A Very Profitable War by Didier Daeninckx (Melville International Crime 1984)

Sorinet and Goyon were first in the pile, followed by a show-case of militant anarchism: men with bald heads, with beards, with glasses, with the expression of hallucinating poets, hair sweeping their shoulders, civil servants in evening dress with bow ties and top hats  . . . the owner of the Carden was hiding at the bottom of the pile between a young woman who specialized in revolutionary abortions and a forger.

My Sorinet-Goyon was in fact called Francis Ménard, born at Ivry-sur-Seine, a librarian by profession. He wasn't wanted for much before '17: a few illegal occupations of private property, taking part ina few demonstrations that ended badly . . . Now they were looking for him for 'desertion in the face of the enemy in May '17'.

Nowadays the penalty wouldn't be much more than three to five years in prison near Toulon; before the armistice, he would have faced the firing squad.

He could count himself lucky, he'd managed to save his skin. Those who were no longer here to say the same thing could be counted in platoons.

Walking back to the car, I decided to follow the trail leading to the appropriation of apartments. Francis Ménard and the friends whose identity he had taken over were at the time part of the 'Tenants' Trade Union', an anarchist group that had had its moments of glory in the two years preceding the war.

The whole of Paris used to follow the exploits of their spokesman, Georges Cochon, and his confrontations, which always included a large dose of humour, for the rehousing of working-class families.

Paris high society followed as well, although its laughter was nervous.

I remembered certain episodes such as the day of action 'Against the Tyranny of the Concierges' during which the Cochonnards' commandos put fleas, bugs and cockroaches through the keyholes of the concierges' doors! One day, I had also come across a procession of the 'badly housed' who were going up to take over the barracks at Château d'Eau from the soldiers. They were marching in serried ranks behind their band, 'The Cacophony of Saint Copy-Cat', a heterogeneous group with music scored for saucepans, ladles, billy-cans, tins . . . 

The Socialist Party flags fluttered in the middle of the procession, mixed in with the black standards, and it wasn't unusual to come across the happy face of a Member of Parliament from that party. The party paper gave inflammatory accounts of the events and blamed everything on their bête noire, the Prefect Lépine.

Murder in the Central Committee by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán (Melville International Crime 1981)

'Put them with today's.'

The girl did as Santos said, and Julian Mir returned to his duties as chief steward, casting eyes over the movements of his red-armbanded subordinates.

'We'll have an unpleasant surprise one of these days. I don't like this place.'

Santos met Mir's critical ill-humour with a nod that could have indicated either agreement or disapproval. He had been using the same gesture with Mir ever since the days of the Fifth Regiment. Then, Julian had never liked the evening shadows, which had seemed pregnant with Franco's soldiers, nor the morning light that opened the way to advance parties of Regulares. Later, he had not been fond of the Tarn fruit groves, which seemed to have borne the shape of German patrols ever since the Pleistocene. Later still, he had not liked his missions inside the country, although he carried them out with the haughty assurance of a Western film hero.

'Many problems?'

'Four fascists died of fear,' Mir had invariably replied on his return from a trip to Franco's Spain.

He had always been like that. Probably born that way, thought Santos, and he was suddenly surprised that Julian Mir had once been born: so long ago; too long. The time was now stored in his stiff white hair and his old athlete's musculature that made him look like a chicken spoiling for a fight.

'I don't like this place.'

'Here we go again. Where would you like to hold the central committee?' asked Santos.

'There are too many little offices dotted everywhere. That's what I am complaining about. There should be a fine central headquarters like every proper Communist Party has got. Does it seem right to you? Just yesterday, the Anabaptists from Torrejón de Ardoz held a convention here. Look at what's written on that poster.

'I'd have to put my glasses on.'

'Oh yes! You've been losing your faculties ever since you became a pen-pusher,' Mir said. 'I can read it all right: "The way of the spirit in the path of the body", by Yogi Sundra Bashuarti. That was here yesterday. I can't tell anymore whether this is a central committee meeting or a gathering of fakirs. Communists in a hotel—as if we were tourists or underwear salesmen.'

'You're in a right old mood.'

'And one day they'll sneak in a commando disguised as a tropical orchestra. Sometimes you can even hear the music from the dance-hall.'

'It's quite atmospheric.'