You Deserve Nothing - Alexander Maksik [59]
It went on like that. We consumed that poem. We were, by the end of class, furious at the war, at the hypocrisy of government, or whatever it was we were furious about. It didn’t matter. It was that ecstasy of legitimate anger that mattered, and the thrill of doing it ourselves, unraveling a poem, so many of us in it together and Silver so proud, pacing around, driving us forward.
Sitting beneath the trees now in St. Germain-des-Prés I kept hearing those tear-gas canisters clattering against the asphalt at République. Such a vacant sound. People running in fear. So much chaos. I couldn’t comprehend the distance between who we were that day in his classroom and who we were now.
I read from his packet of Camus essays.
It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm—this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.
It was nearly dark and I was very cold. There was a man lying on a bench opposite me, wrapped in an old blanket with a wool hat pulled down to cover his whole face. I watched him and imagined I had the courage to spend the night there in the park. I’d never go home. Just take a breath and fade away. No phone calls. I thought about the man I’d seen pushed in front of the train. I’d pasted the article into my notebook. Christophe Jolivet was dead in a second. I thought about the sound of the train hitting his body and how it was so different from the one the metal bar had made against that kid’s ribs.
Il n’y a qu’un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux: c’est le suicide.
In pretending that I had the courage to sleep in the garden with this faceless man and Picasso’s bronze of Dora Marr, I also imagined I had it within me to kill myself. But I didn’t have the courage for either. And I was perfectly aware, even at seventeen years old, how ridiculous I was sitting in St. Germain-des-Prés clutching Camus pretending to contemplate suicide. I was freezing and soon I’d go home.
For a moment, I thought I might call Silver. Maybe he’d take me in, let me sleep on his couch for a while, until I figured things out. But of all I’d seen that day, all I’d proven to myself about my own character, what haunted me most was that single image: Silver turning away, his hand rising to his cheek to wipe the saliva from his face. What had I expected?
When he came forward and cried out, I felt such relief. This would be the end of them, the end of all of it. I knew Colin thought the same. In that moment, he was ours. Righteousness had arrived in a sea of ugliness.
But there was nothing more. What he had to give he gave. It was an inch more than the rest of us, a brief scream. Arrête. And then there was nothing but a diminishing wave of inertia leaving Silver standing there in the street, mute, as we all were, with fear. I saw him stumble backward, refuse to fight, and turn away. Gone.
I couldn’t call him. There was nowhere to go but home. Nowhere I had the courage to go.
A round man in a long black coat opened the garden gate. He walked to the bum lying on the bench and gently shook his foot until the man woke, pushed his cap above his eyes and sat up. He gathered his blanket, picked up a pack from behind the bench and limped silently out of the garden. The man in the coat glanced up at me.
“Le jardin ferme, je vais vous demander de partir monsieur, s’il vous plait,” he said.
I nodded and stood up, pulling my backpack over my shoulder. He held the gate for me and smiled as I walked past. “Bonne soirée,” he said, sliding a key into the lock.
I went home. The apartment was warm and smelled of roasted chicken. I was hungry and the warmth of the place, the lit candles in the living room, the Bach cello suite playing on the stereo all made me