Gérard
66, Gabre, France
We drove an hour south of Toulouse, to a village tucked against the French Pyrenees. On top of a hill in Ariège, Gérard was standing near the fence to his house wearing a t-shirt despite the biting cold, waiting for us.
He hugged us with the prudishness of a mountain bear and opened the gate to the farm. He used to be a mathematician and a member of the French Communist Party; an introvert who ran the nearby village as mayor for five years and a dedicated local activist. He and my mum had been friends since high-school, and visiting the family was a Christmas ritual we never missed. This year was special though. He had been diagnosed with Alzheimer a few months earlier.
“Maybe he won’t recognise us,” I first thought, not knowing what to expect. But everything was the way it used to be. He still spoke in unfiltered jokes, teased his three daughters and prepared feasts for every meal of the day.
His wife was sitting at the dining table in a large living room with stone walls and large windows facing the valley. Sylvie was a philosopher and a musician, walked barefoot everywhere she went, and had grey curly hair that defied gravity.
He opened a ten year old bottle of Saint-Emilion that he poured generously in small wine glasses to everyone around the table. Between the main course and the apple pie, he and Sylvie played us a Schubert Serenade for Piano and Clarinet.
Inevitably, wine helping, the conversation drifted to the “Yellow Vest” demonstrations. Surprisingly, he condemned it. “I understand the frustration, but that’s not how politics work.” I made an obvious parallel to the May ’68 protests in France — the most important since the French revolution.
“May 68 was a cultural and political revolution.” he said. “It was structured and organised by unions and political parties, across the country, and led to some of the most significant changes the country has seen. I remember rallying up students at universities and in our dorms, blocking classes, organising rallies with workers, building barricades and drafting our political agenda. The yellow vest movement is fragmented, unorganised and individualistic. I’m afraid it’ll die out as quickly as it started.”
“In 68,” he continued, “we were on the streets to overthrow a government and rebel against a fossilised morality, forced upon us by our parents generation. Most of us had nothing to lose — that’s what allowed us to build the modern society we’ve lived in ever since.”
He too had thrown cobblestones on riot cops. The vivid memories fueled a passionate speech which took the conversation from social rights to wealth distribution and ended with his plans for local agriculture, degrowth and an empty bottle of wine. I had been raised with these conversations at home too, lulled in my cradle by socialist ideals and dreams of a better world.
Gérard left the table looking for the pie and another bottle of wine. I turned to my mum and smiled. “You see, nothing has actually changed,” my eyes said, relieved.
Sylvie didn’t say much during the conversation. She was absent. Her eyes were locked on the spoon in her glass, following it in circles while she stirred the wine. I looked at her surprised.
“Gérard was sixteen in 1968,” she said licking the spoon.
My bones froze. I replayed the conversation in my head, trying to fit the events he described into the reality of a sixteen year old highschool student. It didn’t.
Gérard came back holding a bottle of wine under his armpit and an apple pie with three lit sparkler candles, singing Happy Birthday. “It’s Jesus’ birthday!” he joked.
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