Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

squads of Gardes Républicaines from the gendarmerie. In critical regions, the army was to allocate infantry battalions as permanent reserves for security duties.
    The idea of commanders of military regions exercising control was anathema to Moch. He said that he wished to avoid ‘the psychological and political disadvantages which often accompany a declaration of martial law’, but he also did not trust anybody else, certainly not the Ministry of War, to control civil unrest. Neither he nor Robert Schuman lost sight of the fact that only a real improvement in the standard of living would reduce the power of the Communists, and that depended on the Marshall Plan.

27
    The Great Boom of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
    The bars, bistros and cafés of Paris had long acted as intellectual incubators, but never so much as in Saint-Germain after the war. An extraordinary array of talent had come together in two square kilometres of Paris at a time when the cross-fertilization of ideas had never seemed more exciting and important, when every art appeared on the point of a new departure. This could not have happened without places in which people could meet, talk, argue and write, from morning until late at night.
    The ideas were new, but the café setting was reassuringly familiar. Whether the floor was of wood or tiled, whether the triangular ashtrays on the little tables advertised Byrrh or Dubonnet, whether the posters for the latest plays and exhibitions were tacked to the door or pegged to the yellowing net curtains, the smell was always the same. It was warm and sociable, established over the years from imperfectly washed bodies, Caporal tobacco smoke and cheap wine. Entering a familiar café was like a homecoming.
    Café life in Saint-Germain observed certain conventions. Sartre noted that ‘people would come in and find they knew everybody; each person knew the smallest details about the private life of their neighbour; but one did not bother to say
bonjour,
although one would immediately if one met any of them elsewhere’.
    Before 1944, when the effects of his fame became too distracting, Sartre used to work at the Café Flore for three hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon. The morning session began with himbustling through the door, his pockets stuffed with books and papers. He threaded his way through to his favourite corner table, settled down, lit his pipe, downed a couple of Cognacs while spreading out his papers and started to write.
    The proprietor of the Flore, Paul Boubal, at first had no idea of his customer’s identity. He often came with a dark-haired woman, who also wrote – in the same corner of the café, but at a different table. They left at twelve, but came back after lunch and worked in the room on the first floor till closing time.
    One day there was a telephone call for a Monsieur Sartre. Boubal had a personal friend called Sartre and told the caller he was not in the café. The caller insisted that he must be, so Boubal called out the name – and up stood the little man with the pipe and pebble glasses. ‘From that moment he became my friend, and we often had a chat in the morning; later, the telephone calls increased to such an extent that I decided it was necessary to put in another line specially for him.’
    The
famille Sartre
and the
bande Prévert
used to patronize both the Flore and the Deux Magots. The great period of the Deux Magots had been between the wars, when – according to Vercors – the café was so filled with celebrated artists, politicians and men of letters that it was almost impossible to find a place; particularly since young disciples would bring up chairs and sit two or three deep round the tiny tables, listening attentively to the conversation of the great figures. Yet by the late 1930s the Flore had also gathered an impressive group of regulars which included not only the
bande Prévert,
but also André Breton, Picasso and Giacometti. Towards the end of the afternoon, people often drifted to the Deux Magots, where they could enjoy the last of the sunlight.
    Communists, if they were not in Marguerite Duras’s apartment in the rue Saint-Benoît, favoured the Bonaparte, on the north side of the Place Saint-Germain, while musicians tended to gravitate towards the Royal Saint-Germain, opposite the Deux Magots on the south side of the Boulevard. In the evening other places came into their own: the Rhumerie Martiniquaise, the Bar Vert and the bar of the