by Håkan Nesser
A few days later he writes about another controversy on the terrace. A young American poet is visiting; Martin writes that he and Bessie Hyatt evidently find a lot to talk about, but that Tom Herold, after having consumed a sufficient amount of retsina, is unable to contain his irritation. Bessie apparently defends her table companion – his name is Montgomery Mitchell and Herold makes fun of the name: it all ends with Herold taking his wife by the arm and dragging her away from the table. They return after a while, ‘Bessie seems cowed and helpless,’ Martin writes. The mood feels subdued and uneasy, it’s only Gusov who fails to register the situation. He encourages all present to sing Theodorakis songs in Greek, and before long has most people joining in.
Many of the later diary entries for this last summer on Samos deal with this topic: how Martin interprets the manoeuvring between Herold and Hyatt. He speculates quite a lot as well. Is there an illicit affair in the background? Is there something going on between Bessie and Mitchell – he stays on for more than a fortnight after all? Or between Bessie and Grass? Martin talks quite a lot to this Grass character (without using the abbreviation G, however), who claims to have known Bessie inside out from his childhood onwards, and he confirms that the facts are what Martin has suspected. She is not happy with her considerably older husband, who wants to control her more and more. Grass maintains that there is both jealousy and envy involved: from a literary point of view Herold feels that he is being outshone by his beautiful wife, and no matter how much he pretends to enjoy her success, there seem to be different emotions lurking in the background. But Bessie says nothing at all about it, not to Grass or to anybody else. ‘This is going to be a disaster, that pompous poet is a bloody big time bomb ticking away,’ Martin notes that Grass commented in early August. ‘We ought to rescue her,’ he says at another point, ‘but how the hell do you rescue somebody who doesn’t want to be rescued?’
There are other things discussed in the diary notes, of course, but I find myself skipping over all the more or less strained Hellenistic observations and all the complicated discussions about life, politics and literature. Although Martin comments on Tom Herold’s moods, it is clear that he is full of admiration for the great poet. ‘What would he be without that restless, creative ocean thundering away inside himself?’ he wonders. And ‘After having read Ode to Ourselves I can see that he is presumably the greatest living poet in Europe just now. Quite simply, Herold’s poetry has a significance and a richness which is unmatched in our continent and in our century.’
But he is never on intimate terms with the great poet – or at least, there is no mention of that and I’m sure that Martin wouldn’t fail to write about it if it existed. On one occasion he has an opportunity for a rather more private discussion with Bessie Hyatt: they happen to find themselves together on the beach one morning when a group has gone swimming ‘before the heat is such that every rational person retires to the shade’. ‘Are you happy?’ she asks him out of the blue, and Martin is inspired to respond that any man would consider himself happy if he found himself sitting on a Greek beach with a Greek goddess. She evidently laughs at this, but then she asks if he thinks that she is happy. Martin says he doesn’t think so in view of the fact that she asks such a question, whereupon she nods thoughtfully and just for a moment ‘looks so sad that one would willingly sell one’s soul to save her’. Hmm. I read this somewhat obscure comment again, but that is in fact exactly what he writes. He would willingly sell his soul for Bessie Hyatt’s sake. I note that this is August 1979, and that Martin and I have been in a relationship for over six months by that time.
A few days later on the terrace Tom Herold lets slip the fact that they are going to move. All good things come to an end, he says, but they have sold their Greek paradise and will settle down in Taza in Morocco. The new owners will be moving in in September, ‘so I am afraid the bell tolls for all of you!’ Quite a lot of emotional reaction erupts all round the table: nobody is sure if they ought to congratulate or commiserate or both, but Martin writes that he happens to glance at Bessie Hyatt and that she seems anything but pleased. There is even more smoking and drinking than usual that evening, and for once Herold is at his wittiest and most cheerful. Martin writes that he ‘produces a perfect sonnet from up his sleeve, just like Cyrano de Bergerac: but instead of stabbing an opponent after the final rhyme of the fourteenth line, he pours a glass of retsina over the head of Montgomery Mitchell and kisses his wife.’ Enthusiastic applause breaks out, and not even poor Mitchell seems to have anything against it.
Needless to say there are discussions the following day about the reasons for the imminent departure of Herold/Hyatt, including one between Martin and Grass. The latter maintains that it is a coup engineered by the deeply egotistical Herold, and that Bessie has been presented with a fait accompli. It is not clear on what grounds Grass is able to make this claim, but Martin refers to him as if what he said was ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’. Once again Grass expresses his worries about the fate of his childhood friend, and maintains that things will never end up satisfactorily between the ill-matched couple. Grass has evidently also read a proof version of Men’s Blood Circulation, and declares that when it is published ‘everybody with more than one brain cell in their body will realize the facts about this English verse-monger’. One might well wonder about the term ‘verse-monger’, and Martin reflects at length about Grass’s aggression. He suspects that he can smell a rat, or possibly several, and wonders if Grass is arguing the case for Mitchell, whatever that might be.
Martin leaves Samos together with Soblewski: they take the ferry to Piraeus, spend two days together in Athens, visit the Acropolis, eat and drink in tavernas in Plaka and eventually part at the airport on the fifteenth of August. Martin devotes almost nine pages to these final days, but nevertheless he concludes his 1979 diary with the words: ‘It feels as if something has come to an end. I shall never return to Samos, perhaps I shall never again meet Tom Herold and his goddess, which is a thought that suddenly feels like a millstone.’
Oh yes, I think more than three decades later. And within a year you have a goddess of much lower significance to take care of. Pregnant to boot. But even so you go off on another journey.
There are forty more handwritten pages from Taza.
Not to mention the typewritten pages. Nor the computer files. I decide to wait for a few days. I don’t feel too good when I heave myself up out of the rocking chair: walking along hand-in-hand with young Martin Holinek like this is not exactly without its problems.
26
‘And do you know why our church is painted white?’
It’s early afternoon on the second of December. Castor and I are in and around Selworthy, a village quite high up in the hills, between Porlock and Minehead, quite close to the sea. We have joined forces with an elderly lady and her considerably younger dog, an energetic labrador. We parked the car next to the church, and are on our way up to the Selworthy Beacon: it’s a bit on the chilly side but otherwise fine, and we hope to be able to see for miles from the summit.
‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t know why.’
The old lady chuckles with pleasure. ‘I assume you’re a foreigner, if you don’t mind me saying so; but it’s very unusual to find white-painted churches in this United Kingdom of ours. They are supposed to be grey, the colour of natural stone, both in towns and in the countryside . . . Unlike in some other parts of the world – Greece, for instance.’
‘Yes, I have noticed that,’ I say. ‘That the churches are usually grey.’
‘That’s right,’ says the lady, pausing for a moment to adjust the woollen scarf she has wrapped around her head. ‘But we had a vicar here who painted the church white. He had good reason for that – or at least, he thought he had.’
We turn round and confirm that we can still see the church quite a long way down below us, through all the wintry green foliage of the trees. There is no doubt at all that it is whitewashed.
; ‘He was very fond of hunting, you see – this was a few hundred years ago – and while he was out hunting for deer or pheasants or whatever, down there in Porlock Valley . . .’ She points in that direction with her walking stick. ‘. . . It’s called the happy valley, and they say it really is that, and it certainly is the most beautiful valley in the whole of England . . . Anyway, while he was wandering around looking for prey, he would take a swig now and then from his hip flask to keep up his body warmth and his good humour . . . and then, you see, as dusk began to fall and it was time for him to go home, he hadn’t a clue where he was or which direction he should be heading in . . . And so he had the church painted white. So that it was clearly visible, and so that he’d be able to find his way home no matter what state he was in. And it really worked – you can see it wherever you are in the valley. You can’t miss it.’
‘Is that really true?’ I ask aghast.
‘Of course it’s true,’ says the lady. ‘Do you think I’d make up stories to impress a visitor from a long way away?’
We part company shortly afterwards. She and her Mufti turn off along a path to Bossington – it’s too steep for an eighty-year-old to get to the summit, and in any case, I’m told, all there is there is a pile of stones and masses of wind.
But Castor and I keep plodding along. I think for a while about the lady’s farewell words – a visitor from a long way away – and how appropriate they are. It’s exactly a month since I moved into Darne Lodge – I have a copy of The Times in the car that confirms this; and even if I no longer regard the passing of time like I used to, even if I’m now a sort of desert dweller and an emigrant from all normal life, I couldn’t avoid noticing that they had started decorating for Christmas in Dulverton. We drove through the village on the way here, and as I stood in the queue to pay for my newspaper I saw a poster advertising ‘Dunster by Candlelight’ the coming Saturday – a big event, it seemed.
For normal people.
We trudge up the last long slope to the cairn at the summit, and I entertain the thought that I will never return to Sweden. No, that’s wrong, I don’t entertain the thought because I’ve been doing that to excess for a very long time: it’s the feeling that I entertain now, the discomfort that swells up relentlessly in my midriff. This must be the first time since I came to live on the moor that I have felt such pangs of homesickness, such longing for home.
But longing for what, exactly? If I’m not really longing for anything any more, if I don’t even want to carry on living, why should I long for home? A feeling of belonging, perhaps, of being well known – is this the link I’m fumbling for? Context and security and the reassuring presence of somebody else? But why are such emotions attacking me now on this windswept hillside? We have no future, Castor and I: I shall outlive him and then die, that is the contract we have agreed upon. That we sign up for every day, my dog and I, is that not the case?
I try to shake it off me, whatever it is, but it’s not easy and I know that it was the old lady’s words that started it all off.
A visitor from a long way away.
It could just as well be a description of what is involved in being a human being in this world.
On the way back to Selworthy – we are following a different path now, there are lots of them – we come across a little stone monument. According to an inscription it was raised for a man who liked to walk up to this summit with his children and his grandchildren, talking to them all the time about the beauty and richness of God’s nature surrounding them on all sides. According to the same text, the monument is intended to be a haven where a tired wanderer can rest, protected from the wind: as Castor and I have both coffee and liver chews in our rucksack, we sit down in the lee with the pale but nevertheless warming sunlight shining into our faces. I read a poem on the wall:
Needs no show of mountain hoary,
Winding shore or deepening glen,
Where the landscape in its glory
Teaches truth to wandering men:
Give true hearts but earth and sky,
And some flowers to bloom and die.
Homely scenes and simple views
Lowly thoughts may best infuse.
Even these lines touch me deeply. I really don’t understand why I am so affected and why so many doors to my soul are standing open on this lovely December day, but that’s the way it is. I’m suddenly reminded of the novel A Happy Death by Albert Camus, which both Rolf and I read during the short time we were together and the theme of which we discussed: choosing the time and the place of one’s own death. That dying is the most important moment in life, and hence that one shouldn’t leave its circumstances so casually in the hands of others, as most people do.
Would I like to die here and now? Is that the question that should be occupying my mind? I don’t think so, but perhaps I would like to die on a day like this in a place like this. Perhaps even this very place?
I contemplate Castor as he lies stretched out on the ground in the sunshine. I contemplate England’s most beautiful valley in all its glory. I listen to the wind in the treetops, and it occurs to me that as long as we live we shall never be able to ignore the passage of time, nor the Christmas decorations in Dunster, nor what we are guilty of having done.
That is why we need the door of death through which we can take our leave.
The sun is swallowed by clouds. Castor sits up and stares at me. It’s time to go back to the car.
*
There are two vehicles in the car park next to Selworthy’s white-painted church. One is my rather dirty dark blue Audi, the other is a silver-coloured Renault with a badge indicating it is from the rental firm Sixt. Despite the fact that there are at least ten empty spaces, the driver has parked it so close to my car that I can barely open the driver’s door and squeeze my way in.
It is while I am performing this difficult manoeuvre that I notice the newspapers lying on the dashboard just above the steering wheel of the rental car – it is right-hand drive, whereas mine is left-hand drive. There are two papers and I recognize both of them: one is the Swedish Dagens Nyheter, and the other the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza.
I manage to sit down in the driver’s seat and close the door behind me. I look around. No sign of anybody. I start the engine and drive away. My heart is beating fast: I know that this is one of my vulnerable days, and I hope the fear that took possession of me in a flash will fade away provided I don’t feed it with unnecessary thoughts. As long as I concentrate on other things.
On the way home we drive once again through the narrow medieval streets of Dunster. I stop and buy four bottles of red wine and two of port. It will soon be Christmas, after all.
27
I leaf through the Morocco material before starting to read it carefully.
Martin seems to have spent thirteen days in Taza in the summer of 1980. Or at least, that is the number of days there described in the diary, but he doesn’t pack up and travel back home, nor does he even say goodbye to Herold and Hyatt. I seem to recall that he was away from Stockholm for at least three weeks, but of course it’s possible he took the opportunity of visiting Casablanca and Marrakesh, not just the notorious couple in Taza, having already gone all the way to Morocco. Perhaps he told me about it when he got back home, but when you’re in the eighth month of pregnancy with your first child, other things don’t register.
Maybe he realized that it was time for him to leave Taza. Maybe something happened that caused him to stop writing – something of which he didn’t want to have a written record, for whatever reason. Perhaps I’ll find the answer in the type-written material, or on the computer.
I no longer know if there really are ravens on my shoulders, and if I am obliged to continue with this undertaking I have embarked upon. The thought of a big nocturnal bonfire out on the moor, with all Martin’s belongings, has become increasingly attractive this last week, but that might be overhasty. Why it should be overhasty is something I still don’t understand: there is a
difference between burning clothes and burning bridges, but perhaps it’s not as great as I’d like to think. I really am ambivalent about it, but think that I might as well read these irritating notes to the end – just as well as I should play patience or become acquainted with Lorna Doone’s and John Ridd’s exploits on seventeenth-century Exmoor. What is important and what ought to be done are questions that become less obvious for every day that passes. I assume that is the legitimate price of isolation.
In any case, the situation in Taza in 1980 is different from what it had been on Samos the three previous years, and I can’t help wondering why Martin has been invited at all.
Or why anybody has been invited, come to that. Have they been invited in fact? By whom? Seven people have come to visit the big house outside the town of Taza this summer: Grass, Gusov and Soblewski, one of the Germans, plus a much older French novelist called Maurice Megal and his wife Bernadette. And Martin. Nobody else is mentioned, apart from Hyatt and Herold. On checking I confirm that this charmed inner circle comprises six men and three women; in addition there is also a female chef, a gardener and a swimming pool supervisor. So if one were to write a play about the goings-on, one would need a dozen actors.
Why on earth would anybody want to write a play about it?
But why on earth would anybody not want to write a play about it? Good Lord, I haven’t had much to do with drama at the Monkey house, but I have been involved in four or five productions and think I can claim to know the rules of the game. Evenings in Taza? It sounds almost like a classic already.
Martin arrives in the evening of the twentieth of July, and his last handwritten note is dated the first of August.
Bessie Hyatt is pregnant, that is the hub around which everything else revolves. Martin doesn’t discover this fact until the third day of his visit, and her body shows no sign of pregnancy. But it is a fact even so. She is in the beginning of the third month, and the same evening that Martin hears the news he is in a private conversation with Grass and is informed of a possible complication. Martin has underlined the word ‘possible’ twice, because Grass is not yet certain of the circumstances – namely that the father of the expected child is alleged to be someone other than Tom Herold.