John Berger - Once in Europa

They dumped their sacks in the trunk of the Mercedes. Four got in behind. Father sat in the front, and Pasquale was the driver. He sat behind the wheel, hunched up, concentrated and impossible to distract.

Every night on their way home the woodcutters stopped to wash themselves in the trough by Danielle’s chalet. She prepared coffee. They drank it outside sitting on their sacks. Virginio, who was tall and wore glasses, left a razor behind so that he could shave if he wanted. Danielle found a piece of broken mirror which she hung on a wire by the trough. She learnt that five of them came from the same village on the other side of the Alps, near Bergamo. Alberto came from Sicily. Every winter they returned home. She learnt that they were paid by the cubic metre of wood felled: the harder they worked, the quicker they earned. Father did the cooking. The Mercedes belonged to Pasquale.

Sometimes, when they passed in the very early morning they left a present for her: a tin of peaches, a bottle of vermouth. Once they left a scarf with a design of roses printed on it.

The first time I saw Pasquale out of his work clothes was when he knocked on the door whilst I was drinking coffee one morning.

I don’t work on Sunday, he said.

You deserve a day of rest.

To do what?

There was a long silence.

Once we worked on a Sunday and I had an accident.

What happened? I asked.

The trees were falling badly, one after the other. We weren’t working fast enough. That’s why we decided to work on Sunday.

Would you like some cider?

He shook his head.

Some eau-de-vie?

I’m not thirsty.

I’ll whip you some cream, I said.

His thick lips smiled and he opened his enormous hands in a gesture of submission.

Tell me what happened while I whip the cream.

A long silence.

About the Sunday you worked? I prompted him.

The very first tree I had to strip had fallen badly. Where we were working was very steep, like here. Rocks everywhere. Crevices. Gulleys. I told myself I’d work toward the head, so as not to have to walk back along where I’d already stripped. They’re as slippery as fish when you strip them. Sometimes the resin splashes your face when you are axing the bark off.

The cream was thickening, leaving the side of the bowl. I watched Pasquale talking. There was a sadness in his face. He had stopped his story. Silence.

Do you have a brother or sister? I asked.

Not one. My mother died when I was born.

And your father?

He went to America and we never heard from him. He disappeared into America like a tear into a well, my aunt says.

Again silence — only the noise of my fork in the bowl.

Go on, I said, go on.

I started stripping her from the top and she began to roll from the head. Nothing stops a rolling tree except another tree or a rock. I hesitated because I was worried about the machine. It was a new one we had just bought. If you hesitate, you’re lost. I jumped too late, holding the machine above my head. In the gulley I began to slide, it was as steep as the side of a pyramid. I slid over onto some dry rocks below and they broke a leg.

Could you get up?

The machine wasn’t hurt!

No machine is worth a broken leg.

A machine like that costs half a million.

A long silence.

You couldn’t get up?

They carried me home to the hut and laid me on the bed. Father said: Pasquale, can you wait till tomorrow? At first I didn’t understand. Wait for what? Before we take you to hospital. That’s twenty-four hours, I said. I’ll sit with you, he replied, pain gets worse when you’re alone. No, go back and work, I told him. Next day, Monday, they took me to hospital. I handed him the bowl and he began to eat the cream. His huge hands rested on the table. To eat he lowered his head to the spoon. When he had finished he screwed up his face and smiled.

I’ve never tasted cream as good as that, he said.

Why didn’t they take you to hospital immediately?

Because it was Sunday.

Well?

On Sundays we are not insured. What we do on Sundays is at our own risk. He looked at me very seriously. Like what we do today, he said.

There was another long silence and we did nothing.

If you come next Sunday with your friends, I said, I’ll make a tart to go with the cream.

A few days later Danielle had the idea of passing by the arolle tree to get to the ridge above Nîmes — blueberries abound there — and then climbing down the scree to surprise Marius, whom she had neglected to visit for a week or two. She filled her bucket with berries and her fingers were stained blue as they used to be when she wrote in ink at school.

She approached the edge to look down on Peniel. The sky was cloudless. There was a strongish north wind which would fall when the sun went down. The sun was low in the sky so that the cows had long shadows like camels. Marius was there with his dog beside him. Yet there was something wrong. She sensed it without knowing why. The old man was shouting, his arms outstretched before him towards the crags. Why didn’t the dog move? She couldn’t hear what he was shouting because she was upwind. Then, abruptly, the wind dropped.

Sounds, like distances, are deceptive in the mountains. Sometimes you can recognise a voice, but not the words the voice is saying. Sometimes you hear a cow growl like a dog, and a whole flock of sheep singing like women. What Danielle thought she heard was:

Marius à Sauva! Marius à Sauva!

The sun was so low that it was lighting only one side of each mountain, one side of each forest, one side of each little hillock in the pastures; the other side of everything was in dark shadow, as if the sun had already set or not yet risen.

Perhaps he was telling the dog to go and save one of the cows, she argued to herself, that could sound like à Sauva . Yet why didn’t the dog move?

Marius à Sauva!

She could no longer be sure, the wind had got up again. She picked her way carefully down the scree. Occasionally she dislodged a stone or a pebble which, clattering down, dislodged others, and they in their turn others. Yet despite the noise of her descent, Marius never once glanced up. It was as if at Nîmes, that evening, all sounds were playing tricks.

The dog ran to greet her. She waited for Marius to kiss her on her cheek as he always did. He kissed her and began talking as if they had been stopped in the middle of a conversation.

You see Guste over there — he pointed at a thickset Charolais with curly hair like wool — he’s charming, Guste, the gentlest bull I’ve had, and already he’s too old. I shall sell him for meat this autumn. He’s two and a half. Next year his calves will be too small.

You must have thought I’d disappeared, Danielle said.

He lifted his hat and put it lower on his brow.

No, no, he said, gently. I hear their chain saws all day. And there are six of them, aren’t there? Bring the Comtesse over! Gently, in God’s name! Over!

He stopped in his tracks and leant against the side of a large boulder covered with moss. He was rubbing the back of his hand against the moss. And our summer at Peniel, he said, you’ll remember it, won’t you, Danielle?

The following Sunday the woodcutters came after supper to eat the blueberry tart Danielle had made. With them they brought two bottles of Italian sparkling wine. They were dressed as if they were going to town. Thin pointed shoes instead of boots, white shirts, natty belts. It was only their scarred hands they could do nothing about. Virginio was the most transformed by his change of clothes: tall and with glasses, he almost had the air of a schoolmaster. Father looked older, and Pasquale younger.

The days were drawing in and the end of the summer approaching. The pastures now were not green but lion-coloured, there were no flowers left, every day the buzzards circled lower, and by eight o’clock in the evening it was almost dark.