland that Rimbaud may have seen from a brig and put into his prose-poem Promontoire.

  He rigged up an improvised saddle for me on his crossbar, with stirrups of purple electric wire. I pointed to a squashed brown thing on the road.