The Paris Architect: A Novel Part 14

"I'm leaving you."

"You're what?" Stunned, Lucien shot up from his chair and looked down at his wife.

"You heard me. Our marriage was finished anyway. It was a bad match from the beginning. To use one of your dumb architecture metaphors, the marriage was built on a weak foundation, and it just crumbled."

"In war you have to make hard decisions. I-"

"And you made the wrong decisions. No matter how you look at it, you're screwed. Stop fooling yourself, Lucien; you're not a man of high moral fiber. It's just like I said before-an architectural Mephistopheles."

Lucien walked to the tall kitchen window that overlooked the courtyard. Except for a scrawny black cat prowling at its edge, the s.p.a.ce was deserted.

"There's something else."

"What?" he answered irritably, his back toward her, bracing for more abuse to be hurled at him.

"I've met someone," she said in a soft quiet voice.

It was as though someone had hit him on the back of his head with a shovel. He almost fell forward. Lucien placed his hands on the sides of the window frame and dropped his head. After a minute, he walked out of the kitchen to the foyer closet and grabbed his tweed jacket. Slamming the door behind him, he ran down the stairs instead of waiting for the lift. He was so beside himself with anger that it took him almost five minutes to notice he'd walked ten blocks along the rue Saint-Denis. Three hours later, when he returned to the apartment, Celeste and her clothes were gone.

32.

"Don't lie to me, Gaspard. You're not leaving me for another woman."

"One of my students. We've..."

Juliette Trenet walked up to her husband and looked into his eyes. He immediately looked away.

"I wish it were one of your students," Juliette said. "Then I could bear the heartbreak."

Gaspard said nothing, gazing at the oriental rug in the vestibule of their apartment.

"Professor Pinard called you into his office, didn't he?"

"No, that's not..."

"And he gave you a choice-me...or your job."

"Juliette, please..."

"And you chose your professors.h.i.+p in medieval literature."

Gaspard, a short, handsome man with light brown hair, stepped back from Juliette.

"All because Vichy and the n.a.z.is decreed that because my grandmother-whom I never even met-was Jewish...I'm now officially Jewish."

Juliette went over to the coat rack and held up her forest-green flannel blazer, which had a yellow felt star on its front breast pocket. "Even though I've never set foot in a synagogue or know a single word of Hebrew."

"The way they decide who's a Jew is ridiculous." Gaspard shook his head. "A priest at a parish in Menilmontant was cla.s.sified a Jew."

"I was fired from a job I loved because I'm a Jew. And now the only man I've ever loved is leaving me because I'm a Jew."

"It's not..."

"Please, please tell me this isn't happening, Gaspard," Juliette cried out. "That I'm just having a terrible nightmare. For G.o.d's sake, wake me up."

Juliette placed her hand on the lapel of his tweed jacket. Gaspard stepped away from her until his back was against the wood-paneled apartment door.

"You know, I fell in love with you the moment I first saw you at Jean's party," said Juliette. "So handsome. And when we started talking, I knew right then how brilliant you were. Remember?"

"Of course, I remember. And you won my heart in an instant. For a woman to be so pretty and to have a doctorate in bacteriology doing such important research at the university," replied Gaspard. "I was so happy to find you."

"All the wonderful trips we took and all the good times we've had together in the last five years. The parties we gave."

"Why, yes," said Gaspard with a smile.

"Then please stay, my love. Together, we can get through this," Juliette pleaded with tears welling up in her eyes.

A pained expression replaced her husband's smile.

"I...just can't do it, Juliette. I can't."

"Is it the thought of us being penniless? Or the loss of your position?" Juliette started toward him but stopped. "Do you think you'll be sent to Drancy with me?"

Gaspard's reply was an agonizing silence.

Juliette put her head in her hands. "Please don't do this," she begged. She wanted to run up to him, put her arms around his waist, and bury her face in his broad chest as she'd done in the past when she was upset or sad.

Gaspard's fair complexion was now flushed with shame. He turned and placed his hand on the door handle. Without saying a word, Juliette grabbed hold of his sleeve, and Gaspard shook his arm to get loose of her as he opened the door. With a furious tug, he finally freed himself and slammed the door.

"Come back," Juliette yelled after him. "Please!"

She stood staring at the door, tears streaming down her face. She walked into the salon where she sobbed uncontrollably and loudly, not caring who might hear her.

G.o.d, I married a coward, she thought. But it doesn't matter. I still love him!

Juliette sat down in an armchair and tried to calm herself. She gently rubbed her belly. She and her baby were now totally alone in the world.

Six weeks later, as Juliette sat in the empty lion's den, the memory of that terrible day still played over and over in her mind. Every time she thought of Gaspard's shocking betrayal, she felt like crying. Time hadn't lessened the pain in the least. She had loved her husband so much...and then to see this handsome, intelligent man turn into a frightened little boy who ran away.

Everything had come down on them so suddenly. First, Juliette lost her position at the university where they both worked, then came the unexpected pregnancy. Gaspard hadn't seemed truly happy when she told him the news, though for her sake, he'd tried to seem so. Just after the surrender, when they'd seen a couple pus.h.i.+ng a pram, Juliette remembered he'd said that no one should bring a child into a h.e.l.l like the Occupation. She knew it wasn't the best time to have a baby, but she was still overjoyed; being a mother would always trump her career, no matter how successful she became.

Gaspard had loved being a professor. More than a job, it was his whole ident.i.ty. If he were fired, the loss of the prestige and his place in elite intellectual circles, she realized, would be even more devastating than the loss of income. A full professor at only thirty-two with a highly praised book on twelfth-century epic poetry, he was admired and respected by everyone at the university, even outside the history and literature departments. A s.h.i.+ning star in the academic universe. Juliette had really never understood how much it all meant to Gaspard. Much more than his wife...and his own child meant to him.

Because Juliette didn't consider herself a Jew, she found little solace in the fact that thousands of Jews had been kicked out of universities throughout France. Or that hundreds of gentile husbands in Paris had abandoned their Jewish wives when faced with the same situation as Gaspard. They too knew they couldn't bear the hards.h.i.+p, poverty, and threat to their lives that suddenly came with being married to a Jew.

The lingering smell of lion p.i.s.s on top of her morning sickness had made Juliette even more nauseous. Still, she knew she was very lucky to have found this hiding place. Just a week after Gaspard had left, Monsieur Ducreux, her landlord, had showed up at the door of her apartment and ordered her to get out right then and there. A man who had been friendly and cordial to her every day of the five years she had lived there now treated her like a complete stranger. Waving an official-looking paper in her face, he claimed he could evict her. Juliette didn't argue but just replied in a quiet voice that she needed an hour to pack and calmly shut the door. After being turned out, she had been able to stay with her former lab a.s.sistant, Henri Leroy, and his family in their small apartment. After a few days, a neighbor down the hall knocked on the door and started asking questions, and Juliette knew it was time to move on. Henri had been a loyal colleague for seven years, and she had no intention of having his family suffer on her account. When Juliette told Henri she had nowhere else to go, he told her he wouldn't abandon her. In desperation, he had asked his cousin, Michel Dauphin, who also refused. His wife, he said, would never risk her life to help anyone, let alone a Jew. But Dauphin was a kind-hearted man, and he had offered a temporary solution.

He was a zookeeper and told his cousin that Professor Trenet could hide for a while in one of the unused cages in the section of animal houses that were completely shut up. Despite the food shortages, the zoo was kept up during the Occupation, mainly for the benefit of the German soldiers. The animals ate better than most Parisians. Now Juliette was living in a concrete den behind the empty lions' cage at the zoo. It was the enclosed s.p.a.ce where the lions slept and ate when they weren't walking around in the cage in front of the public. Even lions want their privacy occasionally, thought Juliette. Out of her savings, Juliette gave Dauphin five thousand francs, even though the man hadn't asked for payment. If Juliette was found, the zookeeper would be arrested too, so she had insisted.

Dauphin, a short, rotund man in his sixties, brought Juliette food and drink every night without fail. She knew he was spending the five thousand to take care of her. Dauphin, she discovered, had three grown daughters of his own and knew what a pregnant woman looked like, so no one had to tell him he was feeding two people. She could see that Dauphin devoted a lot of effort to preparing her meals. Juliette ate meat, chicken, potatoes, carrots, and beets, all thoroughly cooked and served in a covered metal platter. With all of her meals came a large cup of milk. He had also supplied a big thick mattress with a sheet for her bed.

As a bacteriologist, Juliette knew how important it was to keep clean from germs to protect Marie or Pierre (her baby was to be named after her heroine Madame Curie or her husband and, of course, grow up to be a scientist). Dauphin obliged by providing abundant amounts of soap and water so she could bathe. And as a man who was used to cleaning out lion and elephant excrement, he cheerfully dumped out Juliette's slop bucket daily. The problem with the s.p.a.ce was that a human could not stand upright in it. Juliette sat the whole day and was only able to walk around in the open cage at night.

One evening, after Dauphin brought her a meal and some clean clothes, Juliette asked him why he was putting his life in so much danger. His answer stunned her. "Oh, madame, you don't know how good it makes me feel about myself to help a human in this time of evil." The zookeeper, who probably had no more than a few years of schooling, had a far more profound sense of morality, Juliette realized, than many of the highly trained scientists she used to work with.

Sitting in her cage by herself, day after day, Juliette sometimes found her loneliness unbearable. She often placed her hand on her belly and talked about her happy childhood in Lyon to Marie or Pierre. Sometimes she sang her baby her favorite songs. During the day, by placing heavy canvas over the den opening, Juliette could burn candles, which enabled her to read and write. She tried to keep her mind occupied by pretending she was on a sabbatical where she could concentrate on theoretical work. On notebooks provided by the good Dauphin, she scribbled formulas and ideas then stared off into s.p.a.ce thinking and thinking. She did some preliminary work that she hoped would one day be the basis of a research paper.

Just as Juliette was stretching out on the mattress to read a newspaper Dauphin had brought her earlier that evening, all the lights in the animal house came on. It startled Juliette, and she called out loudly, "Monsieur Dauphin," then stopped because she remembered he had never turned on the lights. He had always used a lantern at night. She heard the drunken mutterings of a man in front of the cage. Then to her horror, the side of the canvas sheet was pulled back and moments later, a Wehrmacht soldier dragging a bottle of schnapps along the concrete floor crawled on his hands and knees through the opening.

Roaring like a lion, the soldier leered at Juliette. "What a pretty lioness-or are you a tigress? Roar!" Juliette slid off the mattress and backed into the corner of the den, but the soldier lunged forward and grabbed her right ankle, pulling her toward him. He fumbled open the fly b.u.t.tons of his trousers and yanked Juliette beneath him and pushed her dress up. She could smell his stinking breath when, all of a sudden, he rolled off her. Above her she saw Dauphin with a shovel in his hands.

"He broke in by the side door."

Juliette raised herself up on her elbows. "Are there any more?"

"No, it was just him, thank G.o.d. I'll dump him into the gutter on the far side of the zoo, and his people will find him in the morning with a very bad headache."

"But will he...?"

"No, madame, he won't remember a thing."

Juliette was shaking with fear, and Dauphin knelt down to hug her. She wrapped her arms around his neck.

"It's not this one we have to worry about, madame," said Dauphin, caressing her brown hair and patting her back. "Yesterday, I got official word that the Germans are transferring some animals from Berlin so they'll need these cages. It won't be safe for you here anymore."

Juliette now felt more frightened than she'd been when the soldier had attacked her. She had absolutely nowhere to go.

"My G.o.d, what will I do?" she said, panic-stricken.

"My cousin says he knows a man who knows a man who can help you," said Dauphin.

33.

"I knew you'd show up."

Lucien settled on the chaise lounge and reached out to accept the gla.s.s of cognac from Manet, then drained it in one gulp. It was almost nine o'clock in the morning when Lucien arrived at the little stone cottage-two floors with a dormered attic set off from a country road just on the outskirts of Paris, near Epinay-sur-Seine. He knew it wasn't Manet's country house, as it was way too modest and plain for a man of his stature.

"Ah, now that's a nutritious breakfast," said Lucien. "Now tell me, how did you know I'd be here today?"

"I just had a feeling," said Manet, "that's all."

"Because I felt guilty about killing Monsieur and Madame Serrault?"

Manet frowned. "Lucien, be reasonable. It wasn't your fault that they died. Who would've thought the Boche would wind up there that evening? And the bird's nest? It was pure rotten luck. Lieber murdered them, not you."

"I was responsible for planning every possible contingency, no matter how absurd. I placed them in danger when I chose to use the fireplace."

"Nonsense."

"I could have found another place for them to hide, but that would've been too easy. I had to be clever."

"I asked you here to see if you would help me again, Lucien. Will you?"

Lucien looked down at the gla.s.s in his hands. The last few weeks had been a living h.e.l.l for him. After the discovery of Adele's stair three weeks ago, the guilt over the Serraults hadn't gone away, as he'd hoped. Then Celeste abandoned him. It was literally tearing his insides out; the last few nights he'd p.i.s.sed blood. If he wasn't thinking about the Serraults, the stair problem consumed him, leaving him a nervous wreck.

"We have a problem," said Lucien. "The stair in the hunting lodge in Le Chesnay has been discovered. A friend of mine who now has use of the place told me."

"Adele Bonneau," replied Manet.

At first Lucien was startled that Manet knew her name, then slowly nodded his head.

"The Germans must have given her the house."

"The Gestapo," said Manet.

Lucien was visibly shaken at Manet's reply, then became revolted at the thought of her even touching such an animal. To be with a German was bad enough, but to lower oneself like that was unthinkable. How could any French woman do such a thing?

"She could link you to the stair."

"I know."

"It's in our best interest that you avoid Mademoiselle Bonneau."

Lucien had agreed to meet Manet expressly for the purpose of telling him that this was the end of it. He just couldn't take it any longer. Now was the time to get out. Besides, he'd made out okay in this deal-a great deal of money, a car, plus two commissions. While he was driving, he'd rehea.r.s.ed what he had to say to Manet, revising it and imagining what Manet's response would be. Being a good Christian, the old man would probably make it easy for him and say that it was all right to call it quits, that Lucien already had done more than any man need do. But when Lucien looked up into Manet's eyes and was about to begin his speech, the words stuck in his throat. He lost his nerve. There were a million reasons for walking away from this mess. But not one would come out of his mouth. It was like a dream in which he was on a speeding train that he couldn't jump off. He knew the train was heading for a brick wall at the end of the track, so he had to get off, but he couldn't.

The Serraults' death had made Lucien see things in a different light. The sight of the frail elderly couple dead with handkerchiefs in their mouths had jolted him. They'd died saving him, when he was supposed to save them. Like most Frenchmen, he hadn't given a d.a.m.n about what was happening to the Jews; all that mattered was saving his own skin. But he realized that the sheer hatred and brutality heaped upon the Jews was something he now couldn't ignore. The punishment for being a Jew in the Reich crossed the line into barbarism. They were being hunted down like wild animals. What made it so sickening was that it wasn't perpetrated by a bunch of ignorant half-naked savages, but the citizens of a nation renowned for its culture and intelligence that had produced men like Goethe and Beethoven.

Lucien, the atheist, didn't want to use any religious horses.h.i.+t, like it was a Christian's duty to protect "G.o.d's chosen people," to justify his change of heart. Or have an epiphany and decide to become a Jew. And he didn't believe there was some moral structure to the universe, a set of rules governing good and bad (not like the nonsense of the Ten Commandments). No, he made this decision because he'd seen almost every Frenchman turn his back on these people, and that cowardice now filled him with disgust.

Lucien knew he couldn't be that way and just stand by; he had to continue what he'd been doing. When he asked himself why he was risking his life, the answer wasn't the cash, the factories, or the sheer thrill of the challenge. He was risking his life because it was the right thing to do. He had to go beyond himself and help these people. His father was probably looking up at him from h.e.l.l (certainly not Heaven), laughing and cursing at him, but he didn't care.