Free Red Crystal by Clare Francis

and tried to understand.
    Harsh voices, boots on the stairs.
    What on earth—
    The fear leapt into her throat. Through the door came black helmets, faces invisible …
    She stared incredulously.
    It was a bad dream relived, a second nightmare, except it was real again. She thought: I’ll die if they touch me .
    They grabbed her and she gasped. They pulled her to her feet. She yelled, ‘ Let go, you pigs! ’ They were pawing her, searching her. A gloved hand came close to her mouth and she bit it hard, meeting flesh through the leather. There was a cry. She struggled and kicked out. They grabbed at her arm and, catching the wrist, twisted it harshly up her back.
    She thought: I’m going to go mad .
    She screamed and kicked out with her feet, finding a target. There was a shout of anger.
    The next moment her head exploded and a wall of blackness closed in on her.
    Through the blackness she heard someone groaning loudly and realized it was herself. Then, as if in a dream, she was being half-dragged, half-carried across a hall and down some stairs into the street. A veil of warm wetness covered her smarting eyes and there was a strange sweetness in her mouth. She was hauled roughly over stones and heaved backwards into a van, the metal floor cold and hard on her skin.
    She mustered her strength to gasp, ‘Fascist Nazi pigs! Fascist bastard pigs! Fascist—!’
    Then the doors slammed shut and there was nobody to hear.
    The night of the 10th May became known as the Night of the Barricades; over sixty makeshift barriers were thrown up in the streets of the Latin Quarter. From all over Paris thousands of young people, manual workers and professionals, rushed to the students’ aid until the CRS riot police were faced with an enormous army of guerrillas. The fighting raged for four hours and was remarkable for its savagery and hatred.
    But if the hand to hand fighting was bloody – beaten heads, broken limbs, four hundred seriously injured – it was the mopping up operations which were remembered with most bitterness. The injured dragged from stretchers to be beaten up for a second time; a Negro thrown into a van to emerge with a battered bloody face; girls stripped and taken naked into the street; innocent passers-by attacked. In many areas the police took their opportunities for revenge.
    Local residents and onlookers were horrified. So too was most of France. The next day the government tried to mediate, but it was all too late. The workers and the students were united. Within two days there was a mass anti-government demonstration of over eight hundred thousand people. Three days later more than nine million workers were out on strike. A student soviet occupied the Sorbonne and several provincial universities were taken over. Even members of the most respected professions – the doctors, lawyers, scientists, musicians – rebelled, questioning the outdated structures in which they worked.
    The revolution had arrived.
    The hospital room was white and brilliantly lit and hurt her eyes. At least two days had passed, though she wasn’t absolutely sure. At one point the police came and demanded her name. She closed her eyes and didn’t answer.
    They returned with her shoulder bag which she supposed they had found somewhere near the barricade.
    They held out her passport.
    Linda Wilson.
    She smiled because it didn’t matter if they knew that name.
    Another night came – the third? – and a voice obtruded into her consciousness. It whispered urgently ‘Gabriele! Gabriele!’ Someone was shaking her.
    She stared into the semi-darkness and saw two figures leaning over the bed. One of them was Giorgio. Already they were pulling her out of bed and wrapping a coat round her shoulders.
    She said, ‘I knew you’d come.’

Chapter 4

    T HE WEATHER WAS blustery but fine, and the coast of France was clearly visible across the straits. On the green, white-flecked sea beyond the breakwater a ferry turned in a stately arc to