by Adam Thorpe
‘Has someone been shot?’ my mother asked.
‘Did they club you? They say they’re clubbing everyone in sight,’ Jocelyne’s mother said, examining his forehead. ‘Did you lose consciousness, darling?’
‘I spent most of this afternoon. Being a witness,’ Raymond replied.
‘Keep still! A tiny little thing. I’ll get a plaster. Don’t for goodness sake get any of it on the covers, darling. And I’ll kill you if it touches the Persian rug. Heirloom.’
She went off again, almost running. I had no real idea what was going on. There were too many words. The big complicated rug looked a bit worn.
‘Did you fall over, Raymond?’ my mother asked.
‘Danielle, good evening,’ Raymond said, keeping his head still and looking up at the ceiling, as if he was balancing a plate on his nose. ‘I did not notice you.’
‘No, that’s all right,’ said my mother. I won’t kiss you, it’ll hurt.’
They shook hands, which looked silly.
‘How did you fall over?’
‘A paving stone. Fell my way. Place de la Sorbonne.’
My mother gave a little laugh, as if it was a joke.
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘They can be slippery. I had awful problems with my shoes, getting from the car to here. It’s a very nice house, Raymond. Lovely furniture. Lovely Persian rug.’
I was sure we were going to miss the show, now. I didn’t really care.
‘I believe. It was a paving stone,’ said Raymond, leaning back into the soft old comfy chair and holding his head. He had spots of blood on his raincoat collar. ‘Rather heavy. The size of a grenade. Granite. On a bed of sand. The street – the street itself. That’s it, you see. The street rising against the tear-gas and the bludgeons, stone by stone.’
He leaned forward again slowly and tapped a magazine on the glass table. The dried blood on his nose looked disgusting, like snot.
‘You see? Dry tinder. Never thought the spark would catch. Not here. Too many washing-machines.’
‘What make is yours?’ my mother asked, raising her eyebrows right up.
‘Berlin, Rome, Madrid, Warsaw, Rio de Janeiro – and now Paris. At last. We’ll settle the question once and for all,’ he added, his finger in the air.
The magazine was this week’s Paris-Match, showing two men standing in a white blast of water and someone knocked out, or even dead, right in front. La Révolte des Jeunes Allemands, it said, in bright red letters. There was another jet of water just beginning to come out of the top of an armoured car, like a laser beam. The camera had caught it just as it was coming out. He held the magazine up for us to see better.
‘That’s the Germans for you,’ my mother said, tutting.
‘Is it about Vietnam?’ I asked, too quietly for him to hear.
A dribble of blood was running down into his eyebrow. It was just like a film.
‘The point being. It’s out in the open. At last. That’s the point. Even a reactionary publication like this one. Everyone will see what law and order really means. How the whole system—’ He winced, and touched his cut. I thought suddenly of my father, falling on his head in the showroom: maybe he’d looked a bit like Raymond did, but dead. He was talking about the police, now. ‘They are behaving like total brutes. I am actually a witness to that. Actually a witness. Fascist automatons. The point being. Revolutionary action is no longer deferred. Not deferred. We must have festivals. For the people, of course, free entry—’
‘Do calm down, darling,’ cried Madame Despierre-Chéronnet, hurrying back in again with tissues and a bowl and a tiny bottle of iodine. ‘You’ll get it all over the covers. We’ve got to go to this wretched little do of Jocelyne’s. Jossi will wail and sulk that you’re not there, of course. It’ll be very tiring. You don’t even approve of ballet, anyway.’
She was dabbing water from the bowl on his forehead and wiping away the blood while he sat back as if asleep. A bigger purply-red patch appeared on his forehead because of the iodine. Raymond winced. She stuck on a pink square of plaster. I couldn’t believe they were the same people as at Mamie’s lunch, though they looked the same. He’d only spoken now and again in long, complicated sentences and she’d just looked grumpy with her tiny, brown face. I realised at that moment, in a sort of flash, that they hadn’t enjoyed coming – which was why they’d been like that.
A girl appeared in the second door, dressed in a grubby cloth apron. She looked Chinese, with sticking-out teeth and a flat nose.
‘Madame?’
‘I’m coming, Priscillia, I’m coming, can’t you see? It’s that wretched fridge again, Raymond! I wish you’d sort these things out instead of trying to get yourself killed!’
She rushed out again, with the girl in the apron. She seemed suddenly to have lost her temper and I felt it was partly our fault. I realised my mouth was open, and closed it. I was so thirsty I could hardly swallow.
‘The refrigerator,’ Raymond sighed. ‘While whole systems clash.’
‘Fridges can be temperamental,’ said my mother. ‘What make is it?’
‘Freedom is the recognition of necessity,’ said Raymond, with his finger up. ‘Engels. Refrigerators can be classed as a necessity, I grant.’ The big iodine stain on his forehead made him look seriously injured. ‘If so classed, then they must be available to all. Are they available in Africa? No. In India? No. That is an incongruity. It is not an unfortunate state of affairs. It is an incongruity.’ He slapped his thighs. His trousers were dirty at the knees. ‘This is terribly thrilling, really terribly thrilling. It calls for my pipe.’
He took out his curvy pipe from his jacket pocket and started filling it with tobacco.
‘Raymond,’ said my mother, ‘do you think we could have a private chat, at some point?’
There was a little silence. He didn’t seem to have heard. I looked at my watch. A quarter past seven.
‘However,’ he said, glancing up at my mother as if she had just said something to do with what he was saying before. He lit a match and held it over the pipe, sucking and puffing until the tobacco caught fire. ‘The revolutionary will of the students must be tied – no, no, must ensure.’ He paused, placing the match in an ashtray on the glass table in front of him as he really got the pipe going. ‘A conscious and deliberate effort on the part of the proletariat,’ he went on. It was difficult to work out where he was starting and stopping. ‘Or there’ll be no victory at all. We must seize it with both hands.’ He winced a bit because he’d creased the skin on his forehead. The pink plaster and huge iodine stain didn’t look as if they belonged to him, somehow; it was as if he was trying to take no notice of them. ‘Everything must be – sifted, progressively, down to its natural.’ He puffed twice on his pipe, making popping noises. ‘Biological foundation. For instance, the sand. The bed of sand. The sand beneath the road. The fundamental sand.’ He lifted one side of his bottom and released a flap of his raincoat that was underneath, staring straight forwards all the time. ‘The beach. From whence the salamander gazed, incredulous. The point is, out there is finally true to life. True. To life.’
He grunted, smiling, and started to light his pipe again with a second match. The smoke was much sweeter than my uncle’s.
‘Maybe you should lie down,’ said my mother, in a sad voice.
Raymond grunted again, concentrating on lighting his pipe. The flame on the match flipped downwards each time he sucked.
‘Peasants, workers, students,’ he mumbled, while the tobacco started to catch. Jocelyne’s mother stuck her head into the room.
‘Please try the electrician again, Raymond! There’s water all over the floor!’
Raymond’s face was hidden in clouds of smoke. ‘Electricians,’ he added.
He got to his feet with a sigh and went over to the telephone. He put his pipe down and opened a big leathery book and dialled. He waited a bit, then started talking to someone about the fridge. Jocelyne’s mother came back in.
‘Is he p
honing the electrician?’
‘I think so,’ said my mother.
‘It must be his wife, from the way Raymond’s talking. The wretched fellow’s never in and he never phones back. What did she say, Raymond?’
‘That she would, naturally, inform him. The instant he gets in,’ he replied, coming back with his pipe. ‘She thinks he might be held up.’
‘We’ve heard that before. These people don’t care, that’s the trouble.’
‘And why do you expect them to?’ asked Raymond, sinking into the chair again.
‘Well, of course I do.’
He smiled and nodded, as if he knew something she didn’t.
‘That’s why work is so shoddy, these days,’ she cried, closing the telephone book. ‘People don’t care!’
‘Can we do anything to help?’ my mother asked.
‘What you’ve not grasped, darling,’ Raymond replied, waving his pipe. ‘The system – the system - does not want them to care. They would not be alienated from their.’ He puffed a cloud of smoke up. ‘Labour, if they cared.’ He touched his plaster. ‘But it’s crumbling. As we speak. I tell you. Revolt, or revolution? Either way, the system itself. Is contradictory. It crumbles, like badly baked brick. And then. What will the Americans.’ He puffed smoke all around his face. ‘Do. As the world’s self-appointed police force? Hm? Bomb us to tiny bits. Even if we get our ridiculous H-bomb to work. On some pretty tropical island. Cleared of its. Indigenous peoples.’
He grunted.
‘Until it’s fully crumbled, Raymond, please try pulling the fridge out. Chantal suggested it might be overheating at the back.’
Raymond raised his hand like a Red Indian saying How. He had his eyes closed and looked a bit white.
‘Don’t go out again,’ said Jocelyne’s mother. ‘Raymond? If you feel dizzy, tell someone. Priscillia is in all evening. Promise me you won’t go out. Why don’t you have a cognac? I simply have to go to this wretched show of Jossi’s. That’s why they’re here. Danielle and Gilles.’
‘Please don’t mind us,’ said my mother.
Raymond had put his pipe back in his mouth; he clenched it in his teeth to talk. ‘I will sit in my study. I will think. We must.’ More smoke puffed out. ‘Mobilise.’
‘Priscillia is doing supper. You don’t need to wait for us. You are coming to supper, aren’t you?’ she asked, almost glaring at my mother.
‘Well, how kind, Geneviève, but Gilles—’
‘If it’s a problem, say so. I got fish especially but it’ll keep. Trout, rather dear. We have an old fridge in the cellar, thank goodness.’
‘Trout!’ my mother cried. ‘How special!’
‘Jean-Paul called, by the way, darling. I told him you would phone back. Don’t let him excite you. Sartre,’ she told us, almost in a whisper, as she turned to go out of the door. ‘He’s terribly dependent on Raymond.’
We followed her. Looking back, I saw Raymond reflecting under a cloud of pipe smoke, like a brilliant professor. I felt proud to be related to someone so clever, although I didn’t understand most of what he said. We reached the stairs going down when my mother asked, in a nervous voice, if there would be anywhere to powder her nose in the dance academy.
‘Powder your nose?’ Jocelyne’s mother repeated. She looked very stern, with her pale grey eyes. ‘You mean you want to go to the toilet. Follow me. They only have stinky outside holes in the academy.’
She and my mother went out through one of the doors in the corridor. My heart sank: it was twenty-five past seven by my watch. I was left on my own on the landing. I wandered back into the hall and looked at myself in one of the long mirrors, checking for any faults. I wished I looked different: I wasn’t really ugly, I didn’t think, but I was small and weedy-looking. These must be the mirrors that had shivered when that building had collapsed, I thought to myself. Suddenly, Raymond appeared reflected behind me, standing in the doorway with his pipe.
‘It’s in your hands, Julien,’ he said.
‘Gilles.’
‘The essential point is.’ He waved his pipe at me and came forwards into the room. ‘To carry the message. Beyond. We must let it be. A runaway. Youthful, enthusiastic.’ He looked at himself in the mirror, over my head. The sweet pipe smoke floated down past my face. ‘A runaway slave. Desperate for freedom. Yes. A runaway. Slave. You know, of course, a runaway slave. Is no longer a slave.’
He just stood there, looking at himself through the tall spotty mirror in the gold frame. His tallness made me look even shorter.
‘I put posters up,’ I said, watching myself saying it.
He took his pipe out of his mouth.
‘Yes. Absolutely. And posters. The art of the people.’
‘That Vietnam poster on the lamp standard, just in front. I put it up. With my sister. I mean, Carole. The year before last. At night.’
‘Did you. That’s very good.’
It was as if I’d said I’d done well at school. His pipe went back in his mouth.
‘Yes, we must let the message burst out of its cage. We must not. Shackle it.’
He turned a knob on the wall next to the mirror and the wall seemed to cave in. It was a door, but looking like part of the wall. He disappeared through it, leaving the door open. I took a peep. He’d gone into a room made of books; I could hardly see any walls at all. The walls were books, in fact. Papers and files lay everywhere, some of them on top of one another in crooked towers. He was leaning over a big old wooden desk, scribbling something down. There was a wooden ladder in the corner, going up to the top row of books. It was much worse than the town library, and smelt a bit of brown wrapping paper. A picture of Mao Tse-Tung and someone like Molière hung crookedly where there weren’t any books. I heard my mother in the sitting-room. I hadn’t expected them to arrive from there.
‘Are you admiring his study?’ Jocelyne’s mother cried, coming into the hall.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s a frightful mess,’ she told us, standing behind me, her appley perfume in my nose. ‘But he knows precisely where everything is, he says. Hardly ever cleaned, of course. Filthy. He doesn’t notice. On another plane.’
‘Golly, books,’ said my mother. ‘That’s certainly Raymond.’
We moved out of the hall and down the stairs. Jocelyne’s mother had no problem walking down them, but we looked as though we were limping.
‘He’s working on Théophile Gautier, at the moment. When he’s not working on Confucianism. Confucianism and its intrinsic relation to Maoism, to be precise. I have no idea why. Théophile Gautier, I mean. Light relief, probably. He’s quite a wonderful writer, of course, but politically not Raymond at all. Had syphilis, I believe. They all did, didn’t they? Loved the ballet, as I’m sure you know. Took drugs.’
‘Henri Troyat writes standing up,’ said my mother, as the front door closed behind us, a bit of green paint falling off it.
‘I’m not surprised,’ laughed Jocelyne’s mother.
We walked to the dance school, because it was only two streets away. We passed another of the Vietnam posters but I didn’t say anything: it was stuck on a wall and somebody else had stuck a poster for a theatre show half over its remains. I remembered pasting them on walls, but not that actual one. Jocelyne’s mother said how she believed in walking, how everyone ought to walk more or bicycle more. It was difficult for my mother because we walked quite fast and her high heels kept catching in cracks in the pavement. I had to grab her by the arm now and again. The pavements were not very well looked after, here, and the tall houses were even blacker than in Jocelyne’s street. The lamps flickered on, suddenly, as we walked.
‘At least the electricity’s working,’ said Jocelyne’s mother. ‘That’s reassuring.’
‘Why, doesn’t it usually work?’ my mother said, surprised.
At that moment we passed a car with its front windscreen smashed and Jocelyne’s mother said, ‘Oh dear, even here.’ A few metres further on we turned into a dark gate
way with a brass plaque on the side saying Académie de Danse et Cie. The big courtyard was slippery and uneven and there were a lot of smart people standing about, their chatter echoing off the walls. On one side there was a whitewashed brick building on three floors with narrow windows, like a big shed. Big purple silhouettes of dancers flying through the air were painted on the brick – they were a bit like that shadow left by someone killed in Hiroshima. The tall windows on the other three sides were either broken or boarded up.
‘This was a tannery,’ said Jocelyne’s mother. ‘Closed down about ten years ago – source of much sorrow to Raymond but not to the neighbours, I don’t suppose. The dance people rent a bit of it. Rather dear, which is why they charge so much for lessons. The rest is empty. When you think of all the people with no roofs on their heads! Hello, darling!’ she suddenly cried, and kissed a very smart woman four times on the cheek. They started talking. A man joined them in a shiny white coat with black buttons that looked like liquorice and Jocelyne’s mother kissed him, too. Another man came up with very messy grey hair and a threadbare cravat. They were talking about the Sorbonne and tear-gas.
‘I think that was a Vietnam demonstration,’ I whispered to my mother, as if passing a secret message. ‘What we drove through. I think it was a sort of riot, like in Germany. Probably that red, that German who was killed. Roland, I think.’
‘Who was killed?’
‘I don’t know if he was killed,’ I said. ‘Shot, anyway. When I had my migraine. Just before.’
‘Oh dear. There was something on the news a few days ago about Nanterre, where Carole went. She should have gone to Sceaux, in my opinion. But they didn’t do her subject. Everything might have been different.’
‘Pretend you know, Maman. That’s why Cousin Raymond was hit on the head. Or else we’ll look really stupid.’
‘I’m sure I’m looking a mess, that’s for certain.’
It was spitting, the drops hurtling towards me like machine-gun fire as I looked up into the darkening sky. I was thirsty and needed a pee. The toilets were in one corner of the courtyard, behind a pair of peeling doors. They were smelly holes, and there was no hand-basin. I relieved myself while the people chatted away just beyond the door, all echoey. These must have been the tannery’s toilets, I thought. My nerves made me let off and the toilet filled with my own smell. I came out to find two or three people waiting to go in and felt ashamed.