by John Berger
When the sentinel asks now: Who goes there? I answer: The Plague.
Signalman and bike as they flow and turn beside the great river have become a single creature, the gap between command and action no more than that of a synapse, and this single creature, elbows and wrists relaxed, black thorax joining red torso, toes down and soles of the feet facing the road behind, is still watched over by Jean Ferrero who, in the sky, carries the pain he will never lose, even if at this moment, looking down at his own driving, he feels free.
Papa’s bike is very large. Large as a goose, wide and low on the ground. I love his bike and I sit behind him. When my neck is tired, I rest my head against his back. It’s our bike which makes the earth tilt as we go past the sawmill in Maurienne, fast, fast.
Near the ferry at San Benedetto Jean Ferrero stops, locks the bike and walks towards the river. It is a kilometre wide. By the bank runs a dyke. When such dykes were built during the last century, they were patrolled whenever there was a risk of flooding. A patrol consisted of two men, provided with a shovel, a sack, a hunting horn and, in the night, a lantern.
Jean climbs the dyke. On the other side, more or less level with the river, runs a track like a towpath with a grass verge and small trees. He runs down, and there he is cut off from all sound except that of the water.
When the Po flooded in 1872, four thousand men, and one hundred women, who sewed pieces of canvas together, worked for seven weeks to close the breach.
Jean Ferrero comes to a row of tip-up cinema seats fixed into the earth a few metres from the water. They are stained with bird-shit and their metal fittings are rusty, but the seats still tilt up and down. He sits in one, leans back and gazes at the Po. A blackbird sings in a tree a little downstream.
It was worse than the soldiers in the train, Papa. It was after we’d been to Athens. I heard from Filippo, a friend whom I met at the hospital and who was sick, dead-sick like I am, that in Milano they’re dispensing a new drug to replace AZT, and I wanted to find out more about it. Gino was going to come with me and, at the last moment, he couldn’t because he had to go and buy at an auction of Indian sandals, the importer had gone bust and Gino thought he could get a bargain. So I went alone. I saw a doctor at the end of the afternoon after I’d waited all day. He told me to leave my papers with my latest blood count, the number of lymphocytes CD4, etc.
I was going to sleep in Milano at a girl friend of Marella’s, so before taking the metro out to the suburbs, suburbs are the same everywhere, I said to myself: Why not make a trip to the centre? I’d never been there. You took me, Papa, on the bike to Genoa when I was a kid, and this year to Athens, but never to Milano. The Duomo was flood-lit and it made me think it had just landed, landed there in the empty piazza.
I guess it looked the same when it was first built—maybe more so with the masonry and the spires and statues all new, but in those days nobody would have been able to describe it like this, for they didn’t know about outer space and had never heard of things as big as cathedrals flying and landing! All they could do was to whistle at the new cathedral, or bow their head, or sell things to the crowds who flocked to stare up at the new wonder of the world. Or they could pray.
I went in and I lit a candle for all of us who have it. When I came out it was dark so I strolled through the arcades. The boutiques were closed and there were few people about. I was wondering whether to have an ice cream in a bar which was still open, when a dog bounded up and pawed me. Not a dangerous dog, simply heavy and difficult to push away. I patted him, I lifted his hound’s paws up and I shoved.
He won’t hurt you! a man said. The man had a dog’s lead and wore one of those fake yachting caps that Gino calls Boaters’ Bananas.
Simpler to keep him on your leash, no?
He spotted my accent. You’re a visitor to our city? Let me offer you a glass of the best champagne.
I drink with friends only. And I pushed him off like I pushed off the dog.
Exactly! he said, only with friends! We’ll go to Daniele’s over there, he keeps the Widow on ice for me.
I’m going nowhere with you.
A coup de champagne, what’s the harm? He grasped my arm.
I think you’d better let go. He had his jaw and mouth thrust forward and his fur collar hid his neck. Let go!
Give me one good reason.
Because I’m asking you to.
You’ll be asking me something else in a moment, Beautiful, and by the end of the evening, you’ll be asking me many things.
Get off! I said.
Give me a good reason.
Get off, I have SIDA.
The force with which he threw me to the ground startled me so much—my head hit the mosaics. I think, Papa, I lost consciousness. When I came to, the man was standing above me. Somewhere behind him were a middle-aged couple. They must have been walking home through the arcade. I remember the window of a pen shop.
Help me, I shouted, please help!
You know what she is, the man with the dog yelled, she’s a slut with SIDA and she wants to spread it, contaminate, infect, that’s what she wants to do.
The couple started saying other words. The woman slipped her heavy handbag from her shoulder and raised it to strike me. Her husband restrained her. It’s not for us, he said.
The worst wasn’t their words. The worst was how they hated. They hated everything about me. Like somebody says they love everything about you, they hated everything. There was nothing left over.
Suddenly the hound pricked up his ears, and bounded away down the arcade towards the piazza and cathedral. The animal moved so fast his feet slipped on the marble—his claws making a scratching noise. Boater’s Banana was obliged to run after him. The wife with the handbag gave a little cry of surprise and jumped back. I scrambled to my feet to pursue the bastard who had knocked me down, shouting Senza palle! Spunkless! Spunkless! Even his cap falling off didn’t stop him running away with his dog.
I limped back to my place in the arcade near the pen shop and I sat down on the mosaic pavement, as though it was where I sat every evening of my life. It didn’t matter what I did, so long as I did something definite.
I could see the fucking cap where it had fallen on the floor. I sat there under the curved glass-leaded roof and I cried—cried until my tears rolled stones down your mountainside.
You like our cinema? a young man’s voice enquires.
It’s you who fixed the seats here? asks Jean.
Our group did it, yes.
You cover them in the winter?
We like to sit here and think about the future. I’m eighteen, Lunatic’s seventeen and Tenebrium is fifteen. He’s the most gifted, Tenebrium. He could get Sysman Status anywhere … May I ask if you’re Polish?
No, I’m French.
We saw the French plates on your bike up on the road, but your accent made me think you might be Polish. We want to go to Gdańsk.
Yes.
There’s a genius working there in Gdańsk.
What does he do?
I wouldn’t leave your bike up on the road. There’s a thieving gang—not like us—working around Mantua. Bring the bike down here. Here with us you’re safe.
Does this track join the road?
Up by the ferry, yes. It’ll take no more than five minutes.
I should be on my way, says Jean Ferrero.
You see the hut there by the water—we call it the Hospice. It’s well stocked. Have a Coke with us before you go. Hey! Lunatic, come here, here’s the man with the red Honda CBR!
A beauty! says the boy, examining the bike.
This is Lunatic, says the one who came over to the seats, and I’m John the Baptist. And he’s Tenebrium.
You like our handles?
Handles?
The names we chose as IDs. What would you choose for yours?
Trackshine, says Jean.
That’s from where?
A signalling system term. Trackshine!
How m
uch does a new bike like this cost?
A lot, says Jean.
You’ve done eighty-five thousand kilometres, says Tenebrium, bent over the dials.
Tenebrium wants to buy a motorbike when he’s eighteen, says John the Baptist, but he’ll have to travel for the money.
You’ve all got jobs? asks Jean Ferrero.
Not one of us. We live with our parents in Parma, when we’re not out here at the Hospice. We come here for a quiet break. Back in Parma we travel.
Travel?
All over the world, says Lunatic.
That’s why we know there’s a genius in Gdansk, says John the Baptist.
I’d say that guy in Gdansk is as great as Captain Crunch, says Tenebrium.
Captain Crunch?
Shall we tell him who Captain Crunch is? Better test him first.
Leave him alone, let him drink his Coke in peace.
Everything’s beautiful, says John the Baptist, everything which exists, except evil, is beautiful.
You see how well he chose his handle! says Lunatic. John the Baptist is his ID, and he talks like the Bible.
Do you know how much water passes here in one second? Tenebrium asks. You’ll never guess—fifteen hundred cubic metres per second! I’m telling you.
A celestial vision, continues John the Baptist peering across the opaque water to the small trees on the opposite bank, where everything is beautiful except evil. Up there in the sky there’s no need for aesthetics. Here on earth people seek the beautiful because it vaguely reminds them of the good. This is the only reason for aesthetics. They’re the reminder of something that has gone.
Look at that guy rowing his barchino! says Lunatic.
From here you can’t feel the current. If you go down to the water’s edge you get the message. It’s irresistible.
Hey, man! says Tenebrium, will you give us a ride on your bike?
Until it gets dark, Jean Ferrero drives up and down the towpath—first with Tenebrium behind him, then with Lunatic, and lastly with John the Baptist. He drives slowly, and he watches the stretch of the river which becomes more and more familiar, as if, on each trip, he was crossing it like a ferryman.
Incomprehensible loudspeaker announcements about departures and arrivals and the siphoning noise of a large railway station. In the main hall of the Hlavná Stanica in Bratislava I search for Zdena. She is not there. I go outside to where the taxis are waiting and there I hear a man’s voice. I don’t know whose it is.
Spotted it not too late, grey Mercedes 500 SL nosing in on far side of hot dog stand. I see Vlady recuperated another trolley. His third this afternoon. One hundred dinar—unless he flogs it for two hundred to passenger arriving late with luggage. Must catch eye of grey Mercedes 500 SL. Catch it with authority. Without authority I am dog-shit. I am trying, friend, with my head, my neck, my shoulders, my right hand, my look, to catch the Mercedes 500 SL with authority—as if I had space, as if I had a uniform with peaked cap, as if I had polished boots, and not a torn anorak, not a hat-sock and not gaping sneakers without laces. I have to catch the driver’s eye. If I catch it, the vacant parking spot is mine to offer. He may have already spotted it, yet if I catch his eye, it becomes mine before it becomes his. It was the spot I was keeping for him. Vacated one minute ago. I’ll come over like a flash. He’ll reach into his pocket, and he’ll slip me one hundred or, with luck, two. Can of Pilsner. Keep an eye on the SL, Sir. One of us here all the while, Sir, no worry. Four hundred. Could be five. I don’t catch the driver’s eye. He won’t look at me. At least I can open the door, grasp the door handle. He swings door out of my reach. He locks car with press-stud and strides off. Haven’t space any more to lay out my name. No name. I’m That Fucker There. In anorak-pocket, have, had, used to have, jackknife. Could jag it into tyres of SL. Can’t find it. Black Russian ZIL arriving. Limousine, with curtains drawn across rear windows. Driver a Caucasian. He’d run me down if he could. He’s trying to …
You stay the night, says Lunatic to the signalman, we’ve got mattresses and we’ll make a risotto.
Do you want to tell me who Captain Crunch was?
Is. He’s still alive, he’s in hiding.
Have you heard of the 2600-cycle tone? asks Tenebrium.
The signalman shakes his head.
It’s a high A note used on the Bell telephone system to announce the completion of a phone call. Now the guy who called himself Captain Crunch discovered that a toy plastic whistle given away by Quaker Oats in each packet of their cereal called Cap’n Crunch, reproduced this A note perfectly if you added a minute spot of glue to its outlet hole.
Do you follow? asks John the Baptist.
Why not?
So, by blowing the toy whistle into a telephone, Captain Crunch could make an entry into the cyberspace of the telephone system and like this he could prevent any long-distance call being charged to the account he was phoning from. He could talk his way round the world for free! He could listen to talk from anywhere! This was more than twenty years ago. Later he moved on to computers and became the world’s Master Hacker.
Nearly everything we know, says John the Baptist, first came from him. It was he who demonstrated it was possible to break into the systems.
It was he, says Tenebrium, who invented the term Silicon Brotherhood, and across the planet today we’re a couple of thousand—including this other genius we’ve found in Gdansk. We’ve got access to his Bulletin Board System so we know.
We invented a virus too.
It’s not our principal activity.
We hack to live! says Lunatic, we hack to stay on the planet.
And to show them they can’t keep us out and never will. We can download anything.
Paradise is not for living in, says John the Baptist, it’s for visiting.
You know what I thought, says Lunatic, when I was behind you on the bike. You look for a signpost, don’t you, when you’re driving somewhere, you look for the signpost of the place you’re going to, and as soon as you pick one up, everywhere the road happens to lead you, through forests, along rivers, past schools and gardens and hospitals, across suburbs, through tunnels, everywhere it leads you is given a sense by that name you’ve read on the signpost. And it’s the same with us on our travels, when once we’re in through a backdoor, we know what we’re looking for. In life I think it can be the name of a person, not a place, which can give a sense to everything you find. A person you desire or a person you admire. This is what I think at this moment, Frenchman.
We hack to stay on the planet, repeats John the Baptist.
A vehicle swaying, a sizzling of wheels that are not running on rails but asphalt, an engine purr, a sensation of being cushioned like a child dozing on a sofa, voices in Slovak telling long stories, on the backseat a honeymoon couple, the bride still wearing her roses, near the front a group of shopkeepers who specialise in glassware and are on their way to look at Venetian glassblowers, a Bohemian dance coming over the loudspeaker, a faint smell of beer, and Zdena is in the coach she caught outside the railway station in Bratislava.
She is seated next to a bald man, wearing a dark suit with a pinstripe which is twenty years out of fashion. They have been sitting beside one another for two hours and have not said a word. Not even arriving in Vienna made them talk. He removed his hat and she kicked off her shoes. After that each of them settled back into their personal limbo. She looked out of the window and he read a newspaper.
Now he opens his dispatch case and takes out a brown-paper package. Unwrapping it he finds some meat sandwiches. Lifting up the whole package, he offers one to her. She shakes her head. He shrugs and bites into his own sandwich.
Have you noticed, he says with his mouth full, how gherkins, the kysléuhorky, are getting more and more sour?
She says nothing.
Is it your first visit to Venice?
Yes, it is.
She has a voice which doesn’t fit her reticent appearance. The voice of a born singer which doe
sn’t have to search for expression, since expression is the gift of that voice. The three words—yes, it is—sounded as though they were an entire life story. He must be at least fifteen years older than her.
She turns again to the window. Soon it will be dark. The last sunshine lights the distant mountains, a church hidden between hills, leaves, countless millions of them, the nearest along the edge of the road made to flutter by the draught of the passing coach, village houses of three storeys, apple trees, many wooden fences, a solitary horse.
I’m sure you’ll like Venice, he says.
I just change there, she says.
It is the moment in the farmsteads out there when the chickens are locked up for the night, and old women crumple newspapers and push them, with kindling wood, into the stove and look for their box of matches.
Why not take an orange? In Venice we’ll already find cherries. Where do you go afterwards?
To my daughter’s wedding.
A happy occasion, then.
Scarcely. My daughter is HIV-positive.
Without an instant’s reflection Zdena has told the man who is a stranger what she has hesitated to tell to her intimate friends. She stares at him as though he, not she, has said something shocking. The skin of his bald scalp is as smooth as a silk scarf, moistened with a spray for ironing.
I’m so sorry, he murmurs.
I think you should be!
The driver turns down the volume on the music and announces over the loudspeaker that in five minutes the coach will be stopping at a Gasthaus for toilets and refreshments.
It takes a long time, the bald man says, and meanwhile it’s possible …
Are you a doctor?
No, I drive a taxi.
You expect me to believe that! What are you doing riding in a coach if you drive a taxi?
