by James Jones
Ah, that bar.
I suppose that we are a generation of drunks, as Hill’s younger generation are all the time so loudly proclaiming. I have talked with them about it, and about the cowardice, wastage, and lack of responsibility in it. But I fail to see much difference between that and the pot-smoking and LSD-taking of their generation: and the slush-brained pot-heads, acid-heads, dropouts and even junkies that they produce.
If we have failed to much change the world we inherited from our parents, and have not given them, our offspring, any real moral precepts to go by, they do not understand that the generation of our parents failed even more to change the world they inherited, and gave us even less by way of any honest moral outlook. And I can’t help but wonder what their children will be like, if and when they have them, whether we are drunks or not.
And I suppose we are. I suppose we might go down in history (in this new cataloging of the generations that has become so popular) as “The Drunk Generation”, were it not that we have before us as example the generation of Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Hemingway— The “Lost” Generation—all nervously itching to take the credit, and jealously yelling “We did it first!”, while monitoring us, guiding us, leading us by the hand toward the concept that alcohol is the panacea for all pain and despair, while at the same time claiming the heavy consumption of it to be the quintessence of manliness.
Ah, that bar. I suppose most of all I miss those hot and heavy drunken discussions we used to have around it.
That was the Thursday night. The next night was the night of the Friday of May 10th, and the Great Battle of the rue Gay-Lussac.
I suppose it is silly, even dumb, to talk about that battle now at this late date. But at the time it was very important. It was really the first major turning point of the May Revolution, and from it the whole Revolution proceeded, probably.
Yet, I think the real May Revolution began at some point during the day on that Thursday of May the 9th. Some time during that Thursday the people of Paris went over to the side of the students. And I think they did it, and it began, in gaiety and a sort of hedonistic social irresponsibility, which passed by osmosis from the students to the populace of Paris. People just suddenly did not want to work for the Patronat, the Establishment any more, at least not for a while.
I know many believe it began the next night, the “Black Friday” of May 10th, when the night battle on the rue Gay-Lussac so outraged the French with its police brutality. But I believe they were already on the side of the students, and that there would have been no great night battle if the students had now known this. Certainly it was the students who set the battle up, and forced the police into it.
When more than three hundred people are hospitalized after a night of barricades (and there were many, many more than that, who preferred not to give themselves up to a hospital and be arrested for it)—when that happens, it is bound to be an important event with big impact. We followed it on our transistor radios at the Gallaghers, on both the Europe Number One and Radio Luxembourg stations. As usual, the French Government-owned television and radio said almost nothing about the fact that there was a student uprising.
It began late, after two A.M., and everybody had left the Gallaghers long before that. I had gone out to dinner and come back later because we were all wondering about Hill. Student leaders had been negotiating with M. Roche at the Sorbonne all through the evening, still about their same three demands, and the students themselves used the time to prepare themselves well; they built barricades in depth all over the upper half of the Quartier: rue Gay-Lussac; rue St. Jacques; rue d’Ulm; rue Lhomond; Place Contrescarpe; rue de l’Estrapade. The police, under orders to wait, could only stand at the ends of the streets and watch. Finally, shortly after two A.M., the negotiations broke down and the police were ordered to charge, to clear the streets, and the battle was on. Finally it coalesced itself in two spots, Contrescarpe, and Gay-Lussac.
Gay-Lussac was apparently far the worse. Fred Singer the TV man finished his nightly reportage and came back from there on his way home, and seeing the lights on in the apartment, came up. He was red-eyed and weeping and his nose was running copiously. “The damned CRS are beating up everybody. Strangers, foreigners, newsmen, photographers. I almost got beat up myself. And for a minute I thought we were going to get our equipment smashed.”
The students had piled up cars parked in the street and set them afire. They were dropping Molotov cocktails down off the roofs of the buildings. The police kept on throwing in more and more tear gas. “I don’t see how they stand it,” Fred said, sniffling. “I didn’t get anywhere near the heart of it, and I couldn’t stand it.” Harry made him a stiff drink.
It was too far away for us to see or hear anything from the windows. But an eerie glow lit up the night sky over Montparnasse, above the Left Bank houses.
We had the two American painters, one of them a woman, with us now. They were afraid to try to get home. There were no barricades near their area yet, but a lot of people were out and there was much activity in the street.
At one point Harry and I decided to go out. We would sally forth up to Montparnasse to watch the battle still raging up and down Gay-Lussac. But then Louisa said that if we went, she was going too.
Louisa’s bright eyes were feverishly bright now, and her long-jawed face was grim with a kind of frenetic righteousness. If we were going out to look and take a chance on getting ourselves hurt, she was absolutely going, too. And if we were going out to get involved, she was going to get involved, also. She had a son out there. She had a son out there, too, she said. Harry took one look at her, and said she absolutely could not go, and that if it meant all that much to her, he would not go either. She subsided. But her face fell and she seemed depressed, and she began to brood, quietly.
As a sort of placating compromise, I offered to telephone a literary friend, an American writer who lived on a small street that crossed rue Gay-Lussac, the rue de l’Abbé de l’Épée, to see how things were. When I got him on the line, he advised us not to come out at all. “Things are really bad up here, Jack,” he said, “I wouldn’t try it.” The agitation and excitement in his voice were apparent on the phone. “I’m not even going out myself. The police are really cracking down tonight. We’ve got half a dozen hurt students in here now my wife and I are trying to give first aid to, and every half hour there are three or four more taking refuge in our court. I don’t see how these kids can stand it out there. Even the police, with masks, can’t go into that tear gas they’ve laid down on Gay-Lussac. And yet these kids stick right in there and won’t leave or retreat.”
“All right, Clem,” I said. “Thanks a lot. I guess we won’t go.” This was obviously something quite different than what I had seen the afternoon before.
We did not hear from Hill that night, nor did we hear from him the next day, Saturday.
In the morning we walked up to Montparnasse and rue Gay-Lussac to view the devastation. Lots of other people were out to look, too. It looked like a war had passed by. Turned-over and burnt-out cars littered the entire street in a series of fought-over barricades. Store windows were broken out, and some storefronts were burned black. The usual glass and debris, twisted metal signs, paving stones, and blackened fire filth were everywhere. Cordons of tough-looking police now held the street, and gave you a rough looking-over before allowing you through. You had to have business there or you could not get through. I gave my writer friend’s name and address, in my best American accent. After a drink with him and his wife, who were high and excited, but exhausted, from their night of Red Cross work, we went back to the Gallaghers’ to find that no word at all had come from Hill while we were gone.
That was the Saturday, you will remember, that M. Pompidou returned posthaste from Afghanistan. Only four hours later, and after more than 36 hours without sleep, the Prime Minister went on TV with a tight but remarkably well-delivered speech giving in to all the student demands. From it he emerged with a co
nsiderably enhanced, if slightly ragged-looking, dignity. Certainly it enhanced his popularity. “The great Zorro arrives in the nick of time to save the day,” one Government official was quoted in the paper as saying. It was certainly something Monsieur le Général de Gaulle would never have accepted to do.
Hill did not call Saturday night, either. Saturday seemed to be a sort of night off for everybody, while police and students both patched up their ranks and their wounds.
8
SUNDAY WAS ALWAYS a day off for everybody, student Revolutionaries and police alike. I suppose a lot of them went to church, and then had a big Sunday dinner.
Actually, student groups were meeting with workers’ committees and union committees all that day.
I had news that afternoon late, when I walked down the quiet treelined quai to the Gallaghers for what had now become a recognized daily ritual. Hill had telephoned me just before I left to go to his parents.
“Where in the hell have you been!” I cried.
There was a kind of strange, frustrated pause at the other end. Then he said, “I’ve been busy. Haven’t you heard about the great battle?”
I was outraged. “Do you have any idea at all how worried we have been about you! Never mind me, but your mother and dad! Why in the name of God didn’t you telephone?”
“I don’t think you understand, Uncle Jack,” Hill said tersely. “We’ve got a lot of sick people on our hands here, and we’ve got to take care of them. Somebody’s got to.”
This slowed me down a little. I could imagine him in some loft, like the one he had roughly described to me, surrounded by wounded and moaning students covered with blood. “Well, is everything all right?”
“I’m okay,” Hill said, “if that’s what you mean. That’s why I telephoned.”
“I gathered that. And I will tell your folks. But what I meant was, well, all the rest of it.”
“We’re making out. We’re making out. As well as can be expected.”
“Can I help? Do you want me to come over there?”
There was a pause. “What could you do?”
“Well, I’m still pretty expert at first aid.”
“We’re past the first aid stage, we’re into the medical. Now, we need oxygen, and anesthetics, and bandages, and medications. Do you know any doctors?”
“I know so-and-so and so-and-so,” I mentioned two doctors that I went to, and who were friends of mine.
“They’ve both been here, volunteering their help already. There’s really nothing you can do, Uncle Jack, really.”
“Well, don’t hang up for a minute. Tell me, were you out in the middle of all that?”
“Sure. And I think I got some pretty good shots. Tell Dad that. I won’t know till we get them developed, and there’s no place in Paris we can trust to send them to. The Government apparently has put a tag on all the photo-developing places with the idea of confiscating student film, if it is brought in. So we’ll have to wait. The light was very bad, and we did not have any artificial lighting. And you know how it is with a hand-held camera, especially when you’re breathing hard and standing unbalanced.”
“Well,” I said, “at least you have won, anyway, all of you. Pompidou has given in on all three of the student demands. The Sorbonne will be open on Monday.”
His voice was almost a snarl. “Are you kidding? Pompidou’s offer is only a token acceptance, to slow us down and cool us off a little. They will ‘discuss reforms’ with us, they say. Well, we’re not quitting now. If the Sorbonne opens on Monday, we will occupy it.” His voice suddenly got cautious. “And we may occupy something else, as well!”
What on earth could they occupy besides the Sorbonne? I wondered. The Assemblée Nationale? that would be real war. The huge Government TV and radio building; on the Avenue du Président Kennedy: the O.R.T.F.?
“Then you’re not satisfied?” I said.
“Satisfied? You should be where I’ve been for the past thirty-six hours, and then talk about satisfied. No, we’re not satisfied.”
“Where are you now, Hill?”
“I’m calling from a pay phone in a café in the Place Contrescarpe.”
I knew that area. There were ancient old lofts all over, all around that area, and on the rue Mouffetard. That was “Hemingway country”, as George Plimpton might say.
“Well, where is it that you are staying?”
“I don’t think I better tell you, Uncle Jack. The police are still out after us, you know. They’d love to find a loft full of us, wounded, and take us in to some hospital to show their humanitarian intentions. And then arrest us.”
“I wish you’d call your folks yourself,” I said.
“I can’t. You tell them for me. That’s why I called you. You’re going down there now, aren’t you? Jesus!” he said. “Can’t you imagine it? Mother would be insisting to know whether I had my raincoat and my rubbers. Dad would be giving me revolutionary advice: ‘Now, son, this is the way we did it in 1936.’ No, thanks. They’ve never let me do anything on my own in my life. They’ve protected me.”
“I don’t think you’re being fair to them, Hill,” I said.
“Listen, Uncle Jack, I’ve got to hang up.”
Some gleeful devil rose up in me. “And how is Anne-Marie taking all this?”
“Anne-Marie? Oh, she’s having the time of her life. You never saw such energy, and bravery. People like her are in their glory in something like this.”
“?” I could imagine.
“You’ve got a thing against her, haven’t you?” Hill said. “You just don’t understand. You don’t understand that we don’t believe in one-woman, one-man monogamy. We believe in love for all, love given to all, and accepted by all.”
“I know, I know,” I said.
“Listen, Uncle Jack, I’ve got to hang up.”
“Well, I’ll tell your folks,” I said.
“I’m still your old buddy,” he said.
That really made me feel bad. “I know.”
“So long. I’ll keep in touch.”
He hung up, and the phone went dead.
I called Harry and Louisa immediately after, so they would not be kept in suspense about Hill longer than necessary.
“I’ll fill you in on all the details when I get down there,” I said. Harry met me at the door. The apartment was already half full of people, the regular gang that was coming regularly every day now. “Come into the bedroom,” Harry said. “Louisa’s waiting. We can talk in there.” I followed him, down the long hallway, away from the living room and the entrée.
“I guess it’s my ego,” Harry said. “But I just don’t want those people to know Hill called you, instead of me.”
Louisa was up on the bed, a mass of the satin throw-pillows against her back. She did not look depressed, or moody. She had on one of her at-home robes, and her hair was tied back. She had been cooking her curry in the kitchen apparently. The smell of it was delicious in the hall and in the entrée, when I came in. Instead of the normal daily gathering, this was to be one of her old-fashioned, pre-Revolutionary Sunday evenings. And she seemed in fine form, which sort of surprised me.
I told them everything Hill and I had said. They were interested, were not upset, and did not even ask any questions, except when I told them Hill had called from a café. “Where?” they said together. I told them Place Contrescarpe. They knew that area of old buildings and lofts as well as I did. It was actually only a very short walk from where we were sitting. We had all walked there many times.
“He just does not want any help from any of us,” I kept saying over and over. “He insists this is something he has to do, and wants to do, on his own.”
They seemed to take this easily enough.
“I think Hill doesn’t understand that we are on his side,” Harry said.
“I think he does,” I disagreed. “And I think that that is exactly what he does not want. I think he would much rather have you be against the students, like the other pa
rents.”
“I don’t think the parents are against the students,” Harry said. “Not the French.”
“Well, some of them must be,” I said. “From what I’ve heard.”
“Maybe not,” Harry said, “maybe not.”
Louisa suddenly got up off the bed in a bustling way. “Well, I’m going back to the kitchen. I have got to look after my curry. I’ll be out in a few minutes.”
She gave a distinct impression she did not want to be followed, and neither Harry or I followed her.
“I hope you won’t say anything about Hill to the gathered assembly,” Harry said, with a strange sort of gallant laugh, as we walked back down the hall.
“Sure,” I said. “Of course, not. Of course, I won’t.”
But somehow it irritated me that he should ask it a second time.
The long salon was filling up with people when we came out into it. All of the old bunch who had been coming by every day were there, plus a number of others. There must have been 12 or 14 people, already in the room.
Louisa Gallagher’s Sunday evenings had become quite a famous thing in Paris over the past six years. They were more known, though, in the Artist’s Quarter than in the American business community. They had begun more by accident than by deliberate intent. Because all three of her Portuguese domestics had the full day off on Sunday, Louisa had started making curry on Sunday evenings, since they had to stay home to look after McKenna. Louisa could make a delicious, real Indian curry. A few people started dropping by, by accident, and then came back. The word got around, and more people tried to get invited. Louisa did not try to make a thing out of it, it was very informal. But she and Harry refused to let it become an open house where the people could come without being asked. Mainly we were artists, painters, writers, a few gallery owners; almost all from the Quarter; and of all nationalities. Hill sometimes brought groups of his French and American student friends. There was a smattering of movie people Harry knew. There was a smattering of people from the American business community, the established bankers, lawyers, engineers, and corporation people. The business community people came once, or twice, and then somehow did not come again.