John Berger - Lilac and Flag

He turned round to face Zsuzsa. No one was there, yet the word forgie fan persisted in his head and became part of the music that was still playing, and towards which he now walked. In the ballroom Sucus danced alone through the throng of dancing passengers. He was now sure to find her. Forgie fan .

On B Deck Naisi passed a casino. He could feel the quiet of held breath through the curtain, and this he could not resist. He slipped in. Zsuzsa was not there. The croupier wore a silver suit with wings on its back. When Naisi approached, the wheel was turning slowly, the ball jumping like a finger that teases over the spine’s vertebrae. It stopped on seventeen. The players who had lost turned away.

Tell me what you wish, sir, said the croupier, smiling at Naisi, are you playing to lose?

Nope.

To win then. You wish to win.

No, to gamble.

You want to gamble, really?

Yes, to risk all.

Passengers have little to risk, sir.

I’ll find something.

If you want to buy chips, sir, the bank’s over there.

The cashier was a boy of ten wearing white gloves.

Listen, Naisi said to him, I’ve seen you before. You lived on Rat Hill, didn’t you? Your name’s Kaddour, you died of typhoid fifteen years ago.

The boy nodded, smiling.

Listen, Kaddour, I need to shoot for the sky.

Then tell me what you’re buying with.

I’ve got a piano in my cabin.

The boy shook his head, although he still smiled.

If I win, said Naisi, supposing I win, I need to collect a bundle, a figure with countless noughts, Kaddour.

If you want to win, said the boy, I’ll give you five chips, if you want to lose I’ll give you fifty. You don’t have to buy them.

No, said Naisi, I need to wager. Can’t you understand that? If I win, I want to say to my sister — you remember Zsuzsa, Zsuzsa’s somewhere on this ship — when I find her, if I’ve won, I want to say to her: Here. They’re yours. Take it. Get everything you want … everything!

Then what are you buying with, Naisi?

Naisi hesitated. His pockets were empty. He could hear the wheel turning behind him, and he imagined how he would go up to Zsuzsa, who at this moment was probably dancing in the ballroom, and how he would tap her on the shoulder … All right, he said at last, I’ve an idea. Can I bet my place in this story? Can I buy with that?

The boy stared at him, his eyes wide open with admiration.

If I lose, said Naisi, I’m erased!

The boy handed him a hundred chips.

Meanwhile the years passed. Naisi won. Hector dreamt of butterflies by night and sang songs during the day. I mostly sat aft on the top deck, looking back towards the ship’s wake. I love the way the white turbulence of the water turns to calm eastern, and I love the surf as it disperses and recedes and becomes like pieces of lace clinging to the ocean’s skin.

Sucus and Naisi met at the top of the heron staircase.

No? asked Naisi.

No.

Then she must be on C Deck.

You go forward and I’ll take the stern.

I’ve just won a bundle for her, said Naisi, now she can have everything. Everything.

I told her, said Sucus, I told her when we did the passports, that I wanted to take her to the village and now we’re going there, we’re going to Lucky-Horse-with-a-Broken-Leg.

The two men were dreaming of Zsuzsa’s pleasure.

Aft on C Deck there was a hairdresser’s. He looked carefully under each dryer to make sure the woman sitting there wasn’t Zsuzsa. Next to the hairdresser’s was a cinema. How was he going to tell in the dark whether she was there? He went and stood in front of the screen and cried: Lilac, I love you! Then he waited. If she was there, she would reply. The audience was quieter than ever. Lilac, I love you! Silence. He turned round to look for the first time at the picture on the screen. He saw Zsuzsa. Zsuzsa was washing his hair outside the Blue House.

Out on deck the wind was plucking at the rigging and the white paintwork was dazzled. The ship had reduced speed and the water had changed its character. It was no longer ocean but inland sea, without swell and almost without waves. Its calm corresponded to Sucus’s conviction of being forgiven. Leaning over the ship’s railing, he saw a sheep’s head, apparently floating in the water below. The sheep was alive. Its head turned. He saw another, then another. The ship was passing a whole flock of sheep. They couldn’t be swimming, he told himself, their feet must be on the ground.

Amidships the two men met

So she’s in her cabin, said Naisi.

I think she’s forgiven me, Sucus said.

I told you …

You said there were things which are unforgivable.

I said that too. Let’s try the cabins.

They’ll be locked.

No problem. The purser calls them cabins, but you know what they really are.

Yes, said Sucus, our tombs.

So we just read what’s written on them. We’ll find her in no time. In no time. Have you been in your cabin yet?

I’ve been too busy searching.

You’ll be surprised when you go in.

Tell me.

It’s a stable full of cows!

Shit! said Sucus.

You must have chosen it.

They looked at each other, surprised by what the heart claims and the mind doesn’t know.

The ship had reached the Aravis mountains. It was early morning and the grass it was sailing over was still white with frost. The cuckoo was already repeating his call. The ship’s engines were making less noise than a tractor. Redstarts, chaffinches, coal-tits, swallows flew, chirping, warning, singing, between the orchards and greniers. I could hear them from my chair on deck. Everybody and every creature that morning had a hundred years to live. As the sun rose, the grass lost its frost and became green.

The black branches of the fruit trees, at the level of the lowest portholes, had just opened into white flowers, but their leaves were still folded. On the starboard side of the valley, behind a chapel, a giant apple tree in blossom looked like a cloud, the size of a pocket handkerchief. Only the rockface above the village was still half veiled in mist. As the sun rose higher, the fields on every side changed colour. From green to radiant yellow. They changed, as millions of dandelions opened their petals together.

I’ll do F Deck, you do E, said Sucus, and, walking slowly down corridors of cabins at the level of the fruit trees, he read inscription after inscription. None mentioned Zsuzsa. Naisi came running down a companion way from the deck above and grasped Sucus’s arm.

No?

No.

Naisi, listen, supposing — supposing she’s not on this ship!

Then she’s alive.

Yes?

Yes.

She’s alive!

I read it from the start, from the first evening I arrived, mused Naisi. Nobody can dream of how many different kinds of happiness there are on a ship like this.

The ship cast her anchor. And one by one the cows in Sucus’s cabin came down the gangway to the meadow. They placed their feet with great deliberation and care, like city women in high-heeled shoes do when walking over cobblestones. Once they reached the grass, they kicked up with their hind legs, they jumped, they charged each other with their horns, and they ran in circles. Delphine, who had had six calves, leapt as high as a goat.

I was sitting under my pear tree when the white ship sailed away to become the mountain that is always covered in snow. The cows waded deep into the grass of my orchard where they tasted, smelt, licked, swallowed, and ate so much that when they lay down under the trees to chew, they dozed. Sucus was stretched out in the grass not far from where I was sitting.

You see on the adret , he told me, you see the field up there, you see its yellow? That’s the yellow of Zsuzsa’s earrings, the ones which were big enough to pass a lemon through.