John Berger - G.

The canon: Chavez, the bold and audacious youth who had the fabulous vision of the Alps conquered and fleeing under his glance; the proud, courageous youth whom we saw soaring through the air above us, crossing our valleys more swiftly than an eagle: Chavez, who made us tremble with enthusiasm in anticipation of the imminent triumph — Chavez is no more.

Among the congregation in the cathedral, G. stood near Monsieur Schuwey and Mathilde Le Diraison. His thoughts drifted towards the Hennequins in Paris. Camille was waiting to become his mistress. He doubted whether Monsieur Hennequin would shoot again; he had failed to prevent his wife from cuckolding him and he had failed to avenge himself: after the first time the number of subsequent times made little difference. Taking note of Camille’s determination in the matter, he would concede his wife’s right to a lover provided he suffered no inconvenience and provided she realized that his tolerance was conditional upon her curbing her more extravagant tastes, and upon her never questioning his own arrangements. Camille, in an access of gratitude, would find it in herself to love both husband and lover — in different ways. She would submit to Monsieur Hennequin’s occasional conjugal demands with the reservation in her own mind that she could only truly belong to her lover. She would lend herself to her husband for her lover’s sake.

A mass of candles had been lit for Chavez. The flames created their own air currents so that when a group of them flickered and leaned in one direction, this disturbed another group, making them blow inwards together as if in panic to confer, and then this agitation provoked other flames to burn a little higher, which caused yet others to flatten themselves and circle, unsteadily, round their wicks as if searching for air.

For her husband’s sake she would demand from her lover discretion, punctuality and a certain financial arrangement. She would no longer read Mallarmé for it might remind her too vividly of her approach to that moment when, for the first and only time, she made herself alone, as he was alone. Perhaps one day she would become enthusiastic about another, more sober poet. Time would pass. Everybody would be accommodated. Through boredom or on a sentimental impulse, Camille would give herself, without her accustomed reserve, to Monsieur Hennequin and afterwards she would feel that it was to her husband that she really belonged. But no sooner would she feel this than she would rush to her lover begging him to re-take her and insisting that she wanted to belong to him and to nobody else. Once convinced that she had become her lover’s, she would await an opportunity — which might take months during which time she would occupy herself with the lives of her children and friends — an opportunity to test her attachment by once more offering herself to her husband. And so she would traffic to and fro, each oscillation marked by apparently inexplicable excitability. At first she would await re-possession by her lover far more impatiently than by Monsieur Hennequin. But gradually, so that she might feel, as she would on peaceful days, that she belonged to them both and to her almost grown-up children more than to either, she would commend to her lover more wit and less passion. Ten years later, if she were fortunate, she might acquire a second lover and the first would be cast, with certain minor variations, in the role of the original husband. If she were less fortunate, she would arrange occasional meetings between Monsieur Hennequin, who by then would have a place on the managing board of Peugeot, and her lover, so that by talk and reminiscence she might belong to them both. In old age she would catch sight of herself in a mirror, unawares, solitary, unowned, but then she would think of death: death before whom you have no choice but to make yourself alone.

The canon: He ascended to heaven and he came down having achieved the most dramatic victory yet on the long road of civilization’s conquest. A pioneer, he has advanced the progress of man. Imagine the future that his glorious achievement has opened to us — nation will no longer be separated from nation, the advantages of civilization will reach the furthest corners of the earth …

Mathilde Le Diraison noticed him standing a few pews away. His arm was in a black sling. She had spoken briefly with Camille before her departure for Paris. Together they had decided that he was a Don Juan, that already in his life there must have been hundreds of women. But it makes no difference, Camille had cried, it makes no difference to know that.

Mathilde Le Diraison asked herself two questions. What was his secret, why had Camille succumbed so quickly? The second question concerned herself. What would it mean if, after loving hundreds of women, he made no attempt to approach her? The two questions were intertwined like the strands of the red silk rope which hung across the end of the pew and which she continually flicked with her fingers so that it kept swinging.

She had a face which might be considered stupid. It was the face of a person, slow to go beyond the immediate, who had no particular wish or talent for abandoning herself to flights of fantasy or of deep emotion. At any moment her face declared: WHAT IS HAPPENING IS HAPPENING TO ME, TO ME, TO ME.

The swinging red silk rope caught G.’s eye. He made his plans quickly. He would go to Paris, visit the Hennequins, make a point of ignoring Camille, reassure the husband and would quickly begin an obvious, public affair with Mathilde Le Diraison. In this way he would avenge himself on Hennequin by making the whole shooting incident appear ridiculous, a question of a doubtful flirtation on the part of his wife which, unfortunately for Hennequin, she was incapable of sustaining; and he would disabuse Camille of her fond illusion that passion can be regulated and that a lover can be something different from a second husband. He would see to it that the affair was as brief as possible and afterwards he would disappear from their circle. He regretted that between Monsieur Schuwey and Mathilde Le Diraison there was scarcely more than a purely contractual relationship. But he supposed that even Schuwey must have some pride invested in the woman he paid to be with him. He would discover where.

… He has fallen, but he has fallen as a hero who has accomplished a great feat, which everyone thought impossible and mad. Honour and glory to him!

As they came out of the Duomo, the mourners screwed up their eyes against the sunlight and bowed their heads. They had the air of having partaken of some secret which they could not share; the more so because, for those who had remained outside, the solemnity of the occasion was lessening. Boys handed more baskets of tuberoses to the girls in white. Some of the girls were laughing. The band struck up another funeral march and the procession slowly moved off towards the station.

A schoolmaster explained that the guide from Formazza who had slapped his own cheek had meant that the spirit of Chavez would live in the mountain air so that, high up, climbers would feel his spirit on their cheeks like you can feel the wind or the heat of the sun.

The train waited silently. It was the second time a train on this line had been specially stopped for Chavez. The pall-bearers who carried the coffin from the hearse to the train were all aviators, among them Paulhan. The station master saluted as they passed. The journalists were already telephoning. The girls in white veils lined the platform. Suddenly the locomotive gave a shrill prolonged whistle.

He thought again of Camille. Not Camille as she would be when he saw her in Paris but Camille as she had been when she challenged him to come to Paris under threat of death, a threat in which he could no longer believe but in which at that moment, before her husband had failed to kill him at point-blank range, he could still believe. She had offered this challenge like an invitation. And in issuing this invitation she had spoken, as no woman had spoken to him before, with the unconfoundable authority, the distance, the astonishing familiarity of a sibyl. Had she been right not only about him but also about her husband, he would have immediately accepted.