Lucky, why? First, I like Chatwin’s writing. I like what he writes about and how he goes about presenting his words. Second, I knew what Bey meant and therefore had a much easier time of it than my fellow students.

Having been a student on and off for many years, I suspected that most, if not all, would read the essay but wouldn’t do the necessary investigative work to understand the world upon which Chatwin was commenting within the body of his essay. Based on this belief, I organized my presentation around the necessary details to understanding the piece. It turned out to be a correct assumption; after a successful presentation, I closed with a question to start the discussion. The question was “what is a reader’s responsibility when coming to a piece?” I was speaking to a room full of writers.

“The Bey” begins…

Among my first jobs at Sotheby’s was that of porter in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Whenever there was a sale I would put on my grey porter’s uniform and stand behind the glass vitrines, making sure that prospective buyers didn’t sticky the objects with their fingers.

One morning there appeared an elderly and anachronistic gentleman in a black Astrakhan-collared coat, carrying a black silver-tipped cane. His syrupy eyes and brushed-up moustache announced him as a relic of the Ottoman Empire.

“Can you show me something beautiful?” he asked. “Greek, not Roman!”

“I think I can,” I said.

I showed him a fragment of an Attic white-ground lekythos by the Achilles Painter which had the most refined drawing, in golden-sepia, of a naked boy. It had come from the collection of Lord Elgin.

“Ha!” said the old gentleman. “I see you have The Eye. I too have The Eye. We shall be friends.”

He handed me his card. I watched the black coat recede into the gallery:

Paul A_ _ _ F_ _ _ Bey
Grand Chamberlain du Cour du Roi des Albanis

“So,” I said to myself. “Zog’s Chamberlain.”

Do you know what Bey means? Would you look it up? Would you read the essay without checking it out?

What about the Astrakham-collared coat? The fact that this visual detail very carefully sites the central character in this essay would be meaningless (as would the specific place, time and cultural moment the character is meant to evoke) unless one could picture that coat and its normal accouterments and know what kind of person would have worn such an ensemble.

Chatwin, like all really good writers, chooses images and words with great care. In something as short as an essay, they bear a good deal of weight. He calls the character a “relic,” for example, just before he goes on to show us another sort of relic, that of a lost painter, known as the “Achilles Painter.”  Not a coincidence.

So of course the visual detail of the character and the visual detail of the piece of art Chatwin shows us won’t be a coincidence either.

A lekythos  - something used to store oil and often found in tombs. Dig a little deeper – something in which to store oil used for anointing the bodies of dead unmarried men. Chatwin’s bisexuality? But of course Chatwin was married. As was Zog. And the Chamberlain?

“From the collection of Lord Elgin…” Goodness. What a delightful choice of words — “collection.” The fact that Lord Elgin was the ambassador to Constantinople, the onetime capital of the Ottoman Empire, which then included Greece, has certain resonance since the main character has been announced a “relic” of said empire and the lekythos was (ahem) lifted from said empire by Lord Elgin and re-situated in the coffers of the British Empire. And of course Zog and his court lived in exile in England for some years: another relic which floated over to the British Empire.

So much has been packed into a few words.

And there’s so much more about Zog: his relationships with people, his wife and child, the fall of Albania, the suitcases full of gold, his highness’s relationship with other empires, Hitler, Mussolini, the life in exile, and the various empires’ relationship with (the re-situation of) relics of all kinds.

I mean, if this history, this cultural knowledge wasn’t known, didn’t function as a part of the reading experience of Chatwin’s essay, what would the essay mean?

Certainly, it would be a very different essay from the one Chatwin actually wrote.

So what is the reader’s responsibility here?