John Berger - Once in Europa

She’s never been difficult, has our Odile, he said.

Her intelligence—

I don’t know how you see it, Mademoiselle Vincent, but to my way of seeing, intelligence is not—

She is a pupil of great promise.

Wait a year or two, she’s only thirteen, said Father. In a year or two her promise — do you take sugar?

It’s just because she’s thirteen that we have to decide things now, Monsieur Blanc.

Even in my day, Father said, nobody married before sixteen!

I want to propose to you, Monsieur Blanc, that we send Odile to Cluses.

You said she’s causing no trouble, Mademoiselle. At least that’s what I understood, what sort of trouble?

Mademoiselle Vincent took off her hat and laid it on her lap. Her greying hair, a little damp, was pressed against her scalp.

No trouble, she said slowly, I want her to go to Cluses for her sake.

How for her sake?

If she stays here, Mademoiselle Vincent went on, she’ll leave school next year. If she goes to Cluses she can continue until she gets her CAP. Let her go to Cluses. She was fanning herself with a little notebook taken from her handbag.

She’d have to be a boarder? asked Father.

Yes.

Have you mentioned it to her?

Not before talking to you, Monsieur Blanc.

He shrugged his shoulders, looked at the barometer, said nothing.

Mademoiselle Vincent got to her feet, holding her hat.

I knew you’d see reason, she said, offering him her hand like a present.

I was watching through the stable door.

Nothing to do with reason! shouted Father. In God’s name! Nothing to do with reason. He paused, gave a little laugh, and leered at Mademoiselle Vincent. She was an old man’s last sin — I wonder if you can understand that, Mademoiselle — his last sin.

It will mean a lot of work, she said.

Don’t push her too hard, said Father, it won’t change anything. You’ll see I was right one day. Odile will be married before she’s eighteen. At seventeen she’ll be married.

We can’t know, Monsieur Blanc. I hope she goes on to take her Baccalaureate.

Back of my arse! You see Odile as a schoolteacher?

She might be, said Mademoiselle Vincent.

No, no. She’s too untidy. To be a teacher you have to be very tidy.

I’m not very tidy, said Mademoiselle Vincent, take me, I’m not very tidy.

You have a fine voice, Mademoiselle, when you sing, you make people happy. That makes up for a lot.

You’re a flatterer, Monsieur Blanc.

She’ll never be a teacher, Odile, she’s too … he hesitated. She’s too — too close to the ground.

Funny to think of those words now in the sky.

Twice in my life I’ve been homesick and both times it was in Cluses. The first time was the worst, for then I hadn’t yet lived anything worse than homesickness. It’s to do with life, homesickness, not death. In Cluses the first time I didn’t yet know this difference.

The school was a building of five storeys. I wasn’t used to staircases. I missed the smell of the cows, Papa raking out the fire, Maman emptying her piss-pot, everyone in the family doing something different and everybody knowing where everybody else was, Emile playing with the radio and my screaming at him, I missed the wardrobe with my dresses all mixed up with Maman’s, and the goat tapping with her horns against the door.

Ever since I could remember, everyone had always known who I was. They called me Odile or Blanc’s Daughter or Achille’s Last. If somebody did not know who I was, a single answer to a single question was enough for them to place me. Ah yes! Then you must be Régis’s sister! In Cluses I was a stranger to everyone. My name was Blanc, which began with a B, and so I was near the top of the alphabetical list. I was always among the first ten that had to stand up, or to file out.

In the school there I learnt how to look at words like something written on a blackboard. When a man swears, the words come out of his body like shit. As kids we talked like that all the time — except when we made traps with words. Adam and Eve and Pinchme went down to the river to bathe, Adam and Eve were drowned, who do you think was saved? At Cluses I learnt that words belonged to writing. We used them; yet they were never entirely ours.

One evening after the last lesson I went back into the classroom to fetch a book I’d forgotten. The French mistress was sitting at her table, her head buried in her hands, and she was crying. I didn’t dare approach her. On the blackboard behind her, I remember it so well, was the conjugation of the verb fuir .

If somebody had asked me in 1952: What place makes you think of men most? I wouldn’t have said the factory, I wouldn’t have said the café opposite the church when there was a funeral, I wouldn’t have said the autumn cattle market, I’d have said: the edge of a wood! Take all the edges of all the forests and copses in the valley and put them end to end like a screen, and there’d be a frieze of men! Some with guns, some with dogs, others with chain saws, a few with girls. I heard their voices from the road below. I looked at them, the slimness of the young ones, the way their checkered shirts hung loose, their boots, the way they wore their trousers, the bulges just below where their belts were fastened. I didn’t notice their faces, I didn’t bother to name them. If one of them noticed me, I’d be off. I didn’t want to say a word and I didn’t want to approach them. Watching was quite enough, and watching them, I knew how the world was made.

Take this loaf to Régis, said Mother. When it’s freezing so hard the cold penetrates to your very bones and a man needs his food in such weather.

She handed me the bread. I ran as fast as I could towards the factory; there was ice everywhere and I had to pick my way. All was frozen — railway points, locks, window frames, ruts, the cliff face behind the factory was hung with icicles, only the river still moved. At the entrance I called to the first man I could see, he had bloodshot eyes and spoke with a strong Spanish accent.

Régis! Big man of honour! he shouted and jerked his thumb upwards. I waited there on the threshold for several minutes, stamping my feet to keep them warm. When Régis arrived he was with Michel. They were of the same class: ’51. They had done their military service together.

You know Michel? asked Régis.

I knew Michel. Michel Labourier, nephew of the Marmot.

For God’s sake come in and get warm, hissed Régis between his teeth as I handed him the loaf.

Father—

It’s not the same if you’re with me. Give me your hand. Jesus! you’re cold! We’ve just tapped her.

They led me away from the big furnaces and the massive cranes overhead, which moved on rails in heaven, to another much smaller workshop.

You’re going to school at Cluses? Michel asked me.

I nodded.

Do you like it?

I miss being at home.

At least you’ll learn something there.

It’s another world, I said.

Nonsense! It’s the same bloody world. The difference is the kids who go to Cluses don’t stay poor and dumb.

We’re not dumb, I said.

He looked at me hard. Here, he said, take this to keep your brains warm. He gave me his woolen cap, red and black. I protested and he pulled the cap down on my head, laughing.

He’s a communist, said Régis later.

At that time I didn’t know what the word meant. We sat against a wall on a pile of sand. I let a handful of it run through my frozen fingers. I could feel its warmth through my stockings, touching my calves. Régis rummaged in a tin, took out his knife, and began cutting a sausage. There were some other men at the end of the shop.

So here’s your sister come to see us! shouted one of them.