John Berger - Lilac and Flag

She pulled off her Egyptian turban without untying it. Her dark hair sprang up, alive, glistening. Women everywhere, since the beginning of time, washing their hair, brushing, transforming to a glory, combing, platting, curling. It’s the only thing, hair, along with bird’s feathers, that is both apparel and nature. Its lights speak of this: they speak of silk, birds, water, fire, filigree, stars, rags, and dreams. There was a red line across Zsuzsa’s forehead where the folded muslin had been pulled too tight.

The door opened and Sucus returned.

Zsuzsa made room for him on her throne. The centre of the world was now the two of them. If the earth quaked, they would both tremble. When the sun shone, they would lie in the sunshine together.

The old woman’s fast asleep and everything’s shut, he said.

Never mind.

No grandson there. Like I told you, she’s got a few pages stuck together, the old lady.

No, no, she has her reasons, Flag. I knew there was no grandson. That’s why I ordered champagne. She invents him and makes him a waiter, see? There aren’t any waiters around the hotel when she arrives. She’s by herself. So she invents this grandson for company.

And we’ve got nothing to eat!

People tell lies to feel less on their own. Lies do that. They keep you company.

She got off the bed and walked slowly across the room in her bare feet towards the wardrobe. Take Naisi, she said, half of what he says is untrue. But if he didn’t invent, he wouldn’t last a minute. He’d drown in his loneliness. She opened one of the wardrobe doors. Inside was a mirror. He invents for me too. I play along because — who knows? — what he invents may turn out to be true. But I always know what I’m doing. Never forget that, Flag. There are so few people on this earth who know what they’re doing. They kid themselves. They say things for company. But I know. I know. You’re hungry, my poor Flag. You can eat me! Remember what I told you the first day we met — you’re going to eat me for ever and ever, Flag. She opened a second door of the wardrobe.

Tomorrow I’ll buy the sphygmomanometer, said Sucus.

Are you sure? I’m not sure.

I’m dead sure.

We need piles of lettuce, Flag.

Think how much we made tonight!

We invented something tonight, didn’t we?

You were famous.

Do you know what? I’m going to love you even more when you’re fat. She was looking at herself in one of the wardrobe mirrors.

Me fat!

Fat. When we get some lettuce. Then you’ll get fatter. Maybe I’ll get fatter with fewer worries. What would you say if I was fat like Maman?

Never …

The interior of the wardrobe had to be touched to be believed. Its wood hadn’t come from forests but from orchards: cherry, pear, walnut, peach. As large as one of our greniers, it had been made as carefully as a piano. In it would hang or lie folded the clothes of a lifetime. There were shelves, rails, drawers, racks, golden rods, and a small glass box like an aquarium.

What did they keep there? Zsuzsa asked herself. And suddenly she knew what she would keep there: peaches! The coat-hangers were padded and covered with satin.

I like men with tummies, she said, a little purse to pinch here, a little purse to pinch there …

She took off her jacket and put it on the hanger, then she wriggled out of her skirt. Her panties were of cheap black lace.

I’m not going to wear the same rig two days running, Flag. Tomorrow I’ll wear my jersey dress for you. It’s pinkish grey and sleeveless and you can see my back right down to where my arse begins. The shoulder straps are pearly, all stuck with sequins. I’ll wear it with silver stockings. Are you listening, Flag?

As an old woman I love lace. I can spend hours looking at lace. It shows me how there is order in what is undone, that nothing can be hidden, that everything is joined by threads. I see all this when I’m looking through the lace curtains. But I love it most on a body, when there’s flesh glowing through it and the lace and the skin tease each other with what is missing! The last stitches worn …

Or do you want me to wear my panther dress tomorrow? It’s imitation, Flag, made of wool. Made of jersey, like the grey one next to it, but it’s much tighter fitting and its black spots are like paw marks — as if … as if he stood on his hind legs and leant against me!

The wardrobe was empty.

You like my feather boa, Flag? Look! It’s orange and green!

As she said this, she was unbuttoning the poplin shirt she had lifted a month before from an Argonaut supermarket.

It must be a hundred years old, this bed, said Sucus.

It’s for getting married in, she said.

She folded her shirt and placed it on one of the pearwood shelves in the empty wardrobe.

You don’t want to see my dowry, Flag?

The posts are all carved, he said.

With leaves.

Yes, vine leaves.

No, fig leaves, said Zsuzsa.

You think I don’t know the difference between a vine and a fig.

Fig leaves! And after you’ve been married in a bed like that, one day you have a baby in it, she said.

Boy or girl? asked Sucus.

She hesitated. Girl.

What’ll we call her? Sucus laid his head back on the pillows.

Zsuzsa hesitated again. Jeanne, she said, and stepped into the wardrobe as though it were a phaeton to carry her away.

There is only one horse left in the village and it is owned by Jeanne. Jeanne is not her real name but everybody calls her Jeanne because many years ago, when she was young and beautiful, she played the part of Jeanne d’Arc riding a white horse in the village procession on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the saint’s death. Hercule, the young road-mender, fell in love with her. And she married him because he was upright and strong. He could carry tree trunks of several hundred kilos across his shoulders without slackening his pace. As the years went by Hercule began to drink. It was as if his strength became thirsty, and then the roads he mended became thirsty, till finally his memories drank too. Jeanne became the saviour of their farm and of their six cows. Today her horse is grey and thirty years old. Scarcely a day passes when Jeanne doesn’t harness him and take him out to work. Even when there is deep snow, she uses him to pull the triangle that clears the road to their farm. Hercule, suffering from thrombosis of the legs, is nearly bedridden. The most he can do is to walk a hundred metres in his carpet slippers to the drinking trough and feed the chickens. With her horse, Jeanne works the fields, using farm machines which, in the age of tractors, are unfindable anywhere else. From afar, riding her tipcart, she and the horse look like ghosts. Near to, when you see her broad brown face, the colour of leather, and the fury in her eyes, you realise it is a woman you have met on the road.

Yes … Jeanne, repeated Zsuzsa from inside the wardrobe.

Through the tall bay windows of the immense room came the faint sound of a ship’s siren. It was a large ship, far away.

We’ve never spent a whole night together, have we, Flag?

The voice in which she said this, quietly, and yet as if she wanted each word to be so distinct it would carry across the sea like an answer to the ship’s horn, made Sucus lift his head from the pillow.

She was standing inside the wardrobe, framed by its two open doors. And she was naked. She was wearing only her earrings, each one big enough to pass a lemon through.

It’s as familiar to us as bread is, or the sky. It seems we’ve known it without a name all our lives. We start trying to find a name for it, very young, on the way to the village school. We ask the statue of the Madonna, we ask the cows, and the moon, but none of them can give it a name. Old woman that I am, I still don’t know its name. All I know is how it goes through us. Some of us more than others, but, even if only for a moment, it passes through all of us. Sometimes scarcely noticed. Sometimes remembered for ever. It’s a kind of power. But not the power men pump themselves up with. Perhaps this is why it has no name. It goes through us and joins us with the beginning of everything. It offers us the earth, more than the earth, the sky, heaven. When it’s happening we know it. We know it in our tubes and our knees, our hips and the palms of our hands. We become desirable. The man’s desire follows. Yet they can never begin it. They haven’t the invention. Each time they have to begin with one of us. Then, all that has happened is forgiven. We become love. This is why they hate us, those with power. They hate forgiveness. Whilst it’s happening, time stands still. Later in our lives, time takes its revenge on us, as it doesn’t on men. It can’t forget that something in us once forced it to stop. When all is forgiven, there’s no more place for power or time. So they glare with hatred at our love.