No Telling

by Adam Thorpe

  I tried to wriggle free and ended up being whirled round about three times, my shoes slipping on the wet cobbles. The whirling stopped and I looked down at a pair of shoes that weren’t mine, they were smart black lace-ups a bit like my uncle’s. I felt the ground moving because I’d been whirled round. Then the smart shoes scraped and there was a tearing noise and my navy-blue jacket came up over my head but got stuck on the arms. I was bent down and pulling right back with my bottom out to get my arms free of the jacket while the policeman had the torn part in his stitched black gloves, pulling the other way. One of my flat gold-coloured buttons was rolling off like a coin and the policeman’s huge goggles were high up on the front of his helmet and I could see myself moving about in them because his head was low down. He had very small eyes and his chinstrap made a triangle from just below his mouth to his forehead. Giuseppina Bozzacchi fell out of the jacket’s pocket and disappeared under the policeman’s smart shoes. He was snarling and growling swear-words at me and trying to get at me with his stick.

  My arms suddenly came free of my jacket and he almost toppled over, really swearing badly now.

  I ran back up the street without my jacket and only slowed down when I saw no one was chasing me. I was almost back at the car, in fact. The cars looked very calm, parked along each side of the street. I held my ear, which was still stinging. An old couple were looking out of the window about three floors up, between me and where we’d been hit. They looked up and down the street, leaning on their elbows. I tried to call to them but my voice was too weak and they went back inside, closing the windows. Three other people were standing in a scruffy shop doorway, with their arms folded over their leather aprons. They were looking at me with cross faces. The door behind them was open and the rough sign above them said, Ressemelage. My mother had disappeared. Then I made out the white handbag lying on the ground in the distance and my mother on the ground next to it. She was lying on her tummy but reaching out for the handbag with her cream gloves while the three policemen who’d been hitting her were standing and looking over their shoulders at something happening on the boulevard. Then lots of white smoke rose up the other side of the van, and the group of policemen seemed to jerk. They ran off into the boulevard, leaving the two men in pale raincoats, still smoking. They had turned their backs on my mother and were peering round the van as people hurtled past down the boulevard, yelling.

  My knees were trembling and my head was singing one high note. I tried to run forward to my mother but I couldn’t, I had to lean against a bakery window. The people in the scruffy shop had disappeared. Then I was sick. I had never been sick so quickly, it was worse than the time with Carole and the American. I couldn’t wipe my mouth with my sleeve because I had my posh shirt on. I reached up to my bad ear again and felt liquid on it, more than the drizzle could have made. When I looked at my fingers I saw that they were black. It was probably blood. My ear was warm with it and I started to taste it on my lips. It was only then that I realised I was crying. I’d been shuddering and crying without knowing it.

  I was terrified that the policemen would come back and start hitting me again; I wanted to return to the car but my mother was still lying there at the end of the street, pulling her handbag towards her. It would be dirty, I thought, because the cobbles were wet and dirty and it was an expensive handbag my uncle had bought for her on her fortieth birthday from a shop on the Champs-Elysées.

  I started to walk towards her on my trembling legs, my breath coming out as if I was panting, using the wall to help me along. I got to her as she was sitting up, cradling her handbag against her chest. One side of her face was black and there was a streak on her jaw on the other side. That’s just a splash, I thought. That’s just a splash. I put my hand under her arm and managed to help her up onto her feet, though she was quite heavy. She didn’t say anything, but her mouth was open and she was sucking air in through her teeth. The men in the pale raincoats were still peering round the police van, leaning on its big curvy mudguards. Then one of them turned round because my mother had started to make wailing noises and I saw he had the same Nana Mouskouri glasses as my mother. My mother had lost her glasses. I looked around for them as I was trying to keep my mother on her feet. She had stopped wailing and was saying, ‘Oh dear, oh dear, it’s all over my nice coat.’ Behind the man with the same glasses as my mother there were loads more CRS policemen silhouetted in the boulevard, one of them holding a sort of long gun up in the air. There was whitish smoke around him. It was like a film, his helmet was flashing all pink and purple from a neon sign I couldn’t see. Behind him, through the smoke, there was a pair of strongman weights leaning up against a rectangular object. I started to feel scared again and tried to walk back to the car with my mother, but she refused to come.

  ‘We have to phone,’ she said, ‘from the Wimpy.’ She sounded as though she was laughing, but she wasn’t. ‘Oh dear. I think I fell over. Oh dear. It’s these shoes. It’s these silly high heels. And that Wimpy, dear.’

  In fact, she had bare feet because her slippers had come off. She wasn’t even wearing high heels. It was horrible, seeing my mother’s bare feet on the tarmac, like a tramp’s. My ear stung less but my back and arms felt stiff and the ache throbbed all over my body each time I moved. One moment the ache felt part of me, then the next moment it was floating about two centimetres above my skin. I told my mother that we couldn’t phone from the Wimpy. She was touching up her hair while I was supporting her, though her wig had come off. Her hair was very flat with hairpins in it. She didn’t see my blood.

  ‘Whatever it is, dear, I’m sure you’ll prefer it,’ she said. ‘That old awful Wimpy. Isn’t it?’

  Two people came walking up the street and stopped when they got to us. They were men about Carole’s age, one with a camera round his neck. They asked what had happened in a funny accent. I told them. They said they would call an ambulance but my mother kept saying, ‘No, I’m sure he’ll prefer that. Isn’t it? Isn’t it awful?’

  The first one went running off while the other helped me walk my mother to the car. She’d locked the car and I had to find the keys in her handbag. My hands were trembling so much that the young man had to find them for me, digging about in my mother’s handbag.

  We sat in the car with the doors open and the young man told us he was a Swiss tourist. He didn’t seem to know much about the protests, he said he’d just arrived in the city and was walking to the Quartier Latin for a drink and to take pictures because he had a flash. His eyebrows and eyelashes were so fair he looked as if he didn’t have any, and he had a long lock of blond hair at the front. I told him that the policemen had attacked us and he couldn’t believe me, he was very shocked. He said that he would report this, it must be against the law. He said his name was Gert, from Basle. He shook my hand. He looked at my ear and whistled; it seemed, he said, as if it had a hole through the flat bit at the top. My mother was making high moaning noises now, with her hand on her head. The blood over her left eye and cheek was from a cut just above her hairline. Gert had a blue cravat knotted around his neck, like a cowboy. He gave it to me to wrap around her head, and it was just long enough to make the knot. Her coat was filthy and she had a graze on her bare knee through the transparent stocking. I thought that even if the policemen came back up the street all the way to the car, Gert would protect us. He sat in the back, leaning forward, with me behind the wheel and my mother resting in the passenger seat with her eyes closed, fingering her cravat bandage. Gert liked our old Renault, and said that cars these days were rubbish. Someone started practising a piano in the house we were parked in front of; it kept starting and stopping and Gert said it was Mozart and that no one should play Mozart until they were top-grade. He told us he and Helmut were music students at Basle Conservatoire; Helmut played the violin and he played an instrument called the bassoon. He spoke four languages, but wanted to be a bassoonist. I had never heard of the bassoon. The tune went up and down and made me feel that everything
was happy even when it wasn’t. Up and down the hill went the tune, like a lot of little feet.

  I was really hurting all over, now. I held my mother’s hand and squeezed it when she went quiet because she mustn’t fall asleep, Gert said. He kept shaking his head and saying how he couldn’t believe it, it was like South America or South Africa, the whole system was rotten, even in Switzerland it was rotten. I still felt we must have done something wrong, the policemen were so angry. Then Gert’s friend came back and leaned on the door and said that he’d found a telephone box in the next street but it was broken and the owner of the café opposite the telephone box had done everything for him – he’d phoned the ambulance people and they would come as quickly as they could. It had taken ages to get through because there were so many injuries tonight, it was a big violent protest and there were hundreds of injuries on both sides. His voice was very calm and a bit boring, it took him ages to tell the story, in his funny accent like a German’s – but I didn’t mind, I liked it. His hair covered his ears like a wig.

  My mother’s nose kept bleeding and I started to feel a bit sick and dizzy. I closed my eyes and let the piano music make me go up and down and feel happy. These Swiss men are like angels, I thought; they are like Khaled. God always sends angels to chase away the devils. He drops footballs from the sky and they sprout wings and flutter down disguised as ordinary people.

  I noticed the devils back around the police van at the far end of the street, and couldn’t stop myself panting. It had almost stopped raining, now. Now and again there were bangs and crashes from the boulevard. Gert had got out of the car and was looking at the tyres, discussing it with his friend called Helmut. I felt I had known them for ages, their faces seemed as well known to me as Christophe’s, almost: Helmut had a little beard around the edge of his chin, and droopy eyes. It was incredible to think that I’d never seen them before tonight. Helmut had brought back a bottle of tap-water from the café and a roll of kitchen towel and I’d managed to clean up my mother’s face and knee a bit, Helmut helping. It was awful, seeing the stocking torn like that, the edges of its hole all rolled up. Then Helmut bathed my ear, which wasn’t hurting so much. He said he didn’t think it had a hole right through.

  My mother said she had a headache and Helmut came back into the car and started to get worried. He wondered why the ambulance was taking so long, maybe it had got lost, maybe he had given them the wrong street after all, he knew nothing of Paris. I asked my mother how she was but she had fallen asleep. I shook her arm but she stayed asleep, snoring a bit. I was sure this was OK but Helmut said it wasn’t; he kept looking at his watch and swearing quietly in French about the ambulance. Gert was still crouched by the car’s flat tyre, saying things out loud in what sounded like German.

  Then I saw the policemen running up the street towards us, their black helmets with the white crests flashing every time they went under a street-lamp.

  I was so scared that I couldn’t move or say anything. Gert stood up slowly and started to walk towards them. They came forward with their raincoats spread like wings and then I heard one of them shout at him to fucking well get back up the street. He turned round immediately and began walking back. They caught up with him, raising their sticks, and he disappeared between their legs. Helmut was in the car, gasping and saying something in what I reckoned was German. It was just like watching a film, because we were seeing it through the windscreen and the rain distorted it. The policemen were bent over and I could see Gert between their legs, sitting with his arms over his head. The piano carried on playing its happy tune, getting better and better each time. Helmut had got out of the car and was waving his arms and shouting at the policemen that his friend was a tourist from Switzerland, a tourist from Switzerland, from Basle in Switzerland, a tourist. They took no notice of Helmut. They didn’t even hit him, they were too busy hitting Gert. We must all have done something very wrong, I thought, to be hit like that by our own policemen. I held my ear, because it was stinging even more where the blood was in a sort of lump that Helmut hadn’t tried to clean off.

  A group of people were walking towards us from the boulevard. They stopped with their legs apart and then kept jumping up in the air. I heard clunks on the tarmac and realised that stones were flying towards us from the group. One of the policemen staggered and fell over, rolling into a ball. He waited a bit and then started screaming and holding his face, pushing back his helmet and holding his face. Most of the policemen ran back up the street, leaving only three of them, and the group throwing stones ran away back onto the boulevard. I heard them shouting ‘CRS, SS!’ before they ran away. The three policemen who were left carried the injured policeman off to the end of the street. He writhed about the whole time, screaming, and they nearly dropped him.

  I got out of the car but my legs were too weak and I had to lean against the bonnet. There were square-shaped stones all over the street between us and the boulevard, making tiny shadows just like black boxes. An Interdit aux Piétons sign lay flat on the road as if telling the sky. The piano was carrying on with its happy little tune, over and over. Helmut was crouched beside Gert, shouting things in German, sounding upset. Gert wasn’t moving at all, he was just spread out on his tummy on the wet ground as if he’d dropped too hard from the sky, his wings not having opened in time.

  24

  Then about five policemen came running back again but I didn’t have the strength to hide myself. They were panting as they came up and I covered my head. I felt myself being jerked up by my arm, the skin hurting where the policemen’s fingers were pinching it. They walked us back up to the van at the end of the street; I had to run to keep up and because I was being forced along by the arm my feet felt as if they were taking off. Gert was held between two of them so that his feet dragged along behind. We were obviously going to be killed, I thought.

  My mother wasn’t grabbed; they didn’t see her in the car. The policeman forcing me to the van was breathing through his open mouth, showing his lower teeth. I was so scared that I dribbled into my pants, I couldn’t help it, I felt warm liquid in my pants. I could see how the white crest on his helmet was fixed on to the black curved part with a little bolt at the end, like the bolt on a car bumper. I wanted to tell him that I’d noticed this. The helmet’s leather strap made his cheeks look fat, squeezing them up, and the spare bit of it flapped from the buckle at the back of his helmet. We passed next to a dirty piece of paper, wet and torn almost in half. All I could make out were Giuseppina Bozzacchi’s eyes, staring sadly at me, as if she knew everything that was to happen before it had even happened.

  The van was throbbing, dirty fumes coming out of its exhaust. There was a row of policemen guarding it on the boulevard side, blocking our view. The side door was slid open and Gert was dragged up first and dropped on the floor.

  As Helmut climbed in he turned and said, ‘But we two are foreigners.’ The policeman lifted his foot right up and kicked him in the stomach so that he fell onto Gert. Then the policeman climbed into the van and shouted at Helmut, ‘And you’ve come to France just to fuck us about, have you?’ Helmut found a gap on the bench, holding his stomach and trying to get his breath back. The policeman outside yelled at me to get in. The step up was quite high for me, I almost toppled backwards because I was in a hurry.

  There was one bulb in the middle of the roof, lighting everyone’s faces in an ugly way. They all turned to look when I climbed in. It was embarrassing, with everyone’s eyes on me. I said ‘Good evening’ without thinking, like a programmed robot. One person in a big beret like Che Guevara’s, with the same hair like a woman’s covering his ears, grinned and said, ‘A very good evening, comrade.’ I thought he must be a student. The policeman already inside told him to shut his gob. The student puffed his lips in a snort and the policeman punched him in the face. I’d seen this at school, but I’d never seen an adult do it. The student’s nose started bleeding. He had a big handkerchief around his neck like a US cavalryman and used this
over his nose. His beret had fallen off. The policeman took it and jabbed a finger at the student and said, ‘I’ll have you for my fucking sandwich. Fucking tramp bastard. I’ll give you SS. I was in a fucking German prison camp, just for you bastard long-haired pederasts to fuck things up!’ The student drew up his long legs and stayed very still. The policeman went back out, keeping the beret. He’d probably give it back afterwards, I thought.

  There were about ten other people in the van, some of them with blood on their hands and faces. They were holding their hands behind their heads in the same way we’d have to during bending exercises at school. They were sitting on metal benches either side and one girl with long brown hair was on the floor at the end, grimacing and holding her wrist. She had a black leather coat down to her thighs and only one shoe. I found a space in the middle and sat there. The van smelt of metal and bad breath and urine. Two of the policemen stayed in the van with us, slamming the door with a deafening crash and then sitting on the end of each bench, the two people there moving up politely to let them sit down.

  Nobody said anything. I was on the boulevard side and I could see really well over the heads of the row of policemen through the glass and wire mesh. I could see the reflection of flames in the shop windows further up and big broken branches. The strongman weights had turned into the axles of a car, tipped onto its side. The boulevard was brightly lit with signs and streetlamps and the white smoke had cleared, so I could see people very clearly, running and walking or just standing calmly. Some of them had handkerchiefs over their faces like robbers in cowboy films. A man was crouched down behind a lamp post with his bottom right up, as if trying to hide, but the policeman near him didn’t seem to be bothered. A few people further away were jumping in the air, their legs spread out. A man in a brown macintosh came up with a camera and took a flash photo of the row of policemen and then ran away. There were dustbin lids and loads of square cobblestones on the ground, and one of those fat columns with film and theatre posters on it was lying on its side: I could only manage to read Fournier and Fonda on it. The dome on the top was broken off. Then I saw that people were watching from the floors above the shops, leaning on their railings and looking down as if it was all normal.