John Berger - Pig Earth

I talk to my shadow when the sun is out, and together we calculate the price our loot is likely to fetch. We have become experts, the two of us. And we commiserate together — about the weight of the sack, about the thorns in our hands, about how long we work. Sometimes, like you, we sleep at midday.

Abruptly she pushed back her chair, and went over to the cupboard.

Do you still drink gnôle?

It’s very late, I complained.

The contempt of her laughter filled the room. She poured from the bottle into the glasses.

I sell a bottle of this for nine thousand!

It was the first gentian which I had tasted since my return. It has a very strong taste. The gentian roots taste of the earth and the earth tastes of the mountain.

She knew where every accessible wild cherry tree was. She carried a small ladder with her, no taller than herself, and this enabled her to get up into the tree. When she was well placed, her back against a branch, her boots on another, surrounded by cherries, and the basket hung from its hook at the right level, she could pick without looking. She could stand in the tree with her eyes shut like an owl, and her fingers would find the stalks, instantly move down them and break them off at the hode four or five at a time. With her eyes half shut she scarcely touched the fruit.

She sold her goods to restaurants, herbalist shops, florists, hotel manageresses.

I’ll give you three thousand for the silver thistles, said the manageress, are you deaf, can you hear me? She held out a five-thousand note.

I have no change, said the Cocadrille.

If you never have change, how do you get here every week? demanded the manageress angrily.

By private car!

The manageress was forced to go and change the note. May she rot! added the Cocadrille.

One afternoon there was a cloudburst and she found herself propelled into a crowd of women, who surged through the glass doors of a department store and came to a stop before a glass counter where young women were selling stockings and lace underwear. No sooner had she begun to marvel at the black lace, than she was again pushed from behind, and this time found herself surrounded by other women in a lift. When it went up, she crossed herself and whispered:

Emile, if only you could see me now!

The lift operator, a man of her own age, dressed in a bandsman’s uniform, said to her: Coffee, tea, chocolate, pâtisseries, Madame. The lift doors slid back and the two carpeted ground levels once more coincided.

For the next ten years, every week, after she had sold her goods, she visited this upper floor tea-room. On her way to the tea-room she went to a tobacconist.

What can I do for you today, Madame?

Give me eight hundred Marlboro.

The tobacconist slipped the four large packets into a gold-coloured plastic bag. Carrying the gold-coloured bag, she entered the department store, crossed to the lift and waited for the liftman to address her: Coffee, tea, chocolate, pâtisseries, Madame?

On the fourth floor she went to the ladies’ room. There she locked herself in the lavatory and pulled up her long black serge skirt. Underneath, at the level of her hips, she wore a cloth band. This bandoleer she had made out of one of La Mélanie’s linen chemises. Its pockets were larger than the usual ones for cartridges. Before sewing them she had measured very carefully. Into the double line of pockets she fitted thirty-nine packets of Marlboro.

With these red-and-white packets of what she considered to be tasteless tobacco, she was able to double her income. American cigarettes sold for twice as much on her side of the frontier. After she had arranged her skirt and pulled down her loose cardigan she flushed the toilet and emerged, hat in hand. She arranged her hair in the mirror above the wash-basin.

She had the appearance of a pauper and at the same time she looked wilful. Such a combination in a city suggests madness.

The drinking of the chocolate she ordered in the tea-room was a ritual, and was accompanied by her smoking one or two cigarettes from the single packet she had kept out. She preferred the cigarettes she rolled herself. It was her sense of occasion which made her realise it would have been inappropriate to smoke them in such a setting.

This was the only moment of the week when she sat in company, although she spoke to no one except the waitress. Sitting there on one of the gilded wicker chairs, such as she had never seen until her second life began, sipping her chocolate with grated nutmeg sprinkled on its frothy cream, smoking a perfectly cylindrical cigarette with a long filter-tip, checking from time to time with her stiffened fingers that her bandoleer was in place, she allowed herself to dream of the fulfillment of her plans. She studied the other customers, nearly all of whom were women out shopping. She noticed their hands, their made-up faces, their jewelry, their shoes with high heels. She had no wish to speak to them and she did not envy them, yet the sight of them gave her pleasure. They were a weekly proof of the extent of what money can do. Each month she saved at least half the money which she received for the cigarettes smuggled across the frontier. Never for an instant did she forget what the total of her savings amounted to. Every week this figure encouraged her. It was like a father. It got her out of bed when it was dark. When she set out, before the sun was up, on her walk of twenty kilometres, and her skirt was drenched by the dew which dripped down her legs into her socks, it reminded her that her dress might dry within an hour, if it didn’t rain. When she was hungry, it told her not to complain, for she would eat later. When her back ached and her shoulders were sore and, coming down from the mountain, her knees were knotted and cracked with so much pain that it made her cry out, it reminded her how one day she would buy a new bed. When she talked with her shadow, it promised her that eventually they would move back into the village.

Whilst drinking her chocolate, the total of her savings — she always added on what she was about to receive that day — was as consoling as the music which came out of the loudspeakers high up near the decorated ceiling. Every week, every year, every decade, the amount increased.

When you have enough money, you can stand on your head stark naked!

She said this to a man, accompanied by a woman in a fur coat, who was waiting in the tobacconist’s shop. The woman gave a little scream and the man, thinking that she was begging, dug into his trouser pocket for a small coin. The Cocadrille refused it. I have enough! she hissed at him. I have enough, she repeated to me across the table.

She sipped the gnôle and rolled herself another cigarette.

Soon it will be winter, she went on. Then I’m alone. And the snow forces me indoors. At Christmas I take mistletoe into B.… I get a thousand for a good bunch. The rest of the time, I knit. I can do nothing else. I never learnt to spin like Maman. Anyway I have no sheep. I knit pullovers and ski caps for a shop in B.…

She gulped back the rest of the gnôle.

Next door to the wool shop there is an antique shop. There’s a wooden cradle in the window at the moment. If I had mine, I would sell it. Once I went in there and asked the price of a milking stool. Can you guess how much it cost? If it costs that much, I told them, what would I cost? You could sell me piece by piece. You could ask one hundred thousand for a milking hand. You could ask fifty thousand for a milking arm. How much would you get, I asked them, for a real peasant woman’s arsehole?

She drew on her cigarette.

All winter I knit. There’s nothing here, day after day, except the two needles and me. When a car passes and doesn’t stop — and they never stop — I think of shooting the driver. Why not?