By Paul Carrier
World War II has been the subject of so much fiction over the years that a new entry could get lost in the pile. Charles Belfoure's suspenseful debut deserves a better fate.
Set in the City of Light during the German occupation, The Paris Architect does not explore the war from a military or political perspective. It's a novel about the Holocaust, or rather the selfless efforts of some to shield Jews from the Nazis. In a larger sense, it lets us see how sane people coped -- or failed to do so -- in the most insane of worlds.
Charles Belfoure examines human behavior under extreme duress. Some of his characters are shattered by the evil that surrounds them. Others are sanctified. Some simply muddle through, intent on staying alive from one day to the next. Nobility and unfathomable evil share the same stage, together with cravenly behavior and the purest forms of grace. In the case of one Lucien Bernard, the architect of the title, the reader witnesses a remarkable metamorphosis, as a self-centered man is reborn.
Bernard is what we might call passively anti-Semitic. He doesn't harm or malign Jews, but he doesn't really care for them either. Yet over time, he helps Auguste Manet, a wealthy Christian industrialist, create hiding places, if only because he is being well-paid to do so and he hates the Germans enough to enjoy deceiving them.
Even as Manet is modifying apartments and other properties so he can protect Jews from the Gestapo, he hires Bernard to design an expansion for his factory, which builds aircraft engines for the Nazis. Manet has a new plant in the works that will produce weapons for the Germans, and he commissions Bernard to work on that facility as well. The two men are Nazi collaborators of sorts, but in their own way, enemies of the Reich as well.
Adele Bonneau, a shallow but prominent fashion designer, is having affairs with Bernard and a Gestapo colonel. Yet despite her willingness to take a Nazi lover, which is widely viewed as the worst sort of collaboration, she remains committed to preserving France's reputation as the epicenter of haute couture, as if to show the occupiers that her country remains truly French, despite the tides of war. Her tough but beautiful assistant, Bette Tullard, seems equally cold and calculating, but she has a powerful secret that could reveal her true nature.
As a whole, the people of Paris come across here as treacherous and indifferent to the plight of others, but they are not without redeeming qualities. Some take in Jews at great personal risk. Others fight in the Resistance. A German officer observes that although many Parisians are amazingly willing to rat on neighbors who may be hiding Jews, they show great dignity when facing their own deaths, as Nazis murder innocent Parisians simply for living in an apartment building in which a Jew has found refuge.
And then there are the Nazis themselves. Some are predictably sadistic brutes. But not all. Major Dieter Herzog of the Wehrmacht is a structural engineer who had hoped to become an architect and is now working with Manet and Bernard on the factory projects. Herzog lives in an elegantly furnished apartment. His tastes are cultured and refined. He longs to go on leave so he can visit his wife and children in Germany. Yet he is loyal to Hitler, and he knows his cherished works of art once belonged to people who have disappeared.
Most of the characters in this nuanced and memorable novel live in a world that has too many shades of gray to be viewed in black and white terms. But there are exceptions. The Jews whom we meet -- desperate people who are on the run, or in hiding, or doomed to torture and execution at the hands of the Gestapo -- are truly blameless victims of a world gone mad. If you are trying to elude the Gestapo, or have been taken into custody, there is a clear, hard line between good and evil.
When Solomon Geiber and his wife Miriam take cover under a specially built staircase that Bernard designed for Manet's hunting lodge, the scene is heart-stoppingly dramatic and unforgettable. German soldiers ransack the house and stomp up and down the stairs only inches from the Geibers as they search for the elderly couple. Later, another of Bernard's ingenious designs triggers the start of his transformation when it, too, is put to its intended use, but with a far different outcome.
Belfoure's taut thriller convincingly portrays life in occupied Paris, as readers race from one chapter to the next to learn if Bernard, and the people who depend on him for their very survival, will elude the Gestapo or fall into its clutches. Pursued by a venomous employee who knows his secret and a crazed but shrewd Gestapo officer intent on finding Jews and those who harbor them, Bernard seems to be armed with little more than his wits and his conscience.
