Stories from the Strike

Many of these stories are second- or thirdhand. When you remove a thread as critical as the transportation system from the tapestry that is Paris, the resulting unraveling is bound to be hopelessly scattered, so that the attempts of any one person to gather all the threads would be as futile as gathering all the motes of dust in a dirty house by hand.

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Police lurk the streets of Paris now. This is a fact I can attest to also, so everyone agrees. They travel at least in groups of three, and often in blazing convoys ten, twelve vans long. They travel with guns obvious. They mean it, whatever ‘it’ is.

But apparently sometimes they have their guard down. On Boulevard du Montparnasse, the police vans had set up camp. They were all closed to the world and seemingly empty, as if the police officers were elsewhere on pressing business. But a pair of doors swung open, and there a SWAT (the French equivalent) team is, playing UNO. My friend stared a moment; the cop looked back. Then he moved on and the flic went back to his game.

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There were fights over at Chatelet-Les Halles. Which is surprising—the worst reaction to the strike is a shouted (but mostly muttered) “putain”—but if I were forced to guess where the fights happened if I knew they’d already taken place, I’d’ve guessed Chatalet-Les Halles, a massive, labyrinthine warren. Let me put it this way: Chatelet has its own Facebook group, (in French), “If Hell exists, its metro station is Chatelet.”

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There are “fermetures exceptionelles” (exceptional closings) all around Paris. I do not remember this the last go-‘round. This strike has vexed the French, more so than the last one.

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My own strike experience started usually. The streets were not empty but certainly under-capacity. The RER apparently began minimal service, but no one much bothered to use it. There was no indication of anything particularly interesting.

I waited a while to get onto the Tramway 3, the above-ground tram line that skirts the periphery of Paris. It took fifteen minutes or so, but it is a strike, you know? So that was not too bad, given the circumstances.

Four hours or so later, I was waiting for the Tramway 3 in the other direction. It was crisp—some shivered and called it cold. A small, square-faced woman tried to bum a cigarette from us. Muttered complaints drifted out and diffused for general consumption.
My friend, hands clutching elbows in a protective hug, began a cycle of dashing towards the edge of the quai, leaning out to see if the tram was coming, then retreating back to imagined warmth. On one such lap, he found himself complaining of the self-promotional official poetry inscribed into the glass by RATP, “Flowers of the Tramway? I don’t see flowers. It’s cold!” Soon afterwards we saw the twin lights of the tram piercing the early evening heaviness as it began the steady ascent up the slight incline towards us. We were about to be relieved, we thought. But as its ascent continued, our potential relief fell away: the tram was as full as a clown car, mocking our hopes.

My technique, when a metro car approaches, is to stand in place and methodically scan the cars as they flash past and then chase after the emptiest car. But my methodical scan was a desperate search and my standing in place was a rigid indecisive posture. I could not see entrance. But I determined to get on.

It is understood that in a pressing situation on the metro, such as when the bell rings and the doors are about to close, that liberties are loosened: you can run, you can leap, you can even come into closer contact with your fellow man than is otherwise advisable or allowable. “Whoa, Darius. Gettin’ a little close there,” I was told one time as my leap resembled a clumsy dance maneuver. Apparently one fat woman bowled into a crowded bus stop, her fat spilling over shoulders and around various crevices, like jello smashed into deformed tin, offering only “Pardon” as an excuse. So I recognized that I had the right, and I was not walking back, nor was I waiting for the next one.

I hesitated, then chose one car. This was an error. I ended up at the edge of the fanned-out crowd trying to get in. Finally, when it came to be my turn, I felt there was no more space. The doors closed, with a clank. I resigned myself to the walk. But after the tram took a brief shuddering lurch forward, it stopped and its doors opened again, offering a second chance. I took it and jumped in.

The car was crowded, as you might have guessed from the earlier description. It fortunately did not have nor did it acquire that hot leaden stillness that seems to reach into your lungs and choke you from the inside. Nevertheless, it was a jumble of bodies and I concentrated on making myself the right Tetris piece for this formation. My initial efforts were unsuccessful—the door shut and pinched my ass and backpack. I drew myself up, as thin as I could be without interfering with door or person. But it was impossible to avoid contact, as self-conscious as I was about that, with an elbow digging into my stomach right below my ribs.

A woman’s hand brushed my back infrequently as he brought something up. A small child with big round eyes, a small sapling hidden by big trees, looked for relief. A man with an oval face and stubble stared straight at me, as I was the last one to join the car, as if I were the sole source of his problems. A cute girl with rich-smelling brown hair who entered the car late like me exchanged glances with me, saying with them, “Jesus, what a crowd?” Ringtones and an electronica-Irish folk music mix dominated the air; no one spoke.

The tramway lurched forward and tugged along, acknowledging the weight of its burdens. But it had just really gotten going when it suddenly stopped, sending everyone tumbling, ending like half-fallen dominoes. We had scarcely recovered our positions when the train stopped again, more gently this time. Curses (“putain” or some variation was used by every able-bodied man, woman and child) dominated the murmured apology over the intercom.

The car remained stopped and I was impatient. Soon the crowd began to part, as much it is possible to say that word for how tightly we were squeezed. The conductor was passing through, saying “Pardon” authoritatively. He was a blandly handsome brown-haired, tall for a Frenchman dressed in a RATP sweater and tie. The way was slow. People tried to engage with him; one old man, particularly fond of commiserating with his fellow passengers, shared his feelings at length with him, only to be dismissed with a curt, “Oui” as the conductor waded on through the crowd. After he was safely out of earshot, people began complaining about “les syndicats” and the “grève.” Once he came back, the car hushed except for that teenager’s techno-Irish music. One plain middle-aged woman gave him a smile that practically invited him to get her number right then and there (or whatever the courtship ritual is in France). The car started again and continued without incident.

At each stop, thereon, a wave of people surged out like the tide while I clutched the center pole, trying not to carried out—then another tide of people would rush in to be carried out. At one stop, an older white woman ended up squished against that young, round-eyed black boy; she explained to him something about something as he just watched silent.

Finally when I got to my stop, I loudly declared my intention of getting off while pointing—one woman earlier missed her stop for being insufficiently demonstrative and failing to surrender to the current—and I made it out into the welcome crisp fall air.