L'Avventura

AUTHOR: Etienne Beauregard

L'Avventura

23/09/2019

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.