John Berger - Once in Europa

The blond hung the tapestry on the wall in the bedroom. One Sunday afternoon, when Gérard was lying on the bed watching television, he nodded at the tapestry where the horses’ manes were combed by the wind as if by a hairdresser and the horses’ coats gleamed like polished shoes and the snow between the pine trees was as white as a wedding dress, and he said:

It’s the only one of his presents I could do without.

I like horses, she said.

Horses! He made a whinnying noise.

Your trouble is that horses scare you!

Horses! The only thing to be said about a picture — and that’s a picture even if it is made out of cotton—

Velvet!

— same thing, the only thing to be said about that picture there — is that in a picture horses don’t shit.

In your mind everything’s shit, she said.

Have you talked to him about the house yet? Gérard asked.

I’ll talk to him when I choose.

Calling him Little Humpback’s not bad!

She turned off the TV.

I call him, Gérard, whatever I love to call him. He’s my business.

How difficult it is to prevent certain stories becoming a simple moral demonstration! As if there were never any hesitations, as if life didn’t wrap itself like a rag round the sharpest blade!

One midday, the following June, Boris arrived at the blond’s house, covered in sweat. His face, with his hawk-nose and his cheekbones like pebbles, looked as if he had just plunged it into a water trough. He entered the kitchen and kissed her as he usually did, but this time without a word. Then he went to the sink and put his head under the tap. She offered him a towel, which he refused. The water from his hair was running down his neck to the inside of the shirt. She asked him whether he wanted to eat; he nodded. He followed her with his eyes wherever she went, not sentimentally like a dog, nor suspiciously, but as though from a great distance.

Are you ill? she asked him abruptly as she put his plate on the table.

I have never been ill.

Then what is the matter?

By way of reply he pulled her towards him and thrust his head, still wet, against her breast. The pain she felt was not in her chest but in her spine. Yet she did not struggle and she placed her plump white hand on the hard head. For how long did she stand there in front of his chair? For how long was his face fitted into her breast like a gun into its case lined with velvet? On the night when Boris died alone, stretched out on the floor with his three black dogs, it seemed to him that his face had been fitted into her breast ever since he first set eyes on her.

Afterwards he did not want to eat what was on his plate.

Come on, Humpback, take your boots off and we’ll go to bed.

He shook his head.

What’s the matter with you? You sit there, you say nothing, you eat nothing, you do nothing, you’re good for nothing!

He got to his feet and walked towards the door. For the first time she noticed he was limping.

What’s the matter with your foot?

He did not reply.

For Christ’s sake, have you hurt your foot?

It’s broken.

How?

I overturned the tractor on the slope above the house. I was flung off and the fender crushed my foot.

Did you call the doctor?

I came here.

Where’s the jeep?

Can’t drive, can’t move the ankle.

She started to untie the boots. She began with the unhurt foot. He said nothing. The second boot was a different matter. His whole body went rigid when she began to unlace it. His sock was drenched in blood and the foot was too swollen for her to remove the boot.

She bit her lip and tried to open the boot further.

You walked here! she exclaimed.

He nodded.

Seated on the kitchen floor at his feet, her hands limp by her side, she began to sob.

His foot had eleven fractures. The doctor refused to believe that he had walked the four kilometres from his farm to the blond’s. He said it was categorically impossible. The blond had driven Boris down to the clinic, and, according to the doctor, she had been at Boris’s house all morning but for some reason didn’t want to admit it. This is why, according to the doctor, the two of them had invented the implausible story of his walking four kilometres. The doctor, however, was wrong. Of all the many times that Boris visited her, this was the only one which she never once mentioned to Gérard. And when, later, she heard the news of Boris’s death, she abruptly and surprisingly asked whether he was wearing boots when they found him.

No, was the reply, he was barefoot.

Boris, when young, had inherited three houses, but all of them, by the standards of the town, were in a pitiable condition. In the house with the largest barn he himself lived. There was electricity but no water. The house was below the road and the passerby could look down its chimney. It was in this house that the three black dogs howled all night when he died.

The second house, the one he always referred to as the Mother’s house, was the best situated of the three and he had long-term plans for selling it to a Parisian — when the day and the Parisian arrived.

In the third house, which was no more than a cabin at the foot of the mountain, Edmond, the shepherd, slept when he could. Edmond was a thin man with the eyes of a hermit. His experience had led him to believe that nearly all those who walked on two legs belonged to a species named Misunderstanding. He received from Boris no regular salary but occasional presents and his keep.

One spring evening, Boris went up to the house under the mountain, taking with him a cheese and a smoked side of bacon.

You’re not often at home now! was how Edmond greeted him.

Why do you say that?

I have eyes. I notice when the Land Rover passes.

And you know where I go?

Edmond deemed the question unworthy of a reply, he simply fixed his unavailing eyes on Boris.

I’d like to marry her, said Boris.

But you can’t.

She would be willing.

Are you sure?

Boris answered by smashing his right fist into his left palm. Edmond said nothing.

How many lambs? asked Boris.

Thirty-three. She is from the city, isn’t she?

Her father is a butcher in Lyons.

Why hasn’t she any children?

Not every ram has balls, you should know that. She’ll have a child of mine.

How long have you been going with her?

Eighteen months.

Edmond raised his eyebrows. City women are not the same, he said, and I ought to know. I’ve seen enough. They’re not built the same way. They don’t have the same shit and they don’t have the same blood. They don’t smell the same either. They don’t smell of stables and chicken mash, they smell of something else. And that something else is dangerous. They have perfect eyelashes, they have unscratched legs without varicose veins, they have shoes with soles as thin as pancakes, they have hands white and smooth as peeled potatoes and when you smell their smell, it fills you with a godforsaken longing. You want to breathe them to their dregs, you want to squeeze them like lemons until there is not a drop or a pip left. And shall I tell you what they smell of? Their smell is the smell of money. They calculate everything for money. They are not built like our mothers, these women.

You can leave my mother out of it.

Be careful, said Edmond, your blond will strip you of everything. Then she’ll throw you aside like a plucked chicken.

With a slow blow to the face Boris knocked the shepherd over. He lay spread-eagled on the ground.

Nothing stirred. The dog licked Edmond’s forehead.

Only somebody who has seen a battlefield can imagine the full indifference of the stars above the shepherd, spread-eagled on the ground. It is in the face of this indifference that we seek love.