You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [56]
“Really into this, aren’t you, mate?” he yelled.
I turned to him, my throat raw, and nodded. “Got to be engaged,” I told him, mimicking Silver.
“Fuckin’ right,” he said, bowing his head and putting his fist in the air.
Flowing from Boulevard du Temple, the protesters spilled out onto the place, which served as a sort of estuary. The order the boulevard provided to the marchers was immediately lost as they flowed outwards around the statue of la République. Banners, which had earlier been drawn tight, drooped. Now red-shirted communists filtered among dancing rainbows. Eventually the last straggling protesters arrived, followed by city workers methodically picking up garbage, spraying the asphalt clean. And behind them a slow parade of CRS was flanked by their creeping blue vans.
People distributed leaflets, chanting, screaming into megaphones. What had been a single massive protest had become a sea of smaller ones. We found a man selling sausages, bought our lunch, and ate sitting on a curb.
“Who are all these people?”
“Don’t know, man.” Colin shook his head.
“They’re so into it.”
“I bet most of them are just here for the fucking party. I mean look at those girls running around with their rainbow flags. In a couple years they’ll be looking for a job in a bank just like all the rest of us. Maybe those hairy fucking Marxists are in for the long ride, and those guys with the AK-47 flags, but mostly? Come on, it’s a street party.”
“Those guys were Hezbollah,” I said, watching members of the Union des Étudiants Juifs de France form a small group across the street. “Anyway, maybe you’re right, but I’ve never seen anything like this, man. Look at how young most of them are. They’re like us. They’re out here.”
The students wore white t-shirts with the words Juifs Contre la Guerre written across their chests. They were talking, laughing, leaning on their signs. They had a sort of glow, which I saw then as one of purpose and confidence. It was the same look I saw in a thousand people that day. Faces that seemed to radiate certainty, a passion for their cause, they were out there doing what they believed in. Living their beliefs, assuming responsibility, acting in accordance with their desires. They were all the things I was sure I was not. They were all the things that Silver expected us to be. As the crowd grew, there was a slow rise in volume, megaphones raised to the sky, chanting from across the place. I watched the faces, the backslapping camaraderie, and felt, yet again, challenged by a world that existed outside of myself, by a version of life I was not part of, a version of life I saw as infinitely more pure than my own, and by the growing sense that it was a life I’d never possess.
I wanted to say something like this to Colin. I wondered if those people I saw as young, fiery, passionate examples, tempted him, seduced him the way they did me. I turned and was about to speak when, a hundred meters away, I saw Silver forcing his way through the crowd. I watched him weave in and out, moving in our direction. He stopped on the other side of the gathering Jewish student union to wait in line for a sausage.
“Silver’s here,” I said not looking away.
“Fuck off, where?”
I nodded toward the sausage stand. It thrilled me to have this new power. To watch him, as Colin joked, “in his natural habitat.” I was fascinated. I watched the way I’d watch him waiting for the métro. But it also felt as if I were somehow betraying him. Suddenly the day felt delicate and fragile. I held my breath, waiting to see what he’d do. I expected something horrible, or I feared it.
To our right