John Berger - Lilac and Flag

He had to walk five doors down the street. He knew the number. It was next to the Golden Fleece. He had a searing pain in his heart. This pain would take any way back in, like a blinded dog who had only its nose, it remembered a nameless happiness. He climbed the stairs to the second floor. Feather was already in her dressing gown.

Scythes! When I was young, I found it strange that they cut as they do cut. Enough to strike a single stone, and the blade’s edge tears like a mouth with a tooth knocked out. The scythe with its silvery edge and black shoulder is so close to blood, far closer than a needle or an axe or a knife. It’s so close to blood because of the thinness of its blade. The thinness of a garment.

Inside the marble hall of the Hotel Patrai there was nothing except a lift made entirely of glass and framed by golden-coloured metal. Even the floor of the lift was made of glass. As soon as Zsuzsa and Sucus entered the lift, its doors closed and they started to ascend, like the Madonna of the Cherubs into the sky, visible from every side.

The whole world can see us! giggled Zsuzsa. You’re sure you’ve got the smash?

Sucus nodded. Then he tapped the glass.

Bulletproof, he said.

When the lift at last stopped, they found themselves in another large hall, this one carpeted and wood-panelled. There were some small trees in tubs and two or three suits of armour.

Not a soul, said Zsuzsa.

It’s one o’clock!

To their surprise, at the reception desk at the far end of the hall sat an old woman rather like myself. She wore black, she had worn hands with arthritic knuckles, her forearms, if they could have seen them, were weathered, and the rest of her body, if they could have seen it, was very pale.

You require a room? she asked, looking at the register.

With a bathroom and a view onto the sea, said Sucus.

You have no luggage? remarked the old woman.

We left it at the airport, said Sucus.

We’re flying out tomorrow, said Zsuzsa, waving her sunglasses, so we only brought our—

Of course, said the old woman.

To Rio de Janeiro, added Zsuzsa.

Where else? said the old woman.

We’d like something to eat in the room, said Sucus.

I’ll send my grandson to take your order. If you’d be so good as to sign here, sir, and settle for the room immediately.

Sucus hesitated. It is difficult to invent a name for yourself on the spur of the moment. All names flee except the one given you by your parents. Finally, he invented Murat Ioannide.

The room is one hundred thousand, said the old woman.

Zsuzsa was looking at one of the suits of armour. Each finger-piece could bend three times. Over the breast the metal was finely engraved. Where his sex was, it made a shape like a small cake tin.

Why not champagne, darling? she proposed, looking straight into the visor.

My grandson will bring up a bottle.

Chilled, said Sucus.

As chilled as the bottle Boris kept in the trough of his yard before he died.

I don’t understand …

No, no, how could you? It was a village story. Here’s the key to your room, sir. On the third floor.

The room was far larger than the Blue House and the levelled ground behind it. Yet it was almost empty. Zsuzsa stood in the doorway transfixed. From the high ceiling hung a chandelier with strings of cut glass. In places, bits of glass were missing and you could see the bulbs. As one of the strings turned, traces of light shot all over the room. Between the two bay windows there was a television, and along half of one wall an immense wardrobe. The varnish had mostly worn off the floorboards which were the colour of grey sand. It was the bed that surprised her most. Neither of them had seen a four-poster before. It had a tattered canopy of yellowish silk, the colour of the bars on the wings of a goldfinch. Around the borders of the whole ceiling, acanthus leaves were modelled in deep white plaster.

What are we going to do, Flag?

Go in and shut the door.

They went in. Zsuzsa stepped out of her shoes and went round the room, touching things. The four posts, the goldfinch canopy, the lace runners on the bedside tables, the handles to the six doors of the wardrobe. She drew the velour curtains of the two windows and looked out into the night.

Once the Hotel Patrai with its private beach had been fashionable with the English, but oil from the tanking station further up the coast had polluted the sea, and now where the bathing huts had once been, there was a hovercraft station. All Zsuzsa could make out was a floating landing stage.

She lit the television and, pulling up her skirt like a whore, she sat astride it. Three cowboys rode between her legs. One fell off his horse. A sheriff entered a bar. Her two brown legs either side of the screen made the highly coloured actors look like toys.

She turned off the TV with her toe and went into the bathroom where the bath had rust stains and brass taps. There she played with the lights, switching them on and off by pulling a cord with a tassle. She came back and sat on the edge of the bed. Now the immense room, and the furniture and the fabrics from another century and another empire, were hers for the night. She took a large pillow and clutched it to her chest, smiling.

Let’s look at the passports, she said.

Sucus handed them to her and she arranged them in a pile on the top of the television. She opened the top one, examining the photograph.

A man, she said. She looked closer. Not one I’d trust.

She handed the passport to Sucus.

He’s American. From Carolina. Born 1957. Has blue eyes.

Any children?

Two.

Do they live with him?

Doesn’t say.

What does he do?

It says Federal Police.

He’s a scuffer?

That’s what it says.

I told you not to trust him, didn’t I? I can see through people, Flag. Like I saw through you in a flash, outside St. Joseph’s. I saw you were good, I saw you were going to be the man of my life. So I don’t have to read, do I? If I could read, I wouldn’t know more.

She picked up the next passport and studied it. You have to guess, she said. Man or woman?

Man.

No. Woman. How old is she?

Forty?

No, she’s my age. What colour is her hair?

Blond.

Wrong again. It’s black like mine.

Zsuzsa placed the passport face down on the TV.

Now for the big question. Think carefully. Is she beautiful?

No, she’s not beautiful at all.

You’re wrong, she’s very beautiful. She’s wearing a dog-tooth jacket, no burns, and pinned to it, there’s a brooch worth ten million.

Whilst saying this, she stretched one leg, then the other, and began to dance slowly past the windows. Sucus turned over the passport she had left lying face down. The small photo showed a bald man in his fifties!

She stopped dancing to watch his reaction. For a fraction of a second, before he bellowed, he looked lost, utterly lost. And at that instant she loved him more than she had ever done.

I think they’ve forgotten our supper, is what she said.

He took the lift down to the reception hall. There was a light by the counter. Near the telephone exchange a green eye was blinking. Otherwise everything was still. The old woman was fast asleep on a settee by the wall. Above the settee was a large poster announcing the films being shown in Troy that week. He tiptoed behind the counter. In the upright pigeonholes, below the hooks for the room keys, stood several passports. He hesitated. Walked round the hall. Tried the doors of a bar and the dining room. Tried the double glass doors of the lift with the word PATRAI written on them in gold. They were locked. No, he decided, no passports.

Zsuzsa sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, beneath the goldfinch canopy, waiting for him. In the book of pictures I found in the presbytery the day Monsieur le Curé Besson came back sooner than expected and closed the book like a shutter, the same book where I found the picture called “Roman Charity,” there was another, which I will remember for ever. It showed the Queen of Sheba in her tent. Outside it was night, the stars in the sky a reminder of how short life is. The entrance to the tent, which was the colour of coral with cream trimmings, was wide open, its canvas flaps drawn back and held in two loops like curtains. The queen’s face was solemn and amused. I think she wanted to be solemn, but she could feel the laughter coming! She sat there in her tent, holding her hands tight between her knees. Zsuzsa, sitting on the bed, reminded me of Sheba.