King by John Berger

Author:John Berger [Berger, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79430-7
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

5

5:30 P.M.

Red, Vico told me one day, is the colour of sacrifice.

Really?

Both pain and triumph, he said, are in the colour red, and of course blood.

Blood isn’t a colour, it’s a taste, I growled.

Some reds are killing, others are healing, he went on. The abattoir and the geranium, King.

Sometimes I’m sorry for Vica; sometimes I believe Vico has gone mad.

Geraniums smell of wet silver, I said to tease him, go and sniff them in the cement coffins by the traffic light.

Then I felt ashamed of thinking him mad. Everyone at Saint Valéry needs a madness to find their balance after the wreck. It’s like walking with a stick. Madness is the third leg. Me, for instance, I believe I’m a dog. Here nobody knows the truth.

Vico was talking about the colour red because of the Pizza Hut beside us on Sallust Street. Its uniforms are red, its shop front is red, its satchels for carrying the pizzas in are red, its logo, which hangs from a metal frame with feet on the pavement and which the sea wind blows so that it falls over like a talking drunk, is red, its bikes are red, its money bags are red, its telephones are red.

I’ve told you already about the Pizza Hut. I see it all the while. It doesn’t go away. So I tell you again. They never offer us anything although we are in the next doorway. There’s no waste in red Pizza Huts. The cheapest pizza there is the Margherita.

The Margherita was a Neapolitan creation, King, first made in 1830 for Marguerite de Savoie to convey to her excellency the loyalty of our city. It has the same colours as the national flag: red for pomodori, green for basilica, white for mozzarella!

I fix my eyes on the two of them sitting on the scraps of cardboard they bring in the chariot to sit on, so that the pavement is a little less cold and a little less rough with the dirt no one else notices, I fix my eyes on the two of them sitting on their cardboard with their backs against the doorway of the shoe shop. They are sitting close together, casually, unthinkingly, as only the intimate can do. And about neither of them can you suppose anything conclusive. Although they come here every day, their being here looks like an accident. Yet it’s a choice, a reply to a question.

The two of them could stay in Saint Valéry. Why do they come to Sallust? To sell chestnuts and maize. To whistle up money if Vica is alone. Yet why do they come every day? Their coming is a way of replying no.

They’re not going to get rid of us as easily as that! Vica told Vico one morning when he didn’t want to get out of bed.

What difference does it make?

We can’t hide here, she said, all day in the Hut. Are you ill?

No, I’m not ill.

We’ll go together, my love, and take King, she said.

I look along the street.

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