Paris: The Novel

seat otherwise. And he got a bruise on his leg, but he didn’t mind. As they went down in the boat, he was underneath and she fell into his arms and he felt her body pressing into his, and his arms went around her, and for a moment or two they lay there like that. She was looking down into his face, and he was going to kiss her.
    “Well, help me up, silly,” she said. But she was laughing with pleasure all the same.
    Then she rowed him back to the shore. She splashed him several times. Once or twice he thought it was deliberate. And he was happier than he had ever been in his life.
    They walked through the Bois after that. They were walking down a long empty alley when he put his arm around her. She didn’t stop him. After a little while, they stopped. There was still no one in sight. And he kissed her, and she kissed him back. But when his hands started to rove too much she stopped him. Then they walked back, and he kept his arm around her until some other people came in sight.
    The sun was behind them when they walked back up the avenue de la Grande-Armée, and ahead of them in the distance the Arc de Triomphe shimmered as if it were going to dissolve in the sunbeams.
    The next weekend Thomas went to see his family at Montmartre.
    “Did you take Édith out?” Luc asked, when they were alone.
    “Yes, to the Bois de Boulogne. We went on the lake.”
    Luc reached into his pocket.
    “Take these,” he said. “They’re the best.”
    Thomas looked down at the little packet in astonishment. They were condoms.
    “My little brother is giving me
capotes anglaises
?” It was a culturalcuriosity that the French and English nations had decided to attribute these artifacts to each other. The French called them English hoods; the English, for reasons obscure, called them French letters. They were mostly made of rubber, could be reused, but were not too reliable.
    “Why not? One of my rich customers gave them to me. These aren’t the usual ones. They’re finer. He told me they’re the best.”
    Thomas shook his head. At the age of fifteen, his little brother was mixing with some strange company. But what could one do? There probably wasn’t a child of ten in all the Maquis who was innocent.
    “She’s not that kind of girl,” he said.
    “Keep them all the same,” said Luc.
    So Thomas laughed and put them in his pocket. And as he did so, he wondered: Might he need them after all?

    In September 1888, after several weeks of agonizingly slow progress, the tower suddenly began to increase in height at great speed.
    It should have begun after Bastille Day. For above the second platform, the curve of the tower was such that it became much thinner. Instead of building horizontally, as they had in the lower sections, the flyers were now building almost vertically. The same number of men, installing the same number of sections, could add two, three or more times the height each day than they had done before. While some of the gangs, including Thomas’s, continued going up the tower, others were redeployed to the filling-in work on the great platform and the arches below.
    Yet one problem had almost brought progress to a grinding halt.
    It was the cranes. The ingenious creeper cranes were splendid, but they were slow. And now, as the cranes had to crawl up hundreds of feet, the flyers would quickly install the sections they brought, and then wait, uselessly, for the next sections to make their slow journey back again. The work was falling behind. Tempers frayed.
    One day Jean Compagnon stopped Thomas.
    “At least you look cheerful, young Gascon. You got a girl? Is that it?”
    “Oui, monsieur.”
Thomas grinned.
    “Well, good for you.” He nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t like the look of the men, young Gascon. Do you know when there’s trouble at work?”
    “Non, monsieur.”
    “Well, I’ll tell you. It’s not when the men are working too hard. It’swhen they haven’t got enough to do. I’ve seen it time and again. So think of your girl and stay out of trouble, you hear me?”
    “Oui, monsieur.”
    The solution that Eiffel found took time to put in place. But at last it was ready. And as soon as it was set in motion, the entire mechanics of the operation changed.
    Machine-driven winches would hoist the sections vertically from the ground to the first platform. As soon as the sections arrived, they’d be reattached to a second lifting system which hoisted them vertically another two hundred feet up to