The World at Night

THE ADE PAGODA

20 August, 1940.

The silence of the empty apartment rang in his ears. The bed had been made—the concierge’s sister coming in to clean as she always did—and the only sign of his long absence was a dead fern. Still, he felt like a ghost returning to a former life. And he had to put the fern outside the door so he wouldn’t see it.

The heat was almost liquid. He opened the doors to the little balcony but it wasn’t all that much better outside. Hot, and wet. And still—as though all the people had gone away. Which they had, he realized. Either fled before the advancing Wehrmacht in June, or fled to the seashore on the first of August. Or both. Practical people on the rue Chardin.

He sat on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, let it out slowly. The man who had lived here, the producer Jean Casson, Jean-Claude to his friends, little jokes, small favors, a half-smile, maybe we should make love—what had become of him? The last attempt at communication was propped against the base of a lamp on the bedside table. A message written in eyebrow pencil on the inside cover of a matchbook from the bar at the Plaza-Athenée. 34 56 08 it said, a phone number. Signed Bibi.

He’d spent a long time walking the roads, a long span of empty days in the barracks of a defeated army, and he’d thought, every day, about what had happened up on the Meuse. The machine-gun duels across the river, the French soldiers running away, the refugees on the roads. It seemed strange to him now, remote, an experience that happened to somebody else, in some other country.

He shaved, smelled the lotion he used to wear, then put the cap back on the bottle. Went for a walk. Rue des Vignes. Rue Raffet. Paris as it always was—smelly in the heat, deserted in August. He came to the Seine and rested his elbows on the stone wall and stared down into the river—Parisians cured themselves of all sorts of maladies this way. The water was low, the leaves on the poplars parched and pale. Here came a German officer. A plain, stiff man in his mid-thirties, his Wehrmacht belt buckle said Gott Mit Uns, God is with us. Strange God if he is, Casson thought.

The Métro. Five sous. Line One. Châtelet stop, Samaritaine department store, closed and dead on a Sunday. He would survive this, he thought. They all would, the country would. “Peace with honor,” Pétain had called the surrender. Peace with peace, at any rate, and not to be despised. Just another débâcle, the lost war. And French life had plenty of those. There goes the electricity, the Christmas dinner, the love of one’s life. Merde.

In the back streets of a deserted commercial district he found a little café open and ordered an express. The price had doubled, the coffee was thin, and the proprietor raised a cautionary eyebrow as he put the cup down—this is how things are, I don’t want to hear about it. Casson didn’t complain. He was lucky to be alive, paying double for a bad coffee was a privilege.

On the flight south from Sedan he’d been lucky twice. The first time, he was with a company of French infantry, half of them still armed, when they were overtaken by a German column. An officer stood on a tank turret, announced the Panzerkorps had no time to deal with prisoners, and directed them to lay their weapons down on the road. When that was done a tank ran over them a few times and the column went on its way. Others had not been so fortunate—they’d heard about whole divisions packed into boxcars and shipped off to camps in Germany.

The second time, Casson was alone. Came around the curve of a road outside Châlons to find three Wehrmacht officers on horseback. They stared at him as he walked past—a lone, unarmed soldier in a shabby uniform. Then he heard a laugh, glanced up to see a young man with the look of a mischievous elf, or perhaps, if some small thing annoyed him, a murderous elf. “You halt,” he said. He let Casson stand there a moment, then leaned over, worked his mouth, and spit in his face. His friends found that hilarious. Casson walked away, head down, and waited until he was out of sight before wiping the saliva off.

So what? he told himself. It didn’t mean anything.

A woman came into the café and caught his eye. She was tall, had a big, soft face, net stockings, short skirt. Casson stood and gestured at an empty chair. “A coffee?” he said.

“Sure, why not.”

The proprietor brought it over and Casson paid.

“Been out in the country?” she said.

“You can tell?”

She nodded. “You have the look. Too many healthy Frenchmen around, all of a sudden.” She took a sip of coffee and scowled at the proprietor but he was busy not noticing her. She snapped her purse open, took out a small mirror, poked at a beauty mark pasted on her cheek. “Care for a fuck?” she said.

“No, thanks.”

She closed the mirror and put it back in her purse. “Something complicated, it’ll cost you.”

“What if I just buy you a sandwich?”

She shrugged. “If you like, but I hate to see this louse have the business.”

Casson nodded agreement.

“Oh, it’s going to get real shitty here,” she sighed. “Before, I was just about managing. Day to day, you know. But now . . .”

Casson took out a packet of cigarettes and they both lit up. The woman blew a long plume of smoke at the café ceiling. “Trick is,” she said, “with these times, is don’t let it ruin your life.”

“My mother used to say that.”

“She was right.”

They smoked. A fat little man, commercial traveler from the suitcase he was carrying, looked into the café and cleared his throat. The woman turned around. “Well hello,” she said.

“Are you, uh . . .”

The woman stood up. “I have to go,” she said.

“Luck to you.”

“Thanks. And you.”

Monday morning, 7:00 A.M. The concierge knocked on his door. It took him a long time to unwind himself from sleep, dreams, the safety of his very own bed. He staggered to the door.

“Welcome home, Monsieur Casson.”

He stood, swaying slightly, his shirt pulled together in one hand, his pants held up with the other. “Madame Fitou,” he mumbled.

She was sweating with anxiety.

“What is it?”

“The car, monsieur.”

“Yes?” He rarely drove it—it mostly stayed in the little garage off the courtyard.

The words came in a rush. “Well, of course we waited until you returned, and we worried about you so, but of course you know the authorities have made a requisition of all private automobiles, so, ah, it must be turned in. Of course there were posters, while you were away, monsieur. My husband made sure to write down the address, out in Levallois, because we thought, you’d have to be informed, you’d want to be, when you came home . . .” She ran down slowly.

“Oh, yes, of course.”

Now he understood. The poor woman was afraid he’d refuse, that she would be dragged into disobedience, made to suffer for his casual attitude toward authority. “I’ll take care of it this morning, madame,” he said.

She thanked him, he could see the relief in her eyes. She’d lain awake all night, he supposed. In her imagination he had scoffed, jeered at her. Then, disaster. Police.

“I’d better get dressed,” he said brightly, and managed a smile as he closed the door.

Madame Fitou and her sister held the doors open and Casson backed out carefully into the rue Chardin. No point in scratching the bodywork, he thought. He let the car idle a moment, then shifted into first gear. He didn’t particularly share the national worship of automobiles, but this one had been very hard to get hold of and he was sorry to lose it.

A Simca 302. A model last manufactured in 1934, so those seen around Paris were all of a certain age. A sedan convertible, built low to the ground, always forest green. Walnut dash, rag top, throaty engine. Just the sort of car the producer Jean Casson might be expected to drive. Actually, just the sort of car the producer Jean Casson might be expected to drive—Jensen, Morgan, Riley—the producer Jean Casson couldn’t afford.

The 302 was nice enough to look at, but it wasn’t at all nice to its owner. It was a sulky, spoiled car that drank gas, that sputtered and died at traffic lights, that whined if made to go at high speeds, that wanted nothing to do with the weather after October. Still, it was a credible showpiece, and if it misbehaved with an important personage—it knew who was sitting in its passenger seat—Casson would smile and shake his head, helpless. A depraved passion, what could one do.

Of course it drove like an angel on its way to the garage. Out avenue Malakoff on a cloudy August morning, a few sprinkles of rain. Casson worked his way patiently through swarms of bicyclists; clerks and factory workers, young and old, everyone peddling along together, most of them sour-faced and grim, ringing their bicycle bells when some idiot went too slow or too fast.

The light was red at the intersection of Malakoff and the busy avenue Foch. A black sedan pulled up next to him and Casson and the passenger glanced at each other. German soldiers. Casson turned away. They were junior officers, probably lieutenants. They had the look of young men going to work at a bank or a law office—perhaps the military version, paymaster or judge advocate. Something administrative, he thought, and probably technical.

They were staring at him. He glanced back—yes?—but it didn’t make them stop. They both wore glasses, one of them had round, tortoiseshell frames, the other silver rims. Their faces were pink, freshly shaved, their hair cut to military length and combed into place with hair tonic, and the way they were staring at him was rude. The light went green. The bicyclists moved off, Casson resisted an urge to speed ahead, hesitated so the sedan could go first.

But it didn’t. They were waiting for him. Conards! he thought. Jerks. What’s your problem? He eased the car into gear and inched forward. I’m not supposed to be driving, he thought. They can see I’m French, and that means I’m supposed to be pedaling a bicycle while they drive a car. His stomach turned over—he didn’t want a confrontation, he wasn’t sure exactly what that would mean. He let the Simca fade a little, waiting an extra beat between second and third. The sedan’s door moved ahead of his, and he saw the two were talking, urgently, then the passenger looked out the window again. Clearly he was concerned, perhaps slightly annoyed.

Porte Maillot. A large, busy traffic circle with avenues radiating like spokes in all directions. A horn blasted behind Casson and he swerved over into the right lane as a Wehrmacht truck tore past him, swaying as it lurched around the circle. Then the sedan was back, the passenger not a bit less irritated. Casson began to feel sick. What’s the problem, Fritz? You think somebody peed in your soup? He knew the look on the lieutenant’s face—righteous indignation, a German religion.

Up ahead, another traffic light at the avenue des Ternes. Now green, but not for long. If they stopped side by side, the Germans were going to get out of their car and make an issue of it. And he wasn’t legal, he wasn’t supposed to be driving this car. He didn’t know exactly what they’d do about it but he didn’t want to find out. You have not behaved correctly, now you must suffer the consequences. A side street came up on his left, he threw the wheel over and stepped on the gas.

Rue du Midi. He didn’t remember ever being here but he thought he was just at the edge of Neuilly. He stopped in the middle of the block, in front of a villa with an elaborate iron gate in its wall, and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking. He glanced out the window at the view mirror. There they were. Up the street he could just see the black sedan, out on the avenue, backing up slowly in order to turn into the rue du Midi. They were going to come after him.

The sweat started at his hairline, he jammed the gear shift into first and took off. On his left, a tiny cobbled lane, something dark and lost about it. A place to hide. He turned in, gray plaster walls rose on both sides, there was barely room for a car. He followed a long curve, past an old-fashioned gas lamp, an even narrower alley that opened to his left, a row of shuttered windows. Where was he? It was perpetual twilight in here, the walls so close they amplified the car engine and he could hear every stroke of the pistons.

The street ended at a wall.

Covered with vines and moss, crumbling, twenty feet high. Over the oak and iron doors the chiseled letters on the capstone had been worn almost flat by time—the Abbey of Saint Gervais de Toulouse. Casson turned off the ignition then had to work his way free of the Simca because the walls were so close. He ran to the entry—he thought he could hear the sedan back in the rue du Midi. There was a chain hanging down the portal, he pulled it, heard the clang of an iron bell within the walls. He tried again, then again, glancing back over his shoulder and expecting the Germans at any second.

“Hello!” he called.

From the other side of the door: “What do you want?”

“Let me in. The Germans are after me.”

Silence. Now he was sure he could hear the sedan—the whine of reverse gear, then the sound of idling where the lane opened to the street. “Please,” he said. “Open the door.”

He waited. Finally, a voice: “Monsieur, you cannot come in here.”

“What?”

The silence seemed to last a long time. “Please go away, monsieur.”

For a moment, Casson tried to explain it away—it was a Coptic order, or Greek, something exotic. But the man on the other side of the wall was French. “You should be ashamed of yourself,” Casson said.

Silence.

Casson turned away from the door and ran back down the cobbled lane, in the direction of the rue du Midi, looking for the alley he’d seen. He found it, sprinted into the darkness and right into an iron grille. The shock made him cry out and a trickle of blood ran from his nose. He squatted down, his back against an icy stone wall, and held his hand against his face to stop the blood from getting on his shirt. He was perhaps ten feet down the alley. Out in the lane he heard footsteps, then two shadows moved quickly past the opening where Casson was hidden only by darkness. He forced himself against the wall. One of the soldiers said something, he was short of breath, and his whispered German was excited, perhaps a little frightened. Then the footsteps moved away, and Casson heard a shout as they found the car parked facing the Abbey wall. He could just hear them as they talked it over, then footsteps came back toward the alley, paused, and moved away toward the rue du Midi.

Too French for them in here, Casson thought. It was dark and damp and it smelled of old drains, burnt wood, cat piss, and God knew what else. It was too ancient, too secret. Sitting against the wall and wiping at his bloody nose, Casson felt something like triumph.

He counted to a hundred, then got the Simca backed down the lane and out into the street as quickly as he could. Because if the Germans had lacked the courage to search the alley—and Casson sensed they’d known he was in there—they were certainly brave enough to pick up a telephone once they got to work, and report the Frenchman and his car to the Gestapo, license plate and all.

As for the feeling of triumph, it didn’t last long. In the winding streets of Levallois-Perret—the industrial neighbor of luxurious Neuilly—he stopped the car so a young woman carrying a bread and a bag of leeks could cross the street. A blonde, country-girl-in-Paris, big-boned, with spots of red in her cheeks and heavy legs and hips beneath a thin dress.

Their eyes met. Casson wasn’t going to be stupid about it, but his look was open, I want you. When her lip curled with contempt and she turned away pointedly it surprised him. Eye contact in Paris was a much-practiced art, a great deal of love was made on the streets, some of it even made its way indoors. But she didn’t like him. And she was able, her face mobile and expressive, to tell him why. Anybody driving a car since the requisition was a friend of the Occupier, and no friend of hers. Let him seek out his own kind.

A few minutes later he found the garage. It was enormous, packed with row on row of automobiles, all kinds, old and new, banged-up and shiny, cheap little Renaults and Bugatti sports cars. The German sergeant in charge never said anything about where were you, he simply took the keys. Casson wondered out loud about a receipt, but the sergeant merely shrugged and nodded his head at the door.

Later that morning he went to his office, but the door was padlocked.

Casson went home and called his lawyer.

Bernard Langlade—whose anniversary he’d celebrated at Marie-Claire’s—was a good friend who happened to be a good lawyer. A personal lawyer, he didn’t represent CasFilm or Productions Casson. Sent a bill only when he was out of pocket and, often enough, not even then. He looked at papers, listened patiently to Casson’s annual tax scheme—taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes—wrote the occasional letter, made the occasional phone call. In fact Langlade, though trained at the Sorbonne, spent his days running a company that manufactured lightbulbs, which his wife had inherited from her family.

“At least you’re home, safe and in one piece,” he said on the phone. “So let’s not worry too much about locked doors. I have a better idea—come and have lunch with me at one-thirty, all right? The Jade Pagoda, upstairs.”

A fashionable restaurant, once upon a time, but no more. It had fallen into a strange, soft gloom, deserted, with dust motes drifting through a bar of sunlight that had managed to work its way between the drapes. The black lacquer was chipped, the gold dragons faded, the waiter sat at a corner table, chin propped on hand, picking horses from the form sheet in the Chinese newspaper.

“Well, Jean-Claude,” Langlade said, “now we’re really in the shit.”

“It’s true,” Casson said.

“And I worry about you.”

“Me?”

“Yes. Life under German rule is going to be bad, brutal. And it’s going to demand the cold-blooded, practical side of our nature. But you, Jean-Claude, you are a romantic. You sit in a movie theater somewhere, wide-eyed like a child—it’s a street market, in ancient Damascus! A woman takes off her clothes for you—she’s a goddess, you’re in love!”

Casson sighed. His friend wasn’t wrong.

“That must change.”

Langlade took a sip of the rosé he’d ordered with lunch and scowled. He was ten years older than Casson, tall and spare and extremely well-dressed, with iron-colored hair going white over the ears, large features, dark complexion, and a mouth set in perpetual irony— life was probably not going to turn out all that well, so one had better learn to be amused by it. He raised an eyebrow as he said, “You have a bicycle?”

“No.”

“We’ll get to work on it. Immediately. Before all the world realizes it’s the one thing they absolutely must have.”

“Not for me, Bernard.”

“Ah-hah, you see? That’s just what I mean.”

Casson poked his fork at a bowl of noodles. It needed sauce, it needed something. “All right, I’ll ride a bicycle, I’ll do what I have to do, which is what I’ve always done. But what worries me is, how am I going to earn a living? What can I do?”

“What’s wrong with what you’ve always done?”

“Make films?”

“Yes.”

“What—The Lost Rhine Maiden? Hitler Goes to Oxford?”

“Now Jean-Claude . . .”

“I’m not going to collaborate.”

“Why would you? I’m not. I’m making lightbulbs. Your lights will burn out, you’ll need replacements. But they won’t be Nazi lightbulbs, will they?”

Casson hadn’t thought of it quite that way.

“Look,” Langlade said, “your barber—what’s he going to do under the Occupation? He’s going to cut hair. Is that collaboration?”

“No.”

“Well, then, what’s the difference? The barbers will cut hair, the writers will write, and the producers will make films.”

Casson gave up on the noodles and put his fork down by the plate. “I won’t be able to make what I want,” he said.

“Oh shit, Jean-Claude, when did any of us ever do what we wanted?”

The waiter appeared with two plates of diced vegetables. Langlade rubbed his hands with pleasure. “Now this is what I come here for.”

Casson stared at it. A carrot, a mushroom, a scallion, something, something else. As Langlade refilled their glasses he said, “I’ll tell you a secret. Whoever can discover a wine that goes with Chinese food will be very rich.”

They ate in silence. The Chinese waiter gave up on the racing form, and his newspaper rattled as he turned the page. “What was it like here?” Casson said.

“In May and June? Terrible. At first, a great shock. You know, Jean-Claude, the Gallic genius for evasion—we will not think unpleasant thoughts. Well, that’s fine, until the bill comes. What they believed here I don’t know, perhaps it wouldn’t matter if the Germans won. There were women to be made love to, bottles of wine to be opened, questions of life and the universe to be discussed, important things. If we lost a war, well, too bad, but what would it matter? The politicians would change the color of their ties, possibly one would have to learn a new sort of national anthem. After all, the shits that run the country are the shits that run the country—how bad could it be to have a new set?

“Ah but then. We sat here in Paris the second week in May, reading the departmental numbers on the license plates. It started in the extreme north—one day the streets were full of 10s from the Aube. By midweek we had the 55s from the Meuse and, a day or two later, the 52s from the Haute-Marne. And no matter what the radio said, it began to dawn on us that something was moving south. And so on a Thursday, the first week in June, a great mob—can you guess?”

“Marched on the Elysée Palace.”

“Descended on the luggage department at the Galéries Lafayette.”

Casson shook his head, ate some of the diced vegetables, poured himself some more rosé. By the end of the second glass it wasn’t too bad. “Tell me, Bernard, in your opinion, how long is this going to go on?”

“Years.”

“Two years?”

“More like twenty.”

Casson was stunned. If that were true, life could not be suspended, left in limbo until the Germans went home. It would have to be lived, and one would have to decide how. “Twenty years?” he said, as much to himself as Langlade.

“Who is going to defeat them? I mean really defeat them—throw them out. The answer hasn’t changed since 1917—the Americans. Look what happened here, a German army of five hundred thousand attacked a nation with armed forces of five and a half million and beat them in five days. Only the Americans can deal with that, Jean-Claude. But you know, I don’t see it happening. Even if Roosevelt decided tomorrow that America had to be involved, even if the senators saw any point in spilling Texas blood for some froggy with a waxed mustache, even then, it’s years to build the tanks. And get them here—how? Flown by Babar? No, everything has changed, the rules are different. Your life is your country now, my friend. You are a citizen of the nation Jean-Claude, and you will have to learn to live on those terms or you will not survive.”

Langlade had shaken his fork at Casson as he was making his point, now he caught himself doing it and put it down on his plate. Cleared his throat. Took a sip of wine. The waiter turned another page of the newspaper. Casson looked up to see one corner of Langlade’s mouth twist up in a sudden smile. “Hitler Goes to Oxford indeed!” he said under his breath, laughing to himself.

“And there he meets Laurel and Hardy,” Casson said. “The college servants.”

It was not the first time he’d had to glue his life back together.

The banks had resumed operations in July, but there had been problems, confusion, and for some reason the checks to the landlord for the office on the rue Marbeuf had not gone through. The landlord, a fat little creature, shoulders back, tummy sucked in, said “Such difficult times, Monsieur Casson, how was one to know . . . anything? Perhaps now, life will become, ah, a little more orderly.”

He meant: you attempted to take advantage of war and Occupation by not paying your rent promptly, but I’m smarter than that, monsieur!

And he also meant: Orderly.

Which was to say, Pétain and everything he believed in—by September Casson had learned to recognize it from the slightest inflection. France, the theory went, deserved to be conquered by Germany because it was such a corrupt, wicked nation, with a national character so degenerate it had stormed the Bastille in 1789, a national character deformed by alcohol, by promiscuity, by loss of the old moral values.

He’s right, Casson thought, one September evening, gently improving the angle of a pair of legs in silk stockings. The radio was playing dance music, then Pétain came on, from Vichy. The usual phrases: “We, Philippe Pétain,” and “France, the country of which I am the incarnation.”

“Ah, the old general,” she said.

“Mmm,” Casson answered.

They waited, idling, while Pétain spoke. Waiting was a style just then—it will all go away, eventually.

“You have warm hands,” she said.

“Mmm.”

Lazy and slow, just barely touching each other. Could there be a better way, Casson wondered, to get through a speech? When the dance music returned—French dance music, plinky-plinky-plink, none of this depraved “jazz,” but upright, honest music, so Maman and Papa could take a two-step around the parlor after dinner—he was almost sorry.

He missed Gabriella. Once the padlock was removed he’d found the note she’d left for him. It was dated 11 June—the day after Italy had declared war on an already defeated France. “I cannot stay here now,” she’d written. Casson remembered the barracks where he’d heard the news. The soldiers were bitter, enraged—what cowardice! The Germans had brutal souls, they did what they did, but the Italians were a Latin people, like them, and had rushed in to attack a fallen neighbor.

“I will miss you, I will miss everything,” Gabriella wrote. She would always remember him, she would pray for his safety. Now she would go back to Milan. The Paris she had longed for, it was gone forever.

Otherwise there was nothing. Mounds of pointless mail, the rooms dusty and silent. Casson sat at his desk, opened files, read papers. What to do next?

Late September it began to rain, he met a girl called Albertine, the daughter of the concierge of a building on the rue Beethoven. On market day, Thursday in Passy, he’d stood at the vegetable cart, staring balefully at a mound of broad yellow beans—there was nothing else. A conversation started, he wondered what one did to prepare these things, she offered to show him.

The affair floated in the broad gray area between commerce and appetite. Albertine was not beautiful, quite the opposite. Some day, perhaps, she would glow with motherhood, but not now. At nineteen she was pinched and red, with hen-strangler’s hands and the squint of an angry farmwife. That was, Casson thought, the root of the problem: there was a good deal of Norman peasant blood in the population of Paris and in big Albertine it ran true to type. She came to his apartment, revealed the mystery of the yellow beans—one boiled them, voilà!—took off her dress, sat on the edge of the bed, folded her arms, and glared at him.

The time with Albertine was late afternoon, usually Thursday. Then, before she went home, she would make them something to eat. In the old days his dinners had drifted down from heaven, like manna. Life was easy, attractive men were fed. There were dinner parties, or a woman to take to a restaurant, or he’d go to a bistro, Chez Louis or Mère Louise, where they knew him and made a fuss when he came in the door.

That was over. Now the Germans ate the chickens and the cream, and food was rationed for the French. The coupons Casson was issued would buy 3 1/2 ounces of rice a month, 7 ounces of margarine, 8 ounces of pasta, and a pound of sugar. The sugar he divided—most to Albertine, the remainder for coffee. One had to take the ration stamps to the café in the morning.

So mostly it was vegetables—potatoes, onions, beets, cabbages. No butter, and only a little salt, but one survived. Of course there was butter, what the Germans didn’t want—one sometimes saw a soldier eating a stick of it, like an ice-cream cone, while walking down the street—could be bought on the black market. He would give Albertine some money and she would return with cheese, or a piece of ham, or a small square of chocolate. He never asked for an accounting and she never offered. What she kept for herself she earned, he felt, by thrift and ingenuity.

The women he usually made love to were sophisticated, adept. Not Albertine. A virgin, she demanded to be taught “all these things” and other than an occasional What?!! turned out to be an exceptionally diligent student. She had rough skin and smelled like laundry soap, but she held nothing back, gasped with pleasure, was irresistibly shameless, and hugged him savagely so that he wouldn’t drift up through the ceiling and out into the night. “Only in war,” she said, “does this happen between people like us.”

Casson went to the office but the phone didn’t ring.

It didn’t ring, and it didn’t ring, and it didn’t ring. The big studios were gone, there was no money, nobody knew what to do next. Weddings? The director Berthot claimed to have filmed three since July. Rich provincials, he claimed, that was the secret. Watch the engagement announcements in places like Lyons. The couple arrive separately. The nervous papa looks at his watch. The flowers are delivered. The priest, humble and serious, greets the grandmother. Then, the kiss. Then, the restaurant. A toast!

Casson glued two papers together by licking the edges and rolling tobacco into a cigarette. Working carefully, he managed to get it lit with a single match. “Can you make me one of those?” Berthot asked hungrily.

Casson, that devil-may-care man-about-town, did it. When it took two tries to light the ragged thing, Casson smiled bravely—matches were no problem for him. “I had an uncle,” Berthot said, “up in Caen. Wanted to turn me into a shoemaker when I was a kid.” He didn’t have to go on, Casson understood, the shoemakers had plenty of work now.

The October rains sluiced down, there was no heat on the rue Marbeuf. He had enough in the bank to last through November’s rent, then, that was that. What was what? Christ, he didn’t know. Sit behind his desk and hold his breath until someone ran in shaking a fistful of money or he died of failure. He went to the movies in the afternoon, the German newsreels were ghastly. A London street on fire, the German narrator’s voice arrogant and cocksure: “Look at the destruction, the houses going up in flames! This is what happens to those who oppose Germany’s might.” Going back out into the gray street in mid-afternoon, the Parisians were morose. The narrator of the newsreel had told the truth.

He answered an advertisement in Le Matin. “Distribute copies of a daily bulletin to newsstands.” It was called Aujourd’hui à Paris and listed all the movies and plays and nightclubs and musical performances. The editor was a Russian out in Neuilly who called himself Bob. “You’ll need a bicycle,” he said. Casson said, “It’s not a problem,” remembering his conversation with Langlade. But he never went back—inevitably he would encounter people he knew, they would turn away, pretend they hadn’t seen him.

Langlade. Of course that was always the answer, one’s friends. He’d heard that Bruno and Marie-Claire were doing very well, that Bruno had in fact received delivery of the MGs left on the Antwerp docks, that he now supplied French and Italian cars to German officers serving in Paris. But something kept him from going to his friends—not least that they were the sort of friends who really wouldn’t have any idea how to help him. They’d always looked up to him. They did the most conventional things: manufactured lightbulbs, imported cars, wrote contracts, bought costume jewelry, while he made movies. No, that just wouldn’t work. They would offer him money—how much? they’d wonder. And, after it was gone, what then?

28 October, 1940.

He’d brought his copy of Bel Ami to the rue Marbeuf as office reading—he’d always wanted to make a film of de Maupassant, everyone did. Then too, he simply had to accept the fact that one didn’t find abandoned newspapers in the cafés until after three.

11:35. He could now leave the office, headed for a café he’d discovered back in the Eighth near the St.-Augustin Métro, where they had decent coffee and particularly good bread. Where he could pretend—until noon but not a minute later—that he was taking a late casse-crôute, midmorning snack, when in fact it was lunch. And the waiter was an old man who remembered Night Run and The Devil’s Bridge. “Ah, now those,” he’d say, “were movies. Perhaps a little more of the bread, Monsieur Casson.”

Casson’s hand was on the doorknob when the telephone rang.

He ran to the desk, then forced himself to wait for the end of the second ring before he picked it up and said “Hello?” Not disturbed, exactly, simply unable to hide the fact that his concentration had been elsewhere, that he’d been busy—perhaps in a meeting, perhaps in mid-sentence as he reached back for the receiver.

“Jean Casson?”

“Yes.”

“Hugo Altmann.” The line hummed for a moment. “Yes? Hello?”

“Altmann, well, of course.”

“Perhaps you don’t—remember me.”

“No, no. I was just . . .”

“Tell me, Casson, can you possibly cancel your lunch today?”

“Well. Yes, I could. It’s not anything I can’t reschedule.”

“Perfect! You’re still on the rue Marbeuf?”

“Yes. Twenty-six, just off the boulevard.”

“Save me parking, will you? And wait for me downstairs?”

“All right.”

“Good. Ten minutes, no more.”

“See you then.”

He ran into the bathroom down the hall and stared into the mirror above the sink. Shit! Well, not much he could do about it now—his shirt was tired, his jacket unpressed. But he’d shaved carefully that morning—he always did—his hair simply looked vaguely arty when he avoided the barber, and his shoes had been good long ago and still were. It was, he thought, his good fortune to be one of those men who couldn’t look seedy if he tried.

Altmann he remembered well. He worked for Continental, the largest of the German production companies, with offices out by Paramount in Billancourt. A film executive, typical of the breed. The practical, plodding French of the long-term expatriate—nothing fancy but nothing really wrong. Smooth manners, smooth exterior, but not sly. He was, one felt, constitutionally neat, and courtly by upbringing. Well-dressed, favoring muted tweed suits and very good ties in rich colors. The kind of hair that faded from blond to no color at all in the mid-forties, combed back at the age of seven and still in place. Scandinavian complexion, blue eyes—like a frozen lake—and a smile. Always a second drink, always enthusiastic—even about the most godawful trash because you just never knew what people were going to like—always at work. Casson had been at several meetings with him out at Continental, a lunch or two a few years ago, it was all a little hazy.

A last look in the mirror; he ran his fingers through his hair, splashed water on his face, that was the best he could do. Glancing at his watch he hurried out of the bathroom and down the stairs.

Outside, the sun was just fighting its way out of the clouds. Omen? An exquisite Horch 853 swept to the curb, Altmann waved from behind the wheel. Casson wasn’t impressed by cars, but still . . . Silvery-green coachmaker’s body, graceful lines, spare tire—silvery-green metal center—snugged into the curve of the running board just forward of the driver’s door. Casson slid into the leather seat, they shook hands, said hello.

They sped up the rue Marbeuf, then out onto the Champs-Elysées. The Horch had twelve cylinders, five forward gears, and the voice of a sports car, muttering with suspended power every time the clutch was depressed. “We’ll go eat somewhere in the country,” Altmann said. “Some days I just can’t stand the city, even Paris.”

Out through Neuilly in light traffic; a few military vehicles, a few bicycles, the occasional horse and cart. Next came Courbevoie; empty, winding streets. Then left, following the Seine: Malmaison, Bougival, Louveciennes. The little restaurants facing the water had been for painters and dancers, once upon a time, but the money had always followed the kings, west from Paris and along the river, and eventually the cooks followed the money—the lobsters came and the artists went.

“So,” Altmann said, “are you doing anything special?”

“Not much. You’re still with Continental?”

“Oh yes. Just the same as always. Everything changes, you know, except that it all stays the same.”

Casson laughed. Altmann took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, shook it adeptly so that several popped up, and held it across the seat. Casson took one, Altmann lit it, then his own, with a polished lighter.

“We’re bigger now,” Altmann continued. “There’s that difference. A good deal bigger, in fact.” A town fell away and they were in the countryside. Corot, Pissarro, they’d all painted up here. Autumn valleys, soft light, white clouds that rolled down from Normandy and lit up the sky. The most beautiful place on earth, perhaps. It struck Casson in the heart, as it always did, and he opened the window to get the glass out of his way. The car drifted to a stop as Altmann prepared to turn. There were yellow leaves on the road, little swirls of them when the wind blew, Casson could hear them scratching along over the rumble of the engine.

They turned right, came back out on the river and headed west. Altmann drew on his cigarette, the exhaled smoke punctuated his words as he talked.

“I hope you’re not waiting for me to discuss politics, Casson, because frankly it’s all gotten beyond me.” There was a man carrying a basket on a wooden footbridge that crossed the river. He turned to look at the glorious car, shifting the weight of the basket on his shoulder. “The things I’ve seen,” Altmann continued, “in Germany and France, the last five years, I really don’t know what to say about it.” He paused, then said, “It didn’t even occur to me that my phone call might offend you—but it does now, and if you like I’ll turn around and take you back to Paris. It’s just that I came back from Berlin and thanked God that Paris was as it always was, that nothing was burned or blown up, that I was going to be able to live here, on some kind of terms anyhow, and to make films. The truth is, you and I are lucky—we can simply get out of the world’s way while it destroys itself, we don’t have to be crushed by it. Or, maybe, I should turn around. It’s up to you, I’ll understand one way or the other.”

“It’s too nice a day to go back to the city,” Casson said.

“There’s bad blood between our countries, it’s no good, but it doesn’t have to be between us, does it?”

“No, no, not at all.”

Altmann nodded, relieved. On the left a cluster of houses, almost a village. Just on the other side, where the fields began, a restaurant, Le Relais. “Why not?” Altmann said. The tires crunched over the gravel by the entry as the Horch rolled to a stop.

Inside it was quiet and it smelled good. A few local people were having lunch, they glanced up as Casson and Altmann came in, then looked away. The patron seated them in the bay by the front window, looking out over the flowers in the windowbox. Casson studied the handwritten menu, but there wasn’t much choice—basically the plat they’d cooked that day and a few substitutes, like an omelet that the kitchen could produce if you just had to have something else. So they ordered what there was—Altmann had a fistful of ration coupons—a platter of warm langouste, crayfish, not long out of the river, followed by an andouille, the Norman sausage the butchers made from the very bottom of the tub of leftovers, cooked in cider vinegar. All of it so good, in an off-hand way, that it made Casson lightheaded. For wine, what Le Relais offered was the color of raspberry jam, dry as a bone and sharp as a tack, in liter bottles without label or cork; and when the first was gone a second appeared. All this accompanied by small talk— business was never discussed with food—until the coffee arrived. Then Altmann said “Let me lay the situation out for you as it stands today.”

“Good,” Casson said, taking yet another of Altmann’s cigarettes.

“The major difference is, they’re going to set up a committee called a Filmprüfstelle, Film Control Board, that will answer to Goebbels’s people in the Propagandastaffel up in the Hotel Majestic. Now UFA-CONTINENTAL is going to have to deal with them, I would not try to tell you otherwise, and they are who they are, enough said. On the other hand, they have to deal with Continental, and it’s not at all clear who’s the bigger dog in this yard. Our capitalization has increased to ten million reichsmarks—two hundred million francs. With the cost of making a film in France averaging out to about three and a half million francs, you can see what’s going to happen. Certainly there will be quite a lot of waltzing—powdered boobs in ball gowns and all the rest of it, there’s always that, but they can’t have ten million reichsmarks’ worth even if that’s what they think they want. We’ve acquired thirty-nine movie theatres, and we have the laboratories and the processing—once you get to that stage there must be more than Old Vienna, and that’s going to come from independent producers and directors. Do you see?”

Casson nodded. He saw. The thirty-nine theatres came in large part from the confiscation of property belonging to Siritsky and Haik, Jewish film exhibitors.

“So when I say,” Altmann continued, “that the Nazis have to deal with Continental, I mean it. It’s felt in Berlin that if French culture is destroyed then we’ve failed to resolve the difficulties between us. This is not Poland, this is one of the greatest cultures the world has ever produced—Hitler himself dares not claim otherwise.” He drank a sip of coffee, then another.

“Now look,” he said, voice lower. “We’re not sure ourselves exactly what they’re going to let us do. Obviously a celebration of the French victory in 1918 won’t work at the Control Board, but a hymn to Teutonic motherhood won’t work at Continental. Between those extremes, if you and I are going to work together, is where we’ll work.”

“I won’t make Nazi propaganda,” Casson said.

“Don’t. See if I care.” Altmann shrugged. “Casson, you couldn’t if you wanted to, all right? Only a certain breed of swine can do that— German swine or French swine. Perhaps you know that a German film, The Jew Süss, has broken box-office records for the year in Lyons, Toulouse, and, of course, Vichy.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s true. But, thank God, Paris isn’t Lyons or Toulouse.”

“No.”

“Well?”

“It’s a lot to think about,” Casson said.

“You know Leveque?”

“Of course. The Emissary.”

“Raoul Mies?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve both signed to do projects—no details, but we’re working on it.”

Casson looked out the window. The Seine was high in its banks, as it always was in autumn, and gray. It was going to rain, the weeds on the river bank bent over in the wind. Life goes on, he thought. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

“Good,” Altmann said. “An honest answer.” He leaned closer to Casson. “I have to get up every morning and go to an office, like everybody else. And I don’t want to work with every greasy little pimp who wants to be in movies. I want my day to be as good as it can—but I’m flesh and blood, Casson, just like you, and I’ll do what I have to do. Just like you.”

Casson nodded. Now they’d both been honest. Altmann started to pour the last of the wine, then put the bottle down and signaled the patron. “What do you have for us—something good.”

The patron thought a moment. “Cognac de Champagne?”

“Yes,” Altmann said. “Two, then two more.” He turned back to Casson. “They’ll pay,” he said. “Believe me they will.”

Casson wasn’t sure what he meant. Expensive Cognac? Expensive film? Both, very likely, he thought.

This one cried. Nothing dramatic, shining eyes and “Perhaps you have a handkerchief.” He got her one, she leaned on an elbow and dabbed at her face. “Bon Dieu,” she said, more or less to herself.

He reached down and pulled the sheet and blanket up over them, it was cold in November with no heat. “You’re all right?”

“Oh yes.”

He rolled a cigarette from a tin where he kept loose tobacco and burnt shreds. They shared it, the red tip glowing in the darkness.

“Why did you cry?”

“I don’t know. Stupid things. For a moment it was a long time ago, then it wasn’t.”

“Not a girl anymore?”

She laughed. “And worse.”

“You are lovely, of course.”

“La-la-la.”

“It’s true.”

“It was. Maybe ten years ago. Now, well, the old saying goes ‘nothing’s where it used to be.’ ”

From Casson, a certain kind of laugh.

After a moment, she joined in. “Well, not that.”

“You’re married?”

“Oh yes.”

“In love?”

“Now and then.”

“Two kids?”

“Three.”

They were quiet for a moment, a siren went by somewhere in the neighborhood. They waited to make sure it kept going.

“In the café,” she said, “what did you see?”

“In you?”

“Yes.”

“Truth?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I was, attracted.”

“To what?”

“To what. Something, maybe it doesn’t have a name. You know what goes on with you—deep eyes, and the nice legs. Right? Try to say more than that and you’re chasing desire, and you won’t catch it. ‘Oh, for me it’s a big this and a little that, this high and that low, firm, soft, hello, good-bye.’ All true, only next week you see somebody you have to have and none of it is.”

“That’s what attracted you?”

Casson laughed, his face warm. “You came in to buy cigarettes, you glanced at me. Then you decided to have a coffee. You crossed your legs a certain way. I thought, I’ll ask her to have a coffee with me.”

She didn’t answer. Put the bottom of her foot on top of his.

“You like this, don’t you?” he said softly.

“Yes,” she sighed, bittersweet, “I do like it. I like it more than anything else in the world—I think about it all day long.”

That fall the city seemed to right itself. Casson could feel it in the air, as though they had all looked in the mirror and told themselves: you have to go on with your life now. The song on the radio was from Johnny Hess. “Ça revient,” he sang—it’s all coming back. “La vie recommence, et l’espoir commence à renaître.” Life starts again, and hope begins to be reborn.

Well, maybe that was true. Maybe that had better be true. Casson went to lunch with an editor from Gallimard, they had a big list that fall, people couldn’t get enough to read. One way to escape, though not the only one. There were long lines at the theatres—for We Are Not Married at the Ambassadeurs, or the Grand Revue at the Folies-Bergère. The Comédie-Française was full every night, there was racing at Auteuil, gambling at the Casino de Paris, Mozart at Concert Mayol. The Damnation of Faust at the Opéra, Carmen at the Opéra-Comique.

“What are you looking for?” the Gallimard editor asked. “Anything in particular?”

Casson talked about Night Run and No Way Out. What the rules were when the hero was a gangster. The editor nodded and said “Mm,” around the stem of his pipe. Then his eyes lit up and he said, “Isn’t it you who made Last Train to Athens?”

That he loved. Well, Casson thought, at least something. “Come to think of it,” the editor said, polishing his glasses with the Deux Magots’ linen napkin, “we may have just the right thing for you. Publication not scheduled until winter ’42, but you certainly understand that that isn’t far off.”

“Too well.”

“The Stranger, it’s called.”

Casson nodded appreciatively. No problem putting that on a marquee.

“By a writer named Albert Camus, from Algiers. Do you know him?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

The editor talked about the plot and the setting, then went on to other things. Casson wrote the title on a scrap of paper. It wasn’t what he’d made, more like what he’d always wanted to make, maybe would have made if the human-predicament stuff hadn’t been thrown overboard during the hunt for money.

“Now I don’t know if this is for you,” the editor said, “but there’s a writer named Simone de Beauvoir—she has the cultural program on Radio Nationale—and she’s working on a novel . . .”

Now he had the scent. The next day he spent at the Synops office, where synopses of ideas for films—from novels, short stories, treatments—were kept on file. It was busy; he saw Berthot, hunting eagerly through a stack of folders. “How’s the wedding business?” he asked. Berthot looked sheepish. “I’m out of it,” he said quietly. “For the moment.” What the hell, Casson thought. Was he the last one to catch on? The war was over, it was time to go back to business.

“Hello, Casson!” Now there was a voice that caught your attention—foreign, and, by way of compensation, much too hearty. Casson looked up to see Erno Simic, the Hungarian. Or, if you liked your gossip, the “Hungarian.” A tall man, slightly stooped, a head too large for a pair of narrow shoulders, hooded eyes, a smile, meant to be ingratiating, that wasn’t. A French citizen of complex Balkan origins— no matter how many times he told you the story you could never keep it straight. Simic ran a small distribution company called Agna Film, which operated in Hungary and Romania.

“Simic,” he said. “All going well?”

“Today it is. Tell me please, Jean-Claude, we can eat together sometime soon?”

“Of course. Call me at the office?”

“I will, naturally. There is a Greek place, in the Tenth . . .”

Better every day, his world coming back to life.

Cold at night. None of that your side/my side diplomacy in the bed. Maybe he didn’t know her name and maybe the name she told him was a lie and maybe he did the same thing, but three in the morning found them curled and twisted and twined together in the chill air, hugging like long-lost lovers, riding each other’s bottoms through the night, arms wrapped around, hanging on to anything they could get hold of.

Cold at night, and cold in the daytime. They had everything rationed now—coal and bread and wine and cigarettes. Only work kept him from thinking about it. Somewhere out in the lawless borderlands of the 19th Arrondissement he found Fischfang, as always at the center of incredibly complicated domestic arrangements. There were children, there were wives, there were apartments—mistresses, comrades, fugitives. Fischfang was never in one place for very long. Late one afternoon he sat with Casson in a tiny kitchen where a young woman was boiling diapers in a kettle. The coal stove smoked, mildew blackened the walls.

Casson explained that he was back in business, that he was looking for a project, and how the rules had changed.

Fischfang nodded. “Not too much reality—is that it?”

“Yes. That’s how it has to be.”

Fischfang stared out the window, the sky gray with winter coming. “Then what you might be able to do,” he said, “is a Summer Night movie. You know what I mean—the perfect night of summer in the full moon. A certain group of people have gathered in a castle, a country house, a liner on the high seas. A night of love, the night of love. Just once, dreams come true. By the end, one couple has parted, but we see that, ah, Paul has always loved Marie, no matter how life has tried to drive them apart. The crickets chirp, the moon rises, the music of the night is sublime. Hurry—life will soon be over, time is short, we have only this night, we must live out our loveliest dream, and it’s only a few hours until dawn.”

He wound down. They were both silent. At last Fischfang cleared his throat, lit a cigarette. “Something like that,” he said. “It might work.”

On the way back to his office, Casson saw a girl, maybe sixteen or so, wearing a school uniform, arms wrapped around her books. It was dusk. She looked directly into his eyes, an intimate look, as they moved toward each other on the crowded boulevard. “Monsieur,” she said. Her voice was urgent, emotional.

He stopped. Yes? What? The usual Jean-Claude, the usual half-smile, whatever you want, I’m here. She thrust a folded paper into his hand, then was off down the street, disappearing into the shadows. He stepped into a doorway, unfolded the paper. It was a broadsheet, a one-page newspaper. Résistance, it was called. WE MUST FIGHT BACK, the headline said.

On 17 December, Jean Casson signed with Continental.