—Shall I leave you here or at the metro?
—This is good … Nice of you to drop me off. But if you have a little time, I could offer you a drink, around here …
—I won’t say no.
The Saussure served only ordinary beers, and the foam on the Adelscott on tap that Gabriel ordered disintegrated as soon as it touched his lips, leaving behind two craters that resembled eyes floating in a soup. Francis lit up a Celtique and drank his Pelforth straight from the bottle, like a man.
—Would I be wrong to say that I have a feeling we’re interested in some of the same things …
Gabriel played the innocent.
—That would depend on what you’re alluding to.
Francis looked around him. He leaned forward and whispered.
—Real History, the end of the lie spread by the lobby of …
Gabriel considered the difficulty of his task. He had just entered into contact with his first fascists, and it was already impossible for him to rise to the challenge of having a simple conversation. He tried a new tack, tapping the skinhead’s shoulder in a friendly way. They toasted, glass to bottle.
—Tonight, I’m on duty at a meeting just around the corner from here … It’s closed, but if you show up with me, there won’t be a problem … It’s in honor of one of ours who’s returned from Serbia … He fought with the Dragan militias, in Krajina …
—I didn’t know Frenchmen could be admitted to the ranks of … Serbian nationalists …
Francis flashed a proud smile as if to say, “You don’t know who you’re talking to, my friend!”
—There are quite a few of our comrades there, but tonight it’s a Russian who will take the stage: Ivan Astrapov.
Gabriel started when he heard the name. A dozen years ago he had demonstrated in support of political exile for a Soviet painter named Astrapov, who had been persecuted by Brezhnev’s administration. His paintings weren’t interesting in the least, but he had seemed to be a talented dissident. Gabriel pushed away his glass.
—Astrapov? Is he related to the painter?
—Same guy. But now he only paints with a gun! Preferably a machine gun.
16
IN THE FIELD
Gabriel let him pay for the drinks before following him along Boulevard Berthier. Young but battle-weary women, their arms perforated like colanders, sat on the trunks of parked cars and opened their thighs to the passing truck drivers. They passed by the old general stores that had been converted into scenery lots for the Opera de Paris and took a back alley that went along the tracks of the Saint-Lazare line.
Francis nodded to a guy who seemed to be busily tying his bootlace, and they were given the green light to go in. They entered the courtyard of an old warehouse. Another man was waiting on the loading dock. He took hold of Francis’s wrist for a Roman handshake, and after consulting with him about Gabriel, he led them into a freight elevator, closed the heavy grille on them, and flipped the worn switch that hung from a wire. The elevator began to tremble violently, rising in fits and starts to the second level. Nearly two hundred people, the vast majority of them young men, were gathered in the former warehouse, whose walls and beams retained the pronounced odor of the coffee that had been packaged there for decades. Two young men who could have been Francis’s twin brothers brought drinks to tables amidst the din of conversation. The sounds of the Serbian rock group Junak spilled from the PA, drowning out everything else. The skinhead printer sat Gabriel near the remains of a pulley system, and took up his post to the left of the entrance. A meter-high platform supported a table equipped with microphones and three chairs. The wall was decorated with multiple Serbian flags, spotted with stains and dust. They framed an enlarged photo of a Chechnyan squadron in traditional battle dress, with high black boots, thick beards, and fur hats.
Gabriel ordered a Tsver, brewed in Moscow according to the label. He drank it in small sips while observing the audience, which was composed for the most part of minor hoodlums from good families come out for their monthly thrill, and local dropouts looking for any kind of adventure to help them escape the endless void of their futures. At first he didn’t recognize a single face: the small anonymous crowd of meetings … But then, as he turned around to inspect the tables in the back, his gaze stopped on a man of about forty. It took him a good quarter of an hour to wrest the memory from his head and superimpose it onto the wide, ruddy face, prominent cheekbones, and unruly hair of Thierry Tegret. He’d met him two or three times during his first year at university. At that time, Thierry was the Number Two of a small, very active Trotskyist group, organized like an army. He commanded thirty or so militants who would march out of class on command. Gabriel had heard him talked about, vaguely, ten years later, when his organization denounced him publicly, accusing him of having embezzled funds of unknown origin. Here, he was flanked by a former reporter for the leftist paper Libération, Paul Estèphe, a specialist in the kind of shady business dealings that trade in the moods of the Cabinet Minister’s staff, the stench of favoritism, the musk of bedrooms. Gabriel could still remember some of his appearances on the trashy shows on TeleFrance 1, where he talked about the gay pastor Joseph Doucé or the suicide of Pierre Bérégovoy. Thierry Tegret got up, and Gabriel thought that he was coming straight over to him. But the ex-militant for the extreme left passed him by to throw himself into the arms of a short-statured man with eyes hidden behind smoky wraparound glasses. Tegret hoisted himself onto the stage and extended his hand to the stocky masked man. A third man followed suit, and they sat down at the table. The silence was immediate. Tegret tapped on the microphones to check the sound, then began to speak.
—Dear comrades. I believe it’s time to move on to the most important part of tonight’s meeting. I would like to introduce to you, first, Commander Jovan Gavrovic, whose troops have valiantly resisted the Croato-Muslim coalition in the region of Bihac.
He paused for a burst of applause. Gavrovic, who did not speak a word of French, thanked everyone in Serbian and the applause redoubled.
—I don’t need to waste my breath telling you about our brother Ivan Astrapov, who just spent three months on various European fronts where the continuity of our civilization is being threatened by the expansion of Muslim integrationism. In Chechnya, in Serbia! I only need to remind you, before asking Ivan Astrapov a series of questions, that I am here tonight in my capacity as editor in chief of Nation First, the daily paper for French social issues, in which Ivan will be publishing his combatant’s notebook.
The atmosphere was stifling. Gabriel edged back toward the entrance, where a light current of air drifted in.
—My first question will be direct, dear Ivan. A film on the BBC showed you in the process of shooting up Sarajevo. Some claimed it was just for the cameras …
The ex-Soviet ex-dissident ex-painter lowered the microphone to his mouth and pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose. He had almost no accent, as is the case with people who’ve been to the best schools.
—If they stand in front of me, they’ll have their answer!
Tegret cheered along with the crowd.
—Do you think you killed one or many Bosnians?
—Over there, they’re called Turks! I certainly hope I didn’t waste any bullets …
Francis passed in front of Gabriel, who forced a smile. On stage, the interview continued.
—What does it feel like as a painter to trade a paintbrush for a Kalashnikov?
—One hour of war, and you’re forever cured of painting, of the illusion that it’s possible to represent the world, to interpret it! What a waste of time! You have to smash it! Assault it, take it back! The reality of shooting at your sworn enemies gives you a sensation of strength, of freedom … It’s an immense joy. I’ve fought in Moldavia, in Slovenia, in Bosnia, in Abkhazia, in Krajina, and everywhere I’ve felt the same intense pleasure … I have never felt as free as when I’m surrounded by the burning houses of Muslims, the stench of Turkish c
orpses, the odor of cowards’ piss! Art can’t hold its own against that …
A religious silence accompanied these words, which he delivered with impassive eyes behind his corrective lenses.
—In your opinion, will these wars remain limited to the old grounds of the former Soviet empire?
Astrapov took a breath.
—If you want to know my real opinion, I would like for the Russian nationalists to get over the liberal illusion of their alcoholic czar and his prime minister, Pileofshitski, who has destroyed our race, our people! It’s time to go on the offensive. If we act now, things could be settled quickly, with a minimum of damage. If we wait, we’re looking at deaths by the thousands.
Tegret sensed that the audience had become very attentive, receptive.
—The liberal illusion is another name for democracy … Does that word make you afraid? Does it disgust you?
Astrapov stood up and leaned toward the room, shouting now:
—What about you, what do YOU think about democracy?!
A wall of boos rose to meet him. He sat back down, his face red.
—I could give a fuck about the Parisian democracies of Fabius, Lang, Stirn, and Stasi like I give a fuck about the New York democracies of Rockefeller and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer! May they peacefully rot and die in their respective holes. I am simply asking the question: How long will we tolerate wars waged exclusively on the poor?
The audience stood in a single motion and chanted Astrapov’s name. Only Commander Jovan Gavrovic, with whom no one could communicate, was left with his ass glued to his chair. Gabriel took advantage of the warriors’ communion to slip away. The freight elevator was more efficient and quieter going down. It deposited him in front of the skinhead on duty, who quickly concealed his pistol, while checking tenderly to make certain it was loaded.
17
THE END OF THE WORLD
Gabriel had neither the strength nor the lack of judgment to go home. Better to go for a spin first. He took the Peugeot out to the interior ring road and drove, keeping the speedometer at a constant 140 KPH. The radar sensors flashed twice on his circular flight. Of the exits spelled out on the blue overpass signs, none was the one he needed. He spun like a squirrel in a cage, blinded by his own motion.
The Mess.
The messengers of hate are back.
On his sickbed of Saltpeter and Pity, Sloga had droned, “Max, the square, loudspeakers,” his head cracked open by the fists of fascists on whom he’d trained the lethal screen of his Mac. Gabriel accelerated again. Who was Max? On which square were the loudspeakers spitting? Porte d’Aubervilliers, Porte de la Villette, Porte de Pantin, Porte de Bagnolet … The left-wing “red” suburbs gave way to the right-wing “brown” ones—where the French fabricate Frenchness for little French people! Which square? The proud speakers of Marx Square? On his second pass, he crossed over streets crowded with commuters descending on the Porte des Lilas. Maybe Gégé, “the philosopher,” would have the beginnings of an answer …
Gilbert Gache, a philosophy professor who, due to a lack of imagination on the part of his contemporaries, had been saddled with the nickname Gégé, lived at the top end of Rue de Belleville, below a bakery that shared a wall with a Pakistani spice factory that serviced the Chinese restaurateurs at the bottom of the same street.
The scent of decaying fish, requisite base for the alchemy of nuoc mam, impregnated everything, even the voices of the divas trapped in the opera CDs that Gégé listened to while endlessly rereading the classics of Marxism and Freudian psychoanalysis. The perspective one subject provided to the other and vice versa plunged him into abysses of despair. The world would never be able to recover … So he never dove into the chasms of critical reasoning or the socialization of the libido without his provisions of Morgon, Chassagne-Montrachet, or de Pommard. What was most remarkable was that this combination of Freudian Marxism and suicidal alcoholism seemed to work well for him, and even at such a late hour, his discourse remained as clear as it was astute. He welcomed Gabriel as if they’d just seen each other the night before, when in fact it had been nearly three years since their last encounter.
Gégé had been runner-up for the championship title in French weightlifting while he was acing his high school literature exams, and he had maintained his truck-driver’s build, which was a sensation in the classroom and helped recruit several student athletes to the side of Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer. He immediately filled two mustard jars with a ruby-colored Gevrey-Chambertin and cut off the whistling of a German diva with a tap to the stereo remote. Gabriel duly complimented the quality of the wine before telling the hulky philosopher about Sloga’s misfortunes, the book of quotations, Pedro’s insights, his visit to the Gaston Lémoine offices, and finally, the events of earlier that evening, with the skinhead pressman, the kamikaze painter, and the ex-professional revolutionary turned fascist. Gégé listened to him without interrupting, leaning back in his chair, his eyes half-closed, his nose in the divine perfume of his Burgundy. When Gabriel had finished, with an account of Astrapov’s impassioned call for a third World War, Gégé set down his glass and uttered this simple sentence:
—What surprises me is that this surprises you.
—Hold on! I’m not some naïf. With Le Pen and De Villiers attracting more than twenty percent in the presidential elections, we know that the trend toward authoritarianism isn’t just about a few overzealous extremists … I’ve become complacent, relying on old assumptions: that the right will become more and more extreme … a sort of organic evolution. What I’ve discovered from Sloga’s work is this massive ideological shift of certain people on the left, and not only the poor people in the projects, the ones who fall through the cracks … These are politicos, writers, journalists, profs …
Gilbert Gache refilled the jars of wine.
—We could talk for days about this: the loss of meaning, of social utility, the vanishing of points of reference … A simple experiment is enough to reveal the gravity of this crisis … I’d like to ask you to summarize for me, in just a few broad strokes, the platforms of the current strands of mainstream French thought … Gaullist, liberal, communist, socialist … Go ahead … Try to describe their platforms for me …
Gabriel mumbled some vague concepts about equality, the new Europe, the strong franc, the protection of social benefits, competitiveness …
—Now, try to do the same thing with the platform of the National Front …
—France for the French, preferential treatment for citizens, the expulsion of immigrants, salaries for mothers paid for by the state, rejection of Maastricht, reestablishment of the death penalty, transfer of the ashes of Pét …
Gégé had to stop him.
—You see? The results are irrefutable. On one side, a blurriness, a lack of ideological distinction, a long-term view … On the other, crude notions hammered home, the demagogic but terribly effective precision of sloganeering, and miracle fixes … We all have an irrepressible need to act on the world, to transform it. To think that our own weight can be enough to bend the common destiny. It’s easy to transform this human quest into simple terms of war and winning, to name adversaries, even to invent them for the occasion … Their greatest strength is that they promise instant change, they offer distraction from despair. You can’t understand the fascist illusion if you lose sight of the fact that it’s also a doctrine, a mystique. And one that works equally well on lost souls in the projects and on tenured professors!
Gabriel knew that Gégé was right. Still, he tried to play devil’s advocate.
—The horror of the Nazi camps, the resistance, none of it was that long ago! There are limits to our moral …
—Everything would be simpler if memory were a measurable, quantifiable thing … For those who were deported, fifty years is like a day, maybe an hour … For the little bastards you’ve just seen in action, it’s an eternity, which is like saying it never happened. The other night I was watching a documentary about the eighth o
f May, 1945, in Sétif, when the French army deliberately massacred at least fifteen thousand Algerian rebels. An old Kabyle man was telling the story of how he’d come back from the European front, where he’d fought against the Nazis, to learn that his entire family had been executed. The journalist said to him: “After a half-century, the wound must have healed, though, hasn’t it?” The peasant looked at him. After a moment, he responded: “In 1935, when I was ten years old, my schoolmaster, a Breton, taught us the history of France. He explained in detail the atrocities committed by the Prussians—he called them Krauts—during the war of 1870. It was more impressive to me than the tales about ogres and spirits that our elders told at bedtime … This schoolmaster wasn’t old, he was born with the century, and still he hadn’t forgotten what he himself had not experienced: a war that took place thirty years before he came into the world! How do you expect me to forgive the murderers of my father, my mother, and my two brothers?”
Gilbert Gache granted himself a Burgundian respite. Gabriel took up the charge.
—Exactly! How can you justify the fact that the communist papers are receptive to the writings of these fascistic morons? If anyone has fallen prey to the cult of repressed memories, it’s them.
Gégé paused to fully appreciate a swallow of Chambertin, then set down his glass.
—First of all, I’m not justifying anything, especially in this domain. I’m trying to understand. Some people point out that it was easy for the National Front to take the Communist slogan “Made in France!” and add “by French workers!” as a way of appropriating it for their ends. That’s not untrue. We can always find someone more nationalistic than we are. The real explanation is to be found elsewhere, in my opinion.
Nazis in the Metro Page 9
