As it happens, this was only partially true. There were moments, certainly, when he and Théo chatted as equals, indulging in the delirious discourse of cinephiles with less inhibition than was possible in Isabelle’s company. But, even then, a spectral Isabelle, so wraithlike as to be almost invisible, would flickeringly take possession of her brother, as in one of those composite photographs in which two profiles are superimposed to produce a third face, one viewed full on, that of a total stranger.
It was the stranger whom Matthew loved. But his love undermined him. He would find himself stammering like a bashful swain in some rustic farce. The simplest sentence became a tongue-twister.
He was still waiting. The elation he had felt when replacing the telephone receiver the previous evening had been extinguished. Here he was again on the tightrope; here it was stretched over a new abyss. It was almost twenty-five past.
On the pavement outside the Rhumerie stood a street musician, a young Moroccan violinist. He was playing, more or less ably, the tune ‘Vilja’ from The Merry Widow. Matthew studied him. Every so often, whenever there was a dying phrase in the melody, he would retrieve it at the very last minute with a twitch of his bow, wrapping it round his instrument like one of those swathes of soft marshmallow which hang in country fairs.
Though he was beaming as he played, he made others melancholic just to think about him. He carried the germ of that melancholy within him as someone may be the carrier of an infectious disease, unwittingly passing it on to strangers without ever succumbing to it himself.
This was one of those moments when Matthew was most vulnerable to infection. He saw himself as the protagonist of the kind of film he detested, a sensitive outcast making his solitary way along sparkling, neon-lit boulevards amid cheerful, bustling crowds moving in the opposite direction. The film’s background music would be provided exclusively by buskers, all of them the genuine article, recruited by the director himself in what would have been some widely publicised scouting expedition through the city’s streets, squares, parks and metro corridors. And its theme tune – ‘Vilja’, precisely – would be relayed from instrument to instrument, busker to busker, from the scatty old crone at the Flore, whose grin was as wide and creased as her squeezebox, to the blind Jew’s harpist whose patch was the place Monge, as though pursuing him across Paris.
It was half past three when Théo finally arrived, ambling unhurriedly along the boulevard. He wasn’t alone. A bored Isabelle had decided to join them. She was dressed in a prewar ‘little suit’ by Chanel which, ornately cuffed and buttoned, was at least two sizes too tight for her. Since Théo was wearing his regulation corduroy jacket, corduroy trousers and sandals, the two of them gratified Matthew by causing a sensation among the middle-class dowagers with their Hermès scarves and inexhaustible fund of pharmaceutical horror stories who, along with the odd laconic loner reading Le Monde or Le Nouvel Observateur, made up the Rhumerie’s clientele.
Neither Théo nor Isabelle apologised for arriving half an hour late, since it had never occurred to them that he might no longer be there. Théo ran his eyes over the menu and Isabelle, picking up a paperback volume which Matthew had left on the table, flicked through its pages.
‘You read Salinger in Italian? Molto chic.’
‘I was told a good way to learn a language was to read translations of books you already know by heart.’
‘That’s interesting.’
But Isabelle wasn’t at all interested. She had just discovered a new expression. She savoured it amorously. From now on everything that once had been sublime – a film, a Worth gown, a Coromandel screen – would be molto chic. Like those devotees of the increase-your-word-power column in the Reader’s Digest who stake their conversational reputation on the number of times in a single day they find room for plethora and infelicity and quintessential, dropping these words the way other people drop names, she hated to let any amusing phrase go once it had caught her fancy.
It might be a quotation. For example, Napoleon’s ‘People are prepared to believe anything provided it’s not in the Bible’, which, though no Christian herself, far from it, she was fond of quoting whether it was apropos or not.
Or else it was a whimsical pet name that would attach itself to an object for ever afterwards. Her cigarettes, which were mauve and Russian and looked like lipsticks, she renamed ‘Rasputins’. And if one of them smouldered on after several attempts to stub it out, she would simper, as though impromptu, ‘It simply refuses to die! It’s a Rasputin!’
Théo and Matthew, meanwhile, decided that they would take the metro to Trocadéro at six o’clock as though nothing were amiss. There was still the possibility, no matter how remote, that the situation had returned to normal. They were hoping to catch fate unawares.
A cool, overcast afternoon lay before them.
‘We might take in a film,’ said Matthew.
‘There’s nothing to see,’ Théo answered. Moodily removing the pink paper parasol that protected his ice cream from the rays of an imaginary sun and shunting its tiny webbed canopy up and down, open and shut, he drew an inkstained copy of L’Officiel des Spectacles from his jacket pocket and tossed it over to Matthew. ‘Look for yourself.’
It was Théo’s practice, on Wednesday morning, when the magazine went on sale, to scribble a star opposite the title of any film he’d already seen. On its every page, as Matthew discovered, there was an almost unbroken sequence of stars.
‘Anyway,’ Théo went on, ‘we’d have to go to a four o’clock show and that means we’d be late for the Cinémathèque.’
Isabelle’s derisive voice interrupted them.
‘You’re mad.’
Théo reddened.
‘What’s eating you?’
‘Don’t you realise how ridiculous you are? Both of you. The Cinémathèque is closed. Closed. Going to Chaillot this evening is a waste of time and you both know it. If you weren’t such cowards, you’d buy a newspaper and save the price of a metro ticket.’
‘In the first place,’ was her brother’s reply, ‘a newspaper costs more than a metro ticket. In the second place, it was you yourself who swore Langlois would be reinstated no later than today. In the third place, no one I know of has invited you to come with us, just as no one invited you to come out with me in the first place.’
His anger at Isabelle allayed by the number, force and serendipitous circularity of his arguments, Théo lapsed into silence and began to fidget with the parasol again.
She stepped up the pressure.
‘Oh, I’m coming. If only to see your face when you find out it’s closed. What a picture it was last night. You looked as if you were going to blub. Didn’t he revolt you, Matthew? Weren’t you ashamed to be seen with him? Have you ever known anyone so abject? I’m sorry to say, my brother is just as pathetic as the others. As Peplum. As Jacques. He’s a born loser.’
Matthew dared not intervene. He never felt more of an outsider than during these scenes. His silence was that of a pyjama-clad infant standing alone in the middle of the night, listening at his parents’ bedroom door, behind which insults are being traded that cannot be taken back.
Théo had said nothing during Isabelle’s tirade. Instead, he had tugged so violently on the lever of the parasol that it ended by flip-flopping inside out, like an umbrella on a gusty day.
‘What are you saying?’ he finally asked. ‘You don’t think we should go to the Cinémathèque?’
‘Of course we’re going to the Cinémathèque,’ Isabelle replied. ‘There’s never been any question of not going. What I can’t stomach is the sight of you two drooling over the Officiel just like your awful chums.’
‘So what do you propose?’
‘What do I propose?’ she said, doing her famous imitation of Peter Lorre. And she leaned forward, speaking in an almost inaudible whisper, exactly as in those film scenes which fade out just as the conspirator-in-chief is about to unveil his scheme for holding the world to ransom.
&n
bsp; What Isabelle proposed was this. In the free time that he was able to snatch from attendance at classes and at the Cinémathèque, Théo would draw up inventories of his favourite films in loose-leaf folders which he purchased at Gibert Jeune and which, when they were filled, he shelved in rigorously chronological order. In one of these folders, he would list his hundred favourite films of all time; in another, his hundred best films of each successive year. He had been filling them up since he was ten years old, but there was a film to which he had stayed forever loyal, Godard’s Bande à part, in one of whose scenes the three leading characters race through the Louvre’s salons and corridors in an endeavour to break the record – nine minutes and forty-five seconds – for viewing, or squinting at, the museum’s collection of treasures. And it was Isabelle’s proposal that they attempt the feat in their turn.
The idea enchanted Théo. It would be a gesture of resistance, an act of defiance against the Cinémathèque’s closure. If films couldn’t be screened there, very well, very well, they would take them into the streets. Into the Louvre itself. Giggling like children embarked on a private mischief, he and Isabelle tore off a corner of the café’s paper tablecloth and plotted the best itinerary.
In vain Matthew advised caution. He was concerned that he, a foreigner, an alien, risked finding himself in an awkward situation if they were caught. He saw himself sent back home to San Diego in disgrace, his studies abandoned, his future compromised. For him the beauty of the cinema was that it confined its insidious potency to the charmed rectangle of the white screen. He was like one of those people who visit the funfair as amused and passive onlookers, all the while secretly dreading the moment they’ll be hustled aboard the roller-coaster by their more boisterous companions.
But Théo and Isabelle had established a front against him. Like every couple, in whatever manner conjoined, they formed a two-headed eagle, now pecking each other’s eyes out, now fondly nuzzling each other’s beaks. Two against one – or, rather, two against the world – they brushed his objections aside.
‘Can’t you see?’ said Matthew. ‘If we got caught, I’d be deported.’
‘Don’t worry, little man,’ Isabelle replied, ‘we’re not going to get caught.’
‘You don’t know that.’
Isabelle had a reply to everything.
‘They weren’t caught in Bande à part and if we beat their record we won’t be caught either. Stands to reason.’
‘Look, Isabelle, it’s a fun idea and I really wish -’
‘Matthew,’ said Isabelle, looking him straight in the eyes, ‘this is a test. Are you going to pass it or fail it?’ And, before he could speak, she added, ‘Be careful. Alot depends on how you answer.’
On the place Saint-Germain-des-Prés a sword swallower was performing in front of the Café de Flore. Across the square, waiting his turn to go on stage, a young gypsy, clad in a scruffy Harlequin’s costume, propped high on stilts, leaned against the railing of the church. As they passed him, he crossed his stilts as nonchalantly as though he were crossing his legs.
Now too demoralised to offer any further protest, Matthew followed his friends into the rue Bonaparte and down the rue des Beaux-Arts. On their right, as they approached the quai Voltaire, was Degas’s ballerina in her rusty metal tutu; on their left, directly opposite her, a statue of Voltaire himself, watching their progress with his wrinkled stone eyes.
Two hearts as light as cork, one as heavy as lead, they walked along the Seine embankment and crossed the river at the pont du Carrousel. As they strolled over it, a bateau-mouche, gliding beneath them, its upper and lower decks as gaily lit up as a miniature ocean liner, disappeared from one side and reappeared, magically intact, on the other.
In the distance, just beyond the spruce symmetry of the Louvre gardens, was an equestrian statue, that of Joan of Arc, her chain mail gleaming in the sunlight. Matthew found himself thinking of her charred remains catching at the nostrils with the acrid smell of a burntout firework.
Suddenly, without warning, Théo and Isabelle shifted gear into a sprint. They were limbering up for the main event.
Slightly out of breath, they arrived at the Louvre.
‘Now!’ cried Théo.
They skidded round corners with a leg in the air like Charlie Chaplin! They caused snoozing watchmen to rouse themselves with startled snorts! They scattered groups of tourists on guided tours! Masterpieces flashed past them! Virgins alone or with Child! Crucifixions! St Anthonys and St Jeromes! Fra Angelicos wrapped in gold leaf like chocolate liqueurs! Impertinent, snub-nosed putti plumping up the clouds like pillows and pummelling each other as in a dormitory after lights out! The Mona Lisa! The Victoire de Samothrace! The Venus de Milo, whose arms they broke off as they tore past her, Isabelle ahead of Théo, with Matthew, after a slow start, steadily advancing on the inside! Rembrandt self-portraits! El Greco monks! The Raft of the Medusa! Then, coming down the straight, now neck and neck, all three of them together, for a photo-finish in front of those centaur-like ladies of La Grande Jatte who take shelter from the pointillism beneath their frilly parasols!
Not once did they collide, not once did they lose their footing, not once did they pitch into the arms of a watchman. They were miracle-prone as others are said to be accident-prone. And they broke the record by fifteen seconds!
Three abreast, they ran out of the Louvre and didn’t stop running until they had left the gardens behind and arrived on the quay, bent double, holding their sides, gasping for breath.
The euphoria of having let herself go made Isabelle’s eyes sparkle. She clasped Matthew’s neck with both hands.
‘Oh, Matthew, my little Matthew, you were marvellous! Marvellous!’ And she kissed him lightly on the mouth.
Théo, for his part, had suspected that Matthew would funk it, that at the last minute he would be caught standing, petrified, at the starting post. Delighted that he’d passed the test, that he hadn’t been disgraced in Isabelle’s eyes, he extended a fraternal hand.
Matthew, though, pre-empted him. Perhaps because he was still drunk on the capricious animal energies which the race had released in him, perhaps, as well, because he sensed an opportunity which wouldn’t soon recur, he raised himself on tiptoe and impulsively kissed Théo.
Théo recoiled. He seemed about to blush, to say something irrevocable. But he was interrupted by Isabelle, who began to murmur in a low voice, ‘One of us … One of us …’
Her brother instantly recognised the allusion. Smiling, he joined in the refrain. ‘One of us! One of us!’
Who, having heard it, can ever forget the sinister rallying cry of the dwarfs, pinheads, bearded ladies and writhing, limbless monstrosities at the wedding feast of the midget Hans and the voluptuous trapeze artist Cleopatra in Tod Browning’s Freaks?
On the horizon, as inescapable as the moon itself, the lighthouse of the Eiffel Tower was already drawing them into port. Rashers of bacon streaked the sky. Fortified by her nine-minute-and-thirty-second course in art history, Isabelle mused aloud. ‘Why, when nature imitates art,’ she said, ‘does it always choose the worst art to imitate? Sunsets by Harpignies, never by Monet.’
An unpleasant surprise was in store for them at the Cinémathèque. It was impossible to enter the garden by the avenue Albert-de-Mun. Beneath its leafless trees were parked the squat granite-grey vans of the paramilitary police force, the CRS. Leather-jerkined policemen lounged on the pavement, absent-mindedly stroking their riot guns. The barred windows of the vans, as airless as casements in a castle tower, framed the occasional twitch of a shoulder, the only movement visible from outside, suggesting a playing card slapped down on a table.
Uncomprehending for the moment, Théo and Isabelle darted across the place du Trocadéro and headed for the esplanade. Matthew followed them. Minute by minute, he felt the exhilaration of the Louvre draining away from within him.
Not an inch of the esplanade was unoccupied. Demonstrators had scrambled up on to the fountains to get a better
view of the event and crazily sprayed those beneath them. Others, arms linked, swayed back and forth, humming ‘Yesterday’. From time to time a famous face drifted in and out of focus. Wasn’t that Jeanne Moreau? And Catherine Deneuve, surely, behind those dark glasses? And, over there, Jean-Luc Godard, a handheld camera poised on his shoulder?
Dominating the crowd from one of the esplanade’s highest parapets was the actor Jean-Pierre Léaud, who declaimed in a hoarse voice the text of a photocopied tract which was also being distributed among the demonstrators below.
The tract had as its title Les Enfants de la Cinémathèque and this is how it ended: ‘The enemies of culture have reconquered this bastion of liberty. Don’t let yourself be duped. Liberty is a privilege that isn’t given, it’s taken. All those who love the cinema – here in France and elsewhere in the world – are with you, are with Henri Langlois!’
Langlois’s name was a signal. The demonstrators waded into the garden and surged towards the Cinémathèque. At the same time, in a cacophony of high-pitched whistles, truncheons erect, metal shields raised in front of their faces, the CRS leapt out of their vans and ran across the avenue Albert-de-Mun, unplayed hands of poker left behind them.
Forced into immediate retreat, the crowd made a confused scramble to the esplanade, those in the vanguard collapsing on to those in the rear, until, frenzied and directionless, half marching, half running, their legs buckling under them like card tables, they backed into the place du Trocadéro and began to spread out along the avenue du Président-Wilson.
It was at the intersection of that avenue and the avenue d’Iéna, where yet another barrier of shields, impenetrable and three-deep, stretched from one pavement to the other, that the demonstration was finally brought to a halt and the esplanade abandoned to its fauna.
The Dreamers Page 3
