When we walked again, Claire’s hand slipped into mine, softer than the fresh tulips glowing gently around us. I tightened my grip on her fingers, then I let go.
We discovered that we had both been in Paris at the same time in sixty eight. I was stuck in a small hotel up rue Gay-Lussac while she was barricading down the road.
“We might have met!”
“I would have remembered.”
The thought of having once been in the same place had certain sweetness. Like missing the lottery by one, then winning it years later.
“How old were you then?” I asked.
“Seventeen.” She was smiling. “I hitchhiked to Paris with a trucker. He inspired my first short story – I’d written only poems till then. This guy drove a six-wheeler. He gave a continuous commentary on the movement of his engine.” She mimicked, “Down stroke! Piston! Power stroke! Fuel mix with air! Cylinder invasion! Intake valve! Rotate, rotate, rotate. Like he had a third eye roaming over the guts of his engine and he was singing their motions as he stormed along the highway. Later I wrote a satire about how out of touch De Gaulle was compared to a trucker’s rapport with his vehicle.”
In Paris, Claire had been swept away by the general unrest. “Utopia within reach. But where did I fit in? No one in my family had been in politics. So there I was, after Rudi Dutscke was shot, and all the stuff I’d read in l’Humanité trying to find my place in the revolution.”
“A l’Élysée! A l’Élysée!”
“Yeah, and I went with the worst gang: les trublions. The ones who filled the police cars and ended up wet and battered at the end of the day.”
“Wet?”
“People threw water from balconies to protect us from the gas grenades.”
She thought the best thing about sixty eight was how all the doors were flung open and how thousands of young people flew into each other’s arms. “Maybe not utopia but euphoria, making me feel I could go on forever! And while we were changing the world – facing death with a smile and a clenched fist – you were snug in a hotel room.”
“I was researching and writing my articles.”
“I see. You were making money out of us,” she said jokingly.
“I wish! I was still an apprentice, spending my mother’s savings. That Paris trip cost us the income from a whole tobacco season.”
“Not miraculous grapes?”
“Those too.”