Considering Stendhal’s place in
the French literary canon you might expect the street named after him to be
more prestigious than it actually is: a narrow, residential street
leading off the rue des Pyrénées in the 20th arrondissement. Its starting point is an old stone building whose gable end, facing back towards place Gambetta, bears a half-obliterated sign ‘Ville de Paris Dispensaire Jouye-Rouve-Tanies Maladies de Poitrine’. Many years have passed since it dealt with the tubercular and the bronchitic but it still retains a forbidding, prisonlike presence with its high, barred windows and grey doors.
leading off the rue des Pyrénées in the 20th arrondissement. Its starting point is an old stone building whose gable end, facing back towards place Gambetta, bears a half-obliterated sign ‘Ville de Paris Dispensaire Jouye-Rouve-Tanies Maladies de Poitrine’. Many years have passed since it dealt with the tubercular and the bronchitic but it still retains a forbidding, prisonlike presence with its high, barred windows and grey doors.
At the far end of the street
there are three flights of steep steps that take you down to the entrance to
the église St-Germain de Charonne, closed for now but probably reopening later
this year once major repair work is finished. It was formerly the parish church
of the village of Charonne before the latter was brought within the city
boundaries in 1860, but there has been a chapel or holy place on that site from
around 450. Apart from its rather wonderful position and and structure which
you can appreciate without going inside, St-Germain de Charonne is chiefly
notable for its cemetery, it and the église St Pierre de Montmartre being the
only two Paris churches still to have their own cemetery attached to the church
itself. The villages of Montmartre and Charonne were beyond the city boundaries
when Napoléon passed his decree in 1804, banning all burials intra muros.
The best thing about the cemetery
is how small it is. There is no sense of the almost industrial disposal of dead
bodies you get with the big Paris burial grounds, like Père Lachaise and
Montparnasse. I wander round one sunlit afternoon, listening for a moment to
the excited outpourings of a volunteer standing over the grave of Robert
Brasillach, fervent supporter of Nazi Germany and editor for a while of the
fascist newspaper ‘Je suis partout’.
Following the liberation of Paris Brasillach was executed by firing squad on
the orders of General de Gaulle, despite a huge campaign by key literary
figures of the day to have his sentence commuted. His brother-in-law, Maurice Bardèche is buried close by.
Unlike Brasillach who was dead by the time he was 35, Bardèche, arch-negationist
and Holocaust denier, lived till he was 91, fighting till the end for the
rehabilitation of Brasillach’s name. He apparently left five sons behind him,
perhaps one of them is keeping the flame burning yet.
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| Robert Brasillach |
Two days earlier I had been in
the 17th arrondissement, accompanying my grand-daughter to her concert at the
conservatoire there. She had a rehearsal before the concert started so in the
gathering dark I decided to take a look at the modern church I could see, more
Byzantine than European in style, behind the trees of a nearby park: l’église de Sainte Odile, as I
discovered. A remarkable edifice, as big and cavernous as a cathedral.
There was a mass on in the
church. I saw a figure in military uniform holding a French flag. It was 11th
March. I had happened upon the annual celebration/commemoration of
Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Bastien-Thiry’s life. Who was this man, what did he do
to merit a mass? I had no idea.
The priest had just begun his
homily – lots of fine words about his honour, his patriotism, his courage, his
belief in the rightness of what he did. Suddenly a young man erupted into the
church, one arm raised, shouting. He walked briskly down the centre aisle and
right up to the altar. The priest had no choice but to stop and ask him what he
was doing. His response was unintelligible but loud. Some men in the
congregation were already on their feet. He came back
down the aisle, arm still raised, still shouting, and exited the
building. The mass resumed.
Like Brasillach before him, Jean
Bastien-Thiry was also 35 when he died under a hail of bullets. The date was 11th
March 1963. That killing too was carried out on the orders of the General de Gaulle.
Like many of his contemporaries Bastien-Thiry believed de Gaulle had betrayed
France in reversing his policy on Algeria. His crime was to have reneged on his
promise to keep the country as an integral part of France. Bastien-Thiry and
his fellow-conspirators set up an ambush on the road out to the airport at
Villacoublay where de Gaulle was due to catch a place to
Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises. Despite
a barrage of bullets, several of which hit the general’s car, De Gaulle and his
wife escaped without a scratch. Out of more than twenty plotters Bastien-Thiry
was the only one to be executed.
I’m left wondering at the
coincidence of coming face to face, twice in as many days, with the lives and
deaths of two of France’s more controversial figures, the one wielding a pen,
the other a machine gun.
 |
| Jean Bastien-Thiry |
There is a very recent grave in
the cemetery of St-German de Charonne. The flowers piled high, the candles in
pots and the scribbled messages mark the passing of another life, another summary
execution. The excitable volunteer leads his visitors across to where I’m
standing. No one speaks. After a moment the woman kneels down and straightens up
a bent flower. She takes out a handkerchief and wipes her eyes:
Claire Maitrot-Tapprest, 23 ans, étudiante
en philosophie à l’université de Reims, passionnée du rock indépendant, fauchée
au Bataclan par des balles terroristes.
