The Accusing Beret: Chapter 4

Ok, I didn’t stay for the looting. What? I showed up at the march alone! I didn’t know anyone! It will be my lasting shame that I did not remain for the looting — yes, my shame. Let the record show that. But I did attend the afterparty, alone. And there, I made friends, comrades — I dare say, the first real connections of my life. Would I learn at that party? Or, should I say, soiree?

The Socialists, as they called themselves, were not in fact frightening. Quite the contrary, I felt immediately that I’d finally found my people. Of course I discovered them in the forsaken corner of a 17th Arrondissement café, talking about being the victims of police brutality in the name of those who had been the victims of the same involuntarily. Some performing arts collective was tangentially involved. In fact, that’s how I’d heard of the gathering: the arts, it seems, had led me into politics. Observing such truths, I thought I’d finally broken free from irony and become completely earnest. Actually, the irony had only begun.

As you can guess, nothing about the event had been planned in advance. A series of speakers shared various political treatises, a couple of poets read, one of whom transformed the night into a drag show, before a woman younger than me told the assembled guests about other ways they could get involved and engaged in the struggle. I ordered a whisky neat and sat alone, feeling somewhat ridiculous. Miles Davis played over a loudspeaker, mingling with the ringing of billiards against the back wall. Smoke. Noir. Yes, I smoked indoors — we all did, back then. Eventually, another woman asked me for a light, inquired whether or not I’d joined the local Socialist party chapter, then we were off.

There were seven seated at her table: Hidalgo, a tortoise breeder from Mozambique; Ernesto, whom we’d all previously met in dreams (though even there our eyes, alas, never met); Clytie, a Greek goddess who’d been born out of her father’s forehead and had trouble making up her own mind afterwards; Chevalier, a rich man’s son self-consciously joining the fight (we had too much in common — I resented his presence there); Evie, a woman of a certain age who despite her conservative demeanor led a radical life storied with tempestuous revolts; and Dave, a fifty-one-year-old infant we all loved like a little brother. He suggested that we canvas that very night.

‘Canvas?’ I balked. ‘Like, pitch a tent?’

‘In a way, comrade,’ he smiled. ‘We pitch a tent for the live show that will be the revolution.’

It was all so cliché. ‘Sign me up,’ I replied, bewildered yet open to the chance.

A few joined the youth’s call. For the first time, I noticed that Daniel was not there, but I did not mind. What had changed in me? Nothing, not even my priorities — I was merely living in accordance with them. For too long I’d harbored dreams of love as the final goal of my existence, as if all roads had to lead to that. But what about myself, and what I wanted? Suddenly it occurred to me that cultivating domestic dreams had in fact made me weak, compromised my values, and even closed me off from the world of real romance. Within a few minutes I stood outside the club on the sidewalk, repeating catchphrases about colonialism I’d just learned to apathetic passerby. Edward Said flew off my lips. I accosted drunks, businessmen, madams, soccer moms & their jeans… I still had so much to learn, I was still so imprisoned, but at least in the meantime I was contributing!

Ah! the day I joined the revolution! I was in Paris, of course –

But that evening ended, and with the morning I received an invitation from my father to meet him for lunch at the Mandarin Oriental. I had not seen him in a year, and our last meeting had not ended well: drinks until 3am, cigars (because my brother refused them), and — as always — an argument over why I was not running the company on his behalf. You know the old story, yet I tell it again: Making a point of wearing my stained work clothes from the day before, I strode in past the hotel concierge and met my father for a liquid lunch. By the end I’d passionately voiced my intention to remain in Europe, and my father patiently endured my endorsement of free love, the redistribution of wealth, and the international Socialist revolution. Living upon the height of capitalism had taught me that it was bullshit — I had never been happy, his values were fundamentally wrong, etc. etc. etc.

‘Are you done?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s fine. That’s all fine,’ he dismissed, with a bat of his hand. ‘But you need to get a job.’

‘I have a job,’ I replied.

‘That job won’t get you a visa.’

He was right, of course. ‘Could you get me a job?’

‘No, I don’t have any contacts in Europe — and I doubt any of your friends could find you gainful employment. Your brother certainly could not, unless you’re fine working for the mob. And your Aunt, well… she only has so many lovers.’ He studied me for a moment. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come back to St. Louis?’

‘Never,’ I replied, studying my father, in turn.

He was completely and utterly bourgeoisie, as was I. For now we did not talk about much else, aside from sex. He wanted to know who I was with, what we were doing, whether or not we’d be getting married. You’re so old, he’d complain, even though I was — what? — twenty-three. But, again, you know all these dynamics, all of them! My story, really, has overstayed its welcome, is embracing even more fervently the taxidermy’d duck of cliché, and ought to reach its climax any moment or else no one involved will be satisfied.

And Daniel? Well, well –

A few final events to recollect from that terrifying, liberating summer, before we can reach our conclusion: hunting down the murderer of the attaché, getting rewarding work that way, and meeting my dream man — Daniel, or someone else, or no one at all? — in the process, not to mention furthering the cause of the revolution. Going forward, that is what I will focus on: the feeling, which I thought had been lost to me forever, of moving in perfect concert with my convictions, things that had once upon a time been so easy to define…

One day I startled myself while seated outside the Belgian embassy, wearing infinity-sign sunglasses below my beret while pigeons pecked at my feet. I’d scattered bread for them — a sentimental flourish, perhaps drawing too much attention to me, but that was just as well. Contrary to what the celebrities say, when people watch you, you can watch right back. You know what they look for, why, and what they hope to see in you — the glint in their eyes reveals them to you entirely. I should’ve removed my sunglasses, stared back knowingly, but oh well. Ultimately, I wasn’t there to perform, for once. No, I was there, outside the white marble imperiousness of the embassy — bordered, bitingly, by the black latticed fence marking the border-within-the-city — for vengeance. Who — I ask, who? — had assassinated my previous employer, the Belgian ambassador?

For the past week, I had sat outside each entrance to the embassy, taking notes on all who entered: the cook, the pastry chef, the sous chef, the maître-de, the busboys, the charming waiters who never once made a pass at me, somewhat disappointingly but at least they were professional — seemingly the entire office was peopled with solely restaurant staff. My artwork moleskin had transformed into a spreadsheet detailing everyone on the embassy’s charge, along with their home addresses, which I had learned by — you guessed it — following them home. Dusk-lit bus stops along the far-flung quays of double-digit Arrondissements; manicured lawns amongst the provinces of the gentry; pre-fab walkups and even the underpass of a canal-crossing footbridge where a valet slept on a cot while sending money to his institutionalized mother — I found the homes of them all, tailing them always from a discrete distance (which was easier than it ought to have been), taking notes. The state had failed to find the culprit; the method of the murder being so bizarre as to render any investigation in poor taste. But not for me.

Why investigate the murder of my old boss? He was dead; he could no longer employ me. I could’ve found work elsewhere, moved on. But the Socialists had inspired me. All of my previous preoccupations had been petit-bourgeois and I had been dimly aware of that fact at the time. Forget Daniel! Forget art! Forget employment! Let us dive underneath the hierarchies and structures that supported this world to get at the truth: Who had assassinated the attaché? Could this have anything to do with that country’s complicity in the continent’s occupation of countries around the globe? Figuring out who had assassinated the attaché was my idea — I thought it would be my most pragmatic contribution to the Cause, since I was best positioned within the Party to find the culprit. Upon finding the murderer, my orders were to discover whether or not they were a secular humanist revolutionary and if so rally them to our cause.

‘You have to get your hands dirty in this business,’ Chevalier explained, ‘in any business. We could get information from this man, get help.’

‘But isn’t our moral superiority what separates us from them?’ I protested.

‘It’s all a matter of degrees, comrade. We are still human beings, not angels. And this is still a war.’

I nodded gravely. Later that morning — for my discussion with Chevalier happened at 3am — I stationed myself outside the embassy for the first time. Even when I worked there I had never sat upon the benches on the other side of the street with a convenient view of the front entrance, or leaned upon the newsstands and light poles overlooking the other entrances and exits, in turn. I lived in a different moral universe now. Dead convictions guided the steps of those around me. I genuinely believed that everyone around me was delusional, an asshole, or both, and any of them would have been more fulfilled had they joined my newfound cause. Now they’d say I’d become a pawn, too, for the other side of the same game. But this felt different. And it certainly wasn’t a game.

I waited. And waited. Finally, on the 7th evening, I saw him –

My dream man: Daniel. He appeared, as I always knew he would, like a lily against the sidewalk, his face wide open with welcome. He was wearing a long London Fog coat, a pinstripe suit, suspenders, but somehow made all that formality look natural and charming. After we embraced, he stepped back and asked,

‘What are you doing hanging out with these pigeons?’

‘I’m on the lookout for a murderer,’ I replied.

We both laughed.

‘Of who?’

‘The Belgian ambassador’s attaché. My old boss.’

And we kept laughing.

‘Well, look no further, I’m your man.’

‘Oh, finally, that’s what I’ve wanted to hear all along.’

The laughter intensified. It was absurd.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me why I did it?’ Daniel pressed.

‘What?’

I stopped laughing. Daniel did, too.

‘Why I did it. Why I killed your boss, the attaché of the Belgian ambassador, by burning his ass cheeks on a meat frier then serving them to tourists, before we even met.’

I stared back at him, my face blank. The whole world was passing around us, individuals with their own agendas, blissfully unaware of our conversation. He didn’t care that they probably overheard us, going on,

‘Indeed. You never even considered why I introduced myself to you in the first place. After all, why would a man simply proposition you in the street like that?’

‘Proposition?’ I took offense to the term, but he went on.

‘It was a rhetorical question. The only answer, of course, would be hopelessly sentimental. Disgustingly so, even. The relinquishing of taste, ego… that’s what it is, to want to fall in “love” that way. And I could tell that you, with your ridiculous beret and big, wide eyes, came here for that selfish reason alone. You didn’t know it at the time, but you wanted to join the corporate Cult of Death.’

What the hell was he saying? Where was this coming from? I was so astonished and baffled that what he was saying somehow made sense in a sick, roundabout way. In fact, it took me only a moment of reflection to realize that I agreed with him. What had I become?

‘I know that now,’ I said at last, my lips remaining apart, barely believing my own words. ‘But why’d you kill him?’

‘Because it felt good,’ he smiled, as pure as ever. ‘Because I hate people who think they are above nature, exempt from life. I knew your new friends wanted to do away with him. I shadowed him for a day. And that was enough.’

My first thought was to call the police, but of course that was a terrible idea: Daniel would gleefully tell them he was a Socialist terrorist and get us all thrown into jail with him. And would Chevalier and the others want to recruit him? He was a psychopath — that explained everything. But if we were parallel beings –

‘Why kill for the Socialists?’ I blurted out. ‘You could’ve killed for anyone, if you believe in nothing. Why the Socialists?’

‘The same reason why you joined them,’ he said serenely. ‘It was more romantic.’

I was mortified. He understood me completely.

‘Maybe that was true once. But not anymore.’

He smirked. There was nothing to say. We had passed beyond irony, beyond sarcasm. The joke was not a joke. Civilization did not exist.

‘I know a cute little café slash bookstore slash venue we could go to,’ I said, ‘where we could chat.’

‘Lead the way,’ he replied, taking my hand.

It was surreal. I led him through the crowd as people smiled to watch us walk, a handsome couple. My eyes were alert.