Free A Fortunate Man by John Berger

prerogative of distant policy-makers. The intellectual – and this is why they are so suspicious of him – seems to be part of the apparatus of the State which controls them. Sassall is trusted because he lives with them. But his way of thinking could only have been acquired elsewhere. All theory-makers have cast at least one eye on the seat of power. And that is a privilege the foresters have never known.

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    There is another reason why they sense that Sassall’s way of thinking is a privilege, but as a reason it is less rational. Once it might have been considered magical. He confesses to fear without fear. He finds all impulses natural – or understandable. He remembers what it is like to be a child. He has no respect for any title as such. He can enter into other people’s dreams or nightmares. He can lose his temper and then talk about the true reasons, as opposed to the excuse, for why he did so. His ability to do such things connects him with aspects of experience which have to be either ignored or denied by common-sense. Thus his ‘licence’ challenges the prisoner in every one of his listeners.
    There is probably only one other man in the area whose mode of thinking is comparable. But this man is a writer and a recluse. Nobody around him is aware of how he thinks. There are clergymen and schoolmasters and engineers, but they all use the syntax of common-sense: it is only their vocabulary which is different because they need to refer to God, O-levels, or stresses in metal. Sassall’s privilege seems locally unique.
    The attitude of the villagers and foresters to Sassall’s privilege is complex. He has got a good brain, they say, why, with a brain like this – and then, remembering that he belongs to them, they realize that his choice of their remote country practice again implies a kind of privilege: the privilege of his indifference to success. But now his privilege becomes to some extent their privilege. They are proud of him and at the same time protective about him: as though his choice suggested that a good brain can also be a kind of weakness. They often look at him quite anxiously. Yet they are not, I think, so proud of him as a doctor – they know he is a good doctor but they do not know how rare or common that is – rather, they are proud of his way of thinking, of his mind, which has mysteriously allowed him to choose to stay with them. Without being directly influenced by it, they make his way of thinking theirs by giving it a local function.
    He does more than treat them when they are ill; he is the objective witness of their lives. They seldom refer to him as a witness. They only think of him when some practical circumstance brings them together. He is in no way a final arbiter. That is why I chose the rather humble word clerk : the clerk of their records.
    He is qualified to be this precisely because of his privilege. If the records are to be as complete as possible – and who does not at times dream of the impossible ideal of being totally recorded? – the records must be related to the world at large, and they must include what is hidden, even what is hidden within the protagonists themselves.
    Some may now assume that he has taken over the role of the parish priest or vicar. Yet this is not so. He is not the representative of an all-knowing, all-powerful being. He is their own representative. His records will never be offered to any higher judge. He keeps the records so that, from time to time, they can consult them themselves. The most frequent opening to a conversation with him, if it is not a professional consultation, are the words ‘Do you remember when …?’ He represents them, becomes their objective (as opposed to subjective) memory, because he represents their lost possibility of understanding and relating to the outside world, and because he also