Read Online Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: John Berger
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stela were, we discovered, in Anglo-Saxon. And Ne Forhtedan Na. Should Not Be Afraid.
A couple approached an empty bench further down the cemetery path. They hesitated and then decided to sit. The woman sat on her man’s knees, facing him.
The words on the back were in Norse. Hann tekr sverthit Gram ok leggr i methal theira bert. He takes the sword Gram and lays it naked between them. The sentence comes from a Norse saga that Kodama and Borges loved over the years and played games with.
At the very bottom of the stela, near the grass, is written: From Ulrike to Javier Otárola. Ulrike was the name Borges lent Kodama, and Javier the name she lent him.
It’s a shame, I thought to myself, that we didn’t bring any flowers to leave. Then I had an idea: instead of flowers, I would leave one of my leather gloves.
The gardener driving his lawnmower was getting closer. I could hear the two-stroke engine and smell the newly cut grass. I know of no other smell which has as much to do with beginnings: morning, childhood, spring.
The memory of a morning.
Lines of Virgil and Frost.
The voice of Macedonio Fernándéz.
The love or the conversation of a few people.
Certainly they are talismans, but useless against
the dark I cannot name,
the dark I must not name.
I began to wonder. The glove will only look as if somebody has dropped it! A crumpled black dropped glove! It will mean nothing. Forget it. Better come back another day with a bouquet of flowers. What flowers?
O endless rose, intimate, without limit,
Which the Lord will finally show to my dead eyes.
Katya looked at me enquiringly. I nodded. It was time to go. We walked slowly back towards the gate, neither of us speaking.
You found the one you were looking for? asked the Bosnian gardener.
Thanks to you, replied Katya.
Family?
Yes family, she said.
Outside the theatre everything was calm and the door of the starling’s flight was closed. I had parked my bike next to Katya’s scooter. She went to fetch her helmet. About to put on my own, I pulled out the gloves. There was only one. I looked again. Only one.
What’s the matter?
There’s a glove missing.
You must have dropped it, we’ll go back, it’ll only take a minute.
I told her what had gone through my head as we were standing by the grave.
You underestimated him, she said conspiratorially, gravely underestimated him.
While we were laughing, I stuffed the remaining glove into my pocket and she climbed up behind me. Most of the lights were green and we were soon over the Rhône, leaving the city behind and taking the chicane bends up to the pass. The warm air rushed over my bare hands and Katya leant into the turns. I remembered how she had recently quoted Zeno of Elea in an SMS message to me: What is in motion is neither in the space where it is, nor in the space where it isn’t; for me this is a definition of music.
We made a sort of music until we reached the Col de la Faucille.
There we stopped and got off to look down at the lake, towards the Alps, and at the city of Genève with its multitude of lifetimes.
3
Kraków
It was not a hotel. It was a kind of pension where, at the most, there were four or five guests. In the morning breakfast on a tray was placed on a shelf in the corridor: bread, butter, honey and slices of a sausage which is a speciality of the city. Beside the tray, packets of Nescafé and an electric water heater. Contact with the severe and serene young women who ran the place was minimal.
In the bedrooms all the furniture, made of either oak or walnut, was old and must have dated from before the Second World War. This was in the only Polish city which survived that war without serious destruction to its buildings. In the pension, as in a convent or a monastery, there was a sense inside each room that the two windows which gave on to the streets had been contemplatively looked through for several generations.
The building was situated on Miodowa Street in Kazimierz,
A couple approached an empty bench further down the cemetery path. They hesitated and then decided to sit. The woman sat on her man’s knees, facing him.
The words on the back were in Norse. Hann tekr sverthit Gram ok leggr i methal theira bert. He takes the sword Gram and lays it naked between them. The sentence comes from a Norse saga that Kodama and Borges loved over the years and played games with.
At the very bottom of the stela, near the grass, is written: From Ulrike to Javier Otárola. Ulrike was the name Borges lent Kodama, and Javier the name she lent him.
It’s a shame, I thought to myself, that we didn’t bring any flowers to leave. Then I had an idea: instead of flowers, I would leave one of my leather gloves.
The gardener driving his lawnmower was getting closer. I could hear the two-stroke engine and smell the newly cut grass. I know of no other smell which has as much to do with beginnings: morning, childhood, spring.
The memory of a morning.
Lines of Virgil and Frost.
The voice of Macedonio Fernándéz.
The love or the conversation of a few people.
Certainly they are talismans, but useless against
the dark I cannot name,
the dark I must not name.
I began to wonder. The glove will only look as if somebody has dropped it! A crumpled black dropped glove! It will mean nothing. Forget it. Better come back another day with a bouquet of flowers. What flowers?
O endless rose, intimate, without limit,
Which the Lord will finally show to my dead eyes.
Katya looked at me enquiringly. I nodded. It was time to go. We walked slowly back towards the gate, neither of us speaking.
You found the one you were looking for? asked the Bosnian gardener.
Thanks to you, replied Katya.
Family?
Yes family, she said.
Outside the theatre everything was calm and the door of the starling’s flight was closed. I had parked my bike next to Katya’s scooter. She went to fetch her helmet. About to put on my own, I pulled out the gloves. There was only one. I looked again. Only one.
What’s the matter?
There’s a glove missing.
You must have dropped it, we’ll go back, it’ll only take a minute.
I told her what had gone through my head as we were standing by the grave.
You underestimated him, she said conspiratorially, gravely underestimated him.
While we were laughing, I stuffed the remaining glove into my pocket and she climbed up behind me. Most of the lights were green and we were soon over the Rhône, leaving the city behind and taking the chicane bends up to the pass. The warm air rushed over my bare hands and Katya leant into the turns. I remembered how she had recently quoted Zeno of Elea in an SMS message to me: What is in motion is neither in the space where it is, nor in the space where it isn’t; for me this is a definition of music.
We made a sort of music until we reached the Col de la Faucille.
There we stopped and got off to look down at the lake, towards the Alps, and at the city of Genève with its multitude of lifetimes.
3
Kraków
It was not a hotel. It was a kind of pension where, at the most, there were four or five guests. In the morning breakfast on a tray was placed on a shelf in the corridor: bread, butter, honey and slices of a sausage which is a speciality of the city. Beside the tray, packets of Nescafé and an electric water heater. Contact with the severe and serene young women who ran the place was minimal.
In the bedrooms all the furniture, made of either oak or walnut, was old and must have dated from before the Second World War. This was in the only Polish city which survived that war without serious destruction to its buildings. In the pension, as in a convent or a monastery, there was a sense inside each room that the two windows which gave on to the streets had been contemplatively looked through for several generations.
The building was situated on Miodowa Street in Kazimierz,
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