Paris: The Novel

buildings. Even the Hôtel de Crillon on Place de la Concorde was now the huge and threatening offices of the security services. Cars with loudspeakers circulated to remind everyone that troublemakers would not be tolerated. There was a strict curfew at night. Food rationing began in earnest.
    “It’s all right for us,” Charlie remarked. “We only have to go to the château and there is food. I can always go out into the woods and shoot a pigeon. But the poor people of Paris are not so lucky.”
    And what was Charlie up to himself? Marie had been able to do one great thing for him, in the autumn of 1940. But once that was done, she had been careful not to interfere. Sometimes he would disappear for days at a time. She never asked him where he had been or what he was doing. She was fairly sure he had a woman somewhere, and it would have been strange if he had not. But as to his other, perhaps more dangerous, activities, she could only guess.
    If there were resistance groups forming, it was still hard to see at present what they could usefully do, since the German control of northwestern Europe appeared to be complete.
    But as the summer of 1941 began, two events gave a hint that the German supremacy might begin to falter. For in May, Germany’s mighty battleship the
Bismarck
was sunk. And then, at the end of June, camethe astonishing news that Hitler had suddenly turned on his new friend Stalin, and invaded Russia.
    “He must be mad,” Roland remarked. “Doesn’t he know what happened to Napoléon when he invaded Russia back in 1812?” He shook his head. “Perhaps Hitler thinks he’s a better general.”
    “And what do you think?” Marie asked Charlie.
    “I think,” said Charlie, “that this changes everything.”

    For Max Le Sourd, it brought relief. The last year had been especially difficult for him.
    With the French Communist Party joined in lockstep with Moscow, the journalists at
L’Humanité
had been obliged to follow the party line.
    “We have to advocate collaboration with the Germans,” he told his father. By the end of 1940, he was adding: “I’m not sure how much longer I can do it, and nor are many of my communist friends.”
    But his father had never made any comment at all.
    Since Max’s return from the Spanish Civil War, the relationship between them had been perfectly friendly. Both regretted equally that Franco and his right-wing army had prevailed, and that Spain, for all its Catholic trappings, was really a fascist regime. His father accepted that Max had fought bravely and that his heart was in the right place.
    “But he doesn’t trust me,” Max said sadly to his mother.
    “You mustn’t take it personally,” his mother told him. “But with the communists on the Germans’ side … he can’t.”
    Was his father in a resistance movement of some kind? As the months went by, Max often wondered. His father was well into his seventies, but with his tall, lean frame he seemed hardly changed. He’d still walk from Belleville to the Bois de Boulogne without seeming tired.
    It was no use asking him. Once, in the spring of 1941, Max told him frankly that he was ready to start working against the Germans. But his father made no comment at all, and never referred to the subject again. Max understood, though he still found it hurtful.
    Only at the end of June, when Hitler invaded Russia, did the situation change.
    “We’re organizing a communist resistance movement,” Max told the older Le Sourd. “I don’t know details yet, but I shall join it, of course.” He gave his father a careful look. “Unless you have any other suggestions.”
    And this time, though his father didn’t say anything, he put his arm around Max’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. A few days later, on a warm day in July, he suggested: “As it’s a beautiful day, let’s go for a picnic, you and I.”
    “As you like. Where do you want to go?”
    “The Bois de Vincennes,” said his father. “We can bicycle out there, together.”

    Max hadn’t been there for years. Not that it was so far away. He’d forgotten how delightful the old forest was.
    For if Parisians could enjoy the open spaces of the Bois de Boulogne on the western side of the city, on the eastern side the Bois de Vincennes was just as fine. The old royal forest still contained an ancient château that kings had used until the days of Louis XIV, but people mostly came to walk in the woods.
    They found a pleasant, deserted