“I need not tell anyone here the supreme importance of Paris—its history, its art and its culture, for France and for the world. Paris must be protected. But we are not so far from the German lines. Fleets of Gotha bombers, making night raids, night after night, could do appalling damage—for let us remember that we are speaking not only of the explosions, but of the fires that may follow them. We can fire up into the sky. Our gallant fighters can go up to tackle the bombers, but all the evidence so far suggests that large bombing raids would be hard to stop. And so, if we cannot stop them, we must deceive them.”
“Deceive them?” Marc was puzzled. So was everyone else, except the Italian Jacopozzi, who was grinning. And now it was the turn of another of the officials to unroll a large map of Paris on the dining table, and to address them.
“Aviators at night cannot see much on the ground. If there is a little moonlight, however, they can usually catch the glimmer reflected on a river, and they often navigate by this means.” He took a pointer and indicated a point on the map. “Here you can see the River Seine. And I direct your attention to a place about three miles north of the city. As you see, the Seine here displays a series of curves which closely mimic those it makes as it passes through Paris. As you also see, much of the area here is open fields. It would be much better, therefore, if the German bombs fell up here rather than on the city. Our intention is to invite the Germans to do exactly that.”
“Invite them?” Marc was confused.
“Even so, Monsieur Blanchard, and in the simplest way possible. Paris will miraculously move.” He smiled while his audience waited. “Messieurs, we are going to institute a total blackout in Paris itself, and then we are going to build a second Paris, a fake Paris, just to the north.”
“You’re going to build a fake city? The size of Paris?”
“Big enough to be mistaken for Paris at twenty thousand feet, yes.” The man spread his hands. “I am speaking of a stage set, messieurs. A Potemkin village, but a thousand times larger than anything the Russians ever dreamed of.”
“Made of what?”
“Wood and painted canvas, mostly. And lights.” He indicated the Italian. “Thanks to Monsieur Jacopozzi, thousands of lights.”
“You’re going to copy big buildings?”
“Naturally. Buildings that the enemy will be looking for. Buildings that they can see. The Gare du Nord, for instance.”
“And the Eiffel Tower?”
“Yes. That should really fool them.”
“I can precisely copy the lights of the Eiffel Tower,” Jacopozzi said enthusiastically. “You’ll never be able to tell the difference. They will see an illuminated city.”
“You’re insane,” said Marc, shaking his head. “This would be the most daring theatrical deception in the history of war.”
“Thank you,” the prime minister’s man said. “We thought that you might like it.”
Marc laughed.
“It’s daring. It has style,” he agreed. And then, after a little reflection, he paid the project the highest compliment that a Frenchman can pay: “Ça, c’est vraiment français: that is truly French.”
A general discussion ensued after that. There were all kinds of practical questions to consider. But it was agreed that he and Jacopozzi would look at the overall design together, and come up with further specific recommendations.
When the meeting ended, he decided to walk the short distance to Place de Clichy, past some of his old haunts, and then down to the office from there. Since he’d become involved in the family business at the start of the war, he hardly ever went up that way.
Passing a bar he used to know, he went in and ordered a coffee. The waiter who brought it to his table was a young man. Marc noticed that he hobbled slightly as he walked. Marc gazed around the bar.
Wartime Paris was a curious place. For the last three months of 1914, when so many people had fled, and the government itself had briefly left for Bordeaux, he had wondered if it would turn into a ghost town. But once the two armies had settled into their trench warfare, the government and most of the people had returned, and Parisian life had resumed, albeit quietly. Food was often short, but Les Halles and the local street markets were still supplied. Bars and restaurants still opened, and nighttime entertainment too.
Paris had three main functions now. From the military headquarters in Les Invalides, it directed the war. It was also the place to which the vast number of casualties were taken. All the great hospitals of the city were full, aided by the American Hospital out at Neuilly, where American volunteers had taken over the entire local lycée as well, to provide beds for the French wounded.
And of course, it also provided rest and relaxation for the troops on leave from the front.
That meant large numbers of men, not only from every part of France, but from all over her colonies too. There were the colorful Zouave troops from Africa. Tirailleurs from Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, even Indochina. Men of every color, giving Paris a more international look than it usually wore.
In the far corner across from him, Marc watched two Zouaves talking quietly. It was a pity, he thought, that like everyone else, the dashing troops of France’s army of Africa had been obliged to abandon their bright uniforms and baggy trousers for duller khaki, but there was still something romantic about them as they smoked their long pipes.
He’d heard rumors of trouble in the army. The word was that a division or two had even refused to go back to the front line without some changes in their conditions, and that the army might be granting more leave. If so, there would be still more troops visiting Paris. The ladies of the night would have more work to do.
He turned his thoughts back to the fake Paris. Would it really work? Could the secret of it be kept from the Germans? He was just pondering this when the patron came over from the bar, and addressed him.
“Monsieur Blanchard? Do you remember me?”
Marc looked up at his face. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it at once. Then he did remember.
“You were the foreman when we were building the new rooms at Joséphine. You’d worked on the Eiffel Tower.”
“Oui, monsieur. I am Thomas Gascon. It’s my brother who owns this bar.”
“Dark-haired. Am I right? I used to come in here. Where is he now?”
“In the army.”
“At the front?”
“Not exactly. He’s in the quartermaster’s department. Supplies. He’s good at that.” Thomas did not add that he and his family had benefited from the army’s food supplies now and then, on Luc’s visits to them.
“You were a good foreman, I remember. Do you ever do any work of that kind now?”
“Not recently, monsieur. Not much on offer.” He grinned. “Unless someone’s wanting to build another Eiffel Tower.”
You have no idea, Marc thought, how close to the truth you are. But when work began, Thomas Gascon might be a good foreman to use. He’d remember him.
“You have a family, I think.”
“My wife and daughter are next door, in the restaurant. My son Robert, with the wooden leg, served you coffee.”
“Any other sons?”
“I had. Pierre was my younger son. We lost him at Verdun.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And your family, monsieur?”
“My parents are down at Fontainebleau, getting old. My sister is well. But my elder brother died three months ago.” He smiled sadly. “That is why I must go to the office now—like you, to keep the family business running.”
Thomas Gascon wouldn’t take any money for the coffee. Marc made a mental note to go to the restaurant sometime, and leave a tip.
Gérard. Dead. Even now he could scarcely believe it. He’d been in the office when it happened. A clerk, ashen-faced, had come into his office and led him down the passage to Gérard’s. His brother had been sitting at his desk—almost as he usually did, except that he was leaning back at a strange angle in his big chair. The st
roke had obviously killed him quite suddenly. There had been no warning at all.
And Marc had been obliged to take over in his place.
Looking back, it seemed to him that from the first day Gérard had asked him to join him, his brother had had an inkling of what was coming. He’d taken care that, little as it interested him, Marc obtained a good idea how the wholesale business worked, who the suppliers were, how to treat them and the workings of the distribution process. Though Gérard controlled the finances, including those of the department store, Marc understood how all the accounts were put together and where all the information was kept. He was quite surprised to discover, after the first shock of Gérard’s death, that he knew exactly what to do.
For the last three months, he’d kept everything in good order. Not only that, he’d made his own investigations into every corner of the businesses, just to make sure that some aspect of them didn’t suddenly take him unawares.
That was how, last week, he had made the two awful discoveries that had been haunting him ever since.
Gérard had known he’d discover those, too. In fact, Marc realized, he’d wanted him to.
He wondered what Aunt Éloïse would say when he told her.
She had changed remarkably little down the years. She used an ebony stick when she walked, but didn’t always bother to do even that. Her face remained smooth. She was as elegant at seventy as she had been at forty.
He’d offered to take her out to dinner, but she preferred to have a delicious little supper served in her own apartment. They dined under a small Manet and a Pissarro. He waited until the dessert before he told her.
“I have two pieces of bad news. The first is that I made a discovery in the accounts. It went back to early 1915, but I happened to find it when I was going through the records of one of our suppliers.”
“We owe money?”
“Not exactly. Worse. Gérard had dealings with a wholesaler up on the north coast. Dunkirk to be exact. They were supplying shipments of food to the French army.”
“What of it?”
“A huge shipment—potatoes, flour, all kinds of essentials—went missing. Apparently the Germans took them. But Gérard was paid all the same.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Except that he sold them to the Germans.”
“Are you sure?”
“There can be no doubt. But the Germans didn’t get them. He told them that the French army had captured the shipment. So the Germans paid him to get some more.”
“Which he delivered?”
“No. He said that the French had captured them too.”
“So who got the supplies in the end?”
“The French. But they had to pay for them. He sold the same goods four times.”
“At least we got them in the end.”
“But it’s criminal.”
“By Gérard’s standards, one might say it was patriotic. The Germans paid twice and got nothing.”
“God knows what else he did that I don’t know about. The question is, what do I do? I’d like to do something for the French.”
“The first thing is that you must not say a word about shipments. Not a word. It will never be discovered now, and does nothing but bring his memory and our name into disrepute. Think of his widow and his children. You should burn the records straightaway. Give them to me and I’ll burn them. Then forget about it. By all means find any way you can to contribute to our war effort. You will be thanked, and that is good. After all, you had no part in the business, and I know that you would never have done such a thing.”
“I’m just shocked.”
“You said there were two items of bad news. What is the other?”
“Joséphine. The store. It’s losing money. In fact, it has been since the war began. Gérard always told me that we were breaking even. But he was lying. I was running it, but I left the financial side to him. I feel a fool.”
“I’m not surprised in the least. A war isn’t the best time to sell fashion goods. Money’s tight.”
“We still made sales. Dropped our prices, changed the merchandise, operated only part of the store. But it seems we lost money. Why didn’t he tell me?”
“It was the price he thought he needed to pay to keep you in the business. Thank God he did. We need you there now.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Yes you do. Sell it or close it.”
“But that’s terrible. Think of Father. It would break his heart.”
“He’s a businessman. He’ll understand. All he wants to do now is enjoy his old age in Fontainebleau.”
“But I can’t run a wholesale business.”
“You must. Gérard has two daughters and a son, who will be conscripted any minute. You must do it for them. It’s your duty.”
“But my talents …”
“Will have to wait. I love you, Marc, but you must continue to be unselfish. Your family has given you all the good fortune you have. You said you wanted to pay your country back for Gérard’s theft. Good. And you must pay the family back for your good fortune.”
“I don’t particularly like Gérard’s children.”
“I couldn’t care less. Marc, when I depart, I have always intended that you should be my heir. Who else would I leave all these paintings to? But if you won’t do what you should, then you are no better than your brother, and I shall leave everything to a museum.”
“I thought you were more spiritual.”
“I am very spiritual. Others are dying at the front. Be grateful that your duty is, by comparison, so easy.”
Marc sighed.
“I was afraid you’d say something like that,” he said.
Le Sourd had no doubt about his fate. He was going to be shot. He’d written two letters to his son. One which the censors might see. The second, of which he made three copies, was given to three men in the regiment that he trusted.
The letter explained what he believed in and why he had acted as he did, but it did not enjoin his son to follow in his footsteps. It told him to make up his own mind what course to follow when he became a man, and to think only of his mother and her welfare until then.
He’d never made any secret of the fact that he was a socialist. There had been no need. There were plenty of good trade union men in the army, and most of them had socialist leanings, at the least.
“We need to fight the German Empire,” he would tell his comrades, “but it was the capitalist class that got us into this mess, and when the workers sweep them away, the need for wars will end.”
Since he was older than the other men, they began to call him Papa. Even the sergeants called him that sometimes. His job in the printer’s and his reading had left him more literate than most. If a young fellow was struggling with a letter home, he’d often come to Le Sourd to help him straighten it out grammatically, or provide the words he was searching for. Sometimes, he would do more. When young Pierre Gascon was killed at Verdun, along with his lieutenant and captain, it was Le Sourd who wrote a letter to his parents about the young man’s valor and his other good qualities.
But he never lost sight of his ultimate goal, and he watched for opportunities. Indeed, the war itself, with its massive casualties, was an opportunity. If this senseless carnage and destruction were the result of the present world order, didn’t that show that it was time for a change? Wasn’t the capitalist world demonstrating that it was a heartless consumer of lives, whose inherent contradictions would lead it to destroy itself? He had brought quite a number of the men around to his point of view.
He suspected that he’d even got through to an officer once. “Well, Papa Le Sourd,” the captain had remarked to him in a friendly way, “you think the workers of the world could organize this war better?”
“The question, mon capitaine,” he’d replied, “is whether they could do worse.”
The officer had laughed, and said nothing more. But Le Sourd suspected that, in secret, t
he captain didn’t disagree.
By 1916 he’d been promoted to corporal. His captain had once asked him if he’d like to be a sergeant, but he’d said no. That would be yielding to the system too much.
Meanwhile, he’d been receiving literature regularly from Paris. Some were permitted newspapers, others were more private communications.
And then, in 1917, had come the electrifying news from Russia. The army had mutinied. It was a revolution.
The socialists were astonished. The revolution was supposed to begin in the industrialized countries, where there was an urban proletariat, not in backward Russia. Evidently the war had been the catalyst. And if in Russia, why not elsewhere? A stream of literature began to reach Le Sourd from Paris. All along the Western Front, other men like himself were being alerted. For the committed men of the Left, a new excitement was in the air.
And then, at the end of May, after the disaster of the Nivelle Offensive, the news had come. The authorities might be able to keep it hidden from the outside world, but they couldn’t stop the rumors spreading along the front. They spread like wildfire.
“There’s a mutiny. Whole regiments are leaving the front.” Ten, twenty, thirty thousand men had marched to the rear and refused to go back to their posts. The conditions were terrible. The direction of the war was completely incompetent. The slaughter was senseless. All along the line, troops that had been in the towns behind the line were refusing to obey orders. Just after the start of June, an entire regiment had taken charge of itself and marched back to occupy the little town Missy-aux-Bois which it was holding for itself.
An infantry brigade had looted a supply column and was returning to Paris. A motor convoy had been taken over as well.
They had been here at the front when the mutiny had come to their regiment. It had started with a small incident. The enemy trenches had a number of outworks at that point in the line, and a sniper had taken possession of one of them. During the last few days he had managed to wound one fellow and kill another. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to take him out, if possible. So one of the lieutenants had gone to the section of trench just beyond Le Sourd’s, and told a corporal and a few of his men that he’d lead them on a reconnoiter that night, to see what could be done about the sniper.
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