Setting the Activist Table

H.’s apartment is on the second floor in an old building, up a flight of worn wooden steps. When we walked in I immediately thought of Ruth [H.’s friend since the 1960s and the dot that connects me to H] and her equally small apartment in Mountain View. Walls plastered with political posters, pictures and held up by books. There are files going back decades: anarchisme, Mexique, economie, and periodicals in piles on the floor. H.’s toilet closet wins the design contest, however. The floor to ceiling bookcases lean precipitously over the commode, and the remaining wall space is covered with ETA stickers and a pictorial timeline of England. Had I asked H for any bit of history, for information, for an article, I have no doubt that he would have located it as quickly as Ruth can, and that it would have been placed securely in my hands for as long as I had need of it. He very quickly explained France’s role in the Middle East after the Ottoman exit.

But, lunch first, and that involves the activist table and its essential papers that cannot be removed, only pushed to the side. Ruth has an extra card table for this purpose so that the organization of current events is left undisturbed on the main table. Chez H the stacks are reorganized in the corner, visible only as a slight rise in the topography of the tablecloth. Lunch was laid out here, five courses that took us more than three hours to eat. I am happily bewildered by French, excited about the food and content to talk politics [in its many dimensions] around a table crowded with friends and papers.