“Daddy! Did you see?”
He whirled away from Lucie and slapped his hand to the back of his neck. “See?”
“Look!” Josie poked one arm before her, one behind her, kicked her leg back—and fell over.
Lucie smiled, rushed to the child, and helped her up.
With a pout, Josie pointed to the mural. “Why can’t I do that?”
“An arabesque? That takes time.”
Paul took Josie’s hand. “An arabesque, you say? Why don’t you show us?” He winked at Lucie.
She remembered his touch under her arm on the quai d’Orsay. Longed for it. But his words and gazes had to do for now. She raised her arms and leg in first arabesque.
Paul sat cross-legged on the floor, leaned against the wall, and pulled his daughter onto his lap. “Show us more.”
For the first time in her life, she hesitated to dance in front of an audience, but Paul and Josie’s expectant grins tore down her reservations.
After Lucie put on her pointe shoes, she started the “Sleeping Beauty Waltz” again. The familiar strains of the garland dance flowed through her, and she performed the belovedbalancésandpirouettesandassemblés.
Never before had she performed for such an appreciative audience. Never before with such pure joy.
30
TUESDAY, OCTOBER14, 1941
Angry shouts and stamping feet reverberated through the factory, and Paul marched across the floor, fists clenched, glaring at his workers.
“Aubrey injuste,”they chanted, shaking fists in the air.
Memories crashed around in his head of the strikes and riots and the occupation of his factory in 1937. Except this time, he didn’t have a pistol in his jacket for protection.
This time he didn’t need it.
Because this time he’d planned it.
Jean-Pierre Dimont stepped in front of Paul, his tiny eyes on fire. “No more oppression! Forty hours!”
“Out of my way.” Paul elbowed past him.
For the past two weeks, Dimont, Moreau, and Silvestre had agitated about factory hours, demanding a forty-hour week, a luxury enjoyed by no other industrial workers in Europe. After the Germans tolerated massive strikes in Belgium and the Pas de Calais region of France with only minimal arrests, Moreau had hatched the plan.
“Forty hours!” the men chanted.
Paul scowled at them and marched toward his office.
The ringleaders had done a magnificent job stirring up anger and slowing production, while avoiding violence that would bring in the police.
And René Lafarge’s filthy blackmailing hands were tied. If the workers had demanded higher wages, Lafarge would have insisted Paul comply to get the men back to work. But a shorter workweek would decrease production of trucks that could carry the Wehrmacht to Moscow as Lafarge wished. So Lafarge had to take Paul’s side in the labor dispute.
Moreau was brilliant.
The general foreman stood at the foot of the stairs, his burly arms crossed.
Paul pointed at him. “You! In my office—now. This must stop immediately.”
Moreau thrust out his chest. “It’ll stop when we have a forty-hour week. You demand too much of us on short rations.”
