John Berger - Pig Earth

“I told you so!”

He pointed, at the bottom of the trench, to a reddish mark in the earth, the size of a small flower.

“Rust!”

“Rust!”

“Catherine!”

The three of them looked down at the pipe at the bottom of the trench.

“It’s in perfect condition.”

“It’s a well-turned pipe.”

Jean-François jumped down and scratched at it with his knife.

“The metal is shiny underneath.”

“I knew it when we saw the rust.”

“It was there all the time,” shouted Nicolas.

“The pipe under the field was there all the time.”

“Exactly one metre down. Measure it.”

Jean-François measured it.

“Exactly one metre.”

“All we do now is to follow it.”

“The spring should be here.”

They stood looking down at the coarse grass.

“We’d have found it yesterday if we’d gone on,” Nicolas shouted. He surveyed everything: the snow peaks, the rockfaces, the white forest, the ledges of land, the valley. “You’d have found it, Catherine, if you’d dug another two metres by the apple trees.” He gazed up at the spaceless blue sky. “I’d have found it if I’d dug upwards instead of downwards! And Jean-François found it where he said he would!”

Impatiently Catherine started cutting the turf. The two men ambled away, opened their trousers and pissed.

They unearthed the reservoir after half an hour’s further digging.

“It’s a huge stone,” announced Jean-François, “it must be two metres wide, the lid.”

Nicolas peered at the flat stone being uncovered. “Where could he have found a stone like that. From La Roche!”

“We’ll need crowbars to prise it off.”

“Is it all one stone?”

“He placed it well, he knew how to place it, did Mathieu. I told you he was cunning.”

“It’s going to weigh a ton!”

“How did he get it here?”

“It’s huge.”

“As huge as a tomb.”

“It’s Jésus’ tomb!”

“Jésus’ tomb,” repeated Catherine.

Jean-François scraped at the stone, his unshaven face almost touching it.

“We’ve got to roll it away.”

Catherine went to fetch what bars she could find in the stable. They forced in two to steady it, and they used one to prise with. The flat stone did not shift. All three strained to use all their weight.

“Jésus’ … tomb!”

“We’re opening it.”

“Op — en — ing!”

“Up!”

“Up!”

“What’s inside?”

Jean-François peered through the narrow space under the prised-up flat stone.

“Shit!”

“He says Jésus’ tomb is full of shit!”

“Fifty years of shit!” said Catherine.

“Slide it now.”

“Gently.”

“There!”

In the great current of their triple laughter, words they had already used surfaced, turned and eddied, disappeared, reappeared and were carried on, submerged by the laughter.

— Jésus, Marie and Joseph!—

— Mathieu knew what he was doing!—

— It was easy for him.—

— It’s big enough to dip a sheep in.—

— The tomb of Jésus, that’s what it is.—

They plunged in their arms up to their armpits, to find where the outlet pipe was. Their arms came out black. With a bucket they began emptying out the sediment, until the water no longer overspilled.

“Run to the bassin , Catherine, and see if it’s coming.”

“It’s coming,” she screamed. “It’s coming out brown like coffee.”

The sun had set before they stopped dredging.

The men carried the tools to the house. Close against the wall, in the shelter of the eaves, water gushed out of the mouth of the pipe. As it fell, it became tangled and silver.

Inside the kitchen it was warm. Catherine strode around the room, particularly between stove and table, serving.

“Sit down, woman!”

“I never expected you to come today,” she said.

“Tonight it’s going to freeze.”

“The water from the spring will never freeze,” she said.

“Today is the last day we could have dug.”

“This morning I never said you’d both come.”

“Catherine, you have always expected too little,” Jean-François announced.

“Listen a moment!” roared Nicolas.

The three of them placed their knives on the table and through the window they listened to the frivolous sound of the running water.

The uprights are pine

the rungs are ash

between each rung

the grass of months is pressed

hard as a saddle

At the foot of the ladder

on her back

belly distended

like a grey risen loaf

a dead ewe

legs in the air

thin as the legs

of a kitchen chair

she strayed yesterday

ate too much lucerne

which fermenting

burst her stomach

the first snow

falls on her grey wool

a vole in the dark

systematically

eats the ear on the ground

at daybreak two crows

haphazardly peck

the gums of the teeth

her frosted eyes are open

Every ladder

is lightheaded

on the topmost rung

the seeds have flowered

into the colours of the world

and two butterflies white

like the notes of an accordion

pursuing

touching

parting

climb the blue sky

Far above the ladder’s head

instantaneously

their white wings change into blue

and they disappear

like the dead

Descending

and ascending

this ladder

I live

SOMETIMES WHEN I listen to the wind howling at night, I remember. There was very little money in the village. During eight months we worked on the land to produce the minimum of what we needed to feed and clothe and warm us for the whole year. But in the winter nature went dead, and it was then that our lack of money became critical. Not so much because we required money to buy things, but because there was so little to work with. This, and not the cold or the snow or the short days or the sitting round the wood stove, is why in winter we lived in a kind of limbo.

Many of the men went from the village to Paris to earn wages as stokers and porters and chimney-sweeps. Before the men left they made sure that there was enough hay and wood and potatoes to last until after Easter. Those who stayed behind were the women, the old and the young. During the winter the fact that I had no father was scarcely remarkable; half the children of my year were temporarily without fathers.

That winter my grandfather was making a bed for me, so that I shouldn’t have to sleep any more with my sister who was soon to be married. My mother was making a mattress of crin. Crin was the hair of the mare’s mane and cows’ tails. Every morning, when it snowed in the night, my mother announced the news in the same way. “He has served us some more!” she said. She spoke about the snow as if it were uneatable food.

After the cows had been milked, my grandfather and I cleared the snow from the courtyard. This done, he went to his carpenter’s bench and I, before going down to school, made sure that no snow was covering the stone sabot. If it was, I brushed it off.

The stone sabot was in the courtyard near the wall, beside the door to the vaulted cellar where the potatoes and turnips and a few pumpkins were kept. When we cleared the courtyard we did not always clear right to the edges, and so there was a risk that the stone sabot might disappear under the snow. Winter was the season of disappearances. The men went away. The cows were hidden in the stables. Snow covered the slopes, the gardens, the dung-heaps, the trees. And the roofs of the houses, covered by the same snow, became barely distinguishable from the slopes. Not since I first found the stone sabot had I let it disappear.