Travels with Myself and Another (33 page)

The Nyali Beach Hotel was then a spacious Edwardian building with dark-panelled public rooms and wood ceiling fans. The bedrooms were done up in the depressing navy blue rep curtains and brown varnished furniture so popular in Africa. I had been given the first redecorated room, a modern luxury nest of imitation white leather and pale wood and the air-conditioner which I quickly turned off, opening the windows to look at the sea and breathe the soft air. This was the only hotel on miles of wide white sand beach and now, past the high season, it was nearly empty. I dumped out my suitcase to find the bathing suit and ran down long steps through gardens scented by frangipani and camellias to the Indian Ocean and into the clear silky water.

Wine connoisseurs, those crushing bores, go on and on about the different subtle flavours of wine. I am a connoisseur of swimming water and able to bore anyone in great detail. Only the best of the Caribbean—around St Martin and Virgin Gorda—could rival the Indian Ocean here. Swimming had never been more deliriously pleasing; my body was returned to me after endless imprisonment in cars.

Africans walk in Africa if they have to or if it is their lifestyle, the nomadic cattle-herding tribes. Europeans do not, the distances are forbidding. They exercise in European style, tennis, golf, polo, swimming pools. I can’t hit any ball in any direction and swimming pools are a necessity for health, but the spirit does not soar while ploughing dutifully back and forth. At last, the intimidating size of Africa could be used: a beach that stretched out of sight, an ocean to myself.

Released from the tyranny of time-distance, I walked on the hard sand at the water’s edge and watched the sunset colours, pale green streaked with banners of mauve and pink, watched the sky turn into translucent sapphire,
l’heure bleue,
and the first stars. I walked back to the hotel in the sudden equatorial dark. There was no terror in the blazingly brilliant night, the air felt like satin on my skin. Happiness swept me at gale force. This place was different from anywhere else in Africa. It was easeful.

Bright and early, I donned mask and snorkel, breast-stroked and floated, gazing at underwater wonders finer than any I had seen before. Brain coral, mushroom-shaped, as big as round dining tables, waving forests of fern coral, purple and rose, tall white antler coral, and thousands, tens of thousands of reef fish. There must be an ecological reason for their colours and design but to my uninformed eye they look like the creation at play, fantasies invented for the delight of invention. Time passed unnoticed, one hour, three hours, I was buoyed by the water and enchanted. Thirst finally drove me ashore. Already, climbing through the gardens to my room, I felt heat. A backward look in the bathroom mirror showed my skin painted bright red from neck to heels.

Burns are graded by degree; I don’t know what degree I had achieved, but I was burned rigid. Lying flat on my stomach, I swallowed aspirin for fever and Vitamin A as recommended by the English housekeeper, and from time to time a little African maid doused my flaming body with vinegar. I was in pain and I despaired of myself. Some mechanism, which I imagined in the shape of a hand-brake doubtless due to my recent relation with cars, had been left out. Adults were equipped with this mechanism; it restrained them from folly. They used it unconsciously; without thought, they avoided excess and imbecility. I was an incurable fool. I didn’t have enough common sense to fill a teacup. I would grow old but never grow wise.

“Cheer up, dear,” said the visiting English housekeeper. “You aren’t the first to get in this fix. Foreigners don’t realize how strong this sun is.”

“But through water?” I asked, struggling not to whine with self-pity.

“Yes indeed, as you’ve found out. It’s best to wear a T-shirt if you mean to stay in for any time. And wear a hat when you walk on the beach. You really haven’t got the colouring for this climate. But never mind, the blisters are coming up nicely, you’ll peel in a day or so and be right as rain.”

I’ll never be right as rain, I thought, sunk in gloom, I’ll always find some new way to be idiotic. And meanwhile I was losing precious days and my neck muscles hurt from lifting my head enough to read and if I tried to drown my sorrows in drink, probably I would catch fire.

But I did recover, though I had doubted it, and swam with a T-shirt and wore a hat to walk on the flawless beach in the cool of the morning and in the late afternoon. When the sun was straight overhead, I lay in my pleasant room and read Jane Austen who had come into her own here. There was not a speck of litter or a pellet of oil on the beautiful beach, no pollution in the perfect water. Only fifteen years ago, I would have been scandalized by either; now both are readily available everywhere, even there.

I climbed the steps into the airplane with reluctance. I had fallen in love with the land and the sky, the fauna and flora, the weather of East Africa. This adoration of the natural world did not extend to mankind in Africa or its differing ways of life. Like a lover, I wanted to know all of the beloved, in every mood and aspect; I wanted to live with Africa. Anywhere else would be passionless, a dull substitute. Ten months later, I returned to that coast and established my ninth permanent residence. The task was as grim as it always is but I endured the daily turmoil with unusual hope. Once the house was fixed I would put my feet up, except for gardening, and rest in happiness. I believed I had found final heart’s desire.

The love affair with Africa was long, obsessed and unrequited, lasting off and on for thirteen years. Africa remained out of reach except for moments of union, when walking on the long empty beach at sunrise or sunset, when watching the night sky. Or later, when I had built my two-room tenth permanent residence high in the Rift Valley and could look at four horizons, drunk on space and drunk on silence. Or always, driving alone on the backroads, when Africa offered me as a gift its surprises, the beautiful straying animals, the shape of the mountains, wild flowers.

Moments were not enough; we live all day; we cannot lapse into coma between moments. I needed a job related to Africa, like botany or zoology or geology or farming. Writing was hopeless. I felt both puny and pretentious, trying to write in the grandeur of that natural world where everything was older than time and I was the briefest object in the landscape.

Then too, not understanding Africans bothered me though I didn’t expect to be the genius exception, the one “European” or Asian for that matter, able to penetrate the mysteries of the African soul. I was harassed by uncertainty; not understanding meant misunderstanding. Africans are outwardly (the only way I knew them) the best-humoured people I have lived with. They laugh easily almost constantly about anything, but their jokes were not mine. The barrier between us was what I had noted so long ago in China.

I would have been blissful in Africa and at home and still there if only I could have been Mowgli or Tarzan or a giraffe.

The infatuation is not yet dead. Retracing that first journey with Joshua, the place names still excite me and I yearn to see the places I missed. But Africa has changed, politics and the tourist boom spoiled much of what I loved, and perhaps I have only grown wise enough to know when to give up.

A month after I got home to London, where I spent my time mourning for Africa, a letter arrived from Joshua. It was written in purple ink on green notepaper with a daisy stamped at the top right-hand corner. Joshua must have bought this fine paper especially for the occasion. He said that he would never forget our safari, he had never been so happy in his life, and I was his mother and father.

China, 1941

Five

ONE LOOK AT MOTHER RUSSIA

I knew this was going to be a horror journey before it began, which puts the whole thing in a class by itself. I couldn’t get out of it; it was a moral obligation; I had to go to Russia where I most ardently never wanted to go, not even on the childhood streetcars. Forewarned is not forearmed.

Though Russians write with poetic tenderness about their landscape, I had my own idea; I was sure Russia would look like the Middle West, too flat and too much of it. The climate repelled; the cold, the snow, the frozen rivers. I didn’t believe in a Russian summer. Obviously that dappled sunlight through birch trees, those butterflies were a figment of literary imagination. Summer in England is largely imaginary; Russia had to be ten times worse. I was quite content to know the Russia of their great writers and the impetuous broody characters in their books.

Modern Russia is a universal obsession; millions of Russia-watchers were welcome to it. Improving the quality of life inside the democracies seems to me of far greater strategic value than counting Soviet tanks and surmising on Soviet threats. I could not exist in any dictatorship and detest the kind of people who are outraged only by Communist dictatorships. When I thought of Russia, which was by no means often, I pitied the citizens of the Soviet Union, who haven’t had a square deal in their recorded history, and my ardent desire never to go there grew more ardent.

How then did I get into this fix? By chance, through a book in Harrod’s Lending Library. It was a fat book and not fiction, two strikes against it as I read for pleasure and fiction is my pleasure. But I had never read anything written by a Russian woman so I took the fat book home and began it with lukewarm curiosity. And was electrified and read it straight through, pausing for food and sleep. Nothing before had shown me exactly how it was to live, day by hunted and haunted day, in the terror of a dictatorship. There was so much to admire in this book that I didn’t know where to start. The woman’s courage? The power of her memory? The fast clean prose that said without effort what she intended to say?

Ever since I was fourteen years old and wrote Carl Sandburg the glad news that I thought he was a fine poet, I have sent a letter of praise and thanks to anyone who writes anything that gives me the excitement of new understanding. This is no more than common politeness; we say thank you without meaning it, why not say thank you when really grateful. I couldn’t write to the Russian woman but I could write to the translator, addressing the letter in care of the publisher. The translation was a work of art itself. I could thank him for his share in this noble book and ask him, if he had any contact, to tell the author of my reverence, awe, etc. Presumably he forwarded my letter.

Time passed during which naturally I forgot that thank you letter and was open-mouthed with astonishment to receive one morning a letter from Moscow. Four lines on a piece of coarse yellow paper from the author herself. “Dear Mistress Martha Gellhorn. Thank you very much for your kind letter. Your letter was the best I read about my work.” The envelope was exotic; cheap paper, the airmail insignia being a stylized stork flying through stylized clouds, bearing a large stylized rose. The big stamp was a beautiful Renoir portrait of a beautiful redhead. No return address. I had not thought of Russia having an ordinary postal service with mail going in and out. I was as surprised as if the letter had arrived by stork.

A second letter followed, with a return address, and thus we became pen pals. I have twenty-eight letters; the stamps are fabulous. If one judged a country by its stamps, the U.S.S.R. would be the pinnacle of culture. My letters were long because much of the time I was alone on a mountainside in the Rift Valley and instead of talking to people I talked to the typewriter. Hers are usually one page written by hand, written around the edges. I have just re-read them and see why I felt obligated. This extraordinary woman, then aged seventy-two, believed she had a short time to live. She could never come to see me but I was free to go and see her. I could not refuse unless I was a cold-hearted monster. That was a little over five years ago and I am happy to say she is still alive.

Meantime we wrote. She asked what I did in my African hermit’s eyrie; I described the charms of pioneer-woman life, adding that I snuggled down at night with thrillers. She didn’t understand the word and I was not about to endanger her by sending a package of those skillful tales, wherein eighty percent of the baddies are KGB. Her addiction was detective stories, which I had outgrown. I sent her all the best: Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, Nicholas Blake, Edmund Crispin, the wonderfully stylish English writers. She didn’t care for them. She wanted Ed McBain and Mickey Spillane, that type. I was hard put to lower my standards and find the tough stuff she liked. She was also eager to try pornography but there I failed her completely. I didn’t know what to get or where to get it; I am blind to the lure of pornography, even the statutory sex bits in thrillers bore me, and anyway I saw no point in upsetting the Soviet postal censor. I sent her photographs of animals in Africa. She was thrilled by an enlarged out-of-focus shot of that great frieze of giraffes in the Serengeti, still there year after year. She had a pal, a twelve-year-old boy, who collected and trafficked in stamps; I sent stamps.

Some things in her letters were funny; more were sharp. She was occasionally so opinionated that I, who suffer from the same failing, was narked by her nerve. Faulkner isn’t the
only
good modern novelist in English, for God’s sake. Faulkner and perhaps Djois. Balls. And why did I have to declare myself pro-Tolstoy or pro-Dostoyevsky, opposed and exclusive positions she said were taken by all Russians. She was pro-Dostoyevsky. Then
War and Peace
and
Anna Karenina
were for inferior readers? Balls again. There were changing references to her health in every letter; she was too tired to get up, she could hardly walk, she had an ulcer which was active only in spring and autumn, a weak heart, could I find something for diabetes. She was ready to die but feared a stroke. To stay alive though gaga was the worst fate. She had earned her ailments; for thirty years, after her husband died in a prison transit camp, she lived alone, teaching in provincial schools, hiding her true identity, a life of unremitting physical and emotional misery.

When at last I decided I had to go, we got down to cases: what I should actually bring. I left for Moscow on 3 July 1972, bearing the biggest suitcase I own, loaded to bursting with the following: six of Yehudi Menuhin’s records, three jars of orange marmalade, six blocks of good writing paper and envelopes, a dozen Biros, fourteen pairs of Nylon stockings, three bottles of pills, a Dutch medicine (incredible efforts by my doctor and me to find it) for her seasonal ulcer, winter dresses and sweaters (mine) for her friends to use or sell, a cashmere shawl for her, Arpège eau de toilette by Lanvin, twelve paperback detective stories, and a large manila envelope from her publisher, stuffed with clippings, reviews of her book which had become internationally famous. She was now considered one of the great modern Russian writers but the news hadn’t reached her.

To choose clothes for myself, I had been checking the Moscow weather report in
The Times.
The Moscow I have known for so long in print is always buried under snow. The temperature was alleged to be 89, 90, 93, 91 Fahrenheit. Clearly a typographical error; they got Moscow mixed up with Malta. My share of that huge suitcase was a second pair of heavy tan jeans, two T-shirts and a sweater. For the plane I wore jeans, T-shirt and sandals. Whatever my worries might be, I wouldn’t have to worry about being well dressed in Moscow.

You do not simply send Intourist a cheque for one week’s bed and breakfast between such and such a date; your travel agent applies for a visa. This took so long that my proposed departure had to be cancelled and gave me the wild hope that I would be turned down and spared the journey. Like hundreds of others, I sign every petition that comes my way, protesting maltreatment of Russian dissidents and Russian Jews. I couldn’t seriously expect that my name had been noted among so many but toyed with the dream of disbarment. No, it was just the regular Soviet method for making travel agreeable and easy. After the delay, I learned that Intourist will not tell you where you are staying in Moscow; you are assigned a hotel at the Moscow airport.

I was nervous about my suitcase, much more than nervous, shivering and quaking. Even in a normal country, a customs officer might find the contents of that suitcase peculiar for a tourist’s one-week visit in midsummer but in a normal country you would explain that you were bringing presents to a friend. If questioned, that was the last thing I could do; I thought of my fingernails torn out while I refused to divulge the reason for three jars of orange marmalade and Yehudi Menuhin’s records. An American friend in London had an American friend working in Moscow; he offered to ask his friend to meet me and see me through the airport.

The arrival hall in Moscow airport was loud chaos. I couldn’t figure out where to find my suitcase and stood there like a country bumpkin who had never before travelled. A tall dark handsome stranger came up and kissed me on the cheek. Chatting as to an old friend or relative, he guided me past the Customs who did not so much as glance at my nerve-racking luggage. The tall dark handsome stranger probably thought it took all kinds to make a world, including an inordinately jumpy and fulsomely grateful middle-aged lady. He could hardly understand my state of mind since he didn’t know of my crazy cargo. He had to hurry off on his own business but directed me to a group of sour women, behind a counter, who were doling out hotels to baffled travellers. The travellers milled and questioned and were treated with scorn, the first taste of the prevailing manner. I asked if I could change money. No.
Nyet.
I should change money at my hotel and the taxi was outside.

The taxi was very old, an old limousine, slumping to one side. The driver looked sour, too. Though we couldn’t exchange a word, a smile wouldn’t have come amiss. He drove as if this were the Monte Carlo Rally, at breakneck speed on an almost empty road. The scenery was dull, flat and meagre, Midwest at its lowest ebb. I saw some birch trees. As we know, Russian literature is alive with birch trees. These weren’t as good as birch trees in Wisconsin and there weren’t many.

After a very long drive, the taxi turned off the road in the middle of nowhere and I found myself dumped at what might have been a motel in any other country, a new structure, sardine tin with rooms, set in a small copse of pine trees surrounded by empty land. Inside at a desk, another sour woman. “But where is Moscow?” I said. It seemed that we were on the road to Minsk. I said furiously that I had not come to Russia to be anywhere near Minsk. I had paid to go to and be in Moscow. This was no skin off her nose; she didn’t bother to answer.

“You must go to your room,” said she. At least I could wash my sweaty face before resuming the battle. The room was like a fifth-rate motel, small, with the sort of bentwood furniture that was mass-produced right after the war, called utility furniture in England. Since I couldn’t even see Moscow from the fourth floor, I hurried downstairs (lift not working) and began to sound like all of the Three Sisters.
“I want to go to Moscow!”
It was either to die laughing or die of a seizure. I had seven days, including day of departure and arrival, and I hadn’t made this pilgrimage to sit in a miserable pine wood.

First, how about changing money.
Nyet.
BUT THEY SAID I SHOULD CHANGE MY MONEY HERE! Shouting.
Nyet.
Two other apoplectic travellers appeared, a big fat Texan and a small Asian, of indeterminate nationality. The Texan was splendid. Red in the face, he announced that this was the goddamndest lousiest place he ever saw, who wanted to be stuck off here, what the hell kind of stinking country was this. The Asian, though less articulate, was no less displeased. He waved his camera at the lobby, nothing in it except bare walls, bare floor and the reception counter; he waved his camera at the outdoors, skimpy pine trees. NO GOOD PICKSHA! he said in a high indignant voice,

NO GOOD PICKSHA!

I was still screaming about money. They joined in, being also short of cash. The sour woman deigned to break her contemptuous silence by saying we could take a taxi to Moscow. HOW? we bellowed in unison. No sign of life or cars here, just us and her. What did a taxi cost? It amounted to twenty dollars. The bloody-minded receptionist condescended to change some dollar bills for me. She made a fifty percent profit on the deal, private enterprise. The three of us, pooling our roubles, could scrape together enough for the taxi. Then we had to cajole and finally threaten her into telephoning for a taxi; telephoning for taxis was not her job. How in God’s name, I said, with passion, did she expect
us
to telephone? What language did she suggest that we use? “Didja evah see such a bitch in yuh whole life?” the Texan asked. Then we waited for the taxi; then we drove the tedious miles to Moscow.

At the Hotel Metropole, after intense argument, I convinced the woman whose job was to change money that she should actually change some money. I was in such a temper that I was hardly coherent. Now I had to find another taxi and since night had descended that was no mean trick. Mrs M.’s address was written in Russian on a little slip of paper (I was prepared to eat it in the best tradition); this I showed to the taxi driver. We set off again. Moscow is an enormous sprawl, scarcely lit. It must be the all-time opposite of a swinging town. The driver had no idea where Mrs M.’s street was and there were few people to ask. Those he asked gave different answers; we followed all the different directions. I couldn’t believe that this particular sleazy cement building, among so many sleazy cement buildings, was really journey’s end. Fourteen roubles poorer; the official artificial exchange rate makes the rouble very expensive. This horror journey, already off to a good start, was going to have certain classical features such as the high price of hardship.