Under the Sun (46 page)

Always

Bruce

c/o Ben Gannon | 11 Gaerloch Avenue | Bondi | Sydney | Australia | 1 March [1983]

 

Dearest Di,

Last night I got back to Sydney and we sat up watching Bob Hawke become the new Prime Minister. Secretly, although one can't say so, I think they'll regret it: not because he's LEFT or Republican etc but because he has the meanest mouth imaginable and terribly shifty eyes. However . . .

I have been on a marathon, extremely expensive zig-zag across the continent from Adelaide, rip through Alice Springs, over to Broome and the Kimberleys, down to Perth and back: Georgie
⁵⁹⁰
will probably have told you how I tracked him down to a sort of rustic amphitheatre in the forest.

You fry in the Centre of Australia: but I can't complain. I never once FELL for the country, except perhaps in the most abstract way with the landscape. The Aboriginal situation is too disheartening, the whites so disjointed, or plainly disagreeable, but I did, often enough, light on a situation that grabbed my attention. Also, I do have what I was looking for: the ‘Australia' peg on which to hang my ‘nomadic' material. The title is to be ‘A Monk by the Sea' – where, indeed, I found him: a Cistercian ascetic
⁵⁹¹
who had lived in London, entered this most severe monastic order, worked on an Aboriginal mission, and then had returned to a hermitage of corrugated sheet (the cross was made by a pair of crossed oars, washed up by a cyclone) on the most abstract beach in N. Australia. He also happened to be obsessed by the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert, by Sufism, Taoism etc. Anyway, I have begun to sketch . . .

I intend to do a trilogy of 3 tiny novels which can all be bound together. 1. The Monk (affairs of the spirit) 2. A new story I've been told of a black woman and a Scandinavian diplomat 3. The old tale of the man with porcelains in Prague.

We shall see . . .

The news of Donald [Richards] is that he's landed himself – after weeks of angst – with a wonderful job – as Deputy Director of the ‘Future' Brisbane Festival. It was absolutely impossible to have him moping around, penniless and frustrated, and he's already become a creature transformed. As far as readjusting to Australia, it couldn't be better. He seemed excessively nervous here in Sydney, and has now returned to his own.
⁵⁹²
So, as usual, I seem to have been sprung back to my usual condition . . . THE ROAD . . .

As for the US reception of
On the B.H
. Well! Review after review with endless comparisons . . . How they love comparisons! Hardy, Spencer, D.H. Lawrence, Vermeer. The review I most liked was in the
Houston Globe
: ‘If you really want to sit by the fireside, going grey with a cameo tied round your neck, listening to a two-piece orchestra banging out the same old tune, good for you. As for me, I'm off to find my own excitement in the West Loop . . .' After a 10 minute read with Penelope Tree the whole lot enjoyed the hospitality of her garbage can . . .

I do hope Candy's
⁵⁹³
all right. How terribly worrying for you. I have to say that although she's very sweet, touching etc I could also BRAIN that Sophia
⁵⁹⁴
. Though I never met Marco I remember the whole thing starting. I took her to dinner one winter night in Siena, and she told me all about him. I remember having forebodings at the time – because, though they can't help it, those upper-class girls can be terribly and wantonly destructive. The Jasper Guinness
⁵⁹⁵
set in Tuscany has really a lot to answer for.

Plans? I can't begin to say. I want to go and hide and write. But can't decide whether to stay here or come back in April. Am feeling very pushed and pulled.

I really do have a mountain of mail – so here's all my dearest love. B

Postcard of ‘The Breakaway' by Tom Roberts (Australian artist, 1856-1931) | Sydney | Australia | 7 March 1983

All going well down-under – with a new Republican Prime Minister poised to cut the umbilical cord from the Mutterland. Have become interested in a very extreme situation – of Spanish monks in an Aboriginal Mission and am about to start sketching an outline. Anyway, the crisis of the ‘shall-never-write-another-line ' sort is now over. As always Bruce

 

c/o Ben Gannon | Sydney | Australia | 18 April 1983

 

Dearest Deborah,

I shall be back soon . . . Australia, I'm afraid, has been a bit of a flop. I feel a bit the same way as Lawrence in
Kangaroo
.
⁵⁹⁶
Flat, dried out, alienated. None of the rich vein of fantasy you can tap by simply landing in S. America.

Oh Well! I have at least got one thing of inordinate fascination which can be worked into an essay. Then I'm rearing to go into more fiction. Sorry for this negative note: perhaps conditioned by the hideous food poisoning I got in Java last week.

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 4 June 1983

 

Darling Lydia,

Over a rather gloomy pre-election lunch (all the vegetables, in the middle of summer, were canned!) both Mr [James] Fox and I agreed that the best thing in Australia is Lydia Livingstone. His drama continues slowly: but I'm sure that, in his slow and thoughtful way, he's going to find a solution. Anyway, this is just to say how infuriating it is to think you're so far away BUT I am coming back. I had Mr H
⁵⁹⁸
on the phone for half an hour this morning from Melbourne. The money is there; the Aboriginal half of the cast is being ‘rounded up' – or is that expression too strong? – and shooting is supposed to start on August 15th. I'll fly probably direct to Melbourne around the 5th. What I long for is that you should come to Coober Pedy in some nebulous but alluring capacity. You with your finely-tuned sense of the ridiculous would, I think, also enjoy it.

I'm sorry this is the shortest possible communication. I have myself ONE day to grapple with a mountain of turgid mail. I bought 40 air-letter forms and am now down to five. So I know you'll understand – this is not the best moment for enlightened correspondence. I feel quite awful about B[en] G[annon]. Two American cheques I gave him bounced because of the immense complications of my American account. Anyway it should be sorted out by now.

All my love to you.

XXXXX Bruce

 

On their visit to Ayer's Rock a year later, Chatwin would tell Salman Rushdie: ‘I've been very unhappy lately and for a long time I couldn't work out why, and then I suddenly realised it was because I missed my wife. I sent her a telegram to meet me in Kathmandu and she sent a telegram back to say she would.' The way Chatwin and Elizabeth got back together did not in fact begin with a judicious exchange of telegrams but with a telephone call from Sydney. When
Esquire
magazine offered Chatwin a commission ‘to go anywhere I want', he telephoned Elizabeth at Homer End and asked her to suggest a place. ‘He said he'd like to go to the South Sea Islands or to Nepal. So I said Nepal. I'd never been there.' He paid for his airfare to Kathmandu by reading
In Patagonia
in six instalments for ABC radio. In the middle of April the Australian novelist Murray Bail drove Chatwin to the Blue Mountains outside Sydney.‘I stepped back for him to admire the view, as you do up there. He looked at it for a second and then turned to me:“What's the date today? Next week I'll be at the base camp of Everest.” ' One year younger than Chatwin, the dry-witted and well-read Bail – he had worked on the
Times Literary Supplement
– was to become one of his most regular correspondents.

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 4 June 1983

 

Dear Murray,

This is a very short communication. Before settling down to write, or at least to set down on paper, some of my Australian thoughts, I've set myself one day to grapple with a mountain of mail. I bought from the Sloane Square Post office 40 air-mail letters at 9am and at 7pm I am down to three. That says nothing about the English side.

I loved our drive in the country.
⁵⁹⁹
It should be the first of many more. I have in mind to rent a house in the Vaucluse for next winter, and if I do I'm going to try and tempt you over to Cézanne and Van Gogh country.

England, as usual, is in a soupy pre-Fascist condition. The weather has been vile. But I have been hardened and burnished by a month of trekking around the base of Mount Everest, so I'm up to it, for a bit.

Also I seem to be coming back to Australia in August, for five weeks, in connection with Werner Herzog's film,
⁶⁰⁰
and this will give me the opportunity to make another foray into the centre, at a less blistering time of year. Why don't you come?

In haste, and best to Margaret
⁶⁰¹

as always

Bruce

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 13 June 1983

 

Sunday

My darling Lisa,

It's hard to write this letter because I have deep physical ache to be back in Nepal. Gradually, over the past couple of weeks, I already feel my knuckles whitening with impotent rage, and my guts twisting into knots. I had to write 75 letters. I had to cope with VAT. I watched the appalling spectacle of the election.
⁶⁰³
I was subjected to bullying demands to do this and that.
Esquire Magazine
wanted me to rewrite the piece in terms of a Yeti-hunt
⁶⁰⁴
– which as one damn well knows it wasn't. Altogether I feel shredded and sliced. Now to cap everything, I've lost somewhere between my flat and E's house my principal Australian notebook, without which I am truly sunk SUNK . . . SUNK . . . SUNK . . .

I am sorry to gripe on: but you do see the contrast with one's unalloyed happiness in Nepal, where I never for a second felt mildly annoyed. I'll write again soon, hopefully in a better frame of mind. If you want the flat for a week or so, let me know and I'll see if it works out. In the meantime there's a vague warning: it is JUST conceivable that my American bank which of course is completely computerised and therefore not amenable to the human will, will bounce the cheque. I have, in fact, in the account about 20,000 dollars, but I've been juggling the accounts round, and it may be that, despite instructions to honour all cheques, they will reject one on my old cheque book – without of course having provided me with a new one. If so, tell them not to be alarmed, because I'll fix it at once.

All my love to you. I AM sorry for this negative note . . . XXXX B

Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 16 June 1983

 

My dear Jorge,

It was lovely to get your letter, six months late, from John Sandoe.
⁶⁰⁵
And thank you for that excessively kind review. I have always been a bit mystified about the Book [
In Patagonia
]'s reception in Argentina, particularly since the Spanish translation, published by Sudamericana seems to have sunk without trace.

However, I do know the book is at least known. For example last week I heard that it was thought to be of consequence by Vargas Llosa,
⁶⁰⁶
to such an extent that there's a possibility I shall go on some TV chatshow
⁶⁰⁷
with him and, of all people, Borges,
⁶⁰⁸
who, to my astonishment, is apparently coming here for three days in the autumn. Could that be true?

The War horrified me rigid. Disregarding the very obvious Argentine right to the islands, and the obvious threat that the ‘pirates' nest poses to Argentine security and ideals, it showed that the British are still the militaristic nation they always were; that they were itching to go to war with someone, no matter where; and that when the opportunity was offered, they went for it, blindly, without even contemplating the rights or wrongs. The
Belgrano
episode
⁶⁰⁹
has to be one of the most cowardly acts of the century, or else a fatuous bungle, but in neither case forgiveable. I agree with you: Mrs T.
⁶¹⁰
and Galtieri
⁶¹¹
are the mirror image of one another; and had the gamble not come off, as it might very easily not have, she would be where Galtieri is today . . .

I'm prostrated by paperwork. I had to buy 60 air-letter forms on my return, and wrote them all. Yours is the second batch. I've had a minor literary success, well and good, but what must it be like to have a major success? I'd like to think that there was still a place for me, an Englishman, in Patagonia. I'll try and get your story from Maxi and look forward to reading it. Chiquita [Astor] told me it was marvellous when I last saw her in December.

My contribution to the war was to find myself inveighing against it on Italian TV, where I suggested that no encouragement should be given to either belligerent by the Common Market Community. Next day Italy refused to renew economic sanctions – for which of course I was roundly castigated by the British Embassy. Someone even suggested I should be put in the Tower of London.