Paris: The Novel

answered. Then she was gone.
    And so their meetings continued for several weeks. On Wednesdays she would come out of work with her mother as usual, and then continue alone to her aunt Adeline’s. Thomas would meet her. They would sit and talk for a while. She would let him accompany her some of the way toward her aunt’s, but never the whole way. Some Sundays he would go to his family in Montmartre, on others she would agree to meet him, and they’d wander about together quite happily. It was clear that, for the time being at least, Édith was keeping him at a distance, and he was content to be patient. He supposed that it was only natural caution on her part.
    But he also had a sense that there were aspects of her life that had not been fully revealed to him yet.

    In the month of October Thomas made two discoveries on Monsieur Eiffel’s tower. Both of them took him by surprise.
    He had arrived as usual one morning when he saw a knot of people gathered by one of the tower’s four feet. As he approached, he saw both Jean Compagnon and Monsieur Eiffel watching closely while a gang of workmen that he’d never seen before were assembling a large piece of machinery.
    Thomas had been working on this leg the day before, but Compagnon directed him to join another crew. By the lunchtime break, however, the new piece of machinery was fully assembled, and Thomas eagerly went to inspect it.
    Eiffel saw him and gave a nod as he addressed the men who had gathered around.
    “Well, my friends, I was asked a little while ago how we should raise the girder sections into place when the tower grew higher than the cranes. Here is the answer. It is a creeper crane. It will run on rails inside each leg of the tower. And when the tower is completed, those same rails willcarry the elevators that the public will use—unless they choose to take the stairs. Since the tower’s legs are at an angle, the crane and later the elevators will also run at an angle. Just like a funicular railway.” He smiled. “As we build up, they will accompany us. The arm of the crane will extend and allow each section to be raised, with the crane, so to speak, creeping along just behind. The cranes can also swivel, if desired, three hundred and sixty degrees.”
    From that day, Thomas worked his way up the tower’s huge iron leg with the creeper crane for company.
    He made the second discovery in the last week of October.
    One feature of the building site was the care that Eiffel had expended on the safety precautions. By its nature, work on iron structures like this was dangerous. It was a lucky builder who could complete a great iron bridge without at least one worker badly injured. And in the case of the tower, its height dictated that any fall would surely be fatal.
    So Eiffel had designed an elaborate system of movable barriers and safety nets. His aim was to do the near-impossible, and complete the project without losing a single man. After all, his workers were all used to operating on high structures. With care and attention, he believed his ambitious safety record could be achieved.
    Until then, Thomas had worked with the same crew. They got on well together, and evidently Jean Compagnon had been satisfied with their work. He’d have let them know soon enough if he wasn’t.
    One morning, there was a man short on a crew who worked near them, and Compagnon told him: “I’m putting you on the crew that’s short today.” So Thomas had gone up with them. He wasn’t concerned. His own crew had worked on the outside edge of the building, while the crew he was joining worked on the inside edge, only yards away. Indeed, it crossed his mind that they might even have asked for him. The work, naturally, was identical. As they went to their workstation, he looked back at his old crew and waved.
    When he got to his position on the inner edge of the tower, he glanced down.
    And froze.
    A second later, his left hand was gripping the edge of a girder just above his shoulder; his right had found a metal strut just behind him, and was clenched around it so tightly that he could feel the metal edge biting painfully into the flesh. But he could do nothing about it. He couldn’t loosenhis grip. A cold panic seized him, as though all his strength were suddenly draining away through his feet. He stood there, unable to go forward or back, his breath coming short.
    Thomas Gascon had never experienced panic before. It had never occurred to him that the sensation