Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Read online

  Prague is one of the most curious places in the world. The whole place is utterly bourgeois and always obviously was. Communism sits on it in a most uneasy way, and I would have said cannot last long. It is virtually impossible to meet a single communist. Even in the trains and buses they joke about it. Some of the younger generation might be communist but would not dream of owning up to the fact. It must be one of the few places in the world where one can hear the American position in Vietnam actually defended. They loathe the Russians and Chinese with an emotional fervour. A great many speak English, and I had a long lecture from a man on the excavation who could only be described as a peasant on the merits of Eton and how England was an education to the world. The world is full of surprises.

  I rather fell on my feet and met a charming couple called Plesl.148 He directs the excavations of a Celtic oppidum called Zàvist, nr. Prague and I was given the professional suite at the camp which meant that I didn’t have to live in town. We went on a tour in their car of S. Bohemia to see another friend digging another Celtic oppidum called Trisov. Nearby is a Schwartzenburg castle called Chesky Krumlov149 with a theatre with the Commedia dell’ Arte figures in a sub Tiepolo manner. We drank pre-war Burgundy in a wine-cellar. Also on the Zavist excavation was an Italian called Maurizio,150 who is my new friend. There is every reason why I should dislike Maurizio but somehow I do not. He is over six and a half feet tall and indecently fat. Despite the solid nature of Bohemian food he needs to be refilled every half hour. In July he was awarded a doctorate at Rome University and is vaguely connected with Tucci151 and his nefarious crew. His thesis, calculated to make me hate him, was on the close of the Indus Valley Civilisation and the coming of the Aryans. He got it all wrong, and used a number of inapplicable analogies about the movement of the Maya from Guatemala to Yucatan. Maurizio is never at a loss for some apparently brilliant remark about some obscure facet of Central European archaeology, but I fear that his knowledge is about as superficial as mine. He tells me he was once employed in smuggling microfilms from East to West Berlin. He is a man of many parts, an archaeologist of sorts, a smuggler, an International Socialist and also a self-styled great lover. Maurizio cannot talk about the stratigraphy of the Lower Quetta valley without finding two bulges which remind him of firm breasts. He bent double, which for him is no mean feat, to kiss the hand of a ferocious Slav lady archaeologist. She was somewhat affronted, but in general it must be said he enjoys considerable success. He is engaged to a girl in Andover, the Wessex bird as he calls her. This is not to say that Maurizio doesn’t have birds in any European town one cares to mention. The current object of his affections is Eva. ‘Eva, the first woman, she gave herself utterly to me.’ Eva is an enthusiastic wide-hipped blonde with sparkling blue spectacles and buck teeth, who lives up the hill from Zàvist with her refined but calculating mother, and I fear that Maurizio did not bargain for her as well. Mother and daughter work as a team, and they are determined to catch Herr Doktor Maurizio. Both have visions of a splendid Roman future, and Maurizio has built up such a baroque image of grandeur that it will be hard for him to dispel their illusions. He has already invited them to Rome. ‘Supposing they really come,’ he moans. ‘How would I explain it to my family – and the Roman bird?’ In the mean time Maurizio is eating them out of house and home – vast quantities of duck and dumplings, chocolate cake, red currant tarts and apricots. He sits on the sofa, and while mama presses her attentions and Eva ladles yet another spoonful of cherry jam down that ever open mouth, he contemplates himself in the mirror occasionally inclining his head to admire that strange Roman profile. I cannot imagine how he will extract himself from the situation, especially as mama has specially rented a riverside cottage for the two lovers this weekend. Despite a lingering feeling that he may have made Eva pregnant, Maurizio faces the prospect of the final parting next week with equanimity. ‘It is very simple,’ he says. ‘I shall burst into tears, and when I cry who can be angry?’ I cannot imagine it will be so simple and Evsen Plesh is full of gloomy prognostications of the scene that will follow.

  In the meantime on Tuesday another bird turned up, the Moravian bird as opposed to the Bohemian bird, a passing affair from last year’s conference when she had made terrible confusion of lantern slides while fondling Maurizio in the dark. News of her arrival in Prague from Moravia caused Maurizio to break off abruptly a deep conversation he was having about the affinities of the Beaker Culture in Bohemia, and to hurry to the Hotel Flora where apparently she was staying. I must say the Moravian bird was ravishing and did much better credit to Maurizio than Eva. She had a pointed turned up nose, dimpled chin and masses of hair piled up on her head and her sensuous little mouth flickered when she was silent. But there was a terrible snag. She had come to Prague to get married. The bridegroom was an ineffectual young German from Magdeburg with a fall-away chin and pointed shoes. She had known him for three years. ‘And to think,’ exclaimed the outraged Mauriuzio, ‘that when she was making love to me on the Linear Pottery site at Bylany,152 she knew him all the time. It confirms my opinion of the faithfulness of women. How could she give herself to the dirty German.’ Anyway for the time being she apparently could and would and the reason for her contacting Maurizio was that he should be best man at the wedding. He at once changed tack and agreed with alacrity, and also insisted that I come too as a witness. The time of the wedding was eightthirty in the morning on the next day at the church of St Ignatz. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he said, ‘she is only marrying him because she is pregnant. I shall play the part of the faithful and wronged friend and in two years I shall have her.’ I think that Maurizio may have miscalculated again because the two seemed absolutely devoted and stood in the foyer of the hotel kissing and fondling each other to the fury of the headwaiter who finally told them to desist.

  So the next morning at a quarter past eight found Maurizio and I in archaeological clothes but with carnations in our buttonholes on the steps of the baroque church of St Ignatz in Charles Square.153 One old woman was desultorily cleaning the aisle and another prayed loudly and devotedly in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, a real rock cut tomb with a plastic Christ looming over the boulders which were rather unsuitably planted with gladioli and gloxinias. An untidy man appeared and was under the impression that I was the organist. When I protested, he shrugged and said he would play himself. This he did on two chords only and to this cacophony the bride arrived in a large Tatra saloon accompanied by her parents and the bridegrooms mother, a solid German hausfrau in a crinkled pale blue suit. The bride’s mother was a good-looking woman evidently in a savage temper, and her father a mild mannered little Czech who squinted through his spectacles. Maurizio bent double and kissed the ladies hands to their evident surprise. The bride must have been wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress, and the bridegroom’s shoes were more pointed than ever. And so this comic little procession made its way up the aisle to the thump-thump of the organ, and came to rest inside the pink marble altar rails where the priest was waiting. St Ignatz is a vast building, about the same size as Bath Abbey with astonishing pink and white plaster decoration and angels and saints dripping from every cornice. The grey marble pillars rippled like the waters of an oil-covered sea, and the organist thump-thumped while the ceremony proceeded in an undertone. I winked at the mother who winked back and began to look more cheerful. And finally the organ stopped while the priest gave a short address. On either side of the altar-piece St Peter exhorted and St Paul comforted while St Ignatius was wafted up to heaven in a rosy sunset and above supercilious cherubs pouted on plaster clouds, and for a moment there was peace. Then the organ thump-thumped again, and never was an aisle so long. By nine-ten the seven of us were in the Hotel Miramar in a corner of the cocktail lounge drinking the happy couple’s health with a savage Hungarian wine that tore to my liver. In the corner by the deserted bandstand was a stuffed bear which a cleaning woman dusted as she cleared up the squalid mess of the night before. And that was the most curio
us wedding I have ever been to.

  Mon.

  I must say I like Vienna more and more. The museum is fabulous and as luck would have it the collections are closed to the public. This means that they are available to be taken out of the cases by the likes of me. There is a charming assistant of Prof Kromer who spent a year at Edinburgh, poor thing but he survived well enough. Over lunch time I went to the Schatzkammer. The Imperial mantle of 1125!! with gold lions attacking camels on a scarlet ground is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. Compare the fact that King William of Sicily had the coronation robe inscribed with an Arabic legend with today’s petty nationalism and realise how we have regressed. The sword of Charles the Bold has a narwhal tusk sheath and handle, and I must say I am more than resigned to the extravagance of a tusk since seeing the unicorn presented to the Emperor Rudolf one of the inalienable treasures of the Hapsburgs together with a sumptuous Byzantine agate bowl, once considered to be the Holy Grail.

  Now what are you going to do? I go to Hungary on Wednesday and will be incommunicado till I reach Sofia on the 15th or so. You know the address c/o Bache, British Embassy. I feel that I may not go to Cyprus but instead go to Maurizio’s professor’s excavation at Bari which sounds v. interesting and you could come too, or do you want to go to the Turkish Aegean coast in September. I must say I would love to go to Samos from Turkey, then we might descend on Teddy [Millington-Drake] before making back. Or we could meet in Italy. The possibilities are endless. Why don’t you suggest something? If you came to Turkey I wouldn’t recommend the train all the way but a single air flight to Istanbul and no return. If you want to see Istanbul with me154 you must let me know via Andrew or c/o Bache because we’ll leave it out till later and go into Anatolia first.

  I’m in a horrid hot little room and I miss you.

  xxxxxx

  B

  P.S. Can you imagine it? The Schmallclothes155 actually turfed Andrew off at Hyde Park Corner instead of taking him back? I’m afraid – to be written off!

  B

  To Ivry Freyberg

  Postcard, Aachen Cathedral | Vienna | Austria | 1967

  Rang you up when we were in the South once or twice with no luck. Am on an archaeological peregrination in E Europe while E. is in America. I have been excavating in Czechoslovakia in a Celtic fort which was fascinating despite my forebodings to the contrary. Am now being a common or garden tourist for a few days before facing the rigours of Rumania for a fortnight. I do believe I shall go to see the Merry Widow. Love Bruce

  To Cary Welch

  Postcard, Volkerkunde Museum | Vienna | Austria [1967]

  From the collection of H. Cortez. Not a bad provenance and I bet that if all the schlemiels in Madison Avenue saw it, they’d say it was a fake. I think your Sassanian dish156 is a marvel, and that you’re very wise, brilliant, etc and it’s the best object you ever had etc. etc.

  I have been grovelling about in the dust with a whole lot of enthusiastic Czechs, and will write at length when I have the time. Will be in Turkey on Aug 20 c/o British School of Archaeology in Ankara. Love B

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, El Greco’s Ascension, Budapest Museum | Hungary | 15 August 1967

  E Hungary

  Am excavating for a few days at a Bronze Age site on the River Tisza, before going on to Rumania. In Transylvania there has just been found what may be the earliest evidence yet of writing yet known. I must say I shall not come here again without a car. The trains are packed and take for ever. Harsh white wine on an empty stomach for breakfast. Bruce

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Béke Étterem | Hungary | [August 1967]

  The dining room of the Béke Étterem is a long corridor with barely room for the three rows of tables. The modernistic lamps have quaint green glass shades half of which work. In between the Gentleman’s which smells horribly and the Ladies which smells less is the orchestra, three violins, a double bass and a xylophone. Cream coloured walls have sprouted a curious fungus and in the far corner is a mutinous green tile stove. Each table has a single bedraggled carnation, and a sprig of asparagus fern that has seen many carnations. Also a blue metal hatstand behind each chair. A few foxed engravings are hung out of sight, level with the helmets. I have never known an orchestra with a greater capacity to shock. We have been running through Lehar waltzes, and whenever we hit a high note it is like crossing a hump back bridge, never fails to hit the wrong note. ‘We are going to Maxim’s’ with a noise that sounds like a thousand Siamese cats in part song. The noise is quite deafening. Thieving Magpie, drab potbellied gentlemen with their shirt tails flapping. Sweaty fingers. Dark rings around their eyes. As I understand no word of the menu, and as I am constitutionally able to endure almost anything, although I did draw the line at the hen’s head which peered out of the soup at me at luncheon, I have been experimenting with everything called Parizi. The influence of the French capital was never really strong in Eastern Europe and has still been further diluted in recent years. The object I am eating seems to be a hybrid Wiener Schnitzel and onion omelette, the one wrapped in the other deep fried in batter and served with a few rings of batter and chips. An original omelette surprise, like the orchestra!

  To Gertrude Chanler

  Ankara | Turkey | 4 September 1967

  I’ve just been to see your friend Captain Trammel157 who is badly laid up in hospital here, and I’ll go again tomorrow. I’ve been having a fascinating trip, in fact a lot of hard work, but I’ve learned an incredible amount. There’s nothing like going to see the material first hand. I can never really grasp the implications from books. Over the past week I’ve been tramping about in the wilds of Anatolia. Andrew Batey was so beguiled by my Turkish friends in Istanbul that he stayed. Betty Carp158 who we saw said ‘I have known people go up to Anatolia and like it.’ I do, but I’m now in the state of longing to go home.159 Love, Bruce

  To Gertrude Chanler

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 4 October 1967

  How nice to get your letter! You beat me to it because I was on the point of writing to you to say that we had definitely decided to come over for Christmas. Your offer to pay the tickets comes as a marvellous surprise and we both look forward to it immensely. I think we must spend a few days here immediately after the term ends, and imagine that we’ll fly on the 20th or perhaps the day before. We must book now. There will be a number of odds and ends to tie up here. One rather unfortunate thing is that our farmer John Jones may be going. He has been offered a sheep farm of 45,000 acres in Northern Scotland, and obviously we can’t begrudge him that. In fact we have been actively helping him find the necessary finance. But that will mean we shall probably be having to find a replacement and that is difficult enough. They all seem to be so sharp and on the make here. I think that the best thing to do now that we have it properly fenced is to stick out for a high rent for a series of short lets. The trouble about letting for a long period is that one can create what is called an agricultural tenancy which means that one can never get the encumbent out, and we must avoid that. The next minor disaster occurred when the main water pipe burst, apparently owing to the action of static electricity on a galvanised pipe laid in wet clay. We were without water for four or five days and had to fetch it in milk churns. They then came to lay the new polythene pipe with a mechanical digger. When the man came to fill it in again, Lib was in Wotton doing the shopping and I had settled down to some Sanskrit. There was a yell from the front, because he had got trapped by the grab and was pinned against the cab. The plumber rescued him and announced that he had some ribs broken. I then called for the ambulance and not only did it arrive but three fire engines and half the county police force together with reporters for the local and Bristol papers. Of course in the meantime the driver had recovered and I felt I wanted to hide in view of what appeared to be a false alarm. Otherwise the whole place has taken a terrific turn for the better and is becoming simply beautiful inside. The kitchen is the most p
leasant I have ever known and I think we will almost live in it. I am in the middle of painting the study which will be ready before we go. I once learned a very good technique for colouring walls. You paint them with flat white oil, and then put a very thin layer of coloured wax glaze. This gives the walls a slightly transparent look. We are doing the study in golden ochre which sounds horrible but I think you’ll like it. The bathroom doors which I glazed green over grey blue are a great success. A painter friend of mine is seriously thinking of adopting the technique. The boiler at last works after its teething troubles and the whole place is remarkably warm and has dried out in a way I never thought it would.