Paris: The Novel

suddenly fallen into place.
    This was the one. He didn’t know how, or why he knew it, but he did. This was the girl he was going to marry. This was his destiny and nothing could change it. He was filled with a sense of lightness, of warmth and peace. He smiled back at her. Had she felt it as well? He thought perhaps she had.
    But already the huge cortege was starting to move. A soldier was making her move back. Her head turned, there was a jostling in the crowd and he lost sight of her.
    He must get to her side. He reached up and started to undo the knot in the rope. But he had been leaning out for so long that the knot was too tight for even his strong fingers. He felt for the knot where the rope went around his waist. The same thing. He struggled for a minute or two, without success.
    “Has anyone got a knife?”
    The black coach bearing the casket was passing. All the men were taking their hats off. Nobody even looked at him. He remembered, just too late, to remove his workman’s cap. The coach passed. A phalanx of the great men of France walked behind it.
    “For the love of God, has anyone got a knife?” he called again. Slowly, the man whose head he’d stepped on turned up to look. Thomas gave him an apologetic smile. “Pardon,
monsieur
,” he said politely, “but as you see, I’ve been left hanging here.” The man considered him for a long moment. Then he reached into his coat pocket, drew out a pen knife and showed it to him.
    “I have a knife,” he said.
    “If you could do me the kindness …,” Thomas continued, using his best manners.
    “It is a pity,” the man remarked pleasantly, “that the rope is not around your neck.” Then he put the knife back in his pocket, and turned to look at the cortege again.
    Thomas thought for half a minute.
    “Hey,” he called down. “Monsieur with the knife.” The man paid no attention. “I’ve got to pee. You want it on your head?”
    The man looked up furiously. Thomas shrugged, put his hands to his front and started to unbutton his fly. The man tried to move away, but the crowd was pressed so thick he couldn’t budge. With a curse, he reached into his pocket again.
    “Cut your cock off, then,” he replied. But he handed up the knife.
    The knife was quite sharp. It took only a few seconds for Thomas to saw through the rope and release himself. He folded the knife.
    “Merci, monsieur,”
he cried. “You are very kind.” Then he tossed the knife down so that it fell just behind the man’s back, leaving him trying helplessly to pick it up from the ground.
    Using the narrow ledge and where necessary the heads of the spectators, he managed to move along the building to the corner, where he found enough space to get down. Worming and discreetly kicking his way forward, he began to work his way toward the street. “
Pardon, madame, pardon, monsieur
, I have to pee,” he cried. Some let him push through. Others resisted. “Pee in your pants, you little shit,” said one man. But eventually Thomas reached the roadway.
    Ducking and weaving behind the soldiers lining the route, he managed to get back to the place where he had seen the girl.
    But she wasn’t there. He looked right and left. No sign of her. It was impossible, he thought. No one could move far in that crowd—unless they used tactics like he had.
    But somehow she had gone.
    He managed to get a little farther along the line of spectators, before a soldier stopped him and made him stand still. Detachments of cavalry passed, and important men in top hats, and bands. The cortege seemed endless. Though he continued to crane his head this way and that, he never caught sight of the girl again.

    It was mid-afternoon when Thomas arrived back at Montmartre. Monsieur Gascon had declared that he could honor Victor Hugo best by taking a drop of wine at the Moulin de la Galette, and his wife, who’d been suffering lately from a painful vein in her leg, had been glad to go there with him. As for young Luc, he had declared that it was his duty to keep his parents company, though Thomas knew very well that his little brother was just being lazy.
    So Thomas joined them at the Moulin, and gave them a general account of the proceedings. It was only later, when they were alone, that he confided to Luc about the girl.
    Although Luc was still only twelve years old, it sometimes seemed to Thomas that his little brother was already more worldly than he was. Perhaps it was his constant hanging around