John Berger - Lilac and Flag

Take off your dress, Zsuzsa.

It seems to me Zsuzsa and Sucus were making love when the story began.

I’ve never been so tall, said Zsuzsa.

Can you feel it? Can you feel it swaying?

No one will ever make me as tall as this.

One day you’ll fly in a plane!

It’ll never go as high as we are now.

A Boeing 747 to Paris!

No, Flag, nobody in my life will bring me as high as you’ve done tonight.

ON THE RIGHT of the stove in my kitchen, there’s a little lever to operate a damper which increases or reduces the draught of air being sucked up into the chimney pipe. The mechanism is simple enough for an old woman to understand. Pushing the lever up or down turns a bar which is attached to a circle of thin metal which has the same dimensions as the pipe. When it’s upright it shuts off, and when it’s horizontal it lets the air go up. Last year, the buff broke off the bar and the fire roared all the time, so I went to César, the blacksmith, and asked him if he could repair it. It was an insult to ask him this, like asking a cobbler to sew on a button. But he looked at me and said, as if we were both fifty years younger: Since it’s for you, I’ll mend it! Two days later I passed by and there was the damper, repaired and waiting for me. César wasn’t at home, so I took it and left for him on his workbench a pot of my honey. Several months later he died. Now every time I move the lever up or down, I think of César, the dead blacksmith, and I thank him as I hear the breath in the chimney becoming weaker or stronger. César, I whisper, you are in my fire!

It was getting dark in Troy. Sucus was sprawled on his bed reading about a marriage between a famous millionaire and an Australian film star. The millionaire was reported to have said: This is my fifth and last marriage, for I’m old enough today to know what I want. He was sixty-two, the bride twenty-three. Sucus dropped his newspaper onto the floor beside the bed.

Do you remember the last time you went to the village, Maman?

Wislawa put down her iron and looked through the fourteenth-storey window as if she could see — not the lead ingots of other Trojan buildings, but a mountain.

The last time I was in the village, Sucus, I was pregnant with you.

Was it snowing?

She laughed. No, it was summer, the time of the haymaking. They wouldn’t let me fork up the hay. They said it was too risky with you. I just raked.

Wislawa was still looking at the mountain. The water in her iron, upright on the table, gurgled. Through the party wall came the simmering noise of the neighbour’s TV, a noise like voices talking in a saucepan.

I’m going to be earning very soon, Sucus said.

I’ll believe that, son, when it happens.

I only need twenty-five thousand. Twenty-five. So I can buy a sphygmomanometer! With a sphygmomanometer I’m away!

What on earth do you want a thing like that for?

You don’t know what it is, do you?

Wislawa was thinking about something else. Did this, this, this — she hesitated, searching for the word she wanted, and the lack of the single word made her heart howl for the loss of Branch — did this vagabond from Rat Hill love her son?

From the Greek, sphygmo , Maman, meaning pulse, the sign of life.

What, Sucus?

With this machine and a white coat like the quacks have at the hospital, you can make eight thousand a day on Alexanderplatz!

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, trying to profit from other people’s suffering.

And dentists, what do they do?

You don’t even know how to listen to somebody’s blood pressure.

I’ll learn in five minutes.

A regular job is what you need.

Regular! You do your ironing, you do your ironing and you see nothing. There aren’t regular jobs any more. They’ve gone. There’s no way. My poor Mother, it’s like that, there’s no way.

Wislawa laid another folded green tablecloth on the pile by the window. The neighbours were now watching a football match and it sounded as if the commentator was running for dear life as he shouted his commentary.

In a moment I’ll make us something to eat, said Wislawa …

Is it true? asked Sucus, his eyes shut. Are there people in the village who live on a mountain so high up, so far away, that when they whisper they can hear an echo from the rocks?

There are places like that.

Sucus swung his feet up into the air as if he was going to walk on the ceiling and then, in one bound, stood upright on the still uncarpeted floor.

Why don’t we go back to the village, Maman, the three of us?

Three of us?

You, Zsuzsa, and me. Father always said there was a wooden house on the mountain and a pine forest that still belonged to us. We could live there. I’d cut down trees, you’d keep chickens, and Zsuzsa, she’d gather mushrooms and sell them on the other side of the frontier, like the woman Father told us about, what was her name?

Why am I crying? Wislawa asked herself.

We’d grow our own vegetables, said Sucus, and in the winter I’d get work on the ski lifts, and in the summer I’d cut wood.

It’s not like you think. There’s no way, my boy, there’s no way.

Sucus took the Métro in the direction of Eddington. He got down at Piton and walked along the sea road towards the tanneries. The road was lit with yellow overhead lights like an auto route. When there were no trucks passing, Sucus could hear the waves breaking on the shingle. He could also smell the tanneries. There were more corrosive smells in Troy — the smell, for instance, of the fertiliser factory in Gentilly, but, in the dark, the smell of the tanneries made him think of catacombs. From kata , which meant down-under in Greek. Down-under where Clement his father was.

When the road turned the headland Sucus’s spirits rose, for he could see, quite near, the lights on Rat Hill. Like many people born in cities he was frightened of empty distance. He ran a little. Soon he heard radio music. Suddenly, all the lights he could see went out. Then they came on again. This happened several times. In the pitch darkness the hill of huts and shacks was like a sleeping dog, when the lights came on it was like a dancing bear. Some of the houses had strings of coloured lights strung along their walls. It was impossible for him to find his way, for at night all his familiar landmarks were lost. It was either a labyrinth of lights or as dark as a well. He stopped by the door of a hut where some kids were sorting into piles the salvage brought back by the garbage collectors: one pile for electrical fittings, another for women’s shoes, another for medicines, another for large tins.

Do you know Uncle Dima’s house? Sucus asked a boy who was smoking.

The Blue House! Zsuzsa’s!

That’s the one.

The boys gathered round him.

A beautiful knife you have there, hinny.

It’s old, very old. It belonged to my father.

Can I see it? asked the one with the cigarette and dark circles under his eyes.

Sucus drew the knife out of its scabbard and held it up, the finger of one hand on its point and the other hand round its reindeer handle. In the light of the hurricane lamp in the hut the knife glinted like water.

Life is as thin as a sharpened blade. The rest is God.

Can I feel your shiv? asked the same boy.

Sucus shook his head.

I’ll give you fifteen thousand for it.

Sucus shook his head again.

Twenty thousand!

It’s not for sale.

Everything’s for sale, hinny.

Tonight I haven’t a sou, said Sucus, I’m telling you, I haven’t a single sou, and I’m not selling my knife.