The World at Night

THE NIGHT VISITOR

24 April, 1941.

4:20 A.M., the wind sighing across the fields, the river white where it shoaled over the gravel islands. Jean Casson lay on his stomach at the top of a low hill, wrapped up in overcoat and muffler, dark hat worn at an angle, a small valise by his side. The damp from the wet earth chilled him to the bone but there was nothing he could do about it. At the foot of the hill, standing at the edge of the river, two border guards, the last of the waning moonlight a pale glow on their helmets, rifles slung over their shoulders. They were sharing a cigarette and talking in low voices, the rough German sounds, the sch and kuh, drifting up the hillside.

The boy lying next to him, called André, was fifteen, and it was his job to guide Casson across a branch of the river Allier into the Zone Non-Occupée. André stared intensely, angrily, at the sales Boches below him. These were his hills, this was his stream, these teenagers below him—nineteen or so—were intruders, and he would, in time, settle with them. By his side, his brown-and-white Tervueren shepherd waited patiently—Tempête he called her, Storm—her breath steaming as she panted in the icy morning air.

These were in fact his hills—or would be. They belonged to his family, the de Malincourts, resident since the fifteenth century in a rundown chateau just outside the village of Lancy. He raised his hand a few inches, a signal to Casson: be patient, I know these two, they chatter like market ladies but they will, eventually, resume their rounds. Casson gritted his teeth as the wet grass crushed beneath him slowly soaked his clothing. Had they left the chateau as planned, at two in the morning, this would not have happened.

But it was the same old story. He was scheduled to go across with another man, a cattle-dealer from Nevers who couldn’t or wouldn’t get a permit to enter the Vichy zone. The cattle-dealer arrived forty minutes late, carrying a bottle of cognac that he insisted on opening and sharing with various de Malincourts who had chosen to remain awake in honor of the evening crossing—the father, an aunt, a cousin and the local doctor, if Casson remembered correctly. Everybody had some cognac, the fire burned low, then, at 3:20, a telephone call. It was the cattle-dealer’s wife, he’d received a message at his house in Nevers and he didn’t have to go across the line after all. That left Casson and André to make the crossing later than they should have, almost dawn, and that invited tragedy.

The sentries had themselves a final laugh, then parted, heading east and west along the stream. The dog made a faint sound, deep in her throat—sentries leaving. No, Casson told himself, it wasn’t possible. But then, he thought, dogs understand war, its memory lived in them, and this one’s traditional business was herding stock to safety. A small cold wind, just enough to lift the soft hair on the dog’s neck, made Casson shiver. He’d been offered an oilskin, hanging amid shotguns and fishing baskets and rubber boots in the gunroom of the chateau, but he had declined. Well, next time he’d know better.

André, in short pants and sweater, seemed not to notice. “Please, sir,” he whispered, “we will go down the hill now. We will stay low to the ground, and we will run. Now I count one, and two, and three.”

He rose and scrambled down the hill in the classic infantry crouch, the Tervueren in a fast trot just behind his left heel—dogs were always trained left, thus the right side, the gun side, remained unhampered. Casson did the best he could, shocked at how stiff he’d gotten just lying on the damp earth for thirty minutes.

At the foot of the hill, André took his shoes off, tied them at the laces, hung them around his neck, then stuffed his socks in his pockets. Casson followed his example, turning up his trouser cuffs as far as the knee. André stepped into the stream, Casson was right behind him. The water was so close to ice that it was barely liquid. “My God,” he said. André shushed him. Casson couldn’t move, the water washed over his shins. André grabbed his elbow with a bony hand and shoved him forward. The dog turned to make sure of him, soft eyes anxious—did this recalcitrant beast require a nip to get it moving? No, there it went, swearing beneath its breath with every step. Relieved, the Tervueren followed, close by André. For Casson, the sharp gravel of the midstream island was a relief for a few yards, then the water was even deeper and the dog had to swim, her brown ruff floating on the surface. At last, the far bank. The Tervueren shook off a great cloud of icy spray—just in case some part of Casson’s clothing had accidentally remained dry. “Ah, Tempête,” André said in mock disappointment, and the dog smiled at the compliment.

André sat in the grass to put his shoes and socks back on, Casson did the same. Then they ran up the side of a low hill until they reached a grove of poplar trees on the skyline. André stopped to catch his breath. “Ça va, monsieur?”

“Ça va, André.”

He was a wiry kid with black hair that fell over his forehead, the latest in a long line of pages and squires that had been going off on one mission or another since the crusades. This was, after all, not really knight’s business, conduction of a fugitive. The knight, red-faced, ham-fisted de Malincourt, was back at the chateau, where he’d settled in to wait for his son with a night-long discussion on the advantages of Charolais over Limousin steers, the price of rye seed, and the national disposition of Americans, who would, he thought, take their time before they got around to deciding they needed to come back over the sea and kill some more Germans.

Casson stayed quiet for a moment, hands on knees. Then a whip cracked the air in the poplar grove. Instinctively, André and Casson flinched. Then two more cracks, close together, this time a spring twig clipped from a branch. The dog—fear had been bred out of her many generations earlier—gave them an inquiring look: Is this something you’d like me to see about? André raised the bottom of his sweater, revealing the cross-hatched wooden grip of a huge, ancient revolver, but it was Casson’s turn to take somebody by the elbow and before this particular war could get fairly underway they were galloping down the reverse slope of the hillside. They took cover for a moment, then headed south, toward a little road that would, eventually, take Casson to Lyons. At the next hilltop there was a view back to the river, a dull silver in the first light of dawn, and very beautiful.

He had a fantasy about how it would be in Lyons—the lover as night visitor. Long ago, when he’d been sixteen and in his next-to-last year at lycée, he’d had his first real love affair. In a world run by parents and teachers and maids it wasn’t easy to find privacy, but the girl, Jeanette—eyes and hair a caramel shade of gold, dusting of pale freckles across the bridge of the nose—was patient and cunning and one day saw an opportunity for them to be alone. It could happen, thanks to a complicated fugue of family arrangements, very early one Sunday morning at the apartment of her grandmère in the 7th Arrondissement. Casson found the door open at dawn, went to a room where a slim shape lay buried beneath heavy comforters. Perhaps asleep, or just pretending—on this point he’d never been certain. He undressed quietly, stealthily, and slid in next to her. Then, just at that moment, she woke up, her smooth body warm and naked next to his, and breathed “mon amour” as she took him in her arms.

So he calculated his arrival at the Hotel du Parc for just after midnight. But no sleeping maiden awaited his caress. The hotel, high on the bank of the promontory formed by the Saône and the Rhône, was a Victorian horror of chocolate-colored brick, turrets and gables, off by itself in a small park behind a fence of rusted iron palings, with a view over a dark bridge and a dark church. Brooding, somber, just the place for consumptive poets or retired generals. Just the place for the night visitor.

However.

When Casson climbed the stone stairway that went from the street to the little park, he discovered every light in the hotel ablaze and the evening air heavy with the scent of roasting chickens. A trio—bass, drums, accordion—was pounding away at the Latin rhythm of the dance called the Java. There were shouts of encouragement, and shrieks of laughter—in short, the noisy symphony that can be performed only on the instrument of a hundred drunken wedding guests.

In the middle of it, Sleeping Beauty. She was barefoot, wearing a sash improvised from a tablecloth and shaking a tambourine liberated from the drum kit. She also had—a moment before he could believe his eyes—a rose clenched firmly between her teeth. “Hey!” she cried out. “Hey, hey!” She was leading a long line of dancers, first the groom— in his late thirties with a daring set of muttonchop whiskers, next his bride—some few years older, black hair pinned up, a dark mole on her cheek, bright red mouth, and eyes like burning coals.

The line—little kids and grandparents, friends of the groom, the bride’s sisters, assorted hotel guests, at least one waiter—snaked from the dining room through the lobby, around an island of maroon velvet sofas, past the desk and the night manager wearing a wizard hat with a rubber band under his chin, and back to the dining room, hung with yards of pink crepe paper. Casson stood by the door, taking it all in. A fireman performed on the French horn. A man beckoned a woman to sit on his lap and they roared with pleasure as the spindly chair collapsed beneath them. Four feet protruded from the drape of a tablecloth, the people under the table either dead asleep or locked in some static, perhaps oriental, version of coition—it would have been hard to say and nobody cared.

The line reappeared in the lobby, Citrine in the lead, cheeks flushed, long hair flying, a particular expression on her face as she capered— the “savage dancer” of every Gypsy movie MGM had ever made. Then she saw him—“Jean-Claude!”—and ran to hug him. Her small breasts were squashed against his chest, she smelled like wine and chicken and perfume. She pulled back a little, her eyes shone, she was drunk and happy and in love.

Much later, they went up the stairs to her room on the top floor. Very slowly, they went up. On a table in the dining room he had discovered a bowl of red-wine punch, a single lemon slice floating on top, a glass ladle hung on the rim. Therefore, one took this step, then this. Many of these old hotels had been built with a tilting device that operated after midnight, so one had to go upstairs very, very deliberately. It helped to laugh.

The room was small, but very safe—the door secured by what appeared to be a simple lock that took a primitive iron key. But this turned out to be a deeply complicated system, to be used only by cellists or magicians—people with clever fingers. Probably Casson and Citrine could have opened the door themselves, at some future date, but a Good Samaritan happened to walk down the hall in a bathrobe and insisted on coming to their aid.

A small room, dark patterns on the wallpaper and the rug and the bedspread and the chair. Cold; rain a steady patter on the roof, and damp. Casson managed to get his tie off—over his head—threw his shirt and pants at a chair, turned to find Citrine looking sultry, wearing one stocking and an earring. They met somewhere on the bed; stupid, clumsy and hot, bawdy and shameless and prone to laugh. So drunk they weren’t very good at anything, hands and mouths working away, too dizzy with getting what they wanted to be graceful or adept. But, maybe better that way: nothing went right, nothing went wrong, and they were too excited to care.

It was like being a kid again, he wanted her too much to be seductive. Her fault, he thought—the way she was, so many shadows and creases, angles and dark alleys; inside, outside, in between. She crawled around, as hot as he was, knees spread or one foot pointing at the ceiling. They didn’t stay in one place very long, would find some position that made them breathe hard and fast but then, something else, something even better.

On and on it went. He didn’t dare to finish, just fell back now and then to a condition of lazy heat. Not her; from time to time she gasped, shuddered, would stop for a moment and hang on to to him. Just the way, he thought, women were. They could do that. So, she came for both of them. Until, very late at night, she insisted—whispering to him, coaxing—and then he saw stars.

Of course he forgot to give her the letter. Nearly dawn when he remembered; watching her while she slept, in the gray light he could see the color of her hair and her skin, rested a hand on her hip, she woke up and they smoked a cigarette. Out the window, the Lyonnais moon a white quarter-slice from a children’s book—it looked like a cat ought to be sitting on it. He rolled off the bed, dug around in his valise, gave her the letter and lit a candle so she could read it. She kissed him, touched his face, and yawned. Well, he thought, when you’ve been fucking all night it’s not really the best time for a love letter.

Five days, they had.

After that there would be too much moonlight for crossing the line back into occupied France. They walked by the gray river, swollen in the spring flood. Late in the afternoon they had a fire in the little fireplace in Citrine’s room and drank wine and made love. At night she had to go to the theatre. Casson came along, sat in the wings on a folding chair. He liked backstage life, the dusty flats, paint smells, stagehands intent on their business—plays weren’t about life, plays were about curtains going up and down—actresses in their underwear, the director making everybody nervous. Casson enjoyed being the outsider.

It was a romantic comedy, a small sweet French thing. The cousin from the country, the case of mistaken identity, the secret message sent to the wrong person, well, actually the right person but not until the third act. Citrine played the ingenue’s best friend. The ingenue wasn’t bad, a local girl with carefully done-up hair and a rich father and good diction. But, next to Citrine, very plain. That didn’t matter so much— it only made the boyfriend come off a little more of an idiot than the playwright really intended.

The audience was happy enough. Despite rationing they’d eaten fairly well, a version of traditional Lyonnais cooking, rich and heavy, not unlike the audience. They settled comfortably into the seats of the little theatre and dozed like contented angels through the boring parts.

Five days.

Dark, cool, spring days, sometimes it rained—it was always just about to. The skies stayed heavy; big, slow clouds moving south. Casson and Citrine sat on a bench by the river. “I could come to Paris,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “But the life I live now is going bad.”

She didn’t understand.

“My phone’s no good. I’m followed, sometimes.”

“If the Germans are after you, you better go.”

He shrugged. “I know,” he said. “But I had to come here.”

They stared at the river, a long row of barges moving south, the beat of the tugboat’s engine reaching them over the water. Going to places far away.

She recited in terrible English: “The owl and the pussycat, it went to the sea, in the beautiful pea-green boat.”

He laughed, rested the tips of two fingers against her lips.

The tugboat sounded its horn, it echoed off the hillsides above the river, a fisherman in a rowboat struggled against the current to get out of the way.

Citrine looked at her watch and sighed. “We better go back,” she said.

They walked along the quay, people looked at them—at her. Almond eyes, wide, wide mouth, olive-brown hair with gold tints, worn loose, falling over her shoulders. Long brown leather coat with a belt tied at the waist, cream-colored scarf, brown beret. Casson had his hands shoved deep in the pockets of a black overcoat, no tie, no hat, hair ruffled by the wind. He seemed, as always, a little beat-up by life—knowing eyes, half-smile that said it didn’t matter what you knew.

They walked like lovers, shoulders touching, talking only now and then. Sometimes she put her hand in the pocket of his coat. They wore their collars up, looked theatrical, sure of themselves. Some people didn’t care for that, glanced at them a certain way as they passed by.

They turned into a narrow street that wound up the hill toward the hotel. Casson put his arm around her waist, she leaned against him as they walked. They stopped to look in the window of a boulangerie. Between the panniers of baguettes were a few red jam tarts in flaky crust. He went in and bought two of them, in squares of stiff bakery paper, and they ate them as they climbed the hill.

“How did you find the passeur?” she asked. It meant someone who helped you cross borders.

“Like anything else,” he said. “Like looking for a travel agent or a doctor, you ask friends.”

“Did it take a long time?”

She had crumbs in her hair, he brushed them out. “Yes,” he said. “I was surprised. But then, it turned out my sister-in-law knew somebody. Who knew somebody.”

“Perhaps it’s dangerous now, to ask friends.”

“Yes, it could be,” he said. “But you do what you have to.”

Their last night together he couldn’t sleep.

He lay in the darkness and listened to her breathing. The hotel was quiet, sometimes a cough, now and then footsteps in the hall as somebody walked past their door. Sometimes he could hear a small bird in the park below the window. He smoked a cigarette, went from one part of his life to another, none of it worked, all of it scared him. Careful not to wake her, he got out of bed, went to the window, and stared out into the night. The city was silent and empty, lost in the stars.

He wanted to get dressed and go out, go for a long walk until he got tired. But it wasn’t wise to do that any more, the police would demand to see your papers, would ask too many questions. When he got tired of standing, he sat in a big chair. It was three in the morning before he slid back under the covers. Citrine woke up, made a little noise of surprise, then flowed across the bed and pressed tight against him. At last, he thought, the night visitor.

“I don’t want you to go away,” she said by his ear.

He smoothed her hair. “I have to,” he said.

“Because, if you do, I will never see you again.”

“No. It isn’t true.”

“Yes it is. I knew this would happen. Years ago. Like a fortune-teller knows things—in dreams.”

After a time he said, “Citrine, please.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She took his hand and put it between her legs. “Until we go to sleep,” she said.

29 April, 1941.

She insisted on going to the train with him. A small station to the north of Lyons, they took a cab there. He had to ride local trains all day, to Chassieu and Loyettes and Pont-de-Chéruy, old Roman villages along the Rhône. Then, at dusk, he would join the secret route that ran to a village near the river Allier, where one of the de Malincourts would meet him.

The small engine and four coaches waited on the track. “You have your sandwiches?” she said.

“Yes.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s going to be late.”

“I think it’s usual,” he said.

Passengers waited for the doors to open. Country people—seamed faces, weatherbeaten, closed. The men wore old mufflers stuffed down the fronts of buttoned suit jackets, baggy pants, scuffed boots. The women wore shawls over their heads, carried baskets covered with cloths. Casson stood out—he didn’t belong here, and he wasn’t the only one. He could pick out three others, two men and a woman. They didn’t live in Chassieu either. Taking the little trains was a good idea— until four or five of you tried it at the same time. Well, too bad, he thought, there’s nothing to be done about it now.

“What if you came down here,” she said quietly.

“To live, you mean.”

“Yes.”

He paused a moment. “It isn’t easy,” he said. Clearly he had worked on the idea.

“Maybe you don’t want to,” she said.

“No. I’m going to try.”

She took his arm, there was not much they could say, now. The engine vented steam, a door opened in one of the coaches and a conductor tossed his cigarette away and stationed himself at the bottom of the steps. The people on the platform began to board the train.

“Remember what we talked about last night,” he said, leaning close so she could hear him. “If you have to move, a postcard to Langlade’s office.”

She nodded.

“You’re not to call me, Citrine.”

The conductor climbed to the bottom step and shouted “All aboard for Chassieu.”

He took her in his arms and she held on to him, her head on his chest. “How long?” she said.

“I don’t know. As soon as I can manage it.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said.

He kissed her hair. The conductor leaned out of the coach and raised a little red flag that the engineer could see. “All aboard,” he said.

“I love you,” Casson said. “Remember.”

He started to work himself free of her arms, then she let him go. He ran for the train, climbed aboard, looked out the cloudy window. He could see she was searching for him. He rapped on the glass. Then she saw him. She wasn’t crying, her hands were deep in her pockets. She nodded at him, smiled a certain way—I meant everything I said, everything I did. Then she waved. He waved back. A man in a raincoat standing nearby lowered his newspaper to look at her. The train started to pull out, moving very slowly. She couldn’t see the man, he was behind her. She waved again, walked a few paces along with the train. Her face was radiant, strong, she wanted him to know he did not have to worry about her, together they would do what had to be done. The man behind Citrine looked toward the end of the station, Casson followed his eyes and saw another man, with slicked-down hair, who took a pipe out of his mouth, then put it back in.

All day long he rode slow trains that rattled through the countryside and stopped at little stations. Sometimes it rained, droplets running sideways across the window, sometimes a shaft of sunlight broke through a cloud and lit up a hillside, sometimes the cloud blew away and he could see the hard blue spring sky. In the fields the April plowing was over, crumbled black earth ran to the trees in the border groves, oaks and elms, with early leaves that trembled in the wind.

Casson stood in the alcove at the end of the car, staring out the open door, hypnotized by the rhythm of the wheels over the rail points. His mind was already back in Paris, holding imaginary conversations with Hugo Altmann, trying to win him over to some version of René Guillot’s strategy. The objective: move Hotel Dorado to the unoccupied zone, under the auspices of the committee in Vichy rather than the German film board. It would have to be done officially, it would take Guske, or somebody like him, to stamp the papers. But, with Altmann’s help, it might be possible.

On the other hand, Altmann liked the film, really liked it, probably he’d want to keep it in Paris. Was there a way to ruin it for him? Not completely—could they just knock off a corner, maybe, so it wasn’t quite so appealing? No, they’d never get away with it. Then too, what about Fischfang? As a Jew, nobody was going to give him the papers to do anything. But that, at least, could be overcome—he’d have to enter the Zone Non-Occupée, the ZNO, just as Casson had, then slip into a false identity, down in Marseilles perhaps.

No, that wouldn’t work. Fischfang couldn’t just abandon his assorted women and children to the mercies of the Paris Gestapo, they’d have to come along. But not across the river, it probably couldn’t be done that way. New papers. That might work—start the false identity on the German side of the line. How to manage that? Not so difficult— Fischfang was a communist, he must be in contact with Comintern operatives, people experienced in clandestine operations—forging identity papers an everyday affair for them.

Or, the hell with Hotel Dorado. He’d let Altmann have it, in effect would trade it for Citrine. Of course he’d have to find some way to live, to earn a living in the ZNO, but that wouldn’t be impossible. He could, could, do any number of things.

The train slowed, a long curve in the track, then clattered over a road crossing. An old farmer waited on a horse cart, the reins held loosely in his hand, watching the train go past. The tiny road wound off behind him, to nowhere, losing itself in the woods and fields. In some part of Casson’s mind the French countryside went on forever, from little village to little village, as long as you stayed on the train.

Back in Paris, he telephoned Altmann.

“Casson! Where the hell have you been? Everybody’s been looking for you.”

“I just went off to the seashore, to Normandy, for a couple of days.”

“Your secretary didn’t know where you were.”

“That’s impossible! I told her—if Altmann calls, give him the number of my hotel.”

“Well, she didn’t.”

“Hugo, I’m sorry, you’ll have to forgive me. You know what it’s like, these days—she does the best she can.”

“Well . . .”

“Anyhow, here I am.”

“Casson, there are people who want to meet you. Important people.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I have organized a dinner for us. Friday night.”

“All right.”

“Do you know the Brasserie Heininger?”

“In the Seventh?”

“Yes.”

“I know it.”

“Eight-thirty, then. Casson?”

“Yes?”

“Important people.”

“I understand. That’s this Friday, the fourth of May.”

“Yes. Any problem, let me know immediately.”

“I’ll be there,” Casson said.

He hung up, wrote down the time and place in his appointment book.

The Brasserie Heininger—of all places! What had gotten into Altmann? He knew better than that. The Heininger was a garish nightmare of gold mirrors and red plush—packed with Americans and nouveaux riches of every description before the war, now much frequented by German officers and their French “friends.” Long ago, when he was twelve, his aunt—his father’s charmingly demented sister—would take him to the Heininger, confiding in a whisper that one came “only for the crème anglaise, my precious, please remember that.” Then, in the late thirties, there’d been some sort of wretched murder there, a Balkan folly that spread itself across the newspapers for a day or two. His one visit in adult life had been a disaster—a dinner for an RKO executive, his wife, her mother, and Marie-Claire. A platter of Heininger’s best oysters, the evil Belons, had proved too much for the Americans, and it was downhill from there.

Well, he supposed it didn’t matter. Likely it was the “important people” who had chosen the restaurant. Whoever they were. Altmann hadn’t been his usual self on the telephone. Upset about Casson’s absence—and something else. Casson drummed his fingers on the desk, stared out the window at the rue Marbeuf. What?

Frightened, he thought.

A bad week.

Spring in the river valleys—tumbled skies and painters’ clouds— seemed like a dream to him now. In Paris, the grisaille, gray light, had descended over the city and it was dusk from morning till night.

He went out to the Montrouge district, beyond the porte de Châtillon and the old cemetery, to the little factory streets around the rue Gabriel, where Bernard Langlade had the workshop that made lightbulbs. The nineteenth century; tiny cobbled streets shadowed by brick factory walls, huge rusted stacks with towers of brown smoke curling slowly into a dead sky.

He trudged past foundries that seemed to go on for miles; the thudding of machines that hammered metal—he could feel each stroke in his heart—the smell, no, he thought, the taste, of nitric acid on brass, showers of orange sparks seen through wire mesh, a man with a mask of soot around his eyes, hauling on a long wrench, sensing Casson’s stare and giving it back to him. Casson looked away. His films had danced on the edges of this world but it was a real place and nobody made movies about these lives.

He got lost in a maze of smoked brick and burnt iron and asked directions of two workmen who answered in a Slavic language he couldn’t understand. He walked for a long time, more than an hour, where oil slicks floated on a canal, then, at last, a narrow opening in a stone wall and a small street sign, raised letters chiseled into the wall in the old Paris style, IMPASSE SAVIER. At the end of the alley, a green metal door—Compagnie Luminex.

Inside it was a beehive, workers sitting at long assembly tables, the line served by a young boy in a cap who, using every ounce of his weight, threw himself against the handle of an industrial cart piled high with metal fittings of various shapes and sizes. In one corner, a milling machine in operation, its motor whining from overuse. It was hot in the workroom—the roar of a kiln on the floor below explained why— and there were huge noisy blowers that vibrated in their mounts.

“Jean-Claude!”

It was Langlade, standing at the door of a factory office and beckoning to him. He wore a gray smock, which made him look like a workshop foreman. In the office, three women clerks, keeping books and typing letters. They were heavily built and dark, wearing old cardigan sweaters against the damp factory air, and had cigarettes burning in ashtrays made from clamshells. Langlade closed the half-glass door to the workshop floor, which reduced the flywheel and grinding noises to whispered versions of themselves. They shook hands, Langlade showed him into a small, private office and closed the door.

“Jean-Claude,” he said fondly, opening the bottom drawer of his desk, taking out a bottle of brandy. “I can only imagine what would get you all the way out here.” He gave Casson a conspiratorial smile— clearly an affair of the heart was to be discussed. “Business?” he said innocently.

“A little talk, Bernard.”

“Ahh, I thought—maybe you just happened to be in the neighborhood.” They both laughed at this. Langlade began working on the cork.

“Well, in fact I called your office, three or four times, and they told me, Monsieur is out at Montrouge, so I figured out this is where I’d have to come. But, Bernard, look at all this.”

Langlade smiled triumphantly, a man who particularly wanted to be admired by his friends. “What did you think?”

“Well, I didn’t know. What I imagined—three or four workmen, maybe. To me, a lightbulb. I never would have guessed it took so much to make a thing like that. But, really, Bernard, the sad fact is I’m an idiot.”

“No, Jean-Claude. You’re just like everybody else—me included. When Yvette’s Papa died, and she told me we had this odd little business, I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do about it. Sell it, I supposed. And we tried, but the country had nothing but labor trouble and inflation that year, and nobody in France would buy any kind of industrial anything. So, we ran it. We made Christmas-tree lights and we had small contracts with Citroën and Renault for the miniature bulbs that light up gas gauges and so forth on automobile dashboards. Actually, Jean-Claude, to make a lightbulb, you have to be able to do all sorts of things. It’s like a simple kitchen match, you never think about it but it takes a lot of different processes, all of them technical, to produce some stupid little nothing.” He grunted, twisted the cork, managed to get it free of the bottle.

“Bernard,” Casson said, gesturing toward the work area, “Christmas-tree lights? Joyeux Noël!”

Langlade laughed. He searched the bottom drawer, found two good crystal glasses. He held one up to the light and scowled. “Fussy?”

“No.”

“When I’m alone, I clean them with my tie.”

“Fine for me, Bernard.”

Langlade poured each of them a generous portion, swirled his glass and inhaled the fumes. Casson did the same. “Well, well,” he said.

Langlade shrugged, meaning, if you can afford it, why not? “When the Germans got here,” he said, “they began to make big orders, for trucks, and those armored whatnots they drive around in. We did that for five months, then they asked, could you buy some more elaborate equipment, possibly in Switzerland? Well, yes, we could. There wasn’t much point in saying no, the job would just go across the street to somebody else. So, we bought the new machinery, and began to make optical instruments. Like periscopes for submarines, and for field use also, a type of thing where a soldier in a trench can look out over the battlefield without getting his head blown off. We don’t make the really delicate stuff—binoculars, for instance. What we make has to accept hard use, and survive.”

“Is there that much of it?”

Langlade leaned over his desk. “Jean-Claude, I was like you. A civilian, what did I know. I went about my business, got into bed with a woman now and then, saw friends, made a little money, had a family. I never could have imagined the extent of anything like this. These people, army and navy, they think in thousands. As in, thousands and thousands.” Langlade gave him a certain very eloquent and Gallic look—it meant he was making money, and it meant he must never be asked how much, or anything like that, because he was making so much that to say it out loud would be to curse the enterprise—the jealous gods would overhear and throw down some bad-luck lightning bolts from the top of commercial Olympus. Where the tax people also kept an office.

Casson nodded that he understood, then smiled, honestly happy for a friend’s success.

“Now,” Langlade said, “what can I do for you?”

“Citrine,” Casson said.

A certain smile from Langlade. “The actress.”

“Yes.”

“All right.”

“We have become lovers, Bernard. It’s the second time—we had a petite affaire ten years ago, but this is different.”

Langlade made a sympathetic face; yes, he knew how it was. “She’s certainly beautiful, Jean-Claude. For myself, I couldn’t stop looking at her long enough to go to bed.”

Casson smiled. “We just spent a week together, in Lyons—that’s between you and me by the way. Now, I’ve had some kind of problem in the Gestapo office on the rue des Saussaies. Bernard, it’s so stupid— I went up there to get an Ausweis to go to Spain, and they asked me about military service and something told me not to mention that I’d been reactivated in May and gone up to the Meuse. You know, there are thousands of French soldiers still in Germany, in prison camps. I decided it would be safer not to admit anything. So, I didn’t. Well, time went by, somebody sent a paper to somebody else, and they caught me in a lie.”

Langlade shook his head and made a sour face. The Germans were finicky about paper in a way the Latin French found amusing—until the problem settled on their own doorstep.

“The next thing was, they started reading my mail and listening to my phone. So, when I was with Citrine down in Lyons, I told her that if she wanted to get in touch with me she could send a postcard to your office, your law office in the 8th is the address I gave her.”

He waited for Langlade to smile and say it was all right, but he didn’t. Instead, his expression darkened into a certain kind of discomfort.

“Look, Jean-Claude,” he said. “We’ve known each other for twenty years, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. If Citrine sends me a postcard, well, I’ll see that you get it. On the other hand, next time you have a chance to talk to her, would it be too much to ask for you to find some other way of doing this?”

Casson wasn’t going to show what he felt. “No problem at all, Bernard. In fact, I can take care of it right away.”

“You can understand, can’t you? This work I’m doing matters to them, Jean-Claude. It isn’t like they’re actually watching me, but, you know, I see these military people all the time, from the procurement offices, and all it would take would be for my secretary over in the other office to decide she wasn’t getting enough money, or, or whatever it might be. Look, I have an idea, what about Arnaud? You know, he’s always doing this and that and the other, and it’s just the sort of thing that would appeal to him.”

“You’re right,” Casson said. “A much better idea.”

“So now, here’s what we’ll do. Let’s go back to Paris—I can call a driver and car—and treat ourselves to a hell of a lunch, hey? Jean-Claude, how about it?”

Friday, 4 May. 4:20 P.M.

End of the week, a slow day in the office, Casson kept looking at his watch. Seven hours—and the dinner at Brasserie Heininger would be over. Of course, he lied to himself, he didn’t have to go, the world wouldn’t come to an end. No, he thought, don’t do that. “Mireille?” he called out. “Could you come in for a minute?”

“Monsieur?”

“Why don’t you go home early, Mireille—it won’t be so crowded on the train.”

“Thank you, Monsieur Casson.”

“Could you mail this for me, on the way?”

Of course.

A postcard—the people who watched the mail supposedly didn’t bother with postcards—telling Citrine to write him care of a café where they knew him. He had to assume Mireille wasn’t followed, that she could mail a postcard without somebody retrieving it. It meant he could save an anonymous telephone he’d discovered, in an office at one of the soundstages out at Billancourt, for a call he might want to make later on.

Mireille called out good night and left, Casson returned to the folder on his desk. Best to prepare for an important meeting. The folder held various pencil budgets for Hotel Dorado, a list of possible changes to the story line, names of actors and actresses and scenic designers—they were just now reaching the stage where certain individuals were, almost mystically, exactly right for the film. Also in the folder, a list of new projects Altmann had mentioned over the last few months; you never knew when one of these “ideas” was going to leap out of its coffin and start dancing around the crypt.

Casson read down the page and sighed out loud. Ah yes, the Boer War. The whole industry was planning movies about the noble Boers that spring, somebody in Berlin—Goebbels?—had decided to make them fashionable. A group of farmers, not exactly German but at least Dutch, thus Nordic and sincere, had carried out guerrilla actions and given the British army fits in South Africa. A war, according to German thinking, that made England look bad: imperialist, power-hungry, and cruel. One German company, Casson had heard, was about to go into production on something called President Kruger, a Boer War spectacle employing 40,000 extras.

The phone.

Now what?

Maybe he shouldn’t answer. No, it might be Altmann, some change of plans, or even, gift from heaven, dinner canceled. “Hello?”

“Monsieur Casson?”

“Yes?”

“Maître Versol here.”

What? Who? Oh Jesus! The lawyer for the LeBeau company!

Versol cleared his throat, then continued. “I thought I would telephone to see if any progress has been made on locating our missing inventory. You will recall, monsieur, some four hundred beards, fashioned from human hair and of a superior quality, provided for your use in the film Samson and Delilah.”

“Yes, Maître Versol, I do remember.”

“We feel we have been very patient, monsieur.”

“Yes,” Casson said. “That is true.”

He let Versol go on for a time, as he always did, until the lawyer felt honor had been satisfied and he could hang up.

Casson looked at his watch again. Almost five. He lifted the top from a fancy yellow box, unfolded the tissue paper, studied the tie he’d bought on the boulevard earlier that day. Navy blue with a beige stripe, very austere and conservative. Just the thing, he hoped, for the “important people” who had inspired that strange little note in Altmann’s voice. Probably it wouldn’t matter at all, it would simply mean he had done the best he could.

On the way home, between the La Muette Métro and the rue Chardin, he stopped at the busy café where they saw him every morning. He leaned on the copper-covered bar and drank a coffee. “I may get a postcard here,” he confided to the proprietor. “It’s from somebody—you understand. I’d rather my wife didn’t see it.”

The proprietor smiled, rubbing a glass with a bar towel. “I understand, monsieur. You may depend on me.”

8:40 P.M.

The Brasserie Heininger, throbbing with Parisian life on a Friday night. Once past the blackout curtains: polished wood, golden light, waiters in fancy whiskers and green aprons. Very fin-de-siècle, Casson thought. Fin-de-something, anyhow.

Papa Heininger, the fabled proprietor, greeted him at the door, then passed him along to the mâitre d’. The man said good evening with a certain subtle approval, more to do with what he wasn’t than what he was—he wasn’t Romanian, wasn’t wearing a bright-blue suit, wasn’t a coal merchant or a black-market dealer or a pimp.

“Monsieur Altmann’s table, please.”

A polite nod. A German, true, but a German executive. Not so bad, for that spring. Party of four, all men, thus ashes on the tablecloth but at least a vigorous attack on the wine list. “That will be table fourteen, monsieur. This way, please.”

Not the best table but certainly the most requested: a small hole in the mirror where an assassin had fired a submachine gun the night the Bulgarian headwaiter was murdered in the ladies’ WC. The table where an aristocratic Englishwoman had once recruited Russian spies. The table where, only a few nights earlier, the companion of a German naval officer had been shooting peas at other diners, using a rolled-up carte des vins as a blowpipe.

The three men at the table rose, Altmann made the introductions. Clearly they’d been there for a while, most of the way through a bottle of champagne. Herr Schepper—something like that—gestured to the waiter for another to be brought. He had fine white hair and a fine face, a pink shave and shining eyes. One of a class of men, Casson thought, who are given money all their lives because people don’t really know what else to do with them. This one was, if Casson understood Altmann correctly, a very senior something at UFA, the Continental Film parent company in Berlin.

The other man waited his turn, then smiled as he was introduced. They shook hands, shared a brief reniflement—the term came from the world of dogs, where it meant a mutual sniff on first meeting—then settled back down at the table. Herr Franz Millau. Something in the way Altmann articulated the name enabled Casson to hear it perfectly.

He was—nobody exactly said. Perhaps he was “our friend” or “my associate” or one of those. Not a particularly impressive exterior. High domed forehead; sandy hair. An old thirty-five or a young forty-five. Eyeglasses in thin silver frames, lawyer eyeglasses, worn in a way that suggested he only took them off before he went to sleep. And a small, predatory mouth, prominent against a fair complexion that made his lips seem brightly colored. He was not unpleasant in any way Casson could put a name to, so, what was wrong with him? Perhaps, Casson thought, it was a certain gap, between an unremarkable presence, and, just below, a glittering and pungent arrogance that radiated from him like the noonday sun. Herr Millau was powerful, and believed it was in the natural order of things that he should be.

Herr Schepper did not speak French. That kept them busy, with Altmann as translator, discovering that he loved Paris, had attended the opera, was fond of Monet, liked pâté de foie gras. A fresh bottle of Veuve Clicquot arrived, and, a moment later, an astonishing seafood platter. Everyone said ah. A masterpiece on a huge silver tray: every kind of clam and oyster, cockle and mussel, whelk and crayfish—Judgment Day on the ocean floor. “Bon appétit!” the waiter cried out.

One small complication.

Altmann and Schepper had to go on to a certain club in a distant arrondissement, where they were to have a late supper with a banker. Schepper said something in German. “He says,” Altmann translated, “ ‘you must take good care of the people with the money.’ ” Schepper nodded to help make the point.

“That’s certainly true,” Casson said.

“Well then,” Millau said, “you two should be going. Perhaps Monsieur Casson will be kind enough to keep me company while I eat my supper.”

Merde. But everybody else seemed to agree that this was the perfect solution, and Casson was effectively trapped. A glass of champagne, a few creatures from the sea, some additional travelogue from Herr Schepper, then everybody stood up to shake hands and begin the complicated business of departure.

At which moment, from the corner of his eye, Casson spotted Bruno. A party of six or seven swept past like ships in the night, Casson had only a blurred impression. Some German uniforms, a cloud of perfume, a woman laughing at something that wasn’t funny, and, in the middle of it—Bruno in a silk tie and blinding white shirt, a young woman— blonde, green-eyed—on his arm. Their eyes met, Bruno winked. Good to see you getting about with the right people, at last—glad you’ve seen the light. Then they went around the corner of a wall of banquettes and disappeared.

Altmann and Schepper left.

“Friend of yours?” Millau said.

“Acquaintance.”

“Some more champagne?”

“Thank you. How do you come to speak French like that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“No, I don’t mind. As a youngster I lived in Alsace—you know, un, deux, trois, vier, fünf.”

Casson laughed politely.

“That’s the way to learn a language, as a child,” Millau said.

“That’s what they say.”

“What about you, Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

“No, not at all.”

“Maybe some English, then?”

“A little. I can get along in a commercial situation if everybody slows down.”

Millau took a heavy black cigar from his pocket, stripped off the band and the cellophane. “Perhaps you’d care to join me.”

“No, thank you.”

Millau took his time lighting up, made the match flame jump up and down, at last blew out a stream of smoke, strong, but not unpleasant. He shook his head. “I like these things too much.”

Casson lit a Gauloise.

Millau leaned on the table, spoke in a confidential tone. “Let me begin by telling you that I’m an intelligence officer,” he said. “Reasonably senior, here in Paris.”

“I see,” Casson said.

“Yes. I work for the Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, in the counterespionage office up on the avenue Foch. We started out as the SS foreign service, and in a sense we still are that, though success has brought us some broader responsibility.”

Millau paused, Casson indicated he understood what had been said.

“We’ve been getting to know you for a few months, Monsieur Casson, keeping an eye on you, and so forth, to see who we were dealing with.”

Casson laughed nervously.

“Ach, the way people are! I assure you, we can’t be surprised or offended by all these little sins, the same thing, over and over. We’re like priests, or doctors.”

He stopped for a moment to inhale on the cigar, making the tip glow red, to see if it was still lit. “We got on to you down in Spain—the British were interested in you, and that was of interest to us. We were . . . nearby, when you met with a woman who calls herself Marie-Noëlle, Lady Marensohn, a representative of the British Secret Intelligence Service who we believe attempted to recruit you for clandestine operations. She is, by the way, residing with us at the moment.”

Casson felt the blood leave his face. Millau waited to see if he might want to comment, but he said nothing.

“Our view, Monsieur Casson, is that you did not accept recruitment.”

Casson waited a beat but there was nowhere he could hide. “No,” he said, “I didn’t.”

Millau nodded, confirming a position held in some earlier discussion. “And why not?”

There wasn’t any time to think. “I don’t know.”

“No?”

Casson shrugged. “I’m French—not British, not German. I simply want to live my life, and be left in peace.”

From Millau’s reaction Casson could tell he’d given the right answer. “And who would blame you for that, eh?” Millau said with feeling. “What got us into this situation in the first place was all these people meddling in politics. All we ever wanted in Germany was to be left alone, to get on with our lives. But, sadly, that was not to be, and you see what happened next. And, more to come.”

Casson’s expression was sympathetic. He realized that Millau possessed a very dangerous quality: he was likeable.

“We have no business fighting with England, I’ll tell you that,” Millau said. “Every week—I’m sure I’m not saying something you find surprising—there’s some kind of initiative; diplomatic, private, what have you. At the Vatican or in Stockholm. It’s just a matter of time and we’ll settle things between us. Our real business is in the east, with the Bolsheviks, and so is Britain’s business, and we’re just sorry that certain individuals in London are doing everything they can to keep us apart.”

“Hmm,” Casson said.

“So, that’s where you come in. My section, that is, AMT IV, is particularly concerned with terrorist operations, sabotage, bombing, assassination. We fear that elements within the British government plan to initiate such acts in France, a carefully organized campaign—and if a number of people die it is of no particular concern to them, they tend to be very liberal with French life.”

Millau made sure this had sunk in, then he said, “This isn’t a fantasy. We know it’s going to happen, and we believe they will contact you again. This time, we want you to accept. Do what they ask of you. And let us know about it.”

The brasserie was noisy, people talking and laughing, somebody was singing. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and the aroma of grilled beef. Casson took his time, stubbing out the Gauloise in an ashtray. “Well,” he said.

“How about it?”

“Well, I don’t think they’ll actually approach me again,” Casson said. If Marie-Noëlle talked to them, he realized, he was finished. Would she? Considering what they did to people, would she? “I made it clear to them it wasn’t something I was going to do.”

“Yes,” Millau said softly, meaning that he understood. “But I’ll tell you what.” He smiled, conspiratorial and knowing. “I’ll bet you anything you care to name that they come back to you.”

3:20 A.M.

The music on his radio faded in and out—if he held the aerial he could hear it. Adagio for Strings, Samuel Barber. Coming in from far away. Outside it rained on and off, distant thunder muttering up in Normandy somewhere. The worst of the storm had come through earlier— on the way home from the Brasserie Heininger he’d had to take shelter in the Métro to avoid getting soaked, standing next to a woman in a sweater and skirt. “Just made it,” he’d said as the rain poured down.

“A little luck anyhow,” she’d agreed. “I have to go see somebody about a job tomorrow and this is what I have to wear.”

Oh, what kind of job—but he didn’t.

They stood quietly, side by side, then the rain stopped and she left, swinging her hips as she climbed the staircase just so he would know what he’d missed. He knew. He lay on top of the covers in the darkness and listened to the violin. It would have been nice to have her with him; big, pale body rising and falling. But Citrine, I didn’t.

Good times they’d had in the Hotel du Parc. He’d been leaning against a wall, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. She told him he looked like a place Pigalle tough guy and he’d given her back the classic line, “Tiens, montrez-moi ton cul.” Show me your ass. In lycée, they used to wonder if M. Lepic, the Latin teacher, said that to Mme. Lepic on Saturday night.

Casson peered at his watch on the table beside the bed. A few minutes after three. What if he went out somewhere and called the hotel in Lyons—let it ring and ring until an infuriated manager answered. This is the police. I want to speak with the woman in Room 28. Now!

Sirens. Air-raid sirens. Now what? Antiaircraft fire—to the north of the city, he thought. Like a drum, in deliberate time. Then he heard airplanes. He swung his legs off the bed, made certain the apartment was dark, went out on the terrace.

Searchlights, north of him, across the river. The AA guns working away, four or five beats to the measure, little yellow lights climbing to heaven. And, then, planes overhead, a lot of them, flying low, the drone hammering off the walls in the narrow rue Chardin. Across the street and down a little way, a couple in nightshirts out on their balcony, the woman with a fur stole thrown around her shoulders, gazing up at the sky. Then he saw others, the whole neighborhood was out.

To the north, bombs, close enough to hear the articulated explosions. Orange light stuttered against the sky—he could see clearly the dark undersides of rain clouds, like frozen smoke, lit by fires. The British are at work, he thought. Among the factories on the outskirts of the city. When the bombing faded to a rumble, fire sirens joined the air-raid sirens. Then the all-clear sounded, and the fire engines were joined by ambulances.

Casson got tired of standing on the terrace, sat against the wall just inside his living room. First edge of false dawn in the spring, the sky not so dark as it was, a few birds singing on the rooftops. The sirens had stopped, now there remained only a certain smell on the morning air. The smell of burning. He was falling asleep. Now that it was dawn, he could sleep, since whatever might come in the night would have to wait another day.

Then, Monday morning, when he got to the office at ten, Mireille had a message for him. “A woman telephoned, a Madame Detweiler.”

“Who?”

“The secretary of an officer called Guske. From the rue des Saussaies.”

“And?”

“She said to tell you that your Ausweis to go to the Vichy zone is under consideration, it doesn’t look like there’s going to be a problem, and they will have a determination for you by May fifteenth. If you have any questions, you are encouraged to call Obersturmbannführer Guske.”

“Thank you, Mireille,” he said, and went into his office.

Was that good news, he wondered, or bad? After a moment he realized it wasn’t good or bad, it wasn’t anything. It was simply their way of talking to him. It was simply their way of telling him that they owned him.