Paris: The Novel (16 page)

The illness of Thomas Gascon lasted many weeks. At first they thought it was the flu. Then they feared tuberculosis.

When pneumonia finally set in, and a fever racked his body, and he became delirious, the doctor told his parents that he might survive, because he was young and strong.

By November, he was past the worst; by December he was resting. But in January the doctor warned his parents that his lungs were compromised.

It was his father who found an answer: a charcuterie at the bottom of the hill of Montmartre, and run by a widow he knew, named Madame Michel, who had a daughter. It wasn’t a bad place. Unwillingly, Thomas worked there through the early months of 1887.

But he still dreamed of working on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower, and one February day, when the weather was mild and he had the afternoon off, he decided to go down to look at the site.

The huge rectangle of the Champ de Mars lay about a mile south of the Arc de Triomphe, just across the river on the Left Bank. Until the eighteenth century, it had been a pleasant quarter of market gardens and allotments. But then a big military school was built along its southern edge, and the gardens running from the school to the Seine became a parade ground, and a site for great gatherings after the Revolution. The place had been made even more splendid a few years later when, to celebrate one of his many victories, the emperor Napoléon had ordered a fine bridge, the Pont d’Iéna, to be built across the Seine directly opposite the place. So the Champ de Mars had been an excellent choice for mounting the World’s Fair of 1889. People would be able to walk across the Pont d’Iéna to the Left Bank and then directly under Monsieur Eiffel’s astounding tower whose four, splayed iron feet would form the colossal entrance arch.

Everything had been set. Except for one thing.

Thomas remembered the day his father had come in with the news.

“Your friend Monsieur Eiffel has a problem,” he’d announced. “The city has told him to build his tower, but they’re giving him only a quarter of the money.”

“So who’s paying for it?”

“Eiffel. He’s got to pay for the tower himself.”

It was an extraordinary situation. To celebrate the centenary of the French Revolution, the city of Paris had ordered a tower and refused to pay for it.

But if Eiffel was a great and inventive engineer, he now showed that he was an entrepreneur of huge courage and vision. “Give me the right to the first twenty years of the tower’s earnings,” he said, “and I’ll find the money.”

So as Thomas approached the empty building site, he knew that before him lay not only the pride of France, but the financial triumph or ruin of Monsieur Eiffel himself.

In front of Thomas now was a huge field of mud. The great 136-yard square that would be the footprint of the tower was marked by huge trenches at the four corners—north, south, east and west—where crews of laborers were busily digging.

He started to walk onto the site to take a look. A man in an overcoat and bowler hat rushed over and told him sternly that he must leave. But after Thomas explained that he had worked for Monsieur Eiffel on the Statue of Liberty, and that he’d been sick, the man became friendly and offered to conduct him around.

They looked first at the two big excavations at the southern and eastern corners, where one could already see, at the bottom of the pit, a good, dry base where the concrete foundations could be poured. Then they walked over to one of the riverside diggings. And Thomas gasped.

The huge pit in front of him was like a mineshaft. Down at the bottom was a great, open metal box of the kind used to keep out river water when the piers of a bridge are being built. Inside it, the men were using pickaxes and shovels to tear away the ground.

“They’re already below the level of the Seine,” his guide explained. “The committee chose the site, but when Monsieur Eiffel tested it, he found that the ground on the riverside was so wet it wouldn’t take the ordinary foundations.” He grinned. “Paris would have had its own Leaning Tower of Pisa, but five times higher.”

“Can the tower still be built?”

“Oh yes. It’ll have two dry foundations, and two deep ones like this.” He smiled. “But it’s lucky Eiffel knows how to build in rivers.”

For nearly three more months, Thomas continued to work in the store. Madame Michel was kind to him. He also noticed something else.

Her daughter was a sallow, yellow-haired girl named Berthe of about his own age. She seldom spoke at all, and moved about behind the counter at a languid pace that, secretly, almost drove Thomas mad.

So he was greatly astonished when, in May, his father announced: “The widow likes you.”

“I’m glad.”

“So does Berthe.” His father smiled. “She likes you a lot.”

“Are you sure?” And when his father nodded and grinned, he was forced to say: “The feeling’s not mutual.”

“You could do well there,” his father continued, as though Thomas hadn’t spoken. “She’ll inherit the store, you know … It’s a nice little business. Marry her and you’ll be set up for life.”

“I’d rather die,” said Thomas.

“A man’s got to eat,” said his father. “Your mother thinks it’s a good idea, too.”

It was the last Sunday in May and he’d gone for a stroll around Montmartre in the afternoon. The sun was out, and as he entered an intimate little square called the Place du Tertre, he saw that several painters had set up their easels there.

Attracted by the cheap rents and picturesque surroundings, artists had taken to living up on Montmartre since about the time he was born. He’d heard tales of Monsieur Renoir up at the Moulin, and it was quite normal to find a few painters out in the open with their easels on a sunny afternoon. Thomas walked through the square glancing at the canvases as he went, but without much interest. Most of the artists were painting the view from the square along the street to the building site of Sacré Coeur, where the scaffolding made a striking outline against the sky. But as he passed one of them, he noticed something different.

The man was a good-looking fellow in his early thirties, with a light brown beard and a pipe. He had two easels, side by side. One held a sketchbook, the other a primed canvas on which he was just starting to work. Thomas stared at the sketch, and stopped.

“Pardon, monsieur,” he said politely, “but isn’t that the Gare Saint-Lazare?”

“It is.” The artist looked up with a pleasant smile. “It’s a sketch I made last winter. A snow scene, but I felt like working it up today.” He shrugged. “It’s nice to sit out in the sun.”

“I worked there last year,” said Thomas, inspecting the sketch. “I can see the railway lines, the steam from the trains. That’s exactly how it looks.”

“Thank you.”

“But why would you paint a railway?”

“Why not? Monet has painted several pictures of the Gare Saintazare.”

“So are you what they call an Impressionist?”

“You can call me that if you like.” The artist smiled. “The term began as an insult, you know. But nobody really knows what it means. Half the people they call Impressionists don’t in fact use the word.”

“You live here, monsieur?”

“Mostly. I was in Holland, in Rotterdam, this spring. I may go back there.”

“What is your name, monsieur?”

“Norbert Goeneutte.”

“You know Monsieur Renoir?”

“Very well. I have modeled for him, in fact.”

“My name is Thomas Gascon. I live here. I am an ironworker. I built the Statue of Liberty.” They shook hands. Thomas continued to inspect the sketch. “I still can’t believe you painted a railway line.”

“You expect artists to paint gods and goddesses in pretty Italian landscapes?”

“I don’t know.”

“Plenty of people expect that. But what I try to do, and Monet, and many others, is paint the world around us. Paint what we really see.”

“But a railway station isn’t beautiful …”

“Are you familiar with any writers?”

“I was at the funeral of Victor Hugo.”

“So was I. Can’t think how I missed you.” The artist paused a moment. “Hugo was a great man. No question. But for myself, I prefer another writer of that generation—and that’s Balzac. He tried to depict the exact reality of the world he saw all around him. From the richest aristocrat to the poorest fellow in the street, and all the men and women in between—lawyers, shopkeepers, whores, beggars. We call it realism. That’s what some of the people you call Impressionists are doing, too. Renoir painted the people at the Moulin de la Galette. I paint all kinds of things, including railway trains. As for beauty, what does that mean? A railway is beautiful to me. Because we don’t live in a world of nymphs and fawns and classical gods. We live in a world of railways, and steam and iron bridges. It’s new and exciting. It’s the great adventure. It’s the spirit of the age.” He grinned at Thomas. “You build the bridges, my friend, and I’ll paint them.”

Thomas stared at him. No one had ever spoken to him like this before. But he understood well enough. And the painter was right. The railways and their bridges were the spirit of the age. He, a humble ironworker, should be part of it. And the greatest iron construction in the history of the world was about to begin, here in Paris.

“I am going to be building Monsieur Eiffel’s tower,” he suddenly declared.

Norbert Goeneutte stared at his canvas thoughtfully for a moment, then he looked up and delivered his verdict.

“I congratulate you. That’s a big adventure, my friend.”

That Wednesday was the first of June. Luc was surprised when Thomas insisted he accompany him to Madame Michel’s emporium in the morning, but he set off with him all the same. It wasn’t until they were halfway down the hill of Montmartre that Thomas told him his plan.

“You’re mad,” said Luc. “What will our mother say? And father too.”

“I’m going to do it anyway,” said Thomas.

While Thomas waited, therefore, Luc went through the Place de Clichy to the widow’s store and told her: “My brother is sick today. He sent me to tell you and apologize.” Madame was most concerned, and only when Luc had assured her that Thomas had nothing more than an upset stomach, and that he would certainly be back at work the next day, did she let him go.