John Berger - Lilac and Flag

The second soldier followed Zsuzsa. Suddenly there appeared, as if he had come from heaven to save her, a young man, standing by a low wall on which was placed a painted tray with glasses and a blue thermos.

Would you like a coffee?

How much?

Six hundred.

No.

Better a little lemon juice! said the soldier, leering.

The young man with the painted tray handed Zsuzsa a glass of coffee, and placed himself firmly between the soldier and her.

Drink it, he said. I’m making you a present.

What’s your name?

Sucus.

That’s a funny name for a boy!

They gave it to me when I was a kid because I sold sweets.

Sucus — a kind of sweet?

You’ve got it.

The soldier banged the butt of his gun with the palm of his hand and turned his back on them.

Now you sell coffee.

I pay five thousand for this plank.

Who to?

Sucus nodded towards the guards.

It’s a lot of money.

Men are willing to pay for coffee here.

Yes?

On their way out, not on their way in. A man who’s done his time in there needs a coffee when he comes out to make sure he’s not dreaming. He needs a coffee almost as badly as he needs a woman. Then there are the visitors — they need a coffee to prove to themselves they’re not like the man they’ve been talking to. Your one inside — who’s he?

My lover man, she lied.

How long’s he in for?

Ten years.

He’ll go mad.

A flock of starlings — like a thousand black chips of wood flying up from the blow of an axe — crossed the Champ-de-Mars and settled on the black tile rooves of the prison.

They don’t, said Zsuzsa. That’s the first thing that changes the other side of those gates. Your need to go mad slowly disappears, day by day it gets smaller and smaller, less pressing — she put the palms of her hands against her temples, she wore four rings and her nails were silver-varnished — until one day it goes away. It’s outside people go mad. More likely it’s me who’ll go mad first.

What’s his name?

She hesitated, glanced around, and following the flight of the last starlings, saw the national flag hanging limply from the prison tower in the afternoon heat.

Flag, she said.

Flag’s his name?

He’s called Flag, I tell you.

Strange name.

It came from how he was born. He was born in the street, on June 7th, the national holiday. There were flags everywhere, and he came a month before he was due, a whole month. It was evening and his mother was dancing in Alexanderplatz like everyone else that night …

Who told you this?

Suddenly there was lightning and a rumble of thunder over the hills! And her waters broke.

Sucus looked at her face. She had large eyes, too large. She closed them. He knew they were dark, but he couldn’t remember their colour. Were they grey or brown?

And there, before you could say Jack Knife, under a roller coaster, behind a rifle range where you could win a life-size doll or a bear cub if you were a good shot, she gave birth on the grass! They were firing all the time, she told me, and the problem was there was nothing to wrap him in, so they took a flag from a street lamp and wrapped him in that. And ever afterwards this was his name, he’s called Flag.

Why’s he inside, this Flag of yours?

He killed a man.

Deliberately?

Only women kill men deliberately.

Are you sure? I’m sure.

What did he do, this Flag?

The man was stabbed. Flag was jealous.

Because of you?

Zsuzsa closed her eyes again. Then she said, Yes, because of me.

And the man? Not Flag, the other one.

The other one never touched me. I never let him.

So this Flag was jealous for nothing.

Flag burnt with jealousy for me.

And the other man died?

Yes.

Zsuzsa had two lower teeth missing, he could see this when she smiled.

I don’t believe you.

The coffee was very good, said Zsuzsa.

I don’t believe you.

Yes, really, it was good, the best I’ve drunk for a week.

I don’t believe your story about Flag.

I’m not asking you to believe anything, she said.

More likely you went to visit little brother who got nicked for car radios. Where do you live, anyway?

Barbek.

On the hill?

Rat Hill.

I live across the river, he said, in Cachan.

Cachan — Zsuzsa exclaimed. That’s where my mother works every night.

There’s no end to Cachan.

She’s a cleaner. In the I.B.M. building. Her last job before daybreak is to change the roses in the sales director’s office. He has new roses every day, and the old ones she brings home. Roses I adore. You can give me a hundred. A hundred stolen roses and I’m yours.

Look, said Sucus, nodding towards the prison, there’s a man coming out.

The man was carrying a suitcase.

Watch now, the guards’ll needle him.

The man held his free arm a little away from his body as if he were walking on a narrow plank high above the ground and had to balance himself. His neck was stiff and he looked straight ahead.

There he goes! said one of the soldiers. The fucker thinks they’ll still remember him at home.

The man continued walking, little step by little step, as if along a plank from a boat to the quayside.

Fuckers like him don’t deserve a home!

His mother’s cunt smells of codfish, said the second soldier.

The man was now through the gate. He could see the whole Champ-de-Mars, the plane trees, the city of Troy below, the children playing with the donkey, Sucus with his painted tray, and the wine-dark sea. He was still walking as if along the plank.

You don’t know what his mother’s cunt smells of?

A glass of coffee, milord? proposed Zsuzsa.

The freed prisoner hesitated and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket.

The first taste of freedom, Zsuzsa said.

Black without sugar, said the man.

He held the glass in both hands with the handkerchief wrapped round it, and sat on the low wall to drink slowly, savouring the coffee.

No arsenic in it?

Zsuzsa laughed and Sucus thought: When she laughs, we’re taller than anybody.

You haven’t heard? said the man. The chief of police was hospitalised last week. Arsenic poisoning. His wife confessed. There were four women in it together. They had the idea of putting arsenic in their husbands’ coffee. A small dose each day. All the husbands were in the law. Bogeys.

They wanted to kill them?

Not at all. They wanted to do a bad turn to Old King Cole.

Who’s he?

They wanted to put an end — this is how they said it — to their husbands’ infidelities. They’d heard that a little arsenic makes Old King Cole go limp. This way their men wouldn’t screw other women. One of the wives put arsenic in her husband’s custard too. You need sugar to hide the bad taste of arsenic. That’s why I don’t take sugar.

Zsuzsa laughed and Sucus thought again: When she laughs, we’re taller than anybody.

At first you’re frightened, the man said.

Now? she asked.

Of not knowing which way to go.

He opened his battered suitcase and took out a packet wrapped in newspaper.

You lose the habit of choosing, he said.

Inside the newspaper was a leather cap, new-looking and very flat, which he placed painstakingly on the very top of his head, feeling the sides of his shaved scalp with his blunt fingertips so as to measure how high up the cap was.

Zsuzsa handed him a mirror from her handbag. The freed prisoner looked into it and saw a man in his sixties with wild eyes.

It suits you, she said.

You think so? I don’t want to turn a corner and run slap into my old crap.

If you’re wearing that, no crap will recognise you, she said.