La Ronde

So, are you going to paint on me?

Kurt didn't come back, and no one knew if he would ever come back.Barbara came home with the baby and shaved her hair short.

Conrad is no longer aloof from the revolution, he wants to do something for Kurt.But what else could he do but hit the streets?He even felt disgusted with himself standing in the ranks of workers, the trade unions and the Communist Party of France just used them as tools!

Looking at the roaring and confronting college students, he couldn't help thinking: they are the real living people.Despite their radical madness, their lives are not illusory. The face of life is not a peaceful but boring church prayer.How pathetic is the man who walks in the procession with his mind absent minded!He wanted to stand with the students, just as the students who handed Barbara the paving stones that day chose to stand with them.

Thinking of this, he decided to visit the only intellectual he knew.

***

The moment Valentino saw Conrad, he noticed some changes in him these days.Conrad walked into the hotel room, but he didn't look at the painting he liked, and he stopped looking around curiously, just staring at him.

Valentino was stared at by him, his throat was a little tight, he asked: "You came suddenly today, I haven't had time to order a drink."

"No, no wine," Conrad held down his hand that was about to touch the service bell, his eyes were as bright as blue flames, "I...I want to ask you for a favor."

"You said."

Conrad's hand was still pressed on his hand: "My friend Kurt was taken away by the police, can you please write a sign for him? And... the next parade, can I go with you ?”

Valentino thought for a moment, looked at him and said, "Of course. I can paint, and maybe do a simple portrait of him." He would have asked Conrad if he knew who had taken him friend, but finally did not speak.

Conrad showed a bright smile of relief, and at this moment he was like the one Valentino saw a few days ago: "Thank you! Valentino...we are friends, right?"

Valentino slightly raised the corners of his mouth, and his stern face softened: "Of course, we did it a long time ago."

Under Conrad's description, Valentino made some slight changes, and a good poster was born - a worker who looked like Kurt raised his fist, and next to his fist was written in bold letters: "The struggle continues! "*1 The ink of the exclamation mark is so thick that it seems to drip out of the screen.

The next day, they held the pictorial and went to the street to participate in the parade, and Valentino's enthusiasm seemed to be more sufficient.Conrad and Valentino were tall, well-mannered, and obviously not French in appearance. Coupled with their eye-catching pictorial designs, they soon became famous.Many small groups of intellectuals and workers began to pay attention to them, and some newspapers even published their photos and commented like this:

Although people say that in this May, students and workers united for the first time, but this union was abstract and vague, and there were few real dialogues between individual students and workers.But now there are two such characters—an intellectual and a car factory worker.They became true friends, and together they held signs and took to the streets against this alienated society.They are not even French, but they take part in this Parisian round dance that awakens people's ancient utopian dreams... Across classes and borders, this May is not only a brutal battle, but also a festival of the left!

After reading it, De Ville raised his eyebrows, carefully cut out the small piece of photo and text, and put it in the notepad.Just as he turned his face over to see if there was such a striking new character, someone knocked on his door.

De Ville frowned, put away the newspaper, and went to open the door.When he opened the door, he had put on a charming smile and leaned casually by the door: "Oh, Natalie, lovely lady, why are you here? Could it be that the parade has started again?"

When Natalie saw de Ville's smile, her heartbeat became chaotic.She had to admit that although she hated those extreme rightists who prevented women from gaining the right to work and vote as much as most girls in the Sorbonne, no woman could resist De Villey's handsome smile at the law school.He is tall and handsome, with a typical French face under neat black hair, thick eyebrows and blue eyes, a not too obvious aquiline nose and quite smooth cheek lines.

Recently, however, de Ville has also started to participate in the parade, perhaps because the enthusiasm of most of the students in the Sorbonne has infected him.Natalie felt a little less regretful when she thought of this.All the female college students will be enamored of de Villey if he can let go of the issue of women's rights. Obviously, this will have to be done slowly.

Natalie didn't dare to look him in the eyes, she just looked at his hand by the door: "Yes, today's parade is about to start. I heard that you have also started to participate recently, so I will let you know on behalf of everyone. "

De Ville seemed to find it interesting. He smiled lightly, his slender eyelashes overlapping up and down: "Of course, we not only have to speak out for ourselves, but also have an obligation to speak up for the workers. They don't have the expressiveness and social care we have. Don't you?" At this point, he paused for a moment, leaned close to Natalie's ear, his face almost touching her hair: "Thank you for making this trip, Natalie."

***

This evening, Valentino was painting some landscapes, with Conrad watching curiously beside him.Since they went to the street together, their relationship has become much closer, and Conrad often visits him at the Hotel du Cap.Sometimes they chatted, about Valentino's ideal social schema, and about the white sausage from Conrad's hometown.Sometimes, like now, they don't say anything and just sit quietly with each other.

Conrad saw that Valentino was almost done painting, and then he spoke up, and sincerely praised: "You are really good at drawing! I wish I could also draw, so that I can draw my mother and sister." ...and Kurt, Barbara, and their two children." After speaking, he was a little depressed again.

Valentino hurriedly replied: "Drawing is not difficult, but it requires persistent practice. If you want to learn, I can teach you."

Conrad happily recognized his teacher: "Then I have to call you Professor Valentino, but I don't have a brush or a drawing board."

Speaking of this, he seemed to think of something unusual, and his expression became a little strange, but there was a hint of excitement: "I heard Ursula—oh, she is a female friend of mine—she said Well, there is a popular painting method in the United States now, which uses the human body as a canvas. But that doesn’t seem cheap.”

"You're talking about body painting in New York, and it's really not cheap. And after the painting, those models will go to the shower immediately. If you want to take pictures as a souvenir, you need to pay extra." Valentino continued.

Conrad imagined it for a while, and couldn't help feeling unworthy of those painters: "Will it be washed off immediately after painting? What a pity! If a painter like you is willing to paint on me, it will be fine if I don't charge me. I can I can't bear to wash it off."

Valentino looked at his face that was glowing softly under the light, and suggested mysteriously, "If you want, I can draw a picture for you."

Conrad was a little unsure of what he meant, and looked at him half-supporting his head: "You mean, do you want to paint on me?"

Valentino nodded, looking at Conrad's cold white and delicate skin with a texture like plaster, he thought, I am afraid there is no better drawing board in the world than this.

Conrad became excited: "Okay! I promise I won't wash it tonight. What are you going to paint? I like tigers, no, it's good to paint workers' fists..."

"As for what to paint, you have to listen to me. I can draw the tiger and fist you like on paper and give it to you." Valentino began to adjust the paint.

Conrad thought about it, and then began to take off his clothes generously: "That's fine, remember to draw me a tiger tomorrow, I like Siberian tigers."

Valentino looked at his naked body and stopped what he was doing.He swept across the young man's body inadvertently, but his heart beat violently.He suddenly understood how the gods of Olympus had been carved.Conrad seems to be in a daze, his face is too relaxed, without any expression, but this unintentional relaxation is a hundred times richer than the expression that ordinary people try to put on.The well-shaped browbones and low cheekbones are fascinating.This is what Achilles would have looked like if he had lost his mind for a moment.

Seeing that he was not moving, Conrad brushed the blond hair by his ears, and urged: "If you don't adjust it, the paint will dry."

Valentino was startled by the clean and erotic breath on him, he knew what to paint.He hurriedly adjusted the paint and began to paint from Conrad's belly.Conrad twisted uncomfortably at the cool touch of the paintbrush.His waistline is a bit girlish, Valentino thought wildly.

After a while, Conrad saw clearly what Valentino had drawn, which was the same flower branches and vines as the background of the Art Nouveau painting in the room.A rose blooms in his belly.

"Flower power."*2 Valentino put down his pen and said.

Conrad caught the pun, giggled, and the flower quivered: "So we're hippies now?" He watched as Valentino put his brush aside and rested his head on The abdomen seemed to be tracing the lines of the petals with its eyes, and asked, "Aren't you going to draw?"

Valentino didn't answer him, but just erased a detail that wasn't drawn well with his finger.The warm and rough fingers brushed Conrad's lower abdomen vigorously, arousing a strange feeling.

Valentino straightened up, looked down into Conrad's clear eyes, and touched Conrad's face with his clean palm: "No, to be a hippie, you have to understand one more thing."

Conrad looked at the circle of golden fluff around Valentino's body against the light, and then looked back into his focused brown eyes. He intuitively felt that the meaning of this pair of eyes was different from usual, but he couldn't tell what the difference was. As if he was stunned, he asked in a low voice, "What is it?"

"It's their philosophy," Valentino's voice gradually lowered, and the two got closer and closer. Conrad heard him say something vague in English, "Make love, not fight. *3" Afterwards, he was gentle However, he embraced the innocent Conrad firmly, ignoring that the still-dry paint would stain the light-colored shirt, and kissed his beautiful neck fascinatedly.

*1 "The struggle continues!" is one of the slogans of Maystorm, original text: laluttecontinu

*2 One of the American hippie anti-Vietnam War ideas in the 60s, the power of flowers (powerofflower), refers to laying down weapons and using flowers to awaken the kindness and love in people's hearts.

*3 One of the slogans of American hippies in the 60s, original text: Makelove, notwar