John Berger - Lilac and Flag

Sucus loved her without any ambition. He loved her jealously, passionately, protectively.

Lilac, oh Lilac

Oh, let me pass by …

he hummed, and Zsuzsa opened her arms.

I can hear the sound of a hunting horn. The hunting horn is strange, always leaving, its back turned, speaking over its shoulder. Everything about it announces departure. And the hunting horn is as male as the harp is female.

I hear the horn beneath the high glass roof of Budapest Station, on platform 17, and it’s like the howling of a wild animal. I can almost touch the animal’s fur, warm, sweaty, golden burrs lodged in it, thick as felt. The bellowing of its voice bruises itself against the cast-iron pillars, crying for the wounds and the wounded to come.

Sucus and Zsuzsa were walking down platform 17 one behind the other, and there was nothing to suggest they’d ever met in their lives. Nothing to suggest it because Sucus’s thoughts were inaudible and invisible. He was thinking: In that skirt her legs look as tall as the sky! Yet I know where they end! His other thought was: Please God let it go well.

Zsuzsa was wearing her dog-tooth two-piece. On its lapel were pinned white dahlias Sucus had stolen that morning from a garden in Escorial. She was carrying a black canvas grip Naisi had supplied. It hung from her right shoulder, where buglers carry their bugles. Her hair was hidden in a white Egyptian turban, which her grandmother had taught her how to put on.

A strip of fine cotton muslin, at least three metres long. You fold it until it is quite narrow, then wind it round your head, leaving two long ends hanging. These you braid tightly into a white plait which encircles your head like a halo.

In front of the dark mirror by the sink it had taken Zsuzsa half an hour to make the Egyptian turban, which pulled back and covered all her hair.

You look like Nefertiti, Naisi had said as she left the house; then he added: Don’t worry about the grip, leave it if you have to. Schlafwagen 101. He’s famous for his lechery!

Along with the turban, Zsuzsa was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses. There was nothing to be done about disguising her two missing teeth. She had varnished her finger nails blood red.

Sucus, following Zsuzsa, was wearing his father’s raincoat. The label by the collar said Aquascutum. His father had explained the name to Sucus. Latin aqua , water. Latin scutum , shield. Clement had been given the raincoat by a restaurant owner for whom he had opened a thousand oysters at a banquet. A client had left it in the restaurant a year before and never come back. Wearing it, Sucus looked as though he had a regular job. Wislawa’s heart, when she saw him trying it on that morning, had tightened with a kind of hope.

It was a TEN train. Trans Europe Night. It would cross the continent and reach the far ocean in three days. Schlafwagen 101 was a sleeper, with amber-coloured curtains already drawn across the high-up windows. Its coachwork was burgundy red. Down near the platform somebody had written with a white aerosol: SHIT TRUCK!

Zsuzsa walked slowly past, looking up through her black sunglasses at the curtained windows and stopping once or twice so that the attendant should notice her. He did. She beckoned and he came to the door of his wagon. First, she handed him her luggage, then she stepped up herself. She was wearing white, flatheeled plastic sandals, the cheapest kind, such as are sold at the beach, but the way she stepped up the steps with these sandals on her feet made them look handmade!

I was eleven when my grandmother taught me to scythe. Men sweat buckets, she said, and die young, so you’d better learn now. And learn I did. When your scythe is well hammered and the blade on its sharp edge is so thin you can bend it with your thumbnail and the bright metal winks back at you, then scything is not a movement of your arms and shoulders, but of the hips, purely the hips. The grass knows when it’s being cut by a young woman and not a man. And for a similar reason the TEN train knew when Zsuzsa stepped up onto it.

I’m travelling to Paris, she said to the attendant. So I have to spend two nights on your train.

The Schlafwagen attendant was thinking: She’s a cayack, an upper-class cayack.

Sucus, still on the platform, was watching the Schlafwagen attendant talking to Zsuzsa at the top of the steps.

Let me explain, she continued confidentially, let me explain my dilemma to you.

It was Sucus who had suggested the word dilemma when they rehearsed that afternoon. Dilemma from the Greek dis , meaning two, and lemma , meaning that which has been taken in or perceived.

I’m sure you can help me, Mr. Schlafwagen Attendant. I just didn’t have time to make a reservation. It was a last-minute decision, and now the prospect of two long nights without being able to undress and slip into bed would be too much! If you can find me a berth, I’ll take your train. If not, I’ll go by air!

Up there in the coach, above the platform, it was another world. Space was very confined. Two people could scarcely pass in the corridor, they had to squeeze by each other sideways and yet everything brushed against was classy, classy and intimate. Most of the passengers not already in bed were preparing for bed, hanging up their jackets, kicking off their handmade shoes, taking off their Parisian scarves. Rich man’s shanty train, thought Zsuzsa to herself.

The Schlafwagen attendant, in his gold-braided, chocolate-coloured uniform, indicated the way to his bureau. From the table beside the sliding door with brass fittings he picked up his chart of reservations.

If you’ve no place, I’ll get down … Can you help me make up my mind?

As it happens, Madame, there is a spare berth.

Wonderful! Could I see it?

This was the decisive moment. Would he or would he not walk her down the corridor immediately? Abruptly and cunningly she changed her look: she pouted, her mouth went hard. He rose to the challenge and he rose to the bait.

Follow me, Madame.

He led the way down the corridor and unlocked cabin number 20. This berth was usually kept for last-minute arrivals who tipped well. But from the upper-class cayack the Schlafwagen attendant was going to refuse payment in money. The lace bedspread on the bunk showed a flying dove surrounded by stars.

Luck is never indifferent; it’s always either with you or against you. At that instant, the attendant, Zsuzsa and Sucus all believed they were in luck. Sucus, because the attendant had left the sliding door of his bureau open. Zsuzsa, because the spare berth was at the other end of the coach. And the Schlafwagen attendant, because when they crossed the frontier, he was going to get his ground rent.

Loudspeakers were announcing the departure in two minutes of the TEN train from platform 17.

Sucus slipped into the attendant’s bureau and slid the door shut. It was no bigger than the crane cabin. The passports of the passengers who had gone to bed were neatly arranged in a pigeonhole above the little table. He picked them, one by one like runner beans, and dropped them into the pocket of his raincoat. Then he slid the door back and walked casually down the corridor, like a man looking for a business colleague who has taken a stroll down the train. As he passed cabin number 20 he heard Zsuzsa exclaim: It’s perfect!

Sucus climbed down onto the platform, deliberately leaving the coach door open so she would be able to jump down.

If you care to give me your passport, Madame, we can arrange the little formalities of the ticket later.

No problem, darling.

The attendant, dumbfounded by the thrill of hearing this word so soon, hardly noticed her squeezing past him fast as a ferret.