Bruce Chatwin (89 page)
Authors: Nicholas Shakespeare
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary, #Literary Collections, #Letters, #Literary Criticism, #General, #Diaries & Journals, #Personal Memoirs
“Bruce Chatwin’s
Songlines
is recommended by many; is top of the poll,” wrote Lees-Milne in his diary on 1 December. “I must I suppose read it. But shall probably be irritated. Saw him in London Library last week. He came up to me in the reading room. Somewhat changed. Those fallen angel looks have withered. Rather spotty and poor complexion, but upright and active since severe illness. Poor Bruce. I said to him, ‘You are having a well-deserved swimgloat’.”
Songlines
is recommended by many; is top of the poll,” wrote Lees-Milne in his diary on 1 December. “I must I suppose read it. But shall probably be irritated. Saw him in London Library last week. He came up to me in the reading room. Somewhat changed. Those fallen angel looks have withered. Rather spotty and poor complexion, but upright and active since severe illness. Poor Bruce. I said to him, ‘You are having a well-deserved swimgloat’.”
XXXIX
My Inexplicable Fever
Nothing resembles a person as much as the way he dies.
—Gabriel García Márquez,
Love in the Time of Cholera
Love in the Time of Cholera
AT THE SAME TIME AS
THE SONGLINES
TOPPED THE BEST-SELLER LIST
, Bruce’s doctors in Oxford thought they were dealing with two different people. He had submitted his yellow fever specimens with his first name, Charles. “I apologise that some of his ‘stickers’ have Charles, which is his first name, on it, and not Bruce. It is one and the same person,” wrote Juel-Jensen to the pathologist. The mix-up was consistent with the confusion Bruce’s doctors had in dealing with his illness. Richard Bull thought it likely he had developed full-blown AIDS. He had written to Juel-Jensen on 27 February 1987: “His overall prognosis remains unknown as there is very little experience in this infection, but one can only presume that his disseminated fungal infection in the presence of HIV would constitute the criteria for a diagnosis of AIDS.” Juel-Jensen was more hopeful. In April, he had put Bruce on a new anti-viral drug, AZT, which worked, for a while, a miraculous effect. “He has no side effects so far from his pills. He can walk ten miles and climb a mountain of 1500 feet without any problems,” Juel-Jensen reported in July. “I feel at present pretty optimistic and I think it is a good idea that he should go off to France where he can write in peace. He has been more productive recently than for many a year.”
THE SONGLINES
TOPPED THE BEST-SELLER LIST
, Bruce’s doctors in Oxford thought they were dealing with two different people. He had submitted his yellow fever specimens with his first name, Charles. “I apologise that some of his ‘stickers’ have Charles, which is his first name, on it, and not Bruce. It is one and the same person,” wrote Juel-Jensen to the pathologist. The mix-up was consistent with the confusion Bruce’s doctors had in dealing with his illness. Richard Bull thought it likely he had developed full-blown AIDS. He had written to Juel-Jensen on 27 February 1987: “His overall prognosis remains unknown as there is very little experience in this infection, but one can only presume that his disseminated fungal infection in the presence of HIV would constitute the criteria for a diagnosis of AIDS.” Juel-Jensen was more hopeful. In April, he had put Bruce on a new anti-viral drug, AZT, which worked, for a while, a miraculous effect. “He has no side effects so far from his pills. He can walk ten miles and climb a mountain of 1500 feet without any problems,” Juel-Jensen reported in July. “I feel at present pretty optimistic and I think it is a good idea that he should go off to France where he can write in peace. He has been more productive recently than for many a year.”
His “remarkable” improvement (which can now be recognised as characteristic of AIDS), Bruce attributed to a combination of the AZT and a change of climate.
Like Stevenson and Rimbaud a century before, Bruce chose to convalesce in the south of France. From December 1986, he based himself when abroad at the Chateau de Seillans. The house, an eleventh-century fort, was built by hunters at the edge of a 6o-foot cliff so they might sleep with their back to it and know that no animal would climb up. In the nineteenth century, the house was occupied by the Comtesse de Savigny, who built a perfume factory in the hills behind. It was to perfume that Shirley Conran compared Bruce’s charm on their first meeting, “like a wonderful cloud of Miss Dior”. She says, “I reeled away, drunk on it.”
Shirley, a best-selling author and divorced wife of the restaurateur Terence Conran, had known Bruce before he was involved with her son. They had met at an Author-of-the-Year party at Hatchards in the late 1970s. “Suddenly this fair-headed chap was at my elbow and I said ‘What do you think is the best way to see a country?’ ‘By boot.’ My first impression was that he was a Yorkshireman or Lancastrian and he’d said ‘By boat’.” She describes Bruce, to whom she bore a resemblance, as “the older brother I never dreamed of having . . . Bruce and I would talk in half sentences, like the Queen when discussing racehorses – no one else could understand.” While she never experienced the pain of falling in love with him, she did observe others whom Bruce held in his thrall, including her son. “A lot of people were in love with Bruce and I’m sorry for all of them. I saw the misery it brought. We have all loved people and left them, but when Bruce danced on to the next he had the ability to leave them feeling empty and bereft in a way I doubt they ever recovered from. He’d wander carelessly in and out of someone’s life in an afternoon and they’d be dazzled for the rest of their lives.” It was not only, she says, that he did not want exclusivity. “There was a dark side of him that wasn’t a scalp-hunter but was amoral. His wanting to externalise his personal frustration onto others was the result of some misery, some fury with himself. He did not know himself and did not care to know himself too closely. He was like Ariel: in this world but not of it.”
Shirley was an equal and firm friend to Elizabeth. “Elizabeth can seem fierce because she’s so shy and modest. Her gruff voice and short-sighted scowl of condescension put people off, but it is the smokescreen of a remarkably knowledgeable and erudite woman who is a woman of action just as Bruce was a man of action. I admire Elizabeth’s adventurousness, her generosity, her morality, her kindness. She has a beautiful nature. She always bows into the shadows when Bruce takes centre stage. In fact, Elizabeth is the person most like Bruce I’ve met.”
The way the Chatwins quarrelled very happily reminded Shirley “of my two young children in the back of my sports car: ‘You said you’d get it.’ ‘I didn’t. I said I’d get it if I was passing and I didn’t pass.’ Bickering was an important part of their child-like relationship.”
Shirley says: “When I think of Bruce I think of integrity.” To some, then, it appeared bizarre that he should choose the house of his lover’s mother in which to convalesce. Here again he showed an ability to render normal the extraordinary, and
vice versa
. (“I could see the oddness of the situation, but it didn’t bother me,” says Elizabeth.) One note he left for Shirley reads like an instruction he might write to a housekeeper. She should take care in closing the front door. The white umbrella was a house gift. The champagne in the fridge was to be drunk. The plastic cushion was for the chair on the terrace – “Jasper thought it horribly vulgar, but it did for the convalescent.”
vice versa
. (“I could see the oddness of the situation, but it didn’t bother me,” says Elizabeth.) One note he left for Shirley reads like an instruction he might write to a housekeeper. She should take care in closing the front door. The white umbrella was a house gift. The champagne in the fridge was to be drunk. The plastic cushion was for the chair on the terrace – “Jasper thought it horribly vulgar, but it did for the convalescent.”
The huge south-facing terrace looked over the tops of the village houses to the mountains. This was where he wrote
Utz
sitting on a Provençal cushion. He would return to it repeatedly until his death.
Utz
sitting on a Provençal cushion. He would return to it repeatedly until his death.
Bruce worked well at Seillans, but he over-estimated his strength. He “gets carried away by feeling good and then overdoes it,” Elizabeth wrote to Gertrude on 27 February. Whenever he felt strong enough, he wanted to leave the terrace behind and travel.
In February, he drove to Milan to see Roberto Calasso, his Italian publisher. Once on the move, his alertness to detail was restored. In Calasso’s visitors’ book, he wrote down a conversation overheard in a Nice restaurant. The audience were two sisters who “would appear to share a remote ancestry with the piranha fish”. The speaker was a stout pharmacist who wore six rings. “Over coffee, he said the following:
“‘Je vais vous raconter l’histoire d’un homme qui est parti pour son voyage de noces avec sa nouvelle femme, et, pendant le voyage, elle était tuée, meutriée par quelqu’un. Et lui, pour oublier ses tristes souvenirs est parti pour
. . . and at this point one expected the words ‘
Tahiti’
or
la Nouvelle Caledonie
. . . but no! . . .
‘il est parti pour la Bélgique où il est devenue président d’une societé de fabrication du chocolat . . . de la laiterie . . . et même les produits chimiques
’.”
. . . and at this point one expected the words ‘
Tahiti’
or
la Nouvelle Caledonie
. . . but no! . . .
‘il est parti pour la Bélgique où il est devenue président d’une societé de fabrication du chocolat . . . de la laiterie . . . et même les produits chimiques
’.”
In March, he was anxious to visit North Ghana where Werner Herzog was filming
The Viceroy of Ouidah.
“This poses problems of a new nature when it comes to protecting him adequately,” wrote a worried Juel-Jensen, who saw him in Oxford on his way to Accra. In response to Bruce’s request for a wheelchair, Herzog had cabled back: “A wheelchair will get you nowhere in terrain where I am shooting. I will give you four hammockeers and a sunshade bearer.” Bruce seemed to be emulating his Viceroy.
The Viceroy of Ouidah.
“This poses problems of a new nature when it comes to protecting him adequately,” wrote a worried Juel-Jensen, who saw him in Oxford on his way to Accra. In response to Bruce’s request for a wheelchair, Herzog had cabled back: “A wheelchair will get you nowhere in terrain where I am shooting. I will give you four hammockeers and a sunshade bearer.” Bruce seemed to be emulating his Viceroy.
After ten days in Ghana, he embarked on a course of AZT. By May, his dry skin had improved. He no longer had an overwhelming feeling of tiredness. Elizabeth gave him some weights to exercise his arms and chest. “He’s really awfully well except for his feet which are still rather numb & stiff.”
His travels accelerated over the summer with the publication of
The Songlines.
On 4 July, he drove with Elizabeth, via Vichy, to Bayreuth to watch Herzog’s production of
Lohengrin.
“Then to Prague & the Tatra Mountains with our camping gear. Then he gets flown to the Edinburgh Festival for 3 days.” From Prague, Bruce wrote to George Ortiz: “I
am
sorry I never made it to Geneva: our arrangements in July got a bit out of hand. Now they are even worse: Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Rome, London, New York, Toronto – all in the space of a month. The Chatwin yo-yo is functioning again.” He plotted to Murray Bail the itinerary after Canada: “Then . . .? Madrid? Perhaps! . . . Vague plans may mature for an Australian winter (ours) but I’m not sure . . . We’re off on a world tour – I hope!”
The Songlines.
On 4 July, he drove with Elizabeth, via Vichy, to Bayreuth to watch Herzog’s production of
Lohengrin.
“Then to Prague & the Tatra Mountains with our camping gear. Then he gets flown to the Edinburgh Festival for 3 days.” From Prague, Bruce wrote to George Ortiz: “I
am
sorry I never made it to Geneva: our arrangements in July got a bit out of hand. Now they are even worse: Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Rome, London, New York, Toronto – all in the space of a month. The Chatwin yo-yo is functioning again.” He plotted to Murray Bail the itinerary after Canada: “Then . . .? Madrid? Perhaps! . . . Vague plans may mature for an Australian winter (ours) but I’m not sure . . . We’re off on a world tour – I hope!”
As his last piece of publicity for
The Songlines
, Bruce had agreed to take part in the Toronto Harbourfront Reading Series. He arrived from New York on 15 September, committed to two engagements: an on-stage interview and a half-hour reading. The founder of this celebrated event was the Canadian poet Greg Gatenby. “At 2 p.m., the publicist rang to say that just before going on Chatwin had vomited in the dressing room and asked to be rushed back to his hotel, cancelling all other interviews.” Gatenby did not meet Bruce until the following night, at dinner before his reading. “We sat outside at Spinnaker’s restaurant. It was a sunny day and he looked a picture of health, like an aerobics commercial. My first instant thought was, ‘This is Stephen Spender 60 years ago,’ but my next thought was that this son of a bitch primadonna was perfectly healthy, not sick at all.
The Songlines
, Bruce had agreed to take part in the Toronto Harbourfront Reading Series. He arrived from New York on 15 September, committed to two engagements: an on-stage interview and a half-hour reading. The founder of this celebrated event was the Canadian poet Greg Gatenby. “At 2 p.m., the publicist rang to say that just before going on Chatwin had vomited in the dressing room and asked to be rushed back to his hotel, cancelling all other interviews.” Gatenby did not meet Bruce until the following night, at dinner before his reading. “We sat outside at Spinnaker’s restaurant. It was a sunny day and he looked a picture of health, like an aerobics commercial. My first instant thought was, ‘This is Stephen Spender 60 years ago,’ but my next thought was that this son of a bitch primadonna was perfectly healthy, not sick at all.
“I said to him: ‘Have you travelled much in Canada?’
“‘No.’
“‘Permit me to ask. Is there any place in the world you haven’t been to, but would like to?’
“‘No. Actually, there
is
one place. The Canadian Arctic’.”
is
one place. The Canadian Arctic’.”
Gatenby and Margaret Atwood had been approached to start a Writer-in-Residence programme in Baffin Island. “We thought it might be good publicity and talked about him going up there. Nobody goes to Baffin Island without a guide, because the polar bears there stalk people. It’s where the American astronauts went to train for the moon. It conjures up everything to do with the north: horrendous storms, three to four days’ supply of food, terrible beauty. At the idea of the north, Chatwin’s eyes lit up. ‘Are you serious?’ I then wrote to him in France: great news, I’ve got it approved, you can go any time you want. I received back a handwritten note. He was now so ill, paralysed in both legs. He could not travel.”
Bruce blamed his collapse in Toronto on a punishing publicity schedule. He apologised to Gatenby: “There’s something about a book tour – which pray God I never do again! – that stews one up into a fever.” But back in Oxford his “febrile illness” did not respond to treatment. Dr Juel-Jensen retired from the Churchill Hospital in November. He worried in his last report that Bruce’s P24 antigen was positive again. “I fear that all is not well.”
His doctor’s concern did not deter Bruce from spending a fortnight in the West Indies with Elizabeth. “We went first to an island called Ile des Saintes, off Guadeloupe, which is peopled by a very strange clan of
mestizo
Indian-negro-Breton fishermen,” he wrote to Bail. “Nothing happened to interrupt our days of sleeping or taking a boat to the coral reefs
except
for the ludicrous incident when squatting in the bush I inadvertently let my balls brush against a plant which is
the
toxic plant of the West Indies. And since we were on our way to Mass, the agony of standing in church was indescribable.”
mestizo
Indian-negro-Breton fishermen,” he wrote to Bail. “Nothing happened to interrupt our days of sleeping or taking a boat to the coral reefs
except
for the ludicrous incident when squatting in the bush I inadvertently let my balls brush against a plant which is
the
toxic plant of the West Indies. And since we were on our way to Mass, the agony of standing in church was indescribable.”
He cited this incident to his new doctor, David Warrell, on his return to the Churchill in early February 1988. He had explosive diarrhoea, no appetite and complained about pains in his spleen. “A bad bout of flu”, he told Bail. But the fungicide was killing his flora and making him sicker. On 12 March, he was taken off Ketoconazole. Two weeks later, the fungus returned with new virulence, this time for good. Seventeen months after the possibility was first raised, a skin biopsy indicated that the spots on his face were “highly suspicious of
Kaposi sarcoma
”. On 29 April, one of the specialists in the John Warin ward described him as a “very nice 47-year-old travel writer with AIDS”. It had taken 20 months to establish once and for all what the clinic had initially suspected.
Kaposi sarcoma
”. On 29 April, one of the specialists in the John Warin ward described him as a “very nice 47-year-old travel writer with AIDS”. It had taken 20 months to establish once and for all what the clinic had initially suspected.
As a writer who had, metaphorically, found love not just with Elizabeth but with a readership, Bruce could not bear to risk parting with something so hard won.
“Suppose that I were now to reveal that I have AIDS, full-blown AIDS, and have been ill during most of the course of what I have related. I would lose you. I would lose you to knowledge, to fear and to metaphor. Such a revelation would result in the sacrifice of the alchemy of my art, of artistic ‘control’ over the setting as well as the content of your imagination. A double sacrifice of my elocution: to the unspeakable (death) and the overspoken (AIDS).” Gillian Rose in
Love’s Work
understood what it costs an artist to speak about AIDS: one runs the same risk of losing one’s reader as one would one’s lover. Writing about a terminal illness is, suggests Rose, like breaking your contract with your reader. But Rose, a philosopher at Warwick University who died of ovarian cancer in 1995, was by nature an artist intent on transforming her “shrieks” into “shouts of joy”. She
had
to abandon equivocation and risk losing her readers, “otherwise I die deadly, but this way, by this work, I may die forward into the intensified
agon
of living.” But for Bruce, the unclassifiable harlequin, to speak meant quite literally to sacrifice the “alchemy” of his art. He could not, like Rose, write his way through his illness; rather, he equivocated to the end, unconsciously asserting his rights to the intimacy that Gabriel García Márquez speaks of in
Love in the Time of Cholera
: “the sacred right of the sick to die in peace along with the secret of their illness”.
Love’s Work
understood what it costs an artist to speak about AIDS: one runs the same risk of losing one’s reader as one would one’s lover. Writing about a terminal illness is, suggests Rose, like breaking your contract with your reader. But Rose, a philosopher at Warwick University who died of ovarian cancer in 1995, was by nature an artist intent on transforming her “shrieks” into “shouts of joy”. She
had
to abandon equivocation and risk losing her readers, “otherwise I die deadly, but this way, by this work, I may die forward into the intensified
agon
of living.” But for Bruce, the unclassifiable harlequin, to speak meant quite literally to sacrifice the “alchemy” of his art. He could not, like Rose, write his way through his illness; rather, he equivocated to the end, unconsciously asserting his rights to the intimacy that Gabriel García Márquez speaks of in
Love in the Time of Cholera
: “the sacred right of the sick to die in peace along with the secret of their illness”.
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