Paris: The Novel (43 page)

On the evening before, Thomas went up to Montmartre to see his family. He ate with his parents and sister. Luc was working, and Thomas decided to stay the night up at the house so that he could see his brother. It was after midnight when Luc arrived, and as it was warm, the two brothers sat out on the wall nearby under the stars to chat awhile.

“I went to the tower this afternoon,” Luc informed him. “It’s only been open two days, and you still can’t use the elevators, but I wanted to go and see.” He smiled. “Most people only walk up to the first platform, but
I went on to the second. It’s still not open above that. And guess who I met there?”

“Tell me.”

“The man himself. Monsieur Eiffel. He was walking up to his office at the top. He’s certainly fit. He told me he does it every day.”

“You spoke to him?” After his disgrace, Thomas was a little nervous of what the great man might have had to say.

“Certainly. He recognized me. He said I could walk up to the top with him if I liked. So of course I did.”

“I see.”

“And I saw the plaque with all the workers’ names on it.”

“Ah.” Thomas sighed. “I didn’t tell you yet. But unfortunately …,” he began.

“I saw your name.”

Thomas started. His name? Could there have been another Gascon working on the tower he didn’t know about?

“My name? You are sure?”

“It was Monsieur Eiffel who pointed it out to me. ‘There’s your brother’s name,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget to tell him you saw it.’ ”

“Oh,” said Thomas.

“So I went up to the top and he went up into his office and I walked around the viewing platform. Quite a view. It must be like that when you’re up in a balloon.”

“What did you do then?”

“I came down, of course. What else?”

“Nothing.”

“
Il est gentil
, your Monsieur Eiffel. He’s nice.”

“Yes,” said Thomas. “He is.”

Édith wasn’t sure. Aunt Adeline was.

“This is the time to end it. You made a mistake, but now that is over. You’re not pregnant anymore. You’re free. He’s a nice boy, but he seems to have a talent for getting in trouble, and he hasn’t a sou.”

Even Édith’s mother did her best to give her good advice.

“You know that butcher up at the top of the rue de la Pompe? Well, his son has his eye on you. And that junior master at the lycée, the one with
the little beard, I see him looking at you when he leaves the building. You should encourage him, you know.”

“A schoolmaster’s never going to marry me.”

“You never know. I could talk to him.”

“That may not help.”

She was determined to decide for herself, but she couldn’t deny that her aunt was right. Thomas might be as much as she could hope for, but he was no safe haven.

And then there was his family. Better than many in the Maquis, she supposed, but she hadn’t felt any particular kinship with them. She’d probably finish up working to support them.

As for his little brother Luc … There was something about young Luc that she didn’t like. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she didn’t trust him.

So what did that leave? Only the fact that when she felt Thomas’s strong arm around her, she was at peace. That he was attentive to her, and that she was happy in his company. That he loved her, and that she liked the way his body was made, and the scent of it. And that she knew he was a good man. And that therefore, taking all these things together, she supposed that in a modest way she loved him. And that sometimes she yearned for him. But that at other times she could almost forget him.

So she still didn’t know what to do, and she wished that she did, because she didn’t like to be dishonest with him. And perhaps that was why, recently, she had somehow avoided him.

During April, she’d seen him several times, but only in the evenings after her work. She hadn’t been out with him at a weekend. There had been things to do helping Aunt Adeline, of course, but she knew she could have made time for him if she’d really wanted to.

He’d asked her to the World’s Fair. But she had an easy excuse for putting that off. She wanted to go up the tower. “And I’m not walking,” she said. “I want to take the elevator.” The tower had finally opened to the public three days ago, but the elevators still weren’t fully operational, and probably wouldn’t be for another three weeks. And by that time …

For by the start of May it seemed to her that, if it hadn’t been for the tickets to the opening of the Wild West show, which she really wanted to see, she might have broken with Thomas already.

Thomas came to pick her up at noon. Soon, they were walking down the avenue de la Grande-Armée westward toward Neuilly. Thomas was
wearing his new suit that he was proud of. She was wearing a summer dress with a silk shawl that Aunt Adeline had found for her. Thomas offered her his arm, and she put her hand through it. She liked walking with him like that.

At the bottom of the avenue where it reached the Bois de Boulogne they turned right, and soon came to the part of Neuilly that was still open ground. In the middle of this open space stood the remains of an old fort, and here Buffalo Bill had built his camp.

There were two hundred tents, and big corrals for the horses and the shaggy buffalo—which had caused a sensation when they were led down the road from the railway station to the camp. And in the center of it all were the splendid arena and a newly constructed grandstand that would hold fifteen thousand spectators.

“Look at the crowd,” said Thomas. They were early, but already a sea of people was flowing through the entrance. And it wasn’t just any crowd.

The president of France, Monsieur Carnot, and his wife were to be present. Royalty and ambassadors, generals and aristocrats, distinguished visitors from all over the world, including a large party of visiting Americans—the stands were packed. Everyone who was anyone was there. And so was Thomas Gascon.

It amused him that he and Édith were there and that Monsieur Ney and Hortense were not.

And all that packed crowd—except of course the Americans—were united by two things. They were all excited to be there. And they were not quite sure what the show was about.

The opening of the show was clear enough. It was a huge parade around the ring of all the colorful cast. Cowboys and cowgirls with whirling lassoes, magnificent Indians in feathers and warpaint, Mexicans, Canadian trappers—French Canadians, of course—with their huskies, all that was brave and dashing and exotic in the huge, wild North American spaces. The crowd was delighted. Then came a single young lady, Annie Oakley, with her guns. The crowd clapped politely, not knowing much about her. And finally, the hero of the West, the greatest showman of them all, Buffalo Bill himself in his buckskins and big cowboy hat, his hair flowing behind him, entered at a gallop, whirled around the ring and made a magnificent, sweeping salute to the president of France.

The crowd roared. So far so good.

Thomas offered Édith the bag of popcorn he had purchased at the entrance.

“What is it?” she asked uncertainly.

“God knows. It’s American. Try it.”

She did, and made a face. But a few moments later, she dipped her hand in again.

The first reenactment of Wild West history was the attack of the Redskins on the Pioneers. The show’s regular man, to whom God had given a magnificent, carrying voice, declaimed the narrative so all could hear, the trappers formed their wagons into a circle, the Indians whooped—the riding and the action were altogether splendid.

There was only one problem.

“What’s going on? What’s it about?” asked Édith.

“I don’t know,” said Thomas.

Nor, apart from the Americans in the stand, did anyone else. For although the announcer had a mighty voice, and although he’d been practicing his lines in French for weeks, his idea of French pronunciation was even stranger to his audience than the Wild West itself. As the trumpet sounded, and the U.S. Cavalry came riding in to the rescue, the French were not quite certain who the men in uniform were, or why they were there.

As the thrilling scene ended, they waited in silence.

“Is that it?” whispered Édith. “Should we applaud?”

“Let’s wait till someone else does,” said Thomas. Most of the audience was in the same dilemma. Fortunately the Americans started to applaud, and so everyone thankfully followed suit. But it was not the start that Buffalo Bill was used to.

So as the audience waited for the next tableau, and prepared to strain their ears to try to decipher the announcement—for they all wanted to be pleased—they were a little surprised to see instead the slim young lady walk into the ring, accompanied by some assistants and a table of guns.

Thomas frowned. This surely was an entr’acte, supposed to come later in the show. The first piece of action had at least been exotic. The young lady seemed pleasant enough, but not very exciting. He hoped Édith wasn’t going to be disappointed by the whole thing.

The young performer was looking around at her audience, sensing them. But she remained composed.

From somewhere, a glass ball rose high into the air. Easily, hardly glancing at it, she raised her rifle and shot it so that it burst into a thousand fragments. A cool shot certainly. Another ball, and a second. Two shots, so close together it seemed hardly possible. Both glass balls burst. Very good, it had to be said. She went to the table and picked up another gun. As she did so, three balls went up, in different directions. Three bangs, three hits.

And now it began. Glass balls, clay pigeons, a playing card, a cigar, objects on stands, things tossed in the air, in front of her, behind her, faster and faster, high and low. She was grabbing guns from the table and throwing them down with bewildering speed. Generals boggled, sporting aristocrats leaned forward in their seats, ladies dropped their fans. Annie Oakley did not miss. They had never seen anything like it. The cries of astonishment rose, people were standing in their seats. And when she had exhausted every gun and the haze of smoke was hanging over the center of the arena, and she took her bow, the audience roared, and threw handkerchiefs at her feet.

She ran off gaily, and the audience sank into their seats.

And then she was back again, but riding a horse. Around the arena she rode, and the balls started rising into the air, and she shot them as she went. And then silver French coins went up, sparkling in the sun, and she shot them too. But now the audience was beyond ecstasy. As well they might be. For what they were seeing was close to a miracle, and Annie Oakley was, quite likely, the finest shot the world has ever known.

After that, the audience was won. They cheered the Mexicans, and the buffalo, and the Indian battles and the taming of the West. They might not be sure exactly what it all signified, but they didn’t care.

Buffalo Bill was a big success.

And it was understandable. The Americans might speak abominable French, but weren’t the two countries historic soul mates? France, for whatever reasons, had helped the American colonies break free of England in the American Revolution, which in turn inspired the French to follow with an even greater revolution of their own. And if the French Revolution had been for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, were these not, in a different manifestation, the watchwords of the American Wild West as well?

Indeed, many in that audience may have reflected, after France’s humiliation by Germany not twenty years ago, perhaps she needed heroes with the brave spirit of Buffalo Bill to restore her honor still.

He was the toast of the town all summer.

So it was a flushed and excited Thomas who conducted Édith away from the Wild West show late that afternoon. Then, when they got to the bottom of the avenue de la Grande-Armée, instead of walking up it, they turned into the leafy Bois de Boulogne, and walked along a pleasant alley a little way.

Then Thomas kissed Édith, and she kissed him back. And he hadn’t planned it at all, but there was no one else in the alley just then, and so he suddenly went down on one knee and said: “Will you marry me?”

•  1462  •

In the tavern they called the Rising Sun, Jean Le Sourd was holding court. Le Sourd. It meant “the Deaf One.”

Not that Jean Le Sourd was deaf. Not at all. He could have heard a pin drop in the street outside. It was said he could hear men’s thoughts. Certainly, if a man even thought of reaching for a knife, Le Sourd’s own knife would be at that man’s throat before he had a chance and, like as not, have slit that throat from ear to ear, not out of malice, but just as a precaution.

Rouge Gorge
, they also called him. Red Throat.

But mostly they called him Le Sourd because, if a man crossed him, he was deaf to all entreaty. There was no second chance. There was no use pleading. There was no mercy. And within the territory comprising a network of a dozen streets on one side of the old market of Les Halles, Jean Le Sourd was king. The Rising Sun tavern was where he liked to hold his court.

Despite its name, there was nothing sunny about the place. The small street in which it was to be found was dark and narrow. The alley that ran down beside it, and where Le Sourd lived, was scarcely wide enough for two cats to walk side by side, and the overhanging stories above drew so close together that a mouse could leap across, and the stench of urine clung to the walls.