by EJ Swift
NEW YEAR’S DAY. My studio is cold and silent. I have no memory of getting home and my head feels as blank as snow. I try to remember the last time it snowed in December. I can’t. Seasons have become the trappings of another era, long ago: one less confused, more certain.
I put on my coat and woollens and go out. The wind is vicious. By the end of the road I am chilled and shivering, but I keep walking. I follow the métro south: Saint Georges, Grand Boulevard, Opéra. At Pyramides I gaze into the brightly-lit window displays, their contents glamorous and costly. I look at jewellery and couture suits, at gold-tinted mirrors and handcrafted furniture. The trappings of beautiful lives for beautiful people. For the non-resident residents of Paris. I walk past the Louvre. The pyramid glows silver-blue, reflecting stray tourists and their cameras. I walk along the river, hands balled in my pockets. Seagulls fly or are thrown by the wind; bleak, pointed, swirling shapes, their cries thin and reedy. Over the wall, the surface of the Seine is turbulent.
I walk until it is dark. I find myself back in Montmartre. My feet are taking me up, and up, and up.
Here, finally, is my proof that it was all real. Sacré-Coeur is gone. Looming over the hill, awkward and ostentatious, stands a colossal green windmill. The eight arms stretch outwards, as if seeking to engulf the residents of Montmartre. I can hear the slow, ominous creaks of their rotation, the sails struggling on century-old mechanics.
The Moulin Vert.
The chronometrist had better be happy.
To my surprise, I’m not the only one standing out in the freezing cold. A few tourists are dotted about, and a group of Parisians huddle together on the steps. Someone is plucking at a guitar but the sound is mostly swallowed by the wind.
As I stand gazing up at the windmill of my making, a young woman in a headscarf approaches. She holds out a flyer.
“Join us, sister.”
“Oh, no, thanks,” I respond automatically, but she pushes the leaflet into my hand.
“Take a look.”
I scan the flyer. In the top right corner is a stylized logo of a little green windmill. I realize that this is the movement Angel was talking about, the movement allegedly inspired by the monstrous piece of architecture above us. The flyer is printed in bold text. I read slowly, translating as I go.
Capitalism has created global inequality on an unprecedented scale.
Climate change is killing our planet.
The 1% are taking our cities and growing fat.
Hatemongerers make our neighbours into our enemies.
We live in fear. We have forgotten hope.
But there is another way.
Join us.
Then there’s a date.
The young woman smiles at me, bright and fearless.
“We’re all brothers and sisters in this world. Time we started to act like it, don’t you think? Join us, sister.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll... I’ll think about it.”
She smiles again, turns, walks away. The Moulin Vert creaks, its sails turning. Overhead, flakes of snow begin to fall, blotting the thin paper in my hand.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
JANUARY IN CLICHY: sober and freezing. Four hours dark when I start my shift at nine, the sky still hooded when I leave at seven. My hands are chapped and numb and cannot be trusted not to drop things. I crouch by the dishwasher and bathe my face in the steam. I listen for the anomaly’s friendly warmth.
I come home one morning to find Léon outside my apartment block, standing in the sleet and clutching a bag of choquettes and a bottle of Brouilly. Beads of slush are dotted over his woollen coat. He looks freezing. I stop, keys in hand.
“This is getting to be a habit,” I say. I’m surprised to see him. Since that humiliating episode on New Year’s Eve I’ve stayed away from Oz, and Léon hasn’t been sighted at Millie’s either. I assumed we were avoiding each other.
“I thought about what you said,” he says.
“What I said?”
“At New Year.”
“Look, I was really drunk, forget about it—”
“You see, I have a rule about... Clichy. Not to get involved. It complicates things.”
“It’s just a drink,” I say.
“It’s never just a drink,” he says. We stare at each other for a moment. I wish I could tell what is going on behind that face.
“Come in. It’s far too cold to talk out here.”
The lift is broken again. We traipse up the five flights of stairs. The stairwell is narrow and I’m intensely conscious of Léon walking behind me. My thighs are burning by the time we reach the top.
Inside the flat, I put the kettle on.
“Cup of tea?”
“Do you have coffee?”
“Sure.”
I open the shutters, although at this time of year it barely makes a difference. A flat grey light enters the room. Outside, sleet continues to fall, melting on car tops and umbrellas. We sit awkwardly, Léon taking the beanbag, me cross-legged on the floor.
“I brought you something,” says Léon.
He hands me a book. It’s a history of Paris, a beautiful hardback with several sets of photographic plates.
“I read it over Christmas. The section on World War Two is especially good. I thought you might like it, after we talked that time.”
“Thank you.” I examine the plates. There’s the Moulin Rouge, its terrace packed with men in grey-green uniforms. “It’s so weird to think this is what our grandparents lived through.”
Something flickers in his face.
“Were yours…?” I ask tentatively.
“They survived the war. Well, obviously, or I wouldn’t be here. But they never spoke about it. A lot of what happened... it isn’t talked about much, even now.”
“I can’t imagine living through something like that.”
“Hopefully you’ll never have to.”
“But it’s frightening, isn’t it? The attacks that happened here—Charlie Hebdo, the stadium—there’s so much anger.” I shake my head. “I know Clichy’s a bubble. But we can’t ignore this stuff.”
I get up, searching for the flyer I was given on New Year’s Day, and find it on the floor by my bed. I pass it to Léon.
“This is what Angel was talking about at Christmas. The Moulin Vert people.”
He reads it slowly.
“Do you think they could be a good thing?” I ask.
“I think their intentions are good.”
“Yes.” I take a sip of tea. A car passes in the street below, a wave of music rising briefly and tailing away. “Can I ask you something? Have you ever done something that has... unintended consequences?”
“I think you’ll find that’s called la vie.”
“I don’t mean little things. I mean... something big.”
“Yes.”
“How did it work out? In the end?”
“I guess I’m still working on that.”
I focus on his hands, brown fingers wrapped around the mug. I remember the way he took down that drunk man. It occurs to me that Léon is protecting himself in every conceivable way. Perhaps he, too, is trying to escape something.
“Why did you talk to me, that day in the brasserie?”
“You looked like good bar fodder, chérie.”
“Seriously.”
“I don’t know. I guess you just looked a little… lost. I could see you were looking at job adverts. I wanted to help.”
“Is that it?”
He gives me a helpless smile.
“I noticed you.”
“You said you have a rule.”
“I do.”
“But you’re here.”
“Hallie—” I look up. I can see the conflict in his face. He wasn’t joking, I realize. This is serious for him. “I don’t want to screw things up. This bubble—Clichy—I’ve made it my life. My home. I’ve been happy here.”
I gently remove the coffee mug from his hands.
“You wo
n’t screw things up.”
“How do you know that?”
I don’t, I think. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I don’t know anything about you; and Gabriela’s right, there is something different, something I can’t pin down. But if I sit here any longer with us talking in circles and pretending we’re not remotely attracted to one another, I’m going to go insane.
“I just know,” I say.
And perhaps it’s the Clichy effect, the fact that I, too, have the feeling I’ve come home, perhaps it’s the fact I haven’t had a panic attack in weeks, or the new found confidence that comes with having survived another century, perhaps I just can’t resist any longer—whatever the reason, I lean forward and kiss him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“SISTERS. BROTHERS. YOU may know why you are here today. You may not.”
So begins Aide Lefort, founder of the Parti Moulin Vert. A Pantheon-Sorbonne graduate of French and Senegalese descent, her political credentials are a masters in law specialising in human rights, a mesmeric voice, and a new movement that has attracted thousands of members in a matter of weeks. I know this because Dušanka is muttering in my ear, determined to provide a running commentary with opinions attached. Both the plaza and the steps leading up the hill are packed. People have brought banners and picnics; there’s a jovial, almost celebratory atmosphere amongst the crowd.
Lefort raises her loudspeaker.
“One thing you do know. You felt compelled to join us today. So let me tell you why. For some time now—it may have been years, or months, or even weeks—you have been aware. What do I mean by aware? I mean that you have perceived a truth that, once acknowledged, is impossible to ignore: the knowledge that things are not equal in the world, that something fundamental is out of sync.”
Dressed in jeans and a gilet, Lefort strides up and down the plaza before the Moulin Vert, the loudspeaker in one hand, a placard in the other. The sides of her head are shaved, and the remaining stripe of hair is bleached to gold. The force of her personality is undeniable.
“Sixty per cent of the global population is still offline. Forty per cent of us walk around glued to portals which take us to a seemingly infinite world of information, yet many of us feel more unhappy than ever before. Globalisation has connected us, yes. But it has disconnected us too.”
Heads are nodding. I hear murmurs of assent, and am surprised to discover I understand not only the words of Aide Lefort, but the snippets spoken around me, without effort. Apparently timefaring has improved my French in my home time too.
Lefort draws a breath, gathering her resources.
“For too long,” she shouts, “we have been hanging on the words of leeches, oblivious to the way they feast upon our insecurities. Our hunger for instant gratification. For Facebook likes, retweets, Instagram hearts. For our bodies to appear as photoshopped idols. For each of us to surpass our neighbours, secure in the knowledge that we—are—special.”
Lefort raises her placard high. There’s something about her—the way she moves, perhaps—that reminds me of Millie.
“Today I will tell you a truth I have learned. None of us is special. But every one of us is a miracle!”
“Oxymoron,” mutters Dušanka.
Bo shushes her.
“It is miraculous that our planet was created. It is miraculous that we have an atmosphere exactly calibrated for mammalian lungs. It is miraculous that we could be the only life in the universe. But what are we doing with the greatest piece of cosmic luck the world may ever know?”
Lefort looks slowly around her, taking in the crowds, the camerawoman kneeling to get a better shot, the gently waving banners and balloons.
“We are allowing the one percent to hive its resources, whilst we stand on the outside, looking in. We are letting them tell us who our enemies are, when our true enemies are those who drain the money we work so hard to earn and hand it back to bankers. We are destroying ourselves from within!”
Noisy agreement. People get out their phones, ready to convert Aide’s speech into digestible hashtags and soundbites which will no doubt generate the instant gratification she’s talking about. Lefort waits, the loudspeaker poised at her lips, until quiet returns. Her tone turns sober.
“You may ask yourselves what right I have to stand here, talking to you. I grew up in Clichy-sous-Bois, which if you’ve never been there is a parallel universe to the skyline below us now, a place where a quarter of my neighbours couldn’t find work, where police harassment is part of daily life, where some people are afraid to leave their houses for fear of assault because of their religion. All I ever wanted was to get out. My parents fought to get me an education. I went to university. I learned to talk the talk, to dissect society whilst standing apart from it. For years I planned to go abroad, work in a poor country, do good. And then I realized what I should have realised a long time ago: I needed to start at home. Because I, too, had been asleep.
“So why here, you ask now? Why not give this speech in Clichy-sous-Bois?”
She casts aside the placard and throws up an arm, gesturing to the building behind her.
“You may not know that during the Second World War, Montmartre was a crucial hub for the Resistance. It was here, perhaps on these very steps, that Resistance fighters met to smuggle women and men out of the country. They had a symbol: the green windmill. They had a saying: ‘Against your four arms, we raise eight.’ Never again, they said. Never. Again. But here we are in the twenty-first century and we can once again feel the shadow of fascism, the politics of fear and austerity, advancing across Europe.”
Now her face is entirely serious.
“The attacks on our city have only made us more vulnerable to this rhetoric. None of us will ever forget where we were when we first heard about the Stade de France, the Bataclan, Bastille Day in Nice. The terrible fear that our loved ones might be among the dead. For some of us, those fears became reality. The perpetrators of those attacks would see us divided, have us live in hate, blind to one another’s humanity. Now, more than ever, we must respond with love.”
A roar of approval. Someone beside me is uploading to YouTube. Gabriela leans against me woozily. Bo is gazing up at Lefort, his face rapt. Dušanka folds her arms, habitual mistrust not quite broken. But Lefort has not finished.
“Maya Angelou once said that love recognises no barriers. She also said, ‘You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.’ So I stand before you today in the heart of Montmartre to call for a new bohemia. For a movement that grows not outside but from within society, that will meet the real needs of real people, that embraces hope and difference, that defends the rights for which our parents and our grandparents and their parents before them have suffered, have sacrificed. We can be a way to do things differently. Take this message. Tell it to your friends, your family, your enemies, the strangers you are yet to meet. Because the world needs heroes again.”
Parti Moulin Vert members in green T-shirts are moving through the crowd, handing out leaflets. I take one.
“France was once great,” shouts Aide Lefort. “She built that greatness upon rotten foundations. But she can become great again, if we can only reach across the forces that would divide us. Every act, however small, is a gesture against the tide. We must embrace our neighbours as sisters and brothers. Forget our terrors. Renew our hope. Rebuild our broken world. Friends, I ask you this: will you join me?”
Lefort spreads her arms wide, encompassing the hundreds of people gathered on the hill. She stands there for a moment, a smile blazing across her face. Then she bows.
Applause erupts. People are turning to one another, nodding, hugging, talking excitedly. Gabriela’s eyes are wet. Even Dušanka looks moved.
“Ah, such naivety,” she says shakily. “Such belief.”
“But Dušanka,” says Bo. “We are siblings! It’s like that show Gabriela and Hallie love so much, what’s it called...”
“Oh, you are so amusing, Bo.�
�
I flick through the leaflet. It is full of tips and chirpy advice. Helping others is psychologically proven to improve your wellbeing! Why not introduce yourself to your neighbours? Volunteer at a food kitchen. Join a carpool. Recycle everything you use for a week. Talk to a homeless person and share their story. Offer your spare room to a refugee family. Donate to a humanitarian crisis.
“Hippies,” says Dušanka, peering over my shoulder.
But Gabriela looks thoughtful. “I don’t know. I think there is something in it.”
Aside, she whispers to me, “This is an interesting development. We should monitor it.”
I nod, but I am gripped by feelings too complex to offer a reply. The thought that this could be anything to do with the anomaly—with what I’ve done—feels anathema. I am too small for this. Then a cheer spreads across the hill. Aide Lefort has abandoned the loudspeaker. She is stepping down from the plaza, into the crowd. With the ease of a rockstar, she moves among the spectators, smiling, shaking hands, laughing, the crowd contracting around her in ever-shifting fractals. Everyone wants to touch her, including us. In the excitement we lose sight of her until a shout goes up,
“Aide!”
And suddenly she’s there, in front of us, her face open and radiating hope, and Bo manages to touch her gilet, and Gabriela breathes her name like a charm, and despite our weary Western cynicism, in that moment I think all of us really do believe that the world could become a better place.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“YOU SHOULD HAVE been there,” I tell Léon. “It was incredible. She was incredible.”
“I will be, next time.”
“You’ll come with us?”
“Sure.”
“So… you don’t mind if people know?”
“People know already,” he says. “It’s Clichy. The Spanish Inquisition was an amateur organisation compared to the Clichy rumour mill.”
I consider this, and decide I don’t care. I have enough secrets. Being with Léon is something to celebrate.
