The Merry Month of May (46 page)

I had not gone out. I had the feeling that it was the last flurry before the end, and anyhow, I was too worried about Louisa. But the police and troops had gotten much tougher now, and a strict curfew was imposed on the Latin Quarter, and the students were really no longer any match for them. It was tapering off, or would soon. The consensus of public opinion was no longer with the students. Lots of workers wanted to get back to work. That night I had stood in my windows drinking Scotch, while across the river the Latin Quarter blazed with action and burning cars. Percussion grenades by the hundreds cracked their explosions across the water and into my ears, lighting the tops of the buildings with their flashes. I stood and watched it, and thought about Louisa.

I could not escape the feeling that if I had been more thoughtful and considerate, that if I had realized what was really bothering her when she came and asked me to have an affair with her, and had gone ahead and done it, then she would not be where she was now. So that, in a way, it was my fault, and I was guilty.

Still, I just don’t see how I could have done it like that, on such short notice.

Late Wednesday the doctors said she had improved a little, slightly. At least, her blood pressure was more nearly back to normal.

27

F
OR THE NEXT THREE DAYS
I kept in constant touch with Harry in Rome. This was fairly easy since all the Government postal, telephone and telegraph people were now back at work. Harry remained adamant about not coming back unless Louisa actually died. And even then he was not absolutely sure.

He seemed to care nothing for her at all. Although, I have to admit, he said several times that he felt sorry for her. He seemed to actively detest her and have no patience with her at all since the night he saw her with Samantha.

Louisa, or I should say Louisa’s body, was showing marked improvement on Thursday. At least, physically—in her blood pressure, pulse, temperature, breathing capacity, etc. But she remained in the coma.

Then on Friday she came to, throwing an enormous fit, and thrashing about. She managed to work one arm loose and tore the glucose needle out of her arm. Fortunately, they were able to get to her and hold her down before she could tear the tubes out of her nostrils, which might have done her really serious damage. And after that they strapped her down completely, legs and all.

After the Tuesday night rioting, there was a sort of cooling off, and nothing much happened during the next two days. There were a couple of interesting developments that appeared in the papers, however.

On Wednesday, after the two nights of renewed rioting in Paris, the French Government officially banned all street demonstrations throughout France. They would be banned indefinitely, and at least until after the National Election campaign. They also dissolved seven extreme-left student groups. The decisions were made and approved at a cabinet meeting presided over by de Gaulle himself.

The principal group banned was the 22nd of March Movement of young
Dany le Rouge
Cohn-Bendit, who was now in London, seeking political asylum, and posing for news photos in front of the gravestone of Karl Marx—whom, if I understood Hill Gallagher right, Dany had consistently repudiated in favor of Anarchism.

The ban on the seven groups meant that the Government could seize their offices, that they could not hold meetings, publish newspapers or have bank accounts. Although, none of this was likely to bother the 22nd of March Movement which had never had any official organization.

And on Thursday, Thursday the 13th, the Paris
Herald
carried a front-page piece on the fact that it appeared likely that le Général in the next few days would pardon the remaining Army Officers still in jail because of the celebrated “Generals’ Putsch” in Algeria back in 1961. One of them was General Salan, one of the leaders, and another was some hot-shot Colonel named Jean Lacheroy. The rumor was all over that this was part of the deal le Général had had to make with the Army, in order to get their backing. Certainly, it was not going to alienate any Rightist votes for Gaullist candidates in the up-coming Assembly elections.

Right alongside, another article, continued on the second page, told how the student rebels of the Sorbonne were planning an evacuation in order to “clean house”. They were afraid the police might try to take them over on the grounds of health and sanitation. So they were going to scrub the place down, get rid of all the garbage, and in the process throw out a group of young toughs who called themselves “les Katangais”, who were inhabiting one corner of the huge Sorbonne cellars. I knew nothing of the “Katangais”, but I could testify to the fact that they ought to get rid of the garbage. It would be a good thing.

On Friday, the day that Louisa came surging and fighting out of her coma, the police took back the Odéon from the students. There was not any fighting. Everybody left quietly. The lions were turning into lambs.

The newspapers gave conflicting and garbled accounts of it. But apparently the Government’s reason, or excuse, for the move was that they wanted to oust a group of “mercenaries” who had taken refuge in the Odéon after being thrown out of the Sorbonne. Apparently, these were “les Katangais”. In their “clean-up” campaign, as they had promised, the students had also cleaned out the “mercenaries” in the Sorbonne’s basement. Apparently the name “Katangais” came from the fact that one of the leaders of the group claimed to have been a mercenary in the Congo fighting. Whether this was true, no one seemed to know. Several other armed and organized groups were ousted with them by the students, but the “Katangais” were the only ones who put up any fight. In any case, 80 students overwhelmed the 30 “Katangais” in less than half an hour, and no one was seriously hurt. So it could not have been much of a “battle”.

This apparently was when the “Katangais” descended on the Odéon, and now late on Friday morning the police were knocking at the door, on the pretext of getting out the dangerous mad-dog “mercenaries”, but incidentally clearing everybody else out at the same time. They sent in a young doctor who had been working there in the students’ hospital with a message that anybody who left of his own accord would not be arrested. About 130 came out, several of them young student mothers with what appeared to be new-born babies, but of the 75 who stayed inside, a lot of them hospital patients and personnel, none offered any resistance when the police entered. The “Katangais”, apparently, had quickly shaved and cut their hair and changed their clothes in order to walk out with the students, but several of them were recognized anyway and apprehended. The first thing the police did inside was to remove the big red and black flags that floated on the roof and replace them with the Tricolor. So, the month-long, 24-hours-a-day “cultural dialogue” was finally ended. And the Odéon had fallen, back into Government hands.

There were reports in the French afternoon papers that day about how filthy the students had left the place, but they said that nothing had been seriously damaged except for the costume department, where all helmets, shields and spears had disappeared.

I could not help feeling a little nostalgic. And I could not help wondering what had happened to our poor little Cinema Committee. But Weintraub, who stopped by the Gallaghers’ apartment that night, told me that evening that they had moved to the Sorbonne, as had most of the other student committees housed there. But what about all their files, and their film? I wanted to know. Oh, they had gotten those out before, Weintraub told me, about two hours before the police arrived. The minute the “Katangais” had moved in they had begun getting their things out. I nodded, and then asked Weintraub over to Harry’s pulpit bar to have a drink.

I had, as Edith said, kept up the evening meetings at the Gallaghers, even though now there were no Gallaghers there, including McKenna. I somehow felt Louisa would want me to do that. I suppose I am a sentimentalist. But I told their Portuguese to stock up on booze and to lay out the bread and plates of different sausages and hams as usual, all paid for by me of course. I told the other guests only that Louisa had been taken ill. If any of them knew the truth, they did not mention any suicide attempt. It was only on Sunday, the Sunday of June 16th, when I began these papers, that I stopped the evenings, and told the Portuguese to turn off the lights and lock the place up. That was the night Weintraub, I suppose with nowhere else to go, stopped by my place.

The maid, of course, had been retained by Harry to come in once a day and clean and take care of things.

They moved Louisa, in an ambulance, to the American Hospital in Neuilly on Saturday. The whole thing was handled by the American-trained French doctor we knew who worked there, and whom all of us, including Edith and Weintraub, used as our doctor. I had called him up on Friday evening. He was a remarkable man, and an excellent doctor, who worked himself into exhaustion just about every day. His name was Dax, like the colonel in Humphrey Cobb’s novel, and he had the same humanitarian qualities as the colonel. I was not worried he would not handle it perfectly. I did not feel up to riding out with her myself, but Edith de Chambrolet went with her. It had already been established that she had a certain amount of brain damage, maybe a considerable amount. The thing now was to establish just how much.

I had visited her on Friday. I had called the Hôtel-Dieu that morning, and they had told me how she had come out of the coma fighting and tearing.

“Come,” the nurse said, “but don’t come until late in the afternoon.”

When I arrived, walking in past all those sad, horrifying beds, the glucose bottle and the needle in her arm had disappeared, and the tubes in her nose were gone also. But she was still nude and under the oxygen tent and still strapped down, this time with straps across her legs and thighs and chest stretched all across the bed. Her eyes were glassy.

Her stomach seemed strangely swollen and bloated, and I commented on this.

“Well, she’s had a lot of water, fluid in her lungs, you see,” the nurse told me in French. “That was one of the worst problems.”

She could move her head, and she rolled it over toward me and stared at me rather wildly. For a while she said nothing. “Do I know him?” she said finally, in a husky whisper.

“Yes, dear,” the nurse said, and smiled and nodded sadly. “She’s had some throat damage, too,” she said to me. “From the tubes. We don’t know yet just how much.”

“I’m Jack,” I said to Louisa in English.

“Jack,” she said, as if tasting the name for the first time. She seemed to have more trouble with English than with French. Then she made a ghastly smile. “Well, hello, darling! How are you!” It was as if she was having trouble remembering the words.

“I’m all right, I’m fine,” I said. “But you’ve given us a pretty scary time.”

She simply stared at me as though this had no meaning for her at all. Then she rolled her head to the other side toward the nurse. “Is he one of them?” she said in her husky whisper in French.

“No, dear,” the nurse smiled. “He’s not one of them.” She stood up. “I’ll leave you alone,” she said to me. “I have to get back.” She spread her arm toward the other beds down the ward. “There’s so much to do.”

I thought, there certainly was.

“They’re trying to get to me,” Louisa said in French after she had gone. “They’re trying to do things to me.”

“They saved your life,” I said in English.

“They’re trying to do horrible things to me,” Louisa said in French.

“No, they’re not,” I said in English. “They’re trying to help you. Help you get well.”

“They’re trying to do terrible things to me,” Louisa said in French. “I know.”

There did not seem to be anything more for me to say on that. There was a chair beside the bed and I pulled it up and sat down.

“Will you loosen that strap on my arm a little? It’s hurting me,” Louisa said, in English now, but with that strange seeming to fumble over the words. “I know what they’re doing. Believe I do. I see them. I see them coming and going. They move all around me. In and out. Really they do.”

I did not say anything, but moved forward to the slip buckle of the strap across her arms and chest. It did look awfully tight.

Well, I was totally unprepared for what happened next. I slipped the buckle just the tiniest fraction. But before I could do anything more than that, as quick as a cat Louisa had her arm out, was slipping the buckle on her other arm, then bending to slip the buckle on the strap across her thighs, then the one across her ankles, and then was sitting up and swinging her legs over and pushing the oxygen tent aside. Her feet were already on the floor.

I was astounded. “Stop!” I cried. “Stop!” I had to dive in under the oxygen tent and throw my whole weight on her to stop her, and even then it was almost impossible to hold her. She fought like a tiger, and seemed possessed of an almost inhuman strength. “Nurse!” I yelled.

The nurse came running, consternation on her face, and from the other side of the bed got Louisa by the shoulders and threw all her small weight on her. From up the corridor a young doctor came running to help us. With him there, the three of us were able to contain her. We got her back under the straps and tightened them. We stood up, all three breathing hard and staring at each other.

“You must never do that!” the nurse wailed. “Never do that!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, through my heavy breathing. “I didn’t know.”

“You must never do that!” the nurse wailed again. “We’ve all tried so hard to save her!” She wrung her hands suddenly, in a kind of despair.

“I know you have,” I said. “And I’m grateful. And I’m sorry. I just didn’t know.”

In the bed Louisa rolled her head and glassy stare toward my side. She did not appear to be at all disturbed or upset and did not even seem to be breathing hard. “You see,” she said in French in an insanely calm voice. “They want to do things to me.”

I looked down at her and tried to give her a smile. Then I looked at the others. “Thank you, Doctor,” I said in French.