The Paris Architect: A Novel

“You better believe it won’t happen again. You’ve got to go.”


“But you promised we could stay.”

“Tough luck. I must’ve been nuts to hide Jews. You know what would happen to me if they found you?”

“But where will we go?” moaned Miriam, Geiber’s wife.

“Who gives a shit? That’s your problem, not mine. You can stay until tomorrow night,” replied Maurier, who stomped away.

Geiber sat down on the plank floor of the dirt pit and held his head in his hands. About two meters wide, three meters long, and three meters deep, the hole they lived in must have once been a storage place for animal fodder. It had been Solomon and Miriam Geiber’s home for the last four weeks. Though it was cold, damp, and always smelled of moldy grain, the pit was a deluxe hotel compared to how they’d lived in the previous weeks.

Warned by a friend in the middle of the afternoon that the Gestapo was on the way to their apartment, Geiber and his wife had grabbed their belongings and savings and escaped into the streets of Paris. After being rebuffed by three friends whom they thought they could count on, the Geibers had had no idea of what to do. In desperation, they’d gone to their longtime pharmacist, a kindly gentile whom they’d hoped would hide them in the basement beneath his shop. But he politely refused and to their horror had offered them free vials of cyanide to take in case they were caught.

Feeling totally abandoned, the Geibers had made their way to the outskirts of the city. After spending a miserable night under a railroad overpass, they’d continued walking west into the countryside, traveling from one farm house to another, begging for a roof over their heads and some food. But knowing the penalty for hiding Jews, the farmers had either slammed their doors in their faces or offered the old couple some scraps of food then shooed them away as though they were stray dogs. Because he’d been so desperate, Geiber had lost all feelings of pride and practically begged on his knees for help. Day after day, they’d wandered with no definite destination, subsisting on handouts and sleeping in the woods or in haystacks at night.

Occasionally, they’d come across some decent people who’d shelter them overnight. They were an odd sight in the middle of the French countryside, an old man in a three-piece English tweed suit and cane, his wife in a fashionable tailored outfit. To avoid capture by the Germans, the couple had steered clear of the highways and only traveled the back country roads. Both were in their late sixties, and the walking soon took a toll on their bodies; Miriam’s legs became terribly swollen, and she could barely drag herself along. There had been times when they thought of turning themselves in to end their misery.

The only act of kindness came when a farmer offered them bicycles that had belonged to his sons, both of whom were now prisoners of war in Germany. Though it had been at least ten years ago, the Geibers had gone on many biking holidays with their children through France and Switzerland. To their delight, they discovered that it was true—that once you learned to ride a bicycle, you never forgot. Biking had been better than walking, but they’d still found no one who would take them in permanently.