try… to speak, briefly… ahem!.. you’ll be more effective…
there is an affirmation in his emphasis, an order, that perhaps registered in my mind only later,
agreed?.. I beg of you,
he had already said everything, there shouldn’t be any surprises, everything was set right from the beginning;
we were descending, hanging on to each other, the noise, the laughter, the slogan of the day was rising from the front rows, beaming, splitting into fractions, like pigeons excreting on everything, bouncing off the screens, the red and black letters of the dancing, exhausted, crumpled, reforming sentence
L’IMAGINATION PREND LE POUVOIR!
it hung across the façade of the grand theater, from the huge columns, art is dead, and death is counter-revolutionary, really, why should one die? idiot! keep walking!
hand radios were blasting in the distance, people were whistling from the front rows, there were small red and black flags, young, always beautiful girls in the back rows, then a huge slab of stone would hit a police van, bombs, tear gas, sobbing, red swollen eyes, the long and winding siren of an ambulance,
but the crowds kept moving forward, merde!, they kept walking, with steady pace, confident, the smell of gas was everywhere, spreading underneath the trees, the sound of the spiraling helicopters, we would stop, close our mouths and noses, the photographer was taking photographs when the baton hit his head, I saw those batons, he says, but I was sure, this was France, they wouldn’t dare, he was rolling on his back, getting kicked in the face, they were rolling shutters down over the display windows, the shops were being emptied out, the batons were coming down fast, I was suffocating from the smell of gas mixed with the smoke of burning plastic and tires, we were running, people were running behind us, they kept pushing, groaning, we were going through the entrance of some building, while up above, the eternal good-for-nothings, the pensioners, the philistine officials, watched from behind their curtains, shaking their fists at us occasionally, you’ll see! tomorrow you’ll see! they were waiting for all of this to end, they’d had enough, the riots had to be crushed; leaflets were being dropped in the police station, people were being hand-cuffed, they were being thrown into dark cells, others were being beaten, punched in the stomach, in the back, in the ass, a little blood from the nose
imbeciles! assholes! castrates! freaks!… youth thus… repulsed… young people who dreamed of changing life… heh! words that would kill and curse life… me or chaos! reforms now! yes… a new program! end to injustices! no more masquerades!…
the woman got up from her place, smoothed her dark-colored skirt, touched the scarf around her neck that came down to her chest, she was thin but had wide hips, promising calves, she walked toward the podium in her red summer stiletto shoes and her toenails were painted bright red, her shins were savagely white, she tried to raise the microphone, which seemed to have the tendency to slide down the stand: every speaker had to do it, draw his or her mouth close to the microphone to check the volume, then withdraw, look right, left, toward the Chair, to whom everyone was obliged to smile a fake, automatic smile;
the woman glanced in that direction too, questioning, frowning a bit, looking behind the Chair, into the dark booth where a lamp shone and where the head of the interpreter moved in a regular cadence; after every twenty or twenty-five minutes, as the speaker changed, the door of the booth would open, a man or a woman would emerge, there were two of them, the entering and exiting persons would exchange a few words with one another, the exiting person would cover his mouth with his hand making a smoking sign, since smoking was prohibited and a nonsmoking sign with bold red letters hung on both sides of the stage
that’s what they had tried to change years ago, the revolution was dislodging cobblestones, hurling them into the air in its final throes, weaving barricades, the radios were blasting, roaring, three thousand, three hundred thousand people in the streets, the law was retreating, abandoning the square, passions were spilling over, flowing, blossoming, burning, squandered, May was marching off the avenues, love was flirting from the sidewalks, people were unanimously revolting, rebelling in a tide, overflowing their shores, putting an end to the chewing of watered-down words, to smoking opium, getting fucked over, no ringleaders, no slogans, we were on top of the wave, loose, free, completely free, dancing, clapping, a Gitanes in her mouth, a masculine girl was writing on the blackboard as if in a calligraphy class—
IT IS FORBIDDEN TO FORBID
the hall was rumbling, thundering, roaring, the coils of smoke were everywhere, ascending, infiltrating the air, forming a thick misty dome, while the Chair, red, raging, as reported in the press, was trying to institute silence, so his colleagues could speak, one of them had Mao’s Little Red Book in his hand, another held Lenin’s tract: put an END to police brutality! END to civilization! SOON, SOON, the flames will materialize THE FUTURE!—and we only wanted to live, we wanted to unlearn everything that we had learned, the green or red or blue or black night, while the mezzanine was gradually emptying out, everyone was descending from the top rows, joining people in the front, coughing, wanting to speak, wanting to piss, the hall too would soon be empty, the footsteps would die out, dust, the smell of cigarettes, soon everything would be in ruins, and so everything is a question of language, of cultural revolution… raising the stipends… until the Pentecost, until the victory of law,
when gasoline opened the way to vacation
and Paris threw off its mask of fear
the rats descended back into the cellars;
a woman was going into the interpreter’s booth, the people in the audience had barely had time to take off their earphones when the light, metallic whisper recommenced, the head of the interpreter kept moving like that of a cow being herded uphill, with stooping shoulders, she was trying to follow the speaker’s rhythm, stopping, waiting for the sentence to end, after which she would start forming the same sentence in a different language;
the woman standing at the podium was holding the pointing stick tightly in her hand in the half shadow, with the other she kept adjusting the projector, searching for the right position; she was coquettish, slightly pale even before reaching the podium,
I have some transparencies… maps,
meaning that after so many long, boring, abstract presentations there would be images, concrete things projected on the screen,
finally!
she was smiling at the Chair, while the technician was fussing with the projector in the back of the stage, going back and forth, trying to operate the machine, checking the electric cords, switching on the light, switching off the auditorium lights; the atmosphere in the room would suddenly become familiar, safe, almost unreal, the classroom slowly descended into the evening darkness, allowing the dream to emerge, like at the beginning of those “sword-and-sandal” films that I used to like so much with hundreds of actors and expensive sets showing military action, wars, easing into the story with a simple pipe melody, history framed by a bucolic setting, as though every detail had its place there, every voice its command, every person his calling and his role, and it was possible to flirt with melancholy then;
her hand kept turning on the overhead projector, as if outlining two invisible intersecting circles, her fingers or, more precisely, the enlarged shadows of her fingers were projected on the screen, turning on one another, weaving into each other, inventing a jostle, a tumult of luster and shadow, a devouring mass, that would suddenly become clear when she removed her hand from the glass surface, leaving the transparency lightly trembling, with various tedious details, which nonetheless would be so important later;