by John Berger
One midday, the following June, Boris arrived at the blond’s house, covered in sweat. His face, with his hawk-nose and his cheekbones like pebbles, looked as if he had just plunged it into a water trough. He entered the kitchen and kissed her as he usually did, but this time without a word. Then he went to the sink and put his head under the tap. She offered him a towel, which he refused. The water from his hair was running down his neck to the inside of the shirt. She asked him whether he wanted to eat; he nodded. He followed her with his eyes wherever she went, not sentimentally like a dog, nor suspiciously, but as though from a great distance.
Are you ill? she asked him abruptly as she put his plate on the table.
I have never been ill.
Then what is the matter?
By way of reply he pulled her towards him and thrust his head, still wet, against her breast. The pain she felt was not in her chest but in her spine. Yet she did not struggle and she placed her plump white hand on the hard head. For how long did she stand there in front of his chair? For how long was his face fitted into her breast like a gun into its case lined with velvet? On the night when Boris died alone, stretched out on the floor with his three black dogs, it seemed to him that his face had been fitted into her breast ever since he first set eyes on her.
Afterwards he did not want to eat what was on his plate.
Come on, Humpback, take your boots off and we’ll go to bed.
He shook his head.
What’s the matter with you? You sit there, you say nothing, you eat nothing, you do nothing, you’re good for nothing!
He got to his feet and walked towards the door. For the first time she noticed he was limping.
What’s the matter with your foot?
He did not reply.
For Christ’s sake, have you hurt your foot?
It’s broken.
How?
I overturned the tractor on the slope above the house. I was flung off and the fender crushed my foot.
Did you call the doctor?
I came here.
Where’s the jeep?
Can’t drive, can’t move the ankle.
She started to untie the boots. She began with the unhurt foot. He said nothing. The second boot was a different matter. His whole body went rigid when she began to unlace it. His sock was drenched in blood and the foot was too swollen for her to remove the boot.
She bit her lip and tried to open the boot further.
You walked here! she exclaimed.
He nodded.
Seated on the kitchen floor at his feet, her hands limp by her side, she began to sob.
His foot had eleven fractures. The doctor refused to believe that he had walked the four kilometres from his farm to the blond’s. He said it was categorically impossible. The blond had driven Boris down to the clinic, and, according to the doctor, she had been at Boris’s house all morning but for some reason didn’t want to admit it. This is why, according to the doctor, the two of them had invented the implausible story of his walking four kilometres. The doctor, however, was wrong. Of all the many times that Boris visited her, this was the only one which she never once mentioned to Gérard. And when, later, she heard the news of Boris’s death, she abruptly and surprisingly asked whether he was wearing boots when they found him.
No, was the reply, he was barefoot.
Boris, when young, had inherited three houses, but all of them, by the standards of the town, were in a pitiable condition. In the house with the largest barn he himself lived. There was electricity but no water. The house was below the road and the passerby could look down its chimney. It was in this house that the three black dogs howled all night when he died.
The second house, the one he always referred to as the Mother’s house, was the best situated of the three and he had long-term plans for selling it to a Parisian—when the day and the Parisian arrived.
In the third house, which was no more than a cabin at the foot of the mountain, Edmond, the shepherd, slept when he could. Edmond was a thin man with the eyes of a hermit. His experience had led him to believe that nearly all those who walked on two legs belonged to a species named Misunderstanding. He received from Boris no regular salary but occasional presents and his keep.
One spring evening, Boris went up to the house under the mountain, taking with him a cheese and a smoked side of bacon.
You’re not often at home now! was how Edmond greeted him.
Why do you say that?
I have eyes. I notice when the Land Rover passes.
And you know where I go?
Edmond deemed the question unworthy of a reply, he simply fixed his unavailing eyes on Boris.
I’d like to marry her, said Boris.
But you can’t.
She would be willing.
Are you sure?
Boris answered by smashing his right fist into his left palm. Edmond said nothing.
How many lambs? asked Boris.
Thirty-three. She is from the city, isn’t she?
Her father is a butcher in Lyons.
Why hasn’t she any children?
Not every ram has balls, you should know that. She’ll have a child of mine.
How long have you been going with her?
Eighteen months.
Edmond raised his eyebrows. City women are not the same, he said, and I ought to know. I’ve seen enough. They’re not built the same way. They don’t have the same shit and they don’t have the same blood. They don’t smell the same either. They don’t smell of stables and chicken mash, they smell of something else. And that something else is dangerous. They have perfect eyelashes, they have unscratched legs without varicose veins, they have shoes with soles as thin as pancakes, they have hands white and smooth as peeled potatoes and when you smell their smell, it fills you with a godforsaken longing. You want to breathe them to their dregs, you want to squeeze them like lemons until there is not a drop or a pip left. And shall I tell you what they smell of? Their smell is the smell of money. They calculate everything for money. They are not built like our mothers, these women.
You can leave my mother out of it.
Be careful, said Edmond, your blond will strip you of everything. Then she’ll throw you aside like a plucked chicken.
With a slow blow to the face Boris knocked the shepherd over. He lay spread-eagled on the ground.
Nothing stirred. The dog licked Edmond’s forehead.
Only somebody who has seen a battlefield can imagine the full indifference of the stars above the shepherd, spread-eagled on the ground. It is in the face of this indifference that we seek love.
Tomorrow I will buy her a shawl, whispered Boris, and without a glance behind him, took the road back to the village.
Next morning the police came to warn him that his sheep were a public danger, for they were encumbering the highway. Edmond the shepherd had disappeared and he was not seen again until after Boris’s death.
The month of August was the month of Boris’s triumph. Or is glory a better term? For he was too happy, too self-absorbed, to see himself as a victor who had triumphed over others. It had become clear to him that the instructions inscribed at the moment of his conception had involved more than the size of his bones, the thickness of his skull or the power of his will. He was destined, at the age of forty, to be recognized.
The hay had been brought in, his barn was full, his sheep were grazing high in the mountains—without a shepherd but God would preserve them—and every evening he sat on the terrace of the Republican Lyre overlooking the village square, with the blond in a summer dress, her shoulders bare, her feet in high-heeled silver sandals, and until nightfall the pair of them were the colour-television picture of the village.
Offer drinks to every table, he said, leaning back in his chair, and if they ask what’s happened, tell them that Boris is buying horses!
Humpback, not every night, you can’t afford it!
Every night! My balls are swollen.
He
placed one of his immense hands on the bosom of her red-polka-dot dress.
It’s true about the horses, he said, I’m going to breed horses—for you! Breed riding horses that we’ll sell to the idiots who come for weekends.
What should I do with horses? she asked, I can’t ride.
If you have a child of mine—
Yes, Humpback.
I’ll teach the child to ride, he said. A child of ours will have your looks and my pride.
The last word he had never before uttered concerning himself.
If we have a child, she whispered, the house where we live now is too small. We’d need at least another room.
And how many months have we got to sort out the question of a house? asked Boris with his cattle dealer’s canniness.
I don’t know, Humpback, perhaps eight.
A bottle of champagne, Boris shouted, pour out glasses for everybody.
Are you still buying horses? asked Marc, who, with his pipe and blue overalls, is the sceptic of the Republican Lyre, the perennial instructor about the idiocy of the world.
That’s none of your business, retorted Boris. I’m buying you a drink.
I’ll be tipsy, said the blond.
I’ll get you some nuts.
On the counter of the Republican Lyre is a machine where you put in a franc and a child’s handful of peanuts comes out. Boris fed coin after coin into the machine and asked for a soup plate.
When the men standing at the bar raised their glasses of champagne and nodded towards Boris, they were each toasting the blond: and each was picturing himself in Boris’s place, some with envy, and all with that odd nostalgia which everyone feels for what they know they will never live.
Beside Marc stood Jean, who had once been a long-distance lorry driver. Now he kept rabbits with his wife and was seventy. Jean was in the middle of a story:
Guy was pissed out of his mind, Jean was saying, Guy slumped down onto the floor and lay there flat out, as if he were dead. Jean paused and looked at the faces around the bar to emphasize the impasse. What should we do with him? It was then that Patrick had his idea. Bring him round to my place, said Patrick. They got Guy into the car and they drove him up to Patrick’s. Bring him in here, lay him on the workbench, said Patrick. Now slip off his trousers.
The blond put some nuts into Boris’s mouth.
You’re not going to harm him? Slip off his trousers, I tell you. Now his socks. There he lay on the workbench, as naked as we’ll all be when the Great Holiday starts. What now? He’s broken his leg, announced Patrick. Don’t be daft. We’re going to make him believe he broke his leg, Patrick explained. Why should he believe it? Wait and see. Patrick mixed up a bathful of plaster and, as professionally as you’d expect from Patrick, he plastered Guy’s leg from the ankle to halfway up the thigh. Jean paused to look round at his listeners. On the way home in the car Guy came round. Don’t worry, mate, said Patrick, you broke your leg, but it’s not bad, we took you to the hospital and they’ve set it in plaster and they said you could have it off in a week, it’s not a bad fracture. Guy looked down at his leg and the tears ran down his cheeks. What a cunt I am! he kept repeating. What a cunt I am!
What happened afterwards? Marc asked.
He was a week off work, watching TV, with his leg up on a chair!
The blond began to laugh and Boris put the back of his hand against her throat—for fear that the palm was too calloused—and there he could feel the laughter, which began between her hips, gushing up to her mouth. Systematically he moved the back of his immense hand up and down the blond’s throat.
Jean, the lorry driver who now kept rabbits, watched this action, fascinated, as if it were more improbable than the story he had just told.
I couldn’t believe it, he recounted to the habitués of the Republican Lyre later that night: there was Boris, over there, bone-headed Boris caressing the blond like she was a sitting squirrel, and feeding her nuts from a soup plate. And what do you think he does when the husband comes in? He stands up, holds out his hand to the husband and announces: What do you want to drink? A white wine with cassis? I’m taking her to the ball tonight, Boris says. We shan’t be back till morning.
The ball was in the next village. All night it seemed to Boris that the earth was moving past the plough of its own volition.
Once they stopped dancing to drink. He beer, and she lemonade.
I will give you the Mother’s house, he said.
Why do you call it that?
My mother inherited it from her father.
And if one day you want to sell it?
How can I sell it if I’ve given it to you?
Gérard will never believe it.
About our child?
No. About the house, he won’t agree to move in, unless it’s certain.
Leave Gérard! Come and live with me.
No, Humpback, I’m not made for preparing mash for chickens.
Once again, by way of reply, Boris thrust his massive head against her breast. His face fitted into her breast like a gun into its case lined with velvet. For how long was his face buried there? When he raised it he said: I’ll give you the house formally, I’ll see the notary, it’ll be yours, yours not his, and then it’ll go to our child. Do you want to dance again?
Yes, my love.
They danced until the white dress with red polka dots was stained with both their sweats, until there was no music left, until her blond hair smelled of his cows.
Years later, people asked: how was it possible that Boris, who never gave anything away in his life, Boris, who would cheat his own grandmother, Boris, who never kept his word, how was it that he gave the house to the blond? And the answer, which was an admission of the mystery, was always the same: a passion is a passion.
Women did not ask the same question. It was obvious to them that, given the right moment and circumstances, any man can be led. There was no mystery. And perhaps it was for this reason that the women felt a little more pity than the men for Boris.
As for Boris, he never asked himself: Why did I give her the house? He never regretted this decision, although—and here all the commentators are right—it was unlike any other he had ever taken. He regretted nothing. Regrets force one to relive the past, and, until the end, he was waiting.
The flowers which grew in the mountains had brighter, more intense colours than the same flowers growing on the plain; a similar principle applied to thunderstorms. Lightning in the mountains did not just fork, it danced in circles; the thunder did not just clap, it echoed. And sometimes the echoes were still echoing when the next clap came, so that the bellowing became continuous. All this was due to the metal deposits in the rocks. During a storm, the hardiest shepherd asked himself: What in God’s name am I doing here? And next morning, when it was light, he might find signs of the visitations of which, fortunately, he had been largely ignorant the night before: holes in the earth, burned grass, smoking trees, dead cattle. At the end of the month of August there was such a thunderstorm.
Some of Boris’s sheep were grazing just below the Rock of St. Antoine on the far slopes facing east. When sheep are frightened they climb, looking to heaven to save them; and so Boris’s sheep moved up to the scree by the rock, and there they huddled together under the rain. Sixty sheep, each one resting his drenched head on the oily drenched rump or shoulders of his neighbour. When the lightning lit up the mountain—and everything appeared so clear and so close that the moment seemed endless—the sixty animals looked like a single giant sheepskin coat. There were even two sleeves, each consisting of half a dozen sheep, who were hemmed in along two narrow corridors of grass between the rising rocks. From this giant coat, during each lightning flash, a hundred or more eyes, glistening like brown coal, peered out in fear. They were right to be frightened. The storm centre was approaching. The next forked lightning struck the heart of the coat and the entire flock was killed. Most of them had their jaws and forelegs broken by the shock of the electrical disch
arge, received in the head and earthed through their thin bony legs.
In the space of one night Boris lost three million.
It was I, thirty-six hours later, who first noticed the crows circling in the sky. Something was dead there, but I didn’t know what. Somebody told Boris, and the next day he went up to the Rock of St. Antoine. There he found the giant sheepskin coat, discarded, cold, covered with flies. The carcasses were too far from any road. The only thing he could do was burn them where they lay.
He fetched petrol and diesel oil and started to make a pyre, dragging the carcasses down the two sleeves and throwing them one on top of another. He started the fire with an old tyre. Thick smoke rose above the peak, and with it the smell of burned animal flesh. It takes very little to turn a mountain into a corner of hell. From time to time Boris consoled himself by thinking of the blond. Later he would laugh with her. Later, his face pressed against her, he would forget the shame of this scene. But more than these promises which he made to himself, it was the simple fact of her existence which encouraged him.
By now everybody in the village knew what had happened to Boris’s sheep. No one blamed Boris outright—how could they? Yet there were those who hinted that a man couldn’t lose so many animals at one go unless, in some way, he deserved it. Boris neglected his animals. Boris did not pay his debts. Boris was having it off with a married woman. Providence was delivering him a warning.
They say Boris is burning his sheep, said the blond, you can see the smoke over the mountain.
Why don’t we go and watch? suggested Gérard.
She made the excuse of a headache.
Come on, he said, it’s a Saturday afternoon and the mountain air will clear your head. I’ve never seen a man burning sixty sheep.
I don’t want to go.
What’s the matter?
I’m worried.
You think he could change his mind about the house now? He’ll certainly be short of money.
A flock of sheep’s not going to make him change his mind about the house.
We shouldn’t count our chickens—
Only one thing could make him go back on his word about the house.
