John Berger - Lilac and Flag

Right foreleg, I’d say, Papa.

So the man gave the order: Pitch camp here tonight. And they stayed. They never struck camp again. They discovered the valley, the green valley they were dreaming of. They found it good. They built houses on the adret , where the church now is.

A nurse walked down the aisle between the beds of infirm and wounded men, half of whom were remembering their villages or their mothers. Sucus hid the bottle. The nurse changed Clement’s drip-feed. When she’d gone, Clement whispered to Sucus.

Give me another gulp … My old friend Dédé, he’s from the village and I was talking to him about you last month. He’s with a building firm these days, he said he might be able to help. They’ve opened a new site on Park Avenue. They need to hire men. He said you should ask for a man named Cato and say you came from Dédé. Promise me you’ll try.

It’ll be too late by now.

Who knows? I want you to promise.

And supposing the horse had broken its fucking leg in some other place?

Then we wouldn’t be here!

You don’t think somebody a bit like me, Papa, might have slipped out somehow?

Clement shut his eyes and his hands felt for the gentian scarf.

I wouldn’t be here, nor would you.

So here we are in this goddamned Troy without jobs. Here we are in the month of July. And you want me to stand up and say thank you for a horse’s broken leg a thousand years ago. Thanks to his leg — no, thanks to his broken leg we’re drinking gnôle!

That’s history, son. Clement didn’t open his eyes.

And what we live now is what? asked his son.

Don’t ask me. I don’t know. It’s not history. It’s a kind of waiting. His bandaged hands were clenching the scarf.

I know a man who works at Budapest Station, said Sucus. When you’re better maybe he could fit you into a freight car. How many days would it take to go back, Papa?

With you! Clement’s eyes were still shut: the judas slits were still closed. I want to show my village to you, my son. I want to show you the house where I was born, the church where your mother and I got married, the chapel where Jean seduced the Cocadrille, the factory where they make molybdenum, the pass of St. Pair where the ravens fly, the blueberries and the bolets … Promise me, Sucus?

What do you want me to promise?

Promise me!

I’m afraid you must leave now, said a nurse, visiting hours are over.

Promise me to go to Park Avenue, whispered his father, and bit his under lip.

Sucus walked down the aisle between the hundred beds and made for the door. The white bedspreads were all identical, and each one was pulled over a distinct pain. Sucus thought the helplessness of the men under the covers was worse than their pain. I don’t want to live to be more than forty, he told himself. By then Sucus will have done all he wants. When I’m forty, before Sucus gets to this, I’m going to see Sucus dies. Then he thought of Zsuzsa and her arse, and he thought of where his hand felt under and behind her, and where there was no end to her.

The thought made him hurry. He took the stairs three at a time and was out of the building before he knew it. Several beggars stood on the hospital steps, hands extended. He paused before one. May merciful Heaven bless you and give you what you need, the white-haired man mumbled. Sucus leapt down the remaining steps.

Pig’s Runt! the beggar spat after him.

On the pavement a woman was selling flowers and a man, pretzels. The flowers were red as blood and the pretzels smelt of kitchens. Without hesitating he stepped off the pavement and ran into the six lanes of traffic. Suddenly, between two coaches, he turned round and ran back, past the vendors on the pavement, up the steps, towards the hospital. There was a crush of people round the main entrance, so he made for a side door. There he found himself face to face with a lion.

The lion was waiting for him. Sucus put out his hand to touch the lion’s mane, and came to his senses. The life-size animal, carved from lion-coloured marble, was only a few centimetres thick and in low relief. The arch behind the lion, the vaulting, the passageway, the tiles along the floor, the door at the end, all were false; they had all been made to deceive and to please when the building was a palace.

Trembling, he pushed his way through the crush around the main entrance and rushed up the stairs to the ward where he had left his father.

Clement’s bed was surrounded by screens. Even from far off Sucus knew it was his father’s bed. There were some people behind the screens. He could see their feet. One man and two nurses in stockings.

What’s happening? he asked.

He’s gone, said the Russian.

Clement is standing before me. He is wearing the coat of bees. It is as warm as bearskin and as thick. But like any swarm, it is alive. The bees, unlike the bear, are not dead. They are calm, sweet-tempered, rather quiet, but they are alive, moving, vibrating and concentrated on their queen. It is a perfect fit, in the form of a pilot’s jacket, tight round the neck and sleeves and waist, and full across the chest and shoulders. Black flecked with orange. From far away, you’d say an Irish tweed. Close up, the flickering of every bee is visible. Clement loosens the collar. Then, clenching lightly the fingers of his hand, he pulls an arm out of one of the sleeves. I step forward to help him. I hold the shoulders so he can withdraw his second arm. Not a single bee is crushed and, naturally, not a single bee flies away. The coat is murmuring too. This is the only thing that has changed. The murmur of the bees has grown louder. I hang the coat on the branch of a plum tree. Bees love the smell of its leaves. I smooth the hair round Clement’s big ears. So I’ve come, he says.

One of the nurses in the public ward of the hospital for the poor came out from behind the screen. She had the severe face of somebody who has given many years of her life to charity, who has struggled night after night, alone, with indifference.

Who are you? she asked Sucus.

I’m the son. He was my father.

I’m afraid I have to tell you, young man—

I know — he’s gone!

Behind her he could see the male porter in a white coat and the other nurse. They were lifting something up.

Would you like to come with me to the office?

He ran. Between the beds, down the stairs and out of the building. He ran faster than the first time. He did not stop to look at the beggars or the flower-seller. His one idea was to get to Cachan. He turned left out of the hospital. He took the Boulevard Cantor. He turned down Kibalchich Street. He crossed Lions. He went over the Hind Bridge. He passed by Swansea and he came into Cachan High Street by the Réaumur Monument. It was only in the lift, going up to the fourteenth floor, that he found the words with which he would break the news to Wislawa. The once blue walls of the lift were covered from floor to ceiling with drawings, initials, names, dates scratched into the paint. There was a drawing of a prick he’d done when he was ten. He took out his father’s knife and scratched in capital letters the word PHUT. And in order to finish it, he went up to the twentieth floor and came down again to the fourteenth.

When people die here they are all buried in the village cemetery. With time, their names, cut in marble, are effaced by the frost, the sun, and the rain; eventually they are forgotten, as the dead have been from the beginning. Yet, nameless, they are still remembered in the course a road follows, in the placing of a bridge over a river, in the way a wall runs, in the paths that lead over the mountains. In Troy it is different. There the names of the dead are forgotten more quickly. The only ones remembered are those with streets named after them. Otherwise, millions disappear without trace, leaving behind no landmark. In the city the bereaved alone carry their dead in their heads. The only memorials are private choices. Here we have so few choices. In Troy they need the dead to help them, because they face so many.