G.

by John Berger

  He is telling Mathilde that he and she will surely meet again and that he will always be in her debt, if she agrees to his plan. He loves Camille: he has never been alone with her: he can no longer write to her: all he asks is that Mathilde take the carriage and wait by the Rosmini College—the driver will know it—where he and Camille will join her by motor car in half an hour. He needs that little time to explain his feelings to the woman with whom he has fallen so desperately in love. He speaks lightly, as though he has no need to convince Mathilde, or as though he knows it is hopeless to try to convince her.

  Whilst appealing to Mathilde, he is careful to remain in sight of Camille, to speak conspiratorially in Mathilde’s ear, to make Mathilde laugh once or twice, to continue holding her arm and to give their collusion every appearance of intimacy.

  The lightness with which he speaks intrigues Mathilde. It does not force her to decide whether he is telling the truth or not. If what he said was too credible, she would be obliged, as Camille’s friend, to find it incredible. If what he said was obviously untrue, she would be obliged to tell him so. As it is, the question of the truth of what he is saying does not arise, because in the way he speaks he assumes that she already knows the truth. Which she doesn’t. And the fact that she doesn’t arouses a very acute curiosity in her. If she cannot discover the truth directly, then Camille must discover it and tell her. The truth, she feels, will not be terrible for, if it were, he would not assume so easily and naturally that she already knows it. She trusts him immediately because he gives her no reason to. It is Maurice that Mathilde does not trust. And in order to convince herself that she is not being reckless on her friend’s behalf, she imagines how it would be possible for her to ask Harry, who is in a position to put considerable professional pressure on Maurice, to persuade Maurice to be more reasonable. She says she will take the carriage to the college if Camille agrees.

  Camille watches them walking up and down behind the gravestones which, old and eroded, are the shape of half-eaten biscuits. The anomaly of the situation makes Camille angry and impatient. Why, she asks, must she, after all the risks she has taken, sit here whilst Mathilde jokes with him over there? She decides that she must speak to him by herself.

  A few minutes later the driver gets up from the grass, rubbing his knees. Mathilde steps into the carriage and waves to Camille. Don’t be long, she cries, I can’t work miracles. As the carriage, which is crookedly suspended over its back axle, departs down the deserted road, Camille thinks: Mathilde believes that in Paris I may become the mistress of this man with whom I have just agreed to be left alone.

  There is a look which can come into the eyes of a woman (and into the eyes of a man, but very rarely) which is without pride or apology, which makes no demand, which promises no adventure. As an expression, signalled by the eyes, it can be intercepted by another; but it is not addressed, in the usual sense of the word, to another: it takes no account of the receiver. It is not a look which can enter into the eyes of a child for children are too ignorant of themselves: nor into the eyes of most men for they are too wary: nor into the eyes of animals because they are unaware of the passing of time. By way of such a look romantic poets thought they saw a path leading straight to a woman’s soul. But this is to treat it as though it were transparent, whereas in fact it is the least transparent thing in the world. It is a look which declares itself to be itself; it is like no other look. If it is comparable with anything, it is comparable with the colour of a flower. It is like heliotrope declaring itself blue. In company such looks are quickly extinguished for they encourage neither discourse nor exchange. They constitute social absence.

  His desire, his only aim, was to be alone with a woman. No more than that. But they had to be deliberately, not fortuitously, alone. It was insufficient for them to be left alone in a room because they happened to be the last to leave. It had to be a matter of choice. They had to meet in order to be alone. What then followed was a consequence of being alone, not the achievement of any previous plan.

  In the company of others women always appeared to him as more or less out of focus. Not because he was unable to concentrate upon them but because they were continuously changing in their own regard as they adapted themselves to the coercions and expectations of the others around them.

  He was alone with Camille, walking back to the north side of the church which was in the shade. He took her arm. He could feel with his fingers that it was warmer on the inside than on the outside. He was overcome by a sense of extraordinary inevitability. The feeling did not surprise him. He knew that it would arrive, but he could not summon it at will. He felt the absoluteness of the impossibility of Camille being, in any detail, in the slightest trace, different from what she was; he felt she was envisaged by everything which preceded her in time and everything which was separate from her in space; the place always reserved for her in the world was nothing less than her exact body, her exact nature; her eyes in tender contrast to her mouth, her small breasts, her thin rakelike hands with their bitten fingernails, her way of walking with unusually stiff legs, the unusual warmth of her hair, the hoarseness of her voice, her favourite lines from Mallarmé, the regularity of her smallness, the paleness of—with this concentration of meaning which he experienced as a sense of inevitability, came the onset of sexual desire.

  I want to tell you, she said—

  Your voice, he interrupted, is also like a cicada, not only a corn-crake. Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to.

  I want to tell you, she repeated, that I love my husband dearly. He is the centre of my life and I am the mother of his children. I consider he was wrong to threaten you, and I want you to know that I gave him no grounds, absolutely no grounds, for believing that he needed to threaten you. He discovered the foolish note you wrote to me—

  Foolish? We have met, we are alone, we are talking to each other—and that is all I asked of you. Why was it foolish?

  It was foolish to use the words you did, it was foolish to write a note at all.

  What foolish words?

  Camille stared at an impenetrable cypress tree. Everywhere there was still the same abnormal silence. I do not remember, she said in a hoarse whisper. And saying this she remembered a line by Mallarmé:

  … vous mentez, ô fleur nue

  De mes lèvres.

  I called you my most desired one, my corn-crake.

  That was foolish.

  But you are.

  The inscriptions on the tombstones were mostly illegible. The letters which were formed with curved lines (like U or G) appeared to be more quickly effaced than those composed of straight lines (N or T).

  Then you must go. Please go.

  The heat of the morning made anything which was out of reach or sight seem unusually distant.

  It was not wrong of your husband to threaten me, he said, he has every reason to be jealous.

  He has no reason! I am his wife and I love him. And I cannot he held responsible for your feelings. You are mistaken, that is all—mistaken in me. You are not base. I believe in the nobility of your feelings. And this is what I wanted to tell you, I did not encourage my husband to protect me from you for I don’t need any protection. I have known you for two days. Do you really suppose that a woman’s affections can be gained in such a short time? In two weeks or two months perhaps. But in two days! You are mistaken. I think you believe life is like that swing you described. It isn’t. Talking here we are already running a risk for nothing. There is nothing to be gained. Please take me back to join my friend in the carriage. My husband and I are leaving for Paris this afternoon.

  Camille spoke with difficulty. It was no longer easy for her to say these things. Yet she said them with sincerity. She saw renunciation as the only proper way of putting an end to the present situation and of undoing the injustice and indignity of her husband’s threats. What she wa
s renouncing was still of little importance. But she believed in destiny. Nothing in her life had led her to believe that she was entirely the mistress of her own fate. She did not think of the future as unmysterious, as entirely foreseeable in the light of decisions made today. She wanted to be able to look back at this moment of genuine renunciation because she considered it a necessary one. But she did not feel compelled to answer for the consequences, expected or unexpected, that might follow from that moment. They might be beyond her control and she recognized this with modesty, with hope and with misgivings.

  Then I will find you in Paris! he said.

  He will shoot you.

  Not if you don’t betray me.

  Betray!

  It was foolish to keep the note. In Paris you must be wiser.

  In Paris I will refuse to see you.

  If there was nothing conspiring against us, he said, we would never find out what we are each capable of.

  You do not know, you cannot know, what I am capable of. Nobody will ever know. Please take me back.

  I think I have dreamt of you all my life without knowing that you existed. I can even guess what you are going to say now. You are going to say: you are mistaken.

  You are mistaken! she repeated, unable to stop herself, and unable to repress a laugh.

  It was you, Camomille.

  By the car he explained to her what she must do with the controls in the driving seat whilst he cranked the engine. She was pleased to do what he instructed her to do, for it offered her an opportunity of showing him that she was capable, that her renunciation was in no way a disguise for incapacity.

  At the end of the bonnet she could see his powerful head and shoulders lunging from side to side as he turned the crankshaft. His arms were thin. His forehead was shiny with sweat. After several unsuccessful turns, the engine started. The whole motor car began shaking and her gloved hands on the steering wheel shook in time with the engine. He shouted something which she could not hear. She had the impression that if she climbed down from the car she would have to make a small jump from the trembling car into the absolute stillness of the dust on the road and the walls of the church. She jumped. On the other side of the car he offered her his hand as she climbed up into the passenger seat. When she was seated, he lifted up her arm so that it trailed over the door, then he kissed it between glove and sleeve. She stared at his bowed head. She saw ber other hand lay itself upon his hair. He gave no sign of having felt her touch.

  We will go back by the small road through the Viezzo valley, he said, it is only three or four kilometres longer.

  SI TU VEUX NOUS NOUS AIMERONS AVEC TES LEVRES SANS LE DIRE

  Mallarmé

  To morality there are no mysteries. That is why there are no moral facts, only moral judgements. Moral judgements require continuity and predictability. A new, profoundly surprising fact cannot be accommodated by morality. It can be ignored or suppressed; but when once its existence has been recognized, its inexplicability makes it impervious to any immediate moral judgement.

  She knows that the man driving her away in his car is indifferent to the chaos he is creating in her ordered life. Because of this indifference she wants to see him as an enemy. He is indifferent to the way she has defended him against her husband. He is indifferent to the effort by which she has renounced him. He is indifferent to the happiness with which she has been satisfied. Every reason which she can find to call him an enemy of her interests she welcomes, and with every reason which she finds she becomes more critically conscious of her own life.

  The open motor car creates its own cool breeze. It seems to Camille that there is a correspondence between the cool air blowing against her face and neck and arms and the silvery colour of the underside of the leaves continually shifting on the branches of the trees they pass. Between the trees are green slopes of grass. The landscape is in every detail the setting for the conspiracy of their being alone together.

  She contrasts his indifference with the love of her husband, her children, her own family. She hears them addressing her by name. There is no distinction between the name they call her and what they expect from her. Camille is her life.

  Camomille, he says. A classmate used to make the same joke at school. There is only the difference of a syllable.

  What is it that you love in me? she asks.

  Your dreams, your elbows, the doubts at the four corners of your confidence, the unusual warmth of your hair, everything that you want but are frightened of, the smallness of—

  I am frightened of nothing in myself and you know nothing about me.

  Nothing? I know all that I have written about you.

  Who is speaking?

  You don’t care what happens to me, she insists.

  Then why do you ask me?

  Because I am curious to see myself through your eyes. I wonder what has misled you.

  Nothing has misled me. My whole life has led me to you.

  You are as mad as he.

  Who?

  Maurice and you are both mad.

  But not you and I.

  He will shoot you in Paris.

  He stops the motor car after a bridge, at a point at which a path appears to lead down to a stream.

  I will be in Paris in eight days, he says.

  She jumps from the running-board of the car into the stillness of the grass and dust. She lands on her stiff legs and, turning round towards him, scowls. Then she runs a few steps towards the wild acacia trees away from the road. All that she has learned of deportment, all that has become the second nature of her movement as a woman, deserts her. She moves like an awkward child, or like an adult overcome by grief.

  And if, she cries out, in her hoarse voice, if I say this—she flings out both arms either side of her—this is Paris a week from now! If I do!

  She runs on, stumbling a little, between the trees.

  He begins to run after her. She hears him and turns round towards him. Near by is a wooden trellis construction over which a thick abandoned vine is growing.

  Stay where you are, she cries out, and lunges out of sight behind the trellis towards some trees.

  Out of his sight, she stops running. Unhurriedly and pausing from time to time to look around her, she begins to undress. Above the trees, above the near wooded hills which are like fists covered with green fur, she can see improbable peaks with snow upon them. She looks down to negotiate the hooks of her corset.

  It is not myself I will give you. Not the self of mine. Or, if I were you, and believe me I can at this moment imagine it as easily as I can turn the palm of my hand upwards or downwards—or if I were you, the self of you. If you want to number me part by part I shall be as any other, for nobody has found the judge of parts, nobody has found the nipple to judge the breast, the brow to measure the light in the eye, the ear to decide the note of the way, the only way, in which I might walk towards you now between the trees. Part by part I am a woman undressing in a clearing like a room by a stream, hidden from you and waiting, who a few minutes ago renounced you, who will return to my children in Paris tonight, who cannot imagine myself other than the loving wife of my husband, who has never before been what I am now. But I am not the sum of my parts. See me as wholly as your own dear life demands that you see yourself. I have as many hairs on the back of my neck as you may have ways of touching me. It is not myself I give you, it is the meeting of the two of us that I offer you. What you offer me is the opportunity for me to offer this. I offer it. I offer it.

  She speaks out loud to him: I am waiting here.

  The incongruity of her tone of voice does not surprise him. (It is as though she is calling out a little impatiently through an open dressing-room door.) The words employed at such a moment are bound to be incongruous.

  She is sitting in the grass. Her hair falls over her shoulders. Her chemise is loose. Her grey skirt and jacket lie folded on the grass with some other garments.

  Because Camille has chosen a setting which reminds
her of some Renaissance painting of fauns and nymphs, we are liable to picture her as having the body of a goddess as painted by Titian. This is far from the case. Her arms are thin, her neck knotted and taut, the insides of her thighs have so little flesh upon them that were she standing with her feet together her thighs would scarcely touch each other.

  She awaits him as he expected. And yet he is surprised. This combination of surprise and of expectations being precisely fulfilled is unique to moments of sexual passion and is another factor which places them outside the normal course of time. At some moment prior to birth we may, at a level as yet unknown to us, have perceived the whole of our life like that. Before he touches her he knows what touching her will reveal to him. When he touches her he will fully appreciate how alone she has become. Undressing was the act of shedding the interests of those who make up the interests of her life. With her clothes she discarded the men he hates. Her unclothed body is the proof of her solitariness. And it is her solitariness—her solitariness alone—that he recognizes and desires. He has led her from her conjugal bedroom, from the overfurnished apartment, from the street in which the curtained windows are so still that they might be carved out of stone, from the overread pages of Mallarmé, from the clothes which she orders from her costumier and her husband pays for, from the mirrors which are falsely impartial to husband and wife, further and further away from where she belongs until she is herself alone. From that solitude of hers and from his they can now set out. Andiamo.

  As he stares at her with eyes more intensely fixed than any she has ever imagined, she sees herself as a dryad, alert in a way that is more animal than human, quick, sensitive, fleet-footed, soft-tongued, shameless. She sees him and the dryad together as a couple, and the sight of them fills her with tenderness. The dryad undoes his shirt. She anticipates the dryad offering herself on all fours, face to the ground, and he mounting her like a goat. She crawls on all fours until she is facing his head and then kisses his eyes from above.