Paris After the Liberation_ 1944 - 1949 - Antony Beevor [140]
In eastern Paris, the districts of Belleville and Ménilmontant lay mainly between the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, the Porte des Lilas and the cemetery of Père Lachaise, burdened with the memory of the massacre of Communards in 1871. Alleys, steep little cobbled streets, and houses with grey shutters and peeling grey stucco bore testimony to a very different sort of history from that of the spacious and grandiose centre of the city.
After the thick slush of winter, the only colour in spring came from the blossom of a few stunted and polluted lilacs or optimistic shoots from ruthlessly pollarded plane trees. The begrimed romanesque façade of Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix in the Place de Ménilmontant appeared to belong to an industrial city of the north, not to Paris. Few buildings matched in height and the chaotic roofscape was completely unlike the Haussmann-imposed discipline of central Paris. There were not many shops: the odd under-provisioned grocer optimistically entitled ‘Alimentation Générale’, the dingy little establishments run by migrants from the Auvergne selling wine, firewood and coal, and bare cafés with little more than a zinc counter for those in cloth caps and blue overalls who needed a petit vin blanc to start the day. Housewives still did almost all their shopping in the street markets, like the one on the rue de Ménilmontant.
As well as the Jewish leather-workers and cobblers and garment workshops in Belleville, the area was filled with artisans of every description: watchmakers, woodcarvers, caners, cabinetmakers, monumental masons for the gravestones in Père Lachaise, all working in tiny ill-lit premises, in most cases no more than a cubbyhole with a workbench, pigeonholes and a single bulb on a flex above.
From the water towers overlooking the cemetery of Belleville round to the abattoirs of La Villette, to the marshalling yards and railway workshops of La Chapelle, eastern and northern Paris were areas of great working-class solidarity, however fragmented their population.
In the 18th arrondissement, which included the central workshops of the French railways, young Communists hero-worshipped their elder brothers who had taken part in the Resistance – the centre for their activities had been the basketball club.
On Sunday mornings, the men of the Gager family put on their Sunday suits and went off to sell Communist Party newspapers. Hersz Gager, the father, sold L’Humanité, and the elder son, Georges, sold L’Avant-garde. Each had his own pitch in the rue de l’Olive next to the market.
Activities for Communist youth were taken as seriously as the Church’s activities for young Catholics. There were outings to politically approved plays, the cultural programme of the Association France-URSS, which usually involved watching films about the heroism of the Red Army, and camping for boys and girls in a very puritan atmosphere. The only relaxation came when young Communists in the 18th arrondissement used to organize a dance known as la goguette, the name coming from Saturday-night parties on the banks of the Marne before the First World War. They danced le swing and loved le bebop. The Communist Party decided not to maintain its anti-jazz line too strictly – it needed to recruit the young.
Hersz Gager’s weekly cell meeting took place in the rue Jean Robert and started after supper. He always shaved carefully before setting out. (Cell meetings in factories took place after work, but most workers preferred to avoid a cell linked to their job because if the boss found out you would be the first to be fired.)
The Communist year had its feast-days and days of political observance. Supposedly the happiest, like an ancient spring rite, was the fête des remises de cartes. This was a family event, with cakes and wine, and singing and dancing to an accordion. The cell secretary would