The Designer(55)
‘I’m a journalist,’ she replied with dignity.
Giroux puffed on his Gauloise, showering her with sparks. ‘A journalist? You write about those bastards who charge twenty thousand francs for a dress. Enough to feed a working-class family for a year. You call that journalism?’
‘Well, if you let me through, I’ll write about something else today.’
‘How do I know you’re not a spy?’
‘You know very well that I’m not a spy,’ she said indignantly.
He showed no inclination to budge. ‘I hear your husband ran away from you. And you’re very friendly with la Comtesse Dior. How is the old pansy?’
‘Don’t call him that.’
The man showed pointed teeth. ‘You like these degenerate types, it seems. Now why would that be?’
‘I like him because he’s talented, kind and generous,’ she replied staunchly. ‘Are you going to let me pass?’
He squinted against the smoke of his cigarette. ‘What’s it worth to you?’
He was plainly angling for a bribe. She produced a couple of hundred-franc notes and passed them to him. ‘To help with the Revolution.’
He pocketed the money, tossed his cigarette into the gutter and gave her a helmet. ‘Wear this,’ he said with a malicious wink. ‘There will be fun and games this morning, mark my words.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Down there,’ he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘But watch your head, comrade. The capitalist thugs don’t play games.’
‘And neither do we,’ a woman shouted after Copper.
The helmet was heavier than it looked, pressing down on her brows. Copper made her way through the roadblock and walked further into the Latin Quarter. As always, the streets were vibrant here, despite the light rain that had begun to fall. Not for the first time, she rather regretted having allowed Dior to settle her in the fashionable part of the city. It would probably be a lot more fun to live here among the artists and the revolutionaries. She might not be an artist or a revolutionary, but she sure as hell wasn’t a fascist bastard, either.
A few streets further on, she started to encounter less art and more revolution. Groups of men and women were marching, carrying banners and chanting slogans. They all seemed to be making towards a common point. Copper joined in. She could hear massed singing from up ahead. She felt her heart start to speed up. She recalled marching with her father and brothers on the Lower East Side.
The gathering point was a large square lined with spindly plane trees. There were already several thousand people crammed into the area, singing ‘The Internationale’ and waving banners. A platform had been set up, decked with red flags, where speeches were evidently going to be made. The needling rain seemed to deter no one.
Wanting to get a shot of the whole, tumultuous scene, Copper asked some men nearby to give her a boost up into one of the trees. Grinning, they obliged, not reluctant to grab handfuls of her buttocks. She scrambled along a somewhat slender branch and got the photographs she needed. It was a good vantage point, but she wanted to get back among the crowd. However, before she could ask her posse of young men for a lift down, the atmosphere in the square changed abruptly.
The crowd had fallen silent, allowing the battering of hoof beats on cobbles to be heard. It grew louder. At the far end of the square, mounted gendarmes emerged from side streets. There were dozens of them. Behind them marched a phalanx of police on foot. Their black capes were slick with rain and they swung long batons, their faces shadowed by the heavy helmets they wore.
A rumble of fear and anger went through the crowd. These were the hated CRS, the security police used to break up riots. They had filtered through the back streets, avoiding the barricades. Resuming ‘The Internationale’, the mass of people pressed forward to confront the police. A senior police officer began bawling at them through a megaphone, telling the crowd to disperse, but he was barely audible over the roar of the communist anthem.
Feeling as though she were in the grip of an electric current, Copper watched as the first line of demonstrators reached the police. A vehement argument was going on. But then the first police baton was swung. A man fell, clutching his head. A roar went up from the crowd. It was the signal for a full-scale assault on the CRS. Demonstrators surged forward, swinging weapons of their own – the wooden poles of placards had evidently been chosen to serve two purposes – and clashed with the police lines. A horse reared, its flailing hooves scattering the unfortunates beneath. Men and women were floundering, stumbling, screaming.
Suddenly, the square was full of violence and danger. People surged to and fro, clubbing at each other, retreating, then turning to face the fray again. Copper realised that she was well and truly stuck up her tree, like a lookout up the mast of a ship in a storm. There was nothing to do but try to record the scene. Her heart was racing and her hands shook so much that she knew half of her shots would be blurry. She fumbled for her notebook and pencil, trying not to drop her camera as she shakily scribbled notes. The fighting, which had been taking place at the far end of the square, now spread as the CRS forged a path through the middle of the crowd, effectively cutting it in two.
But the gendarmes were not having it all their own way. Horses were rearing and screaming as a hail of half-bricks and cobblestones showered on them. Copper saw that figures lined the rooftops, prepared with missiles for exactly this moment. Several police were knocked down, and riderless animals were panicking, causing as much chaos among the police as among the demonstrators.