Work Text:
“Whoever feels in his soul a secret revolt against any act whatever of the State, of life or of fate, borders on the emeute, and as soon as it appears, begins to shiver, and to feel himself uplifted by the whirlwind.” - Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
In the week since the cops besieged the Sorbonne, Bahorel wore the same blue jeans every day. He declared a strike from laundry to match the students' strike. Every morning he rose at dawn, pulled on his jeans, cuffed them at the ankles and laced his boots all the way up. He would throw his things into a bag and walk briskly in the direction of Nanterre, with no intention of arriving in class. At some point he would turn off his course, he would walk too far, run into loafing comrades. Several hours later a group of ten or twenty with Bahorel at their head would arrive at the Arc de Triomphe, and join up at the edge of the mass – twenty thousand or perhaps fifty thousand students and teachers marching. It became a routine.
It became so routine as to worry Bahorel.
Yes, they tore at the streets, they raised their voices, they pushed away traffic in a single pulsing mob – their banner read Vive la Commune, but where was the commune? Nomadic, marching and then dispersing, shifting around borders defined by authority.
In these marches they aimed to protest the commodity of space, but ended up only overlaying it. Bahorel felt certain they had to claim it.
“Marching isn't enough. Let's live so wildly that we subvert the spectacle,” he told Combeferre. “Out it as the smoke-and-mirrors it is.”
He slammed his hand on the table and it shook, rattling Combeferre's typewriter, where he was picking away at some communique. “Careful, Bahorel.”
And that was all he ever said. Bahorel pushed him. “Monday, when we rushed the Sorbonne – hell, Combeferre, didn't that just make the pigs mad! And you would just let that energy die? Our little marches piss them off, sure – but if the cops aren't angry, we're doing something wrong.”
Combeferre looked up at him then, at last, his mouth twisted with uncertainty. He took off his glasses and wiped a little sweat from his brow with the corner of his t-shirt. The sight goaded Bahorel on. “Look at you, sweating over that document. Tear it to pieces. Tear it all to pieces. Live a little.”
“If I tear the communique to pieces,” said Combeferre with strained patience, “how will the people know what's happening?”
Bahorel threw himself down in the chair across from Combeferre, and set one of his big hands over the typewriter, forcing Combeferre to look him in the eyes. “The people are what's happening.” He leaned over, and flung his other hand around Combeferre's shoulders, so they were nose-to-nose. “Fifty thousand took the streets yesterday. If we aren't speaking loud enough already, how will a little communique make a difference? We've got to mobilize, we've got to make something happen.”
“And what do you suggest?” said Combeferre.
Bahorel leaned back and looked left and right. He had caught Enjolras' attention, he realized – this next he said loudly: “Let's take the Latin Quarter back from the police.”
Stunned silence. The whole center circle of the student union, crammed into a tiny dorm room on the rue de la Folie, listened now. Bahorel puffed out his chest and extended his arms, turning to face them, drawing them all in.
“Tomorrow is Friday night,” he said. “It's time to fucking party.”
9:00 PM – Night fell. Bahorel took his post on la Rive Gauche, where the river curved gently and he could see lights and shadowed figures moving along the bank, and in the distance the silhouetted bulk of Notre Dame. He felt a swell of pride in the city. Tonight was the night to take it back. With two fingers raised to his mouth, he whistled. Almost immediately he heard running feet; a handful of students tumbled out of each alley. Combeferre came up behind Bahorel and clapped him on the back. He had left his glasses at home, and he wore a dark scarf pulled up over his mouth and a look of grim determination.
They split up into groups. Bahorel and Combeferre marched with several others down the rue de Seine. They cut through the Luxembourg, and there met up with Enjolras. Behind him, a much larger group than even Bahorel anticipated filled the park.
“You want to build barricades, Bahorel, is that right?” said Enjolras.
“That's the plan.”
Enjolras grinned and stepped closer. He laid the palm of his hand against Bahorel's lapel. “You know the construction site on the rue des Ursulines?”
“Of course,” said Bahorel. “Combeferre stole the plans from Construction Authority.”
“They're tearing up an old public square, with a grand old fountain, and building a block of office buildings,” said Combeferre, looking wistful. “Doesn't it feel like the new face of Haussmannization?”
“Well,” said Enjolras, “if they're destroying our public square, don't we have a right to the materials for our barricade? I scoped the perimeter. It's fenced all around with barbed wire, but there's a couple of gaps. Courfeyrac brought a wheelbarrow.”
10:00 PM – Shouting, stampeding, wheelbarrowing palettes and massive blocks of concrete from the rue des Ursulines to intercept the rue Gay-Lussac, they made altogether too much noise and attracted a crowd. Once the first barricade rose taller than Bahorel, they began another. News traveled fast, and soon other groups amassed and set to work. They blocked the rue Gay-Lussac from both ends, and interrupted its surrounding allies with devious obstacle courses.
11:00 PM – Clambering through the building site with all the zest of a boy on the playground, Bahorel lifted up a tarpaulin and under it, found a pneumatic drill of the kind used to break up pavement and stones. He gave a whoop of joy and brought it to the barricade.
“What's this,” said Courfeyrac, “a jackhammer? Good find!”
“Isn't it?” Bahorel turned the powerful tool over in his hands. “With this, we'll break apart the street itself and finally reveal the insubstantial nature of the State –”
“Do you know how to use it?” Bossuet interrupted.
Bahorel looked up in dismay. “Not exactly, but – hell, it can't be too difficult, can it?”
They spent the next half hour crowded around the drill, examining and gingerly twisting its parts, with no success. Bahorel had resorted to kicking it when an unfamiliar hand clutched his shoulder.
“My friend, why are you kicking this poor drill?” The man was bearded and broad shouldered but lean. He wore faded work pants and carried an empty lunch pail. A workman, headed home for the night.
“He can't work out how to use it,” said Courfeyrac.
“Neither can you,” Bahorel retorted. “We're building a barricade,” he added, for the workman's benefit.
The workman sized him up. “You're one of those March 22nd boys,” he said. “Those students on strike.”
“That's right.”
The workman extended his hand. “My name is Feuilly.”
“Bahorel.” They shook on it, and Feuilly picked up the abused drill and patiently demonstrated how to use it.
When Feuilly left them with a salute and a blessing, Bahorel turned to see a strange expression from Combeferre.
“What's wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing at all,” said Combeferre. “Only – that man was the first worker to take notice of our cause. Maybe I misjudged you.”
Bahorel laughed, threw his arms around Combeferre, and pulled him back to the barricade.
12:30 AM – The first time Bahorel took the drill to the paving stones, it rattled them out of place to reveal older, scuffed cobbles beneath. But in another, unmodernized part of the rue Gay-Lussac, the stones broke apart, and under them Bahorel found –
“Sand?” said Jehan.
The poet stood a safe distance away from the drill, occasionally flinching back at its loud rumble and flying debris, but he watched with interest. When Bahorel laid down the drill at last, Jehan crept over and fell to his knees on the stones. His soft hands pulled away rubble to reveal what was indeed coarse, damp sand.
“The true face of la Rive Gauche,” said Bahorel.
Jehan looked up at him with a strange expression, cradling a little pyramid of sand in his palm, and said, “Sous les pavés, la plage.”
Under the paving stones, the beach.
1:00 AM – With the barricades erected, clusters of students converged in the center of the street. On a small patch of sand, Courfeyrac kindled a fire. Bahorel unbuttoned his sweat-soaked shirt and happily accepted the beer offered by Grantaire.
“This is our Paris,” said Grantaire, quietly but with ferocious energy. Bahorel saw the fire reflected in his eyes.
Enjolras took Grantaire's bottle and raised it high. “This is our Paris,” he repeated, much louder. “No cops, no bosses – only the street, the barricade, and the beach. The police have their barracks and we have the rue Guy-Lussac. Vive la Commune!” He finished off the beer and sat down again, close beside Grantaire, who snatched the bottle back and complained when he found it empty.
“This is the happiest I've seen Enjolras in some time,” said Combeferre quietly.
“Let's not disappoint him,” said Bahorel.
Jehan read a new poem, to liberal finger-snaps and wolf-whistles at the dirtier lines, and Courfeyrac brought out his guitar. Combeferre mixed wheat-paste and plastered pages of Le Libertaire to the sides of buildings.
“Wallpaper for our living room,” he explained.
The peace didn't last long. They gathered up the empty bottles and brought out menthol and motor oil found at the worksite, and soon had amassed a reserve of nasty Molotov cocktails.
“Bahorel!” a voice called out, from beyond the barricade.
Bahorel put his eye against the gap in a pallet to look out – It was Feuilly, with two more working men beside him.
“We've come to help you,” said Feuilly. “These are my union comrades – Hakim and Marceli.”
“Welcome,” said Bahorel, earnestly, and the three men clambered up over the barricade.
Once on the other side, Feuilly took Bahorel by the shoulders and said in a low voice, “I'm afraid we have also come to warn you. The police are on their way, with orders to clear the streets. I see you've armed yourselves – good. But what's the plan? One riot, get yourselves arrested, have daddy bail you out and head back to the dorms? Or are you in it for the long haul – organization, solidarity, total revolution.”
With a loud whoop, Bahorel wrapped his arms around Feuilly's waist and heaved him into the air. “Total revolution!”
“You are drunk, friend,” said Feuilly.
“The union makes us strong,” shouted Bahorel, but he returned Feuilly to solid ground.
2:15 – When the police arrived, they brought tear gas, billy clubs, and phosphorous grenades. The students tied scarves around their noses and mouths, and heaved bottles over the barricade until the barricade itself finally broke down. Bahorel was flinging himself at the police when he felt hands holding him back; it was Combeferre, who pulled him around a corner, Joly sat bandaging up Enjolras. Only then, Bahorel took stock of the stinging in his eyes and the angry burns on his arms and neck. He washed out his eyes in a basin of water, and Combeferre wrapped his arms with bandages coated in a salve.
“This isn't over,” said Bahorel.
“It's madness,” said Combeferre. “I saw a cop set fire to a car, himself, just to stir things up.”
“The police are a farce,” said Enjolras. “People will see. Hold the barricades.”
“They've fallen,” said Combeferre.
“Hold the streets,” said Enjolras.
7:00 AM – Hold the streets they did. They fought all night. By the time it was all over, the rue Guy-Lussac was unrecognizable – paving stones torn up, cars overturned and smoldering, graffiti splashed across every surface. The streets were more or less empty, students either dragged off to prison or escaped to their beds.
“I'm glad I didn't bring my glasses,” said Combeferre, wiping a drop of blood from his cut lip.
Bahorel clapped him on the shoulder. “What do you think of our work, man of reason?”
“Right now, I call it unnecessary destruction. If Bossuet spends the weekend in prison, who will distribute my communique? But when I think of the lot of us sitting around the fire – that was something new. This street was ours. Now that I know that feeling, I don't want to give it up.”
“This isn't over,” said Bahorel.
Combeferre hummed. “Look at that,” he said.
Bahorel followed his gaze over the tops of the buildings, to where the sky opened up in a vast parabola. A rosy glow crept up over the chimneys.
“Dawn,” said Combeferre. “We should clear out, before the cops come back to round up the stragglers.”
“One more thing,” said Bahorel.
He shook a paint can, and where the light of dawn crept around the corner to illuminate a triangle of wall, he scrawled in bombastic cursive,
Sous les pavés, la plage.