Bruce Chatwin (54 page)
Authors: Nicholas Shakespeare
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary, #Literary Collections, #Letters, #Literary Criticism, #General, #Diaries & Journals, #Personal Memoirs
Bruce’s Patagonian notebooks contain few personal revelations or confessions of the sort he is adept at chiselling out of others. He told Uki Goni: “There are some people who go through the day and just write up what they’ve seen in the evening and I’ve tried that, but it’s absolutely no good. It goes dead on you. So what my diaries are is just constant notes. I’ll always have it in my pocket and just scribble down what’s happened that minute and how it’s struck me, fragments of conversation.” But the fragments, the confessions are never his own.
He
is teasingly absent.
He
is teasingly absent.
On 4 January 1975, he arrived in Rio Pico. This village of German and Boer descendants is as remote as you get in Patagonia, 78 kilometres down a dirt road which comes to a halt near the Chilean border. The desolation draws from Bruce the remark: “Who would bomb Patagonia?”
He met in Rio Pico a Ukrainian nurse whose legs had been amputated. Alma Arbusova de Riasniansky is another example of Bruce seeing what he wanted to see. He changes her name, which protects her and also heightens his snapshot. He describes her shelves of Russian authors and says that the words Mandelstam and Akhmatova “rolled off her tongue”. In fact, Alma reads Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. She has not heard of Osip Mandelstam.
But in this snapshot he does not give us the full picture. When they meet she inveighed against homosexuality. Bruce quotes her as saying: “England in full decadence tolerating homosexuality.” In handwriting so small it is barely legible, he adds: “longing to tell/dare not”. Even at the end of the remotest road in Patagonia, he is unable to confess to his diary without betraying the anxiety that someone is looking over his shoulder. He still, at 34, resists the label of homosexual.
Bruce had spent four days in Gaiman, the longest he lingered anywhere in Patagonia. On 29 December he headed further inland, reaching Esquel at the foot of the Andes. For the next three weeks he zigzagged from the cordillera to the pampas, “spending nights in the grass, in caves, in peons’ huts, and sometimes between the linen sheets of an old-fashioned English
estancia.
On my back I carried a small leather rucksack containing a sleeping bag, a few clothes . . . and half a bottle of Vintage Krug to drink at the worst possible moment.”
estancia.
On my back I carried a small leather rucksack containing a sleeping bag, a few clothes . . . and half a bottle of Vintage Krug to drink at the worst possible moment.”
This tantalising digest is typical. Paul Theroux, who reached only as far as Esquel, is not alone in wanting to know: “How had he travelled from here to there? How had he met this or that person? Life was never so neat as Bruce made out.”
His notebooks and letters provide some details. “Dying of tiredness,” he wrote to Elizabeth. “Have just walked 150 odd miles. Am another 150 from the nearest lettuce and at least 89 from the nearest canned vegetable. It will take many years to recover from roast lamb.” There are frequent references in his notebook to his stomach. “Difficulties of Patagonia. I want a salad. Cannot face any more meat. Dust in your eyes. Feeling rather weak of hunger . . . Have an overwhelming desire to eat canned peaches.”
He took trains and buses and hitched rides where he could, and walked a lot, as when he trekked from Harberton to Viamonte. “Basically, God is kind to people who walk on foot.” Once, beyond Rio Pico, he rode a horse but fell off, injuring his hand, and had to visit the clinic named after the Ukrainian nurse. He often found himself abandoned to the roadside. “Tourists always wave at the hitchhiker walking in the other direction; going in the same direction, tight-lipped they pretend he does not exist.” On 18 January, near Lago Posada, he managed to thumb a ride only for the lorry to break down.
“Day of disasters – wrecked my plans. Certainly well said that the internal combustion engine is the modern replacement of the Devil.
“Good subject for a story – the young
camionero
crushed by his own lorry – the one thing he loved.
camionero
crushed by his own lorry – the one thing he loved.
“19th Sunday.
“How to describe the immense boredom, the inertia of waiting for the lorry to recover. We had another puncture last night coming too fast down the
barranca
. . .”
barranca
. . .”
At last he gets a lift with a depressed gendarme who reminds him that “the tragedy of the semi-educated has yet to be written”. The gendarme turns out to be another storyteller. He believes the Vikings marched deep into the Brazilian jungle and that the Incas were in contact with the Martians. “How else to explain their intelligence?”
Sometimes he slept in the open, sometimes in cheap hotels, and wherever he could in the
estancias
of those he wrote about. At Viamonte in Tierra del Fuego, he is remembered by Bridges’s cousin Adrian Goodall as “the chap who brought his own cereal” (Elizabeth’s muesli).
Estancias
like Viamonte reminded him of the headmaster’s house in an English boarding school.
estancias
of those he wrote about. At Viamonte in Tierra del Fuego, he is remembered by Bridges’s cousin Adrian Goodall as “the chap who brought his own cereal” (Elizabeth’s muesli).
Estancias
like Viamonte reminded him of the headmaster’s house in an English boarding school.
Usually, he arrived unannounced. “He felt he was welcome anywhere,” says Elizabeth. “He couldn’t imagine not being welcome.” This attitude caused friction further south. At Despedida, he appeared without warning while Jacqueline de las Carreras’s husband was shearing. “He was very arrogant, very sure of himself, very narcissistic,” she says. “He didn’t speak any Spanish and he didn’t make any effort to be understood. He was very ‘Me, myself and I’m the Queen of England’.” He appalled Nita Starling, a 60–ish spinster who looked after the garden, by asking if she would wash his clothes. She refused.
Bruce would reserve his prickliest comments for Natalie Goodall, who lived at Harberton, Lucas Bridges’s old house. He telephoned to say he had been given her name by David Bridges. “N. G. sounded quite gratuitously nasty on the telephone – hope she drowns.” Nor did their relationship mend when he reached Harberton. “The question of payment to Natalie Goodall rubs one completely up the wrong way by suggesting you are just another bum in search of a bed. Some maybe, but . . .”
On 21 January, in the small village of Baja Caracolles, Bruce wrote to Elizabeth. He was stranded in the middle of nowhere, but he had arrived.
“Dearest E.
I have begun letters I don’t know how many times and then abandoned them. Now I am stuck, for 3 days at least, because the justice of the peace, to whom I confided some of my things, has run off with the key.
Writing this in the archetypal Patagonian scene, a
boliche
or roadman’s hotel at a crossroads of insignificant importance with roads leading all directions apparently to nowhere. A long mint green bar with blue green walls and a picture of a glacier, the view from the window a line of lombardy poplars tilted about 20 degrees from the wind and beyond the rolling grey pampas (the grass is bleached yellow, but it has black roots, like a dyed blonde) with clouds rushing across it and a howling wind.
boliche
or roadman’s hotel at a crossroads of insignificant importance with roads leading all directions apparently to nowhere. A long mint green bar with blue green walls and a picture of a glacier, the view from the window a line of lombardy poplars tilted about 20 degrees from the wind and beyond the rolling grey pampas (the grass is bleached yellow, but it has black roots, like a dyed blonde) with clouds rushing across it and a howling wind.
On no previous journey am I conscious of having done more. Patagonia is as I expected but more so, inspiring violent outbursts of love and hate. Physically it is magnificent, a series of graded steps or
barrancas
which are the cliff lines of prehistoric seas and unusually full of fossilised oyster shells 10” diam. In the east you suddenly confront the great wall of the
cordillera
with bright turquoise lakes (some are milky white and others a pale jade green) with unbelievable colours to the rocks (in the pre-
cordillera
). Sometimes it seems that the Almighty has been playing at making Neapolitan ice cream. Imagine climbing (as I did) a cliff face 2000 feet high alternately striped vanilla, strawberry and pistachio in bands of 100 feet or more. Imagine an upland lake where the rock face on one side is bright purple, the other bright green, with cracked orange mud and a white rim. You have to be a geologist to appreciate it. Then I know of no place that you are so aware of prehistoric animals. They sometimes seem more alive than the living. Everybody talks of pleisiosaurus, or ichtyosaurus. I met an old gentleman who was born in Lithuania who found a dinosaur the other day and didn’t think much of it. He thought much more of the fact he had a pilot’s licence, at the age of 85 being probably the oldest solo flyer in the world. When he was younger he tried to be a bird man.
barrancas
which are the cliff lines of prehistoric seas and unusually full of fossilised oyster shells 10” diam. In the east you suddenly confront the great wall of the
cordillera
with bright turquoise lakes (some are milky white and others a pale jade green) with unbelievable colours to the rocks (in the pre-
cordillera
). Sometimes it seems that the Almighty has been playing at making Neapolitan ice cream. Imagine climbing (as I did) a cliff face 2000 feet high alternately striped vanilla, strawberry and pistachio in bands of 100 feet or more. Imagine an upland lake where the rock face on one side is bright purple, the other bright green, with cracked orange mud and a white rim. You have to be a geologist to appreciate it. Then I know of no place that you are so aware of prehistoric animals. They sometimes seem more alive than the living. Everybody talks of pleisiosaurus, or ichtyosaurus. I met an old gentleman who was born in Lithuania who found a dinosaur the other day and didn’t think much of it. He thought much more of the fact he had a pilot’s licence, at the age of 85 being probably the oldest solo flyer in the world. When he was younger he tried to be a bird man.
I have been caught in the lost beast fervour and 2 days ago scaled an appalling cliff to the bed of an ancient lake . . . and there discovered to my inexpressible delight a collection of fragments of the carapace of the glyptodon. The glyptodon has if anything replaced the mylodon in my affections – there are about 6 whole ones in the Museum of La Plata – an enormous armadillo up to 9-10 feet long, each scale of its armour looking like a Japanese chrysanthemum. The entertaining fact about my discovery, and one that no archaeologist will believe, is that in the middle of one scatter of bones were 2 obsidian knives quite definitely man-made. Now Man is often thought to have done away with the Glyptodon, but there is no evidence of his having done so.
Not an Indian in sight. Sometimes you see a hawkish profile that seems to be a Tehuelche i.e. old Patagonian, but the colonisers did a very thorough job, and this gives the whole land its haunted quality.
Animal life is not extraordinary, except for the
guanaco
which I love. The young are called
chulengos
and have the finest fur, a sort of mangy brown and white. There is a very rare deer called a Huemuel and the Puma (which is commoner than you would think but difficult to see). Otherwise
pinchi
the small armadillo, hares everywhere, and a most beguiling skunk, very small, black with white stripes; far from spraying me one came and took a crust from my hand.
guanaco
which I love. The young are called
chulengos
and have the finest fur, a sort of mangy brown and white. There is a very rare deer called a Huemuel and the Puma (which is commoner than you would think but difficult to see). Otherwise
pinchi
the small armadillo, hares everywhere, and a most beguiling skunk, very small, black with white stripes; far from spraying me one came and took a crust from my hand.
Birds are wonderful. Condors in the
cordillera
, a black and white vulture, a beautiful grey harrier (also amazingly tame), and the black-necked swan which has my prize for the best bird in the world. On the mud flats are flamingos – these are a kind of orange colour – the Patagonian goose inappropriately called an
abutarda
, and every kind of duck.
cordillera
, a black and white vulture, a beautiful grey harrier (also amazingly tame), and the black-necked swan which has my prize for the best bird in the world. On the mud flats are flamingos – these are a kind of orange colour – the Patagonian goose inappropriately called an
abutarda
, and every kind of duck.
You would think from the fact that the landscape is so uniform and the occupation (sheep-farming) also, that the people would be correspondingly dull. But I have sung “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” in Welsh in a remote chapel on Christmas Day, have eaten lemon curd tartlets with an old Scot who has never been to Scotland but has made his own bagpipes and wears the kilt to dinner. I have stayed with a Swiss ex-diva who married a Swedish trucker who lives in the remotest of all Patagonian valleys, decorating her house with murals of the lake of Geneva. I have dined with a man who knew Butch Cassidy and other members of the Black Jack Gang, I have drunk to the memory of Ludwig of Bavaria with a German whose house and style of life belongs rather to the world of the Brothers Grimm. I have discussed the poetics of Mandelstam with a Ukrainian doctor missing both legs. I have seen Charlie Milward’s
estancia
and lodged with the peons drinking maté till 3 a.m. (
Maté
incidentally is a drink for which I also have a love/hate relationship.) I have visited a poet-hermit who lived according to Thoreau and the Georgics. I have listened to the wild outpourings of the Patagonian archaeologist, who claims the existence of a. the Patagonian unicorn b. a protohominid in Tierra del Fuego (
Fuego pithicus patensis
) 80 cm high.
estancia
and lodged with the peons drinking maté till 3 a.m. (
Maté
incidentally is a drink for which I also have a love/hate relationship.) I have visited a poet-hermit who lived according to Thoreau and the Georgics. I have listened to the wild outpourings of the Patagonian archaeologist, who claims the existence of a. the Patagonian unicorn b. a protohominid in Tierra del Fuego (
Fuego pithicus patensis
) 80 cm high.
There is a fantastic amount of stuff for a book – from the Anarchist (Yes, Bakunin-inspired) Rebellion of 1920, to the hunting of the Black Jack Gang, Cassidy etc., the temporary kingdom of Patagonia, the lost city of the Caesars, the travels of Musters, the hunting of Indians etc. Everything I need . . .” There is no better précis of
In Patagonia
.
In Patagonia
.
The primary story remained Charles Milward and the sloth skin. As he followed its tracks south, Bruce found Milward’s story more compelling than he had anticipated. In Lima, he had learned from Monica that her mother Isabelle, before she married Charles Milward, had been raped by an English
estanciero.
On 27 January, Bruce reached the
estancia
of La Colmena, south of San Julian. He had telephoned from the station, “seven leagues away”, mentioned Bridges and said he was on his way in a taxi. Jack Frazer and his Danish wife Ingebord chatted to Bruce for an hour. That night he stayed in the manager’s house and he left early the next morning “without saying goodbye, let alone a thank you”.
estanciero.
On 27 January, Bruce reached the
estancia
of La Colmena, south of San Julian. He had telephoned from the station, “seven leagues away”, mentioned Bridges and said he was on his way in a taxi. Jack Frazer and his Danish wife Ingebord chatted to Bruce for an hour. That night he stayed in the manager’s house and he left early the next morning “without saying goodbye, let alone a thank you”.
The Frazers, Bruce wrote, “live in a world of perfect lawns, a little whisky, white trellises, zinnias, sweet peas, greenhouse cucumbers, cucumber sandwiches.” He found Frazer “pink, quite amusing, with a mouth turned down at the corners”. Monica believed that it was Jack’s father who had raped her mother, Isabelle.
She had sailed from Glasgow just before the outbreak of the First World War. She was the daughter of a Scottish steelworker, 26, tall, slender with an 18-inch waist – and deeply religious. She had been hired as a governess to a Scots family in Patagonia. One night, according to Monica, her employer took his wife in to town for her third confinement. “Mother remained on the farm and apparently he made an excuse to return without his wife and once there, attacked my mother in a particularly brutal way, breaking down the door of her room into which she had barricaded herself. He took her by force after a bitter struggle.
“That night she left the farm – I never knew how, but doubt that it was on horseback as, so far as I know, she never rode a horse in her life – and made her way across several hundred miles to the nearest British Consulate, which was in Punta Arenas. And there, as was her right as a British subject, she asked for help. The Consul was Charles Milward.”
Isabelle, pregnant and in dire straits, worked as Milward’s housekeeper until she was able to sail home. She gave birth to a son and in 1916 she returned to Punta Arenas and married Milward.
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