From the Elephant's Back: Collected Essays & Travel Writings

  Nations, like individuals, grow slowly, and the harder the struggle the richer the experience upon which character is founded. Yugoslavia has struggled out of the mists of foreign oppression and has gathered itself together. But it is so various and so brightly coloured (I am thinking of the patchwork quilts that one sees in illustrations to Grimm[8]) that sometimes the Yugoslavs themselves are bewildered by the multiplicity of colours and patterns.

  Out of all this confused colouring, however, their national character is beginning to emerge, and there is little doubt that when it does it is in the arts that it will leave the first imprint of its unique temperament. Their self-interpretation will come in sculpture, poetry, and music. Already there are the first signs on the horizon. No one can see these first fruits of unity without a feeling of hope for the future.

  Letter in the Sofa

  1957

  IT WAS A YOUNG SAPPER MAJOR who found the love-letter while he was combing through the villa his unit had inherited from the Germans, on the look-out for booby-traps—though I must confess this seemed to me an unnecessary operation, for we had moved swiftly into the Island of Rhodes to find its starving garrison only too glad to welcome us.

  The Germans were literally starving; there were two hundred deaths a day from sheer malnutrition among forces and civilians alike. The place was a shambles.

  I still retain an image of destroyers drawn up in the harbor feeding out biscuits from the great broken boxes by searchlight, tossing them into the forest of waving hands in great packets.

  Unit for unit, the incoming administration took over the offices and billets of the military garrison, and the sappers inherited a rather pleasant villa on the hill from some German sapper unit. While I was only a civilian, I had arranged to mess with them as my printing-press was near by.

  It was odd that, just as I was calling on them to make my number, their major should hand me a love-letter in Italian. He had been groping in the bowels of the big, ugly Second Empire sofa which stood in the window, with its incomparable view over the sea and the Anatolian hills. I translated a few lines for him, and he grunted contemptuously.

  “A love-letter,” he said. “I suppose these Huns had girl-friends up here of a night.”

  I put it in my pocket and forgot all about it; but later that evening I remembered it over my solitary dinner in the town (my work kept me late) and I read it again in full.

  It was rather a remarkable letter to find in a sofa, and as I read it I became interested, for it was written in the most touching and spirited style. There was nothing mawkish or silly about it at all.

  It was signed Rebecca Monteverdi and addressed to someone called Wilhelm-Maria.

  It was a long letter, almost valedictory, for the writer had been surprised by the dreadful news that Wilhelm-Maria had been posted back to Germany: she did not know whether he would find this letter in its hiding-place or have time to leave one for her. (Apparently he had neither been able to claim her letter nor deposit his own.)

  She spoke also of the Italian lessons, and “other officers.”

  It seems as if she had been giving the unit Italian lessons.

  But why the sofa, then, and the secrecy?

  Then the truth suddenly dawned. Her name was a Jewish one, a typical Spanish-Levantine name, Monteverdi! This explained the secrecy, at least, the hidden exchange of letters via the sofa on which she sat to give her lessons.

  I thought no more of the matter until one day, quite by accident, the intelligence people who were fussing through the garrison muster rolls produced some information about the original inhabitants of the mess.

  There was only one Wilhelm-Maria on it: Rowohlt.

  Then there came another small coincidence—a party in the mess during which I met the grave, sad Mr. Silvani, President of the Jewish Committee of the island, and learned some distasteful things about what the Germans had done.

  “Out of a population of seven thousand Jews,” he told me quietly, “they took away three thousand, mostly women, among them my own daughter.”[1]

  He paused and drank his cocktail with an air of great deliberation. Then he went on steadily: “Up to now, we have located about 1,500 through the Red Cross. They are all over the place.”

  I said: “Well, that’s something—I suppose they will be coming back.”

  He looked at me quietly with the muscles tightened in his jaw. Yet his voice was mild.

  “Most of the women,” he said, “were sent to officers’ brothels on the Russian front, and many, some…well they don’t want to come back. Out of shame.”

  I don’t know what prompted me to say: “Do you know anything of a girl called Rebecca Monteverdi?”

  He nodded slowly and put his glass down. “Of course. She was taken among the last lot. A brilliant girl. Doctor of Law at the University of Rome. She was caught here on holiday by the war and stayed on with her mother, dead now. She gave Italian lessons to the Germans. But that did not save her.”

  All of a sudden I felt that I could see her very clearly, her dark head bent to her lesson-books, seated before the window with its marvelous panorama of water and mountains.

  “Did you know her?” asked Mr. Silvani, and again to my surprise I found myself answering: “Not personally. She is a friend of my sister.”

  He could not tell me whether she was among the 1,500 persons located who might be expected to return. The war was over, but there was a good deal of chaos everywhere. You never knew.

  And if she did, Wilhelm-Maria, if he was not dead, was somewhere in the tangle and confusion of a disrupted Germany. If she did return, could she find him? Would she want to? Or perhaps…There I let speculation rest.

  But good stories don’t let one rest. Two months later I met a don engaged on the undonish work of going through the German archives on the island, sorting out the papers to check the names of the prisoners we held in the desert pens in Egypt.

  I asked him to keep an eye open for a German sapper officer called Wilhelm-Maria Rowohlt, as I would like his address.

  Trust an Oxford don! Within three weeks I had a note from him on my desk at the office, telling me that he had turned up information on Wilhelm-Maria and giving me an address in Bavaria—a little village of sorts, full of timber mills. He had even discovered that Wilhelm-Maria was a Doctor of Philology from Dresden.

  I wrote him gratefully, though of course all this was purely gratuitous curiosity; I felt I was prying into something which was hardly my own affair. After all, if Rebecca Monteverdi came back, and Wilhelm-Maria wanted to reach her…

  Then my own posting came through and I packed my affairs, sad to leave this beautiful island. To my surprise, I found the crumpled love-letter among my papers. I can’t think why it had not been destroyed.

  I sat and read it again right through, seeing the whole story quite clearly now in my own mind. What is more commonplace in a war than the human love story?

  Then on a pure impulse, I took the love-letter and scribbled a few lines on the back of it—I didn’t know quite how to put it—giving Wilhelm-Maria’s address, and hoping that she would once more get in touch with him. (We writers are sentimental people at heart.)

  In the morning I took the letter round to Mr. Silvani. I had to pay a courtesy call to say goodbye anyway.

  “May I leave this for Rebecca Monteverdi?” I asked him, “I mean in case she should come back to the island. I expect that sooner or later she will be located and brought back. It is rather an important message. It contains my sister’s address.”

  He assured me that it would remain to await her arrival among his archives.

  The next day I left the island, and have never been back. And that is the end of the story. It is years ago now. I have never had the courage to write back and find out whether she got back and found my letter—her letter. I feel superstitious about these things. It is better to let destiny take its own course not to try and be a deus ex machina.

  After all, suppose she did ge
t back and get in touch; she might have found him married already, or legless, or a tramp in the new Germany. Life finds a thousand ways to cheat lovers.

  I personally don’t want to know the answer to the story. I know that in life it is always a thousand to one against the Happy Ending. For life is not like a short story. Or is it?

  The Moonlight of Your Smile

  1960

  THERE WERE MANY MEMORABLE, delightful or just sinister aspects of life in Cyprus which I was not able to investigate for myself during my stay there.[1] But my sharpest regret is that I never managed to visit the factory in Larnaca which manufactures black false teeth. I know. I know. I too could hardly believe my ears when first I was told of its existence. “Black false teeth?” I said. The Colonial Secretary of the day was a master of anecdote, and I suspected him of pulling my leg when he mentioned the place.

  “Did you say black teeth?” I echoed. He enjoyed my obvious incredulity for a whole second before reassuring me that he had intended no joke. “Apparently,” he said (and he was always glad to illustrate that truth was stranger than fiction). “Apparently, all over the Far East, where people chew betel nut, black false teeth are as much in demand as white ones with us. The Larnaca factory here is the sole manufacturer and exporter of black artificial smiles in the whole world. Why don’t you visit it?”

  I determined to do so, but somehow I never got around to it. We were in the middle of political crises[2] of varying intensity and the pressure of events always prevented me. But I never forgot about it, and later that year, when I became a Government Press Officer, I sent a reporter down to Larnaca with instructions to write a feature on the factory for the Cyprus Review.[3]

  He came back looking thoughtful and said plaintively that he had not been able to get inside the factory. He had telephoned the manager twice and had told that the makers were averse to all publicity about the black teeth. He asked why, it was feared the lucrative Far East market would be impaired if the world got to know about the black teeth. Apparently, Asians were rather sensitive about false teeth in general, even white ones. Publicity about the black teeth might have unforeseen results on sales.

  There the matter rested for some months. God knows, I did not wish to harm the island’s industries in any way, yet I confess to a feeling that there was something rather curious, perhaps even a bit sinister, about it all.

  INFORMATION

  After a year, a visiting reporter in search of colour material came to my office and asked me for some information about the black false teeth. This gave me an opportunity of pressing the matter officially, so to speak, and I wrote twice to the factory asking for permission to report on its wares, but neither letter was answered.

  Then one day a highly nervous businessman called at my office and left me a fat brochure and a single tooth (but a white one) mounted in some unlovely pinkish material. I was out at the time, and my secretary received this. When I got back, she was looking rather faint. Perhaps she had feared it was an EOKA[4] bomb, wrapped up so neatly in tissue paper. But even the fact that it was a tooth did little to reassure her.

  There was not a scrap of information about the black teeth. The businessman who wore black gloves (a sinister touch, this) had told her that I could only publicise the exploits of the firm as and where they concerned white false teeth. Blacks were on the secret list. It seemed to me that the directors were obviously under some frightful misapprehension—or in the grip of an inexplicable pudeur. I let the matter slide once more.

  Then, some months later, during the riots and upheavals, I ran into an officer I knew in charge of search parties in the Larnaca district. His job was, as he put it, to “unstitch” places where the illicit manufacture of grenades might be taking place. At once I implored him to lead his men to the false teeth factory and examine the whole question of its products with an unclouded eye. I felt I simply must know. Did they or did they not manufacture black false teeth? By this time the thing was rather preying on my mind.

  I could see he didn’t believe my story, but he made a note of the factory’s name and promised to look into the matter in the normal course of his duties.

  “YOU WERE RIGHT”

  A month later he walked slowly into my office and lowered himself into the armchair, breathing heavily. “By gad, you were right,” he said in a low voice. “I thought you were pulling my leg at first. Upon my soul, they do make black false teeth. It gave the men quite a turn to see these rows and rows of black snappers hanging on the walls. Ugh!” and he shuddered. “But there were not bombs, alas!” He smiled. “And I brought you a little souvenir to set your mind at rest.”

  He placed a set of black false teeth on my desk. I slumped in my chair with relief. At last! The teeth were rather smaller than I had expected and appeared to be made of black liquorice. But the set was complete. I thanked him profusely. I suddenly felt ten years younger and liberated from an obsession. After washing them in the lavatory I tried them on. I was due to leave Cyprus the next day[5] so I wore them back into my office and gave my secretary a fright by smiling at her with them in. They were a success.

  Ah well, I hope these notes do the tooth industry no harm. I had some difficulties in getting the black teeth through the customs at that end and was finally forced to sign a document attesting that they were the used personal effects of a Government official returning to UK on termination of contract.[6]

  At London Airport, too, there was a little feeling about them. It was suggested that I should pay duty on them as works of native art, but I successfully evaded all charges and signed another document attesting that they were purely for personal use.

  They lie before me now as I write. I don’t suppose they could be considered either very useful or very beautiful. But they prop up a burning cigarette quite well as I type and next week, when I go up for my Foreign Service interview and ask for another foreign posting, they may just do the trick.[7]

  The Poetic Obsession of Dublin

  1972

  IN AN ERA when there are societies for the suppression of almost everyone and everything it is surprising that there is not one devoted to the total suppression of Duffy.[1] He has caused so much trouble to his friends…his search for the Holy Grail in the back parlour of Mooney’s; his address to the nation (fell into the docks); his guide to Irish sentiment (one shilling). Yes, if there were a Nobel for Utter Awfulness, Duffy would get it. Yet, in spite of this, when chance sent me to Dublin I discovered that he had gone back home for a visit and asked him to show me round. In Dublin he was O’Duffy. In England, where he lived precariously off bookmaking, he was simple Duffy—he dropped the particle. I sent him a telegram care of Duggan’s, which I knew from his conversation was his favourite haunt after Neary’s. I made my need quite clear. I said: “Please no folklore, no Irish eyes are smiling stuff, no feckless charm. Just want to see the city with calm detachment.” His answer was characteristic. “Try and come during Ramadan and share a glass of ruby porter.” Was I to presume from this that the Irish had suddenly gone Moslem?

  However, I swallowed my misgivings and took a plane which lofted me into the warm pearly sunlight of a precocious spring morning, high over the Irish Channel with its criss-crossed vortices of wind hither-and-thithering. Tilted up against the sky-ceiling we could look down upon the islands which lay about like cattle in a field, while the glittering sea flared back at the windows of the aircraft like a shield of bronze. Ireland slid towards us silently, looking somehow frail and vulnerable with its soft curves—not craggy and beetling like Scotland or Wales. We hovered, we circled, coming down lower and lower until at last the pilot made a short run in and rolled us towards the small compact building of the airport. Dublin Airport—its homely size gives one a premonition about the capital—perhaps even the secret of its charm, namely size, that vital key to living values. All the cities which haunt one are life-size, built to human scale. Once they grow beyond a certain size their cohesion gets swallowed up and it’s no longer possi
ble to be haunted by them in quite the same way. London and Paris have grown this way—out of affection and intimacy: one loves little pieces of them now, not the whole. But Edinburgh, Zagreb, Lucca, Geneva—it is still possible to centre a poetic obsession around them. A fine poetic city should be walkable across and should not have more than a quarter of a million inhabitants living in it. I felt Dublin would be this way, and it was.

  Duffy was waiting for me, talking to a pretty Customs Officer in uniform; she had blue eyes and a cowslip complexion. I thanked him for his presence. “Nothing is too much for a friend one distrusts,” he replied, lighting up his pipe. Nobody could have minded his luggage being searched by such a girl but she simply smiled and waved us through, so that Duffy led me out into the blue-violet air of an Irish spring. He himself looked as if he had slept in his clothes, and he was rapturously unshaven—presumably because it was Ramadan. In the taxi he appeared to drowse as we sauntered and bumbled on our way. He had become very much stouter since last we had met, and when I commented on the fact he said it was a “phantom pregnancy,” whatever that might be—he had read about it in a woman’s paper. Everything smelt marvellous out here: wet earth, glimmer of streams, larks rising from dewy ground. And Green! That was the code word—Irish green. I told him that the philosophic society of the University had invited me over to hear a paper read on my work and to take part in a discussion on it with the students.[2] It had been a marvellous chance to visit the island and correct the impressions I had gathered from my readings. “Sinister impressions, about the Liffey running dark with Guinness, about Saturday night being folklore night, and so on.”[3] Duffy puffed and wagged his head. “I fear that mostly your impressions are well founded. Why even the damned island is shaped like a diseased liver.”