The Jewish quarter dates back to the ninth century, when the city became a flourishing trade center on the route that connected the Near East and the Baltic. The Nazis, who destroyed synagogues all over Europe, didn’t touch the buildings in the old ghetto of Prague, because some German scholars had persuaded Hitler that the ghetto should be preserved as an ethnological museum, in which relics of the Jewish race could be shown after the race itself had been exterminated. I wanted particularly to have a look at the Pinkas Synagogue—named after a man who owned the site on which it was built, in the fifteenth century. The synagogue was rebuilt several times, and incorporates interesting late-Gothic and Renaissance elements. But few people notice the architectural details. In 1950, the Pinkas Synagogue became a memorial to the Jews of Bohemia and Moravia who died at the hands of the Nazis. The walls of the synagogue are covered with the names of men, women, and children, arranged by cities, towns, and villages, in a roll call of death. There are seventy-seven thousand two hundred and ninety-seven names. An old woman who offered me her services as a guide was quite definite about the figure: seventy-seven thousand two hundred and ninety-seven. After each name, there are two dates—the date of the victim’s birth and the date he was taken away. I asked the woman to show me the names for Ostrava, and after she had pointed them out to me, she walked a little distance away. They were all there.
I walked on, in the late afternoon, past houses that seemed cold and empty to me, because the friends of mine who had lived in them were no longer there, and then I reached the Moldau and walked across Charles Bridge, the finest of Prague’s fourteen bridges. It was put up by Charles IV in the fourteenth century and was later lined with statues of saints. A walk across Charles Bridge provides by far the best views of Prague’s medieval past. From the Moldau a bluish haze was rising, and down on Kampa Island, which the people of Prague call their little Venice, the shadows were already very dark. The city was no longer reflected in the water. Just ahead of me was Malá Strana Square, whose St. Nicholas Church many people—and not only in Prague—consider the finest baroque church in Europe. At its best, the Prague baroque is finer than either the Viennese or the Italian baroque—less flamboyant, more meditative. I stood there watching the last rays of the setting sun bathe the Gothic silhouette of Hradčany Castle, high above the river, in liquid gold, and then, suddenly, the whole thing went deep blue. It was incredibly beautiful.
Mavis Gallant
SEPTEMBER 14, 1968
MAY 3
PHOTOGRAPHS, IN NEWSPAPERS, of students in front of the Sorbonne. Members of Occident, an extreme-right-wing student group, waiting in the street to beat up Nanterre enragés, start fighting with police when they see enragés arrested.
MAY 4
H. T. caught in traffic jam around Saint-Germain-Saint-Michel in midst of student disorders. Says this is “different”—they all seem very young. He sees a barricade made of parked cars they have moved away from the curb. Is very impatient—hates disorder.
Talk with M. B. She saw the police charge, outside the Balzar Brasserie. Says their apartment full of tear gas—they live on the fifth floor! Wouldn’t let her daughter talk on telephone in sight of windows. Police think nothing of throwing grenades into houses. Doubt if they could throw one up to fifth floor. Says gas makes it impossible to sleep at night.
Crowds, traffic jams. See a crowd. I feel the mixture of tension and curiosity that is always the signal of something happening, and I hear shouting and see police cars. I duck into Saint-Germain Métro. I hate these things. See more pictures in papers, and accounts, surprising, of how the students, far from fleeing, “regroup and charge.”
MAY 6
In the night, hear that familiar wave of sound, as during the crisis in 1958. Get dressed, go out as far as Carrefour Raspail. All confusion. Students do not run—it is not 1958, after all. Attack in a kind of frenzy that seems insane. The courage of these kids! Don’t get too near. See what is obviously innocent bystander hit on the ear by a policeman. Decide not to tell anyone, as friends would have fit. All night, shouts, cries, harsh slogans chanted, police cars, ambulances, cars going up and down my one-way street, running feet. I open a shutter and see that I am the only person on the street at a window. Are they scared, or respectable, or what? Scared of police, or of students?
MAY 7
Dined at the B.s’, Quai Saint-Michel. No one takes a car now—not safe to park in the area. Students are marching all over Paris: “Libérez nos camarades!”—meaning those who were sentenced by a monkey court on Sunday. From the B.s’ living room you see Seine, sunset, expanse of quais, very few cars, scarcely any traffic, many police. Christine (fifteen) says, “But it is my duty to be out there with the students.” Nothing doing. However, I notice she does not eat her dinner with us. Has it by herself in the kitchen. Almost seems like the heart of the matter—not with the adults, not with the kids. In Métro, find I have tears in my eyes. Astonished. Think: I must be tired—working too much? See everyone is dabbing and sniffling. It is tear gas that has seeped down. By Saint-Placide it is almost unbearable, prickling under the lids, but so funny to see us all weeping that I begin to laugh.
Out of the métro, Rue de Rennes a wall of people. The end of the student march. They have been all over Paris. Quiet, grave, in rows straight across the road, linking arms, holding hands. Boys and girls. I find their grave young faces extremely moving. Perfect discipline, a quiet crowd. They are packed all the way up the street to the ruined Montparnasse Station—I can’t see the end of them. They hold the banners of the C.N.R.S. (National Scientific Research Center) and a banner reading, “LES PROFESSEURS DE NANTERRE CONTRE LA RÉPRESSION.” Behind a red flag, a tight cluster of non-identified, other than by the meaning of the flag. Ask if I can cross the street. Boy parts the rows so I can get through; girls begin chanting at me, “Avec nous! Avec nous!” Slogans start up, swell, recede as if the slogans themselves were tired: “Li-bé-rez nos ca-ma-rades. Fi-ga-ro fa-sciste.” Marchers look exhausted. The police bar their route up near the Hôtel Lutetia. Sometimes the marchers have to move back, the word is passed along: “Reculez doucement!” A number of good citizens of our neighborhood watch without commenting and without letting their faces show how they feel. A little girl, about four feet nine, collects from everyone “for the wounded.” Notice that the non-identified lot behind the red flag give freely, the watchers around me a little less. At midnight, the news; someone has parked a minute car on the edge of the crowd with a portable radio on the roof. Touching narcissism of the young; a silence, so that they can hear the radio talk about them. When the announcer describes where we are—the Rue de Rennes—and says that there are about fifteen thousand left out of the thirty thousand who were earlier on the Champs-Élysées, a satisfied little ripple is almost visible. Something to do with looks exchanged. But then he says, “The police are simply hoping they will, finally, be tired and go home,” and a new slogan is shouted, quite indignantly: “Nous sommes pas fatigués!” This is a good one—three beats repeated twice—and goes on quite a long time. But they are tired. They have, in fact, been sitting down in the roadway. They remind me of children who keep insisting they are not sleepy when in reality they are virtually asleep on the carpet. This seems to me the end. Unlikely that they will press on for the release of their camarades.
MAY 10
Walked from Île Saint-Louis to top of Boul’ Mich’. Light evening. The bridges are guarded by C.R.S. (Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité)—riot police, under the Ministry of the Interior. Self-conscious as one walks by (they, not I). Middle-aged men, professionals. “Laissez passer la dame,” etc. They must know they are hated now. They may wonder why. One fastening the other’s helmet chin strap, as if going to a party. I mistake their grenade-throwers for guns, and I think: If they have these guns, they must intend to use them. Place Saint-Michel. I am part of a stupid, respectable-looking small crowd staring—just dumbly staring—at the spectacle of massed power on the bridge. Up the
Boul’ Mich’. Crowds, feeling of tension. Street dirtier than usual, and it is never very clean. Still has that feeling of a Cairo bazaar. Side streets leading to Sorbonne and Latin Quarter blocked by more police, and I have that feeling of helpless anger I had earlier today. The Sorbonne is empty, and it is kept empty by a lot of ignorant gumshoes. The last stand of the illiterate. Difference between now and early afternoon is that the students are back from their mass meeting in Denfert-Rochereau and—shifting, excited, sullen, angry, determined—they want to get by those large, armed men and back to their Latin Quarter. Electric, uneasy, but oddly gay. Yes, it is like a holiday in a village, with the whole town out on the square.
Home, turn on news. Suddenly wonder about Anna, who was at Denfert-Rochereau. She turned up at her family’s apartment between ten and eleven tonight with some hairy youth and said, “Maman, je voudrais la permission de passer la nuit au Quartier Latin—il y a des barricades.” She is seventeen. Nice kid, came all the way home, knew they’d be worried. Parents handled it beautifully—said they hadn’t eaten, took both kids to a restaurant. Anna, pure et dure, said, “How can I eat in a restaurant while my camarades are out there, etc.?” Call their apartment and am told that parents have persuaded boy to spend night at their place, and, without actually forbidding anything, have kept both kids out of it. Z. tells me this in low voice. Boy is sleeping in living room. Both kids worn out, upset.
MAY 11
Listened to nightmare news half the night. Around two o’clock, when the C.R.S. were “regrouped and ordered to charge,” I said to no one, “Oh no! No!” I’ve never seen barricades “charged,” but once you have seen any kind of police charge in Paris you never forget it. They charge on the double—they seem invincible. How brave these kids are now! Until now I’d never seen them do anything but run. Finally fell asleep, thought I had dreamed it, but on the eight-o’clock news (Europe I) the speaker said, “Have you slept well? Because this is what went on in your city last night,” and told.
The ripped streets around the Luxembourg Station. People who live around here seem dazed. Stand there looking dazed. Paving torn up. The Rue Royer-Collard, where I used to live, looks bombed. Burned cars—ugly, gray-black. These are small cars, the kind you can lift and push around easily. Not the cars of the rich. It’s said that even the car owners haven’t complained, because they had watched the police charge from their windows. Armed men, and unarmed children. I used to think that the young in France were all little aged men. Oh! We all feel sick. Rumor of two deaths, one a student, one a C.R.S. Rumor that a student had his throat cut “against a window at 24 Rue Gay-Lussac”—so a tract (already!) informs. They say it was the police incendiary grenades, and not the students, that set the cars on fire, but it was probably both. A friend of H.’s who lost his car found tracts still stuffed in it, half charred, used as kindling. Rumor that police beat the wounded with clubs, that people hid them (the students) and looked after them, and that police went into private homes. When the police threw the first tear-gas bombs, everyone in the houses nearby threw out basins of water to keep the gas close to the ground.
Shopkeeper saying, “I sold nothing all day. I gave water away, without charge. That’s all the business I did.” Feeling of slight, unpleasant pressure. I don’t like it. Shopkeepers “encouraged” (by whom?) to proclaim, with signs, publicly, their “solidarity” with the students. Well, they did have their shops wrecked, and shopkeepers have no solidarity with anyone. Anyway, I don’t like it. Too much like post-Occupation.
Am told that a Belgian tourist bus stopped, a father and son descended, son stood on remains of barricade with a stone in each hand while father took his picture. Then they got back in the bus. Didn’t see this, but saw plenty of people taking pictures. Last thing I’d want to photograph. Curious tendency—men and boys pick up these paving stones, weigh them, make as if to throw them. See themselves as heroes. Am embarrassed by elderly professors suddenly on the side of students. If they thought these reforms were essential, why the hell didn’t they do something about it before the kids were driven to use paving stones? Maurice Duverger, professor of political science—gray crewcut on TV, romanticism of barricades. Wanted to say, “Come off it, vieux père.”
Voice of the people: Wife of a Garde Mobile (paramilitary police, the Gardes Mobiles belong to the Army) lives in my quartier. Much surrounded. Very simple, plain creature. Says, “When my husband came in this morning, he told me that the barricades were manned by North Africans aged forty and fifty. That was why the police had to be so rough.” This is believed. Indignant housewives. “Send them back to North Africa!” I have a queer feeling this is going to be blamed on foreigners—I mean the new proles, the Spanish and Portuguese. And, of course, the North Africans are good for everything.
Evening. The Boul’ Mich’ still smells of tear gas. Last night like a year ago. One’s eyes sting and smart under the lids, the inner corners swell. Aimless youths wander up and down under the trees and street lights. No cars. It is a pleasant evening, and this aimless walking up and down (curious onlookers on the sidewalks, young people in the roadway) is like a corso in a Mediterranean town.
Gardes Mobiles and the C.R.S. here now are big, tough middle-aged men. Their black cars and their armored gray cars have brought them from Marseille and from Bordeaux—we recognize the license plates. Stout, oddly relaxed, they stand around and about the intersection of the Boul’ Mich’ and the Boulevard Saint-Germain, both of which are thronged with a holiday sort of sightseeing crowd. I can’t believe these young people are students. I think the students were last night, on the barricades. These boys simply don’t resemble the kids I saw last night. They look like suburban working-class boys on any Saturday night—like the boys we called blousons noirs in the nineteen-fifties. H. T. says I am mistaken. Anyway, they form an untidy knot, spread out, begin to walk up the Boulevard Saint-Germain. The police stand still, and those kids going up and down the road, restless, moving, more and more of them, remind me of waves on a rock. The police just in themselves seem to be a sort of provocation, and for the life of me I can’t see why the police aren’t taken right out of the Latin Quarter at once. Finally, a compact crowd crosses the Boulevard Saint-Germain singing the “Marseillaise” and giving the cops the Nazi salute. The police laugh. These are obviously a fresh lot. If they had been around last night, they wouldn’t be laughing.
The police: The police involved in last night’s debacle had been brought in from Brittany, where Breton nationalists had been staging a strike. They travelled all night. From the morning, when they arrived—from their breakfast time, say—they were given no more food. They stood from noon until two o’clock in the morning without one scrap of food—they stood, they didn’t sit down—and they watched the barricades going up, knowing they were going to have to demolish them and the kids behind them. At around two in the morning, they were given the order to charge. They had been given clubs to hit with and gas bombs to throw. What were they supposed to do? Boy who lives in my building tells me a story that sounds like a dream. How the people who lived on those streets showered the students with saucissons and chocolate and brought them coffee (not the police!). How some of the students actually began to talk to the police. Not arguing—discussing. Talking (he says seriously) about their problems and, dear God, the structure of society. The C.R.S. were just people, and not all of them middle-aged, some of them only boys. At around two, their order came: Regroup, get back in your lines, put on your helmets, and charge. He says it was unreal, dreamlike—the tear gas, the armed men with those great round shields, the beatings, but they were the same men.
Talk with young Anna. “The German students are being deported,” she tells me. “But we need them here—they are organized, they can tell us what to do. Oui, nous avons besoin des allemands.” Her mother, who spent the war years in a concentration camp, says nothing. I feel as if I were watching two screens simultaneously.
De Gaulle still invisible. Says nothing.
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A NOTE BY MALCOLM GLADWELL
MY FAVORITE PIECE in the section you have before you is A. J. Liebling’s encounter with the young Cassius Clay. Clay was twenty at the time, still some years from his transformation into an international celebrity, as Muhammad Ali. Liebling, of course, was one of the greatest of The New Yorker old guard, who had been at the magazine, by that point, for a quarter century. He had watched Clay in the 1960 Rome Olympics, where Clay won the gold medal, and pronounced him “attractive but not probative.” He thought the boxer had a “skittering style, like a pebble scaled over water.” Liebling listens to Clay’s poems—the little ditties that would later become such a key part of his playful public persona—and seems a little baffled: “There are trainers I know who, if they had a fighter who was a poet, would give up on him, no matter how good he looked.”
Liebling was a student of boxing. The Sweet Science, perhaps his masterpiece, had come out a few years earlier. He was ringside during boxing’s golden age. But in Clay, he understands, he has come face-to-face with an entirely new kind of athlete. “Now Cassius reappeared, a glass of fashion in a snuff-colored suit and one of those lace-front shirts, which I had never before known anybody with nerve enough to wear,” Liebling writes. “His tie was like two shoestring ends laid across each other, and his smile was white and optimistic. He did not appear to know how badly he was being brought up.”
What follows is a snapshot of The New Yorker’s confrontation with the 1960s. The magazine came of age in the parochial confines of the 1930s, when the nation was pinched by Depression. (It is worth remembering that the round table at the Algonquin Hotel—the symbol of the magazine in those years—was across the street.) But fast-forward thirty years, and suddenly that same institution was face-to-face with the world. It’s all here: the Beatles, the moon landing, Joan Baez, Ronald Reagan, Simon and Garfunkel, touch-tone phones!
The 60s Page 40
