Not Exactly Allies

by Kathryn Judson

CHAPTER 18 – CASTELNEAU, THEN AND NOW

  Florentin Castelneau, Leandre Durand was finding, had made no effort to hide his connections with the Marxist variety of communists back in the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, he had been the right age for it, and had gone to the right schools for it. A young man with such a life path who hadn't dabbled in utopian dreams would have been more surprising. What Durand found most interesting was the jumble that seemed to be Castelneau's life after the disastrous student uprisings of 1968.

  Up until then, he had been true to form for a spoiled rich kid encountering the juvenile, detached variety of social justice taught at many major universities. As if on cue, he had been counter-culture in all the approved and popular ways. He had boycotted his sociology classes, claiming they were tools of industry. He had protested the Vietnam War, blindly following people who spewed concocted stories of atrocities by American soldiers. He had dutifully thrown his hatred against honest progress if achieved by the 'wrong' people or if it in any way supported the bourgeoisie life that had spawned himself and most of his fellows. He tossed old tomatoes at public speakers, whenever handed tomatoes. In short, in the bad boy circles he was a good boy and did what he was told, went where he was led.

  After the societal explosions of May 1968, for a while it looked as if Castelneau would slide into the pattern of what the more idealistic utopians scorned as blousons noirs; mostly privileged students running riot in the streets, protesting everything about society, yet stealing to get the good things of life and then generally settling down to a humdrum existence.

  A great many young men of that generation had slid into petty (and sometimes not so petty) anti-social, even criminal, behavior after their riots unaccountably achieved less than they dreamed. It was disgusting, but common, and most men had outgrown it. Indeed, by the record, Florentin Castelneau had outgrown it, right on schedule, still in lockstep with his fellow 'nonconformists.'

  Well into the 1970s, having apparently written off his brief detour into street crimes as a waste of time, Castelneau had stayed with the main Communist Party, handing out propaganda sheets on street corners, taking factory jobs solely so he could organize factory workers, that sort of thing. But then, quite late in the game for most communists, he strayed into the writings of ex-Marxists and post-Stalinists, specifically those who argued that Marxism was passé, and that an even more radical socialism was called for in its wake.

  For perhaps the first time in his communist career, he seemed to examine what he was doing and why he was doing it. He started distancing himself from the communists he had served for so long. It had been a delicate process. He had fallen in with a group that killed deserters as often as not. But to all appearances he had successfully extracted himself, and thereafter embraced free markets, religious tolerance (to a degree), and other anti-communist aspects of normal life.

  Durand wondered if it had been a true conversion, or a good show. But of course, it was no good making guesses based on old information and assessments made by other people. He would have to keep his mind open, as well as his eyes and ears. He tried to force himself to be calm. He hated communism. It made him crazy. Any time he had to deal with it, he had to be careful, because men who did not contain their violent feelings against cruel distortions of human society risked being baited by their enemies, if the enemies kept their heads. To the best of his knowledge, communists, at least at the higher levels, ruthlessly weeded out anyone not able to keep his head. If there was a more dangerous combination than wrong-headed but clear-headed, Durand could not, at present, think of it. No, on second thoughts, he could. Wrong-headed but clear-headed and horribly well-organized was worse – and described his adversaries to perfection.

  Well, no.

  Durand realized with some chagrin that he was carefully avoiding the ruthlessness part of the equation. It was hard to imagine, and almost impossible for a humble Christian such as himself to understand, how vicious the unregenerate human animal could become once it got its teeth into a cause it considered both utopian and achievable.