You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [57]
I felt a shift in the mood of the crowd. People slowly began to move away and I had a clear view.
“This isn’t good,” I whispered to Colin.
“No, mate,” he said, straightening.
Sitting with him I felt protected. He was small, but he could fight. I once watched him break the nose of a kid who’d tripped him in a lunchtime soccer game. I’d seen him take on Ariel. But this was something different, another level. This was not school. It was the world.
I watched several of the kids tie patterned kaffiyehs around their faces as they began to taunt the Jewish students across the street.
“Sales Juifs,” they yelled, spitting on the ground for punctuation.
“Allez vous faire foutre, putains de Juifs.”
The Jewish students didn’t react at first. They ignored the taunts and pretended not to hear. But nearby the crowd went quiet. Now there was a pocket of meanness amidst wild celebration. My heart was pounding.
“Espèce de sale Juif, je vais me faire ta sœur,” a gangly kid in a Gucci T-shirt yelled, his face hidden behind a red-and-white kaffiyeh.
There was little reaction. They stiffened at the vulgar taunting but otherwise continued to talk to one another. We stood up. There was too much violence in the air.
Nothing happened.
And then I watched as a short kid in a Nike cap hurled an empty beer bottle against the opposite curb. It exploded and sent shards of glass flying into the small group across the street. Finally one of them spoke. A tall guy with short curly hair turned around and said, “Ça suffit.”
“C’est à moi tu parles, connard?”
I’d forgotten briefly about Silver, who appeared just to the side of the students. He stepped quickly through the crowd to the curb where, perhaps for the first time, he was confronted with the source of the yelling. He held a sausage in one hand, his lips slightly parted as if he were on the verge of speaking.
Silver’s presence calmed me and while I felt less afraid I also knew, in the moment I saw him there, that I was a coward. I knew it absolutely. He’d come to remind me, to show me what I was.
What kind of person are you? he’d asked us in class. I was the kind of person who stayed still, who remained motionless while every bully in the world stormed forward in a blur of violence. I stood humiliated, paralyzed, and trembling with anger. I turned to those idiot kids. I stared at them.
I would walk to the tall one with the scarf around his face. I’d step off the curb while all the rest of these frauds with their placards and slogans did nothing, stood waiting for something to happen. I’d defend myself. I’d defend all of us.
I put on an angry face, hoping he’d glance my way and see my outrage, see that I was on the edge of action. Two of the kids in kaffiyehs stepped off the curb into the street, one of them holding a metal bar in his hand.
They were only a few feet from Silver, who stood still on the edge of the curb.
The tall student from the Jewish union said nothing. A few others stood at his side. One of them, a young girl, sexy I’d thought earlier, with long blond hair tied back in a loose ponytail, screamed, “Vas te faire foutre!” Her face was flushed and she was shaking. Someone grabbed her wrist and told her to be quiet. She pulled her hand away and faced the two men.
The one holding the metal bar said, grinning, “Quand je te sauterai, tu parleras moins fort, salope.”
Someone in the crowd drew in a quick breath of horror. I looked at Silver. He wouldn’t allow this, I thought. The tall student looked out at the silent crowd facing him and shook his head, disgusted.
The guy with the bar turned as if just then noticing his audience.