by John Berger
Michel who?
Michel Labourier. You didn’t hear about his accident?
On his motorbike?
No, in the factory.
What happened?
Lost both his legs.
Where is he?
Lyons. It’s the best hospital in the country for burns. A military hospital. They used to fight wars with lead, now they fight them with flames. Both legs gone.
I stared through the bus window and I saw nothing, not even the factory when we passed it. The next day I went to see his mother.
Perhaps it would have been better, she said, if it had killed him outright.
No, I said, no, Madame Labourier.
He’s not allowed visitors, she said, he’s in a glass cage.
I’m sure you’ll be able to visit him soon.
It’s too far. Too far for anyone to go.
Is he still in danger?
For his life, no.
Don’t cry, Madame Labourier, don’t cry.
I cried when I thought about it every evening for a week in Cluses. For a man to lose both legs. I thought too about what the boys call their third leg. When you’re young and both your legs are supple your third leg goes stiff … when you’re old and your legs are stiff, your third leg goes limp. And this silly joke made me cry more.
New Year’s Eve, 1953, I spent at home. Father’s chair was empty. After supper Régis and Emile got up to go to the dance in the village. Come on, Odile, said Emile. I’ll stay with Mother. You like dancing! insisted Emile. There’s no boy in the village good enough for our Odile now, said Régis. They left. Mother sewed and went to bed early. I heard the bells pealing at midnight on the radio and the crowds cheering. I wasn’t sleepy and so I let myself out and walked once round the orchard. The grass was as hard as iron. The bise had been blowing for several days and the sky was clear. Looking up at the stars, I thought of Father. Nobody can look up at the stars when they are so hard and bright and not think that they don’t have something to say. Then I thought of Michel without his legs and the Red Star he wore on his leather jacket. In their silence I missed his jokes and his cough. I went to check that the chicken house was well shut. When it was minus fifteen for a week on end, the foxes would cross the factory yard looking for food. A month earlier the night shift had killed a wild boar behind the turbine house. Suddenly the wind changed and to my amazement I heard dance music. A tune from a band wafting towards me. It seemed to come in waves, just as the stars seemed to twinkle. Distance and cold can do strange things. I made up my mind. I returned to the house, put my hair in a scarf, and found an old army coat. I would go and see what was happening at the Ram’s Run.
Every New Year’s Eve the Company imported a band to the factory and the men who were lodged in the Barracks had their own dance. The villagers didn’t participate, the Company didn’t encourage them to, and it was for this reason that it was called the Ram’s Run. I crossed the railway line. The music was louder. The furnaces were throbbing as usual. The smoke from the chimney stacks was white in the starlight. Otherwise everything was still and frozen. Not a soul to be seen outside. The ground-floor rooms adjoining the office block were lit up. There were no curtains and the windows were misted over.
I crept up to one and scraped like a mouse with my fingernail. I couldn’t believe my eyes, there was a man who was dancing sitting down on the floor! He had his hands on his hips and he threw out his feet in front of him and his feet came back as fast as they went out, like balls bouncing off a wall. I was so amazed I didn’t notice the approach of the stranger who was now at my side looking down at me.
Good evening, he said. Why don’t you come into the warm?
I shook my head.
You must be hot-blooded, not to mind the cold on a night like this!
It’s only minus fifteen, I said.
Those were the first words I spoke to him. After them there was a silence. The two of us stood there by the light of the window, our breaths steamy and entwining like puffs from the nostrils of the same horse.
What’s your name?
Odile.
Your name in full?
Mademoiselle Odile Blanc.
He stood to attention like a soldier and bowed his head. He must have been two metres tall. His hair was cropped short and he had enormous thumbs, his hands pressed against his thighs, his thumbs were as big as sparrows.
My name is Stepan Pirogov.
Where were you born?
Far away.
In a valley?
Somewhere which is flat, flat, flat.
No rivers?
There’s a river there called the Pripiat.
Ours is called the Giffre.
Blanc? Blanc means white like milk?
Not always—not when you order vin blanc!
White like snow, no?
Not the white of an egg! I shouted.
Give me one more joke, he said and opened the door.
I was standing in the vestibule of the Ram’s ballroom. After the glacial air outside, it felt very warm. There was the noise of men talking—like the sound of the fermentation of fruit in a barrel. There was a strong smell of sour wine, scent, and the red dust that in the end powders every ledge and every flat surface facing upwards in the factory. Along one wall of the vestibule—which was really an anteroom to the offices, where the clerical staff took off their coats and put on their aprons—there was a long table where women whom I’d never seen before were serving drinks to a group of men who had obviously been drinking for a longer time than was good for them. My brother said that the women for the Ram’s Run were hired by the company and brought from far away, somewhere near Lyons, in a bus.
I wanted to get out into the air and I wanted him not to forget me immediately. So I told him a story about my grandmother. It wasn’t strictly my grandmother. It was the woman my grandfather lived with after his wife was dead. When he died, Céline—she was called—Céline continued to live in Grandfather’s house alone. She was old by then. You can’t explain all that to a stranger whom you’ve just met a few minutes before and who has taken you into a bar full of men with the windows steamed up and the floorboards muddy and wet with melted ice. So I told him it was my grandmother.
Grandma always had a billygoat, so the neighbours had the habit of bringing their goats to her when they were in heat. She used to charge a thousand a visit, and if the goat didn’t take they had another visit for nothing. One year, every single neighbour who had come with a goat in heat demanded a second visit. Something was wrong. Grandmother talked about it to Nestor the gravedigger who was married to her niece and bred rabbits whose skins were sold as otter. It’s simple, he said to her, he’s too cold, in your stable all alone, the he-goat must be freezing. Build him a stall where he’ll keep warm! Grandma went home and thought about Nestor’s advice and decided it was too much trouble. Instead, she’d bring the beast into the kitchen—except when the sun was out. The he-goat recovered and all the neighbours’ goats were going to have kids at Eastertime. When Grandma next saw Nestor the gravedigger, she thanked him for his advice. So you built him a stall? he said. Too much trouble, she replied, I brought him into the kitchen. Nestor looked surprised. And the smell? he asked. Grandma shrugged her shoulders. What do you expect with a he-goat, she said, he soon got used to it!
I was glad when he laughed. Then I caught sight of myself in a mirror above a sink. What was I doing here? Quickly I turned away from the mirror. He stood there, towering above me, protective like a tree. And hesitating. Perhaps under the neon light I was a surprise to him. Perhaps outside he had thought I was older. Perhaps he hadn’t seen how ridiculous my clothes were. Despite myself I glanced at the mirror again.
Your feet must be cold, he said.
I looked down at my thick, artificial-fur-lined boots and shook my head.
If we dance, they’ll warm up! And at that moment the band, whom I couldn’t see, started to play. A polka. This man, to whom I’d told the story abo
ut the goat, took my arm and delicately guided me towards the Ram’s Run. The band were installed on planks laid on scaffolding. All the other women wore high-heeled shoes. The music sounded strange, for the room, which was normally a storeroom, had no ceiling. Far up, high above, were the iron girders of the same roof which covered the topmost furnace. Most of the women were wearing low-cut dresses and some wore golden bracelets. There were also men dancing with each other. And one woman dancing alone with a gigantic feather.
What’s so surprising about music is that it comes from the outside. It feels as if it comes from the inside. The man who had clicked his heels and announced his name as Stepan Pirogov was dancing with Odile Blanc. Yet inside the music, which was inside me, Odile and Stepan were the same thing. If he had touched me whilst we were dancing like men touch women, I’d have slapped his face. Behind the band there was a heap of shovels, if he had touched me, I would have taken a shovel to him. He knew better. He didn’t interfere with what the music was doing. He tossed back his head at each beat, chin flung up, neck taut, mouth smiling. When the band stopped, he lifted his hand off my shoulder and stared at the players as if surprised that there was no more music, then he nodded and the band started up again. It looked as though he ordered the music with a nod of his head.
For a long while, I don’t know how long, before we had exchanged anything except a silly story about a goat, before anything had been decided between us, when I knew nothing of Stepan Pirogov, the two of us let the music fill us like a single cart drawn uphill by a cantering horse.
Are you thirsty? he eventually asked.
We returned to the vestibule with its neon lights, where he bought me a lemonade. This time I avoided looking in the mirror. His accent was very foreign.
Where is it you live, Odile?
In the house after the shunting line stops.
Where the cows are? My father kept a cow.
Just one?
Just one, outside Stockholm.
Were you born in Stockholm?
I don’t know where I was born.
Your mother could tell you.
I never knew my mother.
She’s dead?
No.
In the heat and the smell of sour wine and the din of the men’s laughter in the Ram’s Run, I suddenly felt a kind of pity for him. Or was it a pity for both of us? I gazed at the lemonade in the bottom of my glass. I could feel him looking down at me—like a tree at a rabbit. I raised my head. My sudden fear had gone.
I’ve been here three months, he said.
And before?
Before I was on a ship.
A sailor?
If you like.
You won’t stay here long if you’re a sailor!
I’d stay long for you, he said.
You know nothing about me!
I’ve known you since I was first conceived in the womb of a mother I never knew. He pronounced this extraordinary sentence in a strange singsong voice.
I have to go, I said.
Spend a little more of the year with me, Odile.
Is that how you talk in your language? I asked.
In my language I’d call you Dilenka.
It was different dancing with him the second time. I’m dancing with a sailor, I kept telling myself. If Mother knew I was dancing with a sailor.
I’ve never seen the sea in my life. When the dance was over, I went to fetch my coat.
I have to work tomorrow, I told him.
Can I see you on Saturday afternoon?
I may have to work, I don’t know.
I’ll be waiting for you by the footbridge, he said.
What time? I could have bitten off my tongue for saying that.
I’ll be there the whole afternoon, listening to the river till you come. He said this in the same singsong voice.
My mother was washing out a bucket in the stable and I was milking before taking the bus to Cluses, it was still dark—and she screamed at me:
You would never have dared do that, if your father was still alive!
Do what?
Go to the Ram’s Run!
There was no harm in it, Mother.
And to come back at four in the morning!
Three!
No one goes to the Ram’s Run!
They’re not beasts.
What did I do—what in God’s name did I do—to deserve a daughter like you?
You did with Papa—may he rest in peace—what most wives do, Mother.
Listen to her! my mother was screaming. She talks like that to her own mother.
She hurled the bucketful of water at me. It was so cold it took my breath away and the shock of it made me fall off the stool. Lilac calmly turned her head to see what had happened. Cows are the calmest cows in the world, was one of Stepan’s jokes. He would say it in a mournful voice.
I kept him waiting the whole afternoon by the footbridge. When at last I arrived, he didn’t complain. He stood there listening and whilst I talked, he fingered the fringe of the scarf I had round my neck. It was so cold, the sound of the river was as shrill as the train’s whistle. A train came once a fortnight to take away the molybdenum and manganese. Always at night. And since my earliest childhood the train woke me up. We walked across the lines to the big furnace shop.
Do you know each furnace has a name? he asked. The big one there is called Peter. The other one is called Tito … Why does it make you smile?
They weren’t called those names when I was young.
Now he was smiling.
There’s another called Napoleon. Why does it make you smile?
A little smile, I said.
Not so little now! he said.
Smaller than yours!
Do you know how to measure a smile?
Yes, I said.
He bent down and picked me up so my mouth was level with his, and he kissed me. On the nose.
I know so little about him, yet with the years of thinking I have learnt a great deal more from the same few facts. Perhaps there are never many facts when you first love somebody. The facts are what destiny has in store for you. His foster parents were Ukrainians and left Russia in the early twenties to settle in Sweden. One day a Russian who knew his foster mother when she was in Kiev arrived with a swaddled bundle. In it was a two-month-old baby. The couple gave the baby their family name of Pirogov. They had no children of their own. The “father” was a chairmaker and the “mother” took in washing. They had had to leave their country because in 1918 the man had joined the wrong army—the green not the red one. His “father” joined the army of a man whom Stepan called Batko Makhno. Batko, he said, meant Father. I didn’t understand much.
The winter passed slowly. One Saturday we went for a walk in the snow. He was wearing blue wool mittens. As we walked, his arm round my neck and one of his huge blue woolen hands on my shoulder, he told me a story.
Once there were two bears asleep under a rock. Their fur was all white with hoarfrost. The smaller of the two opened her eyes.
Mischka! she growled.
Mouchenka! growled the other.
We can speak! Say something. Say a word.
Honey, he growled.
Snow, she said.
Spring, he said.
Death, she said.
Why death? asked Mischka.
As soon as we speak, we know death.
God! said Mischka and pushed his muzzle into her neck.
Why does God have so little power? asked Mouchenka, and placed a paw on his back.
How should I know?
Everything that exists hides him, she said.
He’s in his lair, he said.
He could come out, couldn’t he? complained Mouchenka. Mouchenka moved her head from the shelter of the rock and the snow fell on her large black muzzle. Mischka, why does he have so little power?
Because he created the world, growled the bear.
So he spent all his power doing that and has been exhausted ever since! She blew th
e snow off her mouth.
No, said Mischka.
What do you mean, No?
He could have created everything differently so it did exactly what he wanted.
That would have been better?
Yes.
For a long while the two bears said nothing. At last the she-bear said: If it did exactly what he wanted, no one would recognise him! Don’t you see? There’d be no need to recognise him. There’d be nothing else but him!
Mouchenka! You were simpler when you couldn’t speak.
As things are, she went on, he hopes to be recognised all the while. Keeps sending reminders. Look at the snow falling, Mischka, it’s falling on every pine needle.
He’s clever, growled the he-bear, he’s made it all so he stays hidden! He scratched the fur on her hip with his paw. He’s made it all so he can be left in peace!
No, no, said Mouchenka, God made the world as it is, so he should be needed. It’s what he wanted.
At that very moment two shots rang out, and a hunter shouted: Bagged the two of them!
The blood of the two bears stained first their fur and later the snow.
Christian is pointing at something below. He is wearing the woolen gloves which I knitted for him. I can’t make out what he’s pointing at.
The next weekend I suggested Stepan should come to the house. I told him about my brothers. I was hoping that if Mother saw him she might relent a little. Since the morning when she had thrown the water in the stable, she hadn’t addressed a single word to me.
Not yet, Dilenka, not yet. You take a man home for the first time and everyone looks at him and starts wondering about the future, they try him on—like a pair of trousers—to see how he fits. If I were your age, but I’m a fully grown man, a foreigner, I don’t have anything here, and they’ll need a lot of reassuring—it’s too soon, I don’t know yet where to take you. Let’s wait a little.
One Saturday Stepan came to Cluses by the midday bus. He wanted to see the room in the widow Besson’s house, where I lodged. This time it was I who was against the visit. The room was too small and the bed took up half the space. Instead, I had a present for him. I’d wrapped it up in a scarf of mine, a white chiffon scarf.
What can it be? he asked.
It was a hip flask for gnôle with leather round it. I saved up for a month to buy it. Stepan had complained about the cold when he was working on the night shift.