The Paris Architect: A Novel

It was a cool summer morning, and Celeste enjoyed the breeze on her face as she walked along the boulevard de Sébastopol. The Germans had drained the life out of Paris, but at least they couldn’t change its weather, she thought. She continued down to the Pont Notre-Dame and across the Seine. Looking at her wristwatch, she turned east and walked to Notre Dame. There were far more German tourist soldiers than Frenchmen and pigeons in front of the cathedral. Three Wehrmacht officers with cameras stopped snapping away and looked at her as she passed them. They murmured their approval to each other and smiled, but she ignored them. Inside the church were even more German soldiers walking along the aisles, gazing up at the great vaulted ceiling and the tall stained-glass windows. Some were kneeling in pews, praying, which surprised Celeste. She assumed that such people didn’t believe in any kind of God.

Celeste sat in a pew but didn’t pray. She never attended church on Sundays anymore but still liked the contemplative feel of the place. It was a good place to think and reflect, a tiny oasis of comfort in a disappointing life. What was the use of praying for happiness anyway? It hadn’t done her any good. She had been punished with the loss of her child then the abandonment by her father. She couldn’t take any more heartbreak. And her marriage had slipped away. Celeste had once truly loved Lucien, but for some reason, that love slowly evaporated like water in a bowl. It was once full, and now there was just a tiny puddle left at its bottom. No one had tipped the bowl over; it just simply vanished over time.

Celeste walked out of the cathedral and across the Petit Pont to the Left Bank. Just before the boulevard Saint-Germain, she turned onto rue Dante and went into an apartment house. On the second-floor landing, she rang the bell of a unit.

The door opened, and a tall middle-aged man with wire-rim glasses faced her.

“Madame Bernard, so wonderful to see you. We’re ready for you. This way, please.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Richet.”

At the dining room table sat a ten-year-old girl with freckled cheeks and brilliant blond hair in long pigtails. She stood up and curtseyed to Celeste.

“All right, Sandrine, what is your math assignment for this week? Still fractions?” said Celeste, taking off her hat and sitting down next to the girl.

“Yes, Madame, but I still can’t quite add wholes and fractions.”

“You’ll see, my love, in one hour, you’ll be doing it with the snap of your fingers, like magic,” said Celeste, kissing the girl on her cheek.

When the lesson was over, Richet came back into the dining room.

“I can’t thank you enough for your help these past months. Sandrine’s old tutor simply disappeared.”

“Many, many people in Paris have disappeared,” said Celeste.

“Thank you, Madame Bernard, for my lesson,” said Sandrine with a curtsey.

“Practice those fraction exercises, and you’ll see how well you do on the next exam.”

Richet stood behind his daughter, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her on the top of her head.

“Sandrine, why don’t you go to the park for a while,” said Richet.





15





“Monsieur, I told you that I wouldn’t be part of this anymore.”

Manet, who was sitting on a plush red velvet sofa, smiled at Lucien, who was pacing back and forth in front of the enormous fireplace in the hunting lodge in Le Chesnay.

“All I’m asking for is a little advice.”

“Advice like that can get me killed. And you, as well.”

“Just take a look around and tell me what you think. I’m betting a man with your creative talents could think of another ingenious idea.”

Lucien knew the old man was just buttering him up, and it was working. As he gazed around the house, his eyes lit up when he saw that there were far more possibilities here than in the apartment. The building was typical of the great hunting lodges built in the seventeenth century for the nobility. Hidden in a dense forest on a piece of land probably a kilometer square, the house, with its steep slate roof and corner towers, was a good out-of-the-way place to hole up from the Gestapo. Properties like these were kept in the family, passed down through the generations. It must have at least thirty rooms, with a kitchen that was bigger than his own apartment.

Manet walked over to Lucien. Putting his hand on Lucien’s shoulder in a grandfatherly manner, he half-whispered, as though there were other people in the room.