by Gavin McCrea
—Where did you last see her? she said.
—At the Odéon as well, said Alain. But, listen, that was yesterday. You never know where she might be today. People don’t stay put for long. They hear something is happening elsewhere, and they go. Everything is changeful.
And nothing stopped. Throughout the days and the nights, it was going on. At any moment one could join in, and at any of the different cells. It would need a god outside time to see the plan of it, but somehow everyone knew to come together at six every evening at place Denfert-Rochereau.
—The demonstrations themselves begin at half past six, Alain said, but it’s best to get there a bit early. I try to be there for six, and I recommend doing the same. You won’t want to miss them. They’re the main event.
He ran a hand through his respectable haircut.
—I guess I’ll see you around, he said, and left.
Over bread and processed cheese and Pepsi and Marlboros brought up from a nearby supermarket, the group debated what to do next. Some suggested setting off straight away for the Odéon, to see what was happening there. Others objected to this idea. The Wherehouse collective was against the traditional theatre building. They deemed obsolete any efforts to bring people to the theatre. It was their conviction that the theatre today needed to go to the people. The street, because it belonged to everybody, was where performance belonged.
Another idea was to rest for a few hours and then join the rally that evening. But there was a problem with that too. In London, Wherehouse did not take part in rallies. They had not attended the big anti-war demonstration in March because such manifestations were for people who were already convinced. Useful as a show of force, perhaps, but incapable of changing people’s minds. Wherehouse, on the other hand, reached very few people, but those they did reach, they changed. The group were not naive enough to believe that they alone would stop the war, but they had complete faith in their ability to destroy the values that caused the war and eventually destroy the culture that had created those values. Just as Mao, Eva reminded them, had done in China with his small guerrilla army.
As they conversed, the journey told in the group’s voices. They were tired but trying not to show it. They presented optimism when in fact they were lost and unsure of themselves.
Wanting air, Eva detached from the circle and went to the window. Opened it. Leaned out. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe the strangeness of being abroad, but the people walking in the street below appeared insubstantial, like shadows; the houses without depth. By contrast, the pile of uncollected rubbish by the side of the road looked solid, dense. Cats prowled around the bags which were overfilled and bursting. The breeze whipped at the bits of torn plastic, making them flutter. On a wall opposite, a Communist Party poster had been pasted beside some text about student power and a torn sheet calling for resistance against police oppression. Che was there, as were Mao and Ho Chi Minh, the tops of their heads stripped away to reveal segments of older film advertisements. Across their chests someone had sprayed:
LSD NOW
The scene reminded her some of home. The Wherehouse commune. The only difference being that everything had been turned inside out; the interior exploded outwards. That was what made it strange.
She leaned on the windowsill and sighed. As great as it all looked, she felt unable to connect. In front of her was actual, living revolution, yet in her mind she was replaying the conversation she had just had with Alain, seeing again how mention of Doris’s name had made his eyes widen and his top lip shiver, and feeling the accompanying force of bitterness in her chest.
Doris Lever.
The Body Artist from Bethnal Green.
Or the Cockney Whore, as Uncle Simon called her, and as Eva sometimes called her too. Doris Lever, the Cockney fucking Whore, who had been just out of school, in her first year of secretarial college, when she met Eva’s father. Not especially pretty, possessing no perceptible talent — what had her father seen in her that had impelled him to pick her?
Behind Eva, a discussion about whether performing ghost theatre on the barricades would work was descending into a vicious quarrel in which, in the same careful way, the opposing parties were not allowing an honest debate to begin because their real opinions had to be kept in reserve. The idea that they — her extended family, closer than blood — should sham in her presence, even in the slightest degree, was enough to make Eva despise them.
—Stop!
She swung round:
—Just fucking stop, okay?
With two powerful paces she put herself into the centre of the circle. Kicked away the empty cans and used wrappers to make space.
—Everyone get up.
The group mumbled and moaned.
—On your feet. All of you.
Slowly, sighing, they obeyed.
—We’re going to scream this out, she said.
—Scream what out? someone said.
—The fear. The falsity. All of this bad feeling.
Clapping her hands as a signal to commence, she gyrated her hips, then swung her arms around, then inclined to the edge of her balance and back.
—You know what to do, come on.
—Is this really necessary, Eva? We’re tired.
—This will revitalise you.
She executed the same actions in reverse, and added to them, and exaggerated them, and cut them short, and sped them up, and slowed them down, all the while trying to maintain gestural precision. The others tried to follow her lead. Once this became impossible, the choreography too frenzied, they made up their own moves and went with those.
—Come to grips with yourself, Eva said. Use the space.
With so many bodies in such a small room, they bumped and slapped against one another, which made everyone laugh. Eva took possession of their laughter and brought it low into her chest, transforming it into a yogic intonation. For a long minute they danced and intoned, their voice an extension of their movement: oo, oh, aw, om, ah, u, er, oo, a stream of vowels, and then consonants like sticks thrown into its flow, ba, to, maw, cah, fu, soo. As soon as the chanting started to feel too solemn, Eva brought the group’s voice back up to a yell, then high, high to a howl. In capitalist society no one knew how to scream any more, to cry out. Having been told all their lives to keep their voices down, people had lost full use of their throats. If only they could see, as the Wherehouse collective did, that under the impulse to speak lay the deeper longing to exteriorise the inner scream: the only true truth.
Out of breath, throats raw, but feeling elated, the group collapsed back onto the floor. On her command — Now show some love! — they rolled about and hugged and kissed and begged each other’s forgiveness.
Of its own accord, the circle reformed. The group joined hands. Eye met eye, and again there were smiles. Before, their appearances had been united but their spirits apart; now the inner and the outer were realigned. Restored was the hope that authentic meetings between human beings could still occur — a hope without which Wherehouse could not exist.
Eva suggested splitting up and spreading out, in order to gather as much information from as many different sites as possible. Then they would regroup, share whatever they had learned, and see what further action they would take on that basis.
—We’re the Wherehouse performance collective. We seek the directly lived moment. We should feel at home wherever rebellion is living and being lived. So why don’t we just go and enjoy the spectacle. Soak it up. Then we’ll see what to do next.
There was resistance to the idea of breaking up the group, but in the end practicalities decided the matter: there were two keys to the room, so the group was divided in half. Eva, Álvaro and two others would go out now; the rest would get some sleep and join the action later. If the sub-groups did not see each other at the demonstration that evening, they would meet back at the room in the mornin
g to discuss what they had seen and done. These discussions would form the basis of their work for the following day.
Eva’s sub-group voted three-to-one to start at the Odéon. They took an indirect route there, along Saint-Germain, down Saint-Michel, then circling back, in order to collect some more impressions. Things were still quiet, with most of the activity focussed on rebuilding the barricades in preparation for the demonstrations. One arresting scene they witnessed was that of a motley gang of students and local residents carrying material from an adjacent building site — blocks of stone, planks, wheelbarrows, metal drums, steel girders — to reinforce a particularly large barricade at the crossing of the two boulevards. Álvaro took photographs of an older man who had come down in his dressing gown to help. Eva told him to stop. The worst thing was to be a revolutionary tourist.
In contrast to the calm of the streets, the Odéon was swarming. It could be heard from several blocks away: a thousand dreams of youth merging in the theatre square, and another thousand inside, bees in a hive, climbing one over the other, desperate to be in the middle; a deafening.
In the theatre, despite the glass chandeliers and the lines of white columns, which were cold and inhospitable, the occupying force created an atmosphere of domesticity. Over portable gas burners, people cooked. In the alcoves and on the couches, people slept. Upstairs in the offices, people worked. Backstage, along the corridors and in the dressing rooms, people fucked.
—What do you think? Álvaro whispered to Eva.
—I’m not sure yet, she said.
The crowd had its contingent of workers. In the foyer, a group of Renault employees could be identified by a banner calling for solidarity with their strike. And in the restaurant some cleaning ladies had used their mops and buckets to build a makeshift stall, where they were collecting signatures for a petition. The large majority of the occupiers, however, came from the professional classes. Most were students; most of those, by all appearances, snobs. Next, a few artists. Directors. Writers. Then the parasites: the fellow travellers, the voyeurs, the hippies, the exemplars of radical chic. Judging from accents and looks, there were lots of foreigners. Americans. Italians. Germans. Dutch. Very few British. Neither Max nor Doris were anywhere to be seen.
—Should we stay? Álvaro asked the others.
—We’re here now. We might as well.
—Let’s give it a few minutes.
They took a place upstairs in the dress circle, on the steps because there were no free seats.
—Oh, I see. They’re making speeches.
—Is that all that’s going to happen?
—God, I hope not.
The auditorium was functioning as a sort of general assembly. On the stage, behind a long table, sat a panel of young men. Each sported a variation of the same pullover. Each kept his hair untidy in the typical fashion. Cigarette in hand or on lip, eyes bulging with fatigue, face set in a perpetual scowl, scribbling on bits of paper and calling people up and sending people off — each was certain of his own indisputable usefulness. Every so often, young women would enter from the wings to deliver to the table a message in the form of a written note or a whispered word, which would be passed down the line, and then a response passed back up. How one won a place at the table, and what one was supposed to be doing while seated at it was not clear. Unless, that is, one occupied the middle place, in which case one had obviously succeeded, by whatever means, in becoming the chairman.
—All right, settle down. Thank you, Comrade. An insightful contribution, which we are grateful for. All voices welcome. Next up is—
Anyone, it seemed, could put their name on the list to speak at the microphone. Word was that a spokesman for the Occident movement had been allowed a slot that morning. Something Eva would have liked to see. Give her a fascist any day, over the creep in the Russian Army jacket that currently had the floor. Fuck Russia. China is the only future.
—I’m not sure I can bear much of this, Eva said.
—Me neither, Álvaro said.
—Shh, guys, said one of the other members. Give it a chance.
Posted on a board outside the auditorium were the topics of debate scheduled for that day: art and revolution, the colonial question, ideology and mystification, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, anarchism, the ethics of violence. Eva was at a loss as to which of these subjects the speaker was meant to be addressing. Vague and convoluted, it was not Mao anyway. As she listened, the text of Max’s telegram flashed in her mind:
WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING OVER THERE IT HAS STARTED COME
—Is he saying something interesting at least? Álvaro asked.
Eva shook her head:
—You’re not missing anything.
Álvaro lifted his camera and pointed it at the stage.
Eva put her hand in front of the lens:
—Save the film.
Álvaro dropped the camera so that it hung by the strap from his neck. Gave her an indignant look. He did not like it when she dictated his behaviour.
—You’ll thank me later, she said.
Someone had once said that revolutions could be recognised by the volume of words they generated. If this was true, and if the Odéon reflected what was happening in the rest of the city, then Paris was the revolution to beat all others. There was no limit placed on how long one could speak. If someone was talking then it was taken for granted they had an idea or an experience worth communicating. One’s turn would come. In the meantime, it was interdit to interrupt.
Sighing extravagantly, she got up and kicked off her boots. Trod barefoot through the sprawled bodies to the circle rail. Álvaro, loyal Álvaro, followed her there.
—What are you doing? he said.
—Nothing, she said.
—Eva. You’re planning something, I can see it in your face.
—What you see in my face is ennui.
Banners had been hung from the rail, one overlapping the other, all the way around the front of the circle. The one directly underneath them read:
ATTENTION! THE RADIO LIES!
Eva discovered that, by subtly dropping a hand over the edge and tapping the surface, one could create a ripple which passed down the length of the banner, and onto the next, and the next, reaching almost the other side of the theatre.
—Stop that, Eva, Álvaro said.
—Stop what?
—I see what you’re doing.
—I’m not doing anything.
—You’re trying to distract the speaker. What’s up your sleeve?
—Hold on to me.
—What are you going to do?
—I’m going to sit here.
She threw a leg over the rail.
Álvaro grabbed her jacket:
—Eva!
She laughed:
—I won’t fall if you bloody hold me.
He flung his arms around her waist, and she lifted her other leg over.
—Joder, Eva! Don’t do anything stupid.
—Stop resisting me, and just hold on.
The rail was sufficiently flat and wide to provide a comfortable seat for someone as lean as her. She kicked her feet out, far out into the air. Spread her toes.
—Wow, that feels good, she said.
—You’re only staying there a minute, Álvaro said.
—Oh, yes! she said, taking her hands from the rail and spreading out her arms, as if preparing for flight. Ha ha, yes!
Álvaro tightened his grip on her:
—A minute and then you’re coming back in. Do you hear me?
—I hear you, she said, I hear you.
But she was not really heeding him. Her mind was absorbed with the view between her thighs of the people in the stalls below, and with the accompanying question, is anyone else fooled by this nonsense?
In the seats below, the audien
ce appeared drained of energy, listless. Heads resting on shoulders, legs draped over armrests, bodies slumped, looking this way and that, tuning in and out — they were intoxicated. Drunk on words. In love with the idea of communication while all around true meaning perished as plant life did in harsh climates. Words left their mouths, clean and hopeful, only to fall onto the carpet like dead things.
Stale seeds and rotten barley.
She bent her knees and, in a state fast approaching giddiness, brought her legs up to her chest, her heels to rest on the rail.
—No me jodas! What the hell are you doing?
She was now crouching on the edge, her bottom merely brushing against the rail. The whole theatre throbbed with a soundless vibration which, it took her a moment to realise, was the beating of her own heart.
—Take my ankles, she said.
—Are you fucking serious?
—Take. My. Ankles.
She sucked in a breath and held it. Álvaro had just removed his arms from her waist, so there was nothing supporting her. But she was all right. She was not going to fall. As long as her lungs were filled with air, she was weightless.
An instant later she felt Álvaro grasp her ankles, and her breath rushed out, and she was solid once more. Fixing her gaze on a single point at the back of the stage, beyond the panel of men — who by now had noticed her and were consulting with one another about what to do about her — slowly she began to straighten her legs. She felt firm. Riveted to the rail. Formidable. Until, halfway up, suddenly prey to nervous agitation, her muscles began to tremble inside her trousers.
Sensing this, Álvaro locked his arms around her shins and wedged his head between her thighs. Squeezing, she could feel the flesh of his face bunching forwards; his breath was warm on the inside of her leg when he said:
—Me cago en la puta hostia!
While rising to her feet, she had kept her arms outstretched for balance; now that she was standing straight, she found that she had come into a pose resembling a crucifix. Judging this vain, she lifted her arms over her head, as if to hold a globe.
She was guilty of it as well: the worship of self-expression. She had in her life spent many long hours analysing the past and building the future out of the sheer pleasure of words. But after a while she learned that this had its limits. People were too busy to listen. Events developed at such a speed that her declarations became instantly obsolete. Mao had a better way: do first, then speak. Only the voice of experience — of the revolutionary who had already made revolution — carried durable truths.
