AT THE HOUSE, I had my choice of empty bottles. For my baptism by fire, I chose a Vosne-Romanée whose praises my father had sung through the entire meal the previous evening, and later on as well, as he sipped an old Armagnac that led him into drunkenness loaded with heavy sadness and vindictive commentary. I distrusted the effects of alcohol but accepted the inebriation of action, as if the latter was nobler and less destructive.
Becoming a man takes time, and you need more than the right age to reach adulthood. When it came to theoretical knowledge of the world, with its power relations and perverse complexities, I had almost reached my goal. But in real life, I sailed chaotically on a naïve adolescent sea. I knew nothing of the currents and storms, and I tacked this way and that, ignorant and open to every influence that might affect my destination. I let the waters carry me along.
When it came to action, I remembered how my legs had failed me in the stairway of the Queen Elizabeth Hotel as if I had never been a top-level athlete. Stealing two lobsters had paralysed my reflexes and I had to stagger down the stairs.
Maria entrusted her Latinos with the first wave of the attack—breaking the three plate-glass windows—and gave the hard-boiled anarchists the job of throwing the incendiary bombs. I was part of the third wave with several members of the group.
The objective was well chosen. The McDonald’s stood by a big park, alongside commercial properties, on a street travelled by few drivers at night. The Latinos attacked with revolutionary fervour, and the windows burst into a thousand pieces. The first Molotov cocktail set off a wave of applause. Shit, this wasn’t a show. Then, magically, the restaurant lit up from the inside. Thirty or so policemen equipped with bulletproof vests and armed with automatic weapons surged out of the shadows. They were waiting for us, they had allowed us to break the windows to prove the offense, then throw one Molotov cocktail so we could be accused of arson. Caught in the act, an open and shut case for the prosecution.
I don’t know why, but when a policeman slapped on the handcuffs and told me I had the right to remain silent and that anything I might say could be used against me, I felt free. A heavy burden had been lifted from me. Maria was screaming, pouring out her anti-imperialist venom and kicking the policemen. She was ridiculous, and my complicity in this nonsensical operation brought me back to reality. It was time for me to return to myself.
In youth court, I pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three months in a detention centre. I had three months to think about my future. As I contemplated the nonviolent ways of changing the world in a little room, three metres by five metres, my father committed suicide.
He scribbled a few last words, probably for himself: “Why live if you don’t do anything after you’ve dreamed of doing everything?”
I had attacked a restaurant and killed my father. I felt responsible, but not guilty.
Did I really love Maria? No, surely not, since not a single cell in my body reacted when I learned she had been deported to Chile.