John Berger - G.

At 4pm along the entire attack frontage new lines of men were staggering across no-man’s-land, following the pipes of their band. The sound of the mad pipes was a continuation, far beyond music or reason, of the shrill parrot-cry of the officers’ whistles. As they were falling, they appeared to fall in heaps rather than lines. This was because, in their last minutes, they were trying to crawl towards each other. The effect was of a crop, cut down, forming itself into stooks.

Marika’s infidelities did not disturb Wolfgang von Hartmann because the sexual act (the act which constituted infidelity) was, like the experience of death, so absurdly short-lived. There was of course the obvious difference that death is only experienced once. But if his wife’s amorous adventures were considered in gross, it was he, not she, who consented or refused. Her lovers entreated her: she entreated him. Wolfgang viewed Marika’s gambling in the same way as he viewed her love affairs. She thought her gambling was wild: he ensured that it never exceeded economic prudence. Every time she drew from her account, he was informed. (This was the least of his privileges as a director of the Kreditanstalt Bank.) In both fields, the amorous and the financial, his control was based on the same principle. His wife must receive continual increments, but the rate of increase, the initial payment and the likely terminal payment were calculated to guarantee that, while always encouraging her to expect more and more, her demands remained easily within his resources, these resources thus appearing to be almost inexhaustible.

Since dawn in the battle of Auvers Ridge, more than eleven thousand men and nearly five hundred officers had lost their lives. Very few were killed instantly and outright. The majority died in an agony which, however great its terror and annihilating pain, offered a relief from the burden of hopelessness induced by the orders they had obediently carried out until the moment they fell.

In the drawing-room after dinner Wolfgang von Hartmann received G. as he received all visitors, politely. It was a large room with a white tiled stove in the form of a Greek temple at one end. On the walls were paintings and heavy mirrors. Before the mirrors were candelabra. Each candle burned in a glass, the size of a leeching glass but with a toothed rim. These glasses which reflected the light of the flames around them and glittered like fish-scales, prevented the flames from flickering as they had flickered in the cathedral at Domodossola. Although the large room was dark in places, the mirror and glasses gave the impression of thousands of candles having been lit.

Marika made her entry five minutes after G.’s arrival. She walked like an animal. I find it hard to describe her walk because the resemblance was not to one animal but several. She resembled a composite animal like a unicorn, but at the same time there was nothing mythical about her. She was no apparition among flowers on a tapestry. Her legs were large-boned and very long. Sometimes I have the impression that they began at her shoulders and that, like the four legs of a horse, they were triple-jointed. As she walked she held her head very still; her neck was thick and muscular; she held her head like a stag; above her red-deer hair you might see invisible antlers. And yet she moved unsteadily, she swayed from side to side, her foothold never appeared quite sure enough for her height and bulk — and in this she resembled a camel.

It is a great compliment, she said, that you come to see us on the very day after our return.

I understand your journey back was very long and tiring.

There is nothing here. Nothing in this godforsaken city. There is you, but how often will we see you?

I have delayed my departure.

We do not see you nearly enough.

If you delay it too long, we may have to intern you, said von Hartmann without smiling but without any overt menace. Let us hope it will not happen.

The casualness of the threat reminded G. of Dr Donato saying: The only question is whether or not we share the same dream.

You say intern like a word you have used all your life, said Marika.

Internieren , we say in German. Like Internat , you should know what that means. He looked at G. You, who went to England for your education. Internat means boarding school. So if we had to intern you, you would not find life so unfamiliar.

You will not guess what they called me at my Internat . I was called Garibaldi.

It is strange how the English made a legend of that man. Somebody told me that when Garibaldi visited London he drew larger crowds than their queen. Is it because, at heart, the English love the idea of the pioneer, sleeping alone under the stars beside his fire, is it because they hate the order of their own terrible cities? They are the opposite of us. Everything that is of value in the empire of the Hapsburgs comes from the order and reason established in our cities — and look at our cities! Vienna, Prague, Budapest! What can we offer you to drink?

I would visit you every day in prison! vowed Marika. She was still standing, swaying a little on her legs, and when she said this she made a movement as though opening a cell door and entering. She was not consciously acting. Theatre bored her. If she ‘pretended’ to be visiting G. in prison, it was because she made very little distinction between the idea of an action and the action itself; the words which expressed the idea tended to translate themselves straight away into messages to her limbs.

Our cities are like islands in an ocean of barbarism.

I will help you escape, said Marika, the simplest way will be for you to walk out in my clothes.

That would be unwise, said von Hartmann, even I would find it difficult to save you from the consequences of that.

He would strip me by force, of course!

You could always call a guard for help.

You forget who my father was!

You mean your birth makes you incapable of treason.

Yes, that is what I do mean! And I mean that I admire Garibaldi! And I mean that he was a superb horseman! And I am a patriot!

She was not angry. Each sentence made her smile more. At the end she laughed, stroked her husband’s arm and sat down.

I fear, said von Hartmann to G., that your countrymen may be stupid enough to declare war on us.

I am not a political man.

If you were, you would not tell my husband, murmured Marika.

I have come nevertheless to plead a case and, with your permission, I would like to plead it before you both.

G. had no doubt that his host would categorically reject his advocacy and that his wife would embrace it. The case of Marco would supply, for a short while, a subject by means of which the woman he desired could openly establish her common interest with him and the necessity of intrigue against her husband could become apparent.

The Austrian banker wanted to give the impression of listening patiently and attentively. He lay back in his chair, occasionally lowering his eyes and turning his head. His eyes were small and very quick, incapable of real attention towards anything except the swift thoughts in the brain behind them.

G. was pleading a case in which he did not believe, but von Hartmann was a man to whom no appeal, however desperate or deeply felt it might be, was possible. By the same token he was immune to most threats. Appeals and threats, when once they have been made, work their way into the consciousness of the person to whom they have been addressed, by a process not unlike that by which a rumour spreads among a crowd. The appeal or the threat is whispered and passed on, but each time it is repeated the whisperer gives it his own stress. In the end one rumour may give birth to several rumours but they will all share the same kind of alarm or hope. Yet who is the crowd? Who goes on circulating and whispering the appeals and threats in the mind until the decision has been taken? The crowd is an assembly of all the other possible selves, commenting on the self in power, whom they believe to be a usurper. They were born from visions in the past; they have failed to establish their own power, but they have not been dispersed, they still inhabit the personality.