Paris: The Novel (6 page)

And for that reason, as he gazed at the sacred site on the hill of Montmartre, he began to feel a sense of dread.

The hill was mainly composed of the soft stone material known as gypsum, which possessed two qualities. First, it would slowly dissolve in water, and was thus a poor foundation for any large building. Second, when heated, after giving off steam, it could easily be ground to the powder from which white plaster was made. For that reason, men had been burrowing into the hill of Montmartre for centuries to extract the gypsum. And so famous had these quarryings become that now, even across the oceans, white plaster had come to be known as plaster of Paris.

When the builders of Sacré Coeur began their task, therefore, they found that the underlying terrain was not only soft, but so honeycombed with mine shafts and tunnels that, had the great building been placed directly upon it, the entire hill would surely have collapsed, leaving the church in a stupendous sinkhole.

The solution had been very French: a combination of elegant logic and vast ambition. Eighty-three gigantic shafts were dug, each over a hundred feet deep, filled with concrete. Upon these mighty columns, like a huge box almost as deep as the church above, the crypt was constructed as a platform. This work alone had taken almost a decade, and by the end of it, even those who hated the project would remark with wry amusement: “Montmartre isn’t holding up the church. It’s the church that’s holding up Montmartre.”

Every week, Thomas had gone to the site to gaze. Sometimes a friendly workman would take him to see the cavernous excavations and giant masonry up close. Even when the work on the church itself had begun, the site was still a muddy mess, cratered with pits and trenches. And now, as he stared at the high boards of the fence, the thought came to him, with a horrible urgency: What if his poor little brother’s body had been dumped somewhere on that site? It might be days before it was noticed, if it hadn’t already been covered over. Or what if it had been dragged into the maze of tunnels and shafts below? There were ways into that labyrinth, but once inside it was easy to get lost. Was Luc down there, in the dark and secret chambers of the hill?

No, he told himself, no. He mustn’t think like this. Luc was alive. Just waiting to be found. All he had to do was think. Where might he be?

He walked forward to the corner of the street below and paused. All Paris lay before him. Here and there a golden dome could be seen, or a church steeple rising above the rooftops. On the main island in the Seine, the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral rose higher than all. And above them, the blue sky still reigned, uninterrupted. And telling him nothing.

He tried to pray. But God and His angels were silent as well.

So after a while, he started along the street that led westward along the contour of the hill. There were some houses here, of the better sort, with small gardens. The lane began to descend. On his right a steep bank of land appeared, with a garden wall above it. The bank was covered with bushes.

“Psst. Thomas.” A whisper from above. He stopped. His heart leaped.
He looked up into the bushes. He couldn’t see anyone. “Are you alone? Is anybody in the lane?” It was Luc’s voice.

“Nobody,” said Thomas.

“I’m coming down.” Moments later, Luc was at his side.

They both had the same soft brown eyes. But where Thomas Gascon was thickset and sturdy, his brother Luc, at the age of nine, was a thin little boy. The features of the young workman’s sunburned face were short and straight, and his close-cropped brown hair was already showing the first, faint signs of thinning. His brother’s skin was paler, his hair was dark and long, his nose more aquiline. He might have been a young Italian boy—looks he inherited from his father’s mother, who had come to Paris from Toulon.

He was dirty and his hair was a mess, but apart from that he didn’t look too bad.

“I’m hungry,” he said. He’d been hiding there all night. “I was going to wait until this evening and go down the hill, so I could meet you coming back from work,” he explained.

“Why didn’t you go home? Mother and Father are sick with worry.”

Luc shook his head.

“They said they’d be waiting for me. They said they’d kill me.”

“Who?”

“The Dalou boys.”

“Oh.” This was serious. There were several gangs of boys in the Maquis, but the Dalou boys were vicious. If they told Luc they’d kill him, he could expect to be hurt badly. And they were quite capable of waiting up for him all night. “What did you do to them?” Thomas asked.

“Aunt Lilly gave me a balloon. I met them in the street and Antoine Dalou said he wanted it. But I said no. Then Jean Dalou knocked me down and took it.”

“And then?”

“I was unhappy. I wept.”

“So?”

“As they were going away, I threw a broken bottle at the balloon, and it burst.”

“Why did you do that?”

“So that they shouldn’t have it, either.”

Thomas shook his head.

“That was stupid.”

“Then they came after me, and Antoine Dalou picked up some big stones to throw at me, and I ran. He hit me once, in the back. And I got away. But they didn’t give up. And Jean Dalou shouted that they were going to kill me, and that I’d never get home alive. So I stayed away. They won’t attack you, though. They’ll be afraid of you.”

“I can get you home,” said Thomas. “But what then?”

“I don’t know. Can I go and live in America?”

“No.” Thomas took his hand. “Let’s go.”

As soon as Luc was safely home, Thomas went out again.

It didn’t take him long to find the Dalou boys. They were hanging out near their shack on the other side of the Maquis. Most of the little gang seemed to be there: Antoine, the same age as Luc, with a narrow face like a ferret; Jean Dalou, a bit better looking, and a couple of years older, who led the gang; Guy, one of the Noir family, their cousin, a woebegone-looking boy, with a vicious bite; and two or three others. Thomas came straight to the point.

“My brother shouldn’t have burst the balloon,” he said to Jean Dalou. “But it wasn’t kind of you to take it.”

Nobody said anything.

“Anyway,” Thomas continued, “it’s over. But leave my brother alone, or I shall be angry.”

Jean Dalou didn’t reply. Then Antoine Dalou spoke.

“I kept the broken bottle he threw. He’s going to get it back in his face.”

Instinctively, Thomas made a move toward him. As he did so, Jean Dalou shouted, “Bertrand!” And a moment later the door of the shack burst open and a young man rushed out. Thomas silently cursed. He’d forgotten about Jean’s elder brother.

Bertrand Dalou was about the same age as Thomas. He worked, sporadically, on construction sites. He had a great mop of shaggy brown hair that was both greasy and dusty, since he seldom washed. He looked furiously at Thomas, while Jean Dalou shouted: “His brother threw a broken bottle at Antoine, and now he’s come to beat Antoine up.”

“Liar!” cried Thomas. “My brother was out all night, with the police looking for him, because these boys said they’d kill him. I came to tell them to leave him alone. You want the police instead?”

Bertrand Dalou spat. It didn’t matter what the truth was, and they
both knew it. Honor was at stake. And there was only one way to deal with that, in the Maquis. He began to circle, and Thomas did the same.

Thomas had never fought Bertrand before, but since he was a Dalou, he’d be fighting as dirty as he knew. The question was, how much did he know?

His first move wasn’t subtle. He rushed as though to close, swung his fist toward Thomas’s face, to make him draw his head back, and launched a savage kick to his groin. But instead of blocking with his leg, Thomas leaped back, caught Bertrand’s leg on the swing and wrenched it upward so that Bertrand crashed to the ground. Dalou was quick though. Thomas hardly got one kick in before he was up again.

A moment later they were grappling. Bertrand tried to throw him, but Thomas kept his balance and got in a short, hard punch just below the heart that shook Dalou up enough for Thomas to get him in a throttle hold. He squeezed. He wasn’t careful enough, though, and the Dalou boy punched him so hard in the eye that he let go.

Again they circled. Thomas’s eye was throbbing, and soon it would start to close up. The fight had better not last too long.

Dalou’s next move was cunning. Putting his tousled head down, he made another rush toward Thomas, as if to butt him in the midriff and knock him over. Only at the last instant did Thomas see the hand come up in a two-fingered eye gouge that could have blinded him. Quick as a flash, he whipped his fist up in front of his nose so that Bertrand’s fingers smashed into his knuckles.

Watching his opponent recoil, Thomas wondered what was coming next. He didn’t have to wait long. Bertrand’s hand suddenly clapped down to his pocket. Thomas saw the hand starting to come out again, and knew what it meant. If things weren’t going to get really ugly, he had one second, and he must not miss. The hand was out. The razor was opening.

He kicked. Thank God he was fast. Dalou’s hand jerked violently up as the razor flew into the air. With a cry of pain Dalou looked up, to see where his razor would fall. And that was his mistake.

It was time to end the fight. One more kick. A big one. With perfect speed and balance, Thomas struck. His heavy workman’s boot swung up into Bertrand’s groin with such a mighty impact that it lifted the eldest Dalou brother clean off the ground so that he seemed to hang in the air, like a rag doll, before falling to the ground.

Thomas circled him, looking down, ready to strike again, but there was no need. Bertrand Dalou was staying down.

It was over. Order, such as it was in the Maquis, had been restored. The Dalou gang wouldn’t be bothering his little brother anymore.

The Gascon family were happy that night. When Thomas had returned earlier in the day, his mother had fussed over his eye, which was rapidly turning black, but his father had understood. “It’s done?” he had inquired, and after Thomas had nodded, his father had said no more. Then his mother had informed them that she would be cooking a large meal for that evening, and disappeared with Nicole to the market. Luc had fallen asleep for a couple of hours.

By late afternoon, the rich smell of a ragout was filling their lodgings, and long before sundown they were sitting down to a feast. Onion soup, the food of the poor, but delicious for all that. Fresh baguettes from the bakers. Madame Gascon’s ragout would usually consist of pig’s trotters, vegetables and whatever seasoning she had, food that was as cheap as it was healthy. But today there were morsels of beef swimming in a sauce that was thicker than they had tasted in a long while. Then there was a Camembert, and a goat cheese, and a hard Gruyère, all washed down with cheap red wine.

Luc had quite got over his ordeal, and gave them an imitation of Antoine Dalou that had them all in stitches. Thomas told them about his encounter with Monsieur Eiffel, and what he had said about the Statue of Liberty. And then Luc suddenly piped up again.

“I want to live in America.”

This was met with protests.

“Will you leave us all behind?” asked his mother.

“I want you to come too,” said Luc. But nobody wanted to go.

“America is a fine country. No question,” said Monsieur Gascon expansively. “They have everything there. Big cities—not like Paris, of course. But great lakes, and mountains and prairies as far as the eye can see. If your own country is not so good—if you are English, or German, or Italian—unless you’re rich … 
Alors
 … it’s probably better in America. But in France, we have everything. We have mountains—the Alps and the Pyrenees; we have great rivers like the Seine and the Rhône; we have
huge farmlands, and forests. We have cities, and cathedrals, and Roman ruins in the south. We have every kind of climate. We have the greatest wines in the world. And we have three hundred cheeses. What more do you want?”

“We haven’t any deserts, Papa,” said Nicole.

“
Mais oui
, my little one. We have.” Monsieur Gascon puffed his chest out as though he had accomplished the feat himself. “When I was your age, France went to Africa and conquered Algeria. We have all the desert we want, right there.”