Paris: The Novel

known only to the bureaucratic mind, when the
Mona Lisa
had been stolen. “Turned out it was a crazy Italian who wanted to return the
Mona Lisa
to Italy. They found it in his lodgings.”
    Most important of all, however, he introduced her to the novels of Proust.
    “The Prousts were our neighbors on boulevard Malesherbes,” he told her. “We just thought Marcel was a show-off and a dilettante. So did everybody. Who would have guessed he was hatching this work of genius in his head?”
    “Does he still live there?”
    “He moved just a block up the street and around the corner on boulevard Haussmann—only five minutes’ walk from Joséphine. He lived there until just after the war. But they say he’s dying now, and his brother may have to finish his work.”
    The following year, Proust had died. But by then Claire had finished
Swann’s Way
; now she was halfway through
Sodom and Gomorrah
.
    She’d never read anything like it before. Proust’s search through his extraordinary memory, his re-creation of every detail of the passing world, his ruthless portrayal of every aspect of human psychology, were fascinating to her.
    “I’m delighted to see you taking such an interest in literature,” Marc said. “I’m only sorry you can’t share it with Aunt Éloïse anymore. She’d read everything. But don’t forget,” he added, “people like Eliot and Proust are writing radically new work, but they are still quite conservative politically. They’re looking for meaning at the end of the old world. Many of the avant-garde have a very different outlook.”
    “They believe in revolution, don’t they?”
    “Paris has always prided itself on being home to revolutionary thought. Ever since the French Revolution, we believe that all radical ideas belong to us. And people with radical ideas have always come to Paris to discuss them. A lot of radical Paris believes that only world revolution willsolve all these new problems. Now we’ve had a Russian revolution, they think the rest will follow—or should. I’m sure Picasso’s a communist, for instance.”

    But if Claire was excited by the cultural ferment of Paris, most of her time now was spent working on a grand commercial enterprise.
    Joséphine. When her mother and Marc had reopened the family store, they had asked her to come and help just to give her something to do. But that was two years ago. She was an integral part of the operation now. “I don’t know,” her uncle was kind enough to say, “how we’d have done it without you.”
    Of course, her mother was the central figure upon whom everything turned. She had a wonderful way with all the people working there. She was always calm, sympathetic, but very firm, like a mother in control of a large family. She inspired loyalty.
    Marie controlled all the day-to-day running of the operation, and dealt with the biggest and most important suppliers—couturiers like Chanel, and others. But she soon delegated a smaller but very important task to Claire.
    “I want you to find new designers and clothes makers. The ones who are going to attract girls of your generation. You find them, then you bring them to me, and we’ll see if we can make a deal.”
    She had found them—in Paris, sometimes in the provinces, in Italy. And she would sit in on the meetings they had with her mother, and see how quickly and cleverly her mother discovered the strengths and weaknesses of their operations.
    “How are you so good at business?” she asked her mother once. “You never did it before this.”
    “I don’t know, to tell the truth. I suppose it must be in the blood.” Her mother smiled. “Do you think I’m good, then?”
    “You know very well you are.”
    Two years of working together had changed their relationship in subtle ways. They really were like a pair of sisters now. Sometimes they disagreed about whether to take on a supplier, or how to price the goods. When they did, they argued it out, and although Marie had the final say, she always respected Claire’s opinion and her intellect.
    But they would both have agreed instantly on one thing. The Joséphine store could never have succeeded without the guiding hand of Marc.
    “Our greatest competition is the Galeries Lafayette. They are just along the boulevard from us. They are much bigger. The business is well run and constantly innovating. There’s no point in trying to mimic all their departments, like haberdashery. We compete, as we always did, on