At first, Pierre thought it was Jean-Claude knocking something off the kitchen table again. He was always running around like a little madman, never paying attention to anything. But there came another loud crash, then another, followed by the children’s screaming. He could hear men shouting, and Madame Charpointier shouting back at them.
Below him, men like rampaging elephants came tearing up the main staircase of the townhouse, first crashing through the second floor then the third and the fourth, going into one room after another. They were yelling at each other, upending furniture, opening closet doors. Pierre fastened his eyes on the attic door in the floor expecting it to burst open at any second, but the men went back downstairs. He could clearly hear the wailing of Jean-Claude, Isabelle, and Philippe. Pierre’s first instinct was to run down the attic stairs and help them. But he remembered what Madame Charpointier had told him and stopped dead in his tracks. His heart pounding, he dropped to his knees and put his ear to the attic door. He could just hear what the grown-ups were saying.
Madame kept telling them that these children were Catholics, baptized in the church in Orléans, and that they knew their prayers. She ordered his brothers and sisters to recite their prayers. In unison, all three started saying a Hail Mary, but a German screamed at them to stop. Philippe, the youngest, was now wailing away, and this angered the German, who yelled at him to shut the hell up. But Philippe cried even louder, and then there was a sudden silence. Madame started screaming at the German for slapping a four-year-old. There was the sound of another slap, which Pierre imagined was directed toward Madame, but that didn’t stop her rage. The shouting continued until Pierre heard the front door open and the commotion shifted to the sidewalk. He got up and went to the attic window that overlooked the rue Dupleix. Two French policemen were dragging his brothers and sister into the rear seat of a French police car parked at the curb.
Two German soldiers took hold of Madame Charpointier, who was still screaming at the top of her lungs. A German officer in a black and green uniform came up to her, and the soldiers let her go. His hand rose to the level of Madame’s forehead, and there was a loud bang. She dropped to the sidewalk in a heap. The children, who had witnessed everything from the car, screamed out, “Aunt Clare! Aunt Clare!” The officer holstered his pistol and, along with the soldiers, got into another car, which sped off. Madame was lying on her back with her eyes wide open, as if she was quietly watching the clouds roll by.
Pierre backed away from the window in horror, stumbled, and fell onto his backside. He pulled his legs up to his chest and grasped them with all his might, rolling back and forth on the attic floor in anguish, but not uttering a single sound. His eyes shut tight. There was such an intense ache inside his chest, he couldn’t stand it. Pierre kept rolling around until he collided with a large steamer trunk piled high with old dusty magazines that fell on top of him. He lay there on his back gasping for breath and finally opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was an old raincoat covered with cobwebs that hung on a nail on a rafter. As he stared at it, dozens of kind things Madame Charpointier had done for him flashed through his brain. The new football. The beautiful navy blue sweater for his birthday. The money she gave him to take his brothers and sister to the cinema. Helping him with his math homework. He reached to wipe the tears from his eyes and was surprised to find there weren’t any. Maybe because he’d been bar mitzvah’d and he was a man now, he didn’t cry anymore. Tears were just replaced with this terrible aching feeling in his chest. Pierre wanted desperately to cry but couldn’t. Crying, he thought, might not hurt as bad as the pain in his chest.
Pierre sat up and saw the attic window. Below it, he noticed a wisp of grayish-white smoke slowly curling upward into the rafters. Pierre realized it was his cigarette that he’d dropped during all the commotion. He’d come up to the attic in the late afternoon as usual to smoke in secret. It was an excellent place to sit and enjoy his Gauloises. Sitting by the window and looking at the roofs of the houses in the neighborhood and the sky above gave him great pleasure. Madame always gave him hell for smoking, saying a twelve-year-old shouldn’t smoke, that it would stunt his growth and yellow his teeth, so Pierre needed his own hideout. He knew she knew he snuck up here to smoke, but she never confronted him about it.
Pierre heard a truck pull up in front of the building, and he crawled on hands and knees to the window and raised himself to peek out. He was sorry he did. Two French laborers hoisted Madame Charpointier’s body onto the truck bed. They did it with a casualness that shocked him, like heaving a heavy sack of flour. Sitting against the wall under the small window, he snuffed out the burning cigarette. He closed his eyes and thought of his brothers and sister being thrown into the car. That would be his last image of them forever, screaming and frightened to death. A new wave of sadness even worse than before crushed him. He’d fought, bickered, and sometimes hated Jean-Claude, Isabelle, and Philippe, but he’d loved them with all his heart. They had been the only family he’d had left, and he knew he’d never see them again. Of all his family, he was the only one left. And he didn’t understand why.
The horrible images of what had just happened kept swirling around and around in his head. He placed his hands on his skull as if he could squeeze them out. Then the boy realized that all that had just occurred had been predicted by his father. When he’d told Pierre of the plan to pretend to be Christian and stay with Madame Charpointier, he’d explained what could happen to all of them. That one day with no warning, they could be found out. How the Boche would take his brothers and sister and him away and that Madame would be arrested. Everything he’d said had come true. The only difference was that instead of being taken away and tortured to death by the Gestapo, Madame had been shot on the spot. Pierre knew the Boche made examples of all those who hid Jews. The French hated Jews, his father said, even ones who had been in the country for hundreds of years. It didn’t matter. They wouldn’t hesitate to inform on their neighbors. Gentiles might smile and be polite to Jews, but in the end they’d stab them in the back. Always remember that, he’d said.
Pierre tried to think who could’ve betrayed Madame. Was it Monsieur Charles, who always argued with her about his dog? Maybe it was just someone who lived across the street and wondered why four children had mysteriously shown up on her doorstep a year ago. Madame’s story that they were her niece’s children hadn’t sounded that convincing even to Pierre.
Pierre waited until it was dark, then he went downstairs to his room and gathered some belongings in a large rucksack. There were so many things he couldn’t take, and that made him even sadder. He had to leave his football and model airplane, his books on the Roman Empire. Before he went back up the attic ladder, he went to each of his sibling’s rooms and took one small belonging—Jean-Claude’s favorite toy truck, Isabelle’s stuffed cat, and Philippe’s little beach shovel. Just touching these things reminded him of his last image of his brothers and sister, and the pain inside his chest intensified. Maybe this was what grown-ups meant by a broken heart. He’d always thought it was a silly expression.
As he left Philippe’s room, he ran into Misha, Madame’s calico cat. Although Madame had been incredibly kind to them, it had been Misha who had given him and his siblings the most comfort in those first weeks after losing their parents. He purred and rubbed his head on Pierre’s leg. Pierre bent down to rub him under his chin. He looked at the rucksack and decided he could stuff Misha into it. The cat went in without protest and curled up in a ball on top of his sweater, and Pierre gently closed the flap over him.
Pierre went into Madame’s room, where her handbag was sitting on the bed. He removed the money from it, then went to her dresser where she kept her savings in a little plaid bag in her stocking drawer. His father had also told him that money could save your life in times like these and the more you had the better. He still had the large roll of franc notes his father had shoved in his pants pocket when they’d parted. Pierre had never e
xpected to see his father and mother again, but even though they’d received no word from them after six months, he and Madame had kept up a charade for the younger children by always saying, “When Papa comes back from his trip…”
He took one more look around and went up to the attic and out through a dormer window. As Pierre crossed the roofs of the adjoining houses, he wondered how long it would be until he was picked up by the Boche.
23
Serrault knew that this was Manet’s architect.
The light was fading and the rear of the apartment was in shadow so Serrault could watch him without being seen. Serrault had been walking through the apartment when he’d heard someone come in, and he’d quickly hidden. He was surprised the man was tall and distinguished-looking; the architects he had worked with were all mousy and poorly dressed. The architect was on his knees measuring the firebox inside the enormous fireplace, taking great care in noting the dimensions on a pad of paper. This reassured Serrault; the man was making sure everything was accurate. It wouldn’t be like the other half-assed hiding places he and his wife Sophie had been stuck in over the last year. An enclosed loft above a stinking pigsty on a small farm south of Paris. A hastily built recess in the rear of a closet that the Gestapo had easily found a week after they had left for a new hideout.
Serrault and his wife hadn’t waited for a deportation summons as most Jews did. Well ahead of time, they had known it was time to disappear. But before the Serraults could leave, their three children and four grandchildren had to be saved. They had gone into hiding, moving from household to household, making their way to the south of France, eventually arriving at Marseilles, where he’d arranged passage for them on two Spanish freighters bound for Palestine. It had taken seven months and had cost a small fortune, but now they were safe. Serrault, an immensely rich man, would’ve gladly spent every sou to help them, even sacrificing his life if he’d had to. His family was his life; without them, nothing mattered.
Everything he had done was for them; from the time fifty-three years ago when he’d arrived in Paris from Nimes with one thousand francs in his pocket to start a business. But the most valuable possession he’d brought with him was his father’s construction knowledge, which he had passed on to his only son. Believing he had a gift for constructing buildings, Serrault had quickly set up his own company, and nothing but success had come his way. Especially after he’d specialized in reinforced concrete construction, the new structural method that had transformed building.
He was proud to say that he had helped make France a leader in the field, constructing some of the very first concrete buildings in the world. But every yard of that poured concrete was for his wife and children. He’d reveled in every piece of clothing and morsel of food he’d provided for them, every holiday and gift. That was the essence of life, he sincerely believed, to give his family the best life possible. And it had been the best—a great city mansion, a country estate, a home on the Mediterranean coast, and the finest education for his children. But all that had vanished. Now, he and his wife were like frightened mice running from one crack in the wall to another.
Serrault had met Auguste Manet when they were guests for a weekend at a country estate in the early ’30s. A member of a rich aristocratic family, Manet, unlike many of his class, had no problem associating with Jews. Serrault liked the fact that Manet had broken a cardinal rule of the aristocracy and gone into business, an endeavor that most aristocrats thought was beneath them. And he became incredibly successful because of his innate business sense, which Serrault admired. Over the years, he’d lunched with Manet occasionally and once had been a guest at his home in the city. Serrault’s social circle consisted mainly of Jews, and Manet was one of the handful of gentiles with whom he had ever socialized. He had not seen Manet in several years, so he’d been shocked when Manet had contacted him about a hideout.
After living in the rear of the closet, Serrault and his wife had moved into an attic in the Saint-Germain district. But the husband of the family who had taken them in had been arrested by the Gestapo and held in prison for weeks. His wife had been convinced the Germans would come to search the house, and if they found the Serraults, she and her children would be arrested. They would have to leave. The husband had taken them in without asking for a sou, showing them incredible kindness, even sharing their family’s hot meals with them. Serrault hadn’t wanted to place them in any more danger. Then out of the blue, Manet had appeared at the attic and said he could hide them and arrange an escape into Switzerland. The Gestapo, he’d told them, were after them for their fortune and would never give up the search. The Serraults had no idea how he’d learned of their plight.
Serrault continued to watch the architect take measurements. A construction man like himself admired the architect’s cleverness in devising such a hiding place. The Germans would look for hours and never find them. He was also thankful that he and Sophie would have a whole furnished apartment to themselves, regaining a measure of the comfort they’d been used to before all this misery had begun. Their ordeal had given them a whole new appreciation of their former life, which he realized they’d taken for granted. Hopefully, he and his wife wouldn’t have to stay here that long.
It was quite dark in the apartment now, but the architect wasn’t finished. He stepped back about three meters from the fireplace, probably to envision what the false wall would look like. Serrault smiled when he saw this; he liked his thoroughness. After the war, he’d give this architect plenty of work. Now, all he could give the man was his new Citroën. Manet hadn’t told him his name, and he didn’t want to know it; at seventy-eight, he knew he couldn’t stand up to beatings by the Gestapo and would give up his name. The architect put his notepad in his suit jacket pocket and turned toward the door when Serrault, his legs stiff from standing so long, shifted to the right, causing the wood floor to creak beneath him. It was so quiet in the apartment that the tiny squeak caught the architect’s attention. First, he seemed too terrified to turn around, but slowly he faced the darkness that enveloped the back of the apartment.
“Who’s there?” the architect shouted, sounding fearful.
Serrault knew it was best to reveal himself.
“Please do not be alarmed, monsieur,” replied Serrault, who walked very slowly out of the shadows.
Serrault was amused to see the expression of relief on the architect’s face when he saw he stood face-to-face with a smiling, well-dressed old man with a neatly trimmed white beard, not a Gestapo agent pointing a Luger at him.
“What the hell are you doing here, old man?”
Serrault started walking toward the architect, who raised his hand, silently ordering him to come no farther.
“It’s all right; I know what you’re doing here, monsieur.”
“You know nothing, goddamn it. Now get the hell out of here.”
Serrault was unfazed by the architect’s reaction. He was still wearing the gentle smile on his grandfatherly face.
“I know what you’re doing for us.”
“Us?”
Serrault pulled his charcoal gray raincoat away from his chest to reveal a yellow Star of David made of felt on his black suit jacket. He saw the architect’s knees almost collapse under him; he had to steady himself by holding on to the mantle. He understood the architect’s reaction; this was probably the first time he’d ever met one of the people he hid. Now facing him was a real and dangerous connection. Serrault was threatening his very survival by just being in the same room with him.
“You’re a righteous man,” said Serrault.
“Me? Righteous? That’s a joke.”
“No, monsieur, it is not.”
“Old fool, why the hell didn’t you get out when you could?”
The question surprised Serrault, but it was a fair one that deserved an answer.
“You’re quite right. I’d be having dinner in Switzerland right now if I’d exercised better judgment.”
“You’re all
idiots. The chosen people, what a joke.”
The old man was amused by this comment. He started pacing slowly back and forth across the far end of the room.
“You ask me why I stayed, and I’ll tell you. I feel I should offer an explanation considering what you’re risking. My family’s been here since the Revolution. All my ancestors have fought for France—the war against the Prussians and myself in the Great War. True, I’m a Jew. But I’m a Jew of French ancestry and very proud to be French. I believed in the glory of France and always will. After the Armistice in ’40, I stayed in Paris out of loyalty to my country because it needed me to stand by her.”
“You were quite mistaken.”
“Yes, I was. No Jew had any idea what life would be like under the German Occupation. But when they made us wear this badge of honor last May, I knew no French Jews would be spared, even those with a French surname. I believed Vichy would protect my family and me, but as you said, I was mistaken. We could never imagine that the French government would be a party to such a crime.”
“A French kike or a Polish kike, it’s all the same to the Gestapo, old man.”
“I’m sorry that I intruded on your work. I’ll go,” said Serrault.
“Please do.”
The old man started to leave but stopped.
“Have you ever heard of an Englishman named Nicholas Owen?”
“No.”
“When Elizabeth I was persecuting Catholics in sixteenth-century England, she outlawed all priests and the celebration of the Catholic mass. Catholics had to practice their religion in secret. If discovered, priests were tortured and executed, so they had to hide. Owen designed and built hiding places for Jesuit priests in manor houses all over England. They were called priest holes, and they were so well hidden that the queen’s soldiers would tear apart a house for a week and never find them. He saved many lives.”
“And what happened to him?”
The Paris Architect: A Novel Page 12