I shall never know if Rosa gave me an honest reply when I asked my disgraceful and insensitive question. I shall never know if she was deceiving herself, or telling me the truth.
It is as if the seventeen-year-old African girl is helping me to answer questions and steer the right course through the difficult channels between life and death.
—
As I write this I have just completed the fourth cycle of chemotherapy in my basic treatment. In a few days from now I shall know whether or not the cytotoxins have worked.
Of course I am worried and tense. Sometimes, especially during the night, I wake up in a state of almost panic-stricken worry. Then I get up and go out into the chilly spring darkness of the terrace. An oystercatcher impatiently waiting for the dawn cries out from the beach below.
It usually doesn’t take long for me to become calm again – a fragile calm, but calm even so. And then I sometimes get the feeling that Rosa is close by. Not as a ghost or some kind of evil or benevolent spirit, but just as a memory and an unresolved sorrow on my part.
And most important of all: a reminder of what happened that evening on the earth floor.
45
Moving silently from darkness to darkness
We can only remember the past. The future can give us no memories. Time is an arrow flying in only one direction: forwards. We can’t change time and ask the arrow to fly backwards. Time machines don’t exist. Mathematical theories, sometimes in model form, can investigate the possibility of reverting to the past – and play with the idea of preventing Grandma and Granddad from meeting so that you yourself are never born. But all such theorems are no more than thought games: in practice I can’t possibly make myself unborn. The thoughts I think would never have been thought if such a journey through time were possible. My memories would never have existed, and hence could never be obliterated.
Questions about time and the universe are the biggest and most difficult. The sharpest minds work away at them. The chemical processes in their brains operate at the highest possible rate and occasionally amazing new breakthroughs take place.
I can remember what nobody knew when I was young and what we know today. From a universal perspective the black hole question is completely new. Analysis of human DNA is another scientific breakthrough that nobody could have foreseen seventy-five years ago.
All theories about thought are ultimately about trying to discover a meaning beyond the basic biological requirement of reproducing ourselves. They are just as much about survival of the human race as about ensuring that our questions, as yet unanswered and possibly not even formulated, shall be set before the enquiring minds of future generations.
We all wonder. It is something we have in common. I don’t know anybody who hasn’t gazed up at the stars and wondered about the meaning of life.
Many people give up, stop asking such questions, shrug their shoulders and continue their daily lives as if there were no unsolved mysteries. Some give up when they are still young, others continue wondering until later in life. But in the end they give a philosophical shrug of the shoulders. I can understand them. For millions of people it is an unattainable luxury to be in a position to set aside time for thought.
This is one of the most disturbing injustices in the world we live in: the fact that some people have time to think while others never have that opportunity. Searching for the meaning of life ought to be written into the global declarations of human rights as a matter of course.
Some people find the truth in religion. Others gaze up at the stars. Once, when I was a young child and unable to sleep on a cold winter’s night, I saw a solitary dog appear in the flickering light of an overhead street lamp and then slink silently off again into the darkness, as if on tiptoe. I sometimes think that all my questions about life and death and the past and the future are linked to that dog, moving silently from darkness to darkness.
Our ability to wonder and ask questions is what makes us human beings. In a way that starry night sky is a mirror in which we see our own faces. It seems to me that my face is most accurately reflected when it is filled with wonder.
In my world truths are always provisional. Nothing I have ever thought in my life has remained the same. Truths are ships sailing across the sea; you have to steer them in the right direction, avoiding reefs and rocky shallows. The speed has to be varied, or the number of sails increased or reduced.
A ship returning from a voyage is not the same vessel as it was on setting sail. The same applies to truths cruising around inside my head and in my life. In order for those truths to survive, I sometimes need to question them and find a suitable way of adjusting them.
When I was in my twenties the USA’s aggressive war against Vietnam was in many ways a significant watershed. At the time I thought it was right to campaign against the American invasion, and still do. But when the war was over and the American troops had been driven out of the country, Vietnam then attacked its neighbour, Cambodia; it became every bit as justified to condemn Vietnam as it had been to condemn the American invaders.
To my surprise, at that moment rationality was replaced by sentimentality as far as many people were concerned: how could I criticise the brave Vietnamese? People flopped down on their sofas weeping profusely and insisting that the Vietnamese had every right to attack Cambodia.
For me that was a significant insight. Sometimes the truth has to be stood on its head in order to appreciate its true stature.
Bertolt Brecht wrote that thinking is one of the most enjoyable activities there is. I agree with him. Trying to solve a problem by means of concentrated thought, sitting at a desk or out walking, is both liberating and invigorating. And also fun.
It is possible to think about anything. There are no protective fences or trenches or minefields in the world of thought. Everywhere is open country.
The people who run dictatorships or tyrannical governments know this so they use various methods of forcing their subjects to conduct more or less voluntary self-censorship. To dig trenches inside their brains where there were no such barriers before.
I know what self-censorship involves. On several occasions twenty-five years ago we chose not to stage some productions in the theatre in Maputo. Our arguments were rational: audiences wouldn’t turn up, we didn’t have actors suitable for the roles, the play or the theme was perhaps not quite as important as we had originally thought. We created no end of arguments to demonstrate that we had made a sensible decision, but deep down we all knew that in fact we were practising self-censorship. There was a risk that the powers that be in Mozambique at the time would not react positively to our production, and we would have problems. In the worst-case scenario the theatre might be closed down. I myself might be given what was known as ‘24/20’, which meant that I would have twenty-four hours in which to leave the country, and my luggage must not weigh more than twenty kilos!
Whether or not we did the right thing is open to argument. I am still not sure. But the theatre is still there – it was never threatened or closed down. Now we can state openly that our decisions were dictated by self-censorship, rather than by our free and unbiased creative aspirations.
The biggest challenge of all is to have the will to explore new thoughts, not to hesitate to question what others regard as truths, and to go in other directions.
Let me give an example. If I were ever asked to write a play about a strike, I would probably choose to write about a strike-breaker. That would mean I would approach the topic from an unexpected angle. Querying the justification for the strike might lead with luck to unexpected and different reflections. New thoughts, new conclusions.
Vital discoveries in various branches of industry often come from the factory floor, not from the offices in which engineers are paid to find solutions to problems. Developing our ability to think has to do with our survival, of course. We want to live, not to die. Every time I see someone rooting in a rubbish bin, I see this simple axiom before me: we want to
live. At any price.
Perhaps we can turn this argument around? Everything we do is because we want to avoid death. At any price. Despite everything, life is something we know about. Death is foreign to us, even if we know that dead bodies rot away and eventually all that is left is merely bones.
But we also think about what death implies. Are there other worlds? Or is it simply darkness?
This also means that sooner or later we find ourselves standing in front of the wall I have spoken about earlier. What came before time and space? What existed before anything existed?
Are ‘nothing’ and ‘eternity’ the same thing?
My paternal grandmother lived to be almost one hundred. During her final years she suffered periodically from an acute fear of death. She would lie down on her bed and close her eyes – tightly, like a child who thinks it can make itself invisible.
I sometimes sat on the edge of her bed. Then she would slowly open her eyes. I would ask what was troubling her, despite the fact that I knew already.
‘Death,’ she would say. ‘I can see it in front of me. Then I need to stop thinking. To banish all thoughts, just try to survive that moment. That’s all I can do. Until the next attack comes.’
Perhaps that is the most difficult thought of all – to stop thinking and banish all thoughts?
46
Mantova and Buenos Aires
Many years ago I Visited the town of Mantova in Italy. I was taking part in a literary festival. It was a warm spring day, and somewhat absent-mindedly I wandered around looking for a restaurant where I could have lunch.
I found myself in Mantova’s biggest square, where people were gathering in a circle around a spot where a street theatre performance would shortly begin. I thought I might as well see how it started and joined them.
In fact I watched the whole show, which lasted for fifty minutes. When it finished I looked around and could see that nearly all those who had been there at the start were still present. Many of them seemed to be as impressed by the performance as I was. The hat lying on the stone paving of the square was soon filled with coins and notes.
The show had been performed by just two actors, a young man and woman. They were dressed in what seemed to be the costumes of medieval fools. That had worried me at first – I had seen all too many performances in which the illusion of medieval jugglers had been forced and embarrassing rather than convincing. But these two young actors soon demonstrated that they were more than capable of doing justice to these costumes. In a sort of timeless no man’s land they recreated a love story with aspects of both tragedy and comedy. They didn’t say much as the square was filled with the noise of busy traffic, and on all sides were cafes with music blaring. But they overcame the bedlam and established a remarkable intimacy with their audience. The performance was subtle and constantly exciting. I didn’t simply stand there waiting for the end, but kept asking myself: What will happen next?
The young actors portrayed love and all its difficulties amazingly effectively. There was never any trace of pretentiousness, everything was consistently credible.
When they had finished it dawned on me that I had just seen one of the finest theatrical performances it had ever been my privilege to witness. As the crowd melted away I remained standing there, watching the duo packing up their few props. Then they squatted down in the shade and counted their earnings in the hat. It became clear that they were a couple in real life, not just on the stage. Their joy over the contents of the hat was such that they hugged each other passionately.
I wondered if I ought to go up to them and say how much I had enjoyed their show, but by the time I started moving towards them it was too late. They had already stood up and scampered over to a battered old banger of a car. I watched them disappear into a side street.
I have always been irritated by the fact that I failed to thank them. I have so often hidden my lack of genuine enthusiasm and thanked actors for their performance, but on this occasion I had really loved what I had seen.
I have no idea who they were, what the play was called or who wrote it. All I know is that the actors were very young and very gifted. It is still one of the most outstanding artistic experiences I have ever enjoyed.
There is another performance that has been haunting me for over fifteen years. Seeing it was just as much of a coincidence as the one in Mantova.
I was in Buenos Aires to talk about my books. I had visited the city once before, but all too briefly. On that occasion I was searching for material in connection with the book I was writing, but now I had more time and had taken a whole evening off.
It was a South American autumn when I left my hotel in the centre of town to look for a restaurant where I could have a late dinner. I hadn’t gone more than a few metres before I noticed homeless people curled up all over the place in entrance porches or underneath illuminated shop windows. Not just individuals, but in many cases whole families. I was walking through people’s bedrooms and living rooms. I knew about the crisis in Argentina, of course, but I wasn’t prepared for the fact that it had such a devastating effect on those who had already been living in poverty.
It was a heartbreaking experience. I turned off into a side street that was so narrow there was no room for people to sleep there. I continued walking around and eventually found a little restaurant full of Argentinians.
I can’t remember what I ate, but I do recall that the waitress had a limp; despite this, she worked more efficiently than any other I had ever come across.
At about eleven o’clock I paid and left, heading for my hotel. After a while I came to a junction where a crowd of people had gathered, making it difficult to walk through them. They were standing in a circle, watching some kind of performance. I could hear music – an Argentine tango – coming from a loudspeaker. In the end I elbowed my way through to the front and saw the reason why the crowd had gathered there.
Four couples were very skilfully dancing the tango on the street corner. They weren’t simply dancing, but also performing a play in which jealousy and other emotions were interwoven and constantly changing. Two of the dancers were at least seventy years old, and another couple could hardly be much more than twenty. They kept swapping partners and adopting different styles of dancing. The only light came from swaying overhead street lamps. They had chosen exactly the right place to perform. The audience was outside the range of the lighting, but the dancers were illuminated dramatically as they moved from the bright light to the shadowy dimness.
Nobody said a word. Sometimes they stopped dead, as if suddenly frozen, then they would continue, changing partners and telling a story about the joys and curses of passion.
It was absolutely brilliant. Technically superb dancers with a theatrical ability to express something more as they flitted through the shifting landscape of the tango.
One of the dancers, the youngest of all, had something extra special about her. I couldn’t quite pin it down at first, but then I realised that she was blind. Even so she closed her eyes when the man she was dancing with closed his.
After the performance I managed to make my way closer to where she was standing, wiping the sweat from her face. She was just as exhausted as all the others, and was clearly thrilled by the sound of the coins and notes clinking and rustling into the hat that the others took it in turns to carry round.
Just as had been the case in Mantova, the performers obviously lived off what the audience put into the hat. That evening I thought about all the thousands of hats that were being passed around or placed on the ground every day by street artists, some of them miraculously skilled. Really great artists, like the actors in the square in Mantova and the dancers in the street in Buenos Aires.
It had turned midnight by the time the performance ended. One of the male dancers was talking to his wife, who was holding a little child in her arms. Those who had been performing were tired – dancing the tango non-stop for over an hour takes a high level of fitness and well-trained muscl
es. I don’t know how many performances they had given that evening. Two? Or perhaps the one I had seen was number three?
I walked back to the hotel through the night, past the families curled up asleep on the pavements. It was distinctly chilly. I thought I would remember my visit to Buenos Aires thanks to those tango dancers. Just as much as to those families sleeping out in the streets.
The corner where the tango dancers had performed was like a cave, with house walls looming up and disappearing into the darkness, the faint light from the overhead street lamps, and the sound of the music bouncing off the house walls.
Sometimes you just know that something you have experienced will always remain in your memory. Something that can never be replaced.
47
The stupid bird
On one occasion in the mid-1980s I was looking for a typewriter. I was living in Zambia, on the border with Angola, and I had to travel as far as Mauritius in my hunt for the machine.
A Norwegian author had left it there. My own typewriter had broken, and I couldn’t find anybody who could mend it. I knew the one I was looking for was in a hotel with the peculiar name of ‘The Colonial Coconut’. It was owned by a Frenchman who had once studied philosophy under Michel Foucault in Paris. Planted on the slope down to the sea outside the hotel was a specimen of every coconut tree known to man – hence the name.
The owner of the hotel, who came to visit me the very evening I arrived, seemed to be an enthusiast for every aspect of old-fashioned colonialism; I never managed to work out whether he really felt that way, or was just being ironic. He lived alone in a house beside the hotel, and occasionally invited me there. Always after midnight. His big passion was discussing philosophy. We used to sit talking until dawn, and as far as I can remember we never agreed about anything at all. But we didn’t quarrel. There was something soothing and unreal about those nocturnal discussions.