Paris: The Novel

dumped somewhere on that site? It might be days before it was noticed, if it hadn’t already been covered over. Or what if it had been dragged into the maze of tunnels and shafts below? There were ways into that labyrinth, but once inside it was easy to get lost. Was Luc down there, in the dark and secret chambers of the hill?
    No, he told himself, no. He mustn’t think like this. Luc was alive. Just waiting to be found. All he had to do was think. Where might he be?
    He walked forward to the corner of the street below and paused. All Paris lay before him. Here and there a golden dome could be seen, or a church steeple rising above the rooftops. On the main island in the Seine, the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral rose higher than all. And above them, the blue sky still reigned, uninterrupted. And telling him nothing.
    He tried to pray. But God and His angels were silent as well.
    So after a while, he started along the street that led westward along the contour of the hill. There were some houses here, of the better sort, with small gardens. The lane began to descend. On his right a steep bank of land appeared, with a garden wall above it. The bank was covered with bushes.
    “Psst. Thomas.” A whisper from above. He stopped. His heart leaped.He looked up into the bushes. He couldn’t see anyone. “Are you alone? Is anybody in the lane?” It was Luc’s voice.
    “Nobody,” said Thomas.
    “I’m coming down.” Moments later, Luc was at his side.
    They both had the same soft brown eyes. But where Thomas Gascon was thickset and sturdy, his brother Luc, at the age of nine, was a thin little boy. The features of the young workman’s sunburned face were short and straight, and his close-cropped brown hair was already showing the first, faint signs of thinning. His brother’s skin was paler, his hair was dark and long, his nose more aquiline. He might have been a young Italian boy—looks he inherited from his father’s mother, who had come to Paris from Toulon.
    He was dirty and his hair was a mess, but apart from that he didn’t look too bad.
    “I’m hungry,” he said. He’d been hiding there all night. “I was going to wait until this evening and go down the hill, so I could meet you coming back from work,” he explained.
    “Why didn’t you go home? Mother and Father are sick with worry.”
    Luc shook his head.
    “They said they’d be waiting for me. They said they’d kill me.”
    “Who?”
    “The Dalou boys.”
    “Oh.” This was serious. There were several gangs of boys in the Maquis, but the Dalou boys were vicious. If they told Luc they’d kill him, he could expect to be hurt badly. And they were quite capable of waiting up for him all night. “What did you do to them?” Thomas asked.
    “Aunt Lilly gave me a balloon. I met them in the street and Antoine Dalou said he wanted it. But I said no. Then Jean Dalou knocked me down and took it.”
    “And then?”
    “I was unhappy. I wept.”
    “So?”
    “As they were going away, I threw a broken bottle at the balloon, and it burst.”
    “Why did you do that?”
    “So that they shouldn’t have it, either.”
    Thomas shook his head.
    “That was stupid.”
    “Then they came after me, and Antoine Dalou picked up some big stones to throw at me, and I ran. He hit me once, in the back. And I got away. But they didn’t give up. And Jean Dalou shouted that they were going to kill me, and that I’d never get home alive. So I stayed away. They won’t attack you, though. They’ll be afraid of you.”
    “I can get you home,” said Thomas. “But what then?”
    “I don’t know. Can I go and live in America?”
    “No.” Thomas took his hand. “Let’s go.”

    As soon as Luc was safely home, Thomas went out again.
    It didn’t take him long to find the Dalou boys. They were hanging out near their shack on the other side of the Maquis. Most of the little gang seemed to be there: Antoine, the same age as Luc, with a narrow face like a ferret; Jean Dalou, a bit better looking, and a couple of years older, who led the gang; Guy, one of the Noir family, their cousin, a woebegone-looking boy, with a vicious bite; and two or three others. Thomas came straight to the point.
    “My brother shouldn’t have burst the balloon,” he said to Jean Dalou. “But it wasn’t kind of you to take it.”
    Nobody said anything.
    “Anyway,” Thomas continued, “it’s over. But leave my brother alone, or I shall be angry.”
    Jean Dalou didn’t reply. Then