The State of the Art(40)

the Pompidou Centre and then double back and

cross by the Pont des Arts.There was a little

triangular park at the island end, like some green

fore-castle on a seaship, prow-facing those big-

city waters of the dirty old Seine.

I walked into the park, hands in pockets, just

wandering, and found some curiously narrow and

austere - almost threatening - steps leading down

between masses of rough-surfaced white stone.I

hesitated, then went down, as though towards the

river.I found myself in an enclosed courtyard; the

only other exit I could see was down a slope to the

water, but that was barred by a jagged construction

of black steel.I felt uneasy.There was something

about the hard geometry of the place that induced a

sense of threat, of smallness and vulnerability;

those jutting weights of white stone somehow made

you think of how delicately crushable human bones

were.I seemed to be alone.I stepped, reluctantly

inquisitive, into the dark, narrow doorway that led

back underneath the sunlit park.

It was the memorial to the Deportation.

I remember a thousand tiny lights, in rows, down a

grilled-off tunnel, a recreated cell, fine words

embossed but I was in a daze.It's over a century

ago now, but I still feel the cold of that place; I

speak these words and a chill goes up my back; I

edit them on screen and the skin on my arms,

calves and flanks goes tight.

The effect remains as sharp as it was at the time;

the details were as hazy a few hours afterwards as

they are now, and as they will be until the day I

die.

3.2:Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality

I came out stunned.I was angry at them, then.Angry

at them for surprising me, touching me like that.Of

course I was angry at their stupidity, their manic

barbarity, their unthinking, animal obedience, their

appalling cruelty; everything that the memorial

evoked but what really hit me was that these

people could create something that spoke so

eloquently of their own ghastly actions; that they

could fashion a work so humanly redolent of their

own inhumanity.I hadn't thought them capable of

that, for all the things I'd read and seen, and I didn't

like to be surprised.

I left the island and walked along the right bank

down towards the Louvre, and wandered through

its galleries and halls, seeing but not seeing, just

trying to calm down again.I glanded a little

softnow [*4*] to help the process along, and by the time I came to the Mona Lisa I was quite

composed again.The Giaconda was a

disappointment; too small and brown and

surrounded by people and cameras and

security.The lady smiled serenely from behind

thick glass.

I couldn't find a seat and my feet were getting sore,

so I wandered out into the Tuileries, along broad

and dusty avenues between small trees, and

eventually found a bench by an octagonal pond

where small boys and their pères sailed model

yachts.I watched them.

Love.Maybe it was love.Could that be it?Had

Linter fallen for somebody, and was the ship

therefore concerned he might not want to leave, if

and when we had to?Just because that was the start

of a thousand sentimental stories didn't mean that it

didn't actually happen.

I sat by the octagonal pond, thinking about all this,

and the same wind that ruffled my hair made the

sails of the little yachts flutter and flap, and in that

uncertain breeze they nosed through the choppy

waters, and banged into the wall of the pond, or

were caught by chubby hands and sent bobbing

back out again across the waves.

I circled back via the Invalides, with more

predictable trophies of war; old Panther tanks, and

rows of ancient cannons like bodies stacked

against a wall.I had lunch in a smoky little place

near the St Sulpice Metro; you sat on high stools at

a bar and they selected a piece of red meat for you

and put it, dripping blood, on a grid over an open

pit filled with burning charcoal.The meat sizzled

on the grille right in front of you while you had

your aperitif , and you told them when you felt it was ready.They kept going to take it off and serve

it to me, and I kept saying, ' Non non; un pen plus

s'il vous plait'

The man next to me ate his rare, with blood still

oozing from the centre.After a few years in Contact

you get used to that sort of thing, but I was still

surprised I could sit there and do that, especially

after the memorial.I knew so many people who'd

have been outraged at the very thought.Come to

think of it, there would have been millions of

vegetarians on Earth who'd have been equally

disgusted (would they have eaten our vat-grown

meats?I wonder).

The black grill over the charcoal pit kept

reminding me of the gratings in the memorial, but I

just kept my head down and ate my meal, or most

of it.I had a couple of glasses of rough red wine