John Berger - G.

On a low table near which they sat was a large glass statue of a swan, rose-coloured, and mounted on a silver turntable which revolved. It was neither art nor toy, but an ornament denoting wealth. Madame Hennequin, looking directly at him, put her hand on the swan’s neck and murmured the famous line of Mallarmé:

Un cygne d’autrefois se souvient que c’est lui

Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre …

The harsh rose-coloured glass made the skin of her thin hand seem milkily translucent.

No more? asked Monsieur Hennequin encouragingly. He was aware that the American aviator’s friend had roused his wife’s interest and he hated Mallarmé, but he wanted to demonstrate his tolerance in such matters.

It goes on like this, said Madame Hennequin, but don’t try to understand it, just listen to the sound of what I’m saying.

She recited the whole four-line stanza and the following one, allowing her voice to transform the nostalgia of the poem into a kind of longing. The poem is about opportunities missed, but, by the very act of saying it out loud, she seized an opportunity. By reciting some lines from it she took the opportunity of letting the sound of the words express all that she felt to be independent to herself, all that was outside the reckoning but not the protection of her husband. She was like a tree, she considered, that grew in the soil of her husband’s garden but the leaves of which moved independently in the wind.

Whilst she spoke Monsieur Hennequin leaned back in his chair and smiled at the ceiling, painted with garlands. It was her spirituality, he congratulated himself, which made her such a good mother, although it also explained her reticence, her excessive modesty towards him. His heavy thighs and stomach pressed against his clothes and creased them. She lacked heat, he concluded, but on the other hand she would always be innocent.

G. refrained from glancing at her.

You have a poet’s voice, said the host, and then repeated the last two words in Italian to make them sound more appropriately poetic.

The Contessa quickly started her own conversation with those around her.

G. leant forward and pushed the glass swan quite forcefully so that its silver turntable began to revolve. It ceased to look like a swan and resembled a tall-necked, many-sided carafe of rosé wine.

The swan is drunk, said a young man.

G. turned towards Monsieur Hennequin and said: There is something I have often noticed which I do not fully understand and which I believe, Monsieur, you may be able to inform me about.

I will do my best.

Perhaps you do not often have the opportunity of visiting fairs?

You mean trade fairs?

Fairs in the street where there are shooting stalls and moving pictures and performing fleas and roundabouts and switchbacks …

I have seen them from a distance, yes.

I am an habitué of such fairs. They fascinate me.

Why do they fascinate you? interrupted Madame Hennequin.

They are full of games for adults and there are very few places where you can watch adults playing.

Simple-minded adults, said Monsieur Hennequin, those who patronize these fairs are of very low calibre.

You are entirely right, Monsieur Hennequin. You must surely have visited one once to understand them so well? Now, to come to my question. Do you think that flying round repeatedly in a circle, as happens on a certain kind of roundabout, do you think this might have a temporary effect — for purely physiological reasons — on the brain?

It can induce a sense of giddiness …

I mean more. Could character be temporarily changed by it?

Please explain, said Monsieur Hennequin, what you have in mind.

At these fairs there is a special kind of roundabout, a combination of a roundabout and a series of swings. The seats are suspended on chains and when they turn—

A centrifugal force comes into play, said Monsieur Hennequin, and they are thrown outwards. I have seen the kind of which you are speaking. We call them les petites chaises .

Good. Now you can control — up to a point — how you swing outwards and in what direction. It’s all a question of how far you lean back, how high you push your feet up, how you swing with your shoulders and how you pull with your arms on the chains either side. It’s not very different from what every girl learns on an ordinary swing.

I know, said Madame Hennequin.

The game which most of the riders play as soon as the roundabout starts to turn, is to try to swing themselves near enough to whoever is behind or in front of them so as to join hands with them and then to swing together, as a pair, holding on to each other’s chains. It’s quite difficult to do this, often only their fingertips touch — The seats are spaced in such a way, interrupted Monsieur Hennequin, to ensure that they never come into contact. Otherwise it could be dangerous.

Exactly. But everyone who rides on this kind of roundabout is transformed. As soon as it begins to turn and they begin to gain height as they swing out, their faces and expressions are changed. They leave the earth behind them, they throw back their heads and their feet go up towards the sky. I doubt whether they even hear the music which is playing. Each tries to take hold of the arm trailing in front of him, they cry out in delight as they gather speed, and the faster they go, the freer they play, as they rise and fall, separate and converge. The pairs who succeed in holding on to one another fly straighter and higher than the rest. I have watched this many times and nobody escapes the transformation. The shy become bold. The awkward become graceful. Then when it stops most of them revert to their old selves. As soon as their feet touch the ground, their expressions again become suspicious or closed or resigned. And when they walk away from the roundabout, it is almost impossible to believe that they are the same beings, men and women, who a moment ago were so free and abandoned in the air.

Madame Hennequin set the swan turning as he had done earlier.

Now what I want to ask you, Monsieur Hennequin, is whether you think this transformation might arise from the effect on the nervous system of gravity being modified by a centrifugal force? Is that possible?

It is more likely the result of the very low mental capacity of the class of people who go to such places. For the most part they are little better than children.

You don’t think it would have the same effect on us?

I doubt it very much.

Hasn’t it always been man’s dream to fly? Is that so childish? asked Madame Hennequin.

I fear, my dear, your imagination takes too much for granted, said Monsieur Hennequin. A fairground stunt like this has got nothing to do with flying. You should ask Monsieur Weymann.

The conversation changed. Somebody remarked on the painting of Giolitti. The host laughed and said the painter must have been a political opponent. Do you know what Giolitti’s enemies call him? They call him a Bologna sausage, because, they say, he is half ass and half pig!

I understood you admired him, said the Belgian.

In Bologna pig may be a pet name, said Mathilde Le Diraison.

Yes, I do admire him, said the host. He is the creator of modern Italy. He has often been here, in this room, and it was he himself who said that about his own portrait, and he added that the painter was from Bologna! And this is exactly how he is a great man. He knows how unimportant personal opinions are. What matters is organization. Organization and persuasion.

The conversation turned to politics and then to Germany and the news of the continuing riots in Berlin. Monsieur Hennequin feared that a revolution breaking out in one country in Europe might quickly spread to the others. Monsieur Hennequin was always oscillating between supreme confidence and sudden fear.