Becoming (Really Slow Motion)


France was suffering terribly and no one cared.

His friends were only concerned about themselves and those closer to them, and those who may have been there for him were either dying or missing. It had to be me the one to check on him. I remember being very angry at Canada for turning his back on him...I didn't know what he was going through at the moment...

I didn't find France at his house. They told me he had gone out for a walk for the first time in a long time. He had left his phone at home. I figured I could visit the places he used to frequent, which were dear to him.

And I did right. After some hours of search, near lunchtime, I found him at the Moulin Rouge.

The establishment was not open to the public yet. There was only staff in there who took care of some work before night fell and the shows started. But in France's head the Moulin was very much alive. There was light, there was music. Around him people wooed the ladies and gentlemen who did their performances on the stage, there was alcohol, smoke of cigarettes in the air, exclamations of wonder and scandal. People who long since lived only in his memory.

Did France seek comfort among the dead, sat in the shadows of an enormous empty room? Did he want to revive the happiness he felt in other times?

When he saw me approaching, he stood up from his seat, muttering my name, as if he didn't believe I was really there.

"Hi, papa."

"What are you doing here?" he asked me as he hugged me. My God, I said to myself, he looked twenty years older.

"I came to see you, papa. I heard you were not okay and maybe you could want some company."

"I'm alright but how are you?"

"I'm fine."

"Really?"

"Yes."

He looked at me as if he didn't believe it. His hand touched my chin with affection, with immense sadness.

"Ma petite Seychelles...I'm glad you're safe..."

"What are you doing here, papa? It's closed."

France looked around him and sighed through his nose.

"I was saying goodbye."

"Are you going somewhere?"

"Yes. I don't know where. But I'm definitely leaving..."

"Don't say that."

"They attacked the Pantheon yesterday. They didn't even respect the tombs of the dead...they almost took Voltaire out of his. They threw paint over Jeanne's murals...Everywhere I look I see these signs which say 'Let's sell the Tour Eiffel to the junkyard'."

"You're not your monuments. You're something deeper than that."

"That's where it starts, Seychelles. Erasing history, the memories. There will come a moment when a generation will replace the existing ones, and they won't know who Napoleon Bonaparte was, what happened in Verdun, what the guillotine meant, or the flame under the Arc de Triomphe, or the Marsellaise. And since they won't remember, they will make the same mistakes I made."

"Everything will be alright, you'll see."

He tried to smile. He touched my hair with love, not like the satyr people said he was (and at some point I believed he was, myself), but like a father whose daughter is back to his arms. I really hoped he found some comfort in me, even just a little.

"Let's take a walk, France. You know I love to come to your beautiful city."

"It will be a pleasure."

Even though a bit reluctant, France called his bodyguards and together we left the Moulin Rouge enjoying their never ending party.

France loved his Paris. He had always been proud of her, but that time...I understood his worry as we walked around the city. The posters and graffitis made by the movement filled the facades, every surface, in fact. We found people who looked at him in a way that scared me.

"Pig" I heard somebody murmur in our path.

Even in the company of France's bodyguards I didn't feel very safe. I didn't let go of his arm in any moment.

When I turned my head to him, I saw him dejected, serious. That was not France. He looked nothing like the one I knew. I tried to bring him back with a conversation which was as far as possible from the state of things, but it didn't succeed. When I made a comment about the sun, he sighed for his friend Spain.

Only one thing snapped him out of it, and I didn't do it.

An explosion was heard behind us. It didn't hurt us, but France's bodyguards took us away immediately and he...

"Papa! France!"

He touched his forehead. I thought he was hurt, even if there was no blood. He turned around, wobbling. And then he saw what was going on.

The Pont des Arts. The one which had to be redesigned because of the thousands of love locks. World Heritage Site. It did not exist anymore.

"A bomb!"

"Run!"

"Everybody out of here, go away now!"

I pulled France, who was stuck in the place, looking at the space which now the smoke was filling. We moved away from there, not much, to a safe place, and there his bodyguards took care of him.

I remember having asked myself if there was someone there, in the bridge. Good Lord, was someone in there?

"Mr. France?" one of them asked.

He didn't react. I approached to touch his cheeks. He was so pale...

"Papa..." I called him.

I looked away from him to look around me. There was a lot of people staring at us. The bodyguards did everything possible to take care of him and get them away.

I remember having hated them. All of them. Looking as their nation suffered enormously. Forgetting everything he had done for them, just like everybody else. They were accomplices of those who were destroying the treasures of his past, everything dear to him. I embraced him and I would have ripped off the head of whoever had come closer.

Someone did. A bald, black man approached. France's bodyguards prevented him from taking more than three steps towards us. But he didn't want to hurt him. I turned to him and I saw big tears running down his cheeks.

The man, to my surprise, started singing in low voice:

"Allons enfants de la Patrie...Le jour de gloire est arrivé...Contre nous de la tyrannie..."

A red-haired woman at our left, who was holding the hand of a five-year old boy, sang along as much as her trembling throat allowed her:

"L'étendard sanglant est levé...L'étendard sanglant est levé..."

There were five people singing now. One of them was a man with a mustache whose voice stood up in the crowd. When France blinked, starting to react, they were ten. An old lady sang too with tears in her eyes. There was also a couple of boys who, in spite of their hipster looks, joined them.

"Entendez-vous dans les campagnes mugir ces féroces soldats ? Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras égorger vos fils, vos compagnes!"

Everybody around was singing! More and more people approached, only to look at France to the eyes, smile at him, share his tears and sing! I couldn't help smiling when I saw all those people together, so different from each other: women, men, young, adult, old, white, black, Asian, humble-looking, rich; all of them looking after France, singing to him, showing him their affection!

"Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons! Marchons, marchons! Qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons!"

They finished with an applause and a big cheer.

"Did you see that, Mr. France?" one of his bodyguards was smiling at him like a small child.

"...Yes, Bernard...I saw that..."

France glanced at me. He was smiling. He was smiling at last. It made him look younger, as if the veil was lifted, as if he had returned to life. He got up. People cheered him. 'Vive la France!', they said in choir. He bowed like the showman who finished his show. People applauded him with a lot more enthusiasm. 'We love you, France!', 'Down with the tyrants!', 'With you till death!'.

"As long as there is one French left..." I heard him mutter. "As long as one person believes in me...I'm not going to stop fighting."

Somebody spread a stupid cliché about France being a coward. If the whole world could have seen what I saw, they would have never believed it.

"Seychelles, my dear..."

"Go. Find whoever did this and kick their butts."

"Bernard and Julie will take you home and cook something good for you. I'll make it up to you when this is over. Don't worry, it won't take me long!"

He held my face in his hands and kissed my forehead. Then he ran away.

For the first time in weeks, he didn't run from anybody's accusatory looks. In his way, people smiled at him, said compliments to him. Fed up of the damage to their patrimony, the French people started declaring their love for him aloud, and, without knowing it, gave him his life and youth back.