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I am not one of them, of course. In all the time I have worked here I can only recall the great Jacques Meunier looking at me twice, speaking to me once. But of course to a man like that I am barely human. I am something less than visible.
The Concierge, a working-class immigrant from Eastern Europe, is treated as a second-class citizen by her wealthy employers in Paris. As she notes, she has only ever spoken to the patriarch of the family, whom she refers to ironically as the “great” Jacques Meunier, on one occasion despite working for him for many years. To men such as Jacques, she is “barely human” and socially invisible, a woman not worth paying attention to. The other members of the Meunier family treat her similarly, regarding her as a part of the building’s furniture rather than a hard-working individual with her own life, her own history, and her own dreams for the future. Even sensitive Mimi, who does not know that the Concierge is in fact her grandmother, dismisses her as little more than a strange old woman who seems to emerge from out of the shadows. Though she lives in their building, she feels that she is ultimately not “one of them.”
The Concierge, however, has learned to take advantage of her invisibility. When she first arrives in Paris, she has no trouble entering La Petite Mort to find her daughter, as everyone assumes that she is a cleaner. Similarly, she is able to closely monitor the various people living in the apartment building, spying on them and collecting information, which she believes gives her a certain power over the family.
And what must it feel like to live in this tiny hovel while surrounded by the luxury and space of the rest of the apartment building? What would it be like to live with the reminder of how little you have on your doorstep every day? [...] If only she knew how out of place I am here too.
When the Concierge invites Jess into her apartment, Jess is surprised by its poor, cramped conditions. The main apartments of the building are large, spacious, and comfortable, with luxurious antique trappings. The Concierge’s one-room apartment, which also doubles as her office space, offers a pronounced contrast to the apartments in which the Meunier family resides. Jess observes that the space is barely large enough for one person to lie down comfortably in. Despite the Concierge’s clear efforts to keep the place as clean as possible, there are stains from water damage that no amount of cleaning can hide.
The stark differences between the living accommodations of the Concierge and the Meunier family underscore the importance of class differences in the novel. In the midst of the Meunier family’s luxury is squalor, and nobody thinks to improve her living conditions despite the fact that they have more than enough resources to do so. Jess feels that the Concierge resents her for violating the boundaries of class, pushing her way into the apartments of the Meuniers despite her own working-class background. Instead, she feels, the Concierge should be her ally, as the two have far more in common with each other by virtue of their socioeconomic class than they do with the Meuniers.
I couldn’t help myself, you know? That family. Everything we never had. I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted for them to love me. And at the same time, I wanted to destroy them. Partly for living off women who might have been Mum, at one stage in her life. But also, I suppose, just because I could.
At the end of the novel, Jess takes Ben to a hospital, where he is treated for his injuries. There, Ben reflects upon his own complicated motives for moving into the building and investigating the criminal origins of the Muenier family’s wealth. He admits that he wanted the Mueniers to love him while simultaneously wanting to destroy them. Ben, then, feels both an attraction and repulsion towards their wealth. The luxurious lifestyle enjoyed by the Mueniers appeals to him, reminding him of everything that he was deprived of as a child due to poverty. He wanted, he admits, “to be a part of it,” to be invited into their home and even, perhaps, to join their family. On the other hand, he also confesses that he was motivated at least in part by a bitter resentment of their wealth, which has been gained through the exploitation of desperate women.
In a particularly revealing line, Ben notes that he wanted to destroy the family simply because he could. Here, he implies that he enjoyed wielding power over the Mueniers, manipulating and outsmarting them. Having spent much of his life trying to impress people wealthier than himself, including the Daniel family that adopted him, Ben clearly takes pride in his ability to fit in easily among the rich and powerful, to infiltrate their exclusive, private spaces, and to beat them at their own game. This admission casts a new light upon his interactions with the family throughout the novel, which often seem to exceed the methods of an investigative journalist. He implies, here, that he enjoyed using his wits to win over the family.
