John Berger - G.

During the next few hours most of the guests wanted to forget what the next days or months might bring. Yet what they had to say to each other inevitably and disagreeably reminded them of the following day in their provincial war-threatened city. Their release depended upon the music The music sounded both familiar and timeless to them. As soon as it started up after each pause, they were reassured and, once reassured, they had the impression of dancing in the same world as they had danced in since their first ball.

Yet to a solitary listener on one of the deserted jetties who had nothing but his ears and memory to go by, the distant music might have sounded different. It was neither timeless nor entirely familiar.

The orchestra, in blue and red uniforms, belonged to an Austrian regiment which had served on the Eastern front and recently been transferred to Trieste in anticipation of war with Italy. The players no longer believed, as they had before, in the time of the waltzes. They were playing them — not to fill the present moment — but to remind themselves bitterly of the past. All Viennese dance music was nostalgic. But this was no nostalgia for a vague past which could always be conjured up and induced to return. This was bitter simple regret for seven brief irrevocable months during which they had seen too much that they would like to forget. Without realizing it, without thinking of it, they played in order to exaggerate, like parodists.

G. entered with Nuša as a dance ended. They stood side by side, surveying the couples who were leaving the floor. She was the same height as he. And she was like no other woman there. This was instantly apparent to all who set eyes on her.

Taking Nuša’s arm, G. led her towards von Hartmann and his wife. A silence fell upon that part of the room and several guests ostentatiously turned their backs as the couple passed. He presented Herr von Hartmann and Frau von Hartmann to Nuša, which was the contrary of all that etiquette demanded. Then, in a stentorian voice, he thanked the Austrian banker for inviting them to the ball and, as the music started up again, swept his partner away. Von Hartmann stared at them dancing, his face fixed in an absolutely expressionless mask. His voice when he spoke was calm and flat. The only thing which indicated his rage was his choice of epithet; he wanted to find an expression which came from the same depths as the woman whom G. had had the effrontery to bring to their ball. To come with a plate-licker! he said. His wife smiled. She knew who G. was, and his insolence filled her with enthusiasm.

Nuša’s dress was like an iris, tight before it fully opens, when its colour is still folded in upon itself, but an iris upside down, with the tips of its petals on the floor. It was not, however, her dress which differentiated her from the other women there. Her dress merely compelled those who were staring to compare her with themselves. If she had come in her everyday clothes, they would have considered any such comparison ludicrous. Within minutes of their arrival everybody was recounting or discussing the scandal.

An Italian has brought a Slovene to the ball. A Slav girl from the villages, dressed outrageously in pearls and muslin and Indian silk. When she dances the waltz, she dances like a drunken bear, clutching her partner close to her and thumping with her feet.

A young officer in a blue uniform gravely informed a white-haired gentleman that he was willing to challenge the interloper who had had the temerity to insult His Imperial Majesty’s Red Cross. The white-haired Viennese was a general who had fought at Solferino. If he spoke German, my boy, you would be justified. But they tell me he has nothing but Italian. And in that case I must forbid you.

A waltz is a circle in which ribbons of sentiment rise and fall. The music unties the bows — and ties them again.

In most circumstances the high society of Trieste would have been far too adept at inflicting snubs for anybody in Nuša’s present position to remain self-possessed. Her heart was beating faster than usual and her fingers felt constricted in their gloves. But this was caused by excitement and her anticipation of the success of her plan rather than by confusion or embarrassment. At the ball she enjoyed several unusual advantages. She and G. could pass among the guests without ever becoming engaged in their conversation. They swooped from group to group like birds among heads of cattle. There was the music. It was stronger than the people; they danced to it. And the music was not strange to her. True, she could not dance the mazurka, but she could dance the waltz and the polka, and when she danced with G., she felt secure. She would not trust him until he had paid her. But in the improbable and exposed position she was in, she found familiar things to reassure her. Like the music, he was one of them. The question of why he had brought her there did not occupy her greatly because she knew why she herself was there. She was there to get a passport. She had watched G. warily for ten days and she was confident that, whatever his motives, he would not leave her unprotected. There were also the robes, the jewelry, the flowers, the ribbons. The people were dressed to look their best and this, she felt, limited what they could do. What she was wearing was also a protection. The hostile glances flung at her changed their expression slightly when they took in her turban or her train; for a moment their hostility was checked in its stride. Before it had recovered itself, she could turn her back.

Once they were the first to take the floor. As G. had expected, no other couple was willing to join them. They danced alone. But to a certain young lady the idea of forgoing a dance on which she had placed precise hopes was too much. Why should she stand there whilst her partner goggled at that idiot of a Slav? She raised her hand and placed it decisively on the shoulder of the man she hoped to marry. Obediently, he took her by the waist. Other couples followed.

A waltz is a circle in which ribbons of sentiment rise and fall. The music unties the bows and ties them again.

Very little that happened in the ballroom escaped G.’s notice. The revulsion he had first felt in face of von Hartmann had by now extended to every guest, man and woman, at the ball. He wanted to express this revulsion by insulting and defying them. But he knew them well enough to know that to insult or threaten them openly, to shout or shoot at them, would only have amused and confirmed them. They were all addicts of the theatre. His defiance had to be persistent, devious, and cumulative. Having determined to take this course ten days ago, and having now set out, he was entirely preoccupied, like an aviator in mid-flight, with his immediate situation. He could no longer recall his own motives or think beyond the outcome of the night. Each moment was a moment of tension and triumph. When he spoke to Nuša, he spoke gently and formally — as to his own defiance.

Von Hartmann left the ballroom. It was too late, he reflected, to order his wife to refuse G., for she would disobey him as soon as he left; worse still, she was too primitive, too unintelligent to discern the calculated insult in G.’s behaviour. The insult, which was a public one, amounted to declaring: after a plate-licker, your wife.

A mazurka is simultaneously a race and the music which celebrates the winning couple. For so long as the music continues each couple is the winning one.

Marika, dancing with a young officer, imagines how she will dance with G. as soon as her husband has left; when they wag their heads at the banker’s wife dancing with the Italian who came with the Slav, she will show the petty administrators and Jews and insurance clerks of this godforsaken city what disdain is!

Wolfgang has taken the Chief of Police to a window on the grand staircase and is retelling the story about Marco. He should be taken in for questioning immediately, he adds, referring to G.