Paris: The Novel

his choice.
    “He’s going to ignore Hitler’s orders,” Max reported to his father. “He knows what’ll happen to him if he obeys them.” Then he smiled. “It seems, Father, that the Paris Commune is about to be reborn.”

    And then, on the evening of the sixth day, came the crushing news which put all their calculations at risk and, by the seventh day, destroyed all their hopes.
    General Charles de Gaulle arrived to liberate Paris.

    To be precise, the advance guard of General Leclerc’s Free French Division arrived at the western gates of the city. When Max first heard it, he couldn’t believe it.
    “Impossible!” he cried. “Eisenhower’s not coming to Paris.”
    “Eisenhower isn’t,” they told him. “But de Gaulle is.”
    Within an hour, the advance guard had raced into the city, straightup its central axis and arrived at the Hôtel de Ville behind the Louvre by nine-thirty that night.
    When the two Le Sourds met with their usual committee that night, the story was becoming clear.
    “It’s all de Gaulle’s doing. Eisenhower didn’t want to go near Paris at all. But once the Rising began, de Gaulle badgered him, told him that if the Germans massacred us, it would be worse than the tragedy of the Warsaw uprising. In the end Eisenhower gave permission for Leclerc’s division, together with the U.S. Army Fourth Division, to divert up here. Leclerc actually disobeyed orders to wait and just drove straight through to Paris. He’ll enter with his entire force, and the American division as well, in the morning.”
    “Then we’re screwed,” said Le Sourd bitterly. “We can’t organize the Commune overnight.”
    With an entire division of well-armed and well-trained Frenchmen marching in to liberate Paris, not to mention another division of honest American soldiers to whom the very idea of socialism was anathema, the conservative patriot de Gaulle had not only the moral authority, but the naked power, to take the city over and impose his will.
    The obstinate, lone officer who’d refused to give in, and gone to England to raise the Cross of Lorraine, had just shown himself to be a ruthless politician as well.
    And so it came about. The following day, Lerclerc and the Americans swept into the city. The German general, probably secretly relieved, surrendered. And the following day, the twenty-sixth of August, a huge parade of troops, Resistance fighters and public men marched down the Champs-Élysées.
    But it was one figure upon whom all eyes were fixed. Dressed in his general’s uniform, towering over his companions, the tall, unyielding figure of Charles de Gaulle moved with a stately stride down the center of the great avenue, knowing, as all who saw him knew, that he was the man of destiny that France would follow now.
    Paris was liberated. The agony was over.
    Max Le Sourd also marched, for old Thomas Gascon, and the Dalou boys, and his other comrades in the march would have been disappointed if he had not.
    But his father remained at the side of the Champs-Élysées and grimlywatched. And as the tall and lonely statesman strode past, Le Sourd could only shake his head.
    “Salaud,”
he muttered sadly. “You son of a bitch.”

    It was the next morning that Thomas Gascon decided to gather all his family together for a celebration at the restaurant. “At least,” he pointed out, “we have some extra food stored here.”
    During the morning, Édith sent him down on an errand into the Second Arrondissement, and at noon he was already returning up the rue de Clichy.
    He was less than a mile from home when he saw the small crowd coming toward him. There were about fifty of them, and they were goading a young woman. Her shirt had been ripped, and they were chanting and taunting her for sleeping with Germans.
    Thomas frowned. He’d heard that these attacks were starting to happen. They were absurd, of course. If every Frenchwoman who’d slept with a German in the last four years was going to be hounded like this, there would be no end to it. God knew how many thousands of children had been fathered by lonely German troops in Paris alone.
    But the ritual rage of a crowd that feels guilty has a special viciousness.
    The wretched girl was the same age as one of his own granddaughters.
    They had just drawn level when one of the girls in the crowd ran up to the young woman, pointed at her and screamed: “German whore. Shave her head!” And she spat in her face.
    “Fuck off!” the woman