by John Berger
I had to send two photos of myself, a Xerox of my identity card and an electricity bill to prove where I lived.
I too at your pitiful fate, says Euripides, shall spend my sad life in tears.
Then came a letter informing me that my request had been granted and I should present myself at 3 p.m. on Thursday at the Maison d’Arrêt in Nantes.
The signalman’s road goes through a copse of willows. The tree from which Orpheus took a sprig when he went to find Eurydice: the tree whose bark contains salicin, which works as a pain-killer like aspirin.
I found the prison in a narrow street on a hill, about half an hour’s walk from the station.
I ordered a coffee and a sandwich in the nearest bar. I wasn’t sure what I would do when I faced him. How I knew it was him, I couldn’t explain to anybody. All the lab tests I’d gone through were one thing; my body had its own lab, and the results from this lab told me conclusively it was him. It was him and I wanted him to see me, me the one whose life he had ended. There’s no blemish on me yet, and so if he sees me now, he’ll know what he has done and he’ll know the enormity of it. Then I’m going to kill him.
In the prison, two women warders seize my handbag, frisk me and force me to turn round in circles. A dickie takes my papers.
The Cook’s blue eyes, his cropped hair, his knuckles have not changed. He’s thinner. The way he is sitting is twisted, and his feet are bigger than ever. I hate him. What does the bastard remember as he watches me approach? His smile is false.
The waves say Shooo! he says, and he nods towards the warder who is stationed on a chair, two metres away.
He wants to warn me not to talk in front of the screw. Talk about what?
You know why I’ve come to see you?
He says nothing.
I’ve come to kill you.
It’s so long ago …
Three years, I say.
I was coming to find you next day …
Once was enough! I tell him.
He lowers his head.
They nabbed me in the restaurant, he says eventually.
I’ve come to kill you. Do you understand?
You haven’t changed a bit, he said, you’re as dog as ever! And he smiles a true smile.
It’s terrible, this smile. It shows all the ravages done. He is not just thinner, he’s skeletal. I think of the soldiers in the train and our tunnel. At the end of his tunnel there is death and his train is almost there. There are marks on his face like burnt paper. I’ll be like this in one year, or two, or three, or four—the last figure is a lie, I’ll be like this soon, very soon.
I live in Italy and I’ve come a thousand kilometres to kill you.
He believes me. The screw is reading, bored.
I’m dying anyway, he whispers.
So am I! I tell him. At the age of twenty-four I’m dying, I’m like you!
When a small fear changes to a big one, the eyes dilate. This happens to his eyes now.
It can’t be, he whispers, his voice gone.
That’s what I said. I said it can’t be! And it is!
Jesus!
Five minutes pass without either of us saying a word. Our eyes go on a tour of one another, moving from exhibit to exhibit: wrists, collarbones, neck tendons, earlobes, hairline, eye pouches, nostril hair, chipped teeth, skull, chinbone. Then our eyes meet. I look into his blue eyes and he looks into mine.
Pardon me, he mumbles.
The same fucking words, I say to myself, the same words they use when they burp or fart or tread on your toe. So I scream as loud as I can.
I must have screamed very loud for the screw is at my elbow with a fist between my shoulder blades, propelling me out of the visitors’ room.
I think what I screamed was: We are ALL going to be pardoned! Do you hear me, Cook? Do you hear me, Screws? We are all going to be pardoned!
The road has been gravelled, so the signalman slows down.
Papa got off his bike and from his leather jacket he pulled out this box which had a ribbon round it. Inside were Les Coussins de Lyon. They were cushions but they were no bigger than the bowl of a coffee spoon! Their colour, a beautiful green with grains of silver in it, made me think of satin. And you could tell by their shape that the tiny cushions would have been as soft as pillows—if they had really been cushions! They weren’t, of course. They were too small and the silver was sugar and the green was mint and the fabric was marzipan. When you bit into one, your teeth went through the skin of marzipan and found truffle chocolate. What I didn’t eat that night when Papa came back from Grenoble, I took next day to school to share with Gyel and Jeanne and Annette, and we all agreed we’d only marry men who could promise us a constant supply of Les Coussins de Lyon!
There is the smell of tar coming off the road.
I have more old friends in the cemetery, Gino, than in the Paradiso Bar. It’s in the natural order of things that I end up there before you do, so long as you don’t fool around. I know what I’m talking about, I’ve handled a lot, Gino. Since your mother died we haven’t had a single argument, you and I. I don’t expect you to trade in my way—you have your own. And I’m proud of you. But tonight, for once, I have something to say, so listen to me. STOP, GINO. Make a clean break. This is what I have to say. STOP. I don’t know the mina in question, I’ve never met her. She’s French, you said. They’re easily blown, the French. Fly-by-nights. Your mina may be the exception, she may be the best Long-term Lorry on the road, your mina may be as beautiful as Gina Lollobrigida, but she’s condemned. If she’s infected with this abomination, she’s condemned. Worse, she’s dangerous. It’s pitiful if you think about it. She falls in with a band of cocaini, they shoot up together, they share a needle, they share a trip, and now they share a death. Povera pupa! But this doesn’t stop her being dangerous, Gino. You trade your way, but she’s dangerous. At the drop of a handkerchief, she’ll pass the same filth on to you. Let her go, Gino. It sounds to me as if she is asking you to do the same thing. Agree with her. Let her go … STOP. Otherwise you’ll be in the cemetery first.
Jean Ferrero leaves the main road to go through the town of Casale Monferrato. The street he is taking with its double arcades is very narrow. Over the roofs and in the passages between the houses there is a faint acrid smell of wine. All the wine of the region is delivered and sold here. The arcades beside the road are as narrow as Ninon’s room in Zdena’s flat. On the banks of the Po stands a château for the Dukes of Monferrato, where Cavour once stayed.
In the hospital lift people stare at me. Visitors, cleaners, patients, students. They all know. They don’t know how long, they don’t know when. They don’t know my T4 count. Yet they know. I can tell immediately on account of their eyes. What they have in common on account of their eyes is more important than all their differences. If I spot one who doesn’t know, I want to kiss her or I want to kiss him on the eyes. In the eyes of the others, of the ones who say to themselves She’s Got It, there’s horror. Horror can go with a kind of pity. True pity is different. True pity is what the Widow Bosson felt for the man trapped under the train in Maurienne. Horror is horror, even when it’s small and under control and is going with pity. In the lift seventeen horrors stare at me. I count them. We haven’t yet arrived at the Gastroenterology floor. So I put out my tongue, saying to myself: If one of them smiles, I’ll have a good night tonight. No smile. As I edge my way out towards the fifteenth floor, a male student mutters: Puttana!
Leaving Valenza, on the south bank of the Po, the road signs warn of an S bend. Jean Ferrero revs the engine, taps down to third, moves over to the crown to take the right-hand turn and leans over for a fraction longer than is safe, so as to be close to the right shoulder, at the moment when he shifts his arse and leans into the even sharper left bend. Then, as the straight opens out for him, he unexpectedly doesn’t accelerate but taps down through second to neutral and puts the bike on its stand on the grass verge.
Coming into the bend the signalman saw
something. Now he walks back. A roadside shrine, about the size of a telephone box. The upper half of the rusty door has an open iron grille. Inside, under the stone arch, standing on a shelf, is a statue of the Madonna. Behind her are painted flowers on a blue wall that is peeling. With both hands Jean lightly grips the bars of the grille and peers through. She has a blue dress and her neck and face are the colour of a pale rose. Her head is inclined and her arms which hang loose are turned so that he can see her palms. Since he was a kid, Jean has not prayed, and then prayers were a form of recitation, with the Curé conducting them like a bandmaster. How to do it? He is a practical man. He can make a trap in the bottom of the backdoor for a puppy and the cats to go through, but how to pray through a grille? I read the question through his shoulder blades as he stands there. And I know how he replies. When he’s fitting a window or hanging a door he first presents it, puts it up against the space where it is meant to go; then he can see what to do next more easily. In the same way he begins by presenting their pain. Presenting it to the statue. Through his shoulder blades I hear the words.
Praying is not what I’m used to. Do I look at you? You’re looking down so I’ll do the same. She’s going to die. Die horribly after getting sicker and sicker. Defenceless. This illness isn’t like others. They don’t say this, they call it a retrovirus. As if this says it. In other illnesses death comes one day and snuffs you out. This illness, the illness of Ninon, is the job of being slowly abandoned by life. It’s the job of life letting you down, one part after another failing. Do you follow, Holy Mother of God? Her capacities go out, one by one, and there’s no night, no stars, only a cellar from which she can never walk out and in which nobody else can stay. She’s given medicines which make her ill but which stop her dying for a little while. In this little while there’s pain and time but no hope. She’s your daughter too. There’s nothing to ask for and there’s everything. Teach us how to change nothing into everything, Holy Mary. Most people look away. You don’t because you are a statue. They’re scared, I’m scared. You stay calm because you’re a statue.
How to change nothing into everything?
The test was negative, says Gino over the telephone, I’m clean.
Just keep it that way, I tell him.
I want to see you.
There’s nothing we can do, Gino.
Ninon, it makes no difference …
You say it makes no difference! My life is wiped out, and you say it makes no difference. Perhaps it makes no difference to you!
I want to see you.
No.
Once.
What for?
Friday morning. I’ll pick you up in the van at eight-thirty.
I’m working.
Take the day off!
He puts the phone down before I can reply. What do I want? Not even knowing what I want, not even knowing what I myself want, is where the loneliness begins.
Still wearing his helmet, the signalman is kneeling in the grass, his head against the rusty bottom of the door of the shrine. The words I hear now are spoken by a chorus of voices.
God is helpless. He is helpless out of love. If he had retained power he would not love as he does. Dear God aid us in our helplessness.
He gets to his feet as if he had been on his knees to look for something he had dropped. And, as he walks away, he takes off his helmet.
Gino takes me to a place called Zibello where the river is very wide, more than a kilometre across and with islands in it. We get out of his Mercedes van with all the shirts and socks in the back, and he leads me by the hand without a word to a wooden landing-stage built out over the water. Several boats are attached to it and there’s nobody there. Because of the heels of my sandals—I’m wearing my white ones—I look down at the gaps between the slats of the platform; I don’t want to trip. And there I see a dead cat floating in the water.
No, I say, get me out of here! Take me to a park or a decent café in Cremona.
Ninon, don’t get excited. I brought you here to show you something
Then be quick about it.
You see the island there?
The one where the trees come down to the water?
Yes, that’s where we’re going. We’re going to that island.
What for?
To lie with you.
It’s finished, Gino. I don’t want to fuck any more.
I’m still going to take you there.
You know I can kill you, Gino. All I need do is to smear a smear of my blood across your teeth and you’ll die a probably horrible death, a year or two after me.
Wait till we get there.
No means No for both of us, and I’m saying No.
Sit on the cushions.
The boat rocks as I climb in and makes a splashing noise. Otherwise, the river is completely silent.
It’s very low in the water, I tell him.
You know what they’re called, these boats, Ninon?
What?
They’re called barchini. The Venetians took the idea for their gondolas from here. On a river as big as the Po, you need to watch all the while where you’re going, you can’t row like an idiot and every so often glance back over your shoulder as happens in an ordinary rowboat, you have to know where you want to aim and you have to keep your eyes skinned, or the river sweeps you away as she’s taking the big tree over there, as I’ve seen her take oxen and lorries. So somebody invented the barchino which allows you to row and see where you’re going.
Gino and I are alone on the immense, opaque, yellowish sheet of water. We’re so low in the water I don’t know where the water ends. I can’t see the bank. The trunk of a big grey tree drifts past us with a bird perched on one of its branches.
Look at the bird!
It’s a sandpiper, says Gino—a piovanello.
I twist round to check where we’re heading. We are heading straight for the island.
No means No for both of us! I repeat.
He nods, but he’s concentrated on what he’s doing with the two oars. He rows standing up and he leans forward on the two oars as if he was using them as crutches. With each stroke, he somehow flicks the foot of the crutch like a dog shakes a leg dry when it comes out of the water, but Gino does the flick of the oar in the water. There’s nobody to be seen anywhere.
You come often here? I ask him.
No, not since Pedro drowned.
Drowned?
Upstream where the railway bridge crosses the Po at Cremona.
Why did he drown?
He fell in.
He couldn’t swim?
He could swim, sì.
I look at Gino. He’s still flicking each oar, one after the other, like a dog its hind leg, and he’s still standing there very tall. I put my hand in the water which strikes cold. You can’t see through it, it’s as opaque as a blanket, even milk is more transparent than this water.
When I was a kid I used to go with my father on his motorbike across the mountains where the shepherds live.
Why do I tell Gino this? I know why. Since a minute or two the barchino has changed direction, and I’ve felt a force tugging us which makes me think of the horsepower of Papa’s bike. Its pull is deep down and doesn’t vary, and its horsepower is more than anybody can reckon. I glance at the far bank and I see how we’re moving fast, whatever the water says.
We’ve missed the island, Gino. We’ve missed it.
The current is tugging the barchino downstream. Nothing can stop it. The water’s on every side now. In the mountains, glaciers do the same thing. The river is fast and the glacier is slow but nothing can stop them.
Gino, what are we doing?
We’re crossing to the island.
Suddenly I understand: he wants to kill me. He thinks it’ll be better this way. Perhaps he wants to kill us both. A suicide pact on the Po. Except it’s not a pact. He didn’t ask me.
Stop it, Gino, stop it! Get us to the bank, I want to stop!
All the while leaning on
the oars like crutches, he shakes his head. Don’t be frightened, Ninon, I know what I’m doing.
His words calm me. I don’t know why. Maybe he’s lying. I shut my eyes. The immense energy of the Po, carrying us away, is like the energy of sleep when you fall into it. It’s irresistible. I know with my eyes closed tight that this is something true, not just in my head. The river air on my forehead is cold as we gather speed.
Get us to the bank! I don’t want to die.
A long time ago when I still had my eyes open, the water was flat; only when it came up against something it wasn’t carrying away at its own speed, did it form a wave. Now with my eyes closed, I feel from my hips and from the cushions I’m sitting on, that there’s a swell which monstrously rises and falls, lifting the boat and us with it. The patience of this swell is the worst, for it tells me that what is carrying us is liquid, is unstoppable and is too vast to even notice us.
Something like a cord grazes across my cheek. I raise my hand and a willow branch runs through my fingers. I try to hold on to it and it tears itself away from the tree.
I don’t believe my eyes. We are close up under the far bank of the river and the water is still.
What the hell do you want now, Gino? I say.
We paddle upstream, he says, then we cross the other arm of the Po, and we reach the island.
You can’t go against the current.
If we come to the point of the island from this side there’s no current.
I thought we were going to drown.
You should have trusted me more than that, he says.
Are you sure there’s no current by the tip of the island?
He nods.
What do you want to show me, Gino?
How to get to the island.
No means No, Gino. No means No.
If you don’t want to, you needn’t get out of the boat, he says.
Then why the fuck go?
To see how we get there.
To prove what a good boatman you are! I tell him.
No, to show you how we’re going to live, you and I.
I did what Gino told me. I didn’t get out of the boat. But in my rage I pulled a handful of long grass from the bank of the island and I took it home with me. Gino’s grass.