“So that’s how it was,” he concluded. “Twenty-six they were, twenty-six; sand will never cover o’er their graves. .”
I’ve never known what those lines from Esenin were doing there.*
Meanwhile, we had arrived at the crossroads where cardholders were to be finally segregated from commoners. In other circumstances, I would have done anything to avoid flashing my invitation in sight of a comrade still under sentence, but this time I had no option. It had to happen at the precise moment when he asked “And how are things with you?” As a result, smiling guiltily, and feeling more than a little embarrassed, I took the card from my pocket and blurted out: “As you can see, I’ve got an invitation to. . I mean. ..”
I didn’t know how to finish my sentence: humorously, or plainly, or by adopting an ironical stance prompted by — well, I don’t quite know what. It could have been me, or him, or the whims of fate. But he solved my dilemma by exclaiming brightly: “You’ve got an invitation! Bravo! Now that’s really good news. But shouldn’t you hurry up? Aren’t you late?”
There wasn’t the slightest trace of mockery or repressed envy in his voice or on his face, and I felt sorry for having spent the last twenty-five yards worrying solely about how to get rid of the man.
When I got to the other side of the crossroads, and just before reaching the first line of plainclothes police, I turned around one last time and saw him waving good-bye, still watching me with his sparkling eyes.
I was upset by how nice he had been. However, the suspicion that his behavior was simply a sign of the implosion of a personality which, for reasons that are hard to explain, takes pleasure in its own downfall (in other circumstances, such a suspicion would have left an unpleasant sensation in the pit of my stomach) was swept away by his goodhearted and happy gesture, which made me all the more relaxed for my encounter with the first line of police.
“ID!”
From the corner of my eye, I watched the inspector’s glance going back and forth from my passport photograph to my face, as I tried (for reasons I cannot fathom) to detect in it some sign of disbelief, or ill will, or, on the contrary, respect. A few seconds later, as I left him behind me, I thought I must already be in an advanced state of mental degeneration to worry at all about the impression my face, my name, or my invitation card might make on an insignificant plainclothes policeman I would probably never see again in my life.
Boulevard Marcel Cachin, which connects El-basan Road to the Grand Boulevard, was packed and at a standstill The only people who could get through, along the side, were people with invitations, moving individually, as I was, or in small groups. Some of the latter included children carrying toy flags or paper flowers. Others were wearing medals, which cast a yellow gleam on their faces. I was just behind a short, squat man striding boldly forward and holding a little girl by each hand. Both wore ribbons in their hair — one blue, one red — and their charming faces looked as though they had come straight out of a documentary film about official festivities.
The second checkpoint wasn’t far from the first. I was expecting it to be stricter, but the procedure was in fact identical, which must have been a disappointment to first-time invitees who were looking forward to a rigorous identity check whose stringency would establish the true value of their invitation. That was completely borne out by the man with the two girls in front of me, who displayed a kind of frustration when, having informed the policemen that the girls were his daughters and that he had their birth certificates with him to prove it, got by way of answer from one of the two cops just a casual “On you go!”
The man was dumbstruck and shook his head as if to say: “You call that a security check?” It was so visible that I almost wanted to get involved and tell him: “Don’t worry, there’ll be more checks before you get to the grandstand, and they’ll be much tighter!”
Boulevard Marcel Cachin is not only particularly wide at this point, it is also curved, so you could look around and get a good view of the various groups of invited guests. They moved forward in line with stilted eagerness, and what with the spring sun above them and the medals and flags they bore, not to mention the nearing sound of the brass band, a warm glow of solidarity arose among people who were otherwise unknown to one another. It wasn’t difficult to see why. They had all been singled out by the same hand (the index finger of the state) to participate in the same solemn celebration, and that sealed them in a golden union and made them want to talk to each other, or at least to smirk discreetly. After all, hadn’t other people, ordinary people, people not invited, been kept behind the security cordon so as not to bother us any longer with their stunned, overinsistent, and interrogative eyes, asking: “So why did they invite you, in particular?”
I felt ashamed to be part of this idyllic and peaceful holiday tableau and was suddenly overcome with a strong desire to see Leka B. again, in whose presence I had at first felt uneasy but who had shown such tact and nobility. Not only had he not allowed the fateful question to emerge, he had demonstrated real warmth, despite having himself been banished for years from all public celebrations.
At the third checkpoint, I came across a Party activist from our own neighborhood. (Only then did I realize that the plainclothesmen were complemented by all sorts of Interior Ministry employees, as well as by volunteers from various neighborhoods, who were surely also “shadow workers.”) In other circumstances, I would have given him a look of scorn, but here, in the radiance of reconciliation emanating from this high mass of togetherness, I was more inclined to favor him with a smile. But he didn’t return my greeting; what’s more, he pretended not to recognize me. He flicked through my passport looking bored, as if he didn’t know me from Adam, although I had bumped into him only the day before at the dairy store. Then, without even looking up, he blurted out: “On you go!”
I felt the blood rising in my cheeks from the humiliation, but it did not take long for the man’s display of indifference to become the source of an unspecifiable pleasure. The episode proved that even if I was one of the elect on that day, and putting aside the fact that in some insidious and barely perceptible way I was just a little proud of it (despite also feeling a degree of shame for the same reason), I had not become an indistinguishable part of the elite or, to be more precise, of the upper circle’s dark side. That’s why our neighborhood activist had looked me over with his evil eye and had probably muttered under his breath: “What’s this guy doing here? Who the hell selected such a nonentity to sit in the grandstand?”
That’s all it took to make me begin to watch out for signs of hostility. And the nearer I got to the Grand Boulevard, the more I noticed them. But I hadn’t seen anything yet. Just when I was least expecting it, when I had come to believe that I could now be pricked only by hauteur (people who were accustomed to getting invited every year would naturally take exception to newcomers), and that I had nothing to fear apart from a single enemy called jealousy, since the other, nagging, questioning foe (“So what did you do to earn the invitation, eh?”) had been cordoned off by our common condition on that score, since we were all more or less in the same boat, it was precisely at that point that the snake reared its ugly head higher than ever. Two youngish men in raincoats, with the kind of faces that made you think you’ve seen them before somewhere, but who knows where, looked me up and down from the side as they crossed my path. I got the impression that their glances had a touch of sarcasm about them. I turned around to make sure they weren’t focusing on me, that I was simply a trifle paranoid, but I saw to my alarm that it really was me they were glaring at. Not only did they carry on ogling me, they were also whispering in each other’s ears while the smiles on their lips twisted into something close to a sneer.