Paris: The Novel (29 page)

Within a week all Paris knew. The lovely daughter of Jacob the merchant had run away with a poor miller’s son. It was a humiliation. His family was dishonored. But one had to respect his reaction.

For Jacob the merchant was leaving Paris. He, with his wife and son, were setting forth for Aquitaine, where it was believed the couple were, and would not rest until Jacob had seen his daughter properly married in church. Then it was their hope to return to Paris where, if the young man was up to it, Jacob would take him into his business.

Not many fathers would have done it. They’d have cast their daughter out. But it was generally agreed that he was showing a truly Christian spirit.

The luckiest person in all this, people also said, was the miller’s son. He was going to get an heiress for his trouble.

“If only I’d known,” joked one of the eligible suitors for Naomi’s hand, “I’d have run away with her myself.”

It took Jacob ten days to close up his business and put his affairs in order. The merchant guild wished him a safe return. The royal authorities gave him a travel pass and wished him luck.

In the last week of October, in the year of Our Lord 1307, Jacob the merchant set out in a horse and cart, taking the rue Saint-Jacques, the
old pilgrim’s road that led up the hill past the university. Before passing through the gate, Jacob paused.

“Look back at the city,” he said to his son. “I shall never see it again, but perhaps you will one day. In better times.”

A week later, they reached Orléans.

Two days after that, however, instead of continuing southwest toward Aquitaine, they took another road that led them eastward. Journeying south and east by stages they continued another two weeks until they passed into Burgundy. And then they traveled another ten days until finally, looking eastward early one morning, Jacob said to his son: “What do you see in the distance?”

“I see mountains, whose peaks are covered with snow,” he answered.

“Those are the mountains of Savoy,” his father said.

By the time he reached them, he would be a Jew again.

And feeling a great weight of corruption and fear fall from his shoulders at last, he murmured the words he had missed for so long.

“Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

•  1887  •

They were all furious with him. Madame Michel was not speaking to his parents. As for Berthe, no one knew what she thought.

And how could he explain? He hadn’t liked Berthe so much, nor her mother’s business. He thought only of working on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower. But even if his parents understood, he wasn’t sure how much they’d care. His mother pursed her lips. His father looked glum. As well they might, having hoped he was going to feed them.

“I suppose,” his father once suggested, “you could still be an ironworker and marry Berthe.”

“I don’t think so,” said Thomas.

“The girl goes with the business,” said his mother simply. “It’s obvious.”

“You’ll just have to find another rich girl,” said Luc with a grin, but everyone ignored him.

So it was partly to escape his family for a while that, within a week of starting work on the tower, Thomas made an announcement.

“I think I’d better get lodgings closer to my work.”

“It’s only an hour’s walk,” his father pointed out.

“More than that. And the hours are long. Monsieur Eiffel’s got less than two years to build the tower.”

“You’ll be paying rent to someone instead of bringing the money home,” his mother said quietly.

“Just while I’m working across the river.”

He was being selfish and he knew it. Nobody said anything.

He found the lodgings without much difficulty.

In almost every house and apartment building in Paris, up in the roof, there was a warren of servants’ rooms, some of them garrets with windows, others hardly more than wooden-walled closets. Those not being used by servants could be let out by their owners to poor folk. An advertisement led Thomas to the house of an elderly gentleman who lived alone, with only a single servant, across the river from the building site on an ancient street named the rue de la Pompe, which worked its way up toward the avenue Victor Hugo. Having given proof that he was respectably employed on Monsieur Eiffel’s great project, Thomas was able to rent a tiny attic room with creaking floorboards, just enough space for a mattress on the floor, and a small round window through which he could look out at the surrounding rooftops. The old man asked a peppercorn rent, and it was only a short walk to the Pont d’Iéna, which gave straight onto the building site.

After that, Thomas went to see his parents every Sunday, and always gave his mother any spare money that he could.

Every morning, when he came onto the site, Thomas felt a sense of pride. As everyone knew from the newspapers, it was only three years since, in America, the 555-foot Washington Monument had surpassed the ancient pyramids and the medieval spires of Europe to become the tallest building in the world. But Monsieur Eiffel’s tower wouldn’t just beat the record. It was going to soar to almost twice that height—a triumph for France.

Yet the site was strangely quiet, almost deserted. In the huge open space, the tower’s four mighty feet looked like the stumps of some vanished fortress in the desert. And as the four spread legs of the tower began to grow from those feet, with the workmen up in the iron girders, the ground below was often nearly empty.

“Why is there nobody here?” a visitor once asked Thomas.

“Because Monsieur Eiffel is a genius,” Thomas proudly replied. “There are only a hundred and twenty of us workmen on the site at any one time. And we alone build the tower.”

Prefabrication. This was how it was done.

Out at the factory lay the network of girders, in their prefabricated sections fifteen feet long and weighing no more than three tons. Each day, the huge horse-drawn wagons would arrive at the site with just enough
sections for that day’s work. Big, steam-powered cranes would lift the sections up into position, and under the watchful eye of their foreman, Jean Compagnon, Thomas and his fellow workers—the flyers, as they were proudly called—would swing their hammers onto the hot rivets to fix them in place.

“The precision is astounding,” he told his family. “Every piece fits exactly, every hole is drilled to perfection. I never have to pause in my work.” He grinned. “The whole tower will go up like clockwork. It has to,” he added. “The exhibition starts in eighteen months.”

Soon after he began work on the site, he took his brother, Luc, around it, and showed him how everything was organized. Luc was much impressed.

“And how’s your head for heights?” Luc asked him.

“No problem,” Thomas told him. “None at all.”

The foreman of the flyers, Jean Compagnon, was a sturdy workman who looked like a battle-hardened sergeant. His watchful eyes missed nothing. But Monsieur Eiffel himself was also on-site most days. Thomas took care never to interrupt the great man, but if Eiffel saw the young worker, he’d always give him a friendly nod.

As the huge lower legs began to grow, upward and inward, it appeared as if the tower’s four feet were the corners of a vast iron pyramid. Day after day the sections went in. By the end of August, the legs were over forty feet high.

Early one evening, as he was looking at the progress before going home, Thomas heard a voice at his side.

“Well, young Gascon, are you enjoying being a flyer?”

“Oh yes, Monsieur Eiffel. It’s so well organized, monsieur.”

“Thank you.” Eiffel smiled. “I’ve done my best.”

“But I suppose this is the easy part,” Thomas ventured. “When we get higher …”

“Not at all, young man. This is the hardest part, I assure you.” Eiffel pointed to the rising legs that sloped in toward the center. “Those legs are inclined at an angle of fifty-four degrees. Does anything strike you about them?”

“Well …” Thomas didn’t like to say. But the great man nodded encouragingly. “Won’t they fall over?” he finally dared to ask.

“Exactly. They will fall over, I calculate, on the tenth day of October.
To be precise, when they reach a height of ninety-two feet.” He smiled. “But they will not fall over, my young friend, because we shall prop them up with big wooden pylons. You have seen the flying buttresses of Notre Dame?”

“Oui, monsieur.”

“They will look a bit like that, only they will be inside the legs. Then we shall continue to build the legs up to the height of the first huge platform, which will hold them all together. That will be at a height of one hunded eighty-two feet. And it will be necessary to put scaffolding under the middle of the platform while we build it, of course.” He paused. “It’s not easy to do all that, I assure you.”

“I understand, monsieur.”

“Then comes something rather special. I have to make sure that the platform is absolutely, and perfectly, level. How to do that, young Monsieur Gascon? Give it a shove?”

“I don’t know, monsieur.”

“Then I will tell you.” He pointed to one of the tower’s four great feet. “Under each foot is a system of pistons, operated by compressed water, which allows me to make minute and subtle adjustments to the height and angle of each leg in three dimensions. Surveyors will take the most careful measurements.” He gave a broad grin. “Then I’ll go up and check with a spirit level.”

“
Oui
, Monsieur Eiffel.”

“Any other questions?”

“I have one, monsieur.” Thomas pointed to the great cranes that hoisted the girders up into position. “Those cranes will go only so high. Nowhere near the height to which we’re building. When we get to the height of the cranes, what happens after that?”

“Bravo, young man! Excellent question.”

Thomas politely waited.

“You’ll see,” the great man said.

It was already growing dark as he crossed the Pont d’Iéna to the Right Bank. Ahead of him, on the slope overlooking the bridge, stood the strange, moorish-looking Trocadéro concert hall, built a decade ago for the last World’s Fair.

Thomas smiled to himself as he passed this exotic palace. Ten minutes
later he was at his lodgings. But he didn’t go in. He was feeling hungry. If he walked for another five minutes up the rue de la Pompe to where it crossed Victor Hugo, there was a little bar where he could get a steak and some haricots verts. He’d earned it.