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Episode image is a detail of a photo by Charles Adrian
Getting pretty much straight on with it, Charles Adrian goes back over three books that he was given by guests on his podcast.
For a better synopsis of Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy, you can follow links on Wikipedia here. The plot summary of River Of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh that Charles Adrian reads when he should be talking about Sea Of Poppies can be found here. You can read more about Zamindars and the zamindari system on Wikipedia here.
The Rossini piece that Charles Adrian mentions in relation to the Grand Théâtre in Luxembourg is Nico and the Navigators’ production of Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonelle which you can watch a trailer for here.
Another book by Daphne Du Maurier, Jamaica Inn, is also discussed in Page One 24.
Books discussed in this episode were previously discussed in Page One 41, Page One 44 and Page One 45.
A transcript of this episode is below.
Episode recorded: 14th May, 2020.
Episode released: 30th June, 2020.
Book listing:
Sea Of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (Page One 41)
Das Spiel Ihres Lebens by anon. (Page One 44)
Not After Midnight from Don’t Look Now by Daphne Du Maurier (Page One 45)
Links:
Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy on Wikipedia
Plot summary of River Of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh on Wikipedia
Trailer for Rossini’s Petite Messe Solonelle by Nico and the Navigators
Episode transcript:
Jingle
You're listening to Page One, the book podcast.
Charles Adrian
Hello and welcome to the 167th Page One. I'm Charles Adrian and this is the 11th Page One In Review. Hi!
I... I don't want to say very much before we start today. It's a sunny day. It's very nice. It's warm. There are some clouds in the sky. Yeah. That's it. That's enough chatter.
I have three books to talk about today. For those of you joining us for the first time, the Page One In Review episodes of this podcast...
[sound of train going past and tooting horn]
- Oh! Excuse you! - ... are the ones in which I talk about all of the books that I've been given by guests on the podcast. Page One is a book podcast, as it says in the opening jingle. There are, I suppose, three different types of episodes at this point - or four if you... if you count the one live episode that I talked about in the previous Page One In Review. There are the episodes in which I'm alone reading the first page of second hand books, the episodes in which I have a guest, which are called Second Hand Book Factory episodes, and these ones, the Page One In Review episodes. The Second Hand Book Factory episodes were called Second Hand Book Factory because my guests and I... we didn't necessarily bring second hand books with us to the conversation but we... you know, even if we brought new books, the idea was that we then exchanged books - I would give my guest a book, my guest would give me a book - and then those books would become second hand books even if they had been new to us. Not all of my guests did give me a book - but, you know, forgiven forgotten - but most of them did and those are the books that I'm talking about in these Page One In Review episodes.
The first book that I want to talk about today...
[page turning]
... was given to me by my younger sister Lissa - Lissa Gillott - during the 41st Page One. We recorded that at a... yeah, a relatively noisy Chiswick House Cafe. It's a lovely place, I recommend that you visit. It has beautiful gardens and the cafe is... is well worth a stop-off. I think it's... it's pricey but nice. Lissa gave me Sea Of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh, which I think I'd seen adverts for on the tube - you know, they were splashed everywhere. And I don't think I'd wanted to read it - it wasn't a book that called out to me - but I did enjoy it. I was very pleased that she gave it to me. And I read this one and then the sequel. It's... It's part of a trilogy. So I definitely read the first two. I'm not sure that I read the third one. So the second one is called River Of Smoke and then the third one is... Flood Of Fire, I think. Oh goodness, I did look this up and... Anyway. I preferred the second one. Let me as honest as I am prepared to be. I liked... I liked Sea Of Poppies. Le... So. Okay. I'm going to talk a little bit about Sea Of Poppies and then I'll talk about River Of Smoke.
Sea Of Poppies is about a group of people who get together and they... they end up on a boat called the Ibis, which gives its name to the trilogy - the whole trilogy is called the Ibis Trilogy. And they're from all kinds of walks of life - different nationalities, different social backgrounds. You know, there's a... there's a son of a slave, there's a... some kind of Raja, I think... some religious people... lascars... There are some women as well and I'm not sure where they fit in. I don't remember anymore. Anyway, they all end up on this... on this boat and they set off, I think, from Calcutta heading towards Mauritius. I think that's right. And, anyway, there's a big storm and some of them end up in Mauritius. There's a... There's a, kind of, swapping around in the middle of the sea, which is quite fun. And in the second boat - second boat! - second book, [laughing] which contains... I mean it is... they are in the second boat I suppose. But there are two other boats that arrive in the second book, I think. And so some of them get on another boat. Some of them stay on the original boat - I don't know if I'm making any sense of this plot... Some of them stay on the original boat and end up in Mauritius and some of them get on a different boat and end up in Canton, I think, in China. In Fanqui... Fanqui-town? Is that what it's called? And then, anyway, in the... in the second book, which, as I say, is called River Of Smoke, you get the build up to the Opium... the first Opium War - I think the first one - and you... you... the settling of Hong Kong by the British and a certain amount of fighting between ships in the river... What river is that? Oh, I don't remember. Anyway, it was... I enjoyed it. I... It was... I mean, it's all stuff that I had, kind of, half heard about in a very vague way and didn't really know anything about. The... You know, from... The first book, the Sea Of Poppies, talks about the growing of poppies in India, funded by the East India Company in a way that bankrupted the people who were growing those poppies. So it talks a little bit about that. And so then... And then the... the production of opium from the poppies and the... And then the opium travels over the sea to China and this is what the second book is really about: the opium arriving in China and what the Chinese government did to try and stop opium coming into the country.
Let me read you the... [laughs] This is a bit naughty really because this isn't at all what I should be talking about during this episode, but I wanted to read you the plot summary of the second book - of, you know, River Of Smoke - from Wikipedia just to give you a sense of, you know, what these books are.
In the year 1838, three ships are caught in a raging storm off the coast of Canton. The Anahita, owned by Bahram Moddie, a Parsi opium trader from Bombay, the Redruth, owned by Fitcher Penrose, on an expedition to collect rare species of plants from China and the Ibis (from Sea Of Poppies) carrying convicts and indentured labourers.
Yeah, I'd forgotten they were convicts and indentured labourers.
The convicts Neel Rattan, a Bengali Zamindar...
Oh yes, Zamindar. He's not a Raja, he's a Zamindar. It's different. It's similar but different.
... and Ah Fatt, a criminal from Canton, escape from the ship along with a couple of lascars.
The story traces the lives of these principle characters in Canton. Bahram Moddie, a lowly son-in-law of a rich Parsi ship builder Rustamjee Mistrie, convinces his father-in-law to provide him seed capital to enter into opium trade, carries out multiple successful expeditions to China and creates considerable wealth in the process for his son-in-laws [sic]. However, on the sudden demise of his father-in-law, he is forced by his brothers-in-law...
… lots of law here…
…to retire from the Export division. Bahram decides to ship a large consignment of opium to China, as he is confident that he would be able to earn a sizeable profit to buy out the Export division, in spite of a ban on trading of Opium issued by the Chinese officials. Bahram also has a son (Ah Fatt) through a Chinese boat woman, Chi Mei, unknown to his family back in Bombay.
Fitcher Penrose, a botanist, is on an expedition to China to collect rare plants. He is joined by Paulette Lambert [/læmbert/]...
… Paul... Paulette... I want to say Paulette Lambert [/læmbeər/]... Yeah.
… aka Puggly, daughter of a French botanist, in his search for the rare Golden camellias. They are helped by Robin Chinnery, a fictional illegitimate son of the English painter George Chinnery.
Neel and Ah Fatt have escaped from Ibis and they meet Bahram Moddie, Ah Fatt's father. Neel joins Bahram as his Munshi.
Does Mr. Moddie manage to sell his opium and redeem himself in spite of the Chinese government's crackdown? Does Mr. Penrose find the rare plant he is looking for? Does Neel manage to evade the long arm of the law?
All questions that you can only answer by reading River Of Smoke - and to read River Of Smoke you really need to have read Sea Of Poppies. So. I'm going to read you a little section from Sea Of Poppies now. This is from page 151. It just describes the meeting between Zachary, who is the son of a... a slave woman from Maryland in America, and Baboo Nob Kissin, who is... I'm not entirely sure what his story is but he's a very religious character.
In his cabin, up on the quarter-deck, Zachary was upending a ditty-bag on his bunk, looking for some clothes to give to Jodu, when along with a heap of banyans, shirts and trowsers, something he had long given up for lost came tumbling out - his old penny-whistle. Zachary grinned as he reached for it: this was beyond praise, it seemed like a sign, a portent of good things to come. Forgetting all about the errand that had brought him to his cabin he put the whistle to his lips and began to play ‘Heave Away Cheerily’, one of his favourite sea-shanties.
It was this tune, as much as the sound of the instrument, that arrested Baboo Nob Kissin's hand just as it was about to knock on the cabin door. He froze, listening intently, and soon every inch of his upraised arm was prickling with gooseflesh.
For more than a year now, ever since the untimely death of the woman who had been his spiritual preceptor and Guru-ma, Baboo Nob Kissin's heart had been filled with pre... pre-monitory foreboding... pre-monitory foreboding: Ma Taramony, as she was known to her disciples, had promised him that his awakening was at hand and had told him to watch carefully for its signs, which were sure to be manifested in the unlikeliest places and in the most improbable forms. He had promised her that he would do his best to keep his mind open, and his senses watchful, so that the signs would not elude him when they were revealed - yet, now, despite his best efforts, he could not believe the evidence of his own ears. Was it really a flute, Lord Krishna's own instrument, that had started to play, just as he, Nob Kissin Pander, stepped up to the door of this cabin and raised his hand? It seemed impossible, but there could be no denying it - just as there was no denying that the tune, although unfamiliar in itself, was set to Gurjari, one of the most favoured ragas for the singing of the Dark Lord's songs. So long, and so anxiously, had Baboo Nob Kissin awaited the sign that now, as the tune breathed itself to an end and a hand made itself heard on the doorknob inside, he fell to his knees and covered his eyes, trembling in fear of what was imminently to be revealed.
This was why Zachary all but tripped over the gomusta's kneeling body as he made to leave the [sic] cabin with a banyan and a pair of trowsers tucked under his arm. ‘Hey!’ he said, gaping in surprise at the stout, dhoti-clad man who was crouching in the gangway with his hands over his eyes. ‘What the hell you doin down there?’
There you go. That's all I'm going to read to you. I think that's quite an important [laughing] meeting, as suggested by all of the signs and portents. This book, I didn't tell you... So that was page 151 and page 152 of a 533-page book, if you include the acknowledgments. I suppose 530 if you don't. This is a John Murray edition of Sea Of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh.
[page turning]
Okay. So that was the book that my sister Lissa gave me during the 41st Page One. The 42nd Page One was a conversation that I had with Beth Druce over Skype. She didn't give me a book. I did read Gone Girl as a result of that conversation but I don't have it any more and I don't particularly want to talk about it. Page One 43 was myself alone. Page One 44 was a conversation that I had with Patric Schott, who is a dear friend of mine and former colleague - hopefully future colleague. We had that conversation in what might be the most glamorous location for any of these conversations: we were backstage at the Grand Théâtre in Luxembourg just preparing to perform something - probably the Rossini piece that we were in together, the Petite Messe Solonelle, I would guess.
Anyway. Patric is a... he's a football fan. I mean, he's... he's German and football is very important to him and the story of German football is very important to him. And so he gave me an unattributed account of [laughing] the German team - I suppose the West German - football team's triumph at the 1954 Football World Cup. I suppose I don't need to say Football World Cup - they're the football team aren't they. The 1954 World Cup. It's called Das Spiel Ihres Lebens. Yeah. I've looked. I don't know who... [laughing] who wrote this. It's published, I think, by W. Fischer-Verlag. I think ‘Verlag’ is... probably means ‘limited’ or something. ‘Das spiel ihres lebens’ means ‘the... the game of their life’.
It's the... I haven't read it. So I [laughing] don't... I mean, I know... I was going to say: “It's the story of the match between Germany and Hungary.” I only know that because I've been looking for something to read for you know. I... I just... I'm not at all interested in football and this is quite - well you'll see. I'm only going to read you a paragraph. It's quite hard work if you're not a fan. I'm... I'm sure Patric will forgive me for not having read this. Let me just... I'll just read this to you and... I'm going to read it in German and then try to translate it for you. I'm not going to translate it word for word but I'll give you the gist. So this is from the bottom of page 33 and the top of page 34 of this... 70... Goodness. No, that... Yeah. There are so many... Oh gosh. Okay. There are... There's a sort of appendixes with the list of how the matches went, I think, and then some kind of diagram showing how they all stood on the pitch. Is that right? Anyway. 71 or 72 pages, this book has.
Da gibt es Eckball für Ungarn. Er wird getreten von wem? Von Toth, Zakarias, Puskas? Es geht unglaublich schnell, jetzt ist er abgewehrt, ein toller Wirbel ist ungefähr zwanzig Meter vor dem deutschen Tor entstanden. Turek rettet plötzlich, indem er kühn herausläuft, mit dem Fuß abwert und dem gefährlichen Hidegkuti das Nachsehen gibt. Da - Gefahr! Was ist das? Kocsis ist einen Moment unbewacht, er schießt, aber schon ist ein Verteidiger dazwischen. Der wird angeschossen, der Ball prallt ab und rollt ausgerechnet vor die Füße des ungarischen Mannschaftskapitäns Puskas...
Mannschaftskapitäns? yeah...
Puskas. Ein wunderbarer Flachschuß aus vielleicht 9 m Entfernung, und schon sitzt er unhaltbar im Netz.
1:0 für Ungarn!
Sechs Minuten nach dem Ampfiff [sic]... An... Sorry Anpfiff.
Okay, so that... It basically... There's a corner for Hungary. Who's going to take it? Von Toth, Zakarias, Puskas? It goes really quickly. Now something has happened. A really great... “Wirbel” - I'm not sure what... - something is about 20 meters from the Germ... is happening - or has taken place or something like that - about twenty meters from the German goal. Turek suddenly saves it. And then something something with something... He does something with a foot and then the dangerous Hidegkuti does something. There - danger! What is that? Kocsis is unmarked for a moment. He shoots but there is already a “Verteidiger” - I think that probably means... defender? Is that the word? - between - or a back? I don't know. I was forced to play rugby at school. “Aber schon ist ein Verteidiger dazwischen.” So someone, I think, comes between. It's... It's pushed away. Somehow the ball bounces about and rolls... oh, in front of the fee... feet of the captain of the Hungarian team, Puskas. A wonderful something... “Flachschuß” - presumably some kind of shot - from maybe nine meters away and already it's sitting in the... unstoppably in the net... in the back of the net, probably. Well, it doesn't say ‘back of the net’ but that's what I think we... I mean, I... you always hear people talking about the back of the net. One nil for Hungary six minutes after the kickoff.
So. There you go. Halfway through this book, we're only six minutes away from the kickoff and we've got another thirty-five pages to go before we find out really exactly what happened in this game, which presumably - I don't think this is too much of a spoiler - Germany wins. Well, I've already told you that Germany wins, haven't I? Anyway. So there you go. That's Das Spiel Ihres Lebens. It's a... Yeah. It's a lovely book to hold. Um... yeah.
Right.
[page turning]
The 45th Page One was my conversation with Henry Blackshaw and that took place in my flat here, where I am now, today, in West London. It was the second conversation to happen in my flat. Now... You know, looking back from now, this flat, I think, is the... is the location that has been most often used to record Page One episodes. But at this point - you know, when we get to the 45th Page One - there have been two Skype calls made from here and then only two conversations. I forgot to say when I was making the last Page One In Review that my conversation with Gabriele Wappel was the first of the conversations that happened in my flat. So both Gabriele and Henry sat in my kitchen to talk to me - I'm pretty sure you can hear the sound of my fridge in the background of those conversations - and Henry gave me Don't Look Now by Daphne du Maurier, which is a collection of - I think - five short stories? Let me see if there's a... [counting] one, two, three, four, five... Yes.
I... I love Daphne du Maurier. I have... yeah, very, very fond memories of reading her when I was probably fourteen years old. I remember - it's one of those strange things - I remember where I was when I read a lot of Daphne du Maurier, sitting at what was called, I think, my ‘compart’. I went to boarding school and in the room that we were assigned as ‘middles’, which means that we were in the second year... of five - it doesn't make any sense does it? - we had... we had little compartments which you could... It was like a cubicle, almost. You had a desk and you could close a curtain to screen you from the main room. And there was a radio slash CD player in there which was generally playing Nevermind by Nirvana or What's The Story Morning Glory by Oasis or Parklife by Blur. Those are the three albums that I associate with reading Daphne du Maurier. I hated all three of those albums at the time but own them now and... and enjoy listening to them. Strange, isn't it?
I... Yeah, I read loads of Daphne... I read... I must have read The House On The Strand, Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, The Birds, Frenchman's Creek. I just... I loved them. I got them all out of the school library. And I think I loved the, kind of, shiver of... not quite fear.... dread, I think, is the word or... the feeling that something is wrong that Daphne du Maurier manages to create that goes down, you know, the back of my neck and, well, all the way down my back really. They're not ghost stories. They're not... I would say, they're not quite horror stories. They're uncanny. And I like that. I mean, I think... I don't know, it's a long time since I've read The Birds and I haven't seen the film but my memory of that is that at no point do we understand why the birds are attacking they just... the... you know, the feeling grows on us that something is up. And then, you know, suddenly the birds are swooping down on us. And I have a feeling these stories like that too - Don't Look Now. You don't know necessarily why things are happening, you don't necessarily know what exactly is happening, but something is happening and it's dangerous.
I also... I'm pretty sure I also read these when I was at school. I don't think I had remembered that when Henry and I talked. But when I read them - especially the first story, Don't Look Now… That was very familiar to me. I'm going to read you a little bit from the second story which is called Not After Midnight, which is a lovely title, isn't it? It makes you think of Gremlins but... I don't know if... it's probably pre-Gremlins, isn't it? When was this first published? 1971. Yeah, that must be pre-Gremlins, mustn't it? Anyway. I'm going to read you. Just a... I wanted to read you a paragraph from page 91 - sorry, I know this is another long episode, but... - just because it's a lovely paragraph, and then, unusually for me, I wanted to read you the very end of the story. I don't think it will [laughing] ruin the story at all, and it may not make a lot of sense to you, but I thought it would be interesting to... to read the... the way in which she deals with what you might call the twist. You know, she's a short story writer who deals in the twist but they're not so much revelations as cl... hmm... kind of, gentle clarifications? Is that...? I don't know if that really describes what it is. Well, you'll... I think you'll see. But this is just a description of some homemade drink that somebody has given the main character, the narrator:
Hesitant, wary, I dipped my finger into the glass and tasted it. It was like the barley-water my mother used to make when I was a child. And equally tasteless. And yet... it left a sort of aftermath on the palate and the tongue. Not as sweet as honey nor as sharp as grapes, but pleasant, like the smell of raisins under the sun, curiously blended with the ears of ripening corn.
I think that's - argh! - lovely. I find that very evocative. I thi... It's meaningful for the story that she's telling but also a lovely description of an almost tasteless drink. Okay. So here I'm going to read just pages 99 and 100 of this book. This collection is 268 pages long in this Penguin edition.
The footsteps outside the hut were now explained. Mrs Stoll, the boatman in tow, had paid a final visit to the hut to clear the rubble, and now, their mission accomplished, they would drive on to the airport to catch the afternoon plane to Athens, their journey made several miles longer by the detour along the coast road. And Stoll himself? Asleep, no doubt, at the back of the car upon the salt flats, awaiting their return.
The sight of that woman once again gave me a profound distaste for my expedition. I wished I had not come. And my helmsman had spoken the truth; the dinghy was now floating above rock. A ridge must run out here from the shore in a single reef. The sand had darkened, changed in texture, become grey. I peered closer into the water, cupping my eyes with my hands, and suddenly I saw the vast encrusted anchor, the shells and barnacles of centuries upon its spokes, and as the dinghy drifted on the bones of the long-buried craft itself appeared, broken, sparless, her decks, if decks there had been, long since dismembered or destroyed.
Stoll had been right: her bones had been picked clean. Nothing of any value could now remain upon that skeleton. No pitchers, no jars, no gleaming coins. A momentary breeze rippled the water, and when it became clear again and all was still I saw the second anchor by the skeleton bows, and a body, arms outstretched, legs imprisoned in the anchor's jaws. The motion of the water gave the body life, as though, in some desperate fashion, it still struggled for release, but, trapped as it was, escape would never come. The days and nights would follow, months and years, and slowly the flesh would dissolve, leaving the frame impaled upon the spikes.
The body was Stoll's, head, trunk, limbs grotesque, inhuman, as they swayed backwards and forwards at the bidding of the current.
I looked up once more to the crest of the hill, but the two figures had long since vanished, and in an appalling flash of intuition a picture of what had happened became vivid: Stoll, strutting on the spit of sand, the half-bottle raised his lips, and then they struck him down and dragged him to the water's edge, and it was his wife who towed him, drowning, to his final resting-place beneath the surface, there below me, impaled on the crusted anchor. I was sole witness to his fate, and no matter what lies she told to account for his disappearance I would remain silent; it was not my responsibility; guilt might increasingly haunt me, but I must never become involved.
I heard the sound of something choking beside me - I realise now it was myself, in horror and in fear - and I struck at the water with my paddles and started pulling away from the wreck back to the boat. As I did so my arm brushed against the jar in my pocket, and in sudden panic I dragged it forth and flung it overboard. Even as I did so, I knew the gesture was in vain. It did not sink immediately but remained bobbing on the surface, then slowly filled with that green translucent sea, pale as the barley liquid laced with spruce and ivy. Not innocuous but evil, stifling conscience, dulling intellect, the hell-brew of the smiling god Dionysus, which turned his followers into drunken sots, would claim another victim before long. The eyes in the swollen face stared up at me, and they were not only those of Silenos the satyr tutor, and of the drowned Stoll, but my own as well, as I should see them soon reflected in a mirror. They seemed to hold all knowledge in their depths, and all despair.
There you go. That has - for sure - more power if you've also read the opening paragraphs of that story* but I hope that gives you a sense of how Daphne du Maurier does her storytelling.
Okay. That's it. Oh, I haven't told you that today is Friday the 15th of May. For what it's worth. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you're all doing all right. Speak to you again soon. Bye.
Jingle
Thank you for listening to Page One. For more information about the podcast, please go to pageonepodcast.com.
[Initial transcription by https://otter.ai]
*Note for readers of this transcript: in fact, Henry Blackshaw read the opening paragraphs of this story when he introduced the book during Page One 45.