Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [84]
Harold remained a resolute defender of the Serbs as being unfairly victimized, held solely responsible for a ghastly situation in which many others were equally guilty. In later years, he was informed he had become a hero to the Serbs, which he found unexpected and gratifying. In later years, also, Harold and I came to disagree on one aspect of this war and its consequences. That is to say, the trial of the Serbian leader, Milosevic for war crimes. While I had deplored the bombing of Belgrade, I supported this trial. Harold, on the other hand, disapproved of it strongly, signed letters protesting against it – in his opinion there were many other ‘war criminals’ and he was generally extremely active on the subject.
For a long time he never argued the point with me, but in the face of all Harold’s activities my silence was no doubt eloquent. Harold did finally raise it at dinner one night. He explained that he did not (necessarily) believe Milosevic was innocent but that he thought what happened was illegal: the Court of Justice was in essence just NATO – his enemy. I put my opposite point of view: that it was good to try war criminals and although this court, like Nuremberg, was not perfect (think of the USSR then presiding over a court condemning atrocities!) yet it was better than no court at all. You will never have perfect human justice at a court run by imperfect humans. I pointed out the case of Pinochet: there had been something uncomfortable about a Spanish judge, a member of the former imperialist power, doling out justice to a Chilean. But it was still the right thing to do.
The radical and surprising action recently taken against Pinochet, indicted while in England by a Spanish judge for what he had done to a Spanish citizen in Chile during his ‘reign’ as leader, was dramatic and encouraging, unlike the whole situation of former Yugoslavia. Harold’s sympathies for those who had suffered after the fall of the Allende regime – the ‘Disappeared’, many of them very young who had been first interrogated, then tortured, then eliminated – remained as acute as ever. In 1998 he wrote a poem on the subject, inspired as it turned out by a visit to the Sainsbury Wing of the National Gallery to see an exhibition of the Dutch painters of Utrecht, entitled ‘Masters of Light’.
19 July 1998
Extraordinary daring effects; all the painters had been to Rome and there was a strong Caravaggesque feeling.
We liked The Denial of St Peter especially, the amazing construction, the arm blocking the candle completely, the candle which illuminates the girl’s face. Then Harold gave a sort of groan; ‘I haven’t got any paper.’ But I had some at the back of my little diary. Ripped it out. So he sat down there and then in the National Gallery and wrote a poem which came to be called ‘The Disappeared’. He told me later that a large image of Samson, the shackles especially prominent, was the key inspiration. What did people think of this dark figure scribbling furiously? I did not wait to find out but went and shopped for Art Kitsch upstairs.
THE DISAPPEARED
Lovers of light, the skulls,
The burnt skin, the white
Flash of the night,
The heat in the death of men.
The hamstring and the heart
Torn apart in a musical room,
Where children of the light
Know that their kingdom has come.
In October 1998 an enormous amount of time was consumed talking about General Pinochet, rejoicing at his detention, worrying at the result of the judgment in the House of Lords. Harold was philosophical: ‘At least things about Chile in those days have been aired. People of twenty-two who have never heard of Chile, let alone Pinochet, and the tortures which were administered, now know all about it.’
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