The ‘Map Ritual’ then follows, as regularly as any religious rite. If J. is getting the first round I spread out my OS pink Landranger (one inch to the mile), and calculate how far we’ve come today. Depending on the terrain, the blister factor, whether it’s the beginning or the middle of the walk, it will usually be between fifteen and twenty miles. And this will have involved walking as closely as possible to the sea, lovingly tracing each peninsula and headland, and only being forced inland occasionally by military installations or a river without a bridge. And the islands, always just out of reach, still captivating. The history always with us also, knowing that in the town we came through earlier that day a man was born in the late eighteenth century who became one of the most influential slavery abolitionists. Strange to think of growing up as a Quaker in that little farming town … And what did he witness as a child that first made him angry at his world, at injustice? We then discuss possible routes for the next day, both of us by now finely attuned to the codes of the paper and lines, allowing the flatness of the map to come alive. Instinctively visualising the loveliness of that piece of deciduous woodland, the steepness of that valley, the views from the little yellow road that runs along the shoulder of the hillside. If I’m getting the beers, when I get to our corner of the pub J. will have spread out his OS map – the orange Explorer (two and a half inches to the mile) – and he’ll have found the parish boundaries, the tumuli and, most importantly of all, the exact boundaries of the watersheds, the rivers he loves more than anything else. The arteries of the earth. And then our talk picks up again, the flow returning. You know what you were saying earlier reminds me of something I don’t think I’ve ever told you before …
Trust. Listening to each other. Things not even shared with lovers. Debilitating doubts, crises, fear at the prospect of fatherhood, grief of lost love, people we’ll never see again. But being listened to. In the process of talking, something lifts. In the process of walking, something heals. And the rare equality that exists. One walk it’s J. who’s blocked in some way, impatient with himself; the next time it’s me, perplexed, riddled with doubt. The patience with each other, though, the absolute belief that we’ll come through anything. This comes from a long view of life. And knowing what we’ve already been through. Having seen each other fly, completely inspired at times, inspiring to colleagues, gripping audiences, and having also seen each other dulled and depressed, defeated by twists of fate and disappointment. This doesn’t mean simply being kind or understanding – there have been many occasions when I’ve challenged J. to breaking point. And J. similarly with me can be remarkably stubborn, returning again and again to an issue I’ve been elusive on. Not letting me off the hook. And yes, there are times of being maddened, driven to rage, but these pass. And of course, knowing so much means we also know the exact spot of the exposed nerve, the point of weakness, and from time to time, whether consciously or not, these can be touched.
Of course there are sometimes walks where there’s little intensity or tension or need to talk about anything in particular. There are, inevitably, longeurs – sections of landscape that do not thrill (treeless moorland I’ve yet to find appealing, for instance); there are times when we get bored by a subject, especially if it’s something we’ve discussed many times before and are never going to agree on. Our response to these moments is usually to resort to a battery of accents – loud German, Aussie, South African being the most popular – scattering camp or obscene bursts of humour to the skies. Singing is always another possibility, or new forms of cockney rhyming slang, played as a kind of verbal tennis.
Most of all, though, with J. I return to that single word – curiosity. Our shared curiosity about the world, history, political change, revolution. Our curiosity about each other. But also, strangely often, knowing what’s going through the other’s mind before we speak. And, at the same time, being aware of the fundamental reality of existence – our unknowability. Even when we feel we’ve expressed everything. To the outside world we may seem astonishingly similar, yet in the vast majority of ways we remain mysteries to the other. And in this lies the fascination. Knowing that we see the world both as a unity and a fractured multitude. Often I’m sure of how J. will respond to something. But I also relish it when he throws me; I’m exhilarated at moving into unpredictable areas. Being made to look at somebody you love in a different way. Understanding that the temptation to possess another is really a way of keeping them in fixed positions, which may increase your sense of security but does nothing for the winged glory that love is. And still, after all these years, a sense that we cannot be complete by being alone. Love is about understanding what we lack. And being humble about that. ‘I see that I must give what I most need.’9
5
The Town of Organised Forgetting
22 August 2000, Arbon, Switzerland
It’s taken thirteen years to get here. As our train edges round the lake, I reflect on this unhurried journey. J. and I are following the southern shore of Bodensee, ‘Lake Constance’ as the Grand Tour sightseers used to call it, and looking across to the other side and the low hills of Germany, where we’d travelled together many years before. J. is reading an account of the Huguenot refugees of St Gallen, the town where we’ve just changed trains, and their role in establishing the textiles industries that have dominated this part of Switzerland historically. I’m looking out of the window. Late afternoon, a lazy day at the end of August when the heat of the sun has died. Children cycling haphazardly between the shore of the lake and our slowly chugging train. Elderly couples sitting on benches under pine trees. And the little town of Arbon finally comes into view. Thirteen years since the epiphany of seeing Lanzmann’s remarkable nine-and-a-half-hour film on the Holocaust, Shoah.1
In January 1987, in my early twenties, I’d sat transfixed in the Curzon Mayfair cinema on consecutive afternoons, watching seemingly endless panning shots of Polish forests and trains and tracks and a sequence of devastated faces talking to the camera. It created its own mesmerising rhythm. There was a simplicity in the intent (to document testimony of perpetrators, survivors and witnesses), yet a complexity in the form (the disorientation of the changing seasons and geographical locations, the continual layering and over-layering of the narrative) which I found spellbinding. I have carried the faces and the memories of some of those interviewed with me through my life. In a strange reversal of what might be expected, these faces, seen for a matter of minutes on a screen, seem clearer to me now than that of my father. Simon Srebnik’s bewildered expression on his return to Chelmno – ‘Yes, it was here, they burned people here’; Filip Müller’s eyes, darting in terror as he hears himself trying to find words for what it is not possible to find words for – working in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz-Birkenau; and Jan Karski, poised, hawk-like, proud, his face suddenly crumpling recalling the Warsaw Ghetto, the assault of a memory he hasn’t spoken of for more than thirty years – ‘No, I don’t go back.’ In these testimonies there seems to be a quality of stillness, of allowing time between the words, that we almost never see in film. It is as close as you will ever come to witnessing, as tangible actions, the process of thought and memory. What rapid blinking can communicate, or a sudden glancing away.