John Berger - Once in Europa

She overheated a bit on the last stretch, he said. You probably smelt the burnt oil?

Motor oil, I said, I don’t know what it smells like.

On the red 3 5 °CC two-stroke twin motorbike made in Czechoslovakia we came down into Italy, on the other side of the mountain. The cows looked poorer, the goats thinner, there was less wood and more rocks, yet the air was like a kiss. In such air women didn’t have to be like we were on our side of the mountain. Where we have wild raspberries in ruined pine forests, I told myself, they have grapes on vines which grow between apple trees! For the first time in my life I was envious.

Did you notice the Saumua coming down to Aosta? he asked.

No.

It’s the biggest truck since the war. Takes a load of thirty tons.

We arrived back before it was dark. I was in time to shut up the chickens and take the milk on my back to the dairy. My behind was sore, my hands were grimy, my hair was tangled. It took me hours to untangle it before I went to sleep. But I was proud of myself. I’d been to Italy.

We’ll do another trip, Michel proposed.

School begins next week.

You’re a funny one, Odile, there’s no school on Sunday.

No, I said, thanks for this time.

You’re a good passenger, I’ll say that for you.

Are there bad ones?

Plenty. They don’t trust the driver astride the machine. You can’t ride a bike if you don’t let go. I’m willing to bet you weren’t frightened for a moment, Odile. You had confidence, didn’t you? You weren’t frightened for a moment, were you?

Maybe yes and maybe no. His sureness made me want to tease him.

A weekend, two months later, I was coming home from Cluses and the bus driver said:

Have you heard what happened to Michel?

Michel who?

Michel Labourier. You didn’t hear about his accident?

On his motorbike?

No, in the factory.

What happened?

Lost both his legs.

Where is he?

Lyons. It’s the best hospital in the country for burns. A military hospital. They used to fight wars with lead, now they fight them with flames. Both legs gone.

I stared through the bus window and I saw nothing, not even the factory when we passed it. The next day I went to see his mother.

Perhaps it would have been better, she said, if it had killed him outright.

No, I said, no, Madame Labourier.

He’s not allowed visitors, she said, he’s in a glass cage.

I’m sure you’ll be able to visit him soon.

It’s too far. Too far for anyone to go.

Is he still in danger?

For his life, no.

Don’t cry, Madame Labourier, don’t cry.

I cried when I thought about it every evening for a week in Cluses. For a man to lose both legs. I thought too about what the boys call their third leg. When you’re young and both your legs are supple your third leg goes stiff … when you’re old and your legs are stiff, your third leg goes limp. And this silly joke made me cry more.

New Year’s Eve, 1953, I spent at home. Father’s chair was empty. After supper Régis and Emile got up to go to the dance in the village. Come on, Odile, said Emile. I’ll stay with Mother. You like dancing! insisted Emile. There’s no boy in the village good enough for our Odile now, said Régis. They left. Mother sewed and went to bed early. I heard the bells pealing at midnight on the radio and the crowds cheering. I wasn’t sleepy and so I let myself out and walked once round the orchard. The grass was as hard as iron. The bise had been blowing for several days and the sky was clear. Looking up at the stars, I thought of Father. Nobody can look up at the stars when they are so hard and bright and not think that they don’t have something to say. Then I thought of Michel without his legs and the Red Star he wore on his leather jacket. In their silence I missed his jokes and his cough. I went to check that the chicken house was well shut. When it was minus fifteen for a week on end, the foxes would cross the factory yard looking for food. A month earlier the night shift had killed a wild boar behind the turbine house. Suddenly the wind changed and to my amazement I heard dance music. A tune from a band wafting towards me. It seemed to come in waves, just as the stars seemed to twinkle. Distance and cold can do strange things. I made up my mind. I returned to the house, put my hair in a scarf, and found an old army coat. I would go and see what was happening at the Ram’s Run.

Every New Year’s Eve the Company imported a band to the factory and the men who were lodged in the Barracks had their own dance. The villagers didn’t participate, the Company didn’t encourage them to, and it was for this reason that it was called the Ram’s Run. I crossed the railway line. The music was louder. The furnaces were throbbing as usual. The smoke from the chimney stacks was white in the starlight. Otherwise everything was still and frozen. Not a soul to be seen outside. The ground-floor rooms adjoining the office block were lit up. There were no curtains and the windows were misted over.

I crept up to one and scraped like a mouse with my fingernail. I couldn’t believe my eyes, there was a man who was dancing sitting down on the floor! He had his hands on his hips and he threw out his feet in front of him and his feet came back as fast as they went out, like balls bouncing off a wall. I was so amazed I didn’t notice the approach of the stranger who was now at my side looking down at me.

Good evening, he said. Why don’t you come into the warm?

I shook my head.

You must be hot-blooded, not to mind the cold on a night like this!

It’s only minus fifteen, I said.

Those were the first words I spoke to him. After them there was a silence. The two of us stood there by the light of the window, our breaths steamy and entwining like puffs from the nostrils of the same horse.

What’s your name?

Odile.

Your name in full?

Mademoiselle Odile Blanc.

He stood to attention like a soldier and bowed his head. He must have been two metres tall. His hair was cropped short and he had enormous thumbs, his hands pressed against his thighs, his thumbs were as big as sparrows.

My name is Stepan Pirogov.

Where were you born?

Far away.

In a valley?

Somewhere which is flat, flat, flat.

No rivers?

There’s a river there called the Pripiat.

Ours is called the Giffre.

Blanc? Blanc means white like milk?

Not always — not when you order vin blanc!

White like snow, no?

Not the white of an egg! I shouted.

Give me one more joke, he said and opened the door.

I was standing in the vestibule of the Ram’s ballroom. After the glacial air outside, it felt very warm. There was the noise of men talking — like the sound of the fermentation of fruit in a barrel. There was a strong smell of sour wine, scent, and the red dust that in the end powders every ledge and every flat surface facing upwards in the factory. Along one wall of the vestibule — which was really an anteroom to the offices, where the clerical staff took off their coats and put on their aprons — there was a long table where women whom I’d never seen before were serving drinks to a group of men who had obviously been drinking for a longer time than was good for them. My brother said that the women for the Ram’s Run were hired by the company and brought from far away, somewhere near Lyons, in a bus.

I wanted to get out into the air and I wanted him not to forget me immediately. So I told him a story about my grandmother. It wasn’t strictly my grandmother. It was the woman my grandfather lived with after his wife was dead. When he died, Céline — she was called — Céline continued to live in Grandfather’s house alone. She was old by then. You can’t explain all that to a stranger whom you’ve just met a few minutes before and who has taken you into a bar full of men with the windows steamed up and the floorboards muddy and wet with melted ice. So I told him it was my grandmother.