John Berger - Lilac and Flag

On another deck, in another cabin, Officer Frey, the policeman Naisi shot dead the day before during the siege of the Blue House, was preparing brochettes of fish. He was dressed in a loose anorak, like an Eskimo, with a hood over his head. The walls of his cabin were made of logs and had bearskins nailed to them. The grill of an electric oven was already alight, ready to cook the fish he was preparing. By his bedside lay a husky. Over the cabin radio came an Arctic weather report announcing temperatures of minus forty centigrade. He too was happy.

Sucus and the Superintendent were among the last to embark, and I received them as they came up the gangway together.

Welcome Superintendent, I said to Hector. How well you look! On C Deck you’ll find a bar called the Café de la Paix. A young woman who serves drinks there has already prepared a glass for you.

To Sucus I said: In cabin 316, the one next to yours, there is someone waiting to see you, little redstart.

Come in, said Naisi, when Sucus knocked on his cabin door.

It’s you! I thought you’d be gone already! said Sucus.

Make yourself at home.

What a cabin you’ve got!

The white roses knocked me over, said Naisi.

They’re snow queens.

Sucus went over to the porthole. I can see the Hotel Patrai, he said.

I can’t, said Naisi, nowhere.

Beyond the storage tanks there.

Nowhere.

Not those, the Exxon ones.

Show me your wound, said Naisi.

Sucus took off his shirt. By his heart there was a scar, with stitches still in it, in the form of a Z.

I never thought you’d be on this ship, Sucus said again.

She leaves every third day.

I thought every night.

Once, long ago, she used to. The schedule changed in Jerusalem at the time forgiveness began.

You talk about forgiveness like a bogey, Naisi.

Everyone on this ship is happy. So many passengers, and not a single tragedy, no grief!

Hundreds of passengers?

Thousands.

I heard what happened from Pasqua, said Sucus.

This ship’ll never take him! said Naisi.

You think he’s immortal?

They’ll throw Pasqua in the water for the crabs. He’ll be taken nowhere.

And the bogey’s forgiveness?

You’re forgetting something, Brother-in-Law. There are certain things which are unforgivable.

Do you know what I did? asked Sucus.

You used a Beretta 921. A black villain, isn’t she? I adore the Berettas. With her little black tail like a pig!

Who told you?

The herons. Tzaplia in Russian. Creatures from far away who bring a message.

So they know everything, the herons.

Not everything. Only the Devil knows all. Which is why ignorance is good. Stay ignorant, Brother-in-Law.

Where do you see the herons?

They come when the music plays.

It’s bound to come back, the grief, said Sucus.

Where are you going? asked Naisi later.

To the village, my father’s village.

Funny how our fathers come back, isn’t it? I’ve been thinking about it. Once they could save us from everything, our fathers, and so we go on believing it. I guess that’s why I’m going to Aleppo.

Do you know what I did, Naisi?

With the little black villain, yes.

It’s bound to come back, the grief.

Let’s get a drink, said Naisi. There’s a bar on the deck above with a little dancing lawn out back.

The two men walked slowly up a wide staircase, between two mosaics the colour of a lake depicting many sorts of birds, and in the foreground of each one herons.

Tzaplia , said Naisi, nodding at them.

Do you know what I did, Naisi?

Yes, I told you.

Naisi …

I’m listening.

Have you seen Zsuzsa on board?

Zsuzsa!

She has to be here.

You’re out of your mind, Brother-in-Law.

I killed her.

You could never have done that. Never.

Sucus killed Zsuzsa, whispered Sucus.

There are words said which have no expression. Their flatness says all. Before these three words Naisi opened his arms, and Sucus flung himself between them. For several weeks they stayed like that, embraced at the top of the stairway.

Installed at a corner table in the Café de la Paix, Hector was singing. As he sang, he looked softly but fixedly ahead, as if peering at a rock a few feet from his face. In this rock he heard other voices singing the same songs from his childhood.

A barmaid brought him a double mommi. Placing the ice-cold glass on the table, she poured in the water, for she knew exactly how strong Hector liked his drink, and the liquid turned milky, like a pearl. Then she sat down and quietly sang with him. Days passed before he noticed her, but when at last he did, his face broke into such a broad smile that he had to stop singing.

You know all the words? he enquired.

I learnt them for you.

Let me get you a drink.

I don’t need one.

My wife always needed a drink, said the Superintendent. When she drank her first glass at eleven in the morning, she raised her thin child’s arm way above her head and her little feet in buckled shoes had to trot fast to keep up with the adult legs crossing the lawn by the dovecote, whose beady birds frightened her, and when the first gulp of liquor lifted the first weight off her head, her father’s large hand, more protective than Achilles’ shield, grasped hers, at eleven every morning, and they walked together, the dead father and the frightened daughter, across the gravel path to confront … whatever the day might bring. I know all that now.

I want you to be happy, said the woman opposite him.

Then let’s sing again.

They sang: Delà la mer, il y a t’un pré .

It’s beyond me, said the Superintendent, how you remember every song.

All of us purser’s staff, all of us on this ship, explained the barmaid, are volunteers.

You know every song I know.

We had not given enough pleasure during our lives. So to make up for it, we volunteered as crew on this ship’s world cruise. A world cruise takes one minute.

Let’s sing “Sweetheart, Your Eyebrows Are Pencil Thin,” said Hector.

The ship had long since weighed anchor. On the open deck it was dark, or dark again. The waves of the black water were slow and wide, like those of an ocean.

A tanker passed by to port, but the officer on her bridge saw nothing and her radar screen recorded nothing, because, to other vessels at sea, the white ship was now indistinguishable from the night.

We have to find her, Naisi finally said at the top of the staircase, she must be on board.

I’ll take A Deck, said Sucus, and you take B, as soon as one of us finds her … we tell the other.

Below-deck everything was lit like a mountain slope of snow at noon when there’s not a cloud in the sky. Every grain of my ship sparkled that night.

Both men had but a single purpose: to find Zsuzsa. Yet neither hurried, for time could not rob them.

Sucus heard faint music coming from the ballroom at the stern end of A Deck, and he decided to look there first, in case she was dancing. He strolled down an aisle of shops — which was like a street in a city, except that there were no poor — towards the music. Suddenly he stopped before a window to look at a jersey dress, tight-fitting, with black spots like a panther.

At the same moment, he felt a pressure against the back of his knees and against his shoulder blades. He wanted to extend his hand and touch her hip as he usually did, but he did not dare.

He simply stood there without moving, for a year, and towards the end of that time he learnt that only a body can forgive a body, and that forgiveness, if it comes, comes from a honeycomb of tenderness secreted by the bodies concerned. His eyes shut before the shop window, he saw how forgiveness could never be the consequence of judgement. Forgiveness was not a principle, but a brush of lips on closed eyes. The prefix for in forgie fan , Old English, meant, like the Greek peri , enclosing, encircling, embracing.