The Mosque of Notre Dame

^{CHAPTER 10} AN UNDERGROUND CAMP

Within the concrete walls, a surface of water shimmered, alive like the black pupil of an enormous eye.

“We made a mistake!” shouted Eugène-Olivier, jumping from the handcart. “We can’t go any further; the platform is flooded.”

“Yes, occasionally underground waters flood the area,” said Father Lothaire. “But we’re going to drain them right now.”

“Drain them? How?”

“This is an artificial flooding. I knew the engineer who rigged it. We’re going to drain it, if I can just find the rope that pulls the stopper from the tub.”

Father Lothaire moved cautiously along the wall, scanning it carefully with the flashlight.

It was clear to Eugène-Olivier that the Wahhabis would never manage to deprive Parisians of safe shelters. There were so many of them that even he, who had been a fighter since the age of ten, hadn’t known about the 20th century atomic shelters—like the one where he’d met Father Lothaire.

The Saracens ceded a good third of the subway system to us out of laziness, but even without that, there are plenty of locations. Paris is connected to the underground at a thousand points, like a twisted labyrinth. No army can search it or control it. They must resign themselves to the existence of fighters in the catacombs.

But there is another way to exert control, and we in the catacombs of Paris, the small underground cities under the forests of Brittany, and the limestone caves are helpless against it: If the children of the Crescent can take absolute control of life in the sunlight, then, oh! What use are the weapon depots guarded by the skeletons of our ancestors if the secret meeting-places in the city have disappeared?

His thoughts were interrupted by the deafening sound of water flowing out.

The two men silently watched the underground “lake” gradually disappearing in the vortex.

Father Lothaire spurred them into motion. “We’ll hav e to get our feet wet unless we want to wait for two hours. But we have a place to get warm and dry just ahead.”

Splashing around in the wet, smelly dirt with disgust, Eugène-Olivier followed the priest. When they passed the platform, they found themselves in front of a small passageway in which stairs could be seen leading up toward the street. When the station was working, these probably led to offices.

“The water usually closes the entrance,” said the priest. “Be careful, it’s slippery.”

An area of about 200 square feet at the top of the stairs had not been flooded. It was covered with linoleum and filled with crates and items wrapped in rags.

“This is the main church depot, among other things,” said Father Lothaire, beginning to rummage through something that looked like a small refrigerator.

“Your bomb shelter is a lot more comfortable, Father.”

“And a lot more accessible. The problem is that it’s too easy to find—although sometimes God helps. I just have one set of relics there and I’ve placed them in a portable stone tablet. Now we’re going to turn on the lights; here you can even turn on the reflectors. I wouldn’t mind some hot tea. What about you, young Lévêque?”

Eugène-Olivier eagerly agreed. He stopped at what looked like a small engine mounted on legs of steel tubing like a bug.

“Forgive me, but what kind of junk is this, Father?”

“I can tell you what it’s called, but it will mean nothing to you. You will find all sorts of relics in a place where urban life used to unfold. When we found those, they had already been gathering dust for seventy years. But they work. It’s called a generator.”

Father Lothaire smiled contentedly as he searched for something in the drawers. “It’s a weak local source of electricity that runs on diesel fuel. There are also some that work on gasoline. It could also use kerosene, if I could get some. Aha, here we go: diesel. Hold the light here, please.”

“That looks like a can that’s been banged with a hammer for a long time,” said Eugène-Olivier. “Your reverence, you apparently prove to sinners that miracles are possible. If that can helps you turn on any electrical lamp, let alone a heater, I will believe in miracles.”

“If it’s miracles you want…” murmured Father Lothaire, tipping the diesel canister and pouring fuel into the generator. “With the help of this can, as you so disrespectfully call it, we have to maintain the entire station—to light it and dry it. Quite a bit of work.”

“And how does it do that?”

“You’ll see.” Father Lothaire began to pull a rope on the generator with quick jerks. The engine began to snort, giving off an unpleasant smell, and then settled into a moderately noisy rumble. The lights on the ceiling came on.

“Go see if there is light on the platform,” the priest called to him over the noise.

Eugène-Olivier ran down the stairs. The recently flooded, recently black and darkly repulsive platform, when lit by its dozens of electric sconces, looked almost pleasant.

“Light!”

“We used generators when I was a boy.” Father Lothaire pulled an electric heater toward the center of the room. “As I remember, we had the same kind in the castle.”

“Candles seem more fitting in a castle.”

“We had candles, too. At one o’clock in the morning, the generator was turned off. It had the abominable habit of going out in the middle of the most interesting place in the book. But I was forbidden to finish reading by candlelight.”

Father Lothaire smiled, wiping his dirty hands with a handkerchief. “They had cut off our electricity where it passed through the village. But we had lived in that castle for centuries without electricity. We just hooked up a generator, which our ancestors could not do. It wasn’t powerful enough to run a refrigerator, but we had cellars. We didn’t lack for anything.”

Father Lothaire filled the tea kettle with water from a plastic container. On an old-fashioned table, which must have once served as a desk, plates with cheese and biscuits appeared. Eugène-Olivier waited as patiently as he could as the priest said “Oculi omnium in te sperant Domine…” and so on over them for an entire minute. The biscuits with Camembert out of a can were very tasty and he would have gladly eaten them all, but he didn’t know if they were scarce.

Father Lothaire read his mind: “Please help yourself; we have enough food for everyone who will gather tomorrow. There are old military warehouses nearby that the Saracens never knew about. You and I will pick up a few cases from there in the morning.”

From the platform below, they heard footsteps on the stairs. It did not sound like Saracens.

“When the floor of the station is dry, we need to make as many benches as possible from these boards,” said Father Lothaire brightly. “I think we can rest the boards on empty canisters for legs… Oh, it’s you, Monsieur Lescure!”

“I’m not alone, your reverence,” answered the man who entered. Eugène-Olivier immediately recognized him from the chapel by his white hair gathered in a ponytail.

He was followed by a small slip of a shadow. Eugène-Olivier, who had warmed himself in front of the heater, suddenly felt a cold shiver. Valerie! It was horrible to see how the soles of her bare, bleeding feet were black with mud.

“Grandpa Vincent promised me an apple candy if I hid with him here,” she said in her silvery little voice. “But I wouldn’t let him carry me across the mud in his arms. There’s too much dirt everywhere. One has to walk through it on one’s own feet and that’s what I did.”

“I don’t know how appropriate her presence here is, but I was afraid to leave her in the street,” the old man quietly told Father Lothaire. “They’re very afraid of her, but they hate her even more.”

Valerie came very close to Eugène-Olivier and he was surprised to discover something he hadn’t noticed before. The girl’s tangled hair, her unwashed, wrinkled T-shirt—all this should have borne at least a musty odor. But the only scent Valerie she off was a faint smell of flowers that are considered not to have a smell: tulips, water lilies. The damp smell of freshness.

“Hello, grandson of a martyr,” she said to him, opening her blue eyes wide. Red blood dripped from the wound on her hand, which she used to remove a curl from her face. Traces of dried blood could be seen up to her elbow.

E ugène-Olivier reminded himself that Jeanne would have brought some small gift for the girl. But he had nothing in his pockets: no chocolate, no candy, not even a piece of gum.

“You don’t react when your grandfather is mentioned. That means you still don’t understand.” Valerie pursed her lips. “Dummy.”

“Perhaps you’re right, Monsieur Lescure,” said Father Lothaire thoughtfully. “Eugène-Olivier, Monsieur Lescure performs the same service in our parish that your grandfather performed in Notre Dame Church. He is our altar server.”

“In everyday life, a secondhand book dealer,” the old man explained, smiling gently. “I have a shop in the Défense ghetto. It’s a cover for my teaching the Latin language to our young people. If you want to learn, come to the ghetto. Anyone there will tell you where to find me.”

“It’s unlikely our young friend will have time to learn much even if he begins at this very moment,” said Father Lothaire a little grimly.

“Take your candy, Valerie,” said the old man. Having distracted her, he turned to Father Lothaire with concern in his faded blue eyes. “Your reverence, are things that bad? Since I walked in, you have been as tense as a wire.”

It was strange how Lescure saw this, said Eugène-Olivier to himself. To him, the priest seemed the same as ever. Except… except that he was a little more talkative. And what did they talk about for three hours with that Arab? He didn’t ask. Soldiers don’t ask.

“Worse,” said Father Lothaire with a smile. “The status quo is disappearing. Our only goal now is to add our corrections to its change.”

“I want a new rosary,” interrupted Valerie, mumbling a little because her mouth was full of candy. “The buttocks took mine and stomped on them. I chased them because I was angry. They ran away. But the rosary was broken; it can’t be fixed.”

“I’ll bring you a box of them, and you can choose,” the old man responded. His voice was hollow, like that of a man who is not thinking about what he is saying.

But he went and retrieved a large box and placed it before Valerie. She lifted the lid and sighed with wonder. She began to pull out new rosaries, one after another—made of light and dark wood, silk thread, colored glass, plastic, and pearls both large and small.

“I don’t want the ones that are red like coral, I don’t want black ones,” she muttered softly. “I don’t want wood ones, I want translucent ones like amber.”

“Will there be a lot of people tomorrow, Father?” asked the old man.

“About two hundred of ours and almost twice that from the Resistance Movement.”

“Excellent.”

So that’s why it was necessary to dry everything and make benches with boards and canisters! But why was it necessary for Resistance Movement fighters to meet with the church’s people?

Eugène-Olivier couldn’t fall asleep for a long time despite the goose-down sleeping bag they’d given him. Alpinists used to sleep in such bags directly on the ice.

The bag was warm and soft, but as soon as he closed his eyes, pictures kept appearing. Houri-succubi with red lips would approach him and try to catch him with their heavy breasts like pincers. His body flinched from their touch, and he awoke. The lulling sound of the generator had stopped a long time ago, and the underground was ruled by total silence, total darkness.

Then he was relieved to hear quiet voices. It was the priest and Valerie.

“Little girls should be asleep at this time,” said Father Lothaire with a smile in his voice, “so go to sleep, Valerie.”

“Tell me a story,” she said.

“All right, but not a long one, agreed?”

“But not a really short one, either.”

“Very well. My mother used to tell me this one: Once upon a time, there was an old king who lived in a forest with his knights…”

Living sounds, thought Eugène-Olivier. He felt his body relax. What was being said was not important. The important thing was that silence no longer shrouded him like black cotton. He began to doze off. A little later, he awoke again, and heard Father Lothaire say to Valerie, “And that is why today there are very few priests.”

“So few that you’re the only one for all of Paris?” she asked.

Father Lothaire replied. “How did you know that, Valerie? Until recently, there were two of us. Father Francisco was captured and martyred last winter. In all the ghettos of Paris, there are not more than three hundred Christians. For them, one pastor is sufficient, don’t worry. And if I am killed, our bishops will appoint a new priest from among the monks in the forests of Brittany or the students of the secret seminary. We won’t disappear, Valerie.” There was a brief silence.

“Thank you, Father,” she said, with a little yawn. “But your story is sad. Do you want me to tell you a happy one?”

“Please do.”

“Soon the Mother of God will have some consolation.”

After that, Eugène-Olivier could hear a rustling noise as if a mouse were moving, a sigh, and then breathing in sleep.