John Berger - G.

She awaits him as he expected. And yet he is surprised. This combination of surprise and of expectations being precisely fulfilled is unique to moments of sexual passion and is another factor which places them outside the normal course of time. At some moment prior to birth we may, at a level as yet unknown to us, have perceived the whole of our life like that. Before he touches her he knows what touching her will reveal to him. When he touches her he will fully appreciate how alone she has become. Undressing was the act of shedding the interests of those who make up the interests of her life. With her clothes she discarded the men he hates. Her unclothed body is the proof of her solitariness. And it is her solitariness — her solitariness alone — that he recognizes and desires. He has led her from her conjugal bedroom, from the overfurnished apartment, from the street in which the curtained windows are so still that they might be carved out of stone, from the overread pages of Mallarmé, from the clothes which she orders from her costumier and her husband pays for, from the mirrors which are falsely impartial to husband and wife, further and further away from where she belongs until she is herself alone. From that solitude of hers and from his they can now set out. Andiamo .

As he stares at her with eyes more intensely fixed than any she has ever imagined, she sees herself as a dryad, alert in a way that is more animal than human, quick, sensitive, fleet-footed, soft-tongued, shameless. She sees him and the dryad together as a couple, and the sight of them fills her with tenderness. The dryad undoes his shirt. She anticipates the dryad offering herself on all fours, face to the ground, and he mounting her like a goat. She crawls on all fours until she is facing his head and then kisses his eyes from above.

Camomille.

The feeling of tenderness wells over and makes it impossible for Camille to imagine anything viewed from a distance; the idea of the dryad is momentarily obliterated. Gradually such moments become longer and longer until the dryad disappears into the smell of the crushed grass and the surrounding silence, never to return, and Camille becomes entirely concentrated in the act of following with her tongue the underseam of the penis of the man over whose thigh her head is hanging.

He is there under her, above her, beside her. He has no claims on her; he has made none. He is there like the trellis with the vine overgrowing it. He is there like a wall against which she could repeatedly bang her head. He is there, outside herself, like everything else in the world which has not claimed a second residence in her consciousness. She has not said to herself that she loves him. He has convinced her of only one thing. Unlike any other man she has ever encountered, he has convinced her that his desire for her — her alone — is absolute, that it is her existence which has created this desire. Formerly she has been aware of men wanting to choose her to satisfy desires already rooted in them, her and not another, because among the women available she has approximated the closest to what they need. Whereas he appears to have no needs. He has convinced her that the penis twitching in the air above her face is the size and colour and warmth that it is entirely because of what he has recognized in her. When he enters her, when this throbbing, cyclamen-headed, silken, apoplectic fifth limb of his reaches as near to her centre as her pelvis will allow, he, in it, will be returning, she believes, to the origin of his desire. The taste of his foreskin and of a single tear of transparent first sperm which has broken over the cyclamen head making its surface even softer to the touch than before, is the taste of herself made flesh in another.

This can never stop, she whispers, slowly and calmly. My love, my love.

They were fucking in the grass. Both half believed that they were no longer lying down but standing up and walking as they fucked; towards the end they began to run through tall wet grass. He had the further illusion that others were running towards him.

All are there. How can I ever open those words to let their original and still potential meaning out? All are there in their own time and at the same time. It is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether the sweet throat is mine or yours. And here, now, here let the word supreme attain its supremacy. It is of no consequence whose is whose. All parts are one. All are there together. All despite all their differences are there together. He joins them. There is no more need. There, desire is its satisfaction, or, perhaps, neither desire nor satisfaction can be said to exist since there is no antinomy between them: every experience becomes the experience of freedom there: freedom there precludes all that is not itself.

He and Camille lay alone, dishevelled, side by side on the slope by the vine. A peasant passing by on the far bank of the stream spotted them although they were lying quite still. He saw a white arm like a statue’s and a stockinged foot. The peasant was curious and crouched down to observe what would happen next.

Whom were we walking?

I was a knee which wanted the thigh on the other leg.

The sounds of my most tender words were in your arse.

Your heels were my thumbs.

My buttocks were your palms.

I was hiding in one corner of your mouth. You looked for me there with your tongue. There was nothing to be found.

With your throat swollen, my feet in the pit of my stomach, your legs hollow, my head tugging at your body, I was your penis.

You were the light which falling on the dark petals of your vagina became rose.

The blood-vessel was lifted up in the lock of your flowers.

Normally a shooting incident in Domodossola would only have been reported in the local Italian press, but since the town was full of journalists from all over Europe, who were awaiting the death or recovery of Chavez, the story was printed in many different papers. According to their time-honoured tradition when dealing with incidents affecting respectable members of the bourgeoisie, the Swiss newspapers tactfully withheld the full names of those involved.

‘The small town of Domodossola was yesterday the scene of a dramatic crime passionnel . Monsieur H—, a French businessman with interests in the motor car industry, found himself in the town in connection with the recent triumphal crossing of the Alps by the aviator Geo Chavez. At 3.30pm in the crowded Piazza Mercato, Monsieur H — fired three times with an automatic pistol at Monsieur G, a young Englishman who is likewise said to be a flying enthusiast. The latter had just come out of a fruit shop and was walking in one of the picturesque arcades which border the square. The life of the victim, who was wounded in the shoulder, is not in danger. He was taken immediately to the hospital where the aviator hero is also being treated.

‘After the incident Monsieur H — offered no resistance to the police and declared that his only mistake had been to fire from too far away. He claimed that he had already warned the Englishman that he would shoot him if he did not desist from embarrassing and pursuing his wife, Madame H—. “It is an affair,” he said, “of elementary honour and I am certain that when the facts have been established, I will be assured of the sympathy of all decent society.” The Englishman, although he evidently speaks fluent Italian, declined to answer questions.’