Paris: The Novel (4 page)

“No.”

The boy was thoughtful for a moment.

“Then nor shall I,” he said.

The path was curving toward the east, drawing closer to the outer edge of the cemetery.

“What happened to the Revolution, Maman? Why didn’t it last?”

His mother shrugged again.

“There was confusion. Napoléon came to power. He was half revolutionary, and half a Roman emperor. He nearly conquered all Europe before he was defeated.”

“Was he an atheist?”

“Who knows. The Church never got its power back, but he found the priests useful to him—like most rulers.”

“And after him, things went back to how they were before?”

“Not exactly. All the monarchs of Europe were terrified of revolution. For thirty years they managed to hold the forces of freedom down. The conservatives in France—the old monarchists, the rich bourgeois, everyone who feared change—they all supported conservative governments. The people had no power, the poor grew poorer. But the spirit of freedom never died. In 1848, revolutions started breaking out all over Europe, including here. Fat old Louis Philippe, the king of the bourgeois classes, was so frightened that he got in a taxi and disappeared to England. We became a Republic again. And we elected the nephew of Napoléon to lead it.”

“But he made himself emperor.”

“He wanted to be like his uncle. After two years leading the Republic, he made himself emperor—and since the great Napoléon had left a son who died, he called himself Napoléon III.” She shook her head. “Oh, he was a good showman. Baron Haussmann rebuilt Paris. There was a splendid new opera house. Huge exhibitions to which half the world came. But the poor were no better off. And then, after ten years, he made a stupid mistake. He started a war with Germany. But he was no general, and he lost it.”

“I remember when the Germans came to Paris.”

“They smashed our armies and surrounded Paris. It went on for months. We nearly starved. You did not know it, but at the end, the little stews I fed you were made of rats. You were only five, but luckily you were strong. Finally, when they bombarded us with heavy artillery, there was nothing more we could do. Paris surrendered.” She sighed. “The Germans
went back to Germany, but they made us give up Alsace and Lorraine—those beautiful regions along our side of the River Rhine, with their vineyards and mountains. France was humiliated.”

“It was after that when my father was killed. You always told me he died fighting. But I never really understood. The teachers in school say—”

“Never mind what they say,” his mother cut in. “I will tell you what happened.” She paused nonetheless, and upon her face there briefly appeared the ghost of a tender smile.

“You know,” she continued, “when I wanted to marry, my family were not very happy. We were quite poor, but my father was a schoolteacher, and he wanted me to marry an educated man. Jean Le Sourd was the son of a laborer, with little formal schooling. He worked at a printers, setting type. But he had an enormous curiosity.”

“So what happened?”

“My father decided to educate my future husband. And your father didn’t mind. In fact, he was a wonderful student, and soon he was reading everything. In the end, I think he had read more than any man I know. And it was through his study that he came to the beliefs for which he died.”

“He believed in the Revolution.”

“Your father came to understand that even the French Revolution was not enough. By the time you were born, he knew that the only way forward was the absolute rule of the people and the end of private property. And many brave men thought the same thing.”

On their right now, behind some trees, they could see the cemetery’s outer wall. They were almost at their destination.

“Four years ago,” she continued, “it seemed the chance had come. Napoléon III was defeated. The government, such as it was, rested in the hands of the National Assembly, which had fled to the country palace of Versailles. The deputies were so conservative, we thought they might decide upon another monarchy. The Assembly feared Paris, you see, because we had our own militia and a lot of cannon up on the hill of Montmartre. They sent troops to take our cannon. But the troops joined us. And suddenly it happened: Paris decided to govern itself. That was the Commune.”

“My teachers say it didn’t go well.”

“They lie. It was a wonderful time, that early spring. Everything functioned. The Commune took over Church property. They started giving
women equal rights. We flew the Red Flag of the people. Men like your father were organizing whole districts like workers’ states. The Assembly at Versailles was terrified.”

“Then the Assembly attacked Paris?”

“They were stronger by then. They had army troops. The Germans even returned prisoners of war to strengthen the Versailles army against the people. It was disgusting. We defended the gates of Paris. We put up barricades in the street. The poor of the city fought like heroes. But in the end, they were too strong for us. The final week of May—Bloody Week—was the worst …”

The widow Le Sourd stopped speaking now for a few moments. They had come to the southeastern corner of the cemetery now, where the path rose more steeply as it curved to the left up the central hill. To the right of the cobbled walk, down a slope, stood the blank stone face of the graveyard’s outer wall, with a small, empty triangle of ground in front of it. It was a nondescript little corner of the place that had never been given any dignity or name.

“In the end,” the widow went on quietly, “the last area to hold out was the poor quarter of Belleville just nearby. Some of our people were fighting up there.” She gestured to the tombs on the crown of the hill behind them. “Finally, it was over. The last hundred or so of the Communards were captured. One of them was your father.”

“You mean, they took him to prison?”

“No. There was an officer in charge of the troops. He ordered them to take the prisoners down there.” She pointed to the blank stretch of wall. “Then he lined up his troops and ordered them to shoot the prisoners. Just like that. So this is where your father died, and that is how. Now you know.”

Then the tall, gaunt widow Le Sourd suddenly started to weep. And her son watched. But she soon corrected herself and gazed stonily, for a minute or so, at the blank wall where her marriage ended.

“Let us go now,” she said. And they began to walk back.

They were nearly in sight of the entrance to the cemetery when Jacques interrupted her thoughts.

“What happened to the officer who had them shot like that?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

“You know this? You know who it was?”

“I discovered. He is an aristocrat, as you might expect. There are still
plenty of them in the army. His name is the Vicomte de Cygne.” She shrugged. “He has a son, younger than you, called Roland.”

Jacques Le Sourd was silent for a minute.

“Then one day I shall kill his son.” It was said quietly, but it was final.

His mother did not respond. She walked on a dozen paces. Was she going to tell him not to think of vengeance? Not at all. Her love had been passionate, and passion takes no prisoners. The righteous strike down their enemies. It is their destiny.

“Have patience, Jacques,” she answered. “Wait until the time is right.”

“I shall wait,” the boy said. “But Roland de Cygne will die.”

•  1883  •

The day started badly. His little brother Luc had disappeared.

Thomas Gascon loved his family. His elder sister, Adèle, had married and moved away; and his younger sister, Nicole, was always with her best friend, Yvette, whose conversation bored him. But Luc was special. He was the baby of the family. The funny little boy whom everybody loved. Thomas had been almost ten when he was born, and had been his guide, philosopher and friend ever since.

In fact, Luc had been absent the evening before. But since his father had assured them that the boy was with his cousins who lived less than a mile away, nobody had worried. Only when Thomas was about to go to work had he overheard his mother’s cry.

“You mean you don’t
know
he’s at your sister’s?”

“But of course he’s there.” His father’s voice from his bed. “He went there yesterday afternoon. Where else would he be?”

Monsieur Gascon was an easygoing man. He earned his living as a water carrier, but he wasn’t very reliable. “He works exactly as much as he has to,” his wife would say, “and not a second more.” And he would have agreed with her because, in his mind, this was the only reasonable thing to do. “Life is for living,” he’d say. “If you can’t sit and have a glass of wine …” He’d make a gesture, indicating the futility of all other occupations. Not that he drank so much. But sitting was important to him.

He appeared now, barefoot and unshaven, pulling on his clothes and ready to argue. But his wife cut him off.

“Nicole,” she commanded, “run to your aunt at once and see if Luc
is there.” Then, turning to her husband: “Ask the neighbors if they have seen your son. To your shame!” she added furiously.

“What shall I do?” Thomas asked.

“Go to work, of course.”

“But …” Thomas wasn’t happy about leaving without knowing that his brother was safe.

“You want to be late and lose your job?” his mother demanded crossly, then softened. “You’re a good boy, Thomas. Your father is probably right that he’s at your aunt’s.” And seeing her son still hesitate. “Don’t worry. If there’s a problem, I’ll send Nicole to find you. I promise.”

So Thomas ran down the hill of Montmartre.

Although he was worried about his little brother, he certainly didn’t want to lose his job. Before becoming a water carrier, his father had always been a laborer, in and out of work all the time. But his mother had wanted Thomas to have a skill, and he’d become an ironworker. Just under medium height, Thomas was stocky and strong, and he had a good eye. He’d learned fast, and although he wasn’t yet twenty, the older men were always glad to have him on their team, and teach him.

It was a fine morning in late spring. He was wearing an open shirt and a short jacket. His baggy trousers were held up with a broad leather belt; his worker’s boots scuffed the powdery dirt in the street. He had only two and a half miles to walk.

The geography of Paris was very simple. Beginning with the ancient oval of settlement on the banks of the Seine around its central island, the city had gradually expanded down the centuries, enclosed by walls that were built in a series of ever-larger concentric ovals. By the late eighteenth century, just before the French Revolution, the city was enclosed by a customs wall, approximately two miles out from the Seine, at whose many gates there were toll booths controlled by hated tax collectors. Outside this large oval lay a huge ring of suburbs and villages, including, to the east, the cemetery of Père Lachaise, and to the north, the hill of Montmartre. Since the Revolution, the hated old customs wall had been dismantled, and just before the recent war with the Germans, a vast line of outer fortifications had enclosed even the outer suburbs. But many of them, especially Montmartre, still looked like the ancient villages they were.

At the bottom of the hill of Montmartre, Thomas crossed the untidy old Place de Clichy, and entered a long boulevard that ran southwest, along the line of the dismantled customs wall, with the streets of the city
on his left, and the sprawling suburb of Batignolles village on his right. Occasionally a tram pulled by a team of horses rumbled slowly past him, but like most laboring men he seldom cared to pay the fare to go on the trams and omnibuses whose horses, in any case, hardly went faster than a brisk walk.

After half an hour, he came to a line of smart iron railings on his left, through which one could see the green spaces of the Parc Monceau. Formerly a princely garden, now an elegant public space, the Parc Monceau was the entrance to an exclusive quarter. Gathered around its southern side were the impressive private mansions of the richest bourgeoisie. But its most charming feature lay up here, in the middle of the railings on the northern side.

It looked like a small, round Roman temple. In fact, it was the old toll booth. But in keeping with its aristocratic surroundings, this humdrum function had been served by a perfect, domed rotunda encircled by classical columns. Thomas liked the little temple. It was also the sign that he had reached his destination.

Crossing the boulevard, he walked northward fifty yards and turned left into the rue de Chazelles.

A generation ago, this had been a modest area of workshops and allotments. Then small, two-story villas with mansard roofs had begun to appear. And since Baron Haussmann had started carving his great thoroughfares through the quarter, some long, six-story apartment blocks could be seen nearby. The project that Thomas Gascon was working on lay at number 25 rue de Chazelles, on the north side of the street, rising high above the roofs of the neighboring villas: a gigantic truncated figure, completed to its midriff, swathed in metal drapery and surrounded by scaffolding. It was so tall that it could be seen from across the Parc Monceau.

It was the Statue of Liberty.

The workshops of Gaget, Gauthier et Cie occupied a large site that ran back to the street behind. There were several big, high sheds, a foundry and a movable crane. In the middle of the site stood the huge torso.

First, Thomas went into the shed on the left. This was the atelier where the craftsmen worked at long tables, making the decorative friezes for the head and the torch. He loved watching them work, but his real reason for entering was because the bald and corpulent foreman was usually here in the early morning, and he liked to say a polite
“Bonjour, monsieur”
to remind that all-powerful figure of his existence.

This morning, however, the foreman was preoccupied. Monsieur Bartholdi was there. The designer of the Statue of Liberty looked every inch the fashionable artist he was, with his handsome, finely drawn face, his broad brow, and his floppy cravat tied in a large bow. He’d been working on the idea for years. Originally he had conceived a similar statue to stand at the entrance to the Suez Canal, the gateway to the East. That project had been abandoned. But then this other, wonderful opportunity had arisen. With a huge public subscription, the people of France would commission a statue as a gift to America, to stand beside New York Harbor, the gateway to the West. And now Monsieur Bartholdi had become one of the most famous artists in the world.