by Norman Lewis
Close to us a number of tables had been pushed together to accommodate a family later identified as a man of fifty, his wife, two teenaged children, a son in his twenties and the daughter-in-law, their three children, the host’s elder brother, his widowed sister, and the grandfather, who was placed out of respect at the top of the table and to whom the show-fish was first presented for his nod of approval. In Naples there are no babysitters: the family takes its pleasures and suffers its tribulations as a unit, and the aged are excluded from none of its experiences.
With the exception of the eldest son, in his moda inglese pin-striped suit, and his stylish wife, the general impression the group gave was one of less than affluence; yet it was clear that a small fortune was being spent on this meal. By the time coffee came I found myself chatting to the head of the house. He had just been released from hospital—hence the celebration. The family went out on the town two or three times a year, he said, ‘whenever an excuse can be found’. So the money went.
It was the kind of household based on a three-roomed flat—the young couple and their children would live separately—with nothing on hire-purchase, the minimum of furniture and a kitchen of the old-fashioned kind with nothing electrical in it apart from the toaster. The accommodation and home comforts of such a family might seem spartan to English people who could afford an occasional meal in an expensive restaurant.
The father went on to say that he had been employed as a mechanic in the Alfasud factory, then laid off. He added with a twinkle and a rippling gesture of the fingers that while drawing what benefits he could, he had managed to get his hands on a list of Alfasud buyers in the area and, by servicing their cars at cut price, had been able ‘to keep the soup flowing’. His daughter went to school, but took time off before Christmas to make figurines for Nativity cribs, which at that season were in great demand. If necessary his wife could always turn her hand to sewing umbrellas for sale in the London stores. Should a financial emergency arise, the eldest son, who ‘worked on the boats’—he nodded in the direction of the piratical launches in the harbour—could be counted on to pitch in. ‘Si arrangia,’ he said: ‘We get by somehow.’ It has always been the true motto of Naples.
1980
INTO RUSSIA
IN OCTOBER 1944, INSTALLED at the Intelligence Corps headquarters on the first floor of the Satriano Palace, I was as ever astonished at the magnificence of the Bay of Naples as seen through the garden statuary, when the order to leave immediately for Taranto arrived. Here I was to take charge of 3,000 Russian prisoners at that moment ‘in transit’. Enigmatic as this first appeared, no further information was to be obtained, so I took the first train south and after many delays arrived in Taranto in the evening of the next day.
A major in temporary command of the Russians explained their presence. They had been captured in the north of Italy while fighting in the German army and were to be repatriated by sea. I would go with them. The major exploded with wrath. ‘These men are shits,’ he said. ‘If any man so much as attempts to escape, you will shoot him.’ I warned him that such an order could not be accepted. He suddenly appeared to calm, and there was a change in his tone. ‘Do they have foxes up in Naples or wherever it is you come from?’ he asked. I told him that I had no idea. ‘Pity,’ he said. ‘They do in Rome. That may surprise you. In the woods. Get one with your pistol if you’re lucky.’
The Russians had been transferred to the veteran troopship Reinadel Pacifico, and going aboard I found them in their rumpled German uniforms filling the holds and crammed into every inch of deck space. To my surprise I was to learn that all these weary, sick and demoralized men had actually turned on their German captors and gone over to the British in the first battle in which they were involved. In recognition of this they had been promised that their German uniforms would be replaced with British ones. This had not happened and a total collapse of morale had followed along with a number of suicides. Almost all the nominally Russians in sight were Asiatics, in particular from Uzbekistan, and at this moment they had begun an almost tuneless chanting described by an interpreter, who had just arrived on the scene, as a tribal funeral dirge.
A Tadjik, who was the first of these Asiatics that I could make understand me, described his experiences when captured by the Germans advancing into Russia. He and his comrades had been herded into a camp where they were held for three days without food or water before they were made to understand that they were prisoners of war. An interpreter had explained their quandary. ‘There are more of you than expected,’ he told them. ‘There is food for a thousand, but ten thousand of you are here, so you must draw your own conclusions.’
The pick of the prisoners were enlisted in the Asiatic division sent to northern Italy and the rest eventually eliminated by starvation or outright murder, and, since regular German army soldiers were reluctant to kill prisoners, methods were contrived by which they were killed by their own comrades.
Between 4,000 and 5,000 Asiatic Russian prisoners died, largely of starvation, in such death camps. Now, squatting among the survivors in the fetid twilight below deck of the Reina del Pacifico, I listened to the survivors’ descriptions of the horrors that had overwhelmed them. Death’s finality, these survivors admitted, was frequently confirmed by a knock on the head, after which the corpse would be smuggled away to a quiet place to be eaten. Cannibalism, at first dismissed as no more than the most impossible rumour, became a hideous commonplace to be accepted. If a man died his edible parts were eaten. Even a prisoner unconscious through sickness was liable to be attacked. One of the men I talked to displayed the cavity in the back of his leg where half the calf had been gnawed away while he was in a coma. Eventually I was convinced that all the ex-prisoners carried on this ship had eaten human flesh. The majority admitted to this without hesitation—as if the confession provided psychological release.
Authority among these survivors was divided between two men, an Uzbek mullah of the Muslim faith, and one of the handful of Christians, Ivan Golik, a Muscovite with the rank of senior lieutenant in the Red Army, whose philosophies of life were diametrically opposed. Golik’s determination was at all costs to restore the fighting spirit of these cowed victims. The mullah, by the name of Haj el Haq (‘the Pilgrim of Truth’), advocated death for his followers, in this case mass suicide by drowning, to be followed by life everlasting in the Muslim paradise. It was a remedy evaded by even the most fanatical of the mullah’s followers by the ship’s arrival at Port Said, where the promised British uniforms awaited us.
Bound to the wheels of a military machine which once set in motion could not be stopped, ordnance spewed forth: not only the promised uniforms but a range of such army equipment as camouflage netting, gas capes, signalling flags, and above all innumerable razors and shaving brushes, the uses of which bewildered these men with hair that grew only on their heads.
It was the three-quarters of this gear that one would have supposed to have been useless that the Asiatics seized upon and converted to the ends of art, piercing, splicing and amalgamating them to provide a variety of musical instruments, tiny, antique-looking fiddles, lutes, pipes and rebecks. Soon the bowels of the ship quivered with the wild skirl of Oriental music.
Supreme theatrical art had transformed a man who had tasted human flesh into a tender princess stripping the petals from a lily while a suitor quavered a love song.
Whatever these men had suffered in the camps, nothing had been able to take their art away.
Incredibly, at last the war came to an end. I was demobilized and decided to visit Central America. I travelled to Guatemala City, where little tribal life was to be found although primitive groups of great interest had managed to survive in the Cuchumatanes mountains occupying much of the north of the country.
Guatemala was the only one of the small countries of Central America not described as being in the USA’s ‘backyard’. Instead it remained stubbornly resistant to all efforts to extinguish its persistent nationalism. Guatem
ala had held out against all foreign pressure, defended by the poverty of its resources and the absence of oil or very significant amounts of gold. The great barrier of the Cuchumatanes mountains offered better protection than the highest of walls. It was defended also by the national character and the stubbornness of some of the toughest and most dedicated of the Central American Indians.
From Guatemala City I went on to join friends at work in the highlands of Guatemala. Here they were studying the life of the Maya Indians of that area, whose existence as they reported to me was a blend both of sophistication and extraordinary spirituality. This was perhaps most apparent in the Mayan attitude to death. Their Chilam cemeteries were in the centre of the villages and the dead were seen as remaining in contact with the community and even included in family conversations and projects. These people lived wholly on maize and beans, and when these exhausted the soil in which they grew, the family, tribe, or even nation led a nomadic existence until an area where cultivation had not taken place was discovered. It was migrations of this sort that had covered Central America with the ruins of deserted cities.
I had hoped to be able to assist my friends, the Elliots, in their studies of this fascinating race, but was prevented from doing so by the landing in Guatemala of a force of mercenaries from the United States who proceeded to occupy strategic points throughout the country before overthrowing the government, and substituting a right-wing dictatorship in its place. The newcomers had a programme for a revision of the national psychology. Indian communities such as the Chilams would all become peons in the employment of farms, be paid wages, cease to grow maize and beans, and be liable for call-up in case of war. In particular, employment laws were part of the campaign to do away with Indian culture, for the Maya would now be compelled to work in slaughterhouses and even attend church. The old, stubborn and isolated Guatemala had at last joined its neighbours in the backyard.
I settled to write a book (The Volcanoes Above Us) about my sad adventures in Central America, which to my immense surprise eventually became a Book Society Choice for 1954. An even greater surprise was to receive a letter from the Writers’ Union of the USSR to say that they would like to reach an agreement with my publishers to issue the book. It went on to suggest that it would be useful if their representative could visit this country to discuss the possibility with me.
I wrote back to say that I would be delighted to meet the Union’s representative, and a week later I took a telephone call from a London hotel to announce the arrival of Valentina Evashova in this country. It was arranged that we should meet in my agent’s office in Bloomsbury and it was here that our first encounter took place later in the day. A little to my surprise the distinguished professor bore a remarkable outward resemblance to a Russian peasant of the kind portrayed in one of the Soviet films to be seen in London cinemas at about that time. She was sixtyish, short and a little stout, and bundled in garments of the kind a prosperous peasant might have worn to attend a political meeting. Her expression, on the other hand, was intelligent and shrewd. She had dyed her hair dark red. She spoke rapidly in confident and faultless English. Valentina’s wit was quicker than either mine or that of the agent, thus her replies to our questions were ready within split seconds of their being put.
Valentina was critical by nature and ready with instant judgements on all the problems encountered in such meetings. Her eyes ranged dubiously over the office in which she had been received. It was small and bright, but essentially modest in its furnishings and equipment. Later she made some passing comment on this and in a way it was a forewarning or reference to the grandeur of similar establishments in the Soviet Union.
Valentina had been authorized by the Soviet Writers’ Union to inform me that they would print six million copies of The Volcanoes Above Us in paperback form. After some minutes passed without mention of any reward likely to be offered for these rights, she brought up the subject almost in passing. Russia, she said, paid no overseas royalties, but compensated foreign authors in a way most of them agreed was equally attractive. They were invited to visit the Soviet Union, not as mere tourists but as the honoured guests of the nation. The hospitality of the country was theirs to be enjoyed. They were invited to come and go where they liked, and stay as long as they liked. They could, for example, be accommodated for any length of time and without cost to them in a dacha at Sochi in the perpetual summer of the Black Sea. Guides could be given them to explore Central Asia, spend a month with a tribe in Sinkiang or hunt a unique species of boar in Outer Mongolia. As tactfully as possible I pointed out that my agent had worked very hard on the English production and marketing of this book, to which her reply was that she was sure that he too could be invited to become a guest of the Soviet Union.
On this and two subsequent occasions when Valentina visited this country on behalf of the Writers’ Union we were happy to have her stay with us in Essex. It was an environment which must have seemed as exotic to her as later in my case were the Black Sea coast and the valleys of the Caucasus. As was inevitable she was out of her depth with the class system. The village policeman she glimpsed in passing while pruning his roses would be unlikely, she thought, to terrify local evildoers. She was astonished by the behaviour of a son of the local big house who had never quite recovered from his public school, but our gardener impressed her by the pleasing gravity of his expression as he demolished the weeds. ‘Is he an intellectual?’ she asked.
My publisher had thought fit to organize a party for Valentina, choosing the Ivy restaurant for the venue. Included were a Collins director, his film-star wife, and the uncontrollable dog from which she declined to be separated. This could not possibly have been other than a memorable experience for a woman acclimatized to the Muscovite equivalent of what the Ivy had to offer. Everyone who had done rather well in everything came here, and their gay chatter and laughter bubbled all around us. Did they laugh in Moscow? Undoubtedly, but it would not have been like this. I suspected that this gaiety was a convention, and to some extent even a practised art. I could not imagine what I had seen of the Russians fabricating mirth. Valentina had had no practice in subterfuge of this kind. As a Russian she had never been introduced to the mechanism of social pretence. Thus at our small party she was inevitably the odd one out who could not laugh things off and thus reach an easy compromise with unpalatable truth.
My forthcoming visit to the Soviet Union was soon discussed. ‘Leningrad,’ she said, ‘is not completely recovered from the war. You should make a start with Moscow, which offers everything of our country and life-style that the foreigner will wish to see. Be careful in crossing the street on dark nights. We have introduced new laws for car-driving, which is still to be improved. Ask the hotel porter to provide you with a torch whenever you leave the hotel after dark. It is not advisable to drive a car yourself, but if you wish to do so no charge is made for a qualified instructor to accompany you. You will be asked to avoid driving down steep hills or in the medieval district of the city where the roads are narrow. These are indicated by signs.’
Discussion of where best to go next came up and Valentina rattled off a list of historic cities and their principal attractions. ‘Time is short,’ she said, ‘so perhaps we shall be obliged to select a very special few. Had you anything in mind?’
‘Would Central Asia perhaps come into this?’ I asked, a little doubtfully, and I charted the lines of disappointment in her face.
‘Everything depends upon you,’ she said. ‘It is your choice. Central Asia is very large, but four-fifths of it is desert. Were there any towns you had in mind?’
‘I thought perhaps Bukhara, or Samarkand.’
‘No one may visit Bukhara at this time,’ Valentina said. ‘There has been an outbreak of plague. Samarkand is open to travellers. It is a capital of the tribal people, which you might not find interesting. All the same, you only have to say the word and it can be arranged.’
‘You remember I told you about the tribals I took back
to the Soviet Union. Most of them were Uzbeks.’
‘And was there anything special about them?’
‘Yes, they were natural artists. It’s hard to explain. But they were in some way different. Not like us. Very few of the other tribals came through. I think the Uzbeks may have been saved by their art.’
‘I’ll give the Union a ring,’ Valentina said, ‘and if there’s no plague in Uzbekistan you shall certainly go. You may need an adventurous guide who won’t be too scared even if you do run into the plague. I suggest Natasha, whose background has toughened her in a way you may need. She was in Leningrad as a child at the time of the siege. The government ordered Russian civilians to stay in the city, even if they were starving. Natasha was only fourteen but her mother dressed her up as a young soldier and got her out. She speaks your language as well as you do, and she’s beautiful if a little cold. When would you like to go?’
‘As soon as I can,’ I told her, and a week later I boarded the plane for Moscow at Heathrow. If at any time the mere boarding of a plane could be an experience, this was one. The enormous flying machine awaiting us must have been designed to represent the power of the nation that had built it. It spread its great wings over an area emptied by its lesser competitors. I climbed the twenty-two steps and trudged silently over a splendidly carpeted floor, following the stewardess. She lifted the voile curtain of the compartment I was to enter. One of its two seats was already occupied by an exceptionally well-dressed man, who rose to bow, shake hands and introduce himself. This was Dr Bryansky, a lecturer in English History at the University of Kazan.