John Berger - Lilac and Flag

I must kiss Mother goodbye! She’s waiting on the platform!

The train began to move. Sucus, alarmed that she had not yet appeared, was about to jump back on. But there she was in the doorway, triumphant. She landed on the platform as lightly as a magpie.

The Schlafwagen attendant, on the steps of his wagon, shouted, with furious regret, as the train gathered speed:

Your luggage, Madame, your luggage!

In order not to draw attention to herself, Zsuzsa turned and waved at the departing train. When the other people began to drift away, she followed the crowd.

You got them? she whispered.

Fourteen.

Slowly he took her hand and put it inside his father’s raincoat so she could touch the passports. She felt the whole wad of them. Then, smiling hard, she let her head fall from side to side like an idiot puppet. They both fell silent, suddenly exhausted. They were in a Métro going north.

It goes through the mountains where my father came from, the TEN.

Faraway mountains, she said.

At the other end of the coach a man started to sing, standing up. He was singing not for his pleasure but for money.

Why don’t we go there? asked Sucus.

Don’t be stupid.

We could take tomorrow’s train.

We could, yes.

We’ve got the cash.

First-class?

If you want, Lilac.

What would we do when we got there?

I’ve got a wooden house on a mountain.

You told me you’d never been there.

My father’s house. High up on the cliff-face, near a waterfall. We could live in it.

The Métro stopped at Temple. Many people got on, among them two dwarfs who took the seats behind Sucus and Zsuzsa.

You said everything was milk in your father’s village!

That’s what he used to say. Milk’s the only thing we have to sell in the village. If I heard it once, I heard him say it a hundred times.

The singer was now singing “Guantanamera.”

Naisi says you milk goats.

He says whatever comes into his head.

It’s not true?

Who knows?

You can kill chickens!

I can kill Schlafwagen attendants!

Fourteen, Lilac. That makes seven hundred thousand.

Let’s spend the night at the Hotel Patrai.

Where do you think it is?

It’s beyond Chicago. You can see it from Rat Hill. Across the bay. A big place covered with turrets like a cathedral. Let’s go there, Flag.

Behind them, the two dwarfs were also talking.

I’m nervous, said one of them to the other.

No need.

Suppose they drop us on the floor?

Can’t happen, there’s too many of them.

Suppose they toss us through a window!

Unlikely.

Are they young and strong?

Around your age, Samuel.

And the women …

They arrange the contests, if you ask me, for their women!

The women get excited. They love catching us, five, six, seven of them, holding the sheet out. When we bounce up we touch their tits. And they shriek.

The train stopped at Spallanzi.

How high do they throw us? asked Samuel, the younger dwarf.

As high as they can, up to the chandeliers.

I’m still nervous.

You can’t expect to earn big money without a little risk.

I don’t mind dancing …

It’s they who do the dancing, Samuel, not us!

We do the falling! said Samuel.

“Guantanamera” came to an end and the singer walked down the aisle, cap in hand. Most of the passengers gave him a coin or two. The elder dwarf found his wallet and slowly drew out a bank note.

You’re kings! Two kings! slurred the singer, who smelt of wine.

Sucus too pulled out a note. He had insisted that Naisi pay them half on rowing in, and half on delivery. He placed the note carefully in the man’s cap. It was a way of saying thank-you.

To the north of Budapest Station lay Sankt Pauli, one of the city’s red-light districts. It consisted of three parallel streets which, in the previous century, had been the quarter of the city’s printers. Now the shopfronts and workshops and living quarters had been converted into bars, strip joints, sex shops, and rooms, hundreds of rooms. Prostitutes lined the three streets there from eleven in the morning. I can tell you how men in Troy referred to them: as cruisers, flatbackers, koorvas, hookers, bangtails. Birds in the hedges have prettier names. But some of their pet names suggested more tenderness: Squirrel, Lorraine Luv, Feather Duster, Luscious Lou. All of these women dreamt of another life, and in this they resembled most people on this earth, but they had a better reason.

At the top of the third street was the most famous and spacious bar of the district, called Flores. On the evening of the passports, Superintendent Hector was sitting in this bar drinking whiskey. He was in a sombre mood. He had left the station in Cauchy Street at eight, eaten in an Italian restaurant, and come on to Flores. He only came here when he was feeling low. He chatted with the girls, who treated him not like a client but like a Seigneur. They knew who he was. They needed to keep out of trouble. They wanted to ingratiate themselves with him, but they’d also been told that he never went with any of them and that he hated silliness. So they treated him like a Seigneur. And this was balm to his wounded soul. Tonight Feather Duster was talking to him:

So they took us out in their yacht, yes, they had a Paraguayan flag, you should have seen what it was like on board, hot showers, a cocktail bar, video, white leather settees, Swedish glass, we laughed fit to kill when one of them said to me: All I want is a tour of the world!

Superintendent Hector wasn’t listening, he was thinking: In two weeks even the girls here will know I’m finished. When I come through the door, Winner may still say, A scotch, Superintendent, it’s my pleasure! For a couple of months, maybe, he’ll continue. Then one day, he’ll say to himself, What the hell, let the old bastard pay for his own jolts. And the new girls will eye me and the old hands’ll tell them, Let that one slide, honey, used to be a bogey, wants nothing, sits there to get a hard-on just watching us, never seen him offer a girl half a glass of bubbly … past it, we let him slide. Every day it’s getting worse, the Superintendent told himself. If I walk out on Susanna, I’m going back, I’m going back to the village.

So we didn’t return till Monday, Feather Duster was saying, it was quite a weekend! Though, to tell the truth, after two days it was nice to get ashore again and walk on solid ground.

Do you know where they were sailing afterwards?

To Izmir, they said.

What did they pay you in?

Superintendent Hector, is that a question I have to answer here in Flores?

Some champagne, Feather?

That would be nice, Superintendent … Dollars, they paid us in dollars, as a matter of fact.

A bottle of the Widow, said Hector.

When they raised glasses to one another, he looked into her eyes. They were unspiteful, insincere, generous. She looked into his and was surprised. She could see it coming before he knew it himself. He poured her another glass, the Superintendent wasn’t drinking. Before she took a sip, his hand was on her thigh. A large peasant hand. Here it comes, she thought. His fingernails began to play like a child’s in a fleece of wool.

Shall we go to my place? she asked when the bottle was empty.

Tell me your number. I’ll join you there.

As she left, Feather Duster opened her eyes big and raised her eyebrows to the girls at the bar. Look what’s got into the bogie, her look said. The Superintendent followed her a minute later.

To get in, to find the way back. The urge is sometimes so strong it will take the hand of anything — shit, piss, blood, whatever is warm, whatever was at home inside. Inside: where we were before we had to learn about life and were thrown out.