by John Berger
As I leave the exhibition to join Marella in the ice cream parlour, this tizio comes through the turnstile behind me, breathing hard.
Is your name Nefertiti? he asks.
My name’s Ninon.
I’m Luigi. On the road they call me Gino.
Zdena, heels clicking, is picking her way down a basement staircase. Ten years ago she used to visit a basement on Stachanovska Street to collect piles of samizdat. At the bottom of the staircase today a man is whistling. She knocks on a door and the whistling stops.
Who’s there?
Zdena Holecek
Gome in, Citizen.
She hasn’t heard the word Citizen, as a form of public address, since the frontiers were open. She wrinkles her nose as if to reply to a bad joke, and opens the door on to a carpenter’s shop, large and well lit. Sitting at the benches are two men in blue overalls. The elder of them has a watchmaker’s eyeglass on an elastic around his forehead.
A friend told me, says Zdena, that you make bird-calls?
Take a seat. We make bird-calls, says the older man. We now have thirty-three species.
Do you by any chance have a thrush?
Which kind were you thinking of? A Mistle Thrush or a Siberian? A Bluethroat or a Red-winged Thrush?
A Song Thrush like the ones in the trees now.
You understand, Citizen, why we make our instruments? They should never be used as decoys for capturing or killing members of the species. We ask every buyer to remember this, and in every box there is a printed notice which says: “I use bird-calls to speak to birds!” I began as a philosophy student. Marek here played in a jazz group. After years of reflection we became convinced that making bird-calls was the least harmful thing we could do in this world—which would at the same time permit us to live.
Do you sell many?
We export all over the world, says the young Marek. Our next experiment is with the Kiwi Bird for New Zealand. In Marek’s eyes, as he speaks, there is fanaticism. The thrush population in Slovakia is diminishing, did you know that, Citizen?
I want to give one to my daughter.
We have two models. One is a chirper, the other melodic.
Would it be possible for me to hear them?
The one in a blue coat, who was a philosopher, goes to a cupboard and comes back with two small, homemade wooden boxes with sliding lids. He opens one and holds it out to Zdena. Inside is an implement—no larger than an egg cup—which looks like a cross between a tiny car horn with a rubber bulb for honking and a miniature apparatus for giving enemas. At the opposite end to the rubber, there is a metal tube with a little hole like a flute stop and a metal fin that runs along the inside of the tube.
Hold it in your left hand and bang the rubber, Citizen, with your right hand.
Zdena places her handbag on the chair and stands up to perform. As her right palm strikes the rubber and squashes it, the air forced into the tube makes a chirp that could only come from a thrush’s beak. She strikes repeatedly and closes her eyes. Eyes shut, she finds, as I do, the sounds unmistakably true, as if they really came from the syrinx, the voice-box of a thrush.
Meanwhile, Marek has taken the other instrument out of its box. It is shaped like a very small wineglass and made of solid wood except for a slender hollow pipe which runs through the stem of the glass to the level of its rim. He cups it in one of his large hands and puts the stem to his lips. Inhaling or exhaling through the miniature windpipe, his breath becomes liquid birdsong. Zdena stops, hand in mid-air, eyes shut. Marek pauses. Zdena strikes the black rubber again. Marek replies. And so, in a basement on Stachanovska Street, with chirps and trills, Marek and Zdena begin a thrush duet.
Why do you want to give it to her? asks the one with an eyeglass, when the pair stop playing.
A thrush sings outside my house every morning and I hope your invention will—how can I say?—speak to the thrush in my daughter’s head!
They can bring comfort. That’s why we make them …
Ninon, let’s walk, Gino says to me. We go towards Grezzana, Gino knows roads which nobody else does. It’s uncanny. He can get from one city to another without once crossing a Strada Statale. Later I called him Hare because of his face and his long nose and I was right to do so for he knows paths which nobody else can see, let alone find. He didn’t touch me that day. He gave me his hand from time to time to help me down a bank or under a vine. He did something I’d never seen a man do before. He held himself in. The opposite of what monkeys do. They spill all the while. He was like a saxophonist who holds his instrument and surrounds it with his body. Gino did this in the sunlight above Verona where the cypress grow, without an instrument. And it made me want to touch him, and I didn’t.
On the plain it is early summer. The grass is green and young. Each time the road approaches the Po, the river has grown larger.
Here in Greece the sea between the islands is a reminder of what outlasts everything else. There on the plain the fresh water is different; the Po, as it accumulates and swells—and after a certain moment all large rivers attract more and more water to themselves—the Po insists that nothing escapes change.
Poppies grow along the edge of the road. Willows border the river and a breeze blows their flowers across the road like feathers from a pillow.
All the while the land is getting flatter, losing its folds like a tablecloth smoothed out by the hand of an old woman. In her other hand she holds plates and knives and forks. As the land gets flatter and flatter, its distances increase till a man feels very small.
The signalman drives his machine fast, heels well back, elbows bent, wrists relaxed, midriff against the tank. Perhaps the early sunlight gives an edge to his vision which encourages speed. Yet as I picture him, I see that, just as it’s in the nature of rivers to arrive at the sea, it’s in the nature of men to dream of speed. Speed is one of the first attributes they accredited to the gods. And here in the sunlit morning before the heavy traffic has begun, beside the great river, Jean Ferrero is driving like a god. The slightest shift of his gaze or touch of his fingers or movement of a shoulder is effortlessly, without any human delay, transmitted into effect.
The shack belongs to Gino’s friend Matteo. Matteo is away so we have it to ourselves. Gino has a key and we let ourselves in. It’s in a field near the banks of the Adige. Matteo, who sells cars, goes there when he takes a day or two off. Inside it’s a bit like a gymnasium. A punch-ball, Bermuda shorts hanging on a string, parallel bars against one wall, a hi-fi, a mattress in a corner, and pinned to the walls around it, dozens of magazine pictures of boxers.
I knelt down to study them. Gino put on some music and pulled the lace curtain across the little wooden window and started to undress. It was the first time for us and we played like children. He was like a man standing on a cliff edge about to dive. Very concentrated. Knees together. From time to time he glanced towards me to show me the exploit was going to be for me! I was the exploit and he wanted me to watch it too! Compared to the boxers, he was as skinny as a stick. His legs and arms came straight out of his eyes. I stopped calling him Hare and called him Eyeball. I showed him how I could make him twitch with my nail. I don’t know how long I teased him. In the end we made love. All I remember is I was on top of him and we were calling out to one another more and more, when suddenly I heard a snap and a swishing noise like a great tree falling and there was sunlight everywhere and in the sunlight with my eyes shut I rolled over. When I opened my eyes I found myself on my back and there at our feet was an apple tree packed with red apples. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I felt for his hand. When I found it, he started to laugh and made me sit up. Then I realised what had happened, because I saw the grey shattered planks. One wall of the shack had fallen outwards on to the field. The pictures of the boxers were in the grass facing the sky. I was pushing, says Gino, pushing and pushing with my feet against the planks—his laughter was all mixed up with the sunlight and with what he was saying—to lift you up and up an
d up and the wall of the house fell down! Look at the apples, Ninon! And he gave me one and I knelt all naked, holding it like I once saw in a painting. Ah! Gino. The painting wasn’t of Eve.
The city is being announced by huge, printed or flashing, words. Kilometre after kilometre of conflicting words which promise products, services, pleasures, names. Some syllables are so large they seem to be deafening, their noise roaring in and out of the rush of the traffic. Jean Ferrero weaves his way between the words, sometimes riding under them, sometimes slipping between two letters or cornering around the end of a slogan. BOSCH, IVECO, BANCA SELLA, ZOLA, AGIP, MODO, ERG.
The traffic is congested. He moves from lane to lane and rides between the lanes. All the time he’s reading. He reads the signs concerning what another driver is going to do during the next five seconds. He watches how drivers hold their heads, how their arm rests on an open window, how their fingers tap on the bodywork. Then he accelerates or brakes, stays behind or pulls away. He’s been a signalman all his life.
Papa explained the scientific principle to me. Everything’s a question of how you lean. If anything on wheels wants to corner or change direction, a centrifugal force comes into play, he says. This force tries to pull us out of the bend back into the straight, according to a law called the Law of Inertia which always wants energy to save itself. In a cornering situation it’s the straight which demands least energy and so our fight starts. By tipping our weight over into the bend, we shift the bike’s centre of gravity and this counteracts the centrifugal force and the Law of Inertia! Birds do the same thing in the air. Except that birds, Papa says, are not in the air to make journeys—it’s where they live!
The traffic has come to a standstill. The signalman pursues his way between the stationary vehicles, searching for wherever there is a passage wide enough, sometimes to the left along the centre of the road, sometimes to the right near the curb. He manoeuvres, guides the bike. A pall of mist and fumes hangs over the city, masking the sunlight. His motor has overheated because he’s going slowly and the electrical cooling system switches itself on. When he reaches the head of the column he observes what has brought the traffic to a halt. A herd of white heifers is being driven by a man, a boy and a dog along the street. The cattle follow one another like a line of disarmed soldiers who have surrendered. Then a tram appears from the opposite direction, ringing its bell. The driver of a Vision A Mercedes swears to God, and says it’s a scandal that the abattoir hasn’t been moved farther out of Torino. Jean undoes the zip of his jacket.
Gino has given me a ring which is gold-coloured and has the form of a turtle. Every day I decide which way to wear it. I can wear it with the turtle coming home, swimming towards me, his head pointing to my wrist, or I can wear it the other way around, with the turtle swimming out to meet the world. Its metal weighs less than gold, and has more white in its yellow. The ring, according to Gino, came from Africa; he found it in Parma. Today I’m going to swim out with the turtle to meet the world.
There’s a shop in Asklipiou Street where I get my hair cut. Outside is written: . Which means barbers. Then there’s a slogan: . “No Sooner Said Than Done.” Two men and two chairs, that’s all. No photos, no magazines, no lights. They don’t even use mirrors. Instead, there’s trust. The door opens on to the dusty street where the lorries go by. No other barber in Athens can match the scissor speed of these two. The blades snip all the while, whether there is hair between them or not. Never stop. All the time one of them has a pair of scissors up in the air chattering. They don’t move round the chairs. They stay in the same place and swivel the customer. When they pick up a razor, they hold the head absolutely still with the pressure of a single finger. Sitting there, in my favourite barbers, having my hair cut short, listening to the scissors chattering and the lorries passing, I hear a man’s laughter.
The laugh belongs to a body, not a joke. An old man’s laugh. A laugh like a cape thrown over the shoulders of the words being spoken. The old man asks: You’re looking at the photo up there? It’s my son, Gino. He’s in his scialuppa as you can see. You guessed he was my son? A chip off the old block, as they said before chain saws! He’s straighter, straighter than I am. You’re right, slimmer too. He’s straighter because he’s had an easier life, and I pray to God it’ll stay like that. Difficulties twist a man, make knots in him. My son has his secrets, of course, I’m not allowed to see his minas, but he doesn’t have any serious worries, heavy ones. So you’re looking for an anchor? As large as that! May I ask you what you want it for? The discotheque is called the Golden Anchor? (Laughter) I have several but it’s quite a walk. You can always paint one in gold. They’re on the far side of the boilers, to the left of the tyres. Andiamo. As I was saying, I thought he would study more, my son Gino, and he didn’t. You don’t want any urinals? When he was seven years old he used to go fishing alone. When he was eight he could manage a scialuppa by himself—no one else in the boat. Now he goes to Ficardo and fishes on the Po every Tuesday and Thursday. No, at weekends he can’t, he has his markets: Saturday Ferrara, Sunday Modena, Wednesday Parma. Bathtubs don’t interest you? He’s methodical, and maybe this comes from me too. Scrap is method, you know, nothing else. Method and enough land and being able to recognise what comes from what. Everything has to be recognised and put with its family. Gino could have gone into electronics but there’s the problem, the boy can’t work inside. Four walls are a prison to him. When he comes into my office—the cabin where you saw the photo of him in his scialuppa—he can’t stay there for more than three minutes. He’s a boy who’s always listening to the bells of the next village, as the saying went before there were autostrade. So he chose to have his baraccone and every week he does his round of the markets. He’s a good salesman. He could sell confetti at the gate of a cemetery! (Laughter) Yes, he’s in the rag trade. Clothes. Here are the anchors. The largest there came from a lightship. How much? You’re paying in liquid? Then forty-two million. Too much, you say? You can’t tell a bargain when it’s offered you. Ask around, they’ll all tell you the same—Federico’s not interested in selling—he gives things away. Forty-two million.
In Torino near the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele, a dog is standing beside a fisherman on the quayside. Jean Ferrero is looking at them from the road above. His bike is by the curb. He has put his gauntlets and helmet on the stone parapet over which he’s leaning. There is no sun, but the atmosphere is close and the colour of the stone of the parapet—the colour of quince jelly after the jar has been opened for a long while—absorbs the heat.
Careful, says a woman’s voice, you don’t want it to fall in—and she touches the helmet—or do you?
She speaks an Italian which is so melodious and so grave that her spoken words, however ordinary their sense, sound as if they came from the Bible.
“Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.”
The hand on the crash helmet matches the voice. Such delicate hands often go with silken hair, an epidermic sensitivity which amounts to a wound, and a will of iron.
You’d never get it out of the river, she says, it’s too dirty, too foul.
She proceeds to rock the helmet on the parapet with her angel’s hand.
It’s we who have ruined it, her voice continues, we ruin everything.
Her clothes are dusty and old—like those thrown aside when women are looking through a pile of oddments in a market. She wears lipstick—a discreet one, but clumsily applied, as though she couldn’t see any more what her fine fingers were doing.
There’s very little you can do, she says, and what you can do never seems enough. One must go on though.
I shall have a house one day, but not in this murderous valley. I want a house from which I can see the sea from every window. Ninon’s house. It must exist somewhere. Not blue sea, a silver sea. In my house I shall have a kitchen with a table like Tante Claire’s for cutting the vegetables on by the window. And in the kitchen
I shall have a buffet made of pearwood like ours downstairs. But what’s in it will be different. It won’t be full of old bills and photos and a battery for the bike and plates that are never used because they are too pretty. In the buffet I shall have plates that are pretty and which I’ll use. And on the shelf above my plates I shall have a line of heavy glass jars, each one with a thick cork top—perhaps the fishermen will give me a few of the corks they use to keep their nets afloat and which I see them hauling into their boats each morning from my bedroom window. And in my glass jars I shall keep sugar and bread crumbs and coffee and two kinds of flour and dried broad beans and cornflakes and cocoa and honey and salt and Parmesan and myrtilles in gnole for Papa when he comes to visit.
Life depends on it, the old woman by the parapet continues, none of us can stop. You pick up something here, you take something there, you wake up with an idea, you suddenly remember it’s a long time since you tried that, and you go home and put what you go home with into the refrigerator. Every day you keep going. Have you noticed the man down there with the dog?
Yes.
You’ve noticed the man with a dog? He’s my husband. My second husband. He worked for Fiat. Marrying me didn’t do him any good. I fouled it up for him.
Jean Ferrero turns his back, unzips his leather jacket and places it on the parapet. The summer heat has begun. It will fluctuate, go cooler, get much hotter, erupt in storms preceded by violent winds, be somnolent for days under a milky haze, but the heat on the southern side of the Alps will now remain for three months. And this reduces anxiety for the future. There may be despair, particularly the despair of boredom, or the sudden mortal rage of fatigue. But the threat of the future as something different recedes. Every day leads to the next which is more or less the same.