Not Safe After Dark: And Other Stories

by Peter Robinson

  I remembered that there was supposed to be a meeting about the “Nanterre Eight,” who were about to face disciplinary charges the following Monday, and I assumed that was what she meant.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, still not quite awake.

  April came back into the bedroom and sat demurely on the edge of my only chair, trying not to look at me lying on the bed. “The revolution,” she said. “There’s already a big crowd there. Students and lecturers together. They’re talking about calling the police. Closing down the university.”

  This woke me up a little more. “They’re what?”

  “It’s true,” April went on. “Somebody told me that the university authorities said they’d call in the police if the crowds didn’t disperse. But they’re not dispersing, they’re getting bigger.” She lit a Gauloise and looked around for an ashtray. I passed her one I’d stolen from the Café de la Lune. She smiled when she saw it and took those short little puffs at her cigarette, hardly giving herself time to inhale and enjoy the tobacco before exhaling and puffing again. “Brad’s already there,” she added.

  “Then he’d better be careful,” I said, getting out of bed. “He’s neither a student nor a French citizen.”

  “But don’t you see? This is everybody’s struggle!”

  “Try telling that to the police.”

  “You can be so cynical sometimes.”

  “I’m sorry, April,” I said, not wanting to offend her. “I’m just concerned for him, that’s all.” Of course, I was lying. Nothing would have pleased me better than to see Brad beaten to a pulp by the police or, better still, deported, but I could hardly tell April that. The kettle boiled and she gave me a smile of forgiveness and went to make the coffee. She only made one cup—for me—I noticed, and as I sipped it she talked on about what had happened that morning and how she could feel change in the air. Her animation and passion excited me and I had to arrange my position carefully to avoid showing any obvious evidence of my arousal.

  Even in the silences she seemed inclined to linger, and in the end I had to ask her to leave while I got dressed, as there was nowhere for her to retain her modesty, and the thought of her standing so close to me, facing the wall, as I took off my dressing gown was too excruciating for me to bear. She pouted and left, saying she’d wait for me outside. When I rejoined her we walked to the Sorbonne together, and I saw that she was right about the crowds. There was defiance in the air.

  We found Brad standing with a group of anarchists, and April went over to take his arm. I spoke with him briefly for a while, alarmed at some of the things he told me. I found some colleagues from the literature department, and they said the police had been sent for. By four o’clock in the afternoon the university was surrounded by the Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité—the CRS, riot police—and a number of students and lecturers had been arrested. Before long even more students arrived and started fighting with the CRS to free those who had been arrested. Nobody was backing down this time.

  The revolution had begun.

  * * *

  I took the train to Brussels on Saturday morning and didn’t come back until late on Tuesday, and though I had heard news of events in Paris, I was stunned at what awaited me on my return. The city was a war zone. The university was closed, and nobody knew when, or in what form, it would reopen. Even the familiar smell of the city—its coffee, cheese, and something slightly overripe aroma—had changed, and it now smelled of fire, burned plastic, and rubber. I could taste ashes in my mouth.

  I wandered the Latin Quarter in a dream, remnants of the previous day’s tear gas stinging my eyes, barricades improvised from torn-up paving stones all over the place. Everywhere I went I saw the CRS, looking like invaders from space in their gleaming black helmets, with chin straps and visors, thick black uniforms, jackboots, and heavy truncheons. They turned up out of nowhere in coaches with windows covered in wire mesh, clambered out, and blocked off whole streets apparently at random. Everywhere they could, people gathered and talked politics. The mood was swinging: you could taste it in the air along with the gas and ashes. This wasn’t just another student demonstration, another Communist or anarchist protest; this was civil war. Even the bourgeoisie were appalled at the violence of the police attacks. There were reports of pregnant women being beaten, of young men being tortured, their genitals shredded.

  This was the aftermath of what later came to be known as “Bloody Monday,” when the “Nanterre Eight” had appeared at the Sorbonne, triumphantly singing the “Internationale,” and sparked off riots.

  I had missed April terribly while I was in Brussels, and now I was worried that she might have been hurt or arrested. I immediately tried to seek her out, but it wasn’t easy. She wasn’t at her student residence, nor at Brad’s hotel. I tried the Café de la Lune and various other watering holes in the area, but to no avail. Eventually I ran into someone I knew, who was able to tell me that he thought she was helping one of the student groups produce posters, but he didn’t know where. I gave up and went back to my room, unable to sleep, expecting her gentle rap on the door at any moment. It never came.

  I saw her again on Thursday, putting up posters on the Rue Saint-Jacques.

  “I was worried about you,” I told her.

  She smiled and touched my arm. For a moment I let myself believe that my concern actually mattered to her. I could understand her dedication to what was happening; after all, she was young, and it was her country. I knew that all normal social activities were on hold, that the politics of revolution had little time or space for the personal, for such bourgeois indulgences as love, but still I selfishly wanted her, wanted to be with her.

  My chance came at the weekend, when the shit really hit the fan.

  * * *

  All week negotiations had been going back and forth between the government and the students. The university stayed closed and the students threatened to “liberate” it. De Gaulle huffed and puffed. The Latin Quarter remained an occupied zone. On Friday the workers threw in their lot with the students and called for a general strike the following Monday. The whole country was on its knees in a way it hadn’t been since the German occupation.

  Thus far I had been avoiding the demonstrations, not out of cowardice or lack of commitment, but because I was a British subject not a French one. By the weekend that no longer mattered. It had become a world struggle: us against them. We were fighting for a new world order. I was in. I had a stake. Besides, the university was closed so I didn’t even have a job to protect anymore. And perhaps, somewhere deep down, I hoped that heroic deeds on the barricades might win the heart of a fair lady.

  So confusing was everything, so long running and spread out the battle, that I can’t remember now whether it was Friday or Saturday. Odd that, the most important night of my life, and I can’t remember what night it was. No matter.

  It all started with a march toward the Panthéon, red and black flags everywhere, the “Internationale” bolstering our courage. I had found April and Brad earlier, along with Henri, Alain, and Brigitte, in the university quadrangle looking at the improvised bookstalls, and we went to the march together. April had her arm linked through mine on one side, and Alain on the other.

  It was about half past nine when things started to happen. I’m not sure what came first, the sharp explosions of the gas grenades or the flash of a Molotov cocktail, but all of a sudden pandemonium broke out, and there was no longer an organized march, only a number of battlefronts.

  In the melee, April and I split off, losing Brad and the rest, and we found ourselves among those defending the front on the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Unfortunate drivers, caught in the chaos, pressed down hard on their accelerators, honked their horns, and drove through red lights to get away, knocking pedestrians aside as they went. The explosions were all around us now and a blazing CRS van silhouetted figures throwing petrol bombs and pulling up paving stones for the barricades. The restaurants and cafés were all closing hur
riedly, waiters ushering clients out into the street and putting up the shutters.

  The CRS advanced on us, firing gas grenades continuously. One landed at my feet and I kicked it back at them. I saw one student fall to them, about ten burly police kicking him as he lay and beating him mercilessly with their truncheons. There was nothing we could do. Clouds of gas drifted from the canisters, obscuring our view. We could see distant flames, hear the explosions and the cries, see vague shadows bending to pick up stones to throw at the darkness. The CRS charged. Some of us had come armed with Molotov cocktails and stones, but neither April nor I had any weapons, any means to defend ourselves, so we ran.

  We got separated from the others, just the two of us now, and we were both scared. This was the worst the fighting had been so far. The demonstrators weren’t just taking what the CRS dished out, they were fighting back, and that made the police even more vicious. They would show no quarter, neither with a woman nor a foreign national. We could hardly see for the tears streaming from our eyes as we tried to get away from the advancing CRS, who seemed to have every side street blocked off.

  “Come on,” I said, taking April’s hand in mine. “This way.”

  We jumped the fence and edged through the pitch-dark Luxembourg Gardens, looking for an unguarded exit. When we found one, we dashed out and across to the street opposite. A group of CRS saw us and turned. Fortunately, the street was too narrow and the buildings were too high for the gas guns. The police fired high in the air and most of the canisters fell harmlessly onto the roofs above us. Nobody gave chase.

  Hand in hand, we made our way through the dark backstreets to my pension, which, though close to the fighting, seemed so far unscathed. We ran up to my tiny room and locked the door behind us. Our eyes were streaming, and both of us felt a little dizzy and sick from the tear gas, but we also felt elated from the night’s battle. We could still hear the distant explosions and see flashes and flames, like Guy Fawkes Night back in England. Adrenaline buzzed in our veins.

  Just as I can’t say exactly what night it was, I can’t say exactly who made the first move. All I remember is that suddenly the room seemed too small for the two of us, our bodies were pressed together, and I was tasting those moist, pink lips for the first time, savoring her small, furtive tongue in my mouth. My legs were like jelly.

  “You know when I came here the other morning and you were in bed?” April said as she unbuttoned my shirt.

  “Yes,” I said, tugging at her jeans.

  She slipped my shirt off my shoulders. “I wanted to get into bed with you.”

  I unhooked her bra. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I didn’t think you wanted me.”

  We managed to get mostly undressed before falling onto the bed. I kissed her breasts and ran my hands down her naked thighs. I thought I would explode with ecstasy when she touched me. Then she was under me, and I buried myself in her, heard her sharp gasp of pleasure.

  At last, April was mine.

  * * *

  I lived on the memory of April’s body, naked beside me, the two of us joined in love, while the country went insane. I didn’t see her for three days, and even then we were part of a group; we couldn’t talk intimately. That was what things were like then; there was little place for the individual. Everything was chaos. Normal life was on hold, perhaps never to be resumed again.

  The university was closed, the campus hardly recognizable. The pillars in the square were plastered with posters of Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, and Che Guevara. There was a general strike. Everything ground to a halt: the métro, buses, coal production, railways. Everywhere I walked I saw burned-out vans and cars, gutted news kiosks, piles of paving stones, groups of truncheon-swinging CRS. People eating in the cafés had tears streaming down their faces from the remnants of tear gas in the morning-after air.

  And every morning was a morning after.

  I spotted Brad alone in a side street one night not long after dark, and as I had been wanting to talk to him about April, I thought I might never get a better opportunity. He was on his way to a meeting, he said, but could spare a few minutes. We took the steps down to the Seine by the side of the Pont Saint-Michel, where we were less likely to get hassled by the CRS. It was dark and quiet by the river, though we could hear the crack of gas guns and explosions of Molotovs not so far away.

  “Have you talked to April recently?” I asked him.

  “Yes,” he said. “Why?”

  “I was wondering if . . . you know . . . she’d told you . . . ?”

  “Told me what?”

  “Well . . .” I swallowed. “About us.”

  He stopped for a moment, then looked at me and laughed. “Oh yes,” he said. “Yes, she did, as a matter of fact.”

  I was puzzled by his attitude. “Well,” I said, “is that all you have to say?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Aren’t you angry?”

  “Why should I be angry? It didn’t mean anything.”

  I felt an icy fear grip me. “What do you mean, it didn’t mean anything?”

  “You know. It was just a quickie, a bit of a laugh. She said she got excited by the street fighting and you happened to be the nearest man. It’s not the first time, you know. I don’t expect April to be faithful or any of that bourgeois crap. She’s her own woman.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said it didn’t mean anything. You don’t think she could be serious about someone like you, do you? Come off it, Richard, with your tatty jeans and your little goatee beard. You think you’re a real hip intellectual, but you’re nothing but a joke. That’s all you were to her. A quickie. A laugh. A joke. She came straight to me afterward for a real—”

  The blow came from deep inside me and my fist caught him on the side of his jaw. I heard a sharp crack, distinct from the sound of a distant gas gun, and he keeled over into the Seine. We were under a bridge and it was very dark. I stopped, listened, and looked around, but I could see no one, hear only the sounds of battle in the distance. Quickly, my blood turning to ice, I climbed the nearest stairs and reentered the fray.

  * * *

  I had never imagined that love could turn to hatred so quickly. Though I had fantasized about getting rid of Brad many times, I had never really intended to harm him, and certainly not in the way, or for the reason, that I did. I had never thought of myself as someone capable of killing another human being.

  They pulled his body out of the Seine two days later, and the anarchists claimed that he had been singled out and murdered by the CRS. Most of the students were inclined to believe this, and another bloody riot ensued.

  As for me, I’d had it. Had it with April, had it with the revolution, and had it with Paris. If I could have, I would have left for London immediately, but the cross-Channel ferries weren’t operating and Skyways had no vacancies for some days. What few tourists remained trapped in Paris were queuing for buses to Brussels, Amsterdam, or Geneva, anywhere as long as they got out of France.

  Mostly, I felt numb in the aftermath of killing Brad, though this was perhaps more to do with what he had told me about April than about the act itself, which had been an accident, and for which I didn’t blame myself.

  April. How could she deceive me so? How could she be so cold, so cruel, so callous? I meant nothing to her, just the nearest man to scratch her itch.

  A quickie. A joke.

  I saw her only once more, near the Luxembourg Gardens, the same gardens we jumped into that marvelous night a million years ago, and as she made to come toward me I took off into a side street. I didn’t want to talk to her again, didn’t even want to see her. And it wasn’t only April. I stayed away from all of them: Henri, Alain, Brigitte, Nadine, the lot of them. To me they had all become inextricably linked with April’s humiliation of me, and I couldn’t bear to be with them.

  One day Henri managed to get me aside and told me that April had committed suicide. He seemed angry rather than sad. I stared at hi
m in disbelief. When he started to say something more, I cut him off and fled. I don’t think anyone knew that I had killed Brad, but clearly April lamented his loss so much that she no longer felt her life was worth living. He wasn’t worth it, I wanted to say, remembering the things he had told me under the bridge that night. If anyone was the killer, it was Brad not me. He had killed my love for April, and now he had killed April.

  I refused to allow myself to feel anything for her.

  The people at Skyways said I might have some luck if I came out to the airport and waited for a vacancy on standby, which I did. Before I left, I glanced around my room one last time and saw nothing I wanted to take with me, not even April’s silk scarf, which I had kept. So, in the clothes I was wearing, with the five hundred francs that was all the Bank of France allowed me to withdraw, I left the country and never went back.

  * * *

  Until now.

  I think it must be the memory of tear gas that makes my eyes water so. I wipe them with the back of my hand and the waiter comes to ask me if I am all right. I tell him I am and order another pichet. I have nowhere else to go except the grave; I might as well stay here and drink myself to death. What is the point of another miserable six months on earth anyway?

  The girl who reminds me of April crushes out her cigarette and twists a strand of hair. Her lover is late. I dream of consoling her, but what have I to offer?

  “Professor Dodgson? Richard? Is that you?”

  I look up slowly at the couple standing over me. The man is gray-haired, distinguished-looking, and there is something about him . . . His wife, or companion, is rather stout with gray eyes and short salt-and-pepper hair. Both are well dressed, healthy-looking, the epitome of the Parisian bourgeoisie.

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.”

  “Henri Boulanger,” he says. “I was once your student. My wife, Brigitte, was also a student.”

  “Henri? Brigitte?” I stand to shake his hand. “Is it really you?”