"Sugar?"
"Thanks." Karl took the bowl.
"You've got nice hands," said the Nigerian. "An artist's hands, of course." Briefly, he touched Karl's fingers.
Karl giggled. "Do you think so?" The sensation came again, but this time it was a wave and there was no doubt about its origin. "Thank you." He smiled suddenly because to remark on their hands and to pretend to read their palms was one of his standard ways of trying to pick up girls. "Are you going to read my palm? "
The Nigerian's brows came together in a deep frown. "Why should I?"
Karl's breathing was heavier. At last he understood the nature of the trap. And there was nothing he wished to do about it.
In silence, they ate their sandwiches. Karl was no longer irritated by the pressure of the man's leg on his.
A little later the Nigerian said: "Will you come back with me?"
"Yes," whispered Karl.
He began to shake.
You are a passenger on a plane which is about to crash. The plane is not a jet and so you have a chance to parachute to safety. With the other passengers, you stand in line and take one of the parachutes which the crew hands out to you. There is one problem. The people ahead of you on the line are already jumping out. But you have a four-month-old baby with you and it is too large to button into your clothing. Yet you must have both hands free in order to (a) pull the emergency ripcord in the event of the parachute failing to open, (b) guide the chute to safety if you see danger below. The baby is crying. The people behind you are pressing forward. Someone helps you struggle into the harness and hands you back your baby. Even if you did hold the baby in both hands and pray that you had an easy descent, there is every possibility he could be yanked from your grip as you jumped.
There are a few more seconds to go before you miss your chance to get out of the plane.
2
In The Commune: 1871:
A Smile
Not only France, but the whole civilized world, was startled and dismayed by the sudden success of the Red Republicans of Paris. The most extraordinary, and perhaps the most alarming, feature of the movement, was the fact that it had been brought about by men nearly all of whom were totally unknown to society at large. It was not, therefore, the influence, whether for good or evil, of a few great names which might be supposed to exercise a species of enchantment on the uneducated classes, and to be capable of moving them, almost without thought, towards the execution of any design which the master-minds might have determined on—it was not this which had caused the convulsion. The outbreak was clearly due less to individual persuasion, which in the nature of things is evanescent, than to the operation of deep-rooted principles such as survive when men depart. The ideas which gave rise to the Commune were within the cognizance of the middle and upper classes of society; but it was not supposed that they had attained such power, or were capable of such organized action. A frightful apparition of the Red Republic had been momentarily visible in June, 1848; but it was at once exercised by the cannon and bayonets of Cavaignac. It was again apprehended towards the close of 1851, and would probably have made itself once more manifest, had not the coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon prevented any such movement, not only at that time, but for several years to come. Every now and then during the period of the Second Empire, threatenings of this vague yet appalling danger came and went, but the admirable organization of the Imperial Government kept the enemies of social order in subjection, though only by a resort to means regrettable in themselves, against which the Moderate Republicans were perpetually directing their most bitter attacks, little thinking that they would soon be obliged to use the same weapons with still greater severity. Nevertheless, although the Emperor Napoleon held the Red Republic firmly down throughout his term of power, the principles of the extreme faction were working beneath the surface; and they only awaited the advent of a weaker Government, and of a period of social disruption, to glare upon the world with stormy menace.
— There you are, Karl. The black man strokes his head.
Karl has removed his clothes and lies naked on the double bed in the hotel suite. The silk counterpane is cool.
— Do you feel any better now?
— I'm not sure.
Karl's mouth is dry. The man's hands move down from his head to touch his shoulders. Karl gasps. He shuts his eyes.
Karl is seven years old. He and his mother have fled from their house as the Versaillais troops storm Paris in their successful effort to destroy the Commune established a few months earlier. It is civil war and it is savage. The more so, perhaps, because the French have received such an ignominious defeat at the hands of Bismarck's Prussians.
He is seven years old. It is the Spring of 1871. He is on the move.
— Do you like this? asks the black man.
KARL WAS SEVEN. His mother was twenty-five. His father was thirty-one, but had probably been killed fighting the Prussians at St. Quentin. Karl's father had been so eager to join the National Guard and prove that he was a true Frenchman.
"Now, Karl." His mother put him down and he felt the hard cobbles of the street beneath his thin shoes. "You must walk a little. Mother is tired, too."
It was true. When she was tired, her Alsatian accent always became thicker and now it was very thick. Karl felt ashamed for her.
He was not sure what was happening. The previous night he had heard loud noises and the sounds of running feet. There had been shots and explosions, but such things were familiar enough since the Siege of Paris. Then his mother had appeared in her street clothes and made him put on his coat and shoes, hurrying him from the room and down the stairs and into the street. He wondered what had happened to their maid. When they got into the street he saw that a fire had broken out some distance away and that there were many National Guardsmen about. Some of them were running towards the fires and others, who were wounded, were staggering in the other direction. Some bad soldiers were attacking them, he gathered, and his mother was afraid that the house would be burned down. "Starvation—bombardment—and now fire," she had muttered bitterly. "I hope all the wretched Communards are shot!" Her heavy black skirts hissed as she led him through the night, away from the fighting.
By dawn, more of the city was burning and all was confusion. Ragged members of the National Guard in their stained uniforms rallied the citizens to pile furniture and bedding onto the carts which had been overturned to block the streets. Sometimes Karl and his mother were stopped and told to help the other women and children, but she gave excuses and hurried on. Karl was dazed. He had no idea where they were going. He was vaguely aware that his mother knew no better than he. When he gasped that he could walk no further, she picked him up and continued her flight, her sharp face expressing her disapproval at his weakness. She was a small, wiry woman who would have been reasonably pretty had her features not been set so solidly in a mask of tension and anxiety. Karl had never known her face to soften, either to him or to his father. Her eyes had always seemed fixed on some distant objective which, secretly and grimly, she had determined to reach. That same look was in her eyes now, though much more emphatic, and the little boy had the impression that his mother's flight through the city was the natural climax to her life.
Karl tried not to cry out as he trotted behind his mother's dusty black skirts. His whole body was aching and his feet were blistered and once he fell on the cobbles and had to scramble up swiftly in order to catch her as she turned a corner.