Agamemnon's Daughter Read Free Page B

as I was, or in small groups. Some of the latter included children carrying toy flags or paper flowers. Others were wearing medals, which cast a yellow gleam on their faces. I was just behind a short, squat man striding boldly forward and holding a little girl by each hand. Both wore ribbons in their hair — one blue, one red — and their charming faces looked as though they had come straight out of a documentary film about official festivities.
    The second checkpoint wasn’t far from the first. I was expecting it to be stricter, but the procedure was in fact identical, which must have been a disappointment to first-time invitees who were looking forward to a rigorous identity check whose stringency would establish the true value of their invitation. That was completely borne out by the man with the two girls in front of me, who displayed a kind of frustration when, having informed the policemen that the girls were his daughters and that he had their birth certificates with him to prove it, got by way of answer from one of the two cops just a casual “On you go!”
    The man was dumbstruck and shook his head as if to say: “You call that a security check?” It was so visible that I almost wanted to get involved and tell him: “Don’t worry, there’ll be more checks before you get to the grandstand, and they’ll be much tighter!”
    Boulevard Marcel Cachin is not only particularly wide at this point, it is also curved, so you could look around and get a good view of the various groups of invited guests. They moved forward in line with stilted eagerness, and what with the spring sun above them and the medals and flags they bore, not to mention the nearing sound of the brass band, a warm glow of solidarity arose among people who were otherwise unknown to one another. It wasn’t difficult to see why. They had all been singled out by the same hand (the index finger of the state) to participate in the same solemn celebration, and that sealed them in a golden union and made them want to talk to each other, or at least to smirk discreetly. After all, hadn’t other people, ordinary people, people not invited, been kept behind the security cordon so as not to bother us any longer with their stunned, overinsistent, and interrogative eyes, asking: “So why did they invite you, in particular?”
    I felt ashamed to be part of this idyllic and peaceful holiday tableau and was suddenly overcome with a strong desire to see Leka B. again, in whose presence I had at first felt uneasy but who had shown such tact and nobility. Not only had he not allowed the fateful question to emerge, he had demonstrated real warmth, despite having himself been banished for years from all public celebrations.
    At the third checkpoint, I came across a Party activist from our own neighborhood. (Only then did I realize that the plainclothesmen were complemented by all sorts of Interior Ministry employees, as well as by volunteers from various neighborhoods, who were surely also “shadow workers.”) In other circumstances, I would have given him a look of scorn, but here, in the radiance of reconciliation emanating from this high mass of togetherness, I was more inclined to favor him with a smile. But he didn’t return my greeting; what’s more, he pretended not to recognize me. He flicked through my passport looking bored, as if he didn’t know me from Adam, although I had bumped into him only the day before at the dairy store. Then, without even looking up, he blurted out: “On you go!”
    I felt the blood rising in my cheeks from the humiliation, but it did not take long for the man’s display of indifference to become the source of an unspecifiable pleasure. The episode proved that even if I was one of the elect on that day, and putting aside the fact that in some insidious and barely perceptible way I was just a little proud of it (despite also feeling a degree of shame for the same reason), I had not become an indistinguishable part of the