X 7th April 1998
As I looked, the Manor House was in flames, a seam of fire from one side to another, its strands spreading quickly, they were twisting at the roof already. The fire crackled between the walls and red and yellow woolly wisps were creeping out of the windows, throwing a sheaf of ashes into the black sky of the night. Maybe a hundred people, the whole village, stood transfixed by the sight, watching the fury of the flames. No one made any attempt to extinguish the fire, nor I, knowing that it was an inevitable act in the middle of a night, a closing of a story. Looking up the hill, as at a proscenium arch, I saw Chekhovian memories of my youth, going up in flames: the table, a plate of cool sour milk, an evening meal, Baida the lady without a tongue, the cherished balcony of night sky and frogs gurgling - now, as last remaining member of that set, seeing - almost as an artist - an end of the tale. Silent was the quick growth of the flame, with the edges flashing on the roof and birdʼs feathers flying into the sky. The villagers too saw part of their story in flames, which crackled diligently - in the 150 year old logs and mortar between them sizzling.
There was nothing to do and no one in danger when I joined the crowd. Some came up to me and shook my hand without saying anything. The fire brigade arrived after a good while, extending a lead to the round pond, and sprayed the ashes as the day broke. They glowed again in the afternoon, as if to show that the story of this night should be remembered, and were put out easily: all that was left were the abstract shapes of the zinc roof, which we sold by weight later. It was perhaps a jealous or unfriendly hand which laid that seam of flame - what was its object? No doubt to destroy the symmetry of ideas embraced in these forms. Little did they understand the depth of meaning of the involvement here and the vitality of the rainbow showing us the way. Practical steps were taken to press forward at once, to reinforce the team and not to spend time on regrets.
I have seen many fires and each one holds a meaning and the personality of its terror. In childhood, after every thunderstorm, we looked into the night - always to see a distant glow, a fire burning, perhaps a straw barn or maybe a cottage home. There were two fearful threats as part of our lore, one was the coming of front-line, with the sound of the guns getting nearer - and the other was fire.
In August 1940 I saw fires started by strings of German incendiaries raining in the night on Bushey Hill Road, in Peckham; one lighting a house in front of us and another dropping in our garden, which was put out by Mr Thompson, the owner. He was a kindly man, gassed in Ypres during the War, from which he suffered badly, he would take me on No 12 to show the sights of London of which he was proud: the Big Ben and his workplace, the Army and Navy store in Victoria Street where he was a salesman. He dealt with the incendiary quite expertly, dousing it with sand which he had for such an eventuality, and assured us it had to be returned to the Town Hall.
In 1944 we saw fires in the countryside, the burned out villages of Normandy with smell of smoke and destruction, slaughtered animals lying in the gateways of burning barns and humans smothered by flames. The curse of uncontrolled fire.
In Coleville Road, Notting Hill, one afternoon in 1964, I saw smoke rising from a basement window of Regency houses across the garden. There was no crackling or noise, in fact although only fifty yards away it was almost noiseless (like in the Manor), only scarlet tongues of flame seen in the windows. There was silence for a minute or two and then a thud and raging flame moved up to the ground floor, then another minute or two, and another thud and it was in the first floor now an inferno and again a moment of waiting and a burst into the second floor, like a mechanical opening of the subsequent fire-proof gates and after the last quiet thud, onto top floor and flames surging through the roof - the walls and windows intact while the house was collapsing inside them. A man was climbing up on a rainwater pipe to rescue, but he fell back, and his wife and child died in the flames. This stark image was in my mind, when one day I was caught on fourth floor of a house in Rue Saint Severin in Paris - with young family. The fire raged from ground level, with smoke and howling sound forcing through the door of a single staircase turning it into an inferno. At five in the morning, all telephone wires already gone, the time was short and the lady above wanted to jump, while we started to tie sheets to make a rope, but the brigade arrived in time, with a ridiculous diminutive fire engine because the streets are so narrow there. But fire fighters were big and fought bravely their way up the burning staircase, dressed like Martian invaders, to save us all.
Yet another fire burnt in my home in Fulham last year, sweeping two floors and again the brave and skilful fire brigade came in time and all was saved.
Even today, a world away, in the Malaysian Borneo, forest fires are burning so fiercely that smoke travels across the island and the sea and passengers arriving at Miri Airport have to muffle and cover their faces to save themselves from polluted smoke - another people sharing the universal experience, like we did in Leszczyn today. There is a focus in the magic of a fire, like that of Pompeii, or one which we have known ourselves, offering us the richness of a common link with all men.
Yassir Arafat has a day or two ago, visited the house in Amsterdam where Anna Frank hid from the Nazis and said: “A sad story, a very sad story”. Israel is moving its forces out of Lebanon. Perhaps, this conflagration is coming to an end soon, and the death of Rabin was not in vain. Only the sum of concrete events in time and space, the experience of actual men and women, alone contains the truth, and the material out of which, genuine answers can be constructed - today...
= The first international survey of plant diversity has found that at least one in every known plant species on Earth is threatened with extinction or nearly extinct.
= French people are increasingly following US eating habits. More than one tenth of the population is overweight or obese.
= Iraq is concealing the scope of its biological weapons, but has provided information on its nuclear programme.
= Wall Street regulators yesterday announced that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be allowed to plummet by 10 % before stock markets would be halted.
= A ten day strike at Rudna, the largest mine in Polandʼs KGHM combine, accounting for 3.5 % of world copper output, ended today with Solidarity failure.
= Malaysia has said that the state oil company Petronas will continue to invest in Iran and Libya despite the threat of US sanctions.
= The prosecutorial staff of Kenneth Starr are understood to be compiling a report on possibly impeachable offences by President Bill Clinton.
= The Bosnian wartime leader and indicted war crim- inal Radovan Karadzic appears to have fled his mountain stronghold and may have gone into hiding.
= Indonesia and IMF said Wednesday that they agreed on the third plan in six months to rescue the economy of the worldʼs fourth most populated nation.
... they are often unrelated, even contradictory and connected, if at all, only in some de-facto way, which relates to all people, through a sense of dread, yesterday, today or tomorrow. We share the fears and the joys not as individuals, but in the context of human experience as a whole.
