Paris: The Novel (134 page)

“You all right, Michel?”

“I need a rest.” Michel pulled on his belt, Thomas returned to the vertical, and he took a step back. Just then, a soft owl hoot from far below told them the policeman was coming.

Five minutes later, they began again.

“It’s funny,” Thomas remarked as he leaned out, “I was hanging just like this the first time I saw my wife. From a balcony on the Champs-Élysées.”

“Eh?” said Michel.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Thomas. “Just hold on.”

He spent five minutes on the next cable. Rested a bit. Then the same on the third.

“We’ll have to move around to the other side for me to reach the others,” he said.

That took another five minutes. Far below, the scratching sounds ceased. Obviously Georges had done his work. But Thomas was determined to finish his self-appointed task up here. He was just about to start when another hoot from Jacquôt told him to wait.

This time, when they were ready to start again, Michel had a question.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said.

“What?”

“You know what you said about the two elevator cars balancing each other?”

“Yes.”

“So these cables we’re sawing at, they go right up to the top, over a drum, and down to the roof of the car on the other side.”

“Right.”

“So if you keep weakening the cables, they might give way, and if they do, then won’t the other car fall down?”

“Go on.”

“Well, if the other car falls all the way to the bottom and smashes, it’ll make a hell of a racket.”

“Go on.”

“People all around will be calling the police. We’ll get arrested.”

“Could get shot, I reckon, if you’re right.”

“Then this isn’t a good idea.”

“At my age,” Thomas told him with a shrug, “I don’t care.”

“But I’m not your age.”

“I know. But I’m not worried, because I don’t care if you get shot either. Hold tight.” And Thomas leaned out again.

“Salaud,”
said Michel.

Fifteen minutes later, after Thomas had cut more than halfway through all the cables, while Michel watched in the greatest misery, they were back on the gangway again. They paused for a moment. Thomas pointed up to the platform high above them.

“Can you make out the bottom of the elevator car hanging up there?”

“I think so.”

“Well, ever since the American Monsieur Otis invented this kind of elevator, nearly a century ago, they’ve had automatic brakes. They can’t fall.”

“Oh.”

The view from the gangway was truly wonderful. They could see all Paris bathed in the moonlight below. Thomas gazed up at the moon, gleaming against the backdrop of stars.

“You know what?” he said. “If Hitler wants to go up this tower, he’s buggered.”

Down on the second platform, they found Georges and his mate waiting patiently on top of the elevator car.

“All ready,” said Thomas.

They heard the cable cutters snap—once, twice … six times—and it was done. The elevator was disabled.

The descent from the second platform took twenty minutes. Five of those were a welcome rest while the policeman passed underneath. As they climbed out onto firm ground and Jacquôt joined them, they all shook hands and decided to split up into three groups. Thomas and
Michel proceeded together toward the river, taking the cable cutters with them. The bridge was empty. As they walked across, they tossed the wire cutters over the parapet and heard them make two soft splashes, like a pair of divers, in the waters of the Seine below.

“Can I ask you something?” said Michel, when this was done.

“Of course.”

“You know up there you told me the elevator couldn’t fall because it had safety brakes?”

“Yes.”

“When Georges was cutting the cables finally, I saw you staring up toward the top elevator, and when he cut the final cable, I saw you flinch.”

“Did I?” Thomas nodded. “I was pretty certain,” he admitted, “but”—he shrugged—“I could have been wrong.”

For Louise, the second half of 1940 was a strange time. In the first place, after the beautiful spring and the sudden, terrifying month of war, everything seemed normal.

France still had a French government: Marshal Pétain himself, military hero, in his eighties now, but with all his faculties. France had fought bravely and lost a hundred thousand men. Like Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, she had been unable to withstand the German blitzkrieg. If Marshal Pétain addressed them as Frenchmen and told them to cooperate with the German occupiers, who needed to argue? It wasn’t as if there was an alternative.

True, the lone voice of de Gaulle spoke from London. But in practical terms, he had nothing to offer. The British army had completely collapsed when they tried to fight the Germans, and been sent scurrying back home. Only the narrow waters of the English Channel had saved the British from being overrun at the same time as France. Their turn would come soon enough.

Meanwhile, the Germans had left France with her honor. Pétain’s French government was still in charge.

Well, more or less. Pétain himself was based in the south, in the town of Vichy, whose pure waters made it such a pleasant spa. The Mediterranean coast, Provence, the Midi, the deep central countryside of Limousin and the huge open hills of Auvergne were all in the Vichy zone. But the north of France, roughly from the Loire valley to the English Channel,
was under German military occupation, for which the French government had to pay. So was the western, Atlantic seaboard, from the Spanish border up through Bordeaux, the mouth of the Loire and into Brittany. Within these northern and western occupied zones, the Pétain government was technically in control, and French police maintained law and order, but the presence of German troops reminded everyone that France still had a German overlord whose will would prevail.

Yet Louise had to admit that, so far at least, the Germans had behaved politely. They had occupied certain buildings, of course. The Luftwaffe had taken over the charming Luxembourg Palace. Göring himself liked to live at the Ritz where, Louise soon heard, he liked to wear jewelry, and dress up in silk and satin dresses—though his tastes, it was soon confirmed, were not for men but for women, with whom he was regularly supplied. Other German generals were looking for mansions they could use. It was clear that the orders of the day for the German occupiers were simple: Don’t annoy the natives, and enjoy yourselves.

As for the Parisians, after the initial exodus, the city was filling up again. Life had to go on. Pétain the patriot had told them so. For many on the old military, monarchist right wing, and some of the bourgeoisie too—who, like Pétain himself, had never been so enamored of democracy in the first place—the new regime was not so bad. On the left, the communists had been ordered by Moscow to collaborate with the Germans because, since the new pact, Hitler was now Russia’s ally.

True, Hitler had come to Paris for a few hours on a Sunday in June and found that he couldn’t go up the Eiffel Tower because the elevator cables had been cut. But no one knew for sure who’d done it. The rumor was that some fellows from the Montmartre Maquis area had been behind it. But the old shantytown had a vow of silence. No one would ever get to the bottom of that business.

The question for Louise had been, what should she do?

She had formed her plan even before the baby was born. She didn’t want to bring the child up inside a brothel. So she had taken a modest but pleasant apartment not far away, opposite the Musée des Arts et Métiers. She engaged a nanny, and here the baby slept. She spent as much time in the new apartment as she could, but continued to use her apartment in the rue de Montmorency house to supervise that establishment.

By the time the little boy was ten, she estimated that she would have
paid off all her debts and accumulated enough money to retire from business and eventually leave him a good little inheritance. That was the plan.

She had named him Esmé, the old French name meaning “Beloved.” He was going to have everything that she had been denied. She had deliberately brought him into the world, she was never going to desert him and he was going to know that he was loved.

When she had first told Charlie she was pregnant, Louise had explained very frankly what she’d done.

“I chose you to be his father,” she said, “but I want him for myself. You’re free. I can look after him.” It was her pride that she could say this. And it was her absolute determination that no one, not even Charlie, was ever going to part them.

She also made one other stipulation.

“I don’t want you to tell your father or your stepmother about Esmé. That’s going to be a secret between you and me. I want you to promise me that.”

Charlie thought this second stipulation rather strange, but he’d agreed. The rest he accepted easily enough. Though she had never told him the story of who she really was, he could see that it was important to her. Most men in his situation, he supposed, would have been grateful to escape responsibility for an illegitimate child. But he still wanted to do something for his baby son. He knew this wasn’t virtue on his part. It was easy to be generous if you were rich.

“Come and see us,” she said. “Just don’t ever try to take him away.”

But she hadn’t foreseen the German occupation.

What was she to do now? She had no wish to provide the hospitality of L’Invitation au Voyage to Hitler’s henchmen. Could she afford to retire? Could she even sell the business in the middle of the occupation?

Before the end of July, the situation was made even worse for her when, to her surprise, she received a telephone call from Coco Chanel. Some years ago, the great mistress of fashion had decided to live in a luxurious suite at the Ritz, and she was calling from there.

“I just wanted you to know, Louise,” she said, “that the Ritz is simply swarming with the German High Command. I’ve told them all that you’re my friend, and that L’Invitation au Voyage is the place to visit in Paris.”

“Oh.”

“They all have masses of money, you know.”

“I know.” It was already a sore point with the French that the money they had to pay for the support of the occupying Germans was calculated in German marks, using an exchange rate that hugely favored them. As a result, the Germans could afford anything they wanted in Paris.

“I told them they can trust you,” Coco continued. “Don’t let me down.” Then she rang off.

Louise was still struggling with her conscience a day later when Charlie came to call.

When Charlie had told his father and Marie what he wanted, Roland had been doubtful.

“There’s no network to join,” he pointed out.

“Then I’ll have to build one.”

“It’s a pity we’ve lost so many men,” his father said.

It wasn’t just the loss of a hundred thousand, killed in May and June. By the time the fighting was over, the Germans had taken a million French troops as prisoners of war. Sadly, even the French troops evacuated at Dunkirk had been sent back to France by the British, who probably didn’t know what to do with them, and most of those had finished up in German prisoner-of-war camps too.

“As far as I can tell,” Marie had remarked, “most of the people of our sort would rather follow Pétain anyway.”

“That’s exactly why I’m not likely to be suspected,” Charlie told her. “And you can help me by providing cover. If we just act the part of conservative aristocrats, the Germans will suppose we’re on their side.”

The opportunity had come only two weeks later, when a large car with two outriders had drawn up at the château, and a smartly dressed German colonel and two young staff officers had alighted. At the door he had politely introduced himself as Colonel Walter, and explained that he was looking at châteaus which might be requisitioned for army use.

He spoke excellent French, and Charlie suspected that he might be taking a look at the occupants of the château as well as the building itself. When Marie asked if he could stay to lunch with his staff, he readily accepted.

As they toured the house, it was quickly established that both the German
and Roland de Cygne came from military families. Charlie was still walking with a stick and the colonel asked if this was a wound.