John Berger - Pig Earth

The wood of the frame smelt strongly of pine resin. Mixed with wax, this resin makes a good poultice for the cure of sciatica, a complaint from which many of us suffer as a result of carrying heavy loads on the slopes. We bent down together to lift the frame with our hands.

Marius was shouting so that everyone lifted at the same moment.

Tchee! Tchee! Lift!

And again. Tchee! Tchee! Hissssss!

The dead got their forearms under the frame. Bent double over the ground, they cradled the wood as you cradle a baby.

Tchee! Tchee! Hissssss!

Wood is to us what iron has been to others for two thousand years. We even made gearwheels out of wood.

With each heave we raised the frame a little higher. We could just rest our forearms on our thighs. The dead who were lifting the king-post, the vertical beam which holds the point of the roof, were now able to slip their shoulders under it, bundling together like bearers carrying a coffin.

When the frame was too high for us to lift with our hands, we thrust with poles. There was a pole tied to each column. Half a dozen or so men gathered around each pole, thrusting it up, their grasping hands overlapping. Ten hands, fifty fingers, they were indistinguishable one from the other except where there was a scarred severed finger. How many of our fingers have been cut off by saws! Yet better a finger than a life, the living had a habit of saying.

With each thrust we grunted. The grunts came from the pit of the stomach. Sometimes a dead man farted with the effort. The Cocadrille had come back and was standing by my side, the same scarf round her head, white hairs straggling out of it.

Why do you want a hayloft, you have no land? I gasped.

Tchee! Tchee! Hissssss!

The gigantic frame which was going to span three rooms, a stable and a hayloft — a hayloft such as a hundred haycarts, pulled across the wooden floor by the mares, would scarcely fill — shook with each heave. Or, rather, it was we who shook.

To store our hay, she said.

You have no cows.

To have thirty-five litres of milk a day for butter and cheese.

Tchee! Tchee! Hissssss!

You don’t need to eat, I said.

To support ourselves and to have something to hand on to our children! She smiled, as she had when she handed me the butter fifty years before.

The faces of the dead were red with the effort of grasping, heaving and holding, their mouths were strained, their eyes bulged, the muscles and veins on their necks stood out like ropes and cords beneath the skin.

I was always told the dead rest after a lifetime’s work, I muttered.

When they remember their past, they work, she said. What else should they remember?

The shoulders of those who had taken off their shirts glistened with sweat, yet the frame was still below the angle of forty-five degrees.

Again! Tchee! Tchee! Lift!

The gigantic naked frame scarcely stirred. It was as if another forty men were pushing it down against us.

We need more help, go and fetch some others, round up the neighbours!

Jésus, Marie and Joseph!

A ménage à trois!

Be quick about it!

The Cocadrille ran towards the forest. It was not possible to lay the frame down on the ground. It is easier to raise such a weight than to lower it, and in lowering it there is the risk of somebody being trapped beneath it. Pierre, who was on the next pole, had been trapped under a frame, with both his legs broken, and had died two years later.

No man should suffer the same thing twice.

We were able to prop several poles against the ground. We wedged in several ladders. Most of the weight was taken off us, yet nobody took their hands off the poles. The great frame pointed into the sky, not into the dark blue sky above us, it pointed towards the pale sky beyond the distant mountains. A jackdaw — I cannot say whether he was the same one — was circling above the frame. At one moment I thought he was going to alight on it. Everything was still, none of the dead was moving.

When the Cocadrille came back from the forest, she was young; several men followed her. As so many years before, I was astounded by how fast she ran.

Yes, I should have married her! I said it out loud. The dead were lost in their own thoughts. Nobody responded.

The newcomers joined the groups round each pole.

Tchee! Tchee! Hissssss!

The frame shifted up five or six degrees. Together we were going to master it. As soon as it passed the half-way mark of forty-five degrees it would become easier.

As a precautionary measure some men were already holding the ropes in case the almost vertical frame should incline too far and fall inwards. When the frame was vertical its tusk tenons had to be slotted into the mortices of the sablière . Human geometry had to replace the original strength of the trees. The tusks entered the mouths of the sablière , all five at almost the same moment.

I will marry you, I said, turning towards her.

To my horror ’Mile à Lapraz was standing beside her. He was flushed and looked as if he had been drinking. I had seen him only a week before in the village. It occurred to me then that all the men she had brought back running with her were among the living.

You will be a witness, she said to ’Mile.

Where are we? I mumbled. Aren’t we far from the village?

We are outside the church, Jean, where the men stand at funerals and the newly married are photographed.

My face must have shown my consternation.

He’s so careful, slurred ’Mile à Lapraz, nodding in my direction, he wipes his arse before he has shat!

You should talk, the Cocadrille snapped back at him. You’ve lived alone all your life, you get drunk alone, your bed smells like a distillery. Jean has been to the other side of the world, he married, he had children, he came back, he picks blueberries very slowly, all right he pretends to be deaf, he wanted to kill me, he has taken his time, but now at the last moment, the very last moment, he has agreed to marry me, you would never have the spunk to do that, ’Mile.

Now that the first frame was in place, she went from man to man with a bottle and a glass offering them to drink.

After we had rested, Marius à Brine called us to start raising the second frame. Encouraged by the sight of the first, upright, its columns as thick as trees, its white wood framing triangles of deep blue sky, we lifted the second frame, call by call:

Tchee! Tchee! Hissssss!

We lifted it without stopping, and the tusks of its columns entered the mouths of the sablière . We raised the third frame even quicker than the second. Some said this was because the wood was less green and so lighter.

Fifty men stood looking up at the three frames which indicated the full dimensions of the chalet; it was an outline drawing in white on the green pasture, the dark forest, and the blue sky.

No one will kill themselves in this chalet, she said.

The men whom the Cocadrille had brought from the village announced that, if they were no longer needed, they would return. Marius à Brine did his best to persuade them to stay for the feast they would have as soon as the work was over. They said they must go.

Come back later, insisted Marius, come back with your women for the feast!

The villagers were noncommittal.

Several of the dead came over to thank them. At least let us pay you another glass, they said.

No need to thank us, answered the living, you’d do the same for us.

That goes without saying, whenever a house is built some of us are there.

I watched the villagers walk away into the forest. Gradually they formed a single file, each one walking by himself. Their going disturbed me: I was alone again with the dead. At the same time I was relieved by their going; I would have no questions to answer. What language do they speak in Buenos Aires? How long have you been a widower? Are you really thinking of remarrying? How did she persuade you?