Paris: The Novel Read online

  Édith liked the place. There was a little Oriental temple, and a number of curious animals. But it was also clear that a large area was being prepared for a new display, and they asked a uniformed warden what this was going to be.

  “Ah,” he said, with a twirl of his mustache, “that’s for the exhibition, the World’s Fair next year. Biggest show we’ve ever done. An entire village.”

  “What sort of village?” Édith wanted to know.

  “An African village. Native huts. The lot.”

  “Any real natives?” Thomas inquired.

  “But of course. They’re importing four hundred Negroes. At the last big exhibition, back in ’77,” he went on enthusiastically, “we had Nubians and Inuit Indians on display.”

  “Like a zoo?” asked Édith.

  “But of course like a zoo. A human zoo. And do you know, it brought in a million visitors. Think of that. A million!” Thomas had heard about the human zoos, as these exhibitions were called, that were to be found in several countries. But the scale of this one was certainly impressive.

  “It will rival Buffalo Bill and his Red Indians,” the warden proudly declared.

  As they left the zoo and started walking through the Bois, Édith turned to Thomas.

  “Will you take me to watch Buffalo Bill when he comes?”

  “Of course,” said Thomas.

  He took note of the signal. When he’d waited outside the lycée the week after Bastille Day, he hadn’t been sure what to expect. She’d been cautious, and said she couldn’t meet him until early August, but she hadn’t said no. And now, after only an hour in his company, she’d just asked him to take her to a show the following summer.

  A change of heart? Had Monsieur Ney indicated his approval? Or had Édith missed him? Well, he thought, he’d just have to wait and see. For the moment, he was glad.

  He wondered if he dared put his arm around her. He glanced at her pretty hat and parasol and decided he’d better not. Not yet, anyway.

  They came to a noble avenue. This, clearly, was where the fashionable ladies came to be seen in their fine carriages, while rich men and officers rode beside them. He wondered what it must be like to have no work to do, and realized that he had no idea.

  But he knew how to treat a girl on a summer Sunday afternoon, and soon they reached the upper lake.

  Fringed with trees, which gave it a rustic air, the lake was quite large. In the middle of its waters there was an island containing a café and restaurant in the form of a Swiss cottage. The overall effect was charming and romantic.

  Thomas led Édith straight to the boatyard. Within minutes, they were out on the water with Édith sitting very prettily in the stern, under her parasol, and Thomas manfully plying the oars.

  He’d been in a boat only once or twice in his life, but he took care and splashed Édith only a couple of times, which made her laugh. Since the day was hot, he took off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves, and felt more comfortable like that.

  There were plenty of other boats out on the water. Most of the oarsmen were gentlemen, some of whom had taken off their jackets just as he had. But to his surprise, several boats were being rowed by well-dressed women, who seemed to think it a fine joke to compete with the men.

  After rowing about the lake for nearly half an hour, he moored the boat at the island, and treated Édith to an ice in the Swiss cottage.

  When they came back to the boat again, Édith said she wanted to row.

  “Have you done it before?” he asked.

  “I’ve been watching you,” she said.

  So he helped her into the boat, and stepped in after her, but the boat moved in the water, and Édith lost her balance, and Thomas caught her as she fell, which was just as well because she might have cracked her head on the wooden seat otherwise. And he got a bruise on his leg, but he didn’t mind. As they went down in the boat, he was underneath and she fell into his arms and he felt her body pressing into his, and his arms went around her, and for a moment or two they lay there like that. She was looking down into his face, and he was going to kiss her.

  “Well, help me up, silly,” she said. But she was laughing with pleasure all the same.

  Then she rowed him back to the shore. She splashed him several times. Once or twice he thought it was deliberate. And he was happier than he had ever been in his life.

  They walked through the Bois after that. They were walking down a long empty alley when he put his arm around her. She didn’t stop him. After a little while, they stopped. There was still no one in sight. And he kissed her, and she kissed him back. But when his hands started to rove too much she stopped him. Then they walked back, and he kept his arm around her until some other people came in sight.

  The sun was behind them when they walked back up the avenue de la Grande-Armée, and ahead of them in the distance the Arc de Triomphe shimmered as if it were going to dissolve in the sunbeams.

  The next weekend Thomas went to see his family at Montmartre.

  “Did you take Édith out?” Luc asked, when they were alone.

  “Yes, to the Bois de Boulogne. We went on the lake.”

  Luc reached into his pocket.

  “Take these,” he said. “They’re the best.”

  Thomas looked down at the little packet in astonishment. They were condoms.

  “My little brother is giving me capotes anglaises?” It was a cultural curiosity that the French and English nations had decided to attribute these artifacts to each other. The French called them English hoods; the English, for reasons obscure, called them French letters. They were mostly made of rubber, could be reused, but were not too reliable.

  “Why not? One of my rich customers gave them to me. These aren’t the usual ones. They’re finer. He told me they’re the best.”

  Thomas shook his head. At the age of fifteen, his little brother was mixing with some strange company. But what could one do? There probably wasn’t a child of ten in all the Maquis who was innocent.

  “She’s not that kind of girl,” he said.

  “Keep them all the same,” said Luc.

  So Thomas laughed and put them in his pocket. And as he did so, he wondered: Might he need them after all?

  In September 1888, after several weeks of agonizingly slow progress, the tower suddenly began to increase in height at great speed.

  It should have begun after Bastille Day. For above the second platform, the curve of the tower was such that it became much thinner. Instead of building horizontally, as they had in the lower sections, the flyers were now building almost vertically. The same number of men, installing the same number of sections, could add two, three or more times the height each day than they had done before. While some of the gangs, including Thomas’s, continued going up the tower, others were redeployed to the filling-in work on the great platform and the arches below.

  Yet one problem had almost brought progress to a grinding halt.

  It was the cranes. The ingenious creeper cranes were splendid, but they were slow. And now, as the cranes had to crawl up hundreds of feet, the flyers would quickly install the sections they brought, and then wait, uselessly, for the next sections to make their slow journey back again. The work was falling behind. Tempers frayed.

  One day Jean Compagnon stopped Thomas.

  “At least you look cheerful, young Gascon. You got a girl? Is that it?”

  “Oui, monsieur.” Thomas grinned.

  “Well, good for you.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t like the look of the men, young Gascon. Do you know when there’s trouble at work?”

  “Non, monsieur.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s not when the men are working too hard. It’s when they haven’t got enough to do. I’ve seen it time and again. So think of your girl and stay out of trouble, you hear me?”

  “Oui, monsieur.”

  The solution that Eiffel found took time to put in place. But at last it was ready. And as soon as it was set in motion, the ent
ire mechanics of the operation changed.

  Machine-driven winches would hoist the sections vertically from the ground to the first platform. As soon as the sections arrived, they’d be reattached to a second lifting system which hoisted them vertically another two hundred feet up to the second platform. “And as we get higher, we’ll have another winch at about six hundred and fifty feet,” Eiffel informed them. The winching process would be accomplished in minutes. From there, creeper cranes could go up the tracks to where the sections were needed. The entire process could be completed in a little over a quarter of an hour.

  Eiffel also announced a pay increase up to ten and sixteen centimes an hour. The tower was ready to soar.

  But if the mechanics of the operation had changed, another problem returned.

  It was one of the first mornings of this new regime, in the middle of September, when Thomas came down to the Seine and found that he could not see the top of the tower. Above the second platform, the girders had vanished into an autumn mist. He was rather excited as he went up the tower. It would be like working in the clouds, he thought. As work began, the fires for heating the rivets glowed eerily in the surrounding mist. There was only one thing he’d forgotten.

  The cold. Up there, at over four hundred feet, the temperature was lower. Though he was working hard, it wasn’t enough to stop the damp cold seeping into his bones. He looked around him. The other men on the tower were feeling the same thing. When they went down for the lunchtime break, he could hear men cursing all around him. Was the terrible cold of the previous winter going to return—and so early?

  There was a new fellow on his gang that week. Their holder had fallen sick, and been replaced by a cheerful Italian fellow, younger than himself, whom everyone called Pepe. “You must be used to better weather than this,” Thomas remarked as they went down.

  “It’s true. But I am happy to work on the tower,” Pepe replied, and grinned at him. “My father build roads. He work in a hole. I no want to work in a hole. So I work in the sky.”

  Thomas smiled and tried to be cheerful too.

  That afternoon, the mist cleared, but a cold wind got up, moaned around the girders, and lashed the men as they worked. Everyone was blue with cold by the end of the day. Even Pepe stopped smiling.

  The next workday—it was the nineteenth of September—when he arrived at the site, Thomas found a crowd of men standing at the foot of the tower. Jean Compagnon was standing apart, looking grim. The wagons bearing the sections for the day had all arrived, their teams of horses standing silently. But none of the sections had been picked by the crane, and nobody was going up the tower.

  He saw Pepe.

  “What’s up?”

  “The men strike. They want more pay.”

  In a few minutes, when the workers had all arrived, one of the older flyers, a tall, bony-faced man named Éric, addressed them.

  “Brothers, the conditions under which we’re working are a disgrace. So last night a group of us got together and now we’re asking you to join us and call a strike. We have agreed on our main grievances. If you want to add to them, then now’s the time to raise your complaint. Do you all agree that I should read our grievances out?”

  There was a chorus of approval.

  “First: we are being asked to work under dangerous conditions. No one has ever had to work at heights like this. Yet the workers on this tower are being paid the same as if we were working on an ordinary building. Further, as soon as the winter ended, Monsieur Eiffel demanded that we work a twelve-hour day. And long hours cause fatigue—which in itself is dangerous on a high building. Eiffel is trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of the workers on this tower, brothers. The workers are being exploited.”

  There was a broad murmur of agreement. “And what about the wages?” someone called.

  “Exactly. Second: Monsieur Eiffel has announced a small increase in wages. The top men will be getting sixteen centimes an hour. Note this. Per hour. But we are just about to go back to winter hours. Will you get any extra money for your trouble? Not a centime. We’re going to be exploited even further, under arctic conditions. And Eiffel doesn’t care. The only way to get his attention is a work stoppage.”

  “You mean a strike?” someone called out.

  “We stop work now. That’s a stoppage. If we’re not satisfied by the end of the day, you can call it a strike.” He looked around at them all. “Brothers, I open the meeting. Who wants to speak?”

  Several men stepped up. One spoke of the need for hot drinks in the cold, another about the need for special clothing. Two more complained about the wages and the hours. Yet as Thomas listened, he didn’t feel comfortable with what was being said. Rather to his own surprise, he found himself coming forward.

  “I agree about the cold and the need for hot drinks,” he said. “My hands were freezing last winter, and the higher we go, the colder it seems to get.” This was met with nods. “But I’m not sure about the extra danger.” He shrugged. “The safety barriers and netting are pretty good. Nobody’s fallen so far. But I mean, if you did fall,” he shrugged, “two hundred feet or four hundred feet, doesn’t make a difference. You’re going home in a box anyway.” A few of the men laughed at this, but Éric was not pleased.

  “Don’t you want to be paid for the extra height?”

  “I’ll take more money as soon as the next man,” Thomas answered, “but we signed on knowing what the wage was, and we’re getting more than the usual rate anyway.”

  It was true, but it wasn’t what the men wanted to hear. There were some growls. Suddenly, Thomas found Éric standing beside him. The tall man put a large, hard hand on his shoulder.

  “Now we all know that this young man is a friend of Monsieur Eiffel. So maybe he’s not exactly on the same side as us.” This caused a murmur of agreement that was none too friendly. Thomas was taken by surprise. He hadn’t realized that the fact he’d worked for Eiffel before, or that Eiffel sometimes chatted with him, might be turned against him like this. Éric was well into his stride now, though. “No, brothers, no, I don’t believe the young man means any harm by it. He’s a good young fellow. But, brothers, there are two things we need to remember. The first is that our demands are reasonable, and we all agree about that—well, perhaps my young friend here doesn’t. And second,” he gave the men a knowing smile, “this is a negotiation.” He paused to let the thought sink in. “My friends, Eiffel has to finish this tower. His entire reputation and his personal fortune are at stake. If he fails, he’s bust. And he’s running late.” He grinned. “We’ve got the bastard over a barrel.” He paused once more. “Anyone else want to argue?”

  They didn’t. There were shouts of approval. Éric kept his hand clamped on Thomas’s shoulder.

  “If the tower’s not finished,” Thomas said, too quietly for anyone to hear, “we shall have dishonored France in the eyes of the whole world.”

  “It’ll get finished,” Éric replied, just as quietly. “But I’d keep my mouth shut, if I were you. Wouldn’t want you falling off the tower, would we?”

  The work stopped that day. Eiffel turned up at the site an hour later and had an urgent conversation with Jean Compagnon. Then the two of them went to talk to Éric. The engineer looked furious, but it seemed he didn’t give way. The men stood around all day, but nothing happened. Late in the afternoon, the foreman told them they might as well go home for the day.

  As Thomas was walking off the site, Pepe fell into step beside him. “Want a drink?” he said. As he had nothing else to do, he agreed gladly enough. Pepe lived in the sprawling quarter on the Left Bank to the south of the tower, and he took Thomas to a bar there.

  “I didn’t dare say what you did,” Pepe told him, “but I think you were right.” Then they talked about his family, and the Italian girl he was hoping to marry, and Thomas told him a little about Édith, but not too much, and they agreed that they’d all meet one Sunday, and Pepe would take them to a place where they could get an I
talian meal for not too much money. After parting the best of friends, Thomas walked back, crossed the river in the usual way and made his way home.

  He came to the rue de la Pompe. His lodgings were not far ahead. He passed the darkened gateway to the yard that had once been the farm of Édith’s family.

  The strong hand that clamped on his shoulder took him completely by surprise. He lunged forward to run, but felt his other arm held in a grip he couldn’t break out of. Someone powerful, very powerful, had moved out of the shadows. He twisted, punched hard over his shoulder at where his assailant’s face might be. But the unseen figure anticipated him. He kicked back hard with his right boot, and felt the body behind him shift skillfully. Whoever it was knew how to fight. And he was just opening his mouth to shout for help, when a familiar voice spoke into his ear.

  “Keep still, you fool. I need to talk to you.” Then the grip relaxed, and he turned to face the burly figure of Jean Compagnon. “Stay in the shadow,” the foreman said, so Thomas stepped into the gateway.

  “Couldn’t you have met me in a bar?” Thomas asked, having recovered himself.

  “Bad idea. Never know who might see you. The men already think you may be a stool pigeon.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “That’s not the point. It was brave, what you did today. Took me by surprise. But now you’ve got to be careful.”

  “You mean Éric might push me off the tower?”

  “No. Not unless you annoy him. You were quite useful to him today, you know. You provided a focus. Anyone who thought of disagreeing with him would be pointed at as one of your friends. A stool pigeon of Eiffel’s. That suits Éric very well.”

  “The son of a bitch.”

  “That’s politics. Éric won’t hurt you, but one of the men might. You never know.”