What Am I Doing Here?

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Join the critics in exploring Bruce Chatwin's remarkable world:

 

 

“
Each piece contains a twinkle of surprise. . . .
Chatwin is a writer whose extraordinary empathy with other people, his capacity to enter their personal landscapes, made his work singular.”

—
The Boston Globe

 

“Irresistible . . .
a vibrant mysterious collection
. . . The cavalcade dazzles, and Chatwin clearly delights in the telling.”

–
Kirkus Reviews

 

“
Extraordinarily evocative
. . . in that great tradition of British travel writers — Richard Burton, C. M. Doughty, T. E. Lawrence, Wilfred Thesiger”

—
The Washington Post Book World

 

“The heart of this volume rests in Chatwin's profiles of other people — often brief encounters that, amazingly, sketch entire lives and whole personalities in one sweeping stroke.”

—
Booklist

 

“A writer of rare craft and powers of evocation . . .
His terse, honed, ironic language was built to last.”

—
Chicago Sun-Times

Bruce Chatwin was born in 1940, and was the author of
In Patagonia, The Viceroy of Ouidah, On the Black Hill, The Songlines
, and
Utz
. The last three he considered works of fiction. His other books are
What Am I Doing Here, Anatomy of Restlessness,
and
Far Journeys
, a collection of his photographs which also includes selections from his travel notebooks. Chatwin died outside Nice, France, on January 17, 1989.

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First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape Ltd, 1989
First published in the United States of America by
Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc., 1989
Published in Penguin Books 1990

 

Copyright © the Estate of Charles Bruce Chatwin, 1989

All rights reserved

 

Page 367 constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

 

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Chatwin, Bruce, 1942-1989.
What am I doing here/Bruce Chatwin.
p. cm.
Reprint. Originally published: New York: Viking, 1989.

eISBN : 978-1-101-50320-1

I. Title.
PR6053.H395W47 1990
824'.914 — dc20 89-78426

 

 

Like any layabout, I wanted to write but my early efforts were a failure. I don't want to bore anyone with a confession: ‘How I became a writer'. I have many debts. I want to record the names of those who helped me before I published my first book. They are Deborah Rogers, Francis Wyndham, Tom Maschler, and Gillon Aitken.

The fragments, stories, profiles and travelogues in this book have, with one exception – that of Mrs Gandhi – been ‘my ideas'. They can be judged by the dates. I have made changes: some to avoid repetition, some to avoid bad prose, some to revise editorial hatchet jobs. The word ‘story' is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.

 

Bruce Chatwin
1988

W
hat am I doing here? I am flat on my back in a National Health Service hospital hoping, praying, that the rigors and fevers which have racked me for three months will turn out to be malaria – although, after many blood tests, they have not found a single parasite. I have been on quinine tablets for thirteen hours – and my temperature does seem to be sliding down. I feel my ears. They are cold. I feel the tip of my nose. It is cold. I feel my forehead. It is cool. I feel inside my groin. Not too bad. The excitement is enough to send my temperature soaring.

In comes one of the people I most adore on the ward, Assunta, the cleaning lady and tea-maker.

She comes from Palermo and has married an Englishman. She works here, not so much for money, as for love. I rejoice at the sight of Assunta because she fills the room with Southern warmth.

She has come with a mop to swab the floor.

‘Oh, my God!' she says. ‘The snake! . . . My daughter, she go to the police about the snake.'

‘What snake?'

‘Puppet.'

‘Puppet?'

‘No. No. Poppet.'

‘Assunta, what
are
you talking about?'

She takes a deep breath and speaks in grim and halting sentences:

‘Mister Bruce . . . I have this next-door neighbour . . . She is an evil woman . . . My kids, they play in the garden and she scream, “Your kids make too much noise. Take them in the house” . . . She not believe in God or nothing . . . She have two abortions . . . All she love is animals . . . She have dog . . . She have cat . . . She have rabbits . . . and she have Poppet . . . '

‘The snake?'

‘So she knock on my door and she say, “Have you seen Poppet? She got out of her cage . . .” “No, I no see . . . Look for Poppet yourself . . . ”I
shut
the windows . . . I lock the door . . . I say the kids, you no go in the garden until she find Poppet . . . She not find Poppet . . . Anywhere! . . . Then I must go my garden shed to get something . . . Comes this terrible noise, “
Sssss
! . . .
Ghrr
!
Sssss
!” I slam the door . . . I shout, “Your Poppet is in my shed!” She come over . . . She open the door . . . And this snake jump out . . . And go round and round her body five, six times . . . And lick all over her face . . .'

‘How big is this snake?'

‘BIG!' says Assunta. ‘Big as this room . . .'

She waves the mop-handle diagonally across the room. The snake must be a python or a boa constrictor over twenty feet long.

‘And the head!' she says. Her hands gesture to something the size of a small honeydew melon. ‘And horrible red eyes!

‘So she say, “Can I bring Poppet through the house? . . .” “No,” I say. “You go over the wall.”'

‘You should have gone to the police long ago.'

‘And the little kids playing in the street! . . . English people is mad . . . Now she knock on my door. She say, “My Poppet, she have a baby” . . . She pay
£
17 for artificial insemination . . . Disgusting! . . . My daughter, she go to the police.'

 

I
t may be malaria. The temperature
has
gone down. Young doctors smile and ask how I feel. Now it's my turn to be sceptical: ‘You tell
me
how I feel.' I pestered them to put me on quinine but they were reluctant. If it
is
malaria, I know where I got it. Last spring, having recovered from a very rare Chinese fungus of the bone-marrow, I went to Ghana where a film-director friend was making a film based on one of my books.

There were no hotel beds in Accra because the city was host to a Pan-African Ladies' Congress. The film crew had moved to the North. My friend regretted there might be no one reliable to meet me. We called the British Council representative who volunteered to find something. I once spent a night in Accra, in the bus-park.

Outside the airport building there were
two
reception committees, not one: the boys of Ghana Film Industries, the girls of the British Council. They waved bits of white cardboard: ‘Mr Chatwin . . . Mr Chatwin . . . ' We drove off in the British Council's white station-wagon. The boys followed in their tumbledown cars. We came to the hotel, which I think was called Liberty Hall. I was really too tired to take in the name, and I left at five in the morning. I gave the boys and girls beer and lemonade, and they shyly answered questions. I heard a loud and angry commotion at the reception desk. A lady was shouting, in French, ‘Madame, est-ce que je peux vous aider?'

There were many hungry ladies in the dining-room. They were the delegation from Guinea and they only spoke French. I assumed the role of head waiter and my English-speaking assistant took notes on a pad.

I announced the menu: steak, kid, guinea-fowl, chicken, fish. The ladies were very particular. One wanted her steak ‘not too cooked'. One wanted chicken with
akassas
and a chile sauce ‘not too strong'. The waiter went to the kitchen and the ladies clapped. Here was life again!