Paris Adrift

by EJ Swift

  A beacon to the north draws his gaze. He follows the light, making his way up through narrow corridors of rubble. Looking back, the left bank is a distant sprawl of electricity. He keeps climbing. At last he reaches the foot of the butte Montmartre.

  Where the Moulin Vert stood is a fortress. It squats upon the hill, burrowing greedily into the earth, a low-slung building bristling with defences. Barbed wire fences encircle it, guards and dogs patrol the walls. The red dot of a drone streaks overhead and vanishes. Gone are the palatial steps. Gone are the quiet gardens, the water fountains, the carousel. The hill is stripped of lawn, and the beacon that drew him is a white searchlight roving voraciously over the no-man’s-land between the fortress and where Léon is standing now.

  “What are you doing out here?”

  Léon has no chance to respond. Someone grabs him, clamping a hand over his mouth, and he feels himself being dragged backwards, away from the light. He starts to struggle but a firm clout to the head tells him it’s best to keep quiet. He lets himself be dragged. If these were the people he has just escaped, there would be no need to remain undercover.

  They have been moving for a good few minutes before his captors release him and push him to the floor. A torch shines in his face, the light shielded by the remains of a brick wall.

  “Who is he?”

  “No idea. Not one of them.”

  “Who are you?”

  Léon spits blood, suppresses the urge to inflict reciprocal violence. He’s fairly sure these people aren’t ‘one of them’ either.

  “I’m looking for the Remembrist,” he says.

  Hands move over him. Something else, a device.

  “He’s not chipped—”

  “Armed, though—”

  “Hey, where’d you get these guns?”

  “The police had me captive. I escaped.”

  A pause whilst they assess. Then a voice says, “We’ll take you in, because we can’t leave you out here. But you know the drill. Keep quiet. No sudden movements.”

  They manhandle him to his feet, push him before them, a gun at his back. It’s dark enough for him to break free if he wanted, most likely unhurt, but he makes no attempt. He has a feeling they’re taking him exactly where he wants to go.

  The sun is edging over the horizon as they march him down the hill. Under its benign light, the city’s ruins are even more desolate. Léon can hardly believe this is Paris. That something he loved could be destroyed so quickly. He expects the bohemians to take him underground, into the abandoned métro, but when they reach the boulevard they turn left, towards Barbès.

  MÉTRO JAURÈS WAS named for one of France’s first social democrats, a pacifist assassinated at the outbreak of the First World War. Hallie walked past it in 1942 on her way to the Paris Conservatoire, where musicians used to train, and once a student called Rachel Clouatre sat on a piano stool in front of Rachmaninov’s Concerto No. 3, knowing the world had come to an end when it should have been just beginning.

  The overground section of Line 2 is gone, but the supporting pillars still stand. In the shadow of the station, a grey-haired woman sits at a small square table, studying a chess board. A single plait trails down her back, wisps of white mark her temples. A bandage covers her left eye. Her right rests on the board.

  The game is in an advanced state of play, but the opponent’s chair is empty.

  The bohemians indicate Léon should approach.

  A few metres away he stops, unwilling to break the woman’s concentration. Eye fixed upon the board, the chess player beckons.

  “You’re looking for me?”

  “Are you the Remembrist?”

  “Some call me that.”

  “Then yes, I was looking for you.”

  “Come. You can take a seat.”

  “Am I expected to play?”

  “You could. But I wouldn’t advise it. I’m about to put my opponent in a very sticky position.”

  Léon sits.

  “Why do they call you that?”

  “I guard the old city’s memories. Some are given freely, others are left out, and I take them in. Some need a little... encouragement.”

  “I need to know what happened here,” he says.

  “I can tell you it all, if you can take the telling.”

  “I can.”

  “Do you know what it means, to hold a history?”

  “I do.”

  The Remembrist angles her head, her good eye towards Léon. Bright, alert, the colour of quartz.

  “Where do you wish me to start?”

  “There was a windmill on the hill. It was called the Moulin Vert.”

  A silence.

  “Many would prefer to forget that name,” she says at last.

  “But not you.”

  “There was a great war in the middle of the last century.” The woman frowns. “It consumed the world and many millions of lives. The city fell under occupation. The occupiers sang songs in the music halls. They played symphonies on the steps of the opera. Their music was sweet, and hearing its melodies some forgot who they were. But others did not forget.”

  The Remembrist’s fingers flutter to the board, as though she might make a move, then retreat.

  “Those who did not forget had a symbol to remind them. The Moulin Vert, they called it, a building at the heart of Montmartre, which in those days was still a magnet for people who believed in freedom, and art, and love. During the Second World War the Moulin Vert became something more; it became a code.”

  “And a meeting point.”

  “That is also true. Its symbol appeared in windows, on secret pamphlets. For a brief time, it was the most important building in Paris. But eventually, the war ended, and after the war people forgot, again, because often it is easier to forget, and that is the nature of things.

  “Then came the beginning of this blighted century, when an economic crash swept the world and a new shadow of fear and hatred began to squeeze the hearts of the cities of Europe. Democracy was under attack from outside and from within. There were many senseless deaths. Once again, the windmill appeared. Now its symbol was stamped upon pavements and graffitied on walls. There were rallies on the hill. A young woman roused a new movement. Her name was Aide Lefort, and she might have saved us.”

  Léon waits.

  “It was to be a new bohemia,” says the woman. “Once again, people looked to the Moulin Vert for inspiration, and Lefort supplied it. Lefort knew her history. She remembered. She rallied the people of Paris as the climate of fear and hatred grew more insidious. For a long time she refused to enter politics directly. She felt she could make more of a difference from the outside. But eventually, she did as her followers asked. She stood for President.”

  She looks at Léon.

  “You must have been barely a child when she died, if you were even born. This was almost thirty years ago, on the eve of the last true democratic election.”

  “How did she die?”

  “She was assassinated,” says the Remembrist abruptly. “Though, of course, that is not what we were told. We were told she had murdered her partner and her children and then killed herself. We were told she was mad, dangerous. A fanatic. The Front national rallied and won the election.”

  “And here we are.”

  “And here we are.” She falls silent for a moment. “After that, the Parti Moulin Vert turned dark. They had always been a community who embraced their fellow citizens as sisters and brothers. Perhaps Lefort was the only one who could have held it together. Once she was gone, they turned upon one another. Some held for peace, others vengeance. There were clashes. Offices bombed, politicians assassinated in her name. Within a year, the names of the Moulin Vert and the New Bohemia were tantamount to treason, according to the new laws. Within another five years, they were a network of terrorist cells, determined to bring down the authorities who had killed Lefort.

  “Meanwhile, the rest of the world was slowly falling apart. Oil reserves were almost
depleted. Crops failing. Thousands emigrated to the cities from the flood-plagued countryside. Riots spread through the north of Paris. Today, the state calls it the last revolution. The final act of that government was to clear north of the river, where the Vert terrorists were said to be hiding. Citizens who had proved themselves loyal republicans were evacuated. Anyone questionable was left behind. Then they sent in the drones.”

  “We bombed our own people.”

  “And in place of the Moulin Vert, the government built a prison. Those who go there are forgotten also. Their names are removed from records and their bodies from society.” The Remembrist sits back in her chair. Her single eye roves across their surroundings. “This city’s history has always been paved with blood.”

  Léon tries to imagine the scene: Paris turning upon its citizens. The whir of incoming drones, the incipient terror. Or perhaps there was no warning. A clear day, and then an inferno. His country. He wants to deny it could be possible, but he knows it has happened too many times before.

  The Remembrist folds her hands in her lap, observing him. “This story has troubled you.”

  “What if I told you there was a way to end all this?”

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  “I’d need your help.”

  She leans forward, beckons Léon to do the same. She brings her forehead close to his, almost touching. Her fingertips are light beneath his chin.

  “You have a good heart,” she says. “But why should I trust you?”

  “Because I can do something no one else can.”

  She leans back a little, her good eye shut. For a moment her hand hovers just above the chessboard, then swoops. Her fingers fasten around a knight and claim a pawn from the white player.

  “Obvious, now,” she says.

  She gets slowly to her feet, palms supporting her sacrum.

  “Would you mind...?” She indicates Léon’s chair.

  “Of course.”

  He stands. The Remembrist sits, settles herself, and studies the board anew from the opposite side.

  “Well, that was a beast of a move she left for me. All right, my child. I’m willing to hear more. But you’ll have to convince me.”

  Léon starts talking.

  THE ABANDONED TUNNELS of the métro: dark, dank, labyrinthine, populated by rats and insects and other things that crawl or scuttle or slide. The bohemians run its highways, squat in its darkness, let their minds bend from above the earth to below it. They know where a roof has caved in and they have dug the narrowest channel through. They know the weak spots. They know the cavernous stretches that flood in a storm. They know where the mines are. They know where they can trap, and be trapped.

  There are not many of them left. One is the great-nephew of Aide Lefort. Another is an insider turned outsider. The youngest were born here, underground. Their first memory was of darkness. Some of them came from the left bank. Ex-citizens, their names erased from all but one public record: the guillotine’s waiting list. A green windmill is suspended in their minds. On moonless nights they have crept close to the bleak exterior of the prison, in initiation ceremonies, learning to focus their hate.

  The bohemians are funded by the solar-rich states of north-east Africa. They have channels to Germany, connections in Greece, links to underground movements opposing other fascist governments across Europe. Their tactics are guerrilla. Their centre of operations moves every forty-eight hours. Their best work is done by hackers: burrowing into state infrastructure, pulling grids offline, encrypting databases, squirrelling themselves into the binary world of gaming. Their most successful raid was on a pharmaceutical amnesiac factory. They used homemade explosives and halted the production line for a month.

  They have never taken the life of a civilian, although they do not include the police or the armed forces in this. They believe that a tipping point is coming when every bohemian must take up arms, and when it does, they will be ready: woman, man and child.

  When Léon arrives in the tunnels, preparations are underway for the bohemians’ latest mission. A prisoner is due to be moved to the hill; they plan to intercept the transport. Léon is given food and water and fresh clothes and a pair of boots suitable for traversing the tunnels. The leather is old and supple; someone has worn these boots before. Someone who no longer has need of them.

  Léon sits apart from the others, back to the wall, feet wedged under the rusted rail tracks, the remnants of an advertisement for some department store or other at his back. He attracts looks, curious and guarded, but not unfriendly. The Remembrist has vouched for him. A woman, Aude, introduces herself. She will be his guide back to the left bank. He asks her how long she has been with the bohemians.

  “Five years,” she says. She was a university lecturer. For some time before she defected, she had been feeding her classes illegal syllabi, teaching them about democracy. Then a colleague threatened to expose her.

  She still has family in the city. “Many of us do,” she says.

  She says sometimes there are journalists who come, from those countries where there is still a free press, like Germany or Iceland or further afield. They meet with the bohemians, ask earnest questions. They listen. Then in that other country there is an interview, or maybe a few minutes of video, and for a while the bohemians are news. Their plight is described as tragic, unconscionable, and there is outrage, until the next thing comes along, and then they are forgotten again, put out of mind with the mundanities of daily life.

  Léon waits as the assault team go through their final checks. When they leave, so will Léon and Aude. Light is the final concession, a dim, reddish light; the majority of the preparations have been made by ear and touch. There are murmurs, the clicks of firearms being assembled. The bohemians work effortlessly.

  They gather along the tracks, facing the platform, waiting. The great-nephew of Aide Lefort—sole survivor of her family—stands before them, an Ethiopian rifle slung over his shoulder. He addresses the assault team, wishes them good hunting. He reminds them: theirs is the revolution that will break open the minds of the people. They will liberate the prisoners of the state. They will destroy the stores of Forgetting that dull independent thought. A new era will dawn, one where the bohemians can embrace the light, need no longer skulk in the dark. Tonight, they will free one woman in the road to this end. The bohemians applaud and stamp their feet. The sound, in that gloom, is immense.

  The assault team make ready, performing their final checks. Aude picks up her backpack, and nods to Léon. Time to go.

  A siren blares through the underground station, momentarily freezing its occupants. Then a bohemian screams.

  “Breach!”

  Lights are doused, the station pitches into blackness. Léon hears the sound of weapons being taken up, safety catches clicking off. People shoulder past, running into the tunnels, footsteps uneven in their haste. Aude grabs his hand.

  “Come on.”

  When Léon glances back, he can see a light approaching down the opposite tunnel, harsh and bright and moving at speed. The assault team, caught in its glare, are framed, ready to attack whatever emerges. Aude pulls him further into the tunnel where the others dispersed. They start to run, tracing the path of the old tracks, heading west. Behind them, Léon can hear a smatter of gunfire against the walls of the platform. It’s going to be a massacre.

  He stumbles. He should go back, try to help. But if he gets himself killed now, he loses the only chance there is to prevent this future unfolding. Aude keeps tugging his hand. Doesn’t pause for a moment. The Remembrist has given her a mission, and she intends to keep faith with it. She leads Léon through the underbelly of his city, smuggling him through disused tunnels, platforms that were never open, boltholes and spaces barely wide enough to fit a body through.

  She takes him back under the river. Under the wall. There is a place where the métro intersects with the catacombs, known only to the bohemians. Aude is sure-footed and does not falter. With each step cl
oser, Léon can feel the presence of his anomaly amplifying, its eagerness to have him back. Time falters; begins to lurch around him as the anomaly sends out tendrils, loose strands of past and future that yank at his heart and lungs. The fabric of this world growing thinner. Dizziness toying with his balance.

  “You don’t have to come all the way,” he says to Aude. But she refuses to leave him alone. She has her instructions, has to know that what he told the Remembrist is the truth. He suspects if he were lying, he would find himself joining the dead for good. But a flare is on the way. He can feel its call.

  Through the halls of bones. The disused tunnels.

  Terror, exhilaration.

  The anomaly is waiting. He is ready to embrace it.

  He puts all of his focus on the date in his mind. July, 2018. Hallie’s time. Aude is speaking but he doesn’t hear what she says. He is in a blind and deaf space. When the flare comes, he can no longer see the bohemian’s face, but he can imagine the look of astonishment as she watches him disappear.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  LÉON AND I, sat on the pavement by the Clos Montmartre in the heat of early afternoon. The smell of young grapes in the air, tourists traipsing past us in flip-flops. The future Léon has just described feels impossible, but I don’t doubt him for a second.

  “We have to save Aide Lefort,” I say.

  “Exactly my thinking.”

  “She’s the key.”

  “I asked the Remembrist to tell me everything she knew about the assassination. It happened in 2042. Aide was staying in the Hôtel Josephine in Bastille, the night before the election. When the polls opened in the morning, Aide, her partner and their children were found dead in their rooms.”

  “We have to stop it.”

  “I have to stop it,” says Léon. “There’s no point risking both of us.”