John Berger - G.

Yesterday she had been on the point of giving up hope of ever finding him again. But she consoled herself with the thought: perhaps he comes every day except Sundays. Yet, she argued, this couldn’t be true because it was on a Sunday, last Sunday, that she had first met him here. On the other hand, she had never seen him here before on other Sundays when she came with her brother. When he said: I come here every midday, either he was lying or else he meant every day except Sundays. If he wasn’t lying, the Sunday she met him was an exception to the exception. She did not reason in these paradoxical phrases but her reasoning led her to a startling, unexpected plan. Tomorrow, Monday, she would not go to the factory, she would go sick, and then she would be able to come and see whether he came to Hölderlin’s garden on weekdays. She foresaw she would have to buy a ticket to go in and she thought she might risk losing her job. But all last week she was listening to people talking about war with Italy and she saw that her brother must either go soon or not at all.

She walked towards G. He had his back to her. Had he been watching her, she might have been intimidated. This way she approached him as though he were a load on the ground that she must somehow move.

He is surprised to see a woman advancing towards him with such determination. He supposes that she is the custodian’s wife coming to tell him it is forbidden to sit under the trees. When she comes closer he recognizes her and stands up.

The Slovene, he greets her, who told me her secrets!

So you do come here at midday.

I often come here, yes.

But not on Sundays.

I didn’t come yesterday, did you?

I came to look for you.

If I remember correctly, your brother interrupted us the last time. Or a gentleman who said he was your brother.

I have something to ask you.

The clumsy way in which she says this — she says it with such bluntness that it is like a command — inspires G. with the idea he needs. Ask me.

You said you were an Italian from Italy.

G. nods, offering her the seat on the stone.

I will sit in the grass, she says. If you come from a foreign country, you have come with a passport. Can you give it to me? She speaks the last sentence very lightly despite the fact that for a week she has feared that she would never have the opportunity to say it.

You have never seen a passport? They are nothing much to look at. They always have a photograph inside.

With an amused smile he takes his false Italian passport from his pocket and hands it to her. She fingers the pages, stops at the photograph. His face looks almost as white as his collar and he is wearing a black suit and a tie. She is reminded of the photograph of Cabrinovič taken on the morning of the archduke’s assassination. The face is different but the small rectangle of grey and black and white paper is very similar and like the pictures in the cemetery, except that being out in all weathers they are more faded.

I don’t want to look at it, I want to have it.

If you keep it, we will have to stay together here for the rest of our lives. Without a passport I cannot leave.

I need it very quickly.

A butterfly alights in the grass near her hand. Its flight, its stillness, wings upright and congruent, and then again its tremulous movement belong to a time scale so remote from Nuša’s and G.’s that if it was applied to them, they would seem like two statues.

What for?

I cannot tell you.

Why ask me?

You are the only Italian I know to speak to.

Trieste is full of Italians.

Not Italians with passports.

I will give it to you on one condition. Let me take you to a ball at the Stadttheater.

Bojan was right, she mutters in Slovene, and she glowers sullenly at the trunk of the nearest fruit tree. It is like a return to her village in the years of poverty. She stares at the implacability of the world. Bojan said that he would want to make her a prostitute, and that was what the Italian meant by a ball at the Stadttheater.

I ask you for your passport, she repeats stubbornly, still staring at the tree trunk, what do you ask?

At the end of the ball when they play the last waltz, you shall have my passport. There is nothing to fear. I am asking nothing else. I give you my word.

You mean a ball at the Stadttheater?

What else should I mean?

I wouldn’t be allowed in.

We will buy everything you need. Your dress, a wrap, a bag, slippers, gloves, pearls, everything. You will be my guest.

You do not know what you are asking. She looks puzzled but no longer sullen. I would be thrown out. They will say you have brought a woman-of-the-street to their ball.

Perhaps neither of us know what we are asking, says G., but I will do what you ask if you will do the same.

When is the ball?

On Thursday next week.

It will be too late. Give me the passport now.

One butterfly follows another making loops in the air near her wide feet in their laced boots. The air smells of fresh still green grass. In the depth of the green are purple and white flowers. The fact that she believed he wanted to make her a prostitute and that she was mistaken in this, now emboldens her. She places a hand on his arm and looks up at him with encouraging eyes. Give it to me now, she says.

If I gave it to you now, you would not come to the ball. You are not a fool.

I cannot come anyway. I have to work.

And today?

I told you, I came to ask you.

I will pay your wages.

Give me the passport now and take somebody else. Why does it have to be me? You will find lots of fine women there.

From what I hear I don’t believe there will be any war with Italy before Thursday next week.

I cannot dance your dances.

To hell with their dances!

Then why do you want me to go?

He knows that if he flatters her she will again become suspicious. On the steps of the Stadttheater, he says, on Friday morning you can give me your carnet de bal and I will give you this. He taps his pocket.

All right, she answers softly but gruffly, I will come.

The deserted garden with its unpruned trees, its walls overgrown with creeper, its stone fragments invisible in the long grass, its dragonflies and cats, has never seemed madder to her than now. She is about to leave it, but what she has just said in it will affect everything else in her life outside it.

G. lightly kisses the back of her hand. Meet me here tomorrow at eleven in the morning and by then I will have found a dressmaker.

She wonders if he is a ghost: it would be no more improbable than what she has agreed to do. The most real thing she can think of is the possibility during the next few days of being able to steal the passport.

Do you know what we call this place? she asks.

I like it, he says, il giardino del Museo Lapidario .

I, having written this, cannot forget the garden.

Wolfgang informed his wife that, out of sheer curiosity, he had made enquiries about the young man Marco who was in prison. The whole story, he told her, as recounted by G., was a fabrication. The young man carried forged papers. There was no dying father in Venice. ‘Marco’ was trying to reach Italy in order to speak as a representative from Trieste at the rallies being organized everywhere by the Italian war party. There was already a file on his activities at the Ministry in Vienna. He belonged to the extremist wing of the Irredentists and had the reputation of being an effective orator. Marika asked her husband whether he thought it likely that G. had known the truth. Wolfgang expressed no opinion but made it clear that he was still quite willing to stand by his agreement. The mystery doubled Marika’s impatience. First she would yield to the man who was Don Juan and afterwards she would discover what he wanted her to do.