Wake Of Liberty: 19 – Changing Of The Guard
The Place de la Révolution is shaking under the cries of a big crowd. Cooley and Smyth are in the middle of it.
‘Death to the tyrant. Vive la liberté!’
‘Death to the tyrant. Vive la liberté…’
Cooley, where are we?
“Exactly where you wanted us to be.”
What happened?
“We split and reconstituted.”
Into what?
“Into this place.”
I look around. People are cramming around us, laughing, screaming, pointing at the scaffold ahead, where a guillotine has been erected.
Where are we?
“In the place you visualized.”
This is the Place de la Révolution. I didn’t visualize this place.
“Yes, you did. You are not aware of it but you did.”
I grab my head. It throbs and hurts, and feels weird, and so does my whole body. As if I’ve been chopped up and put together again.
“That’s exactly what happened, Mr. Smyth. We split through time, like we did when we first left your apartment.”
Well, whatever it was, it was awful – and nothing like the first time. The ‘split’ from my apartment was smooth, seamless. This one was like passing through a blender.
“Splitting is tricky, Mr. Smyth. If you don’t know how to concentrate you can end up in limbo. I’m used to it by now, it’s second nature to me. This is why the first split, from apartment to revolution, was taken care of by yours truly, to make sure we got here in one piece, smooth as silk. But that’s where my involvement ended. All splits from then on are your responsibility.”
Why’s that?
“Spirits cannot split from lodges or between stages. Tourists have to do it for us.”
So that’s why you got all riled up in there. I knew there was something going on, I knew it!
“Yes, well, it’s not a fun place to be stuck in, believe me. I once spent two years in a lodge because my tourist couldn’t get it right. He drew attention to himself and was whisked away by a bunch of sympathetic Girondins – and I got stuck there, like a genie in a bottle. I had to watch everyone split in and out of there, unable to do anything. Do you know how hard it is for a spirit to be bottled up? We are meant to flow, Mr. Smyth, not settle.”
Cooley points toward a puddle of water in the street. It’s murky, filled with debris and filth. I get the message.
King Louis XVI was a descendant of the Bourbon dynasty and the absolute ruler of France
“I’m glad you do.”
He shakes his head and shivers all over, as if expelling an unwanted thought.
Is that what those other spirits were doing? They were stuck there?
“Most of them, yes. Trapped in waiting, helpless. Some for a very long time, mind you.”
You were speaking to them, weren’t you? All that hovering around the room, whispering in the corners…
“Yes. I was keeping them company. They wanted to hear news from the Field. Being cut off from the flow like that does strange things to their sense of being. Some of them will never escape, and they know it.”
Cooley pauses for a moment. At the same time there is a loud commotion. A clot of people are pushing their way through the crowd. One of them bumps into me, pushing me to the side. He says something to me and moves on. I bite my tongue, saying nothing, and turn back to Cooley.
Tell me, how will these spirits get out of the lodge?
“The same way I did. Their tourists have to receive the insight they were meant to receive in the first place. It’s the only way out. They get it and zang – tourist and spirit split to the next part of the tour. Not get it and – well, they’re history, stuck there forever – the spirit in the lodge, the tourist in time.”
You mean there’s only one way out of a lodge?
Not just out of a lodge but out of the entire tour. There is only one way through, and it involves a clear mind. You have to stop being all over the place and get it together, gather your thoughts into a concise, precise state of awareness, processing carefully what you are experiencing. You have to adjust to it like water down a stream. Sometimes you have to do this softly and languidly, assuming the shape and rhythms of whatever it is you are flowing through; other times you have to get mad, heaving and frothing-white. Do it with a clear head and you break the barrier. We split time and move on.”
And if I don’t manage to do that, are we trapped here?
“Yes, and I get trapped with you, until you get your head around things.”
Cooley grabs me gently by the shoulder.
“Sometimes I can help you do that, Mr. Smyth, and count on me, I will. But not always. It’s not my job, I’m not allowed to intervene more than I have to. The breakthroughs are mainly up to you. If you do your part and stay with the flow, we will be alright.” He squeezes me tighter. His nails are beginning to bite into my skin. “But if you don’t, if all you can do is try – if you remain lost and confused, or, worse, if you die, which is what usually happens to tourists when they lose the tour’s thread – we stay here forever.”
You mean I can actually die here? This is insane. I thought this was a dream. How the hell can I die here?
Cooley’s grip tightens and his face hardens. There’s that nasty glare again. I don’t like that look, it has only ever spelled trouble for me.
I pull back, breaking away from his vise-like grip, looking away, down, to the floor, nervous and disturbed. I don’t want another confrontation. The prospect of me dying here is hard to believe as it is. I try to deny it but it is deep inside me now, I cannot unregister it.
At the same time I am also mildly hopeful because, for the first time during this tour, I think I have spotted the source of Cooley’s enigmatic outbursts. It seems to me that the reason Cooley blows his top is that he dislikes my talking about myself.
During the revolution, Louis XVI was mocked and ridiculed
I make a mental note of it, ordering myself not to forget it and be careful, then turn to him, shaking my head. I don’t want to get lost in my thoughts. It would defeat the purpose of trying not to infuriate Cooley in the first place.
I tell him that we are in a tough spot from the looks of things, the both of us. I try to be convincing and genuine, despite my undercurrent of panic. I know I must remain calm and not draw attention to the fact that the only thing I am thinking about is how to get out of here. I try to focus, breathing deeply. Suddenly Cooley’s words are echoing in my head again. Stay with the program. Become one with your surroundings.
Right. But how do I do that? How on earth do I get out of this?
Cooley snaps his fingers in front of my face. I turn to see his stony expression staring back at me. I have done it again, drifted off into my mind. Why does this keep happening?
“Stop daydreaming and concentrate, Mr. Smyth. I am giving you all the tools you need to complete this tour. You better listen carefully or we will not make it through, understand?”
I nod affirmatively.
“Good. Now look at yourself. It is important to know how you come across.”
He points at my clothes, then at his.
“You look like everyone else here, and so do I. We are well disguised – care of the Tour directors – made to fit the setting.”
He points all around us, to the people in the square.
“The key to a successful tour is blending in without getting stuck. The only way we can flow through its various stages is to look like everyone else on the surface without actually thinking, acting or being anything like them. We must avoid locking horns with them and mind we don’t get lost in the plot. We are part of the landscape but not part of the story, and that keeps us from harm.”
He grabs me by the hair and by the scruff of the neck and pulls me closer to him, shaking me around.
“But the moment you start getting lost inside this head of yours, obsessing over what you think you know rather than focusing on what you are experiencing, or the moment you start panicking and disintegrating, you lose the thread and start breaking with the tour, giving in to what is happening. From then on it’s very hard to come back. People start noticing you and responding to you, and before you know it you are part of their story. You’re history. And so am I.”
He pauses and gives me a moment to process what he has said. It makes sense, yes, in an insane kind of way, but I have to go with it. It’s simple. All I have to do is listen to what Cooley is saying, stay calm, roll with the moment, and adjust to what is happening instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.
But it’s not as easy as it sounds. It’s hard to know which behavior is appropriate at any given time. It feels like I sometimes need to be calm, other times resolute, other times urgent and fearful, rebellious and defiant, and a hundred other things I can’t put my finger on. How on earth am I going to know how to behave? How am I going to get through this damn tour?
“Take it easy, Mr. Smyth. This is exactly what happened to you in the lodge. You were so nervous and out of touch with what was going on, so engrossed with your own thoughts and obsessions that you strained yourself, blew your cover, and attracted the attention of the Enragés. The only reason we made it out of there was that you eventually managed to get it together at the last minute. Do you even know how you did it?”
No, I don’t.
“You did it by stopping your internal chatter and tuning into the tour again, using what you had experienced so far to focus beyond your nose. And here we are.”
The king and his family tried to escape revolutionary France in June, 1791, but were arrested at Varennes and sent back to Paris
‘Death to the tyrant. Vive la liberté!’
Cooley lets go of me and urges me to follow him. We walk into the commotion, blending in. The crowd is thick now, pushing and shoving to get ahead to see what is going on. They are chanting and raising their fists. Some of them are wearing red caps, meandering through the crowd, looking around. They are not looking at the scaffold at all. I don’t like the look of them.
“They are minders, Mr. Smyth.”
What?
“The individuals with the bulky red caps – they are minders.”
I see. What is their role in this?
“Security enforcement and complication resolution. This is the greatest event France has ever known and the organizers have left nothing to chance. They want to be certain everything runs smoothly, from start to end.”
I look around, searching for them, then stop. I shouldn’t catch their eye.
“You are not paying attention Mr. Smyth.”
I fidget around a little and pull my coat collar up to cover my face. I swear one of them was giving me strange looks. I turn around, hiding behind a couple of people. When I look again, he is not there.
“He is probably sifting through the crowd, making sure everyone is in order. Like I said, this is the greatest event France has ever known, and everything must run smoothly. There is no room for hiccups or blunders.”
Why? What’s going on?
“They are executing the king.”
I gaze at the scaffold, trying to get a glimpse of what is happening, when it hits me. This is it, the moment when everything changed, when history was written in bloody spectacle, setting off a thousand unpredictable events and changing the course of the world forever. And we are smack in the middle of it. Why are we here? Is there more to this tour than meets the eye?
A wave of excitement rushes through me, pumping me up. It suddenly occurs to me that it’s all a trial, an elaborate test designed to assess me, to see if I am able to be selfless and get involved despite the supposed risk.
I grab Cooley by the arm, pulling him closer.
We have got to stop this. This is wrong.
Cooley throws me an interested glance.
“Do tell. Why do you want to stop it?”
Because this is barbarous. It is sick. You saw what Madame du Barry suffered. This is not the way to do things.
“What makes you say that?”
They are chopping heads off in a public square! Doesn’t that count for insanity?
“Nonsense. This is a perfectly reasonable situation for the times. It is part of the process, how things are done here. Even the king does not seem to mind. Look.”
Indeed, the king is standing calm by the blade, looking down at the crowd.
“He is taking it rather well, don’t you think? And the crowd, they do not thirst for blood. Look around, can’t you see that there is a lot more decorum in this execution?”
King Louis bidding a final farewell to his family before being escorted to his place of execution
Cooley is right, the atmosphere is different here, less venomous than du Barry’s execution. There is an air of civility in the whole affair.
But it still doesn’t make it right. It is sick and perverted. For the first time in my life I am confronted with the horror of what premises my world was built upon – a horror I may be in the position to somehow subvert.
Cooley smiles and pushes me back.
“You cannot change anything, Mr. Smyth. Things happened the way they did because they were supposed to happen like that. Altering their course would make no sense.”
It would make perfect sense. This is no way to create a better world. It’s a horrifying, bloody spectacle, is what it is.
Cooley smiles even wider.
“Let me explain something to you, Mr. Smyth. You are too theoretical in your approach to life and have gotten too shaken up by what is going on. Whatever is happening here is not news to you, you have read about it and know more or less what happened and how it happened and who did what, so it should be no surprise to you seeing it take place. But that’s just it – you got to know about the revolution through the safety and sanctity of history books and web pages. But this – this is much more than that, it’s the real, smelly deal. You find it too dirty, brutal and bloody for your liking, I know. Yet, truth be told, this is how it happened, how the modern world began. It’s how it was supposed to begin.”
Cooley is making no sense. I turn away from him and try to move closer to the scaffold but he pulls me back. I want to break free but decide to wait a little longer, gage the situation a little better before doing anything.
“Listen to me, Mr. Smyth. No one likes trouble, it’s a great inconvenience. But we don’t always get what we want. Sometimes we simply get what we can.”
I look at him with disapproval. I want him to know that this is wrong and unacceptable.
“You don’t agree. Well, good for you, I admire that. It’s the only way to progress and get better at things. You seem to have the attitude for it. You are so set on it that it wouldn’t surprise me if you eventually find a way to make things happen without fighting anyone, discovering the frictionless way to achieve progress. It would save the world the trouble of fighting. Yes, I can see it now, you finding a way to wage revolutions without killing a single person. Why, you will receive the Nobel Prize for peace, economics, even literature, for the discourses you will write. The world will finally be free to fight for whatever it wants, in the name of whatever it believes in, advancing and progressing without a single loss of life. All on account of a noble, revolutionary ideal.”
I look down, trying to swallow the sarcasm and stay with the program. This is no time to lose it.
Cooley turns away from me and looks around. He seems to be searching for someone. Maybe it’s the minder in the red cap, or the alien-looking fellow we saw at du Barry’s execution. I check the scene out but see nothing out of the ordinary. I want to move closer to the scaffold, but he grabs me by the arm and pushes me to the side, into the crowd. We are now deep inside a throng of people, with no room to maneuver. I suddenly feel like a fish in a net.
I take a deep breath and remain calm, unwilling to give into the fear hovering around me. I can sense its presence clearly, but it’s not touching me this time, as if it’s bouncing off a great, invisible armor.
I fold my coat collar down and look around. People are chatting away, pointing at the blade, at the king, at the revolutionaries by the scaffold. Their faces are flushed and wild. Some look excited and impatient, others worried, nervous, unable to stand still. The chanting has now ceased, there’s only chatter. Then the chatter stops too.
I look up at the scaffold. The king has raised his hand over the crowd, gazing at them. Silence falls over the square. No one is moving, not even breathing. Paris seems to be standing still, caught in the moment, as if aware that history is shifting at this very moment.
The silence lasts for a minute, maybe two, I can’t tell. Then the king lowers his hand and the crowd unfreezes. A republican in a Phrygian cap approaches the king and manhandles him, shoving him around. The chatter begins again, nervous and proud. Someone starts cheering and the chants resume. Everything is ready for the big event. The king’s head is about to roll, completing the changing of the guard, and the new order will be set and consolidated. In blood. Unless, of course, I have something to say about that!
FOR MORE: Wake Of Liberty
Images:
To The Guillotine by Gavin Denman
http://europeanhistory.about.com
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