Paris The Novel

Chapter Twenty-three




• 1936 •


All sons are wiser than their fathers. And as Max Le Sourd looked at his father, Jacques, he felt concern. Max wasn’t thirty yet, his father was past seventy. But there were things his father did not understand.

And Max was wondering: Was he going to have to tell him?

Early afternoon. A weekday in June, in a fateful year.

From all over the world, athletes had already started making their way toward a new Olympic Games, to be held in Berlin, and hosted by Germany’s Nazi regime. Russia was not attending, but despite individual protests, other nations were.

In Spain, the election of a Popular Front of leftist parties had left the old conservative forces furious, and summer arrived, and left- and right-wing forces eyed each other tensely, there was danger in the air.

And in France …

On any normal day, there should have been cars in the Champs-Élysées, and people crowding the broad walkways under the small trees. But there were almost no cars, and few people. It was eerily quiet. As they gazed down toward the distant Louvre, it seemed that all Paris had fallen strangely silent.

Jacques Le Sourd turned to his son.

“I thought I wouldn’t live to see it,” he confessed.



Once before, he’d thought it had begun. There had been that moment during the war, when the army had mutinied. He’d thought it was starting then. But he’d been premature. France had not been ready.

Russia had been ready, though. The Russian Revolution had succeeded. And with that massive example before all Europe, it had seemed inevitable to Jacques Le Sourd that now it would spread. The question had been: Where next?

By the mid-twenties, all eyes had fallen on Britain. France might be the cradle of revolution, but Britain was also a logical choice. Wasn’t Britain the first home of capitalism, colonial empire and exploitation? Wasn’t London where Karl Marx had written Das Kapital?

The Zinoviev letter of 1924, forgery or not, might have frightened the British middle classes into electing a Conservative government, but the Labour Party and the unions were soon ready to show their power. And in 1926, a huge general strike had brought Britain to a standstill.

Was it the beginning of a revolution? All Europe had waited. If the British Empire fell to the workers, then the rest of the capitalist world could crumble.

But once again, the phlegmatic British had displayed their lack of interest in ideas, their endless capacity to muddle through and compromise. The British bourgeoisie had come out, manned the buses, taken over the essential union jobs. Professional people, students, retired army officers were found driving trains. And they’d been allowed to get away with it. Jacques had even heard stories of an opposing line of strikers and British policemen organizing a football game between each other. He sighed whenever he thought of it. What could you do with people like that?

For another decade, France had drifted. With a weak franc—good for the British and American visitors, but bringing inflation to the French themselves—the weak liberal governments of the Third Republic had tottered on, still opposed by the old guard of monarchists, conservative Catholics and military men. When America’s Great Depression hit Europe, French jobs were lost and wages fell.

Jacques Le Sourd had known how to use the time, however. Endless quiet campaigning with the Socialist Party, writing and distributing pamphlets, talking with union men, visiting small works and large factories: this had been his life.

“When the new revolution comes,” he would tell his son, “Paris will be the key. Not only because it’s the political and spiritual center of France, but because of the industrial workers here. When I was a young man,” he’d explain, “most manufacturing around the city was done in workshops and small plants. But now we have huge factories, producing things like cars, that didn’t even exist before.” More than once he had taken Max down to the suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, which lay in a great loop of the river south of the Bois de Boulogne, and taken him through the gates into the Renault works. “The men here,” he told him, “will one day have the destiny of France in their hands.”

Though Jacques always reminded his son that he was just one of many good socialists giving the lead, it pleased young Max to see how, in the huge car works and in smaller plants all over the city, his father was respected.

And two years ago, the work of Jacques Le Sourd and his friends had been rewarded.

At the start of 1934, the old guard had occupied the parliament and tried to stage a coup. Within days, the socialists and the communists of France cooperated in a general strike. Millions put down their tools. In Paris, the workers filled the streets. The country came to a standstill. The old guard were kicked out.

“Now’s the time to play politics,” Jacques had urged. “All our efforts will be for nothing unless we can win political power.”

A grand coalition had been formed. First the two great trade unions—the moderate CGT and the communist-led CGTU—had come together. Cleverer still, the political parties had come to a subtle agreement. His own Socialist Party and the French Communist Party had arranged that the communists would give silent support to the socialists, but take no part in any government, so as not to frighten off the bourgeoisie. With this reassurance, and a promise to respect private property and not to nationalize the banks, the left had been able to form a coalition with the bourgeois radical and liberal parties of the center.

“Call it the Popular Front,” Jacques said, “and we could win an election.”

He’d been right. By the start of 1936, the Popular Front was ready to fight an election. A month ago, at the start of May, the Popular Front had won, and Léon Blum, the Jewish leader of the Socialist Party, was prime minister of France.

When Le Sourd had been asked if he’d like any government job, Max had assumed he would accept. But his father had surprised him.

“There’s something more important for me to do,” he’d said. And despite his age, he’d thrown himself into another, feverish round of activity. Meetings with important union men, visits to factories: for three weeks Max hardly saw him. But when he did, his father always said the same thing.

“Now is the moment, Max. Strike while the iron is hot. Everything is possible, if we act fast.”

His father was right. All over France, from plant to plant, strikes started breaking out as workers, bolstered by the thought of having a socialist government, began demanding all rights: a forty-hour week, paid holidays, wage increases. As Jacques had also predicted, the key was Paris, and by late May he could point out triumphantly: “Thirty-two thousand workers have occupied the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt. Every big engineering works around Paris is out on strike now. That’s another hundred thousand men. The workers of the Bloch aircraft factory out at Courbevoie are with us.”

A few days ago, there were two million Frenchmen out on twelve thousand separate strikes.



The part of the Champs-Élysées where they were standing lay less than halfway down from the Arc de Triomphe, just above the Art Nouveau glass houses of the Grand and Petit Palais. The triangle of streets that lay between this section and the River Seine was becoming known as the Golden Triangle, the Triangle d’Or, for as well as the American Cathedral church and the recently built Hotel George V, it was home to some of the richest people and most elegant enterprises in the city.

It wasn’t an area that Jacques Le Sourd would normally care to visit. But today he had come there, for the satisfaction of seeing it all shut down.

They crossed the Champs-Élysées. As they walked between the trees on the avenue’s northern side, Jacques glanced at his son with affection.

If he’d taken a long time to find a wife, his marriage was a happy one. He’d met Anne-Marie when he was forty and she was twenty-five, when she had come to work for the Socialist Party. He hadn’t thought of her as anything but a young colleague at first. But as he’d come to know her a little better, he’d been astonished by her direct and uncompromising mind. He’d never known any woman like her.

She was southern, with straight black hair and pale skin. Her father was a worker from Marseille, her mother a devout Catholic from the countryside of Provence, and she spoke with a Provençal accent. But everything else in her life she’d decided for herself. When he asked her if she was religious, she replied simply: “No one has ever given me any useful proof that God exists, so obviously I can’t believe in Him.” The idea of faith without proof didn’t make any sense to her.

In the same way, socialism wasn’t a passion or a religion with her—as it was for so many in the movement. She’d just decided that capitalism was unjust, and socialism was more logical. After that, she couldn’t see the point of arguing about it.

He had been fascinated by this strange girl from Provence. He found himself spending more and more time in her company. After a year had passed, they had become inseparable. “We may as well live together,” she’d remarked one day, “since we’re never apart.” When she became pregnant with Max, they’d married.

Max looked very like his father, but he was not quite so tall, and his face was finer, more Mediterranean. And though he had his mother’s talent for logic, his reactions to life were those of his father. They shared jokes, and even when they argued, they would often finish the other one’s sentences. Jacques was never more comfortable than when he was in his son’s company.

For some years now, Max had written for the communist paper L’Humanité, which was read across the nation. And he’d joined the Communist Party.

They reached the Place de la Concorde and stared across at the Tuileries Gardens and the Louvre.

“The site of the guillotine,” Jacques remarked wryly to Max. “In the first revolution, we took away the nobles’ lives. The second revolution is kinder. We take away the capitalists’ money.” He shrugged. “It’s more practical.”

They walked past the Hôtel de Crillon, a short way along the rue de Rivoli and up into the Place Vendôme, where Napoléon’s great column graced the center.

“In the Commune,” Jacques reminded his son, “we knocked that column over.”

“Why?”

“I forget.” He smiled. “Do you see what I see?”

On their left, the Ritz Hotel had a shuttered look, like someone pretending to be asleep. Around the rest of the square, small groups of men were standing, some with placards, in front of the closed doors of the shops.

“Mon Dieu,” said Max, “even the jewelry store workers are on strike.”

In high good humor the two Le Sourds continued up through the rue de la Paix, across Saint-Honoré with its chic boutiques, through the heartland of fashion, finding everything on strike. Once or twice Max glanced at his father, wondering if he might not be getting tired, but the tall seventy-year-old was striding like a young man.

They left the world of fashion, passed through the Ninth Arrondissement, then up past the back of the Gare du Nord, and into a little poor district known as the Goutte d’Or, where, finding a small bar run by an Algerian, they finally sat down.

“A good journey,” his father remarked. “From the Triangle d’Or to the Goutte d’Or.” He ordered cognacs and coffee to celebrate what they had seen. “Today, the world changes,” he announced.

“It’s certain that Blum’s government are going to offer a huge package of reforms,” Max agreed. “It will transform the life of every worker in France.”

“Of course,” said his father, “but that’s not what I mean. It will go much further than that. All we have to do now is keep the strike going, and power will pass into the hands of the workers. It has nowhere else to go.”

“But we already have an elected socialist government,” Max pointed out.

“Exactly. And as Marxists, they will see the inevitability of the situation as it unfolds. The Popular Front has served its purpose. Now as the workers take power, everything else will crumble away. Give the strike a month and I tell you, a new state will be born.”

And it was now that Max looked at his father and wondered whether it was time to break the news to him. He didn’t want to do it, but he felt that he must.

It was only when they had finished their drinks, however, and Max had insisted on buying a second round that he plucked up the courage.

“You know, Father,” he said quietly, “in another couple of days, the strike is going to end. It’s already been decided.”

“By whom?”

“By us, Father. By the communists.” He paused while his father stared at him in stupefaction. “We don’t want to upset the capitalists. We need them.” He smiled sadly. “Those are the orders.”

“Orders? From whom?”

“From Russia.”



Max had been a boy when fascism began, in Italy, where the former socialist Mussolini decided that authoritarian nationalism worked better. If Il Duce was supposed to be like some ancient Roman Caesar, it was harder to know what to make of the next Fascist Party when it had suddenly sprung up in Britain a few years ago, and he’d read the accounts with fascination.

A genuine English aristocrat, of ancient lineage, was leading huge rallies of men in black shirts against his own British establishment.

It seemed to Max, however, that Sir Oswald Mosley was far closer to the military men of the French right who were fearful of the communists and socialists, and disgusted with the liberal weakness of their governments. “If the left wants revolution and will use force to get it, then the only defense is to beat them at their own game.” Mosley doubtless considered that he was fulfilling the role he was born to, as a forceful leader of national regeneration.

When there were scenes of violence at a big rally at Olympia, however, the placid British public turned against him and the movement fell apart.

But Germany was another matter.

Max found it easy to understand why the German fascists had arisen so rapidly. During the twenties, with the miseries that followed the war compounded by the crippling demands of reparations from the Allies, and a runaway inflation that wiped out everyone’s savings, the Weimar Republic had been brought to ruin and despair. It did not surprise him that people were looking for a strong leader who could hold out the promise of hope and regeneration.

“Unfortunately,” his father had remarked, “Adolf Hitler is a messianic speaker, but he’s also a lunatic. There’s an imperfect French translation of his book Mein Kampf and I’ve actually read it. The most turgid stuff. But it sets out his whole plan. He seems to believe Germany’s problems are caused by the Jews, and he plans to conquer France and eastern Europe. The whole thing is evil, but it’s also insane.”

“Yet people don’t treat him as a lunatic.”

“No. And I think I know why. He’s anti-Semitic. So are most of the ruling class in the Western world, and most Catholics, too. Think of our own Dreyfus affair. Or the recent Stavisky scandal. A French Ukrainian financier defrauds a huge number of people and everyone says it’s because he’s Jewish. It’s absurd, yet everyone does it.”

“But there’s a difference, surely,” Max had objected. “People aren’t saying that the Jews should be attacked.”

“I believe you’re missing the point.”

“Which is?”

“As long as they don’t see it, Max, they don’t care. If a Jew is mistreated they think: Well, he probably asked for it. If a Jewish community were to say that women and children had been rounded up and shot, those same people will say: ‘These Jews are probably lying.’ They may think Hitler and his Nazis are extreme, but at the end of the day, they don’t want to know.”

“And if he says he’ll conquer Europe?”

“He’s against the communists. That’s his attraction to them. It’s the ancient principle: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The bourgeoisie of Europe fear communist Russia. Hitler is a buffer between Russia and the West. They think he’s defending them.”

“Until he attacks us.”

“They don’t believe he will.”

“Why—when he says he’s going to?”

“Because they don’t want to. They can’t bear to think it. The memory of the Great War is so terrible that no one wants to believe it could ever happen again. So if Hitler prepares for war but says he wants peace, they tell themselves it must be true.” His father had shrugged. “The bourgeoisie will always choose comfort over reality.”



Max reminded his father of that conversation now.

“Stalin’s no bourgeois, Father. He sees Hitler for the threat he is. Look at what happened this spring. Hitler marched into the Rhineland. Admittedly the demilitarized zone, but he was still breaking the German treaty with the Allies after the last war. Nobody seemed to think it mattered, but the message is clear. Hitler can’t be trusted, and he means war. Stalin knows that to protect Russia from Hitler, he needs strong allies in the West. So for the time being, at least, Russia needs bourgeois friends. That’s why the party doesn’t want a revolution here. We need to reassure the bourgeoisie, here and in other countries.”

“But if the workers form committees in every factory, we can push straight through to a Marxist state. Then Russia will have a true, Marxist regime in France as her ally, instead of a bunch of timorous bourgeois.”

“I know, Father. That’s what Trotsky is saying. But he’s wrong. It’s too risky.”

“Revolution is about taking risks.”

“Yes. But Russia is the only Marxist state at present. We have to protect her.”

“And we’re to betray the workers for this?”

“Blum is offering them almost everything they want. It will completely transform employment conditions in France. That’s revolutionary.”

“But it’s not revolution. They’re prepared to stay out on strike. Believe me, I know. They want complete change.”

“Yes, but they can’t have revolution. Not yet. The union leaders are going to tell them to take the deal, and go back to work. All the Communist Party boys are being mobilized to back the union leaders up.”

“I haven’t heard this.”

“It’s only just been decided.”

“Where? By whom? Why don’t I know?”

It was time to break it to him.

“They knew what you’d say, so they didn’t ask you.”

“It seems that you knew about this,” his father said quietly.

“I work for L’Humanité. That’s how I heard.”

“You may find,” his father said coldly, “that some of the workers refuse to obey orders.”

Max looked down at the floor, and said nothing. His father stared at him for a little while.

“So what else haven’t you told me?” Jacques said at last.

The unkindest cut of all. But it couldn’t be avoided. Max took a deep breath.

“Blum has troops gathering outside the city.” Max paused. “I’m sure they won’t be needed. But just in case …”

He saw his father’s head fall. The tall man’s body seemed to shrink.

“Troops. Against our own people …”

“It’s only a precaution.”

Jacques Le Sourd did not speak for a little while. He stared up toward the domes of Sacré Coeur high on the hill above them, but whether he even saw the basilica’s pale form it was impossible to say.

So it had come to this. Full circle. It seemed to Le Sourd that his entire life had suddenly become an illusion, an irony, an evaporation into the blue sky.

At last he spoke.

“Sixty-five years ago,” he said quietly, “in the Commune of Paris, we began the rule of the people. And it was actually working. But the government sent the army into the city, and they were too well armed for the ordinary Parisians, and the Communards were smashed.” He nodded to himself. “My father was a Communard. In the last, terrible weeks, a great many Communards were shot. Many were shot up there on the hill of Montmartre. My father—your grandfather—was shot in Père Lachaise. I vowed to revenge myself on the family of the man who did it, and when I had the chance, I failed.” He shrugged. “So much for me. But I have dedicated my life to completing my father’s work.” He paused. “The men who smashed the Commune, our enemies, had at least this in their favor. However mistakenly, they believed they were right. The man who shot my father probably thought he was fighting for God and the honor of France. His son, whom I failed to kill, was an aristocrat and a bourgeois lackey, and history should have swept him aside and thrown him into the fire. But he was brave, and proud, and honest, and he had a son he loved. That’s why I didn’t shoot him.”

He stood up, and looked down sadly at his son.

“But now, when we have the chance again, a better chance by far than we have ever had before, I find that it is not the monarchists and the bourgeois who are bringing in the troops, but the socialists, and the communists—our own side. And having spent my life trying to honor the memory of my father, I find that my own son is with the traitors. So perhaps if I can find some brave men to stand with me, I can defy your troops, and your treachery, and you and your Russian friends can watch them gun me down.”

And with those last bitter words, he turned and walked away. And Max knew that there was nothing he could do but watch his father go, and wonder if, having hurt him so much, he had lost him.



By 1936, L’Invitation au Voyage was a very special establishment. It was named after the famous poem in Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal, whose refrain expressed everything the place hoped to be.

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté

Luxe, calme, et volupté

Order, and beauty, luxury, calm. And sexual pleasure. There were two further things for which the house had gained a reputation: It was spotlessly clean. And it was always changing. In fact, it was a work of remarkable imagination.

The imagination of its owner, Madame Louise.



The French government had a very sensible attitude toward brothels, Louise always thought. It regulated them. The laws went back to the time of the great emperor Napoléon.

Not that regulation had been a new idea in Europe, even then. Back in the Middle Ages, the many brothels along the south bank of London’s River Thames were supervised by their feudal lord, the bishop of Winchester, who drew up the regulations.

In Paris, however, it was not the Church but the civil authorities who licensed the brothels. There were regular inspections and twice-weekly medical checks for all the women employed there. It was pragmatic, logical and responsible.

It was six years now since Louise had opened her brothel.

Perhaps, if she’d been colder, a little more ruthless, Louise could have followed in the wake of Coco Chanel—whose lovers, like the Duke of Westminster, included some of the richest men in Europe. But Louise had been too slow to understand the lesson that a woman’s fortune depended entirely on the circuit in which she moved. On the arm of a man who was very rich, she would meet other equally rich men, who cared very little for the rules of society, because they could make the rules for themselves.

True, in France—where it was well remembered that at the court of Versailles, a royal mistress might have more power and prestige than a queen—a mistress might be a highly fashionable woman, and not a person to be hidden away and looked down upon, as in many other countries. But even so, a well-to-do Parisian was unlikely to give her the social protection or the money she would need to progress beyond a certain point.

So Louise lived quietly, and she did not become rich, but nonetheless, by the time she was thirty, she had been the kept woman of several men who could afford to be generous, and together with the capital sum from her father when she reached that age, she had enough money to stop being dependent on others and to go into business for herself. That was when she had opened L’Invitation au Voyage.

Luc had helped her find the place. There were many areas where brothels were to be found. Apart from the red-light district of Pigalle near the Moulin Rouge, there was the ancient rue Saint-Denis that ran up the edge of the Second Arrondissement just east of Les Halles. For male homosexuals, there were the bath houses on the Left Bank in the Luxembourg quarter; the best lesbian house was even grander, in a private mansion on the Champs-Élysées. Louise didn’t like the rue Saint-Denis. The girls who walked the street there were prostitutes of the lowest sort. Though she was sorry for them, and for their sad, degraded lives, she wasn’t going to have them on her doorstep. But Luc found a place a little to the east on the edge of the Marais quarter, on the old rue de Montmorency, where Nicolas Flamel, the medieval magician, had owned a neighboring house.

Luc had also been useful at the start in helping her find the girls. And Louise had wondered if he would want her to make him a partner, which she didn’t want to do. But when she offered him a salary instead, for these and other services, he seemed quite content, and she realized that, even in middle age, he was happier with the freedom of the streets than the responsibility of a business. He still supplied cocaine to his large network of clients, and in its first year, he provided more than a dozen valuable customers to the brothel.

But he and Louise had one understanding. None of her girls were allowed to take drugs of any kind, especially cocaine. It was a rule she had made right at the start, and she never deviated from it.

“I’ve seen too much of what cocaine can do,” she told Luc. “I want all the girls to look wholesome. I won’t have them getting skinny and rattled, no mood swings, no girls without septums in their noses, no lying. Girls in other places may be like that, but not here.”

Luc had understood. All the girls were clean.



When Louise received the note from Jacob, one morning early in September, she decided to go to his gallery that very afternoon. Every so often, when he had something that he thought she might like, Jacob would send her a little note. His judgment was usually excellent, and down the years she’d bought a number of paintings from him, including one by Marc Blanchard—a small landscape of the very street in which her establishment was situated.

She’d often thought about the portrait of the girl who might have been her mother. But she’d never bought it. She’d developed an aversion to false hopes, and disappointments. Had she discovered for certain that the girl in the painting was her mother, she’d have wanted it. But she preferred to ignore the picture altogether rather than invest her emotion in a possible delusion.

She liked Jacob. It was clear that he loved the work he was selling, and once he got to know her, he would give her frank advice. His prices were always sensible. She looked forward to seeing what he had to show her.

First, however, there was the daily business of the establishment to be attended to.

Every morning the house was cleaned. Though they were always kept shuttered on the street side, all the windows were opened, the bedclothes were completely changed. Every tile and bathroom was washed, scrubbed and disinfected. By noon, the house smelled as if it had just been fumigated, and Louise inspected it with the thoroughness of a strict hospital matron. Not until teatime would little sprays be used to perfume the rooms again.

At one o’clock, a potential new girl arrived for an interview, and Louise saw her in the little office on the upper floor where she had her own apartment.

The girl was the cousin of Bernadette, one of the most reliable of the twenty girls who already worked for her. During the last couple of years, most of the new girls had come to her in a similar way. Indeed, the two that Luc had found had proved to be unsatisfactory, and she had been obliged to send them away.

At first sight, the girl looked promising. She was fair-haired, slim, elegant. Her manners were excellent, she was well-spoken, but her face had a cool distance that was intriguing.

The interview was thorough. Beyond the official medical tests, Louise explained, she would insist on the girl visiting the doctor that she used for an even more thorough screening. She also asked in detail exactly what her experience was, and what she was not prepared to do. But this was by no means all. She made the girl walk about, so that she could study her deportment, she made her read aloud, she asked her questions about clothes and fashion and she wanted to know if she had ever acted.

By the end of the interview, she had decided that the girl was certainly a prospect. Well worth a trial.

“Come with me now,” she instructed, “and you can see some of the rooms.”

At this, the young woman’s calm face lit up.

“I’ve heard about the rooms, madame,” she said. “I’m quite excited.”



There is nothing new under the sun. Certainly not in a brothel. But it could truly be said that, of its kind, L’Invitation au Voyage was exceptional. And if it was, Louise knew, the inspiration for her work hadn’t come from a house of pleasure.

It had come from the Joséphine department store.

She’d gone in there so many times. Her only concern had been that she might encounter Marc Blanchard. It was possible of course that he might not recognize her, but she preferred not to take the chance. And having learned from the shop assistants that he almost never went into the store in the morning, she went then, and had never seen him.

But she had seen his work. And it was spectacular.

She was fascinated by the way that the store was like a changing stage set. There was always something new, to dazzle or surprise. Even the mannequins in the windows or the floor displays seemed to be engaged in some action in which, perhaps mysteriously, they had been suddenly frozen.

Though she avoided Marc, she had on one occasion talked to Marie, who had come up while she was engaged with one of the assistants. Louise had complimented her on the way the store was run.

“That’s very kind of you,” Marie replied. She seemed genuinely pleased. “We do our best. Sadly, however, my daughter, who married a charming American last year, is going with him to America shortly. She’s the one who scouts for talent and keeps us up to date. It won’t be easy to replace her.”

“I wish I could help you,” Louise said on impulse, “but I don’t know enough.”

She realized her folly as soon as the words were out of her mouth, but saw a light of interest in Marie’s eyes.

“What do you do?” the older woman asked.

“I study art, and model for Chanel.”

“Really?” Marie looked quite thoughtful. Louise knew the impression she made on people. Her clothes, her manners, and her elegant French always impressed them. “I wonder if you should talk to my daughter and my brother,” Marie mused. “You’re the right sort of age …”

“It’s a charming idea,” Louise said quickly, “but not possible, I’m afraid. I wish you luck, though, madame.”

Marie was still looking at her curiously as she beat a hasty retreat.

Whatever her exact relationship to Marie might be, Louise liked and admired her. And she was quite taken aback when, a year later, the Joséphine store suddenly announced that it was closing.

The statement to the press was remarkably frank. The owners felt that, after years of brilliant success, they were in danger of getting stale. Rather than see the business descend toward mediocrity, they were going to close it. They hoped that Joséphine would be remembered as a work of art. After her initial shock, Louise decided that the choice was rather admirable. How many stores and restaurants lived on the reputation of their past, when they would have done much better to close?

The space was soon rented to another enterprise. Two months later, Louise saw a small notice in the newspaper that Marie had married the Vicomte de Cygne.

So when she opened L’Invitation au Voyage, Louise tried to follow a parallel course with her own business. Several of the best Paris brothels had exotic rooms and some staged erotic entertainments, but in Louise’s house, every room had a theme. Some, she realized, should not change, because customers asked for them again and again. But seven of her rooms were changed at regular intervals. She not only had an English room, a Scottish room, even a Wild West room, but she would decorate the rooms to evoke particular moments in history. She began to deal in fantasies of every kind, and it amused her to think of fresh ones with which to surprise the men who came there. I should ask Marc Blanchard to help me, she thought wryly. He’d be good at it.

But she didn’t really need any help. She was discovering a rich imaginative vein in herself that she’d never knew she had.

She spent considerable sums on every redecoration, but she kept a sharp eye on the profits and the cash, and found that she could charge more for the quality of service she was providing. As for the girls, they loved dressing up to suit the part, whether Egyptian princess, Roman slave or any of the many roles that fantasy, light or dark, might demand.

There was always something new at Louise’s brothel, and it was done with style. She hoped that her Blanchard family, if they had known, would have been pleased.



After the prospective girl had gone, telling her staff that she would not be back for several hours, Louise left for Jacob’s gallery. It was less than a mile and she decided to walk. She walked west to the Place des Victoires, crossed behind the Palais-Royal, and up through the district near the Bourse that she knew so well. She was in a good mood as she entered the rue Taitbout.

Monsieur Jacob was delighted to see her. His wife was visiting the gallery. Her plain dress and pale skin suggested that, as Louise had always supposed, the Jacob family were strictly observant. She had a baby girl with her, of whom Jacob was obviously very proud.

“Your first?” she asked with a smile.

“Oui, madame.” He beamed.

“Her name?”

“Laïla.”

“A beautiful name.”

She suspected that Jacob himself knew what she did. He might have told his wife, or he might not. The younger woman seemed a little reserved, but that might just be her manner. She did not touch the baby, but she congratulated both parents on having such a pretty child. Then mother and daughter left.

“So what have you for me?” she asked Jacob.

“Something different, madame. Drawings.” He went to a plan chest and returned with a portfolio containing a number of charcoal and pencil sketches on thick paper, which he placed on a table. “I remembered that you had taken an interest in the work of Marc Blanchard,” he continued, “and I was at his place the other day.”

“Ah. He is well?” She was careful not to sound too interested.

“He is getting old, madame. But I asked him if he had any other work for me—for I have sold a number of his paintings, you know. And he told me that the only thing he had was a portfolio of drawings that he hadn’t looked at in years, and that I was free to take it away and see if there was anything of interest.”

He showed her three. One was a rough sketch of Paris seen from the hill of Montmartre, not especially interesting. Two others were very incomplete life drawings, one of a man, the other of a middle-aged lady in a hat.

“They’re all right …,” said Louise, without much enthusiasm.

“I agree,” said Jacob. “I don’t find them interesting. But then I came upon something else.” His small face gazed at her seriously. “Do you remember that you once made an inquiry about a portrait of a girl? Quite good, we both thought. You asked the identity of the sitter, and I did inquire, but the artist did not tell me.” He produced another sketch. This was a pencil drawing, quite detailed, and he laid it in front of her. Louise recognized it at once.

“It looks like a sketch for that portrait.”

“Exactly, madame. I still have the portrait and I placed them together. There is no question. As a collector, you will well understand that to possess both the portrait and the artist’s sketch is highly desirable. I should certainly wish to sell the two together.”

“Naturally. Though we still don’t know the sitter’s identity.”

“No, madame. At least, not quite.” He reached into the portfolio. “But there is a third item, madame, a charcoal sketch, unquestionably for the same picture, and on this there is a name—as you see.” And he placed the charcoal sketch on the table. At the bottom, quite clearly, the artist had written a single name.

Corinne Petit.

Louise stared. And then, quite suddenly, she felt her throat contract, and before she could do anything about it, tears came into her eyes. There could be no further doubt. The coincidences were too many. Marc was her father. And she was looking at her mother.

She kept very still, hoping the little dealer had not noticed.

He stood up.

“I will bring the portrait in, madame, if I may,” he said, moving to the door at the back. “It’s interesting to see all three pieces together.”

He was gone several minutes. By the time he returned, she had fully recovered herself. But she felt sure that he had noticed, and that his absence was tactful kindness.

“You see, madame.” He hung the portrait on a blank wall, and adjusted the lighting. Then he held up the two sketches, one in each hand, beside the portrait.

“A set of three,” she said. “They look wonderful together.”

“I hoped you might say that. I think so too.”

“The painting was for someone else originally,” she lied. “But I might take them for myself. I remember you quoted me a price for the painting. But that was some years ago. What would it be now, with the drawings as well?”

“The same, madame. You are an excellent client.”

“You are kind, Monsieur Jacob.”

“If you will permit me, madame, I should like to get the drawings framed, and then we can arrange delivery.”

“Excellent, monsieur. Meanwhile, I shall choose a suitable place to hang them.”

When the transaction was complete, she prepared to leave.

“There is just one thing, madame,” Jacob said. He was gazing at her kindly. “The artist may ask me who bought the painting.”

“Just tell him that a private collector has the work.”

“You are sure, madame? He might like to meet you.” His voice was very soft.

He had guessed. She was sure of it.

“No, monsieur, I do not wish to meet the artist.”

“As you wish, madame.” He opened the door and bowed, as she stepped out into the street.



She took a taxi back. She was eager to spend a little time alone in her apartment thinking about the best place to hang the picture and its accompanying drawings.

She also couldn’t help reflecting that it was sad that she couldn’t make herself known to her blood relations—to Marie, whom she liked, and Marc who, whatever his faults, had talents to be admired, and to her dear old grandfather down at Fontainebleau. Might she and Claire, whom she’d seen only from a distance, have become friends? Or would they have rejected her, as her mother’s family had done? She didn’t intend to find out.

But unknown to them all, with the purchase of the portrait, she was piecing together her family, her true identity, reconstituting a past and a truth that would otherwise have been lost.

For a few moments, her thoughts turned to Luc. He was the one who had set her upon this path that put a moral and social barrier between herself and her real family. Most people would say he had corrupted her. But if she felt a resentment over the fact, she told herself that it was useless. She had chosen her path too. Had she chosen another, she might have found a respectable husband. Perhaps. But then she’d have had no freedom. There were no other paths to fortune that were open to a woman. Whereas, after a few more years of this, she’d be able to retire as a lady of independent means.

Only one thing was missing from her life now.

A husband? Truly, she wasn’t sure she wanted one, and certainly not the kind of man who’d want to marry a brothel keeper. But she would have liked a child. And time was passing on. She was thirty-six.

It could be arranged. She could surely find a rich lover again, a man of some interest, perhaps. She needn’t tell him her intention. If he wanted to help the child, good. If not, she could provide. Perhaps, she thought, as the taxi reached the rue de Montmorency, this would be the next step forward in her life.

She paid the cab and went swiftly up to the door, letting herself in with her key. The hall was empty, as was the salon on her right, but from the morning room at the back, some low voices told her that one or two girls had already arrived. She was just about to mount the stairs when she heard a man’s voice, speaking softly. She frowned. Surely this wasn’t a customer. They were always kept in the salon. Then she realized it was Luc’s voice. Perhaps he had wanted to see her.

She went quietly to the door of the morning room, and opened it.

The two figures sprung apart. It was Luc and Bernadette. The girl went pale. But they weren’t breaking from a lovers’ embrace. She could tell that at once. It was something else. The girl was holding a small handbag. She had clipped it shut as she moved back. Louise came into the room and closed the door behind her. She ignored Luc, but went straight toward Bernadette.

“Open your bag,” she commanded.

“But those are my things, madame,” the girl protested.

“Give it to me.” She didn’t wait. She took it from the frightened girl before she could resist. She opened it, looked in and saw what she had suspected at once.

Two little packets of cocaine. She took them, satisfied herself that it was what she thought and handed the bag back to Bernadette.

“Madame …,” the girl began, but Louise cut her off.

“You know the rules. Get out.”

“Madame?”

“Don’t come here anymore. Tell your cousin we can’t use her either. Now get out.” She turned, opened the door and indicated the way out. The girl looked at Luc, expecting him to intercede.

“But it’s not necessary, Louise …,” he began.

“We always agreed,” she answered. “You can’t go back on it now.” She turned to the girl again. “Go,” she commanded. And this time Luc was silent.

After the girl had gone, Louise turned to Luc. She was no longer angry, but she was sad.

“How could you betray me?” she asked.

“It’s not so important.”

“It is to me. How many others were there? I need to know.”

“Only Bernadette. She has been using cocaine for years. She’s not addicted. She’s all right.”

“So you’ve lied to me for years.”

“It’s only Bernadette.”

“I can’t trust you, Luc.”

“You can trust me.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I can’t.” She sighed. “Don’t come here anymore, Luc. Don’t come near my girls.”

“Don’t talk to me like that, Louise. You need me.”

She paused. She didn’t need him at all, but she didn’t say it.

“Whatever I owed you was paid long ago,” she said. “You have hurt me very much. I don’t wish to see you anymore.”

“Just don’t forget to pay me,” he said quietly.

“I’m not going to pay you anymore.”

She saw his hand go toward his side. She remembered that he sometimes carried a stiletto. But his hand did not go farther, and she decided it was just an automatic reaction when he was crossed.

“You pay me,” he said, “or you will regret it.” Then he left.

Now, she thought, she had two new girls to find.



After the rapid ending of the strikes in June, Max Le Sourd and his father had seen little of each other. Through the long summer and into the autumn, they had each gone about their business. Each Sunday afternoon, Max would look in at his parents’ apartment in Belleville. His mother would be there, but his father would always go out. In due course, Max supposed, he’d find his father there, but it hadn’t happened so far.

For Max it was a painful time, not only because he felt the separation from his father, but because by the time that summer was over, it was beginning to look as if his father had been right.

True, at first, the party strategy had seemed to be wise. The strikers had accepted the terms of the government’s settlement, and gone back to work. Even the employers had praised the parties and the unions for showing such responsibility. Moreover, the new working conditions were a huge improvement. “This is historic progress,” the unions could claim. They had won respect.

But would it last? Within weeks, the employers started to whittle back the benefits the strike had won. As he looked forward, it was clear to Max that he would soon see more of the same.

Outside France itself, the Spanish military and Catholic right had launched a massive counterattack on the leftist government in July. Spain was now in a state of civil war. Fascist Italy and Germany were sending support to the military. In France, Blum’s socialist government was dithering over what to do. Was Spain about to fall under a fascist regime?

And in the month of August, the Nazi regime in Germany had staged the Olympic games with a magnificence that the whole world had watched and applauded. A token German athlete with a Jewish father had been allowed to take part. But while all the world’s press and thousands of visitors had only to look around them in Berlin to see what the Nazi regime was really like, the splendor and beauty of the games had overpowered their imaginations. As his father had perceived, they didn’t want to know. Hitler’s fascist regime had scored a huge propaganda success.

So what had been achieved? Max asked himself. The answer: nothing. The Marxist cause had been betrayed, the chance of revolution lost, its enemies stronger than ever.

He had been wrong. His father had been right. The question was, what could he do now?



On the first Sunday of October, the fourth day of the month, Max went as usual to his parents’ apartment. His father was not there, so he talked to his mother as usual. But instead of leaving at the end of the afternoon, he remained there.

It was six o’clock when his father came in.

“Oh,” he said, “you’re here.” But he didn’t leave.

“I came to say good-bye,” said Max. “I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye to you.”

“Leave?” His father frowned. “Where are you going?”

“They’re recruiting international brigades to fight against Franco and his fascists in Spain.”

“I’ve heard.”

“I went for an interview on Friday. Paris is the main recruitment center, as you know. Being a Communist Party member, I was accepted at once. All the others have to be interviewed by a Russian intelligence officer.” He grinned. “I would have enjoyed being grilled by the NKVD, but it was denied me.”

His father registered faint disgust at the mention of Russia, but made no other comment.

“Why don’t you go as a war correspondent, for L’Humanité?” his mother asked.

“Not needed. Anyway, I want to fight.”

His mother said nothing. He turned to his father.

“I have to go, you know.”

“I know.”

“This summer, I was wrong. You were right.”

“There was nothing you could have done yourself, in any case. It wasn’t your fault.”

“No. But all the same …” Max shrugged. “I wanted to say I was sorry.”

His father gave a brief nod. Then, rather stiffly, he hugged him.

“Come back,” he said.