John Berger - Lilac and Flag

She was wearing a cap pulled down over her forehead and sunglasses, he continued, chewing a sweet, and as soon as she noticed I’d seen her — Snap! She closed her handbag. All this at a café table beside a newspaper kiosk. So I bought my paper and crossed the street. Then I made a circle round the block and reap-proached the café. Do you follow me, Superintendent, I approached from the opposite direction this time?

Hector got out of his chair and walked over to the window. Go on, he said. Every day he spent more and more time looking out at the Mond Bank buildings, which grew taller and taller. Soon they would be finished, but before then, he would be gone.

I took a coffee standing at the counter, said the man, she was still sitting there and she hadn’t seen me.

Hector saw a figure climbing up an invisible tower to the cabin of the highest of the two cranes. If I were him, he thought, if I were a crane driver and not a bogey …

Then she took off her dark glasses to read the chit so she could pay. And I recognised her! Immediately! I saw who she was. Helen. No question. Helen. Your Helen.

Why are you so sure?

Sure? Why am I so sure? Anna Helen’s face has been on walls all over the city for months. With the reward printed underneath.

It’s a very grainy mug shot, but it’s all we had.

His visitor took another sweet and pulled at his hair.

It was her, he said, unquestionably your Helen. Have you had many people come?

Come?

To ask for the reward.

You’d be surprised.

Anyway, I didn’t stop there, Superintendent, I followed her.

The man’s grey hair was sparse but curly, and already sweaty. He must have pulled at it all his life. It reminded me of a newborn baby’s — the same sparseness and the same dampness.

I followed her systematically. She crossed the city on foot. Already suspect, don’t you think? I trailed your Helen, street by street.

So he’s arrived, muttered Hector.

Who’s arrived, Superintendent?

The crane driver.

I’m telling you I know where the most wanted woman in Troy lives!

Where?

Here’s her address.

The man held out a slip of paper. Hector left the window and read the address.

In Gentilly … How do you know she lives there?

At first I couldn’t believe my luck. Let me be frank with you, Superintendent, the reward is going to help us out with my pension. A million! You’ve got all the information you’re asking for there in your hands, Superintendent.

It seems unlikely.

I saw where she went in, but I couldn’t take the lift, so I didn’t know which floor she was on. Do have a sweet now, Superintendent, you’ll find them excellent. Then I was lucky a second time. I was hesitating, waiting in the street below, and suddenly she opened a window to shake out a carpet. The fifth floor!

Hector went back to the window. I’m listening, he said. The father crane was passing over the jib of the mother crane.

I took the lift and there I found two doors on the landing. So I rang both bells. No answer. This encouraged me, Superintendent, encouraged me because, after all, I’d seen her, she couldn’t have left! If she didn’t answer, it was because she was hiding!

You didn’t think about the risk you were running?

Yes I did, but it was worth it. A million! We’d buy a little place in the country. And I’d already worked out my cover. I was going to be selling insurance. Car. House. Life. I think I look the part, don’t you? Anyway, I rang again. Nothing. I tried to listen through the door. And then the other door opened, and there she stood in the doorway. And it was her. Your Helen.

Hector’s eyes returned to the jibs. To be up there, he thought, turning in the sky above the city.

So now you know where I live, this is what she said. Could I have a few words with you, I asked, it’s about insurance policies. And do you know what she replied?

Who?

The woman worth a million zloti. Tell me.

Forget you ever saw me, Grandad! Meanwhile I was trying to manoeuvre my way to see into the flat. If you want to survive, she whispered, fuck off!

Down here on the ground, thought Hector, only the pain is true. Nothing else.

I know I’ve taken a great risk in coming to see you.

We’ll take the matter up, said Hector. We have your address, and should we make an arrest, you’ll be informed immediately. The sergeant will show you out.

Hector turned to the window, and this time, feeling breathless, he loosened his collar. It was at this moment, after his visitor had left, that I approached him.

Do you remember your aunt who kept goats, Hector? One day in the tall grass behind her house she found a dead fox. Around the fox’s sharp teeth there were traces of froth.

Hector leant his forehead against the windowpane.

Your aunt was asking herself what she should do and you appeared. Do you remember? You were fifteen.

Look what I found first thing this morning when I went out to pee! she said to you.

Leave it to me, you replied and prodded the animal with the toe of your boot.

Should I phone the Mayor? your Aunt Helen asked.

No, Auntie. Forget it. You got a pick?

There’s one in the hen house.

I’ll bury him, you go and make us some coffee, you said.

Whilst your aunt was grinding the coffee in the kitchen, Daniel, the postman, arrived.

Do you know who’s dead? he asked you.

César at Sous-Chataigne?

Yes.

A strange thing happened to me this morning, it was you who said that, Hector. I wanted to have a shit, you said, so I came over to this wall here, I slipped off my braces, and I squatted down—

God Almighty! yelled the postman. I didn’t see it. Is it dead?

I felt something tickling my arse, you lied.

Not grass! said Daniel, beginning to laugh.

Imagine if I’d shat on it, you said.

You don’t get rabies if you shit on a dead fox, said the postman.

I’m going to bury him double quick, you said, two metres, not a finger less.

Meanwhile your Aunt Helen was listening to the whole conversation through the window, holding her ribs and swaying on her hips with laughter. You men! she whistled, you can’t even let an old woman pee on a dead fox with rabies!

For years after you left the village, she used to go on telling this story, and then she would add with pride: And today my nephew, today he’s in Troy, on the police force.

There was a knock on the door.

Come in.

Report just received, sir, concerning the passports stolen from the Trans Europe Night.

When?

A week ago.

I remember, we drew a blank.

A man with one of the passports was picked up last night at the airport. Goes by the name of Pende. He’s wanted on a number of narcotics charges by the heavies. Under interrogation he grassed.

On who?

He said he procured the passport from one Naisi. We had Naisi in here. You ordered his release.

There’s nothing I don’t remember, said Hector.

According to the description of the railway police, it seems the decoy woman may have been Naisi’s sister. As for her partner, it could be a sharpie who goes by the name of Sucus. Lives in Cachan.

Do we have anything on either of them?

On the bozo, no. The bimbo’s a stripper working in the Sankt Pauli.

Where’s Pende now?

At the C.I.A.T.

Seeable?

Yes sir.

I’ll be over, said Hector.

SHE WAS HIS first client. Sucus had installed himself on the corner of Third Street, a few doors down from Flores Bar. She was wearing a sleeveless dress with a taffeta bolero over her shoulders. When she sat down, she took off the little jacket and placed it on her lap. Sucus wound the elastic wrapping around her massive arm. Her flesh sagged like underdone pastry, and the way she held her head and the way she questioned with her insistent lustreless eyes proposed that all flesh everywhere was derisory. There are prostitutes whose disdain goes further than that of most nuns. As his fingers touched her, arranging the wrapping, Sucus could feel the heat of her body and it was like no heat he had ever imagined coming from a woman, for it was dry, as dry as a cricket’s legs.