John Berger - Lilac and Flag

Sucus pulled the tree off the car roof. If you had an axe, I’d cut it for you, he said.

An axe I don’t have, said the man, but a saw, yes.

Whilst Sucus sawed the small tree into a few logs, the man squirmed about inside the vehicle. A vest was hanging to dry from the steering wheel. Where the passenger’s feet would have been was a basin of water. Onto the rearview mirror a picture of the Madonna had been stuck.

I’ll open a beer for you when you’ve finished. It will not, regrettably, be as cold, on such a summer night, as I would wish.

It cuts well, your saw.

Once I used to drive this car, said the man.

The soldiers by the jeeps below were playing with their searchlight. For a moment its beam picked out the derelict Cadillac. Sucus was leaning on the front wing, drinking from a beer can. The owner lay on his stomach on the back seat.

This is my bed now, he said, smoking a cigarette.

I must go, said Sucus.

I must go … That reminds me of my brother, said the man without legs, blowing a smoke ring towards the rear window curtain. My brother is a drinker. At that time he lived in the mountains, rented a house there with his wife. He became close friends with one of his neighbours. They used to shoot clay pigeons together.

I must be going now.

Wait for the end of the story. One evening at the neighbour’s house my brother was drinking wine and eating cheese. The neighbour saw how much he liked the cheese, so he left it on the table with another open bottle of wine and told him to enjoy himself to the full, for he, the neighbour, had to go to bed. My brother finished off the bottle, then staggered drunk out of the kitchen and made his way to the bedroom. The neighbour was already asleep. My brother took off his trousers and was about to slip into bed beside the wife. Piss off! she whispered and grabbed his trousers. And she wouldn’t give them up. My brother was obliged to go home in his shirt tails!

The storyteller on the back seat rolled over onto his side and started to laugh. He gestured with one hand to his missing legs and, choking with laughter, muttered: Could never explain to his wife where his fucking trousers had gone!

When Sucus got down to the road, a tiny figure beneath the lights on the quayside waved at him. It was Zsuzsa and she was running.

You smell of beer. Are you still hungry? she asked.

My head’s turning I’m so hungry.

We’re going to eat, she said.

Zsuzsa led Sucus along a narrow street with bright lights and through a door where there was the smell of cooking and the sound of voices, then down some steps into a cellar.

Here we can’t run for it, he said.

Don’t worry.

A waiter led them to a table.

Do you have calamari? she asked.

Yes, we do.

And goose rillettes?

Yes …

Their table was beside an aquarium. Air was being blown in bubbles into the water. The green weeds were waving like hair. Sucus pressed a dirty finger against the glass of the tank. When one of the fish approached, he slid his finger up the glass towards the surface where the bubbles were. The fish, mouth open, gills flickering, followed the finger and swam upwards. Then swiftly Sucus slid it sideways towards Zsuzsa, and the fish followed.

I don’t understand, he said.

Aren’t you hungry?

I’m starving.

You’re going to eat me, Flag, eat me for ever and ever!

IF I’M NOT mistaken, the third of June was Félix’s birthday. Félix had an accordion whom he called Caroline. He never married. When he was sixty-two, he fell ill with jaundice and was taken away to the hospital. So he had to sell his seventeen cows; there was nobody to look after them whilst he was in hospital. When he came home, he bought six more. He wouldn’t stop, Félix, neither with his cows nor with his music.

The third of June was hot in Troy. When the traffic lights turned red, the waiting drivers hung their arms limply out of their car windows. Only the long cars of the rich were shut tight, for they were air-conditioned. On the beaches girls rubbed in suntan lotion every half hour. In the little workshops of Swansea, an industrial zone of the city, the ceiling fans, set into the brick walls under the metal rooves, were turning at full tilt, but made the air no cooler. On the hill of the Escorial the petals, fallen from the magnolia trees, turned brown. Everywhere the city was grinding the heat into dust. Yet on Rat Hill Sucus could feel a slight breeze coming in from the sea.

Zsuzsa’s Blue House had two windows with white nylon curtains. Behind the left-hand curtain was the room where Zsuzsa’s mother — who worked all night — was asleep on a mattress on the floor. From behind the right-hand curtain, Zsuzsa’s younger sister, Julia, was spying on the man her sister had brought home. He was sitting on a box, his legs stretched straight out in front of him, his eyes shut, his head all white with lather. In the doorway of the same house, leaning against its frame, as if he were a cowboy, stood Zsuzsa’s brother, Naisi. Everyone noticed Naisi’s boots: calf-coloured, shining, turned over at the top, they had golden buckles. His smile was also exceptional. Its cunning was completely open. His was a cunning, the smile said, which you could depend upon.

Think it over, said Naisi from the doorway to Sucus on the wooden box, take your time. There’s no point doing a thing like this if you don’t feel comfortable.

Sucus, eyes shut because of the soap, nodded his head.

Zsuzsa came out of the house next door that was made out of the wood of packing cases with a black bottle in her hand.

What’s that? asked Naisi.

Vinegar.

Maybe you should start a hairdresser’s, her brother said.

Last week it was a tattooing parlour!

The two go together.

Go together?

Both imply trust, Sister!

Naisi pulled a black handkerchief out of his pocket, flourished it in the air and suspended it over the empty palm of his other hand. Then he began to make the noise of a laying hen. Sucus opened his eyes. Naisi lifted up the black handkerchief to disclose, lying in his palm, a small red packet, tied around a hundred times with white cotton. His hen went quiet.

Crack? asked Sucus.

Naisi laughed, stopped, laughed again, touched his nose and then slipped both packet and handkerchief back into his trouser pockets. Slowly he walked away down the hill towards the tanneries.

Not Naisi’s day! said Zsuzsa as she rubbed the soap into Sucus’s head. Look at the way he’s walking. When he walks like that, he’s had bad news.

He just made me a proposition, said Sucus.

Forget it, he’s wild when he’s skint.

She dug her nails deeper into his scalp and scratched. Sucus’s toes curled up with pleasure. She saw them, curled up and splayed out.

Can you do me tomorrow, Miss Crescent Moon? inquired a very old Chinese man with a sunshade who was carrying a bucket of seaweed to his house.

I’m skint too, said Sucus.

We’ll go to the Champ-de-Mars and coffee-job together. Later this afternoon, in time for the visits.

No go, said Sucus.

No go why? she asked laughing.

Somebody swiped my thermos this morning.

And the tray?

The tray was in my hands.

I thought you were a jumping cat.

There’s this guy who calls out for five glasses, over by the big gate where the soldiers are. He holds up his hand and shouts five. One for each digit, finger, from the Latin digitus . So I pour them, put them on the tray and take them across. My back’s turned for about thirty seconds. Then this guy pretends he wasn’t calling for coffee, he wants tea. I don’t have tea. When I get back to my wall I don’t have a thermos either! They must have used a kid to snatch it. If I see that guy again he won’t last—