Paris: The Novel (95 page)

“What?”

“I don’t think the king’s going to live much longer.”

“Well, he’ll die knowing he left his mark on history,” the younger man remarked.

Hercule Le Sourd nodded thoughtfully. No doubt that was true, so far as it went. But what that mark on history would be was still hidden behind the dark clouds.

“No man ever knows his legacy,” he said.

•  1914  •

On the seventh day of September, 1914, one of the strangest sights ever seen in the history of warfare took place in the city of Paris. Thomas Gascon, his younger son Pierre, and Luc were standing at the top of the Champs-Élysées to witness it, at almost exactly the place where, a quarter century ago, Thomas had watched the funeral cortege of Victor Hugo. But the procession today was of a very different kind. And it was not the figure of Édith that he was straining to see, but that of his son Robert.

For the French army was going to war.

In taxis.

In the summer of 1914, Europe had been at peace. If France had been watching her neighbor Germany with alarm, as Germany’s army and navy swelled, she had not been idle. Indeed, her battle plan if hostilities with Germany ever resumed was to race eastward and recapture Alsace-Lorraine. Attack: that was the word, and the inspiration. Attack and avenge the honor of France. But so far, the tense peace of Europe, held together by her complex network of alliances, had remained unbroken.

And then, out of the blue, an Austrian archduke was murdered in Sarajevo. What had this to do with Germany and France? On the face of it, nothing. But when Austria declared war on the Serbs, Russia defended their fellow Slavs. Germany, allied with Austria, was obliged to declare war on Russia. Russia was allied with France. To avoid a war on two fronts,
Germany resolved to smash France quickly. The German High Command already had a detailed blueprint, the Schlieffen Plan, for how to do it.

Would not this bring out the army of the huge British Empire to defend France, to whom she was bound by the Entente Cordiale? Perhaps. But the Entente was rather vague about hostilities. The British might fight, or they might not.

Except for one thing.

Little Belgium. Set up when Europe was being reorganized after the fall of Napoléon. A constitutional monarchy with a modest king and queen. A small, comfortable kingdom, whose neutrality was universally recognized as inviolable by all the countries of Europe.

The large French forces, poised to attack, lay south of the Belgian border. The German army had no wish to go up against them. But if the German army crossed Belgium, it could walk straight into France unhindered. Diplomatically it was impossible. Morally unthinkable. Militarily, obvious.

In August the Belgian king and his government received a note from Germany. It was couched in the most diplomatic terms. But its message in plain English was clear as day:

But the Belgians did mind. They said they’d fight. It had not occurred to the German High Command that this comfortable little kingdom would be so valiant.

And Britain had a treaty with Belgium. A cast-iron treaty, to defend it if Belgium was attacked. Britain, therefore, entered the war at once.

Thus, in the first days of August 1914, all the tottering structures erected to preserve the peace of old Europe came crashing down. No one could have foreseen that it would happen this way.

By the first days of September, Thomas Gascon was in a quandary. Though delayed by the tough Belgian resistance, the German army was in France, its advance guard less than fifty miles from Paris. And every Parisian knew what that meant.

“It’ll be 1870 all over again. Paris will fall. Get out while you can.”

The government got out. Leaving the capital in a hurry, they all headed south for Gascony and the great port of Bordeaux, hoping they might be safe down there.

Thomas Gascon had watched in disgust as the motor cars of the officials sped past the wagons and handcarts of the poor.

“Even if we leave,” he said to Édith, “I don’t know where we’d go.”

And then a remarkable thing happened. It was his eldest son, Robert, who brought the news.

At the age of sixteen, Thomas’s younger son Pierre was already taller than his father. A handsome boy, with a freckled face a little like his mother’s. But when people saw Thomas and Robert standing side by side, they smiled with amusement. For Robert was a perfect reproduction of his father. “I have more hair than you,” Robert would point out to Thomas cheerfully, but his uncle Luc would tell him not to expect this difference to last. “You look exactly the way your father did when he was working on the Statue of Liberty. So in twenty-five years, you can expect to look the same way he does now,” his uncle said. Thomas and Robert had the same physical toughness, the same love of work in the open air, even the same sense of humor. Since Robert was grown up, father and son enjoyed nothing more than going out for a drink in a bar together.

At the age of eighteen, Robert had been conscripted. Now he was part of the reserve.

“General Joffre is regrouping. He refuses to give up,” he told his family excitedly. “The British are with us on our northern flank. Joffre thinks we can drive them back at the Marne. We’re all being called to the front for an attack. Will you come and see me off tomorrow?” He grinned. “There’s transport laid on for some of the boys. But personally I’ll be taking a taxi.”

It was an extraordinary maneuver. Ten thousand reservists were being called to the front. The army had transports for only four thousand. The solution? Taxis.

A decade ago they would have been horse-drawn—and there were still plenty of horse-drawn vehicles in Paris, as in every other part of the Western world. But the Renault company had produced a sturdy and excellent motor—the Renault AG—that now served as the favored taxicab in the
city. Six hundred of them had been put in service for the patriotic task. They’d have to make the journey two or three times.

The Renault AG was a cheerful little vehicle. It looked as if the passenger cabin of a horse-drawn cab had been placed on smaller wheels, and a motor attached to the front. On that warm day, most of the soft roofs on the backs of the cabs were folded down.

The first fleet of taxis was circling the Arc de Triomphe to the applause of the crowd before they turned, two, three, four at a time and scuttled down the Champs-Élysées toward the Louvre and then, eastward, toward the front.

How splendid the young men looked in their kepis, their blue coats and red trousers, hardly changed since the glorious days of Napoléon. With what gallant panache they waved and saluted from their taxis as they passed. It was so colorful, so stylish, so French. If the Parisians had been terrified and ready to flee just days before, this cheerful, mad parade of courage and daring seemed to put new heart into them. When a dozen taxis broke out from the Arc de Triomphe and careered down the Champs-Élysées all together, the cheers turned into a roar.

All the time Thomas was watching intensely. Robert was in one of the taxis, but heaven knows which one. He’d told him where he planned to stand, so he’d be looking out, as long as he was able to get in the right side of the taxi.

Several times he reached out to take Pierre’s arm, thinking that he’d caught sight of him, and Pierre got ready to wave, but each time Thomas had shaken his head; and he could tell that, although Pierre naturally wanted to wave to his brother, he was starting to get bored.

But then at last he saw him. He was sure he did. Robert was sitting in the back of the taxi looking out.

“Robert!” he cried, so loudly that surely one would have heard it from the avenue de la Grande-Armée. “Bravo, Robert!” And he waved wildly from the edge of the street, and Pierre and Luc waved too. And it seemed to them that the figure in the cab raised his hand in acknowledgment as best he could, for he was probably pressed rather tightly in the cab, and then a moment later the cab had passed.

“I think it was him,” said Thomas.

“Certainly it was,” said Luc.

“Did he see us?” asked Pierre.

“I’m sure he did,” Luc answered.

It was clear that he and Pierre were ready to go.

“You go on,” said Thomas. “I’ll just wait a while.” He was still watching the cabs going by.

“Are you sure?” asked his brother.

“You know,” said Thomas quietly, “just in case it wasn’t him.”

“It was him,” said Luc. But Thomas didn’t answer. So Luc and Pierre left, but Thomas Gascon remained where he was, staring into every cab that passed. Because he wanted to be sure that Robert didn’t come by and see nobody waiting for him. After all, you never knew what was going to happen, out there at the front. Several times he waved at cabs where he saw someone who resembled his son.

And though the crowds began to thin, he remained there another hour until, at last, a cab went by with a single old gentleman in a top hat, whoever he was, and then there were no more.

When he got home, Pierre gave him a message that Luc wanted to see him at his restaurant, so Thomas went round there.

Luc was sitting alone at a table, and he motioned his brother to sit down and poured him a glass of wine.

“I’ve been thinking, brother,” Luc said. “This big offensive out at the Marne. It’s quite a gamble, you know.”

“I suppose so.”

“If it fails, the Germans could be here in less than a week. What will you do then?”

“I don’t know. What will you do?”

“Serve them dinner.” He shrugged. “What else does a restaurant do?”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“But what if we hold them at the Marne, or somewhere out there in eastern France? Everyone thinks this war will be a short affair, one way or the other. If they’re right, there’s nothing to do but wait. But what if it isn’t so short? What’ll happen then?”

“Pierre might have to fight.”

“Not only boys like Pierre. There’ll be a general conscription. I’ve heard army officers talk about it in the past. You’re over fifty, a bit too old. But I’ll probably be called up.”