John Berger - Once in Europa

Some of Boris’s sheep were grazing just below the Rock of St. Antoine on the far slopes facing east. When sheep are frightened they climb, looking to heaven to save them; and so Boris’s sheep moved up to the scree by the rock, and there they huddled together under the rain. Sixty sheep, each one resting his drenched head on the oily drenched rump or shoulders of his neighbour. When the lightning lit up the mountain — and everything appeared so clear and so close that the moment seemed endless — the sixty animals looked like a single giant sheepskin coat. There were even two sleeves, each consisting of half a dozen sheep, who were hemmed in along two narrow corridors of grass between the rising rocks. From this giant coat, during each lightning flash, a hundred or more eyes, glistening like brown coal, peered out in fear. They were right to be frightened. The storm centre was approaching. The next forked lightning struck the heart of the coat and the entire flock was killed. Most of them had their jaws and forelegs broken by the shock of the electrical discharge, received in the head and earthed through their thin bony legs.

In the space of one night Boris lost three million.

It was I, thirty-six hours later, who first noticed the crows circling in the sky. Something was dead there, but I didn’t know what. Somebody told Boris, and the next day he went up to the Rock of St. Antoine. There he found the giant sheepskin coat, discarded, cold, covered with flies. The carcasses were too far from any road. The only thing he could do was burn them where they lay.

He fetched petrol and diesel oil and started to make a pyre, dragging the carcasses down the two sleeves and throwing them one on top of another. He started the fire with an old tyre. Thick smoke rose above the peak, and with it the smell of burned animal flesh. It takes very little to turn a mountain into a corner of hell. From time to time Boris consoled himself by thinking of the blond. Later he would laugh with her. Later, his face pressed against her, he would forget the shame of this scene. But more than these promises which he made to himself, it was the simple fact of her existence which encouraged him.

By now everybody in the village knew what had happened to Boris’s sheep. No one blamed Boris outright — how could they? Yet there were those who hinted that a man couldn’t lose so many animals at one go unless, in some way, he deserved it. Boris neglected his animals. Boris did not pay his debts. Boris was having it off with a married woman. Providence was delivering him a warning.

They say Boris is burning his sheep, said the blond, you can see the smoke over the mountain.

Why don’t we go and watch? suggested Gérard.

She made the excuse of a headache.

Come on, he said, it’s a Saturday afternoon and the mountain air will clear your head. I’ve never seen a man burning sixty sheep.

I don’t want to go.

What’s the matter?

I’m worried.

You think he could change his mind about the house now? He’ll certainly be short of money.

A flock of sheep’s not going to make him change his mind about the house.

We shouldn’t count our chickens—

Only one thing could make him go back on his word about the house.

If you stopped seeing him?

Not exactly.

What then?

Nothing.

Has he mentioned the house recently?

Do you know what he calls it? He calls it the Mother’s house.

Why?

She shrugged her shoulders.

Come on, said Gérard.

Gérard and his wife drove up the mountain to where the road stopped. From there, having locked the car, they continued on foot. Suddenly she screamed as a grouse flew up from under her feet.

I thought it was a baby! she cried.

You must have drunk too much. How can a baby fly?

That’s what I thought, I’m telling you.

Can you see the smoke? Gérard asked.

What is it that’s hissing?

His sheep cooking! said Gérard.

Don’t be funny.

Grasshoppers.

Can you smell anything?

No.

Imagine being up here in a storm! she said.

I’ve better things to do.

It’s all very well for you to talk, you’ve never lifted a shovel in your life, she said.

That’s because I’m not stupid.

No. Nobody could call you that. And he’s stupid, Boris is stupid, stupid, stupid!

He was encouraging the fire with fuel, whose blue flames chased the slower yellow ones. He picked up a sheep by its legs, and swung it back and forth, before flinging it high into the air so that it landed on top of the pyre, where, for a few minutes longer, it was still recognizable as an animal. The tearstains on his cheek were from tears provoked by the heat and, when the wind turned, by the acrid smoke. Every few minutes he picked up another carcass, swung it to gain momentum, and hurled it into the air. The boy who had never been able to tap the ash-bark gently enough had become the man who could burn his own herd single-handed.

Gérard and the blond stopped within fifty yards of the blaze. The heat, the stench and something unknown prevented them approaching further. This unknown united the two of them: wordlessly they were agreed about it. They raised their hands to protect their eyes. Fires and gigantic waterfalls have one thing in common. There is spray torn off the cascade by the wind, there are the flames: there is the rockface dripping and visibly eroding, there is the breaking up of what is being burned: there is the roar of the water, there is the terrible chatter of the fire. Yet at the centre of both fire and waterfall there is a persistent calm. And it is this calm which is catastrophic.

Look at him, whispered Gérard.

Three million he’s lost, poor sod! murmured the blond.

Why are you so sure he isn’t insured?

I know, she hissed, that’s why. I know.

Boris, his back to the fire, was bent over his haversack drinking from a bottle of water. Having drunk, he poured water onto his face and his black arms. Its freshness made him think of how he would strip in the kitchen this evening and wash before going to visit the blond.

When Boris turned back towards the fire he saw them. Immediately a gust of smoke hid them from view. Not for a moment, however, did he ask himself whether he had been mistaken. He would recognise her instantly whatever she was doing, anywhere. He would recognise her in any country in the world in any decade of her life.

The wind veered and he saw them again. She stood there, Gérard’s arm draped over her shoulders. It was impossible that they had not seen him and yet she made no sign. They were only fifty yards away. They were staring straight at him. And yet she made no sign.

If he walked into the fire would she cry out? Still holding the bottle, he walked upright, straight — like a soldier going to receive a medal — towards the fire. The wind changed again and they disappeared.

The next time the smoke cleared the couple were nowhere to be seen.

Contrary to what he had told himself earlier, Boris did not come down that night. He stayed by the fire. The flames had abated, his sheep were ashes, yet the rocks were still oven-hot and the embers, like his rage, changed colour in the wind.

Huddled under the rock, the Milky Way trailing its veil towards the south, he considered his position. Debts were warnings of the ultimate truth, they were signs, not yet insistent, of the final inhospitality of life on this earth. After midnight the wind dropped, and the rancid smell, clinging to the scree, was no longer wafted away; it filled the silence, as does the smell of cordite when the sound of the last shot has died away. On this inhospitable earth he had found, at the age of forty-one, a shelter. The blond was like a place: one where the law of inhospitality did not apply. He could take this place anywhere, and it was enough for him to think of her, for him to approach it. How then was it possible that she had come up the mountain on the day of his loss and not said a word? How was it possible that on this rock, far above the village, where even the church bells were inaudible, she should have come as close as fifty yards and not made a sign to him? He stirred the embers with his boot. He knew the answer to the question and it was elementary. He pissed into the fire and on the stones his urine turned into steam. It was elementary. She had come to watch him out of curiosity.