They want us to come back on Sunday to visit the War Museum but museums ought, as Dylan once said, to be put into museums and I can't think of anything more boring. One of the men there, a very suave under-secretary of the Foreign Office said that some ambassador had been to visit and after a couple of hours said that he had tears in his eyes. Lying bastard, I thought. Unless they were tears of boredom.
[...] E wrote two letters last night while I read Dombey and Son. Years since I read it but page after page comes back to my memory. We had several volumes of Dickens at home. They were won by my brothers, principally Ivor I think, for good attendance at Sunday School or day school.
Friday 24th Exhausting work up in the mountains, physically exhausting. Running about at a half crouch and diving into fox-holes at 9000 feet is not only wearying but boring. Seemingly endless explosions go off all around us and at the end of each day I am covered with dirt, some artificial put on by Ron and some, the most uncomfortable kind put on by nature in all the bombing and slithering about. By evening time I am a mass of aches from the use of unaccustomed muscles. So much so that I missed two days in this diary. Too stiff to be bothered. [...]
Still with Dombey and Son. Must confess that Dickens could do with some editing. Sometimes his discursiveness is charming but sometimes one is minded to skip. One can see him beginning a chapter with ‘now let's start this with some fine writing!’ Little Dombey is, let's face it, a bit of a pain in the ass. And the famous ‘death of little Dombey’ very contrived.168 I'd forgotten how often people cry in Dickens. Tears are for ever starting from people's eyes. But it's all good reading nevertheless. [...]
We are going to go to an island supposedly very beautiful and sub-tropical 70% wooded etc. with interior lakes called Mljet.169 We shall paddle around it. Tea and off again in the egg-beater. [...]
E told me tonight that she was always perfectly assured of herself in the early fifties when she knew that she was a sort of second string to Jean Simmons, Grace Kelly and Colleen Gray and Audrey Hepburn variously because deep down she could fall back on a sort of cultural or artistic background.170 She is vague as to exactly what she means and so am I [...] but she thinks that growing up as she did surrounded as she was by great works of art, by your Van Goghs, Monets, Renoirs etc. gave her a sense of proportion about the relative insignificance of whether she played ‘Young Bess’ or whether somebody else did – in this case Jean Simmons.171 E thinks that makes her sound like some kind of intellectual egotist but I don't think so at all. I was and to a certain extent still am, an awful academic snob. There was no mind, if G. B. Shaw will forgive the paraphrase, that I didn't despise in the film business when I compared it with my own.172 There was nothing much to compare it with. One can hardly describe Darryl Zanuck, Lew Schreiber, L. B. Meyer, Jack Warner and all their little satellites as being the owners of towering brains.173 As E says, for her it was a harbour in which she could watch with some dispassion the busy toing and froing while for me, much more arrogantly, it was a mountain peak on which I could look down on the despicable ants.
I have been a little put out by something that Ron Berkeley told me and which I have yet to verify. I have predicated my still unwritten article or what ever it might turn out to be about Tito on the belief that he never ever ordered anyone, including captured Germans who had behaved with atrocity to his defenceless people and hetniks who betrayed and murdered the partisans, to be shot. Now Ron tells me that he was in a bar in Dubrovnik the other night and in the course of conversation with a group of Jugoslavs he said that I was particularly fascinated by Tito because of this. Whereupon two men immediately stood up from the table and left the cafe-bar without a word. Ron asked why this, as Jugoslavs are generally polite. The proprietor who is a cockney Slav believe it or not said that the fathers of the two men had been shot in the Jugoslavian ‘purge’ of 1948.174 I must now try and find out if these two killings (altogether, Ron says 41 people from Dubrovnik were shot at that time) were personal settling of scores or whether the orders came from the top. If so I shall be a disappointed man. I mean if the orders came from Belgrade. I must also find out if the people are willing to talk. So far, after countless conversations with all kinds of people I have never heard one bad word about Tito and very few pejorative remarks about communism, though quite a lot about bureaucracy and its attendant evils – particularly nepotism and the fact that a member of the party, though inferior in merit to a cardless Slav, will always get the vote. I asked Branko, a veteran Slav actor who speaks good English, why nobody, but simply nobody, spoke ill of Tito.175 Was it caution or fear perhaps. Branko said that it was neither, that Tito was still a father-figure. To the older generation – people of my age and his (57? 62?) – he and Sava had been the legendary saviours and to the younger generation – those of 30 and under – there had never been any other President.176 Tito and President had become synonymous. Rather, I suppose, the way in which Caesar came to mean King. Kaiser and Czar are probably etymologically derived from Julius and his namesakes. The young ones know that he saved them from [the] Boche beast and the Red Bear and those who might have opposed him in the crisis of 1948 – if Ron's story in the pub is to be credited – were presumably knocked off or incarcerated. I must ask more of Branko and find out if I can detect in him any signs of caution or fear when next he chats at my instigation. I think I'll be able to tell. I must ask about Djilas and whether it would be possible for me to meet him or even whether it would be advisable of me to ask somebody like Popovi who is a member of the party.177
Saturday 25th, Kalizma [...] I'd forgotten that Dombey was written in serial form which accounts, a great deal I imagine, for the incredibility of the plot which is really beyond belief. No question but that E. M. Forster was right (he is quoted in the afterword by Alan Pryce Jones) when he said that Dickens was the most popular novelist of the nineteenth century and its greatest humourist.178 He is not however a great novelist because I don't believe half he says and his obvious ‘set-pieces’ set my nerves on edge and were it not for the fact that I am congenitally unable to skip passages I would have read the book in half the time. But he is good entertainment and ideal for reading on the daily helicopter trips and between shots on the film – something I was never able to do before. [...]
Having seen Tito on Tuesday we were more than interested in the report in yesterday's Tribune of the meetings between Tito and Brezhnev.179 Looks like the old man is as tough and intractable as ever. He refuses to accept the idea of ‘limited sovereignty’ which is an absurd contradiction in terms anyway. Sovereignty is sovereignty and limited is limited and never the twain shall meet. The Orwellian double-think is evident in every arrogant word that Brezhnev says.180 He denies that he meant by ‘limited sovereignty’ the status under which Czechoslovakia lived and the excuse for the invasion. It says that Mr Brezhnev and Tito were going on a hunting trip but owing to ‘a slight cold’ affecting Brezhnev the trip had been cancelled. How the Russian bosses must hate Tito and how they will exult when he dies. And there is no ear nose and throat specialist who can prescribe for the kind of cold that Brezhnev has. [...]
Monday 27th, Cavtat [...] Flew by copter to the location – took about 40 minutes. Then were asked by Popovi to go to Sarajevo to have a look at the inevitable ‘Tito’ house. It is the usual thing. A house divided into two floors the top one of which is two suites comprised of bathroom, bedroom with two single beds stuck together, and two minute sitting rooms for each suite. Why two? The helicopter attempted a landing in the grounds but it was impossible so we went off to the airport. [...] Knocked off three scenes as fast as I could and we were back on board the copter by 8.30pm. [...]
Tuesday 28th, Sarajevo Sitting here in my ‘suite’ in the house in Sarajevo. It is as far as one can get from the city without being in the country. The mountains go straight up a couple of hundred yards away. It is, this house and the surrounding ones, again one of those little estates which we have found by now everywhere we go which contain hotels
and adjacent houses for the exclusive use of VIPs of the Party. Last night, for instance, one of the boys said that two men appeared unexpectedly and were shown into rooms on the ground floor. That floor has about 8 small bedrooms. So I suppose the VIPs don't bother to book into hotels when on business outside the big cities; they simply report to the nearest Commie-complex.
I finished work ridiculously early [...] about mid-day and was back here in the house by 1pm. Called E immediately at the house but it appears that she'd decided to stay on the Kalizma. Called again this evening after I'd been out shopping but couldn't get through. Will call again later. I feel terribly lonely without Elizabeth. Last night I had dinner as already said in previous entry and today I had lunch – wienerschnitzel, not bad, – just one course when Poppo [Popovi ] [...] turned up again with a very splendid brochure of an exhibition here called ‘Art on the soil of Yugoslavia from prehistoric times to the present.’ He is most insistent that E and I should pay a sort of state visit to it. I loathe the idea of a conducted tour around a museum. I loathe museums anyway and in my case they are a waste of time. The last one I went to was the big one in NY called the Metropolitan I think – it's on the east side of Central Park.181 There were a lot of large Rodins about I seem to remember and I wandered about dutifully enough and was stopped by only one thing – a painting of a large forest, the shot, as ‘twere, taken from one mountain top to another and in the far tree-covered mountain was a long thin waterfall. It was so excellently done that one wasn't sure whether it was smoke coming up from the bed of the valley or water streaming down. The woman I was with, a journalist who was supposed to be an aficionada, said it was a ‘nothing picture’. And by a ‘nobody’. So that was that. Next time I'm in New York I'll see if I can find it again.
The shops close from noon to 4 and so this afternoon I read a book called The French Connection which is about the narcotics trade generally and about one case specifically.182 Not very well written but informative and though written with the co-operation of the NY Police Department showed the Police up in an unattractive light. They seem to be so stupid. A clever man would be able to defeat them every time. The only reason they were successful in this particular case was, it seems to me, because the criminals were equally stupid.
Went out with Brook, Ron and Vessna the interpreter to buy books if any and biscuits and choc etc. for snacking. Found both. The bookshop, a small one was right near the University and was typical. There were many volumes of Ulysses, collected works of MacNeice, Auden, Keats, Byron, Shelley etc.183 Many Fowler's English Usage and dictionaries and Roget's and to my delight two Rex Stouts which I don't think I've read and even more delightful four different Anthony Powells.184 Also two Ngaio Marsh and The Confidence Man by Herman Melville which I've never read.185 So for a small shop in the middle of Jugoslavia it was a considerable haul. Why do the idiotic profs in universities recommend Ulysses – you must know your Ulysses and your Eliot and Pound in your English course here, I gather from Vessna and Yasmin – which, unless you have a really wide and fairly deep knowledge of the language in which it is written must be impossibly difficult to read and certainly to enjoy. They'd even have difficulty with that last sentence of mine. [...]
Wednesday 29th Talked to E at last yesterday evening about 9 and we exchanged loneliness – one for the other. Ate many sweetmeats and drank much water and read Nero Wolfe. He writes so urbanely that after a diet of ordinary thriller writers he cuts the palate with a nice astringency, a neat pungency. [...]
I have decided, even though this is my first visit to a communist country, that the Slav is not made for Communism – at least, not the South Slav. I think it must be as atavistically alien to them as Puritanism would be to the South Irish. It doesn't seem to fit somehow. They seem uncomfortable in it. I have heard so many tales now of the really staggering rudeness of shop-keepers to people, particularly foreigners, that I can only think that they are a very unhappy lot. Raymond, for instance, went into a shop to buy something and when his turn came to be served he was asked for whatever it was he wanted and the shopkeeper said, What nationality are you and Raymond said Italian. Why don't you go and buy it in your own bloody country? was the gracious response. They are just as bad to their own countrymen. Vessna went to buy some drawing pins in a shop and was kept waiting 11/2 hours. The shop wasn't particularly crowded. The assistants simply took endless time, sometimes disappearing into a back room for 15 minutes in the middle of someone's order. Apart from the rudeness on the shopkeeper's part, where was Vessna's and the other people's independence? Where was the shouting and bawling which would have been automatic in any western country? She just shrugs. They also seem a most un-curious people. Though they have never been to the West, they have no curiosity about it. And those who have been to England or Italy or even, one or two like Vessna, to the USA, they never talk about it. [...]
I did a longish scene with two hopeless Jugo actors – hopeless in both languages – and then waited for hours for Heavy Luger to turn up. He had driven from Kupari and it had taken him about seven hours. In the meantime I finished my Nero Wolfe and started Anthony Powell's A Question of Upbringing which is very droll so far.186 I've only read a chapter and a bit and I seem to remember that ‘Witherspoon’ or whatever his name is comes up again very largely in the later volume of The Music of Time.187 It must be quite some time since I read that volume. I had a lot of coffee and had forgotten how shaky it makes you feel. However, nobody noticed and I used it in the scene to give a tensity to it which I hope will work. [...]
Thursday 30th [...] Finished the Powell and started another – got a little tired of that, I mean his style, – and changed to Life at the Top by John Braine.188 Tired of that quickly too so tried a detective thriller. Got tired of that. So put out the light at 10 and went to sleep immediately. [...] Vessna and the chauffeur went out last night and bought two kinds of coffee and two tin jugs to boil water in and some strange looking tea so we'll be able to brew up on the mountain top. Also, from my memory of the bookshop, I wrote out a list of books for Vessna to buy which I suddenly decided would be a neat addition for the library on the Kalizma. I asked her to make it paperbacks as much as she could as ‘good’ books become mildewed from the salt air. So we now have a complete Shakespeare in separate paperbacked volumes, complete Keats, Shelley, Wilfred Owen, Louis MacNeice, Wystan Auden and a Larousse English dictionary which I can keep in the bedroom on the ship.189 And a fat Penguin paperback of Ulysses which I read this morning and immediately after only four or five pages it brought back bleak memories of having to read it so many years ago. I have never looked at it since it was part of the syllabus laid out for me by Phil Burton. It's such a pleasure to read now knowing I won't have to answer questions about it. Having re-tasted it this morning, merely an aperitif of five pages, I shall devour it from time to time.
Ron came back by car last night as we were forced out of courtesy to invite Hardy (Heavy Luger) Krüger and wife to fly down with us in the copter and with Ron as well we would have been overloaded. [...]
Poppo has spent all day trying to persuade Brook, Vessna and Ron to persuade me to go to the Exhibition of Jug Art through the Ages. Normally I suppose I would have gone, but his persistence is so great and his urgency to have the Mayor there together with TV and snappers while I look at the exhibits has made me as recalcitrant as a wild horse. [...]
OCTOBER
Friday 1st, Sarajevo Have read myself into a stupor and practically a standstill. I tried all kinds of books last night and settled for thinking instead after throwing them all aside. I can't remember what I thought about altogether but I remember thinking how much I would like to have E there. I had gone for a walk through the forest – a planned walk laid out by the gardeners in gravel – and thought that much as I liked walking it is not quite as interesting if when you come back there is nobody to confide in. [...]
Sunday 3rd, Kalizma–Cavtat [...] it's a beautiful morning and I'm in love with my wife and apart from s
eeing a chap called Terence Baker at 10 o'clock I have a whole day with E and books ships and cabbages and kings.190 It is also a sparklingly lively lovely day. And my rheumaticaly anthroidic but beautiful child is still a-slumber and E'en So is snoring and the boat moves in a slow circle on its anchor and now you see Dubrovnik and now you see the hotel here and the church-bells are ringing and a plane is coming in to land at Dub airport and I shall have a cup of tea or coffee and smoke a cig and read and waste myself indolently down the day.
Monday 4th Terence Baker, a large man with a lean face and a fat belly, somewhere in his thirties I suppose, came on board yesterday morn as expected and told me, as expected, that the company had not been paying me. I told him to tell the company that we had heard many tales of Yugoslavian perfidy in re the non-payment of actors or delayed payments of as much as 3 to 5 years that unless my money was in the bank on Monday (today) I would not work on Tuesday (tomorrow) and until the money has been paid would continue not to work. So that should be clear enough even to Poppo's muddy intelligence. [...] It is a shame that our dislike of the Poppo could mean a dislike of the entire Jugoslavian race were we dense enough to allow such an enormity. But from Tito on down we have found the South Slavs to be the most enchanting people it has been our pleasure to meet. They have only two rivals but the Italians are untrustworthy and will do almost anything for a fast lira and the Mexicans are so sad, so melancholy. And although the Jugoslavians are chauvinistic, they do not practise it as offensively as the French – particularly – and the English, Germans and Americans. [...]
The Richard Burton Diaries Page 113