Paris: The Novel (31 page)

Before they reached the Lycée Janson de Sailly, they turned right and soon came into a street of small stores, where they found a little place to sit down, and Édith ordered tea and a pastry.

“I have enjoyed my afternoon,” she said. “But I have to go to my aunt now.”

“The one who works for the lawyer.”

“For Monsieur Ney.” Her tone was respectful.

“I should be curious to see such an important gentleman.”

“I must go,” she said suddenly.

“When shall we next meet?”

“Wednesday is a good evening,” she answered. Then she was gone.

And so their meetings continued for several weeks. On Wednesdays she would come out of work with her mother as usual, and then continue alone to her aunt Adeline’s. Thomas would meet her. They would sit and talk for a while. She would let him accompany her some of the way toward her aunt’s, but never the whole way. Some Sundays he would go to his family in Montmartre, on others she would agree to meet him, and they’d wander about together quite happily. It was clear that, for the time being at least, Édith was keeping him at a distance, and he was content to be patient. He supposed that it was only natural caution on her part.

But he also had a sense that there were aspects of her life that had not been fully revealed to him yet.

In the month of October Thomas made two discoveries on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower. Both of them took him by surprise.

He had arrived as usual one morning when he saw a knot of people gathered by one of the tower’s four feet. As he approached, he saw both Jean Compagnon and Monsieur Eiffel watching closely while a gang of workmen that he’d never seen before were assembling a large piece of machinery.

Thomas had been working on this leg the day before, but Compagnon directed him to join another crew. By the lunchtime break, however, the new piece of machinery was fully assembled, and Thomas eagerly went to inspect it.

Eiffel saw him and gave a nod as he addressed the men who had gathered around.

“Well, my friends, I was asked a little while ago how we should raise the girder sections into place when the tower grew higher than the cranes. Here is the answer. It is a creeper crane. It will run on rails inside each leg of the tower. And when the tower is completed, those same rails will
carry the elevators that the public will use—unless they choose to take the stairs. Since the tower’s legs are at an angle, the crane and later the elevators will also run at an angle. Just like a funicular railway.” He smiled. “As we build up, they will accompany us. The arm of the crane will extend and allow each section to be raised, with the crane, so to speak, creeping along just behind. The cranes can also swivel, if desired, three hundred and sixty degrees.”

From that day, Thomas worked his way up the tower’s huge iron leg with the creeper crane for company.

He made the second discovery in the last week of October.

One feature of the building site was the care that Eiffel had expended on the safety precautions. By its nature, work on iron structures like this was dangerous. It was a lucky builder who could complete a great iron bridge without at least one worker badly injured. And in the case of the tower, its height dictated that any fall would surely be fatal.

So Eiffel had designed an elaborate system of movable barriers and safety nets. His aim was to do the near-impossible, and complete the project without losing a single man. After all, his workers were all used to operating on high structures. With care and attention, he believed his ambitious safety record could be achieved.

Until then, Thomas had worked with the same crew. They got on well together, and evidently Jean Compagnon had been satisfied with their work. He’d have let them know soon enough if he wasn’t.

One morning, there was a man short on a crew who worked near them, and Compagnon told him: “I’m putting you on the crew that’s short today.” So Thomas had gone up with them. He wasn’t concerned. His own crew had worked on the outside edge of the building, while the crew he was joining worked on the inside edge, only yards away. Indeed, it crossed his mind that they might even have asked for him. The work, naturally, was identical. As they went to their workstation, he looked back at his old crew and waved.

When he got to his position on the inner edge of the tower, he glanced down.

And froze.

A second later, his left hand was gripping the edge of a girder just above his shoulder; his right had found a metal strut just behind him, and was clenched around it so tightly that he could feel the metal edge biting painfully into the flesh. But he could do nothing about it. He couldn’t loosen
his grip. A cold panic seized him, as though all his strength were suddenly draining away through his feet. He stood there, unable to go forward or back, his breath coming short.

Thomas Gascon had never experienced panic before. It had never occurred to him that the sensation of working on the inner edge of the tower’s slope would be any different from working on the outer edge as he had been up till now. But yesterday, he’d had the network of girders under him. Today, there was nothing under his feet. Nothing except forty yards of empty space.

He’d supposed he had a good head for heights because he could stand on a hill and look down. And 120 feet wasn’t so high, in any case. But this was like stepping onto a tightrope.

And then he realized that two men were looking up at him. Monsieur Eiffel was smiling. But the eye of Jean Compagnon missed nothing, and he wasn’t smiling.

“What’s the matter?” his voice was sharp. “You want to come down?”

And at that moment Thomas Gascon knew that he was about to lose his job.

“Mais non!”
he cried. And then, he hardly knew how he did it, except that he knew he must, he made himself lean out a little, and somehow let go of the girder with his left hand and saluted Monsieur Eiffel.
“Bonjour, monsieur,”
he called. “I’m just waiting for your creeping crane to send me something.”

He could see Eiffel smile and nod, but Compagnon’s gimlet eye was still fixed on him suspiciously. So Thomas, wondering if Compagnon could see the white knuckles of his right hand, which was still clenched tight onto the metal strut, carefully turned and looked at one of his crew. And when he took his eyes off the yawning chasm underneath him, he felt a little better. The man was looking at him curiously also, so he forced himself to smile.

“When I worked with Monsieur Eiffel on the Statue of Liberty, he told me it would be the most famous project he ever did. Now he builds this.” He managed to loosen his hand from the metal strut and shrugged. “When we’re finished I shall ask him: ‘So, monsieur, what will you do for an encore?’ ”

The men laughed. He felt calmer now. For the rest of that day, he would glance down every little while, and gradually he got used to it.

That weekend, when he was up at Montmartre and Luc asked him, “How’s your head for heights?” Thomas just smiled.

“No problem,” he said.

In the second week of November he decided to take the plunge.

“I have to go to see my family on Sunday,” he said to Édith. “Would you like to come? I can show you Montmartre.”

She looked down thoughtfully.

“It’s a long way,” she said.

“Not really. We can take a tram to Clichy and walk up the hill.” He could see her still hesitating. “I think you should come if it’s not raining. But if it’s raining, there won’t be any view to show you.”

“I could come if there’s a view.”

“Exactly. I’ll have to have lunch with my family, but then I can show you around. If it’s a clear day, even in November, there are usually some artists painting outside.”

“All right,” she said.

They hailed a tram just north of the Arc de Triomphe. Since the trams had no official stops, but were hailed by people as they went along, the drivers used their discretion. For a respectable elderly lady, they’d pull up the horses, but not for young poor folk like Thomas and Édith. As she stepped onto the moving platform, Édith slipped, and if Thomas hadn’t caught her with his arm, she might have fallen. He used the opportunity to pull her close, and she didn’t seem to resist. But moments later she was sitting demurely beside him in the tram, and when he tried to put his hand on her leg, she gently removed it.

They got out of the tram at the Place de Clichy, and walked up the hill. As they neared the top, he guided her around the picturesque little streets and she remarked that even when she was a little girl, parts of Passy had still looked like this. The windmills on the hill delighted her. But as they started down the slope into the sprawling shantytown of the Maquis she said less, and it seemed to Thomas that she became a little thoughtful.

“It’s not a palace, where we live,” he said.

“Who wants to live in a palace?” She gave him a smile.

When they came to the house and went up the steps, they found the two Gascon parents, Luc, and also Nicole. They were all rather surprised that Thomas had brought a young woman with him, but Thomas told them easily that Édith was a friend from Passy, who’d never been up to Montmartre. “I said I would show her around, and that she could come and eat with us first,” he said to his mother. “Is that all right?”

“But of course.” His mother was all smiles. God forbid that any French family should not have food on the table for a guest. Though it was as well, Thomas thought, that it was Sunday, or there might not have been enough. “Did you go to Mass today?” she asked Édith.

“
Oui, madame
. With my mother,” Édith answered.

“You hear that?” said his mother to Nicole. “Perhaps you will accompany me next Sunday, instead of lazing in bed.”

“I was tired, Maman,” said Nicole irritably.

“Passy, eh?” said Monsieur Gascon. “Elegant quarter.”

“We used to have a farm there, monsieur,” said Édith, “but not anymore.”

“And what do you do, if I may ask?” inquired Thomas’s mother.

“I help my mother, madame. She’s the caretaker of the Lycée Janson de Sailly. But I also help my aunt Adeline. She has a very good position with Monsieur Ney the attorney, and it may be that I can take her place one day.”

“Janson de Sailly,” said his father. “I hear that’s very chic already.”

Thomas watched his mother making her own calculations with this information, while Nicole was eyeing Édith’s skirt and blouse, and her shoes. The clothes looked all right to him. What Nicole thought of them he couldn’t guess. Judging by his mother’s expression, she hadn’t made up her mind yet, but wasn’t especially impressed.

“This year I started work as a housemaid in a doctor’s house near the Place de Clichy,” Nicole announced.

“That sounds like a good position,” said Édith politely.

Nicole shrugged.

“It’s all right.”

There was enough food. A big plate of haricots verts appeared. There was even meat, though Thomas saw his mother discreetly cut two of the portions to a smaller size, to provide for Édith. There was a fruit pie. He was glad that his family could eat respectably on a Sunday, and supposed that the money he gave his mother must be helping them to do so. They
talked of this and that. His mother discovered that Édith was an only child.