I had been behind the railings and was apart from the disturbance; but why had it started? The crowd had been orderly, systematic;—at least no more heedless than a Saturday afternoon football crowd. And the singing, so frail, no more than a Salvation Army demonstration. So why the cavalry? What orders had been given to reduce the evening to sterility? This had happened when the singing started, but it was the horses that had caused the disturbance, nothing else. And now the meeting was over. The streets were cleared, the loudspeaker quieted. There was nothing except the policemen and Marius and me.
What was Marius then? Perhaps a plain clothes detective, perhaps some secret agent; or perhaps he had come to study horses for a zoo.
“That was a strange business,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. He spoke quite naturally, hardly bothering to look me up and down.
“I can’t see why they wanted to break it up.”
“Oh well,” he said, “I think they always want to break things up, don’t they?”
“Do they?” I said.
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Well,” he said, “it’s the fashion. It’s what people want. The extraordinary thing about this country is that people always seem to get what they want.”
“But they don’t seem to want anything.”
“No,” he said. “That’s another extraordinary thing.”
We walked down the darkening street. He did not seem to be sarcastic. He talked in an offhand way, rather distant.
“But they want things for themselves,” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Comfortable things, crazy things.”
“Yes.”
“It all seems rather a mess to me.”
“Yes,” he said.
Such a strange man, with his agreements. I was sure he wasn’t being sarcastic. At that time (I was still quite young) I thought that I could always get to know people by talking to them, by saying the things that would please them, and as a rule I had been successful with those I had wanted to know. At least, I thought that I had known them. But I had no idea what to say to Marius. I felt, rather foolishly, that when I spoke to him not only were my words wrong, but my whole tone of voice, my expression too. It was almost as if on my old formula I was incapable of knowing anybody. So I kept quiet.
“So,” he said, “I expect that they even want you to think them a mess!” He peered at me amicably.
We were getting back towards the crowd. I could see the bus parked in a side street, like a whale washed up in a dockyard. The horses were gone. A line of policemen on foot was pushing the crowd back, advancing wearily upon them, causing grumbles. The crowd retreated, keeping clear of the police, not wanting to touch them. Then suddenly a man detached himself from his neighbours, wrapped his raincoat around himself, scraped his feet along the ground once or twice like a boxer in his corner, and charged the policemen. He ran like a man approaching the long jump, leapt, and was bounced back deftly by restraining arms. It seemed a quite dispassionate performance. He tried it once again, a little more wildly this time, burrowing his head slightly, almost diving. The police took little notice of him. He bounced comfortably. Then he rejoined his friends. It was as if he had to make some purely ritualistic effort to assert himself, to ensure his self-respect; as if it were some animal instinct within him to make him hurl himself thus; like a monkey that hurls itself against the bars of its cage, catches itself, and then returns to its corner to scratch. He was a tough, rotund little man — one of the balloons. There was certainly nothing purposeful about him.
“There,” I said to Marius. “That’s what I mean.”
“That?” he said. “Yes.”
We went up a side street. We were on the inside of the police cordon, alone. The street at first was empty, with doors closed, giving the impression of enormous events elsewhere. Then, at the far end, some men appeared, running, looking over their shoulders like fugitives. When they were clear into the street they stopped, hopping sideways, and tried to appear at ease. A number collected, forming a column. They were demonstrators who, having evaded the police, were about to demonstrate. They huddled into their column and came marching down the street in a thin line, wispily, all bedraggled and out of step. They trilled some chant about killing. A schoolboy crocodile on the trail of its schoolboy prey.
“Perhaps you’ll see something else,” Marius said.
Along the other side of the street came a girl and boy, carrying newspapers. The crocodile saw them, paused, seemed to shiver along its reptile length and then broke, setting upon them. The boy and girl went down, crumpling, and then were out of sight. They were buried beneath the reptile bodies. There were some youths jumping up and down on the edge of the crowd trying to get a look, to be in on it, their hands rested friendlily on their companion’s shoulders. It was all quite quiet — just the whispering of feet, the feet of the insects, the scurry of cockroaches towards their hole, their refuge; and their refuge was this, the beating up of the girl and the boy. Marius was walking towards them steadily, his hands coming out of his pockets, I following him; and when he reached them he made a way dispassionately through the crowd until he came to the girl and boy, the flailing arms and the plunging movement of fists fading down before him, the youths stepping back, tossing their hair, wondering; then he was above the two crouching figures on the pavement and the boy had his arms wrapped round his head and the girl was gripping the railings as if she were chained. But they were unhurt, unscratched even — after the fists and the kicks they were not even so greatly perturbed — for the boy, seeing Marius above him, stood up quickly and ran, and then waited about twenty yards off: and the girl, pulling herself up by the railings and shaking herself seemed more concerned with the state of her stockings than with any bodily harm. She pulled at her clothes angrily, and then turned to the crowd, shouting something unintelligible at them, but as she marched off proudly to join the boy they did nothing to stop her except follow her with jeers, and at the end, when she was almost past them, snatch her papers from her and hurl them into the air from which they fell, rather damply, upon a neighbouring doorstep. The boy ran to pick them up, and the crowd lurched threateningly; but he got them, and tidied them, and the two of them proceeded on their way down the street. So it was all a game after all, I thought; they are only children and these are only children’s tears. And then a brick hit Marius.
It hit him on the temple, obliquely, so that his head jerked round and he staggered rather, then felt for his forehead with the back of his hand and was examining the blood on it while the echo of the brick still clattered against the stones. He dabbed at his forehead again, cautiously, and he was reaching for his handkerchief while I was advancing futilely upon the crowd trying to alarm them with my fear; and then they left us. They reformed their column. Someone grated an order. They wandered off like prisoners into the dusk. Marius was carefully folding his handkerchief into a pad.
“Are you all right?” I said.
“Yes,” he said.
“I should like to murder the lot of them,” I said.
“I should like a brandy,” he said.
We went to find a pub. Marius looked as he always looked, but then he never looked quite as if he belonged to himself. I wondered why he had been the only person to get hurt. Perhaps they had felt that he was more than a child and a gamesplayer, and had resented him. They had certainly left him quickly enough when he had been standing dabbing his forehead at the side of the street.