Photocopies by John Berger

Author:John Berger
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-05-17T16:00:00+00:00

17

A Man Holding Up a Horse’s Bridle

In the winter he wore a green corduroy waistcoat over his pullover, but seldom a jacket. On his head, whether indoors or outdoors, he wore a small black beret, pulled discreetly over his eyes like a peaked cap. He was small and stocky, like his own work horse, a mare called Biche.

Biche was immortal, because when one mare was too old to work, he bought a young one, and, in turn, called her Biche.

Once he held up a bridle in front of my face.

Do you know what that means? he asked quietly.

Yes, I said, the mare’s been taken away.

Fifteen years working together is a long time, he said.

He still held out the bridle in front of him. It was the only time I ever saw him make a theatrical gesture. The leather was encrusted with white from the salt of her sweat and the foam of her mouth.

Everything has its end, he finally said before hanging the bridle up on its wooden peg behind the stable door.

When I went to Paris last month, I put a photograph of him in my knapsack. I placed the photo carefully between the pages of a magazine with an article in it about post-industrial societies, so that it wouldn’t get bent.

In the photo Théophile and I are facing each other in the kitchen of his farmhouse, which is bare and tiled like a dairy. It’s winter, he has his beret on, and he’s just about to pour some gnole into a little glass on the table. He’s holding the bottle in his right hand, and in his left the stopper of the bottle between his finger and thumb.

It was many years ago, more than fifteen: my hair wasn’t yet grey. I took the photo with me out of a kind of superstition. No, I took the photo with me as a kind of prayer. A prayer for his delivery. But Théophile was six weeks in the intensive-care unit before they let him die. I have come to mistrust most doctors because they no longer really love people.

The church was full and there were no places to sit down. The unnecessarily drawn-out suffering had made Théophile’s death a jagged wound. Everyone felt this. Nobody among the three hundred people there smiled, even when shaking hands. He deserved better, they muttered.

You are assembled together, said the Curé to the standing villagers, to see him off on his last journey. Nothing in life is lost, the Curé went on, when the candles were lit on the coffin lid.

And suddenly I remembered. At that time Théophile and Jeanne had a dozen milking cows. The breed of l’Abondance. During the six winter months the animals stayed in the stable day and night. Once a week Théophile combed and, if necessary, cut their tails. And the hair he kept for stuffing mattresses.

They had no milking machine and so they milked by hand. Jeanne was the faster milker. My job each evening was to sweep

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