The audience in Paris in 1913 condemned Stravinsky’s music as ‘an unpleasant row’. Sarcastically, the composer asked his critics later to point out more precisely where this ‘unpleasant row’ was. They couldn’t, of course. And it wasn’t many years before The Rite of Spring was performed in a concert version to great acclaim. More and more people had come to realise that Stravinsky’s tonal language was an accurate reproduction of all that was new in the world at that time.
Today, we are once again on our way into a new age. In a mere hundred years the world has changed so much it is barely recognisable. It is moving away from industrialisation into what we call, for want of anything better, ‘the information age’.
People born in 1913 could not imagine in their wildest dreams many of the discoveries that would be made in their lifetime. Nor could they understand, before it happened, the absurd power struggles that led not least in Europe to the deaths of many millions of people.
About the same time as The Rite of Spring had its premiere in Paris, two men were living in Vienna – one of them from Linz, the other from Russia. We can be fairly sure that they never looked one another in the eye and conducted a conversation, but it is highly likely that they passed by one another in one of Vienna’s central parks. They lived in different districts, but not far from the park.
The young man from Linz was called Adolf Hitler. The somewhat older man from Russia later took the name Stalin.
Hitler tried to support himself by painting watercolours, which he or one of his friends later sold as postcards. He was often in the park and painted several views of it.
Stalin was in Vienna to study the relationship between Marxism and the national state. He was a member of the Communist Party whose leader was another Russian emigrant, Lenin. Lenin was living in nearby Switzerland.
In 1914 the First World War broke out. Hitler had failed in his ambition to become an artist, and began associating with reactionary and anti-Semitic groups. He didn’t hesitate to volunteer for service in the German army, was wounded but survived. After the war he didn’t return to Vienna, but settled in Munich.
No doubt neither Stalin nor Hitler had been aware that they had been in the same park in Vienna, perhaps even every day for a long period. Stalin might have noticed the scruffily dressed man painting pictures of trees, fountains and buildings. For his part, Hitler might well have seen the man from Russia walking up and down – stocky, powerfully built and chain-smoking Russian cigarettes.
By the time the Second World War broke out they had entered into a pact, which Hitler broke three years later.
Both these men have gone down in history as being responsible for millions of people’s deaths. A long way from walks in the park and painting watercolours…
Stravinsky’s music and Pina Bausch’s remarkable choreography reflect our unsettled times but also the way in which human beings can resist anything that strikes them as destructive.
Hitler and Stalin will probably continue to perch on their respective mountain tops in the collective memory. We can do nothing about that. Tyrants have a remarkable ability to live at least as long in our memories as those we can call good people.
But dare I believe that Pina Bausch and her artistic achievements in the world of dance will still be remembered five hundred years from now? Or will they have sunk in the vast and ultimately all-consuming abyss of oblivion?
I am living in Stravinsky’s era, even though he has been dead for a long time. His music lives on. Just as Pina Bausch’s dancers will continue to perform their fascinating and sensual artistic movements.
But Pina Bausch herself is also dead.
I wonder if she was worried about the same thing that troubles me. The fact that I shall be dead for so long. Or did she think that death was something that she was unable to recreate in her art, and therefore she didn’t bother about what was in store once her heart had stopped beating?
66
The puppet on a string
In 1891 they dug up a street in central Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic. New drains were to be installed so filthy water no longer flowed down the streets.
I recall the name Brno from my childhood, as the city could be found on the medium-wave band of our wireless at home. If I tried to tune in there, all I can remember is a vague buzzing noise – Brno was part of a distant universe.
The street being dug up was called Francouzská. At a depth of four metres the workmen discovered an old grave containing the skeleton of a man. Archaeologists were summoned, and found that the skeleton was surrounded by ivory from mammoths and musk-oxen.
The most remarkable object they found was adjacent to the skull. At first they thought it was a statuette that had broken into three parts during the thousands of years the ivory had been lying there, but on closer examination they were able to establish that it was something unique. Meticulous analysis of bones and soil showed that, like the grave, the object was some 25,000 years old.
What was it exactly? At first the archaeologists couldn’t believe their eyes, but the truth was indisputable: the object placed next to the dead man’s head was a toy. A doll. A marionette. A puppet on a string.
Although it was broken, it was clear that its head had been movable, like an owl’s. The arm – they only found one – had a hole that could be attached to another hole in the body of the doll and moved like a real arm.
So the dead man had a puppet on a string next to his head. They never found the other arm; most probably it had been removed before being buried, or else it had been carried away by earth movements or changes in the level of groundwater. But there was no doubt that the doll was a doll.
When it was dug up, it sent us a message from people living 25,000 years ago. We don’t know if the puppet had been used in some form of shadow play or if it was associated with religious rites – but there is also the possibility that it was simply a toy. For a child. Or for an adult who hadn’t stopped playing even though he had grown up.
That ancient puppet on a string tells us something about what being human has always entailed. I find it difficult to imagine a more touching and at the same time humorous greeting from people who were living just after an ice age had slowly melted away.
Those of us living today will not be sending puppets on a string into the future. Our legacy is nuclear waste. Our most important task is to try to send a warning to people who might succeed us after future ice ages have passed.
Right now it seems that the only solution is to abandon any hope of creating a meaningful warning, and concentrate instead on preventing future generations from knowing that there is anything there at all. Moss should be allowed to grow on the mountainsides where the troll has been buried. Nobody should remember what was once buried in sealed copper capsules deep down in underground caverns.
People have always tried to create good memories for future generations, and, when necessary, reminders of what was dangerous or evil. But now we live in a civilisation that is not trying to create memories, but to create a form of oblivion instead.
What will be the eventual outcome? An age without memories?
Do we still have time to think sensible thoughts? Or is nuclear waste another step along the road leading deeper and deeper down into the abyss?
I don’t know. But as a mantra I can now repeat yet again what I have always tried to convince myself of: Nothing is ever too late. Everything is still possible.
We still live in the age of the puppet on a string.
67
Never being robbed of one’s happiness
On 9 May 2014 it is drizzling south of Gothenburg where Eva and I live. A change is on the way – I can see that the shallow waters in the Stallviken inlet have started to ebb away, which indicates warmer and sunnier weather. The occasional salmon trout fisherman is standing a long way out from land; they often stand there for hours on end, whether or not the fish are biting, and many of them throw the fish back into the water if and when they do catch
one. I envy them their unalloyed joy as they seem to stand there, waiting for everything and nothing.
It is five months since I received my cancer diagnosis, and a couple of days ago I had my fourth and last infusions in this series of chemotherapy treatment. I shall meet Dr Bergman tomorrow, and hear how things have progressed so far.
I got up early this morning – as so often I slept only fitfully. I feel as if I am waiting for a court’s verdict, and it’s impossible to know whether I am going to be declared innocent or guilty. All I can do at the moment is prepare for the worst but hope for the best.
But as dawn is beginning to break I start thinking about something completely different, just as the blackbird starts singing its reveille from our chimney stack and giving the go-ahead for all the other birds to join in. Instead of preparing for whatever is in store for me tomorrow, I start wondering exactly when I experienced the greatest happiness with which I have been blessed in this life. Is there such a moment? Or is it impossible to choose? The birth of a child, the relief when a severe pain goes away, an assault that didn’t result in my death, the feeling that something I have written turned out better than I had expected? I soon decide that it is impossible to choose. Moments can hardly be compared or placed in order. One kind of happiness is different from another.
Nevertheless, I eventually find myself remembering a moment that I think exceeded all other feelings of happiness, even if I don’t actually try to make comparisons.
I am transported back to 4 October 1992. Twenty-two years ago. I was aged forty-four and experiencing what were probably the most intense years of my life. I was spending nearly all the time in Maputo, the capital city of Mozambique. I directed at least two plays every year, as well as being mainly responsible for practical aspects of running the theatre.
Most days followed a strict routine. I got up very early in order to work at my desk before the African heat became too overpowering. At about noon I had a meal and then slept for an hour, having first disconnected the telephone and locked the outside door. Then it was time to go to the theatre, where rehearsals generally began at about four o’clock and continued for most of the evening. On the way home I would stop at some restaurant for a bite to eat, usually on my own, which gave me the opportunity to read the only daily newspaper published at that time in Mozambique, Noticias. Then I would usually write for a while before falling asleep.
Many of my friends in Europe imagined that I was living a dramatic life; but any drama was inside my head. Never before or after have I lived such a disciplined and in fact rather boring life as in those days.
The previous year I had proposed that we should perform Aristophanes’ ancient comedy Lysistrata. Needless to say, it would have to be Africanised in order to make it comprehensible to a modern and mainly young African audience, many of whom would be illiterate. The first things to be omitted were every reference to Greek temples and priestesses; instead we would adapt Aristophanes’ basic theme about women going on erotic strike in order to force their menfolk to stop going to war.
There had been civil war in Mozambique for over ten years, and many people had been killed. As always in connection with civil wars, there had been extremely brutal attacks on the civilian population – ears and noses cut off, children crushed by being smashed against trees. Everybody in the whole country had friends or relatives who had been affected. There were many reasons why we should mount this play, and I was convinced that up there in his dramatists’ heaven, Aristophanes himself would understand how necessary it was to adapt the outline of the play to suit African conditions.
The question was: what could possibly replace the Greek temples and priestesses? One day I was shopping in the central market in Maputo, and when I saw all the women working on the various stalls I realised that this was the answer.
I asked some of the theatre’s actresses to spend a few days visiting the market and talking to the women who worked there. It wasn’t long before the idea of women withholding sexual favours in order to put an end to the civil war had taken root. Our only problem was that the stallholders didn’t really understand the idea of turning all this into a theatre performance; they wanted to do it in real life without delay.
That didn’t happen, but we did produce our play. Our Lysistrata, whom we renamed Julietta, was a stallholder selling fish in the market. (The only Lysistrata in our play was a goat of that name. The plan was that the goat should appear on the stage at a critical moment, but we had a lot of trouble keeping it quiet behind the scenes and hence giving away what was intended to be a big surprise. In the end we asked an old goat-keeper for advice, and he solved the problem immediately: ‘Put some salt on the outside of the goat’s mouth – that’ll keep him quiet.’ And it did.)
The play was a huge success. For reasons I no longer remember we had decided that the last performance would be on Sunday, 4 October. Throughout the time we were producing our play negotiations were taking place between the legal government of Mozambique and the gangs of bandits – lackeys of the apartheid state in South Africa – creating violent chaos all over the country. The negotiations were taking place in Rome and I don’t think anybody seriously thought they would have a successful outcome. Everybody believed the war would continue and there would be no end to the massacre of innocent civilians.
And so 4 October arrived. In the morning a good friend of mine, a journalist, hammered excitedly on my front door. The unexpected had happened! A peace treaty had been signed in Rome. Perhaps the brutal civil war would be over at long last.
When I went to the theatre that afternoon to watch the final performance, the news from Rome had been confirmed. A peace treaty really had been signed. Cars were already driving around in Maputo sounding their horns, as if the national team had won an international match or championship.
As I was walking down the hills to Teatro Avenida I made up my mind what we should do. I sat in the as yet empty theatre with Lucrecia Paco, who was playing the leading role of Lysistrata/Julietta, and suggested what she should say after the final applause had died down. She understood immediately, but asked me to put the right words into her mouth.
‘No,’ I said. ‘The only way you can say this is in your own words. You can’t possibly get anything wrong.’
I placed myself in a corner of the front stalls and watched the performance. The goat didn’t make a noise behind the scenes and he caused outbreaks of shouting and applause as usual when he suddenly appeared onstage, on the end of a rope. That last performance was very good, and the actors were full of energetic concentration. They were careful not to take things too quickly, and to make sure every detail came across.
The end came at last. The applause was long and loud. At Teatro Avenida the response to final applause is always the same, with the whole cast lining up in front of the stage lights. After being called out onstage for the third time, Lucrecia raised her arms and the applause died down, just as we had anticipated when we discussed it earlier in the afternoon.
I remember her words, exactly as she had chosen them herself:
‘As we all know, a peace treaty was signed in Rome today. We can only hope that this terrible war, with all its murders and mutilation, is now over. We must believe that this peace treaty will be honoured. But I promise you that if it becomes necessary we shall repeat our performance of this play again. Like you, we shall never give up.’
It was followed by total silence. There was no more applause. But the audience rose to its feet. In utter silence, they gazed at the actors and actresses who had performed this 2,000-year-old play about a number of women’s desperate and courageous struggle against barbaric warfare.
It was the most moving experience I have ever had in a theatre. I have enjoyed many uplifting moments, but never anything remotely like what happened on 4 October 1992. It was touching, but at the same time overflowing with boundless happiness. Conversations between opposing persons really were possible, and a war could be forced to come to an end. I
had been present at something that really did make the earth move, when something came to an end and something else started.
I find it hard to recall any incident in my life that was more significant and more filled with joy than that moment in the theatre. Things cannot be compared or placed in order. But that morning in 2014, as I prepared myself for what might be good or bad news the following day, I was overcome by the memory of that all-consuming happiness.
Our theatrical performance had no influence on the treaty that was signed in Rome, but I am convinced that without our work in the theatre, something would have been lost from the process that eventually led to the end of the war. Nobody present at that final performance, either on the stage or in the audience, will ever forget it.
The drizzle continued. I gazed out over the sea and thought that despite everything I had been lucky enough to be present at a moment of boundless joy. Many moments, in fact – but that morning I chose as the highlight our production of Lysistrata in October 1992.
Shortly after ten that morning I entered Dr Bergman’s office.
Perhaps I was walking out onto the stage. Or maybe I was in the audience and Dr Bergman was sitting on his chair just in front of the footlights.
I knew by now that he always chose his words very carefully.
‘We have a breathing space,’ he said. ‘The chemotherapy has been effective. Some of the tumours have reduced in size, others have disappeared altogether. But that doesn’t mean that you are cured, of course. Nevertheless, we have a breathing space, and it could last for quite a long time.’
I am living today in that breathing space. I occasionally think about my disease, about death, and about the fact that there are no guarantees when it comes to cancer.
But most of all I live in anticipation of new uplifting experiences. Of times when nobody robs me of the pleasure of creating things myself, or enjoying what others have created.