F — K Bonaparte
To us the cognoscenti it was Owen’s. Only peasants called it Manchester University. I had worked jolly hard to get here, the appropriate A levels and what not. And I wasn’t gonna waste my time. Everybody had told me that the university campus was a much better hunting ground than Scandinavia, that it was the girls who came after you. I wasn’t gonna miss out on that.
I discovered that everybody buzzed around Anna Ford, and although she once smiled at me at the UN Club’s Friday Cheese and Beer lunch, I thought I’d aim a bit lower. I joined various left-leaning clubs, including the Young Commies. Reds, I reasoned out were not racists, and this small brown boy would not be at a disadvantage.
Saturday night at the union dance were not the resounding success that I had anticipated, but I learnt the difference between Mild, Bitter and Lager, although they all made me burp and speak with a slur.
Almost every weekend there was a march. Against Apartheid, The Bomb, Free Palestine, and you will meet soul mates there, I guessed. On a slab of hard board I painted:
F — K YOU VERWOERD, and on the other side, in French
VA TE FAIRE FOUTRE VERWOERD
In French Foutre and Verwoerd rhyme, but I nobody picked on this.
Except Dany.
We were on Mosley Street off the Art Gallery when she nudged her way towards me. “Va te faire foot, Verwoot”, she said, ‘c’est magnifique ça.’ I had noticed her on the campus before, for she was stunningly beautiful, and was delighted when I realised that she was French. There are few things I loved more than to show my proficiency in the langue de Molière. She was an exchange student from Grenoble, but her home was Lons-le-Saunier. Her dad was a syndicaliste and her family were communists, she informed me. I’m a Maths student, I said. “Oh, un matheu! tu dois avoir un de ces cerveaux.” (A Maths genius! You must be so brainy.) I made light of this, but thought that God was watching over me. She had read Paul et Virginie, and would love to go to Mauritius one day. Maybe we can go together, I chipped in and she nodded. We agreed on everything. Hungary, Cuba, Khrushchev. We both loved Brassens and Ferrat. I’ll lend you my Brel LP’s, she offered. We exchanged phone numbers. I was living in Brighton Grove and she in Fallowfield, a ten-minute walk away. At one point the crowd helping, our hands touched, and I seized the moment, and she let me.
We were scarcely paying any attention to the march, except that every now and then I’d wave my slogan. We discussed a variety of topics, and agreed on the evil of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, even Churchill. Like me she was no admirer of De Gaulle. But the wind was about to turn. And of course Napoleon wasn’t much better, I chipped in. I felt a hardening of her hand, and she she asked what I meant. Well, killing five million people to conquer Europe? As bad as Hitler. She pulled her hand away. ‘Tu n’as aucun sens de l’histoire,’ she said. I had no sense of history, Napoleon redefined world politics, I ought to take the long view of things.
I knew the moment was gone.
And I did not learn my lesson. I lost Beryl to Churchill, Miyeko to Pearl Harbour, Mbuyi to Mobutu, Egea to Mussolini. For years I wandered lonely as a cloud in the romantic desert.
But I did learn. When I met a nice Finnish young woman, I immediately assured her that I was an admirer of Mannerheim.
That fascist! she exclaimed. After the civil war she sent my communist aunt Aili to prison.
