A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

A couple of years ago I saw a remarkable documentary about a remarkable man, Patrick Leigh Fermor, who during the Second World War, led and daring raid on the German forces in occupied Crete, capturing the General stationed on the island and taking him into Allied custody. Then over ninety, he could still tell a good story about his travels, and I made a note to read his books.

To my shame it has taken a while to get around to this, but I am now enjoying his account of a walk from London to Constantinople, a tale so rich in detail that it sprawls over two volumes. A Time of Gifts is the first, chronicling how in the winter of 1933, at the age of eighteen, he set off from Britain with little more than a rucksack, a walking stick and a sturdy pair of boots.

The trek gets off to a good start: in Hook of Holland he stops for a coffee after getting off the boat. As he’s leaving, the landlord wants to know where he’s headed:

I put on my greatcoat, slung the rucksack, grasped my stick and headed for the door. The landlord asked where I was going: I said: “Constantinople”. His brows went up and he signalled for me to wait: then he set out two small glasses and filled them with transparent liquid from a long stone bottle. We clinked them; he emptied his at one gulp and I did the same. With his wishes for godspeed in my ears and an internal bonfire of Bols and a hand smarting from his valedictory shake, I set off. It was the formal start of my journey.

After following the Rhine upstream through the Netherlands and Germany, stopping in beer cellars and wine houses – “It is impossible, drinking by the glass in those charmingly named inns and wine-cellars, not to drink too much.” – he reaches Austria. In less than five years time the country would be annexed in the 1938 Anchluss, succumbing to the horrors of Nazism that he had already seen in his walk through Germany. In the early months of 1934, the old order of the Habsburgs lives on in the castles that line the Danube, and armed with letters of introduction, Fermor is invited to stay with the lower nobility from an Empire that disintegrated a mere fifteen years before.

They certainly have a lot to talk about, and Fermor soaks up stories about the old kaiserlich und königlich:

As I listened, the white gloved hand of the Lincoln green footman poured out coffee and placed little silver vermeil-lined goblets beside the Count’s cup and mine. Then he filled them with what I thought was schnapps. I’d learnt what to do with that in recent weeks – or so I thought – and I was picking it up to tilt it into the coffee when the Count broke off his narrative with a quavering cry as though an arrow from some hidden archer had transfixed him: “NEIN! NEIN!”, he faltered. A pleading, ringed and almost transparent hand was stretched out and the stress of the moment drove him into English: “No! No! Nononono – !” I didn’t know what had happened. Nor did the others. There was a moment of perplexity. Then, following the Count’s troubled glance, all our eyes alighted simultaneously on the little poised silver goblet in my hand. Then both the Countesses, looking from the torment on the Count’s face to the astonishment on mine, dissolved in saving laughter, which, as I put the goblet back on the table, spread to me and finally cleared the distress from the Count’s features too, and replaced it with a worried smile. His anxiety had been for my sake, he said apologetically. The liquid wasn’t schnapps at all, but incomparable nectar – the last of a bottle of liqueur distilled from Tokay grapes and an elixir of fabulous rarity and age.

As much as it is a cliché to say that Fermor writes exquisitely about a world that’s now gone forever, it happens to be true in this case. He also links us to the world of Jaroslav Hašek and Joseph Roth, and for that I will always be grateful.

The Book of Genesis

I’m not sure how this particular bibulous biblical reference came into conversation last week, but Noah’s infamous ventures with wine growing ended up scrutinised with a glass of wine over supper, so here it is in full.

Noah, having recently battened down the hatches on his ark and saved his family and the world’s animals from drowning in the flood, has now been told by God to multiply, and replenish the earth. He sets about this by becoming a farmer, along with which he plants a few rows of grapes. In the Old Testament’s first reference to viticulture, Noah gets disgustingly drunk and passes out in his gaff:

9:20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard:

9:21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent.

9:22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without.

9:23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father's nakedness.

9:24 And Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son had done unto him.

9:25 And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

9:26 And he said, Blessed be the LORD God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

9:27 God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

What happens when Noah passes out is clothed in biblical obfuscation. It’s pretty much open to conjecture but there those who suggest a serious misdemeanour, either after the booze gets the better of him, or before. At any rate, the other two brothers cover the old boy up and sit out the wrath of the grape the next day when Noah wakes up with the bible’s first hangover. Ham’s son Canaan gets it in the neck for what has happened between his father and grandfather, so it was obviously something worse than not putting him into the recovery position...

Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño

Another foray into South American literature, this time to Chile, and writer in exile Roberto Bolaño. Bolaño’s magnum opus is 2666, which has been eyeballing me from the bookshelf of the local library for a while now. At over 900 pages in translation, however, I have shied away from it in favour of one of his shorter pieces, Distant Star, the story of a poet-aviator Carlos Wieder, and his part in the murderous regime that took over in the 1973 coup.

Known to the book’s unnamed author as Alberto Ruiz-Tagle in the period running up to Pinochet’s takeover, Wieder is first encountered in various university poetry groups. A little older than his fellow students, he is an accomplished poet who claims to be an autodidact. More infuriatingly, to the author and his friend Bibiano O’Ryan, he is adored by the two stunningly beautiful Garmendia sisters, who fail to notice Bibiano or the writer at all.

After the fall of Allende, the writer is in a prison camp, when one afternoon he looks up to see a Messerchmitt sky-writing poetry. The pilot is Ruiz-Tagle, now know by the name Carlos Wieder. Following his release, finding himself expelled from university and unable to get a job in the country, the author leaves Chile, but on his travels he continues to hear about the poet-aviator Wieder and his exploits.

After a reckless display in which Wieder flies into a thunderstorm while writing a poem about death, the pilot invites a party of friends, fellow officers and socialites back a rented apartment where he has set up a photography exhibition. No one has seen the content, which is in a locked spare room that Wieder promises to open at midnight. The party goes pretty well, at first:

The first guests arrived at 9.00 in the evening. Most of them were old school friends who hadn’t seen each other for some time. At 11.00, twenty people were present, all of the moderately drunk. No-one had yet entered the spare bedroom, occupied by Wieder, on the walls of which were displayed the photos he was planning to submit to the judgment of his friends. Lieutenant Julio César Muñoz Cano, who years later was to publish a self-denunciatory memoir entitled Neck in a Noose relating his activities during the early years of the military regime, informs us that Carlos Wieder behaved normally (or perhaps abnormally: he was much quieter than usual, to the point of meekness, and throughout the night his face had a freshly washed look). He attended to the guests as if he were in his own home (everyone was getting along splendidly, too well, in fact, writes Muñoz Cano).

Come pumpkin time, Wieder assembles the guests and opens the door, ordering them in one at a time:

The room was lit in the usual way. There were no extra lamps or spotlights to heighten the visual effect of the photos. It was not meant to be like an art gallery, but simply a room, a spare bedroom temporarily occupied by a young visitor. There is, of course, no truth to the story that there were coloured lights or drum beats coming from a cassette player hidden under the bed. The ambience was meant to be everyday, normal, low-key. Outside the party continued. The young men drank as young men do, like the victors they were, and they held their drink like Chileans. The laughter, recalls Muñoz Cano, was contagious, without the slightest hint of menace or anything sinister.

The reaction of the first visitor to the exhibition, the beautiful and confident Tatiana von Beck, is memorable, to say the least:

Less than a minute after going in, Tatiana von Beck emerged from the room. She was pale and shaken – everyone noticed. She stared at Wieder as if she were going to say something to him but couldn’t find the words. Then she tried to get to the bathroom, unsuccessfully. After vomiting in the passage, Miss von Beck staggered to the front door with the help of an officer who gallantly offered to take her home, although she kept saying she would prefer to go alone.

A room full of half-cut officers looks on, unsure what to do next:

Wieder’s father broke the spell. He made his way forward politely, addressing each officer by name as he excused himself, then went into the room. The owner of the flat followed him in. Almost immediately he came out again, went up to Wieder, seized him by the lapels, and for a moment it looked as if he would hit him, but then he turned away and stormed off to the living room in search of a drink.

He’ll need it. Wieder has printed out photographs of dozens of atrocities committed by himself on behalf of the military regime, including the murders of the Garmendia sisters. They cover every inch of wall in the room.

Now disgraced, Wieder sinks into obscurity. His writings appear occasionally under pseudonyms in small journals in Europe and South America. The author thinks he has disappeared, until a private detective arrives on his doorstop in Barcelona and demands that they confront Wieder...

The Hireling by LP Hartley

These days Hartley seems best known for The Go-Between and its opening line, “The past is a different country: they do things differently there.” In his time, however, he was a renowned author, recipient of literary prizes and the CBE.

The Hireling, one of the more popular of a fairly prolific output and still in print, tells the story of Leadbitter, who has recently left the army after the war, and started out as a driver for wealthy customers. Misogynistic, uptight and doomed to a life driving the idle rich while paying the crippling hire-purchase on his car, Leadbitter becomes chauffeur for a bereaved young Widow, Lady Franklin.

Asked to take her to Canterbury, he drives her there from London, but declines to see the cathedral with her, which she is visiting in an act of remembrance for her dead husband. Instead, he sits in the car and mopes, before going for a quick sharpener:

Left to himself, Leadbitter turned on the wireless. A woman’s voice! The civilian world was a dull place, a tried three-piece orchestra, waiting for the word ‘fun’. Moodily he got out, locked the car and went to buy himself a coffee. On the way he passed a pub, and after a few moments hesitation pushed the door open. Few working men drink spirits in the middle of the day and Leadbitter was no exception, he couldn’t afford to and besides he didn’t want to smell of alcohol: he had his customers, and the police, to think of. But he felt very tired and the job with Lady Franklin would bring in several pounds, so he decided to take the risk. He chose whisky, a drink he didn’t often indulge in, for it made him feel ‘antagonistic’, as he put it. One double Scotch sufficed to set the hostility working in him, and looking round he spied a small fat man whose inoffensive expression irritated him. He stared at him until the man showed signs first of uneasiness, then of confusion, and at last, looking every way except at his tormentor, ignominiously scuttled out. But Leadbitter’s demon remained unappeased. Arguing the toss with himself whether he should have another whisky, he approached the bar and said the barman, who was a big, heavily-built, pasty-faced fellow, with a slight foreign accent: “Are you an American?” “No,” said the barman. “Well, what are you then?” “If you want to know, I’m Dutch.” “I thought you were an American,” said Leadbitter evenly. His voice made it sound like an insult, almost a threat: and a faint stir of interest went through the drinkers, the pleasurable anticipation of a quarrel, and they turned their heads, awaiting the barman’s answer. “It’s written Dutch on my passport,” he said expressionlessly. “Well, they should know,” said Leadbitter, inferring that such knowledge didn’t matter much, either way. The barman raised his eyes but didn’t answer and Leadbitter, dropping the subject as if any interest it might have had was now exhausted, decided not to have another drink. For a moment, while his will clashed with the barman’s, he had felt that life was worth living: it had been brought to the fine point of conflict that his nature craved.

It’s not set up to end rosily and when Lady Franklin later asks him if he has a family, he lies and invents a wife and children in an effort to give her satisfaction. As his stories get more and more involved, he unwittingly falls in love with his aristocratic employer, with tragic results...

Black Ajax by George MacDonald Fraser

George MacDonald Fraser is best known for the Flashman novels, and rightly so, but he also wrote other historical novels, as well as screenplays and biographies.

Black Ajax is the story of Tom Molineaux, a former slave who came to London from America with the aim of taking on the greatest bare-knuckle champion of all time, Tom Cribb. The book is written through the voices of various promoters, chancers, gamblers and aficionados of The Fancy who are remembering him posthumously to his biographer. The result is a glorious piece of historical ventriloquism.

One of the raconteurs is none other than Flashman Snr, who has been sent to a sanatorium by his son because of his drinking problem:

I am one of a select band of gentlemen resident in this charming rural establishment because we have lost the battle with delirium tremens – temporarily, I hasten to add – and are in need of a breather between rounds, so to speak. We are here of our own free will, at exorbitant rates, have the freedom of the grounds, and do not consort with the loonies, and ... I say, you don’t happen to have a drop of anything with you, I suppose? Flask, bottle, demijohn, something of the sort?

He’s determined to keep mum on the subject of Molineux, however. Only when he’s promised a drink will he sing:

What’s that? You could call again after luncheon ... with a spot o’ lush, no doubt. My dear fellow, what a capital notion. Put ‘em in separate pockets so that they don’t clink ... the attendants here have ears like dago guerrillas, ‘tis like being in the blasted Steel.

After inquiring as to how the biographer has found him – the man appears to have unwisely left his sister in the company of Harry Flashman – Flashman Snr gets to work:

Now, have you brought ... oh, famous! Sir, you are a pippen of the first flight! Brandy, bigod, that’ll answer. Fix bayonets and form a square, belly, the Philistines are upon thee ... Ah-h-h! Aye, that’s the neat article. Sir, your good health ...

And so to his account; another chapter in an exploitive and bloody story from the golden age of boxing...

All Quiet on the Orient Express by Magnus Mills

I first read this around ten years ago, finishing it in a single sitting. I was captivated by the sense of Kafkaesque menace that pervades the story, despite the fact that very little happens for most of the book.

Ostensibly the tale of a holidaymaker who gets trapped in a small village in the Lake District after procrastinating whether to go on his travels to India by motorbike, Mills imbues the book with an increasing feeling of menace. By the time winter has arrived and the unnamed narrator has found himself taking on numerous odd jobs including the local milk round, an ice cream franchise and painting a set of rowing boats in a hideous shade of green, the claustrophobia is unbearable.

It all starts off innocently enough; the narrator decides to stay on a week at the end of the holiday season. As the rest of the campers disappear home, Mr Parker, the farmer who runs the site, asks him to paint a gate in return for the next week’s rent for his pitch. It seems a reasonable deal, and it saves him a few bob which he can spend on beer:

After that there was nothing to do except go down the pub. I had a choice between walking and going on the bike. If I took the bike it meant I would have to drink less, maximum three pints. Or I could walk and have five. I thought of the money I’d saved by painting Mr Parker’s gate, and decided to walk.

Pretty soon, he is invited to join the darts team at the Packhorse, the livelier of the two pubs in the village. There’s a new barrel of bitter on tap, just for him, and he’s allowed to run up a sizeable slate:

My opponent from the Golden Lion was a portly bloke called Phil who didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered when I beat him, and instantly rushed off to buy me a pint of lager. When I asked if it would be alright if I had Topham’s Excelsior instead he looked slightly sorry for me, as though I hadn’t been properly weaned or something.

Well, it’s not as if he’s staying for long, just until he finishes the painting for Mr Parker:

When I walked to the pub at night I could hear seabirds out in the middle of the lake, squawking and arguing. It sounded as though there were thousands of them. I had no idea where they’d come from, but they seemed to have settled in for the winter. I thought about the seven boats waiting to be painted, the darts fixtures and the endless points of Topham’s Excelsior Bitter, and realized that I’d settled in for the winter as well.

But disaster strikes. He doesn’t realise that away matches take place on Tuesdays... When he gets to the Packhorse too late to make the game in the nearby village, he gets a distinctly frosty reception. It’s hinted that he ought to keep his head down at the other pub for a couple of weeks until it all blows over. Sadly, the Ring of Bells is a purgatorial dump of a public house:

That night I began my two-week sentence at the Ring of Bells. Two weeks of sitting in a pub with no women, no darts and no Topham’s Excelsior Bitter wasn’t very appealing, so I put it off until about quarter to ten... The same people sat in the same places and stared at their drinks, while the landlord (whose name, apparently, was Cyril) stood behind the counter and polished glasses. The conversation was at best desultory.

After a while of this, he begins to question if it’s worth going to the pub at all. He’s saved from this terrible fate when speaking to the captain of the Packhorse darts team while on the new milk round he has somehow acquired:

Tomorrow being Thursday evening I assumed he was referring to the next darts fixture in the Packhorse. I took his remark as meaning that my period of exile was over and I could begin drinking there again. My resolution of the previous evening about ‘not drinking anywhere for the time being’ had seemed very bleak in the cold light of day. After all, what was the point of working if I couldn’t go to the pub at night?

What point indeed? But by the time he finds that there is only one way to leave the village, it’s a bit late to be thinking about beer...

Wetlands by Charlotte Roche

Somewhat of a literary sensation when published in its native Germany, Wetlands managed to cause quite a stir when it appeared in translation over here. Its protagonist, Helen Memel, is an emotionally damaged eighteen-year-old recovering in a hospital proctology unit from an infected shaving cut that occurred when depilating an area not traditionally kept hair free.

The book never leaves the hospital or Helen’s head, and the next two hundred pages consist of a rant against the over hygienic de-odorised concepts of modern femininity, a catalogue of Helen’s erotic experiences and predilection for anal sex, and a desperate attempt to bring her estranged parents back together which culminates in an incredibly painful complication of the original wound. It’s fair to say that Wetlands is not for those of a queasy disposition.

At the heart of the book are Helen’s feelings of rejection from her parents. Her father his absent, she has no idea what he does, and her mother, with whom she lives, once tried to kill herself and Helen’s younger brother, leaving Helen behind. That said, her memory of this is distinctly hazy, something that can be attributed to both shock and the fact that she’s done her best to blot out the experience with drink and drugs.

One of her ex-boyfriends, Michael, was a small time drug dealer who kept his stash in a fake Coca-Cola can. He mistakenly leaves this round Helen’s friend’s house – not a good idea, really:

We blew off school, bought some red wine at a kiosk, and left a message for Michael on his answering machine: “If you’re looking for cola, we found a whole case in Corinna’s room. You won’t get pissed if we start drinking without you, will you?” ... Then began our race against time. The idea was to take as many drugs as possible before the first one took effect and before Michael showed up. Anything we didn’t slurp down we’d have to give back. At nine in the morning we starting taking two pills at a time, washing them down with wine. It didn’t seem right to snort speed and coke so early in the morning, so we made minigrenades out of toilet paper. Half a packet each for us – which is half a gram – poured onto a little piece of toilet paper, skilfully wrapped up, and gulped down with lots of wine.

Michael is not a happy bunny when he finally turns up, not that Helen and Corinna are in any state to care:

I guess everything started to kick in. I can only remember the highlights. Corinna and I laughed the whole time and made up stories set in a fantasy land. At some point Michael came by to pick up his can and cursed us out. We giggled. He said if all the stuff we’d ingested didn’t kill us, we would have to pay him back. We just laughed. Later we puked. First Corinna, then me from the sound and smell of hers. In a big, white bucket. The puke looked like blood because of the red wine. But it took as a long time to figure out why it looked like that. And then we realized there were undigested pills floating around. This seemed like a terrible waste to us. I said: “Half and half?” Corinna said: “Okay, you first.” And so for the first time in my life I drank someone else’s puke. Mixed with my own. In big gulps. Taking turns. Until the bucket was empty. A lot of brain cells die on days like that.

Helen is certainly one of the more interesting literary creations that I’ve encountered, and although Roche’s prose deliberately sets out to shock, she does have some valid points to make but ultimately, they are lost under a welter of bodily functions and a rather clunky translation by someone whose day job is writing for Playboy. It’s certainly not a book I'll forget in a hurry, though, and I'm not sure I'll ever look at an avocado in the same way again...