G.

by John Berger

  It is a great compliment, she said, that you come to see us on the very day after our return.

  I understand your journey back was very long and tiring.

  There is nothing here. Nothing in this godforsaken city. There is you, but how often will we see you?

  I have delayed my departure.

  We do not see you nearly enough.

  If you delay it too long, we may have to intern you, said von Hartmann without smiling but without any overt menace. Let us hope it will not happen.

  The casualness of the threat reminded G. of Dr Donato saying: The only question is whether or not we share the same dream.

  You say intern like a word you have used all your life, said Marika.

  Internieren, we say in German. Like Internat, you should know what that means. He looked at G. You, who went to England for your education. Internat means boarding school. So if we had to intern you, you would not find life so unfamiliar.

  You will not guess what they called me at my Internat. I was called Garibaldi.

  It is strange how the English made a legend of that man. Somebody told me that when Garibaldi visited London he drew larger crowds than their queen. Is it because, at heart, the English love the idea of the pioneer, sleeping alone under the stars beside his fire, is it because they hate the order of their own terrible cities? They are the opposite of us. Everything that is of value in the empire of the Hapsburgs comes from the order and reason established in our cities—and look at our cities! Vienna, Prague, Budapest! What can we offer you to drink?

  I would visit you every day in prison! vowed Marika. She was still standing, swaying a little on her legs, and when she said this she made a movement as though opening a cell door and entering. She was not consciously acting. Theatre bored her. If she ‘pretended’ to be visiting G. in prison, it was because she made very little distinction between the idea of an action and the action itself; the words which expressed the idea tended to translate themselves straight away into messages to her limbs.

  Our cities are like islands in an ocean of barbarism.

  I will help you escape, said Marika, the simplest way will be for you to walk out in my clothes.

  That would be unwise, said von Hartmann, even I would find it difficult to save you from the consequences of that.

  He would strip me by force, of course!

  You could always call a guard for help.

  You forget who my father was!

  You mean your birth makes you incapable of treason.

  Yes, that is what I do mean! And I mean that I admire Garibaldi! And I mean that he was a superb horseman! And I am a patriot!

  She was not angry. Each sentence made her smile more. At the end she laughed, stroked her husband’s arm and sat down.

  I fear, said von Hartmann to G., that your countrymen may be stupid enough to declare war on us.

  I am not a political man.

  If you were, you would not tell my husband, murmured Marika.

  I have come nevertheless to plead a case and, with your permission, I would like to plead it before you both.

  G. had no doubt that his host would categorically reject his advocacy and that his wife would embrace it. The case of Marco would supply, for a short while, a subject by means of which the woman he desired could openly establish her common interest with him and the necessity of intrigue against her husband could become apparent.

  The Austrian banker wanted to give the impression of listening patiently and attentively. He lay back in his chair, occasionally lowering his eyes and turning his head. His eyes were small and very quick, incapable of real attention towards anything except the swift thoughts in the brain behind them.

  G. was pleading a case in which he did not believe, but von Hartmann was a man to whom no appeal, however desperate or deeply felt it might be, was possible. By the same token he was immune to most threats. Appeals and threats, when once they have been made, work their way into the consciousness of the person to whom they have been addressed, by a process not unlike that by which a rumour spreads among a crowd. The appeal or the threat is whispered and passed on, but each time it is repeated the whisperer gives it his own stress. In the end one rumour may give birth to several rumours but they will all share the same kind of alarm or hope. Yet who is the crowd? Who goes on circulating and whispering the appeals and threats in the mind until the decision has been taken? The crowd is an assembly of all the other possible selves, commenting on the self in power, whom they believe to be a usurper. They were born from visions in the past; they have failed to establish their own power, but they have not been dispersed, they still inhabit the personality.

  Von Hartmann was a man who had eliminated all his possible selves. All that remained from his past were obsolete versions of the same self. He was like a man engraved on a postage stamp.

  He would of course have responded to crude physical threats at a reflex level. If his life were threatened he might break down and whimper like a child: more probably he would remain curiously impassive. The silence which emanates from death only continues the silence of such a man’s subjective life. Von Hartmann was a man who could be removed, but not challenged. On account of this it might be claimed that he was the ideal administrator.

  As Marika listened, the young man who had been arrested at the frontier became inextricably mixed with Garibaldi and with G. in the internment prison from which she would help him to escape. She decided immediately that the young man must be released. More than that, she decided that she would ask the governor herself. Marika’s decisions were immediate because she had no interest in justifications. If the needle of her will indicated the magnetic north, all she had to do was to set out; it was incomprehensible to her why anybody should want to adjust the compass to the needle and take other readings. Yet she was a woman who reflected. The difference between her and most others was that her reflexions were exclusively concerned with the past and were in the form of stories and legends. In some she herself played a part, in others, which interested her no less, she did not appear at all. A legend, a story, for Marika was what remained when the necessities which determined it had ebbed away; afterwards the story lay there like a boat cast high up on the beach by an exceptional tide, or like a ring no longer worn but kept in a jewel box. Sometimes what remained was an absence, as in the case of a woman friend who lost an arm in a riding accident. She was galloping away from her lover whom she discovered by chance in a wood making love to somebody else. Before the arm was amputated, when the ring was still worn, when the boat was sailing, life was too fateful to allow for reflexion.

  Marika, how I love you! Your smile is more complete than any last judgement. When you take off your clothes you are pure will. We make each other bodiless. All the rest are talkers or sensualists. Marika! When will G. say this?

  As soon as he came to the end of his speech, Marika exclaimed: There is only one thing to do, have him released.

  Her husband nodded his head. Contrary to convention, he often nodded when about to refuse something. Your eloquence, you see, has won her heart, but I am afraid that under the present conditions it would be quite impossible to intervene in any way on your young friend’s behalf. Impossible and dangerous. Let us assume that he is as innocent as you say. In himself he may not be dangerous. But what would be the effect on the city of showing leniency at a moment like this? Many more would be encouraged to try to cross the frontier. The numbers would double. And what would this lead to? Our soldiers on the frontier have orders to shoot at anybody who does not stop or answer their challenge. By relaxing the law in the special case of your friend one might well be responsible for the death of several other young men. And the affair would not stop there. The political and diplomatic repercussions of such frontier incidents might well prove disastrous. It would probably mean war. My wife does not understand politics. In politics nothing is ever merely itself. There is your young Italian whose father is dying, he is arrested crossing the frontier illegally and
he stands to be given what may seem a harsh prison sentence, yet to show undue clemency in this one exceptional case could well cause a war in which tens of thousands of sons and fathers would die.

  A telephone rang in a distant room. The banker rose to his feet, walked over to his wife and covered her hand, which was resting on the arm of the chair, with his own.

  That is why he cannot be set free as you would like, he explained.

  She did not look troubled. She no more made arguments than she listened to them. She was like an animal or a person who, having run along a path, turns a corner and finds that it leads to the bank of a wide, fast-flowing river; anger or impatience would be futile. Her expression was calm, stationary. She was looking up and down the river to decide which way to turn before running on. She knew that she lived under licence and she knew that it was too late for her to live otherwise. It was not something she reasoned about, but she sensed it as one can sense the size of a plain or the proximity of the sea without being able to see them. Without a Wolfgang she would become like a gipsy, and she despised gipsies. Furthermore she sensed that the chronicles of the world, the stories that would remain, were passing into the keeping of men like her husband.

  A servant came to the door and announced that the telephone call was from Vienna. Von Hartmann excused himself and left the room.

  I would like to dance, said Marika, standing up and swaying in slow gliding circles across the inlaid parquet floor towards where G. was sitting. Who are you really? she asked him. You are not he who you say you are. (She spoke an awkward and incorrect Italian.) Who are you really?

  Don Juan.

  I have met men who thought they were Don Juans, none of them was.

  The name is much usurped.

  Why do you claim it then?

  Did I?

  You are right. It was I who asked you, and I believe you.

  She moved away and continued in a flatter voice: When shall we make the trip to Verona which you proposed to us?

  I love you.

  The uncannily still flames of the candles emphasized how tightly the skin of her face was drawn over the pronounced bones of her skull.

  If we were at home we would ride into the forest, now, while he is out of the room we would go.

  Turn your face towards me.

  He places his hand on her nose and mouth so that they are covered. Inside the warmth of his hand he feels her nose like a gentle tonsil. Her eyes are laughing. Then, with his hand a little damp from her breath, he smooths the skin across her hard cheekbones towards her rather red, deeply convoluted ear.

  I am not the same, she whispered.

  Von Hartmann paused at the door, contemplated the two figures by the fireplace and walked pensively into the room. It occurred to neither G. nor Marika to wonder how long he had stood there.

  It seems, he announced, that Rome has decided upon war. It is only a matter of time. He put his hand on G.’s shoulder. So after all you will have to choose between us and the Internat.

  I have time, said G. You don’t have to be a political man to hear war coming, like an avalanche. I haven’t heard it here yet.

  If there is going to be war, said Marika, we must make our journey to Verona before it is too late. Let us go tomorrow.

  Sometimes you astonish me like a child, said von Hartmann to his wife. Verona is nothing but a name for you. Why do you want to go there?

  I want to travel.

  There are no horses there. There is a theatre.

  I hate this city. She began walking towards the far end of the room where the white tiled temple was installed and the walls were lined with books up to the ceiling. Nobody is interested in anything here except insurance. If we are going to be at war before the week is out, we should go immediately.

  It is inconceivable that we should leave at a moment like this. Her husband sat down, smiled at G. and continued: It seems as if war is certain, but it will not be for two weeks at least.

  Is that what you heard on the telephone? shouted Marika, for she was now at the other end of the room, twenty metres away.

  No, that is what I deduce from what I heard.

  She climbed a library ladder which stood by the bookshelves and, mounting the topmost step, her hair almost touching the ceiling, her face in darkness and the light falling on the folds of the skirt of her dress which, seen from that angle, appeared to have no waist but to be skirt to the shoulders, she declared: Let us bet on it! I am prepared to bet one thousand crowns that we shall be at war in one week.

  Impossible, said von Hartmann.

  Very well, she cried again, one thousand crowns. No, there is a better wager. If I win, the young Italian is released. I go to the governor myself and ask him. If I lose, if we are not at war by next Sunday, I will pay you one thousand crowns.

  I can only conclude this young Italian must be your lover! said von Hartmann.

  She turned her back, as though to look at the books on the top shelf, and said bitterly in German: In the end like all Germans you are ordinär.

  Von Hartmann replied in dulcet Italian. There is no need to be angry, I have the greatest respect for your feelings. Since he was leaving the country, I doubt very much whether he would have returned. Since he was leaving, your interest in him is both generous and disinterested.

  What happened next, happened so quickly that none of the three people in the room would later be able to recount more than a single impression. Their three impressions would, however, confirm one another. Marika jumped from the ladder. Neither she nor either of the two men ever considered the possibility of her having fallen. Undoubtedly she leaped. Perhaps she had intended to land with her feet on the seat of a large leather arm-chair near by and below. In any case the chair was knocked over and she lay on the floor. Yet despite the speed with which it all happened and the impossibility of recording the exact sequence of events afterwards, the moment when she was in mid-air seemed at the time interminable.

  Tomorrow morning G. will meet Dr Donato and Raffaele (he has never met either of them singly) in the café off the Piazza Ponterosso. They will ask him about Marco. If he tells them that Marco may be released within the week, they will suspect he is an Austrian agent. If he tells them he has failed to do anything for Marco, they may try to force him to leave Trieste. He will tell them there is a reasonable chance of Marco being released by the twentieth. They will say that that is too late, by then the two countries may be at war. They will insist that G. tries to have something done sooner. He will tell them they are absurdly unrealistic. He will ask them how they expect an Italian businessman to intervene in a question of Austro-Hungarian law. Raffaele, resentful of being told that he is unrealistic, will be on the point of shouting out that they already know G. is an Austrian agent and if he were not, how could he get Marco released even by the twentieth? But Dr Donato will interrupt Raffaele. He only allows Raffaele to blunder when it doesn’t matter. He will suggest a walk along the sea front. They will stroll beside the aborted canal until they reach the Molo. All the time Dr Donato will be talking. He will talk about Voltaire. By the waterfront on the fourth side of the Piazza Grande they will see a goods train slowly coming towards them along the quay. Let us watch the train, Dr Donato will say. The wheels of the engine will be taller than the three men who stare up at it. After the locomotive will come the trucks, black, with wheels which appear to be loose after the solemnity of the locomotive’s. In the brief spaces between the trucks above the rusty heavy couplings, the three men will glimpse the sea. Dr Donato, having stopped talking, will suddenly take hold of G.’s arm with both hands at the same time. Raffaele will fling an arm round G.’s back and together they will force him forward until his face is a few inches from the blackened boards of the slow-passing truck. G. will try to hurl himself backwards. Dr Donato will kick G.’s heels towards the lines. The right heel and the left. After a brief, interminable moment they will let him break free. You almost tripped, Raffaele will say, you want to be careful in a city l
ike Trieste, there are a lot of accidents here. You see, the lawyer will say, we have very little time.

  Let us say Marika was ascending, not falling. Let us say that the floor and everything else in the room was also ascending, but that there was a very slight difference in the speed of ascent, the floor mounting a little quicker than she. That is how it seemed. She leaped upwards. She never seemed to move downwards. Rather, she seemed to hang in the air like a white and damson fuchsia. Her dress lifted a little to disclose white stockings and knees. Her mouth opened but there was no sound. Perhaps the moment was too brief for sound to register. Nevertheless the silence was one of the things which made the moment seem interminable. Suspended there like a fuchsia, she was still herself. She was the woman who had been lying in bed that morning when Wolfgang gazed down at her. She was the woman in every particularity of her physical being whom G. desired. Her very substantiality, there in mid-air, was more far-reaching than any idea. Then she lay in a heap on the floor.