John Berger - Lilac and Flag

No, it’s a surprise.

If we all had a surprise like you! said the goddess man.

At this moment Sucus arrived, running.

You look daft in that helmet, Flag. Why do you all eat with your helmets on?

Safety regulations. Bet you have some too?

Several of the men laughed. Sucus took off his helmet and led her away from them.

Do you like my earrings? she asked.

They were gold-coloured and each one was large enough to pass a lemon through. When she moved, they tilted like dwarf cart wheels.

Not bad.

And my blue dress?

Yes.

I wanted to impress you.

You have! Who gave you the earrings?

So, it’s going to be twenty storeys high, your building!

She looked up at the cranes, and whilst her head was back, he kissed her throat.

Who did?

Did what?

Gave you the earrings?

My ears were pierced when I was three. My grandmother pierced them. So I have to wear earrings. It follows, doesn’t it?

Who was it?

You’re jealous, Flag! Jealous!

How did you get them?

You’d do better to think of your poor father.

He’s dead.

All of us are going to die one day, Flag. I wear jewelry so everybody can see we’re alive. Me and them. And I want you to make me a promise.

What?

When I die I want you to see I’m wearing earrings in my coffin! If I’m not wearing them, you must thread them on my ears. Promise me you’ll do that!

She looked again at the cranes.

Have you been up there in the sky? It must be great up there in the crane — like God.

Who gave them to you?

Perhaps I nicked them.

You did!

I didn’t. You want to hit me, do you, Flag?

Yes.

Go on then, hit!

No.

Hit me!

Fuck you!

I win! I’ve made you angry! Here take them.

Are they gold? asked Sucus, examining them.

Yes, they’re gold.

Was it a man who gave them to you?

You really want to know? Well, I nicked them.

You said you didn’t.

They’re gold. You haven’t given me anything made of gold, Flag!

She was jeering at him.

Aiee! Now you hit me! Give them to me.

Don’t say that again!

I want you to give them to me.

Sucus held out the earrings on the palm of his cement-coloured hand. They weighed nothing and yet he could feel their warmth.

Give me the earrings. Now it’s you who’s given them to me. And now because it’s you who’s given them to me, Flag, I’ll never take them off for anyone.

With one side of her face flushed where Sucus had slapped her, Zsuzsa started to dance, beside a stack twice as tall as her of rusty grills used for reinforcing the concrete.

I can’t remember when I first saw it, it was too long ago. It belongs to the high mountains which the snow never leaves. It happens at the height of the glaciers, often on them, but never at a lower altitude. It has always reminded me of heaven. The sunlight catches the snow and instead of making it blinding white, it makes it glisten. It’s a molten light and it comes and goes and changes place, measuring the sun as no instrument can. For this light to occur, snow crystals have to melt into moisture and then freeze again as hard as enamel, and then melt and be frozen again. In this light coming off the ice there is a warmth and a trace of sugar as in a mother’s milk. And when Zsuzsa danced beside the stack of rusty grills, the arms of her dress stained with sweat, and her mouth open because she was laughing, her teeth with their two gaps glistened with this light.

Suddenly she stopped and let her arms fall to her sides.

You must look after your mother, Flag. She needs you these days.

She started to dance again, this time slowly, throwing out one arm to one side and then the other to the other, like a man sowing seeds with two hands.

There was no way round her, Sucus thought, following her every movement. You could turn your back and walk away, but if you took one step forward, you had to go through her. Even if you went way out to the side, it would still be through her. Wherever you went she got there first. She must have been the same all her life, from the time she could first stand on her two legs. Everything she could see here — the cement dust, the crane, the rusty grills, the sky, Murat, the other men watching — everything she could see, everything that passed by, everything that rose and fell, was Zsuzsa, and was part of her, not of something else. This was why there was no way round her.

She stopped dancing and brushed the cement dust off her feet.

We’ll buy your mother some fish tonight, some fresh garnards, I’m sure she likes red garnards, doesn’t she?

The whistle sounded.

Five fucking minutes early, said the goddess helmet.

Cato sounds it when he wants!

Zsuzsa walked away along the edge of the road the trucks took to bring in the sand and gravel. The driver, who had lost his child the day before, did not notice whether she was a man or woman: she was simply another figure on the road to be avoided.

Yannis, going to his crane, tapped Sucus on the shoulder and told him:

At home when a young woman dances alone, we say she’s asking for a husband!

Far away, your home! said Sucus.

No, my friend, women don’t change. She was dancing for you.

The whistle sounded again.

Hose down her gutters! said Murat to Sucus, nodding at an empty hopper. The water that dripped from the nozzle of the hose made a blister on Sucus’s hand smart. The force of the jet he directed against the hopper knocked off the crumbs of drying concrete.

Yannis climbed up to his cabin in the sky. The first job of the afternoon was to deliver four shutterings, complete with scaffolding and bridges, to the south. When not being used, all the shutterings were kept in the north. Stacked together, grey with cement, they made a block like a bunker. Yet when hammered they rang out like metal. Yannis swung his crane beneath the mother’s arm, northwards, and whilst swinging he ran out the crab and lowered the cables. It took a little time to attach the chains and loop them to the cable hooks, so he let his eyes wander to the sea where the ships passed. Whenever he looked at the sea he dreamt of returning home.

A rigger, far below, raised his hands, joined as if in prayer, to heaven. This was the sign for Yannis to hoist. The giant metal shuttering, which would hold the concrete feed until it solidified into a wall, left the ground. Yannis turned the crane like the hour hand of an immense clock, over the sheds, the archway, the wasteland where Zsuzsa danced, the central blocks, to the southernmost point of its orbit. The top of the crane’s mast, as it carried the load, rocked, predictably, like a tree top. Only Yannis’s eyes were fixed.

With the tips of his fingers on the black buttons, he had to place twelve tons of metal as gently as Gabriel placed his words at the Annunciation. Slowly, he let the cables run out. He brought the crab back a bare twenty centimetres. Continued lowering. Then stopped to take off his sunglasses. He let the cables run again. The cabin tilted forward as if it too were anxious to see, and, far below, ten workers the size of bees manhandled the massive shuttering, still afloat on the summer air, into its exact position, exact enough for every bolt to drop into its hole.

Bull! shouted one of them and lowered his outstretched arms. Yannis let the cables go slack. The shuttering rested on its own weight. Twelve tons.

You, Newborn, ever think about justice? asked Murat.

I keep away from the law.

We’re not talking about their justice.

Whose then?

I’m talking about what happens to us.

You all say us when you start to get old. I talk about me. Who’s us?