John Berger - Pig Earth

Mother says she catches marmots and skins them.

My father says she has a fortune hidden up there.

Why doesn’t she have a dog at least to keep her company?

Witches don’t have dogs, they have cats.

If she looks at you, you have to open your mouth — have you noticed that — you can’t keep it shut!

I was walking with my head down looking for mushrooms. With age I have become somewhat deaf. Something made me look to the side. The woman in the black dress, not more than ten metres away, was squatting at the foot of a tree, holding her dress up over her scratched knees.

The passer-by, she cawed, should always raise his hat to the one who is shitting!

I took off my beret and she cawed with laughter.

I think she didn’t recognise me for when she got to her feet and took a few steps towards me, pulling down her skirt, she stopped and exclaimed.

It’s Jean!

I nodded.

Do you recognise me?

You’re the Cocadrille.

No! she said and her laughter stopped dead.

Why are you following me? she asked.

I came up here to look for bolets.

You found some?

What?

Did you find some? she insisted.

I opened my haversack. Her hair was white, the lines to the corners of her mouth were very deep, and down the sides of her face I could see tracks of sweat. Around her lips were spots and traces of dark red from the fruit she had eaten. This, with her lined face and white hair, gave her the macabre air of a prematurely aged child. Or of an old person become childish.

Give them to me. Her eyes were fixed on the bolets I had found.

What for?

They are mine! she claimed.

She believed that whatever grew and had not been planted by man, within a radius of ten kilometres of where she lived, was incontestably hers.

I closed my haversack. She shook her head and turned away, cursing quietly to herself.

So you’ve come back, she said after a minute.

Yes, I’ve come back.

You were away too long. She stared at me with the intense gaze of her blue eyes, which were no more like flowers but like a stone called kyanite.

I remembered the way up here, I said.

You came up here to spy on me.

Spy?

Spy on me!

Why should I want to spy on you?

Give me the bolets then.

No.

Why did I refuse? I had found the mushrooms, therefore they were mine. It was an elementary point of justice. Yet I knew that justice had little to do with my life or hers. I refused out of habit.

She took an empty frail from her sack and began picking. I wondered how she arranged the frails in her sack when they were full so that the fruit would not be damaged.

Whilst you were away, everything changed, she said to me over her shoulder.

A lot must have changed when you left the farm.

I didn’t leave it. They disinherited me.

She moved on, following the fruit, away from me. Soon she appeared to forget that I was there. She bent back a stem on which the berries must have been especially closely clustered.

Thank you, little sow, she cawed. Thank you!

Did you marry out there? she shouted.

Yes.

I forced my way through the brambles so as to hear her better. She wore boots with no stockings and her scratched legs were as lean as the forelegs of a cow.

Why did you come back alone then?

My wife died.

You’re a widower.

I am a widower.

Do you have children?

Two sons. They are both working in the United States.

Money can change everything, she said. She held up her left hand, full of raspberries, pretending that it was full of coins. He who hasn’t got money is like a wolf without teeth. She looked around at the whole forest as if it were the world. And for he who has money, money can do anything. Money can eat and dance. Money can make the dirty clean, the despised respected. Money can even make the dwarf big.

Her using the word dwarf shocked me.

I have two million! she cawed.

I hope you keep them in a bank.

Fuck off! she swore. Fuck off and get away!

She pointed as if pointing at a door and ordering me out of a room rather than a forest. Everyone in the village said that she was fearless. I don’t think this was true. What she counted on was inspiring fear in others. She knew that people were frightened of her. Now she was angry because she had told me about her savings; she had probably intended to keep this a secret. If I went obediently she might assume that I was not interested. If I insisted upon staying it would be tantamount to admitting my curiosity. So I left.

It is said that large mushrooms are large from the moment they first appear. One morning there is nothing, and the next morning the mushroom is there as large as it will ever be. A small mushroom is not a young large one. It will stay small, as the Cocadrille stayed small.

Occasionally, as I went on looking for my mushrooms, I saw her faded blue sunshade in the distance. Its blue was like the colour of her eyes. They had lost none of their colour with age. They had simply become dry, like stone.

Towards midday I found the largest bolet I have ever seen. I looked at it for several minutes before I saw it. Then suddenly it stood out from its surroundings of fern, moss, dead wood, grey pine needles and earth — exactly as if it had grown from nothing before my eyes. It was thirty centimetres in diameter and thick like a round loaf of bread. Sometimes I dream of finding mushrooms and even in my dream I say to myself: Don’t pick them straight away, admire them first. This one weighed two kilos and was still fresh.

I walked to another part of the forest where the pines are not spruce but larches, and where the earth is covered with a carpet of turf as soft as an animal’s stomach. There I planned to eat my lunch and afterwards, as has become my habit, to sleep a little. I put my beret over my face to keep the sun out of my eyes. And as I lay there, before I fell asleep, I thought, I must look like an old man who never left his country. This thought along with the mushrooms I had found, the little wine I had drunk, the softness of the turf, was a consolation. I sat up to look once more at the giant bolet in my haversack. It too was a confirmation that I had come home.

God in heaven!

If she hadn’t sworn, she wouldn’t have woken me. A platoon could march on the turf there without making a sound. She was holding the bolet which was as large as a loaf and staring at it. The strap of my haversack was already over her shoulder. She saw me sit up. This in no way deterred her. With her exaggeratedly long strides she was making off towards the other part of the forest. Why didn’t I protest? To lose all the mushrooms I had gathered during the morning, to lose the largest bolet I had ever seen, and to lose a haversack into the bargain was a shouting matter. I could have run after her, picked her up and shaken her. I stayed there on the ground. All the stories I had heard about her were true. She was shameless. She was a thief. I had no doubt she would sell my mushrooms. Why had she not asked me for them once more? I might have given her some. The idea came to me that this time, and this time only, I would let her have what she had taken.

I need my haversack, I shouted.

You know where I live!

She bawled this as if it were a complete justification of what she had done.

A few days later I went to retrieve my haversack. Half an hour’s walk along the road which climbs east out of the village brings you to a stone column on top of which is a small statue of the Madonna. She stands there arms relaxed, palms of her hands facing the road as if waiting to welcome the traveller. Either side of the Madonna are railings because, behind her, there is a sheer drop to the gravel of the river Jalent, sixty, seventy metres below.