A Dog's Life (14 page)

She died soon after, and so did Ivan, and then Marshal Tito shook off his substantial mortal coil. Andrea, who had appeared to be stoical about his parents’ deaths, was deeply hurt by Tito’s passing. He told all the shopkeepers in the district and many of the neighbours, including me, that his lovely cat had gone.

How do you let a dog know that her arch-enemy no longer exists? You can’t. I couldn’t. The ghost of Marshal Tito plagued Circe for the rest of her life. We went on crossing the road, to keep clear of the fat dictator. For eleven years, Marshal Tito was a malign immortal as far as my beautiful bitch –
la bella cagna
– was concerned.

Jeremy and I were watching a television documentary about Radovan Karad
ž
i
ć
– the self-styled poet, self-proclaimed ‘leader’ of the Bosnian Serbs, and erstwhile psychologist to the Sarajevo football team – when a familiar figure came on the screen. Who was this clown in army fatigues pretending to be a soldier? ‘I know that man,’ I said. And then, as he began to drool over Karad
ž
i
ć
, telling his hero he was another Alexander the Great, but greater, I saw the dreaded name: Edward Limonov. It made sense to me that Limonov should be worshipping at the feet of a mass murderer.

In May 1989, I took part in a conference in Budapest attended by some of the world’s finest writers. The event was sponsored by the Getty Foundation in America. We were put up in the Budapest Hilton and treated with lavish hospitality.

During that week, the body of Imre Nagy, one of the martyrs of the 1956 uprising, was reburied in his rightful grave. Hundreds of people were at the cemetery to witness this belated act of mercy. For all the evident grief and sadness on display, there was also a patent feeling of hope and renewal in the air. The sun was shining, and the city streets were thronged with young men and women who appeared to be happier and healthier and better dressed than their counterparts in Romania. It was almost as if the Wall had already crumbled.

The conference began, as conferences do, with welcoming speeches from our hosts at a ceremonial dinner. Then, for the next five days, there were sessions every morning and afternoon. The Germans concentrated on the likely possibility of a united Germany and what it implied in literary terms; the French were philosophical, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, a mischievous wit and raconteur away from the podium, droned on at length on that unappealing subject, The Death of the Novel; the Indians were sweet-natured, and talked of many poets and storytellers – most of them Bengali – whose works had never been translated; the speakers from Eastern Europe, who included the remarkable Danilo Kiš, who was shortly to die of cancer, were sceptical rather than optimistic about the future; the Africans looked forward to the end of apartheid in South Africa, and Nadine Gordimer mentioned several promising black writers unknown in Europe and the United States, and the Americans seemed to agree that the days of the ubiquitous Great American Novel were over. The British contingent were ill at ease, because the author appointed to make the address, David Pryce-Jones, took the opportunity to trash contemporary English fiction for not being seriously involved with political issues. But our disapproval of Pryce-Jones was as nothing to that exhibited by the Arabs and Israelis for each other’s points of view. Here was real drama – stormy exits from the conference hall, angry accusations from the floor, and desperate pleas for common sense and respect for literature to prevail.

Edward Limonov was a late arrival, taking his fellow Russians – who loathed him – by surprise. He had been living in Paris, where he had written the punk autobiographical novel
It’s Me
,
Eddie
. His reason for being in Budapest, it seemed, was to insult the Hungarians by praising the Russian soldiers who were sent in to thwart the possible revolution in 1956. He was unstoppable in his condemnation of all the countries in the Soviet bloc. He was not consistent, though. If he was attacking those nations for anti-Semitism and other forms of racism, why did he turn his venom on the Jews? And, indeed, the Arabs? He was playing the role of anarchist, antagonist and denigrator of the status quo up to, and beyond, the very hilt. He was twice evicted from meetings, when he was dragged out screaming.

On the last day of the conference a representative from each country was chosen to thank the hosts and to offer a few general comments. I was elected to speak on behalf of the British writers, and I said how moved we had been by the scenes at the cemetery and how much we had enjoyed the experience of seeing Budapest and meeting poets, novelists and historians we had hitherto admired from afar. There had been only one severely disruptive influence, but I would desist from naming him.

Limonov knew who I was referring to, as did everyone present. That night we had a party on a boat cruising up and down the Danube. I danced with Madame Robbe-Grillet, who was encased, as ever, in tight-fitting black leather. It was long after midnight when we returned to the hotel, where a small group of us – Angela Carter, Richard Ford, Amitav Ghosh, Gianni Celati, Christopher Hope and myself – decided to order champagne as a farewell nightcap. The Russians, minus Limonov, were seated nearby, drinking beer and vodka.

We were into the second bottle of Mumm when Limonov appeared, wild-eyed and spoiling for a fight with anyone. He clearly intended that I was to be that anyone. He strode over to my chair and looked down at me.

‘Are you for or against capital punishment?’

‘That’s a strange question to ask at two in the morning,’ I replied.

‘Answer me,’ he demanded. ‘For or against?’

‘I’m against it, of course.’

‘I thought so, you fucking Western liberal.’

I took a breath, and said, ‘What is it with you? You’ve been foul to everybody all week. Do you have a problem? Are you by any chance a closet transvestite?’

Hearing this, Limonov picked up the empty champagne bottle and struck me on the head.

I can’t recall how long I was unconscious. There were scuffles. The Russians darted over to our table, grabbed Limonov and threw him into the lift. When I had come to, the biggest of the Russians asked me what I had done to annoy Limonov. I told him, and he thanked and embraced me.

‘You were lucky it was a champagne bottle,’ Angela remarked. ‘A wine bottle might have broken.’

Limonov reappeared, shouting, ‘Have I killed him? Have I killed him?’ The Russians dispatched him again.

I had a sore head for weeks afterwards, and often had to lie down to ease the pain, with the ever-attentive Circe at my bedside.

So there was Limonov in the company of his hero, who invited him to use the machine-gun that had been strategically positioned to kill or injure as many innocents as possible in the city below. Limonov accepted the invitation fulsomely, spraying bullets indiscriminately, joyful at the prospect of polishing off a Muslim or two.

A decade after the incident in the Hilton, I visited Sarajevo. I met men and women and children with missing limbs, and several with a missing eye – the lasting mementoes of the gunfire that came at them from the surrounding hills, where Karad
ž
i
ć
was now in hiding, protected by his private army. They all said how lucky they were to be alive.

In Banja Luka, two days later, I was shown Karad
ž
i
ć
’s office in the council building. His name was still on the door. Someone was expecting him back.

In the spring of 2002, Edward Limonov was in prison in Moscow, awaiting trial for drug-dealing and fraud.

I somehow knew the woman was from Central or Eastern Europe before I discovered she was Polish. I attained that knowledge simply by observing the way she dressed. Her elegant clothes had a dated look about them – tailored suits in the lightest of tweeds; dainty, wasp-waisted jackets with fur collars; sequinned pink or mauve jumpers; crisply pleated skirts; shiny court shoes. I had seen such outfits on well-to-do women in Budapest, Prague, Bucharest and Warsaw. They conjured up a vanished conservative age, when fashion was muted rather than ostentatious. Her slightly podgy prettiness suggested a diet of sausage, dumplings, sauerkraut, roast pork and beer.

She came into the park with her dog, an Alsatian whose coat she brushed lovingly. She smiled and said good morning to everyone, but little more than that. She always looked as if she had just visited her hairdresser, for her dark brown hair was never less than perfectly coiffured. In winter, we regulars trudged through the mud in our wellington boots, but she wore galoshes over her shoes. She was shy and modest in her demeanour, yet she made an impression on us as she moved gracefully in our midst.

Adjacent to the roundabout near Ravenscourt Park is a stretch of grass known as Starch Green. It’s a favoured haunt of the local alcoholics, who gather there all the year round. The star among them is Peggy, a volatile pensioner with an impressive collection of funny hats – a jester’s cap with bells; a medieval liripipe; a gentleman’s topper – who sings and dances lewdly before passing out. In June 1993, the Polish woman and the husband she had barred from their flat because of his own problems with drink walked towards Starch Green with their lustrous pet. The man had wanted to visit her, but she had insisted they discuss their differences in the open air. It was a balmy evening.

They sat on a bench on the green and talked. She was seen to rise, and then he produced a gun and shot her dead. He turned the gun on himself, collapsing beside her.

The police and paramedics were unable to remove the bodies. The dog wouldn’t countenance them doing so. He was protecting both master and mistress, baring his teeth at anyone who came remotely near them. An hour passed. A dog-handler appeared, gently coaxing the distraught Alsatian to come to heel.

What was the dog expressing? The deepest devotion, I care to believe.

There is a soup in Britain called Brown Windsor which tastes of nothing in particular. I think I last consumed it in Darjeeling in March 1994, but I can’t be certain. It was set before me in the dining room of the Windamere Hotel, which the poet Dom Moraes had recommended to me, with a chuckle, as the only place in India that still served steak-and-kidney pudding. It looked brownish, and there were no suspect pieces of meat floating in it. Yet when I swallowed a spoonful I realized that it tasted of warm water, with the faintest suggestion of beef extract. The very faintest suggestion of beef extract.

Earlier that day, I had flown from Calcutta to Bagdogra, in the company of Mitalee Chatterjee from the British Council, an independent spirit who prefers jeans to the perpetual sari. She was wearing jeans for the flight and received many disbelieving stares from policemen, soldiers and airline staff. At Bagdogra it was necessary to have my passport stamped, since Darjeeling is, officially, in the kingdom of Nepal. I queued up outside a dusty, cobwebby hut, in which a pile of moth-eaten ledgers was perched on top of a dirty filing cabinet. An amiable Englishwoman, dressed in a sari neatly folded through Salvation Army epaulettes, remarked that the ledgers had been there, unopened, since 1947. It was like a scene from one of R. K. Narayan’s novels or stories, for the three men on duty – two of whom entered our names and passport numbers in ledgers at the pace of a comatose snail, while the third pretended to be supervising – were blissfully oblivious of the anger and annoyance they were causing us. They took their time, and it seemed to last for ever.

Mitalee and I were driven up to Darjeeling in a Land Rover, the driver negotiating the narrow mountain roads with great skill. The air was crisp and cool, and a welcome change after the ferocious heat of Calcutta.

The Windamere is a former hill station. It consists of a main house, furnished and decorated in the style of the 1930s, and a series of chalets. From the moment I walked in to my chalet, I knew I was going to enjoy my stay. The notice in the frugal bathroom was enough to lift my spirits. I read:

NOTE
The chain-action water-closet in
this room has been giving dependable
service since 1912.

There were other notes to digest. I copied them into the diary I was keeping.

COFFEE BY WINDAMERE

From the Baba Budan Hills of Mysore in Southern India comes some of the finest coffee in the world. Windamere adds a northern character to the distinctive flavour of this southern coffee by hand-roasting the beans in a rotating drum over a very slow charcoal fire. The beans are then ground to perfection in an old-fashioned coffee mill just prior to brewing.

I read on, enchanted:

There may be occasional small variations with coffee brewed for you at meals. Coffee making, even now, remains more of an Art than a Science at Windamere.

There was more:

INFORMATION FOR NEW GUESTS

We have been filtering and boiling our drinking water since 1939. No one has been known to become ill after drinking our water. Nevertheless, if you prefer to drink mineral water, we keep an adequate supply in hand.

Mineral water, I quickly discerned, is the Windamere’s sole concession to modernity. The hotel is run (I am assuming it is the same in 2002) on the principle that the Raj is still in existence, as I learned that first evening when I dined alone in the restaurant, the chalet adjacent to the house.

The cuisine, in 1994, was Anglo-Indian. The meal was of a memorable ghastliness, reminding me of the school dinners I’d had to endure forty years earlier. There was that clear soup, which might or might not have been Brown Windsor, to begin with, followed by an unidentifiable fish, accompanied by defrosted, lukewarm beans and carrots, and a chicken curry which contained the tiniest chicken leg I had ever seen, with barely a mouthful of flesh on it. The curry had a distinctly English look about it, since the powder was manufactured, not prepared in the kitchen. I declined the banana crumble, swamped in lumpy custard, and drank a cup of coffee made with Art rather than Science. It tasted disgusting.