John Berger - Lilac and Flag

As Sucus was putting his key into the door, Wislawa opened it. Behind her was their kitchen, its walls covered in scarves.

He’s left us both, Mother. Father died.

She stared at him and time stopped for them both as they stood in the doorway. They did not want anything to continue, for each of them knew that the pain would only begin when they came back. So they let the echo of the words go on and on, till finally it disappeared into timelessness.

Then Sucus shut the door and Wislawa fell to her knees. Her jaw was thrust out in determination. It was as though the cruelty of the event had entered her and settled on her face. She bit down on her chin with her teeth. Still kneeling, she slumped forward so as to be able to crawl on all fours. Like this she went into the bedroom. Once, before the fire, there had been a wall-to-wall carpet on the floor, now it was bare cement. With her hand she plucked at the cement as if picking one flower after another from grass.

Oh, Branch, she whispered, how can we manage with what they’ve done to you, darling? Tell me! Tell me!

TODAY I WENT into the stable because I heard one of them kicking. They play me up these days, they piss in the hay that I give them, they jump into their mangers, they butt, just like goats do every year at Easter. And there she was, when I opened the stable door, there she was, my black one, as wide as she was long, flanks extended, her four feet placed together on one small spot, and she was pushing hard, neck outstretched, head down, and, at her other end, the snout of her belly rooting the air and gaping, with the cabri’s head already out. I pulled his front paws, warm and sticky with love, and he came into my hands as easily as a slipper comes off a foot. He weighed a good eight kilos and he was brown and white. In two minutes he was on his four feet, he stuck out his long ears sideways as if they were a pole that would help him balance, and he made his first leap. Cabris are born in the air. Meanwhile, the mother, who was about to push out the second kid, but in her own time, turned her good-for-nothing head and looked at me with her oblong black pupils which hide all expression except that of a distant and insolent curiosity. She looked at me long and hard. What will happen next, she asked, not to you and your broom and your shovel and your stool, but to me? Her udder was as full as a bell is with sounds. The stump of his horns, I told her, which I can feel with my fingers on his head, will grow, and he’ll walk on his hind legs trying to eat the moon.

It was early morning in Troy. A man was climbing up thin metal rungs inside a narrow tower scarcely wider than his shoulders. The tower was transparent, its walls made of air. The ladder was absolutely vertical. The man in his blue working clothes was almost invisible against the blue sky. He had a large black moustache which his daughter, Chrysanthe, liked to outline with her forefinger. It’s a crow flying! she would cry. The man’s name was Yannis. In the bag over his shoulder as he climbed up into the sky was some bread, a slice of lamb, and a carton of orange juice.

There is a moment early in the morning before much blood has been spilt, before the pitilessness of the strong has reached its apogee, when the night players are at last asleep and free of their sadness, there is a moment when the new day seems almost innocent.

To take food up to the crane was strictly forbidden, for it was thought to encourage the drinking of alcohol. Yannis, however, was a man who did what he wanted and ignored other people’s rules. If they could find a better operator than he, let them find one!

Below him, the cars driving along Park Avenue were moving slowly in both directions, and were so close together that the traffic lanes in the early morning sunshine looked like metal snake toys. On the flat roof of the police station on Cauchy Street, three policemen in track suits were doing exercises.

At the top of the tower Yannis stepped out onto the perforated platform before his cabin. He liked to eat his breakfast alone in the sky. It gave him the chance to question leisurely.

How was he to get rid of the cockroaches that had invaded his flat? They came out every night, and twice his two daughters had woken up screaming that the beasts had got into their hair.

A wind came off the sea, and white clouds were being blown northwards like cotton flowers. Gently, securely, the crane rocked.

The problem with the cockroaches was that Yannis could not stand the smell of ammonia. It gave him a migraine. Yet everyone swore ammonia was the only cure. Murat the Turk claimed there was a powder you could use against cockroaches, which had no smell. He must ask him the name.

Yannis was the operator of the father crane. Large construction sites in Troy used two jib cranes. The father was always ten or so metres taller than the mother, with a longer arm. Her arm could pass beneath his. Thus, when the two were delivering at the same time, they could feed the same area without their booms touching.

Eating his breakfast in the sky, Yannis wrote a postcard to his mother:

Happy Birthday, Maman. In a few weeks I’ll be sending an air ticket. You will fly across the wine-dark sea. I’ll be at the airport to meet you. You’ll live in our apartment. Chrysanthe and Daphine are longing to meet their grandmother. I’ll take you across the New Bridge — look on the other side of this card — to the great church of Santa Barbara. Sonia is expecting a child in November! Perhaps a grandson this time. I’m writing this in my crane.

Far below, in the direction of his left foot, a group of workers in yellow helmets were drinking coffee out of cardboard cups. One of them was Sucus. They were sitting in the shade of an archway, which, long before, had been the entrance to the city’s silver market. The day was not yet hot. Some of the men were wearing shorts, their legs brown as camels.

The Greek up there is smart, one of them told Sucus, he can get his motherfucking crane, which lifts forty tons, to pull a cork out of a bottle!

I wasn’t born yesterday, said Sucus.

Newborn wasn’t born yesterday! said a man with a red handkerchief round his neck.

So he doesn’t believe us! said another who had stuck onto his helmet a pin-up of a woman with naked breasts like cumulus clouds.

Hey, Newborn! How long can you hold a litre at arm’s length — like this?

As long as you.

How many minutes?

Seven, eight.

If you make it for five, we’ll pay your beer at lunch.

Give me the bottle.

If you don’t make it, you pay for our beer, said the man with the goddess helmet.

For all of you!

Yep. All of us.

It’s just water, ordinary water?

City water, man. One kilo plus the bottle.

Where’s the trick?

Newborn thinks there’s a trick. There’s nothing tricky here. You don’t stop, that’s all. You hold it up. For five minutes.

Which hand?

Any hand you like. Hold it straight.

Who’s got a watch?

Okay. Start.

Sucus, on his feet, held the bottle in his right hand, arm outstretched sideways, straight from the shoulder, like a crane.

One minute!

Sucus clutched the bottle a little harder.

Two!

Newborn says he’s going to keep it there for seven minutes.

He could feel the shape of the muscle in his shoulder, and its hardness, growing bigger like a stone in a fruit.

Three minutes.

Now it hurt. Not the weight. The weight was nothing. It was the stone in his shoulder insisting that it be moved. He twisted his head a little to squint along his arm.

He’s not going to make it.

On the spreader beam of the mother crane, hanging from its two cables, Sucus read over and over again the words: THINK SAFETY. THINK SAFETY. Everything he thought passed so quickly, leaving behind empty seconds which were wordless.