Paris: The Novel

of the tower, at least he was building it.
    “You’d better go,” said Eiffel. “If you are late, tell Compagnon that it was my fault and that I send my apologies. It’s not as if,” he murmured to himself, “I want the building delayed any more than it already is.”
    By the time Thomas got back to his station, he was a minute late. Passing Jean Compagnon, he began to explain, but the foreman waved him on.
    “I saw you with Eiffel. He likes to talk to you.” He shook his head. “God knows why.”

    Since their parting the previous November, Thomas had hardly seen Édith. Once in December, and again at the turn of the year, he had deliberately encountered her outside the lycée, but each time she’d made it clear that she didn’t want to see him anymore. After that, he’d avoided the lycée, and although he would occasionally catch sight of her in Passy, they hadn’t met.
    Since he spent every Sunday with them now, it was clear to his parents that he wasn’t seeing Édith. But nobody said anything. Once Luc asked him what had happened to her, and Thomas replied that it was over.
    “Are you sad?” Luc asked.
    “Oh,” Thomas replied with a shrug, “it just didn’t work out.”
    Luc said nothing.
    As spring began, he had thought about looking for another woman. But so far he hadn’t met anyone he especially liked. Nor did he have much time or energy.
    During May and June, the work on the tower picked up more speed. The men were now working twelve hours a day. The great arch underthe first platform was accomplished, and the central scaffolding removed. Suddenly the tower began to put on a stately face. As the four great corner pylons swept up their narrowing curve into the sky, the next target was the second platform. At 380 feet above the ground, this would form a second four-legged table on top of the first. After that, the tower would soar in a single, narrowing fretwork shaft up to its dizzying height in the heavens. By the end of June, the second platform was already being built.
    And this was admirable timing. For it was almost the fourteenth of July.
Le Quatorze Juillet
.
    Bastille Day.
    How fortunate it was for succeeding generations that when the ragged sans-culottes had inaugurated the French Revolution by storming the old fortress of the Bastille in 1789, they should have done it on a summer’s day. A perfect choice for a public holiday of celebrations, parades and fireworks.
    “Monsieur Eiffel is having a party at the tower on the fourteenth,” Thomas announced to Luc. “Do you want to come?”

    It was a bright afternoon. As they crossed the Pont d’Iéna, Thomas glanced at his younger brother and felt rather proud of him.
    Luc was now fourteen. His face had continued to fill out, and a dark lock of hair fell elegantly down over his brow, so that at the Moulin where he often worked, the customers often thought he must be a young Italian waiter. Indeed, despite his youth, his years spent up there had given him a mixture of smooth worldliness and boyish charm that his older brother could only watch in wonderment.
    Today, he had put on a white shirt without a jacket, and a straw boater on his head.
    By the time they arrived, there were large crowds walking around the site. The lower parts of the tower were festooned with bunting, displaying the red, white and blue of the Tricolor flag. There was a refreshment tent and a band smartly dressed in uniform.
    Whatever the papers might have said about the ugliness of the tower, one could see already that its huge, two-tiered archway was going to provide a magnificent entrance to next year’s exhibition. At 380 feet, the just completed platform was almost three quarters as high again as the towers of Notre Dame, and on a level with the highest cathedral spires in Europe.
    All kinds of people were there, including the fashionable. Thomas and Luc stood near the refreshment tent. “I’ll introduce you to Monsieur Eiffel,” said Thomas proudly, “if he comes by.”
    They’d been there about five minutes when Luc suddenly said, “Look who’s over there.” But when Thomas looked, he couldn’t see anyone particular in the crowd. “Over there.” Luc indicated a knot of well-dressed people. And then Thomas saw.
    It was Édith. She was wearing a white dress that must have been given to her, since she could never have bought such a thing herself, and a small bonnet. She looked very pretty. Beside her was Monsieur Ney, and a pale woman in her