Chapman's Odyssey (9 page)

He was joined, soon enough, by the regular trio.

— Have you a poem for us, Harry?

— I have, Marybeth, and I haven’t.

— And what exactly is that supposed to mean, honey?

— Well, there is a poem and then again there isn’t.

— He’s at his mischief, said Harry Chapman’s Virgil. — He enjoys his puzzles, she added with what her cockney Dante acknowledged as uncommon shrewdness.

— I shall need a little time to explain.

They gave him that precious time – Nancy Driver, Marybeth and the quizzical Philip Warren – as they changed his linen, took his temperature, checked his blood pressure and rearranged him in the bed.

He had to apologise, but this late poem of Nazim Hikmet was still working its way around his brain. It was a joyous meditation on death. He wanted to convey its message to his good friends in his own English, although it had been written in Turkish. He would tell them of the poet’s life, briefly, if they had the patience to listen to him.

— We’re listening, Harry.

— Where to begin?

— We can’t answer that for you.

— All I need to say is that Hikmet was a devout Marxist who offended the secular state he had helped bring into being. He spent eighteen years in prison, where he wrote love letters in verse to his wife. He smoked too many cigarettes. He died, at the age of sixty-one, in Moscow, where he had lived for more than a decade. I’m going to give you Harry Chapman’s version of ‘My Funeral’, which he wrote in April 1963.

He paused; he had to, to collect his thoughts.

— This isn’t something morbid, is it, Harry?

— No, no, no. Quite the reverse. Listen. The poem begins with two questions. Will Hikmet’s funeral start in the courtyard below his tiny apartment? And how will the bearers bring the coffin down three floors? The lift is too small; the stairs too narrow.

He paused a second time. Was he making any sense?

— What happens next?

— I’m coming to that, Master Philip. Laboriously, I admit. Give me a moment more.

They gave it to him, and he continued.

—
Perhaps the courtyard will be knee-deep in sunlight and pigeons
–

— ‘Knee-deep’, that’s good, said Marybeth, sounding like Polonius.

—
perhaps there will be snow and children’s cries mingling in the air

or the asphalt glistening with rain

and the dustbins littering the place as usual . . .

— Dustbins? In a poem?

— Oh, Nancy, you disappoint me. He almost called her Virgil, the consummate chronicler of the damned. — Dustbins are a necessity of urban life, and poetry has to address itself (Oh, he sounded so professorial) to muck, to waste, to –

— Spare us the details, Harry.

He went on.

—
If in keeping with the custom here I am to go, face open to the skies,

on the hearse, a pigeon might drop something on my brow, for luck.

Whether a band turns up or no, children will come near me, children like funerals.

He stopped once more, recalling the many funerals of his childhood: the distant relations, whose virtues were lauded by bored and dishonest clergymen; the stillborn; the ancients whose existence he had to take on trust, thanks to Alice Chapman’s approval or disapprobation.

—
Our kitchen window will stare after me as I go,

the washing in the balcony will wave to see me off.

I have been happier here than you can ever imagine.

Friends, I wish you all a long and happy life.

— Is that it, Harry?

— Yes. That’s it.

— It’s not as – how shall I call it? – it’s not as
melodious
as the others you’ve recited.

— I suppose it isn’t. But I love the washing waving farewell to him, and the pigeon leaving the perennial message on his brow. I find the poem curiously serene.

— You’re the expert, Harry.

The expert? He was no such sterile thing. He was an enthusiast, a hero-worshipper of those who use words or notes or brushstrokes to convey something of the mystery and wonder of human existence. Oh, that sounded so high-minded, so elitist, too precious by half to explain to Nancy, Marybeth and Philip. Yet it was what he was, and what he believed, and what he would die believing – today, tomorrow, this year, next year, or in the immediate or not too distant future.

— Perhaps it’s because it’s in a foreign language.

— Don’t worry. I’ve plenty more in my English poetry kitty.

Then Harry Chapman was unexpectedly sick, and the simple meal he’d been given the evening before gushed out of him. The gushing went on and on, as if he’d consumed an entire feast instead of a single plate of tuna and salad. Bowls were brought for him and borne away, and the bedclothes he’d stained removed and replaced.

— Where’s it all coming from?

— That’s a constant mystery, Nancy Driver assured him. — You’ll feel so much better when it’s over.

— When? When?

— Any minute now. Try and stay calm.

— At least the shit’s coming out from somewhere.

The message NIL BY MOUTH appeared above his bed again, and the drip was attached to him – or he to the drip – once more. He saw the red blotches on his arms and knew they would increase in number as long as the pain persisted. His wounds, courtesy of Dr Pereira, the reliever of his physical suffering. His arrows.

— What day is it?

— Tuesday, Harry.

— And is that lunch being served, or dinner?

— Lunch.

— It doesn’t smell enticing. Not even to a hungry soul like me.

— You’re picky, honey. That’s what I love about you.

Marybeth Myslawchuk kissed Harry Chapman’s forehead, and he wondered on the instant if her kiss signalled his demise. Was there infinite pity in her show of affection?

— Take kindness when it’s offered you.

— Yes, Auntie.

— She’ll try to keep you alive, if anyone will.

— You may be right.

— Trust me.

Harry Chapman had invariably trusted her, there was no denying that, but hadn’t he often been cynical about her eternal optimism? Alice’s nickname for her contented sibling was ‘Rosy Glow’.

— You’d think, listening to Rosy Glow, that life is a bowl of bloody cherries from start to finish. No misery, no worrying where the next penny’s coming from, no aches and pains, no working till you drop, nothing but bleeding sunshine and happiness.

— Malice and myself were as different as chalk and cheese, Harry’s aunt intervened. — I saw no good reason for making people more unhappy with their lot than they were already, whereas she had to twist the knife in the wound, no matter whose it was. She enjoyed preening herself at funerals, trying hard to conceal her delight that it wasn’t her turn yet.

— She didn’t preen herself when Dad was buried.

— No, not then, Harry dear. Not then she didn’t. Just that once. She was too upset on that occasion, I grant you.

— You never married, did you, Rosy Glow? You were frightened to tie the knot. You had it easy.

— What do you know of my life, Malice?

Were they having an argument in his presence? Had Harry Chapman ever heard them quarrel? He couldn’t remember. Aunt Rose’s carapace, her impregnable shell of serenity, was never allowed to crack in public.

— I often fall to wondering if I chose the wrong sister, Frank Chapman said to his son as they walked briskly over the grass.

— Then you wouldn’t have Jessie for a daughter and me for a son.

— That’s true. But I might have had a quieter time of it with Rose. She’s a stranger to moodiness.

‘A stranger to moodiness’ – here he was, sixty-one years later, revelling in a heartfelt phrase his laconic father had come out with on one of their Sunday walks. Harry Chapman’s ears had been attuned, as long ago as 1946, to the blessed gift that even the unlettered possess of saying something peculiarly memorable. His Aunt Rose wasn’t simply happy to be alive. No, no: she was ‘a stranger to moodiness’.

As they neared home, and the prospect of Alice’s anger at their being ten minutes late, Harry had pictured Moodiness, garbed in red and black, approaching his beloved auntie with the greeting:

— Hello, Rose Bartrip. I’m Moodiness.

— Go away. I don’t wish to know you. I don’t speak to strangers.

— Why are you smiling, son?

— Nothing, Dad.

— You’re a funny little fellow, and no mistake.

And then Frank Chapman, in a rare display of affection, had ruffled Harry’s hair.

It was a day of such intense heat that Harry Chapman, alone and palely loitering in what appeared to be a limitless desert, was desperate for the soothing comfort, however tepid it might be, of some shade. There were no trees, no bushes, to be seen. He pressed on, sweat flowing from him, his cotton shirt and trousers sticking to his tired flesh. Where was he heading? Did he have a destination? He couldn’t say, in truth.

But then the questions were answered for him, with echoing voices talking excitedly of Abydos. The wind from the sea cooled Harry Chapman as he approached a throne of white marble, overlooking the city and the shore, on which was seated a bearded man he took to be no less than Xerxes, the presently triumphant king of the Persians.

— I can see the whole of my army and my navy from here, he pronounced with evident pride. — The Hellespont is hidden by my ships, and the beaches and plains of Abydos are filled with my men, and I am happy. Yes, I am happy.

Barely a moment passed before the happy king was weeping.

His uncle, Artabanus, was by his side.

— My Lord, surely there is a strange contradiction in what you do now and what you did a moment ago. Then you called yourself a happy man – and now you weep.

— I was thinking, Xerxes replied — and it came into my mind how pitifully short human life is – for of all these thousands of men not one will be alive in a hundred years’ time.

Harry Chapman, in that same white cotton shirt, those same white cotton trousers, was reading the
Histories
of Herodotus in London’s Hyde Park in the summer of 1955. His young heart galloped as he followed Xerxes’ progress from Sardis (page 432) to Lydia, and thence, passing Mount Ida, entered Trojan territory (page 433), where he reviewed his forces. Reviewing them, he wept (page 433, again), and the eighteen-year-old reader was tempted to weep with him as he lifted his eyes from the glorious book and saw the numerous sunbathers basking in the unexpected heat. How many of them, he wondered, were concerned with the shortness of their earthly existence? It occurred to him that one or two, perhaps, had fatal diseases and were sunning themselves in sheer defiance of the inevitable – making hay, so to speak. These brave souls were indistinguishable from the boys and girls exposing their winter-white skin to the sun’s warming rays. He returned to Herodotus, but soon he was sleepy. He took off his shirt and made a pillow of it. He awoke in the early evening with a great thirst, which he quenched in a pub near Marble Arch. He drank lager and lime, a mixture that was very popular with youngsters like him.

— Harry?

— Who is it?

— Only your oldest friend.

— Pamela?

— Yes, you sly elderly sod.

— Am I imagining you? Are you real?

— No, you aren’t, and yes, I am.

— I didn’t want anyone to know I was here.

— I rang your home, I rang your mobile, and then I rang the police, and after that I rang this hospital. I talked to Sister Nancy Driver, who said you were in the Zoffany Ward.

— Is that where I am? The Zoffany Ward? A second-rate portraitist who lived in a grand house in Chiswick.

— Yes, my dear old duck, that’s where you are.

Pamela kissed his forehead and sat down at his bedside.

— Where’s Graham, Harry?

— Lost in the jungle somewhere in Sri Lanka.

— Am I your first visitor then?

— Apart from a Catholic priest and a few heroes and villains from literature, yes. I presume Sister Nancy has told you what’s the matter with me.

— Yes. As much as she knows.

— Cheer me up, Pam. Are you working?

— Yes, darling, I am. I am essaying the role of the final victim of a serial killer who rapes, strangles and otherwise disembowels ladies
d’un certain âge
. The piece is called – would you believe? –
Fire in the Groin
.

— The fiery groin belongs to the rapist-stroke-killer,
n’est-ce pas
?

—
Mais oui, mon cher
. This will amuse you, Harry. The script requires the actor who plays Colin, he of the blazing genitals, to be quite spectacularly underdeveloped downstairs. It’s taken the director several months to find someone courageous enough to waggle his tiny tackle in front of the cameras. It transpires that his grandmother laughed when she saw young Colin’s penis and her mockery turned him into a murderer.