John Berger - Lilac and Flag

I tell you every morning, Mother, we are not on Samos here. The cockroaches are in the whole building.

It’s Babylon!

We live here. I invited you here so you could see how we live.

The house is waiting for you, Yannis, it will always be waiting for you.

We’ve made a life here in the city.

Everyone grows old, my boy. And with age everyone’s eyesight fails a little. I don’t need to see more than I do in order to know. I know because I feel. You work in the sky like a god, and you are lost!

You see nothing!

Why do you shout at me?

I have to go now.

Have a good day, my son.

Yannis drove to the building site on Park Avenue. He had a small Renault. Already the streets were full, the cars fender to fender. It was raining in torrents and through the windshield the lights were tangled like yellow wool. Yannis, the crane driver, was thinking about his women …

It’s not Sonia’s fault if she’s a little scatterbrained. It’s not Mother’s fault if she’s never left Samos. But why can’t they leave me in peace? He was driving less smoothly than usual. Suddenly, he had to slam on his brakes to avoid a woman pushing a grown-up figure across the street in a gigantic pram. He frowned. The pram made him think of babies. After a month with four women in the flat, he would like to have a son … he would call him Alexander.

Underneath the rubber sheet of the pram the woman was pushing, sat a man, huddled up, his hands on his lap, his head lolling a little. The woman stopped on the pavement and adjusted the hat on the man’s head so that it sheltered him better from the rain. You mustn’t get cold, she said, if you catch cold I’ll have no end of trouble with you. I know you — when your nose is running, you stop eating, you refuse to eat, and your tummy goes hard. Let me tuck your foot under the sheet, they’re not waterproof these boots and you’ll get soaked. We don’t have to cross the road again, my love, till we get to Park Avenue. You like passing by there, don’t you? You like watching the big cranes.

On the building site all the men had taken shelter in the locker room. When Yannis arrived the goddess man was telling a joke. Sucus was reading in a newspaper a story about dolphins being trained to protect nuclear submarines. Cato flung open the door and stared at the men leaning against the walls.

What are you waiting for, you lazy buggers? Out! Get out on the job.

Murat took a step forward and bowed very slightly, as if about to award a public prize.

Can I say something, Mr. Cato? I would suggest we wait until it’s raining a little less.

Is that what you would suggest! Jesus!

Under these weather conditions, Mr. Cato, the safety of the workers on the site is at risk.

You talk like a fucking lawyer. You get your foreign mouth around big words! You’d better watch it or I’ll have you blacked. No work anywhere. See? Out! Get out there now!

Not a single builder moved.

It’s a mud swamp out there, Mr. Cato.

Mud or shit, it’s the same to me. We’re eight days behind schedule.

Men’ll be sliding in all directions. Quite apart from the hazard to health working all day in drenched clothes.

Hazard to health my arse! This isn’t a nursery school. Any man who needs a cape can go and get one from stores. I want the six casings set up yesterday poured. See? Now out!

Still nobody moved. Cato approached Murat with his fists up.

Drop your knife! Cato hissed.

I’m not moving, said the Turk.

Then you’re fired. Out, the rest of you! Are you deaf or what? I said outside. You want to be fired, the lot of you? Shit! What’s the matter with you?

The twenty men in the wooden hut, big-handed and sullen, refused to move. The air was muggy with their breath and damp clothes. No one spoke. The floor boards creaked under their heavy boots. They filled the little hut the way a single elephant would fill a railway wagon. Eventually the goddess man said: You put Murat back on the payroll or none of us work today.

Cato turned away to look out the window. He stuck his hands in his belt. The elephant shifted its weight. Finally Cato spoke:

Look, it’s raining less already. Get out there, the lot of you, Murat included! We’ve had our little yap, now get to work.

It was true that the falling rain was less heavy. Three builders moved towards the door. The others followed. Some of the men tied plastic sacks over their heads. Murat was the last to leave.

The first hopper was there to be filled. When Murat waved, Yannis hoisted a little clumsily and the load swung sideways on its cables so that grey cement slurped over to fall with the small rain onto the muddy earth.

The wind was coming in squalls. In the cabin Yannis glanced at the wind gauge to see whether the gusts were exceeding the statutory fifty kilometres per hour. Not yet. The rhythm of the long wiper blades as they swept backwards and forwards across the glass wall of the cabin reminded him of two oars from long ago, when his father used to row a boat. He must have been no more than six, for by the time he was seven his father had drowned. Another squall hit the crane like a wave.

On the ground, the sudden gusts whipped the men’s wet clothes against their bodies, and those who were able ducked their heads behind their shoulders to shelter their faces against the rain. Sucus was shifting sand towards the crabs of the cement mixer. The sand was twice as heavy as usual. With his feet wet and water trickling down his neck and his right shovelling shoulder a little stiff, he thought of Zsuzsa. He thought, as men have always done under rough conditions, of her warmth and softness, of how she was the opposite of shifting wet sand in squalls of rain.

The first time he’d seen her without a stitch of clothing on, the first time he’d seen her hidden hair, darker than he had imagined in any dream, he thought he was the luckiest man on earth. She was standing there before him and she was making everything else until the end fade into nothingness!

Bull! shouted Murat as the hopper came down.

The mixer spewed out its liquid concrete. Murat threw the switch and the feeding stopped, the drum rotating in the opposite direction, tongue lolling. Sucus, leaning on his shovel, watched.

It was then Murat noticed that one of the lifting chains looked out of place. He hesitated. They had just put in two tons of concrete. If two tons of concrete fell out of the sky as the crane took the load off … From where he was on the ground he couldn’t properly see the rings the chains were threaded through. He found a foothold and pulled himself up the hopper to look more closely.

Another squall hit the crane, seriously reducing visibility. The air became like sea. Yannis thought he saw Murat wave his helmet in the air. He pressed the appropriate black button.

The hopper started its ascension into the sky with Murat still clinging to it.

No! he shouted. Bull! Bull! The wind blew his words away. Only Sucus heard them and saw what was happening.

Let go! Let go! yelled Sucus.

It would have been simple for Murat to jump during these first few seconds, but there are situations in which the will to survive issues mad orders and a paralysis sets in. Once I saw a dog on river ice which was breaking up. The dog was standing on a slab that had broken loose and was carrying him downstream. It couldn’t decide whether to jump or stay put. Its forelegs wanted to do one thing, its hind legs the opposite. In the same way Murat’s hands refused to loosen their grip, as the hopper rose into the air above the cement mixer.

Frantic, Sucus scrambled up the mud bank so as to be directly under the hopper. There he fell onto his knees and looked up at the great ladle already four metres off the ground, and about to disappear into the sky. Murat was hanging by his arms, legs dangling. Jump! Murat! Jump! Sucus prayed and implored. The words carried. Murat heard them and this time, miraculously, his hands obeyed. They let go and he fell five metres down on to the earth, just beside Sucus.