John Berger - To the Wedding

Incomprehensible loudspeaker announcements about departures and arrivals and the siphoning noise of a large railway station. In the main hall of the Hlavná Stanica in Bratislava I search for Zdena. She is not there. I go outside to where the taxis are waiting and there I hear a man’s voice. I don’t know whose it is.

Spotted it not too late, grey Mercedes 500 SL nosing in on far side of hot dog stand. I see Vlady recuperated another trolley. His third this afternoon. One hundred dinar — unless he flogs it for two hundred to passenger arriving late with luggage. Must catch eye of grey Mercedes 500 SL. Catch it with authority. Without authority I am dog-shit. I am trying, friend, with my head, my neck, my shoulders, my right hand, my look, to catch the Mercedes 500 SL with authority — as if I had space, as if I had a uniform with peaked cap, as if I had polished boots, and not a torn anorak, not a hat-sock and not gaping sneakers without laces. I have to catch the driver’s eye. If I catch it, the vacant parking spot is mine to offer. He may have already spotted it, yet if I catch his eye, it becomes mine before it becomes his. It was the spot I was keeping for him. Vacated one minute ago. I’ll come over like a flash. He’ll reach into his pocket, and he’ll slip me one hundred or, with luck, two. Can of Pilsner. Keep an eye on the SL, Sir. One of us here all the while, Sir, no worry. Four hundred. Could be five. I don’t catch the driver’s eye. He won’t look at me. At least I can open the door, grasp the door handle. He swings door out of my reach. He locks car with press-stud and strides off. Haven’t space any more to lay out my name. No name. I’m That Fucker There. In anorak-pocket, have, had, used to have, jackknife. Could jag it into tyres of SL. Can’t find it. Black Russian ZIL arriving. Limousine, with curtains drawn across rear windows. Driver a Caucasian. He’d run me down if he could. He’s trying to …

You stay the night, says Lunatic to the signalman, we’ve got mattresses and we’ll make a risotto.

Do you want to tell me who Captain Crunch was?

Is. He’s still alive, he’s in hiding.

Have you heard of the 2600-cycle tone? asks Tenebrium.

The signalman shakes his head.

It’s a high A note used on the Bell telephone system to announce the completion of a phone call. Now the guy who called himself Captain Crunch discovered that a toy plastic whistle given away by Quaker Oats in each packet of their cereal called Cap’n Crunch, reproduced this A note perfectly if you added a minute spot of glue to its outlet hole.

Do you follow? asks John the Baptist.

Why not?

So, by blowing the toy whistle into a telephone, Captain Crunch could make an entry into the cyberspace of the telephone system and like this he could prevent any long-distance call being charged to the account he was phoning from. He could talk his way round the world for free! He could listen to talk from anywhere! This was more than twenty years ago. Later he moved on to computers and became the world’s Master Hacker.

Nearly everything we know, says John the Baptist, first came from him. It was he who demonstrated it was possible to break into the systems.

It was he, says Tenebrium, who invented the term Silicon Brotherhood, and across the planet today we’re a couple of thousand — including this other genius we’ve found in Gdansk. We’ve got access to his Bulletin Board System so we know.

We invented a virus too.

It’s not our principal activity.

We hack to live! says Lunatic, we hack to stay on the planet.

And to show them they can’t keep us out and never will. We can download anything.

Paradise is not for living in, says John the Baptist, it’s for visiting.

You know what I thought, says Lunatic, when I was behind you on the bike. You look for a signpost, don’t you, when you’re driving somewhere, you look for the signpost of the place you’re going to, and as soon as you pick one up, everywhere the road happens to lead you, through forests, along rivers, past schools and gardens and hospitals, across suburbs, through tunnels, everywhere it leads you is given a sense by that name you’ve read on the signpost. And it’s the same with us on our travels, when once we’re in through a backdoor, we know what we’re looking for. In life I think it can be the name of a person, not a place, which can give a sense to everything you find. A person you desire or a person you admire. This is what I think at this moment, Frenchman.

We hack to stay on the planet, repeats John the Baptist.

A vehicle swaying, a sizzling of wheels that are not running on rails but asphalt, an engine purr, a sensation of being cushioned like a child dozing on a sofa, voices in Slovak telling long stories, on the backseat a honeymoon couple, the bride still wearing her roses, near the front a group of shopkeepers who specialise in glassware and are on their way to look at Venetian glassblowers, a Bohemian dance coming over the loudspeaker, a faint smell of beer, and Zdena is in the coach she caught outside the railway station in Bratislava.

She is seated next to a bald man, wearing a dark suit with a pinstripe which is twenty years out of fashion. They have been sitting beside one another for two hours and have not said a word. Not even arriving in Vienna made them talk. He removed his hat and she kicked off her shoes. After that each of them settled back into their personal limbo. She looked out of the window and he read a newspaper.

Now he opens his dispatch case and takes out a brown-paper package. Unwrapping it he finds some meat sandwiches. Lifting up the whole package, he offers one to her. She shakes her head. He shrugs and bites into his own sandwich.

Have you noticed, he says with his mouth full, how gherkins, the kysléuhorky , are getting more and more sour?

She says nothing.

Is it your first visit to Venice?

Yes, it is.

She has a voice which doesn’t fit her reticent appearance. The voice of a born singer which doesn’t have to search for expression, since expression is the gift of that voice. The three words — yes, it is — sounded as though they were an entire life story. He must be at least fifteen years older than her.

She turns again to the window. Soon it will be dark. The last sunshine lights the distant mountains, a church hidden between hills, leaves, countless millions of them, the nearest along the edge of the road made to flutter by the draught of the passing coach, village houses of three storeys, apple trees, many wooden fences, a solitary horse.

I’m sure you’ll like Venice, he says.

I just change there, she says.

It is the moment in the farmsteads out there when the chickens are locked up for the night, and old women crumple newspapers and push them, with kindling wood, into the stove and look for their box of matches.

Why not take an orange? In Venice we’ll already find cherries. Where do you go afterwards?

To my daughter’s wedding.

A happy occasion, then.

Scarcely. My daughter is HIV-positive.

Without an instant’s reflection Zdena has told the man who is a stranger what she has hesitated to tell to her intimate friends. She stares at him as though he, not she, has said something shocking. The skin of his bald scalp is as smooth as a silk scarf, moistened with a spray for ironing.