The Paris Architect: A Novel

Gaspard had loved being a professor. More than a job, it was his whole identity. 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 shining 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 hardship, poverty, and threat to their lives that suddenly came with being married to a Jew.

The lingering smell of lion piss 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 assistant, 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 space 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.