G. walked on. The woman’s air of vague familiarity increased his interest in her. Between the two of them he saw his past self hurrying forward to draw level with her. He would recognize her face, he would speak to her. He saw her interest being aroused by his past self. Yet he did not quicken his pace to discover who she was. Whatever it was that separated him from his past self was very slight, amounting to no more than a whim, to no more perhaps than the heat he imagined he could still feel on his body from the fire in the print shop.
If G. had struggled with the four men when they came up to him, their fight might take several pages to describe. He did not struggle.
If, on the other hand, he submitted to them without any resistance at all, several pages might be needed to describe his acceptance of death. He did not submit without resistance.
What happened can be quickly told and the rest can be conveyed at last by my silence.
They forced him to walk out of the piazza past the church of San Antonio. On the way he caught a glimpse of the face of the woman who had seemed familiar: it was from this woman that he had bought this morning the cherries in the Piazza Ponterosso. Two of the men held his arms forcing them against his sides like the arms of a foetus not yet detached from the body. The third man walked in front and the fourth behind. They went along by the canal down to the mole. There they turned right towards the railyards. The waterfront was deserted. From time to time G. tried to release his arms. He could not. They took him to the water’s edge.
Until that moment I do not think he foresaw the exact circumstances of his own death. Certain doubts or hopes must have remained. Perhaps death when it arrives is always a mounting surprise which surprises itself to the point at which all reference—and therefore all self-distinction—disappears.
They struck him on the back of his head. He fainted. The taste of milk is the cloud of unknowing. They supported him, moved forward a few inches and then dropped him feet first into the salt water.
The sun is low in the sky and the sea is calm. Like a mirror as they say. Only it is not like a mirror. The waves which are scarcely waves, for they come and go in many different directions and their rising and falling is barely perceptible, are made up of innumerable tiny surfaces at variegating angles to one another—of these surfaces those which reflect the sunlight straight into one’s eyes, sparkle with a white light during the instant before their angle, relative to oneself and the sun, shifts and they merge again into the blackish blue of the rest of the sea. Each time the light lasts for no longer than a spark stays bright when shot out from a fire. But as the sea recedes towards the sun, the number of sparkling surfaces multiplies until the sea indeed looks somewhat like a silver mirror. But unlike a mirror it is not still. Its granular surface is in continual agitation. The further away the ricochetting grains, of which the mass become silver and the visibly distinct minority a dark leaden colour, the greater is their apparent speed. Uninterruptedly receding towards the sun, the transmission of its reflexions becoming ever faster, the sea neither requires nor recognizes any limit. The horizon is the straight bottom edge of a curtain arbitrarily and suddenly lowered upon a performance.
About the Author
John Berger, born in London in 1926, is well known as a novelist, screenwriter, documentary writer, and art critic. His books include The Sense of Sight, About Looking, The Success and Failure of Picasso, Ways of Seeing, Art and Revolution, and the award-winning novel G., among many others.
He now lives and works in a small French peasant community. This milieu is the setting for Pig Earth and Once in Europa, the first two volumes of the Into Their Labours trilogy, that concludes with Lilac and Flag.
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The Works of John Berger
Pig Earth (first book of the Into Their Labours trilogy)
Once in Europa (second book of the trilogy)
Lilac and Flag (third book of the trilogy)
A Painter of Our Time
Permanent Red
The Foot of Clive
Corker’s Freedom
A Fortunate Man
Art and Revolution
The Moment of Cubism and Other Essays
The Look of Things: Selected Essays and Articles
Ways of Seeing
Another Way of Telling
A Seventh Man
G.
About Looking
And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos
The Sense of Sight
The Success and Failure of Picasso
Copyright
First Vintage International Edition, September 1991
Copyright © 1972 by John Berger
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in Great Britain by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1972.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Berger, John.
G. : a novel / John Berger.—1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
Previously published: New York : Pantheon Books, 1980.
eISBN: 978-0-307-79423-9
I. Title.
[PR6052.E564G24 1991]
823’.914—dc20 91-50094
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