John Berger - Lilac and Flag

You know I killed her.

I know nothing … It’s better if I take my glasses off, said Hector.

I killed her last night.

I can see a bit better. I don’t want to be taken home to the house.

I killed her last night, I tell you.

I just want to lie here.

What will they put on her?

Take off this holster, will you? It’s too tight.

What clothes do they put on in the morgue?

Slip off the tunic and then it will come. Loosen the buckle.

What clothes do they put on?

Gowns.

She was so beautiful.

There’s a bottle in the sink, pour me a little.

Slowly with feet that brushed the floor Sucus walked over to the sink.

Should be a glass somewhere. Take some for yourself too, said the Superintendent.

I heard the clink of a bottle and the gurgle of pouring, then Sucus’s walk back across the cage.

The dead stay beautiful, said the Superintendent after a gulp, the dead don’t get dirty. They stay beautiful … like my butterflies.

The surprise you were always expecting, said Sucus, when you were a kid, the surprise could come after death.

What was your fight about?

We didn’t quarrel.

Married and you didn’t fight!

I killed her without a word

Open the window more. You’re right, Clement’s son, the surprise could come now, open it.

Every morning when there’s snow, the robin comes to the window and I open it. I hammer the stale bread to make crumbs for him. He hops in and struts around at my feet, his little body puffed up and as round as a tangerine, his legs thinner than matches. Mon gamin , I tell him, tu es le plus fidèle de tous .

Through the locked door there was a dead silence. Then one of them said:

Do you believe in forgiveness?

It was impossible to be sure which one of them it was who asked the question. But it was the Superintendent who spoke next.

There was a curé I remember in the village, the Superintendent said, his name was Hippolyte Castor. Your father must have talked about him. He was related to your father. His sister’s husband had a sister who was married to an uncle of Clement Gex. Each morning the curé Castor walked from the presbytery down to the grocer’s to fetch his newspaper. I can see him now. To everybody he passed he wished a cheerful Good Day. The curé Castor was much respected, and if he was occasionally criticised for his drinking, there was always somebody to defend him, saying: Think of his life! His solitude! Wouldn’t you drink from time to time? Isn’t that reason enough?

Hector paused here, as if there were other reasons for drinking which he wanted to acknowledge but not name.

When the curé Castor came out of the shop, he began to read his newspaper. His feet knew their way back up the hill like a blind man’s. He never for a moment looked up. Sometimes he would pause in midstride, fascinated by a news item, one leg raised off the ground like a hunting dog. Those he passed refrained, out of tact, from addressing him. He saw nothing. He walked very slowly and by the time he reached the presbytery, he knew what had happened in the world during the last twenty-four hours. This man, the curé Hippolyte Castor, said that God forgave. He said forgiveness was divine. He went further. He said if forgiving didn’t exist, then God didn’t exist. He said God was forgiveness.

So we are alone and unforgiven, whispered Sucus.

I’m a policeman, I’m telling you what a priest said.

How can there be forgiveness?

I’m cold. Pass me the blanket.

Suppose I catch the white ship, policeman? It was the first promise we ever made.

Leave the window as it is. The first promise?

With Zsuzsa. To take a ship.

I can see it fascinated you. It’s a Beretta 921. You can take it out.

No.

The best light pistol in the world. It’s not service issue, it’s my own. Semi-automatic. Eight rounds … The pain is bad now, boy.

Where?

Everywhere. Hand it to me for a moment. Here you have what we call a second thought for the first shot. The first squeeze of the trigger is like a safety catch. It doesn’t fire. You squeeze a second time and it shoots. If you want to catch the white ship, take it.

One of the men behind the door groaned.

The place is full of bogeys, policeman. I can call for help.

For God’s sake, don’t do that! Stay with me. Is her real name Zsuzsa?

Her real name was Lilac.

What does she do for a living?

She’s dead. She worked for a gazupie.

I told you, the dead stay beautiful.

There was a thud and a gasp and I asked myself whether Sucus had hit the Superintendent. Then I heard sobbing. I had the impression both men were sobbing.

We’ll go back together, we’ll find the village, we’ll climb up the steps to the Republican Lyre — we’ll order champagne, we’ll sit on the terrace. I’m too old, Hector is too old, but you’re not, you’re Clement Gex’s son. Shout out for us both! We’re back! Hector Juaradoz and Clement Gex’s son are back … back for good, back for ever. Help! Help us!

And Lilac, policeman, can you hear me, I’m shouting so you can hear me, policeman, Lilac called me Flag!

When the shot rang out, I opened the door. It opened as innocently as any unlocked door does. The silence and stillness in the room were equally innocent. Through the open window came the murmur of Troy’s first evening traffic. The two cranes had stopped working. A tiny flag was fluttering from Yannis’s masthead. Hector lay, covered with a blanket, on a surgical trolley, which was undoubtedly kept in the unit for the resuscitation of interrogated prisoners. Head thrown back, mouth and eyes wide open, he was dead. His lips were the colour of the fore wings of the Libythea geoffroji , which is the most beautiful and rare of all the libytheids. The same pale blueish mauve is also typical of the colour of lips after an infarctus attack. A holster, of the type that carries the gun beneath the left armpit, hung, empty, from the handle of an open cupboard beside the sink. Inside the cupboard was a pile of paper towels. Sucus, from whose heart wound blood was still seeping, was sprawled face-down on the white-tiled floor. The Beretta 921, missing from the holster, was hidden under his body. His poor finger was still around its trigger.

MOORED TO THE dockside she dwarfs all buildings in sight. In villages, men, women and children dream of palaces. The poorer the home, the more perfect the palace. And the white ship is a floating palace. All her cabins are first-class and each one is different, with its own furniture and fittings and mementos. Voyagers who were homeless or exiled, passengers who lived all their lives in institutions are given, on my ship, the room of their dreams.

A small detail distinguished her from other liners when she was moored in the Trojan docks: on her seven decks there was not a single lifeboat or lifebelt to be seen. The few passersby who noticed this strange fact argued amongst themselves about what it might mean. Some maintained that lifeboats were automatically ejected from below-deck in case of an emergency. Others shrugged their shoulders and simply asserted that on such a ship, with such a reputation, they were not needed!

Naisi’s cabin was a conservatory such as might belong to an emperor, filled with flowering plants, among the greenery of which stood a piano and a synthesizer. On the floor were carpets from Aleppo whose woven flowers were as geometric and beautiful as the scrolls on banknotes. The colours of their weaving were beyond price. Beiges of honey, and blues of wood smoke in the evening light. Naisi, dressed in a pair of swimming shorts and seated in a wicker chair like a sun god was experimenting with a rendering of “Your Balls Are Hanging Out” on the synthesizer. The wounds in his chest were healed. Their scars had turned into tattoos, just as, over the centuries, gardens turn into flourishes on rugs. The largest tattoo, made from the wound that killed him, showed the palm of an open hand.