John Berger - Lilac and Flag

Because your Dad gave it to you?

The boy threw away his cigarette.

There are things you don’t sell, said Sucus.

So you want to find Zsuzsa!

You’re lucky, man, because we know her!

Zsuzsa and her zazzle!

To find Zsuzsa, said the one who wanted to buy, you follow the electricity cables, up and up, till you pass the second blind pig on your left.

You know what a blind pig is, I guess?

I wasn’t born yesterday, said Sucus.

Nor was Zsuzsa!

How would you like Zsuzsa as a mum?

By the blind pig you turn right and it’s the Blue House.

The house inside was as crowded with things as Rat Hill was crowded with shacks and people and children and poultry. There were clothes, saucepans, cardboard boxes, cushions, plates, bottles, shoes, towels, rags, jugs, a table, a mattress on the floor, a TV set, a wardrobe, a gas ring, a gas cylinder, a sink. Yet the room was full of arrangements and touches which showed that women lived there.

Where the gigantic mattress touched the wall, the pillows had been placed in a straight line under the cloth that served as a bedspread, and along this mound was laid a runner of white lace. The plates on the shelf fixed to a wall of naked briseblocks were carefully stacked in descending size, the largest at the bottom. In the centre of the cardboard ceiling a photo of a flying gull had been pasted; from the bed it looked as if it were flying towards you. Most noticeable of all, there were five mirrors in the small room! The largest, in a gilt frame the shape of a church window, was rested against the wall by the back of the sink. Its grey surface was spattered with black spots where the mercury had disappeared. It looked like the soil of Rat Hill, but if you stood by the sink, in its solemn dark reflection you could see your whole body.

Look at this! said Zsuzsa’s mother, Kaja.

She held up the garment she was ironing by its shoulders. It was a tailored jacket, in black and white dog-tooth tweed. As she held it up, she couldn’t resist swinging it as it would swing on a woman walking, tight across the shoulders, flared over the hips.

It’s for Zsuzsa, she explained, she bought it this afternoon.

Smart, said Sucus.

There’s a skirt goes with it.

She went on ironing around her large splayed-out left hand which held the jacket in place. Sucus noticed that on one of the lapels there was a hole, black at the edges, which must have been caused by a burn.

It’s nothing! said Kaja, as if the weight of her ample, apple-brown body overflowing her violet cotton dress, could give such emphasis to the two words that the hole would disappear.

Did it happen ironing?

I’d say a burning coal fell on it, said Kaja.

How?

Must have thrown off her clothes by a fireplace to be fucked. Anyway, whatever happened, happened. If nothing had happened it wouldn’t be here tonight. Rich ladies don’t throw away tweed suits in perfect condition. It won’t show if you get her some flowers to pin there.

Kaja winked.

Are you hungry? I’ll heat some polenta for you. Naisi’s out the back with the girl. Tell her to come in.

On Rat Hill there was no flat ground except where men dug to build. Every home on the slopes had begun with a spade and a shovel. Now that some families were richer they sometimes began by hiring Achille, who had lost a leg and owned a recuperated bulldozer. Behind the Blue House a plot of about four metres square had been levelled with pick and shovel by Uncle Dima before he went to prison. The idea was to build a room for Zsuzsa and Julia: then Uncle Dima and Kaja would be able to sleep alone in the room where the mirrors were. The second room was occupied at night by Naisi. To justify this regal privacy, Naisi called the room his HQ. Since Uncle Dima’s arrest, work behind the house had stopped. The tiny plot was strewn with wood Uncle Dima had collected for the construction — planks, palings, packing cases, an old telephone pole. These made it look as if the lean-to the family was dreaming of building had just collapsed. It was often difficult on Rat Hill to tell the difference between what was falling down and what was going up.

Naisi and Zsuzsa were sitting on a crate amongst the debris and Zsuzsa was listening to her brother. Naisi could read, but it wasn’t books he read. He continually read the signs of what was happening on the hill and down in the city, of the new rackets of survival, and, best of all, of the latest plans for joining those for whom survival wasn’t a problem. Naisi read all the while — which is why he considered manual work a waste of time. Everywhere he went, he read: people’s characters, the way they lied, their fears, the city districts and the men who controlled them, the layout of buildings, rumours, new market prices, police reports, street maps — and when he wasn’t reading, he was thinking about what he had just read. This is why, talking in the dark behind the house, Naisi looked as if he was teaching his sister something. He wasn’t really. It was her way of listening and his way with words.

I wouldn’t ask you to at night, Naisi was saying, I’m talking about afternoons, afternoons only …

Sucus approached. Your new suit’s ironed, he said.

Flag, I want to be called Lilac, said Zsuzsa.

Lilac isn’t a name.

It’s the name of a flower and a perfume, and a tree.

It’s not a woman’s name. Lila! Lily! Lilith! But not Lilac.

Listen, the garbage man I bought my new rig from was singing a song. It was written by a friend of his called Ottay Riffat who lives on Tortoise. It goes like this.

Laying her head back, she sang:

On the corner of the street

The lilac’s in flower

So I have to pray and implore

Lilac, oh Lilac

Oh let me pass by

Lilac, my sweet …

Further down the slope two dogs were barking.

Zsuzsa got to her feet, kissed Sucus on the lips, and went inside the shack.

It’s a bad sign when dogs bark at night. In the village they say it’s because they have heard something in the forest.

It’s good you came, said Naisi. We’ve got to make some new people. Ever made a new person?

Maybe we made one a few nights ago!

We need ten, Brother-in-Law.

Give us a few years!

We need ten by the day after tomorrow.

That’s a lot.

With mugs, names, and numbers.

Papers?

Yes, international ones, we need passports.

Who’s paying? Sucus asked.

We’ll say I’m paying.

How much, Naisi?

Five hundred thousand for the ten.

You should tell him, Naisi, the one who’s really paying, said Sucus, you should tell him he’s making you look mean. Ten heists for five hundred thousand!

We’ve checked it out. It’ll take you and Zsuzsa a quarter of an hour, at minimal risk.

All ten?

If you get more, we pay more. Budapest Station. Tomorrow night. Ten o’clock. Platform 17. Schlafwagen 101.

What are you going to do with the passports?

I told you, Sucus, we need some new people.

It was at this moment that Zsuzsa appeared wearing the dogtooth suit. In the dark they could see she had changed and that a tight skirt ended just above her knees, but not much more than that. Yet the two of them went on gazing at her. Both men loved her. The barking of the dogs had stopped. Naisi straightened his shoulders and tapped on the earth with one of his boots to match his sister’s elegance. If he was a reader, she was why he wanted to read. He loved her the way a musician can love an instrument, or a pilot his racing car. All he wanted was to entice the best from her, so as to give it back to her as her own pleasure. The pleasure of being Zsuzsa. He had known nothing in his life as beautiful, in his eyes, as his sister. There was no jealousy in Naisi’s life, only this intimate, immense ambition.