Paris bulletin 2 2016

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 20^th 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.

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 11^th 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 11^th 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.

Jean Bastien-Thiry

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.

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.