I first rang John Berger more than a year ago – I had been given his number by his publisher to arrange a date to meet him in Paris. I mentioned that November was a busy month, to which he responded in a warm, conspiratorial tone: that was good – because he would be away throughout the month and could not say when next he would be free. The sense was – charming, if not helpful in professional terms – that we would agree not to meet unless or until it suited us. The clear subtext was: let the bosses go hang. I put the phone down – amused but then anxious that I had missed my opportunity to meet the great man – storyteller, art critic, artist. Months passed and then Berger’s 90th birthday was on the horizon – a new excuse to meet. I still had his mobile number and, this time, we made our date without fuss.
The trouble was – and typical that this should happen en route to meeting a man I admired so much – his address. There is more than one Avenue du Onze Novembre and they exist in distinct, far-flung areas of Paris. I was on a suburban train when Berger rang to check my progress and we ascertained I was heading at speed in completely the wrong direction (my slapdash approach to Google maps to blame). When I eventually arrived, a flustered cab ride later, he and his companion, Nella Bielski, must have been staring at the lunch Nella had prepared for almost an hour. They could not have been nicer, Berger smilingly making light of all my apologies with what I would discover to be his defining quality: kindness.
In their company, the procedure of an interview seemed bad form. How much more agreeable to talk over lunch through the ebbing Parisian afternoon. And that, with huge enjoyment on my part, is what we mainly did. As to any sense that Berger himself was ebbing, only his painful back seemed to insist he was mortal. He planned to get back on his motorbike and swim again (as soon as his back obliged). Even allowing for the frailty of being 90, there was fire in him. We talked about art, politics and literature and, above all, his love of family and friends. He told me he was intending to give only one major pre-birthday interview – this was it. Neither of us knew it would be his last. “Come and see us again next time you are in Paris,” he said.
