Prologue
I woke up that day like on any other day, feeling alive, kicking and breathing. The air carried a faint whiff of patchouli coming from the women in my house and of the ghost of wood fires that, once upon a time, used to bring the disused fireplace in my parents’ bedroom to life.
It was the beginning of the summer 1972 in Nantes, a port city on the River Loire, historically affiliated to the north-western French region of Brittany. I was seven and a half years old.
We lived in an amazing apartment occupying the entire top floor of a neo-classic building dating back to the French Revolution. Built as one of the very first structures surrounding the opulent gated park called Le Cours Cambronne, our home was listed on the registry of Historical Monuments of France. To us though, it was just a tatty old flat…
It was a sunny first day of the week and my mother had opened the windows to air the place. Despite the early hour, I could already hear loud music climbing up the shaft at the back of our building. It was the radio of the concierge Madame Garapin appropriately blaring out the latest hit song by Claude François Le Lundi au Soleil (Sunny Monday).
These were good days… There seemed to be ‘plenty enough’ dough for the good people of France to make brioche, as Marie-Antoinette had once famously suggested, albeit in a far better turn of phrase. I was then too young to understand how oppressed and exploited by the conservative ruling class the blue-collar workers were at that time. Most of us who had the chance to live so well during this angelic period and in this blessed city of Nantes, whose wealth had by the way come from the slave trade, had absolutely no idea about nor any interest in their struggle. The joyous vibe around us kept us blind.
Madame Garapin’s radio was now broadcasting the 8 o’clock news bulletin and all seemed to be just fine in this beautiful world…
President George Pompidou was at the helm of France’s Fifth Republic. His Prime Minister Jaques Chaban-Delmas and his Defense Minister Michel Debré looked all the same to me: shorthaired strict-looking men in dark suits, just like my dad who was also very fond of another similar-looking man: Richard Nixon.
The Vietnam War was still raging. The Red Fiery Summer offensive by the People’s Army of Vietnam against the American forces and their allies had been particularly brutal. According to various news agency reports, close to 100,000 troops across both sides had lost their lives during this particularly fierce 6-month campaign.
As Nixon’s National Security Advisor, Henri Kissinger, was keeping himself as busy as a blue-arsed fly whilst trying to extinguish the multiple fires his country’s foreign policy had started.
Although his administration was as staunchly anti-communist as his predecessors were, Richard Nixon had established new grounds for a promising détente with both China and the Soviet Union after respectively visiting both countries in February and May.
Despite the US President’s trip to Moscow, the image portrayed by his Russian counterpart Leonid Brezhnev in the West, including France, was that of a dangerous actor with his fingers well glued to his country’s nuclear arsenal launch-button.
Amidst the cold and not-so-cold wars, the youth in 1972 was turning the other cheek while enjoying a life-style mostly geared towards laid-back, peace loving and even sometimes deeply spiritual pursuits.
Between the weekly shootings, car bombings, hijackings and hostage taking incidents perpetrated by various terrorist organisations such as the Irish Republican Army, the Basque Nationalist ETA, the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and the left-wing Marxist-Leninist-Maoist revolutionary factions, the summer 1972 was fun…
At the cinemas, Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns with their spellbinding musical scores by Ennio Morricone, and countless French belly-tickling B-Movies topping the French box office managed to keep the youngsters out of mischief.
Since the far-reaching civil unrest by the French students in May 1968, the government had learned how to use the audio-visual means of communication to their advantage. The state-owned national agency for radio and television ORTF, responsible for the program selection of the main and only French TV channel La Premiere Chaîne, had launched a daily variety show during the sacrosanct French lunch break called Midi-Trente. While bringing the mainstream musicians such as Johnny Halliday and Mireille Mathieu into the fray of people’s homes, its ultra-popular presenter Danielle Gilbert also even occasionally invited international pop singers. Hence, a well-entertained population was unlikely to create havoc.
On my way to school this morning, Madame Garapin’s radio was playing L’Avventura by the French band Stone & Charden.
