The Paris Architect: A Novel

“He was a shrewd judge of character.”


Lucien was in a trance as Manet ushered him to the door. When he found himself outside in the cool night air, he couldn’t remember going down the lift. It was well after the curfew and the streets were completely empty. Lucien leaned against the base of the building and looked up and down the rue du Renard for German patrols. He heard no sounds of marching Germans in the distance, so he began walking blindly down the rue du Renard until he came to the quai de Gesvres and almost tumbled down the steps to the Seine. Both the quai and the river were deserted. He knelt by the edge of the Seine and threw up, then sat against the quai wall in the shadows, staring into space. Throughout the night, his emotions swung wildly from unrelenting guilt to blind rage at the Germans. Even if the Jews were the worst of what people called them, they were human beings and shouldn’t end up like that. No one should die like that. A German patrol of five men with machine guns slung over their shoulders passed only five meters away from Lucien, never noticing him against the wall. He stayed there until daybreak, clutching the handkerchief he’d taken from Serrault’s mouth. Instead of tossing it in the Seine, he kept it in the side pocket of his suit jacket and walked home.

***

For the next week, Lucien could think of nothing but the dead faces of the Serraults, with the handkerchiefs in their mouths. Nothing he did would purge the image from his mind. No hour passed when he did not think of them. His remorse was unending. The couple even invaded his dreams. Every night, the Serraults joined other images from his life to form a surreal film that ran in his mind. In one dream, he was back in his childhood bedroom where he kept his trunk at the foot of the bed, and when he opened it up the Serraults were inside, at the bottom, eating at a dining room table like little doll figures, with hundreds of tiny birds flying around them. He shouted at them, but they ignored him. In another dream, he was in a car he didn’t recognize. The Serraults were driving through a landscape that resembled North Africa with him, his father, and Celeste, who was holding a dead rabbit in the backseat. Throughout the ride, his father was screaming something in his ear.

Lucien would toss and turn violently, waking up in a cold sweat, then get up and pace throughout his apartment in the middle of the night, chain smoking away. Even his architecture, which was his whole world, seemed unimportant to him, and he didn’t go near his drawing board. He pushed all the work onto Alain and rarely set foot in the office. He couldn’t bear being at home so he spent his days walking the streets or sitting by the Seine. Going to the cinema was of no use; he could never keep his mind on the film. And he hadn’t had the courage to face Manet since that terrible night. He took the handkerchief with him everywhere and touched it whenever the image of the Serraults came to mind, as if he were rubbing salt in a wound to punish himself for his hubris.





29





The old stone cottage with the dilapidated barn next to it looked very familiar to Lucien as he steered the Citro?n down the winding road. So did the little inn coming up on the right. Lucien knew he’d been this way before but couldn’t remember when. It was hard to think with Adele talking nonstop. She hadn’t shut up since they’d left Paris. As he’d predicted, she was thrilled to see the car outside her window. In just seconds, she was downstairs and in the passenger’s seat, giving him directions where to go. Lucien had planned a romantic afternoon in Saint-Denis, but Adele insisted on going southwest of Paris in the opposite direction. All she would reveal was that she had a new weekend retreat to show him. With a navigator’s instincts, she issued directions as they roared down the country roads.