The Merry Month of May (25 page)

He grinned at me. “We—that is, the students, not the Cinema Committee alone—have cars going to Holland all the time. We could deliver the material for you. And by boys without long hair.” His own hair was cut short, I noted. “We feel,” he looked around, “at least,
I
feel that the sooner the articles on us are on the stands in Paris and in America the better it is for us, and for the Revolution. Does anyone have any discussion on that?”

Instantly there was a babble of voices that made my head really ache. They certainly did have a thing about discussion. I had noticed from the moment I entered that this thing of democratic discussion was as much a sacred ritual with them as some other ritual might be with a church, and it was beginning to give me a pain in the ass. Also, I found I was taking an active dislike to Daniel the Chairman for some reason I could not isolate or name. It was hot as hell in there, I was sweating, and the whole thing had been in French, which, though I speak it well enough, tires me when it is done in a climate of emotional excitement. And now Weintraub and that little girl Florence appeared to have disappeared somewhere.

Just as if he had actively read my thoughts, Daniel smiled at me and said, “Let one of us show you around the rest of our establishment up here, why don’t you?” He then plunged right back into the discussion, which by this time had turned from the delivery of my Review through to Holland to something having to do with various shooting assignments the various teams were competing for for tomorrow.

The boy who took me around had long hair, and his long hair could have stood a good washing. He was called Raymond. The first place he took me was to the right, into the “cooking” area, which was in fact slightly larger than the “office”. It was nearly empty, the floor was dotted with rather ripe-looking blankets, and over a tiny butane cooking apparatus one boy was heating himself some canned soup. And over in one corner Weintraub was fucking that half-American girl Florence.

The boy Raymond, he was quite short, did not turn one greasy hair. “Would you like to take a look down at the theater? We have our own special balcony,” he told me quietly in French.

“Why, yes,” I said. Neither Weintraub nor Florence looked up from their locked embrace, and as far as I could tell, without actually peering, did not even break their rhythm.

So Raymond led me past the boy, still concentratedly heating his soup, down the narrow room to another door at the far end. When we opened it and stepped through, shutting it behind us, we were on a tiny darkened balcony right up under the roof of the theater itself. Seven floors below us the nonstop dialogue which had been going ever since the students occupied the Odéon four days ago was in full cry. A tall blond boy on the stage who was chairing the debate with a large gavel, and doing it well, had recognized a citizen, obviously not a student, and certainly no executive, in other words a worker, who was asking to large numbers of angry boos whether the developing general strikes might not be doing more harm to the French people than good. Amidst lots of derisive shouts the man stuck to his point and developed his argument, which was essentially that what France really needed was more inflow of American capital investment, which according to him would automatically change the antiquated French capitalistic structure and bring it along to the more modern American corporate system and in so doing would both quietly and peacefully do away with the old entrenched French Patronat which was the root of all the trouble anyway. He sat down red-faced to a smattering of applause and a great number of derisive boos. The blond boy beat his gavel and recognized someone else, who rose to refute the first man. We went back in. I could hardly help seeing that Weintraub and Florence were still at it.

“Would you like to take a look at the sleeping quarters?” Raymond said politely.

“Why, yes. I would,” I said. I hoped it sounded cool enough.

We went back through the “office”, still vibrating with some democratic discussion or other, and through the other door. This room was narrower but considerably longer than the “cooking quarters”, darker, its floor covered with sleeping bags, greasy mattresses and the same sleazy-looking blankets, and on one of these Hill Gallagher was humping Samantha Everton. The blanket didn’t cover much of them, and Samantha, who was not a tall girl at all, appeared to have very long and lovely legs—as pretty as Louisa’s in fact, which were the handsomest I’d ever seen.

“Very nice,” I said, and ducked back into the reverberating office immediately, “but what do you do about baths?”

“Oh, we go to the public baths around the area,” Raymond smiled. “When we have the time to.”

The kids were still discussing. I could not quite make out what the new discussion was about, but Weintraub had reappeared, sweating and red-faced.

“She’s quite a little chick, old Florence,” he grinned when he came over. “Would you like to try her? She likes you, she said. Likes you a lot.”

“She said that?”

“Sure. I wouldn’t kid you.”

“I wonder if she washed?” I said.

“Washed?” Weintraub said. “Washed? Oh, washed. Well, I guess so. There’s a john right outside in the hall. She went there.”

At that moment Florence, looking pleased and happy, came in from the outside door; and suddenly something took hold of me and I thought why not? After all, if this was the way it was going to be, why not see what it was like? I might be an “Older Generation”, but I still ought to know what the new world was going to be like. So when Florence came over to us, I took her hand.

Actually, she needed no urging. We went immediately into the “cooking quarters”, where the preoccupied boy was now eating the can of soup he had so laboriously and meticulously heated. We used the same blanket in the same corner she and Weintraub had used, and I was pleased to see that we did not upset the young man’s meal.

I must say that she was not much of a lay. She certainly did not have any of Martine’s experience or finesse. She just sort of laid there. But, of course, as Weintraub said later, she was very young, she was only a kid.

13

“Y
OU CAN’T EXPECT HER
to have the ability of someone older who’s had years of practice and education in bed behind them,” Weintraub said reasonably.

“Perhaps not,” I said. “But look at Sam. She’s the same age. Nineteen, too.” I was feeling bad now about the whole thing.

“Ah, but Sam is a different kettle of fish!” He grinned. “To coin an apt phrase. She’s sophisticated. She’s been around plenty.”

“I suppose.” I felt gloomy. “But what about her and Hill, now? I saw them in the—, you know.” I coughed. “I thought Florence was Hill’s—well, you know.”

“But none of them believe in sleeping with just one person. Monogamistic love,” Weintraub said agitatedly. “You know that. Unless, of course, both parties decide that that is what they want. Then it’s their business. You know all that. So Sam’s making it with Hill a little bit now. And Florence is making it with me. And you. And a bunch of others, I expect.”

We were sitting in a bar. In fact, it was the old Monaco Bar, that bum’s hangout, the same place where Dave had told me about first meeting the Cinema Group kids earlier in the month. We had left the Odéon around one-thirty, with the understanding I would do what I could about writing a Commentary for them when and if that were possible, and in the meantime would try to get two articles written for the Review, all of the material for which, the entire issue, the kids would guarantee to get out to my printers in Holland for me. They had offered me an assistant, and I had chosen the angelic-faced Terri of the beautiful hair when Hill, after his tête-à-tête with Samantha, had declined my request for him. Sam had not left with us.

I must say, the old Monaco did not look like such a low dive anymore, after the happenings of the past few weeks. We had walked straight down to it from the front steps of the Odéon along the rue de l’Odéon. Ahead of us all that way was a huge cordon of police and police camions at the Carrefour, blocking off rue de l’Odéon where it met Boulevard St.-Germain. The CRS boys were lined up across the entire street, at least three lines deep, and wearing their helmets, gasmasks and fighting raincoats, and carrying shields and the long
matraques.
They hardly looked human. The smell of tear gas was everywhere, but we all were used to that by now.

“Don’t worry about it. You and me can walk right through them to the Boulevard,” Weintraub said cheerily as he led me into his old Monaco stamping-ground. “Of course, if we were twenty years younger and had long hair we probably couldn’t,” he added.

We had picked an empty table at the back.

“I think Hill is falling for her,” I said now, after the exchange on sex. “For Sam. I mean in a really serious way.”

“Oh, come on! Of course he is! Just like he fell for Florence, and then turned her over to me and that other kid. What’s his name? Raymond. The one that took you around.”

He was probably right. In any case I didn’t think it was that important anyway. “Listen, Dave,” I said. “I’ve just had an idea. A really brilliant idea. It was playing around sort of in the back of my mind all the time we were up there, and now suddenly it has crystallized.”

“So what is it?”

“I’m not the man to do their Commentary on their film for them. Oh, I could do one. And I’ll certainly go ahead and write those articles for them for the Review, though I doubt if they will help them as much as they are hoping. But as for doing a film Commentary, I’m not really the man they want. I’ve never done any film work. Harry Gallagher is the man they want!”

Weintraub did not answer for a full minute, and then grabbed up his Pernod and drained its milky contents suddenly and almost savagely. “Well, Jesus! Why didn’t I think of that?” Then he paused another very long moment. “But it’s going to cause all sorts of hell’s orchards with Hill, you know. He was furious enough when I suggested bringing you over. I told you, he voted against, remember? What’ll happen if they ask his dad to come?”

“Are we doing all this for the Cinema Committee, or are we all doing it all for the sake of Hill Gallagher?” I said.

“That’s true,” Weintraub said thoughtfully. He signaled for another Pernod. “But somehow it bothers me. I don’t know what could happen.”

“Listen,” I said. “If it’s for the good of the ‘Revolution’—and you know what
I
think this ‘Revolution’ is going to come out to in the end—I don’t see how Hill can fight it. Is he for the
Revolution?
or is he for Hill Gallagher?”

“Well,” Weintraub said. “
I
am for the
Révolution.
We could go back up there and present them with the idea, certainly.”

“Harry would be
perfect
for what they want,” I said. “And I’m not chickening out or anything.”

He drained off his new Pernod savagely, after adding a little water, and I suddenly had the distinct impression, quite clearly, that he was not at all that happy or that much at ease about having had to give up his beautiful Samantha to Hill, or to any of the others for that matter. “Okay, let’s go,” he said toughly, and pushed the little cash register tabs for our drinks over to me suggestively. I picked them up. “But will they be there still, now?”

“Are you kidding? They’ll be there all night, most of them.” So that was what we did. We turned our backs on the massive cordon of CRS at the foot of the street and walked straight back up to the massive front steps of the Odéon where our
Laissez-Passer
cards got us admitted immediately through the crowds.

“You understand I hate to do this to Hill,” Weintraub said to me as we went up the marble stairs to the first floor, “but I do think it is good for the entirety of the
Révolution.”
I had not anywhere questioned his motives.

It turned out that Hill was not there when we arrived back up at the tiny moisture-laden little room up under the eaves backstage. Neither was Sam. They had gone somewhere. And after my presentation of the case for Harry’s nomination to do the Commentary, led on by Daniel the Chairman who harangued forcefully for Harry during the inevitable democratic discussion which followed, there was, with the absence of Hill and a few others, a unanimous vote in favor of asking Harry to do it. Anne-Marie voted for it, so did my now co-associate Terri, so did the bearded Bernard. And certainly Daniel the Chairman voted for it. It turned out that not one of the Cinema Committee knew or realized that Harry Gallagher, the famous avant-garde and radical screenwriter, was the father of their
Comité
member Hill Gallagher of the same last name.

“I’ll talk to him about it tomorrow,” I said to Weintraub as we made our dim way back downstairs and left through the crowd.

I called Harry the next morning.

“What? A Commentary? A Commentary on the film
they
are going to make? On the Revolution?” There was a pause. “Hell, yes!
Christ,
yes! I’d love to do it!” Then another pause. “But I’ll have to see shot film. And I’ll have to have cutting permission. I’ll have to be able to work with whoever they have for cutters.”

“I think they will give you all that, and more if you want. Look, I’ll take you over there tonight. Around midnight. That is, Weintraub and I will take you,” I added. “It was really his idea from the beginning.”

“Okay. But wait,” Harry said. “Wait. Wait a minute. I’m not sure I can go tonight. I’ve got a meeting. I guess you know what happened at Cannes yesterday?”

In fact, I did not. I had not yet seen the morning papers. Harry proceeded to tell me about it.

Apparently on Sunday night the Cannes Film Festival, which had been going on for some days, had been closed down five days early by a group of agitators composed largely of the younger French directors and actors like Godard, Louis Malle, François Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Leaud and Carlos Saura. There was some confusion as to why, but mainly it was supposed to be a sympathy strike with the students and workers of France. Geraldine Chaplin, the pretty young star of the Spanish film
Peppermint Frappé
had rushed up onto the stage and attempted to close the curtains on the showing of her own film. M. Favre Le Bret had proceeded to close down the entire proceedings after these demonstrations, to avoid the possibility of violence during film showings and “since circumstances did not permit projections under normal conditions.” So the whole thing was definitely finished, for the year.