The World at Night

THE 16TH ARRONDISSEMENT

10 May, 1940.

Long before dawn, Wehrmacht commando units came out of the forest on the Belgian border, overran the frontier posts, and killed the customs officers. Glider troops set the forts ablaze, black smoke rolling over the canals and the spring fields. On some roads the bridges were down, but German combat engineers brought up pontoon spans, and by first light the tanks and armored cars were moving again. Heading southwest, to force the river Meuse, to conquer France.

In Paris, the film producer Jean Casson was asleep. His assistant, Gabriella Vico, tried to wake him up by touching his cheek. They’d shared a bottle of champagne, made love all night, then fallen dead asleep just before dawn. “Are you awake?” she whispered.

“No,” he said.

“The radio.” She put a hand on his arm in a way that meant there was something wrong.

What? The radio broken? Would she wake him up for that? It had been left on all night, now it buzzed, overheated. He could just barely hear the voice of the announcer. No, not an announcer. Perhaps an engineer-somebody who happened to be at the station when news came in was reading it as best he could:

“The attack … from the Ardennes forest …”

A long silence.

“Into the Netherlands. And Belgium. By columns that reached back a hundred miles into Germany.”

More silence. Casson could hear the teletype clattering away in the studio. He leaned close to the radio. The man reading the news tried to clear his throat discreetly. A paper rattled.

“Ah … the Foreign Ministry states the following …”

The teleprinter stopped. A moment of dead air. Then it started up again.

“It is the position of the government that this aggression is an intolerable violation of Belgian neutrality.”

Gabriella and Casson stared at each other. They were hardly more than strangers. This was an office romance, something that had simmered and simmered, and then, one night. But the coming of war turned out to be, somehow, intimate, like Christmas, and that was a surprise to both of them. Casson could see how pale she was. Would she cry? He really didn’t know very much about her. Young, and slim, and Italian-well, Milanese. Long hair, long legs. What was she- twenty-six? Twenty-seven? He’d always thought that she fitted into her life like a cat, never off balance. Now she’d been caught out-here it was war, and she was smelly and sticky, still half-drunk, with breath like a dragon.

“Okay?” He used le slang Americain.

She nodded that she was.

He put a hand on her cheek. “You’re like ice,” he said.

“I’m scared.”

He went looking for a cigarette, probing an empty packet of Gitanes on the night table. “I have some,” she said, glad for something to do. She rolled off the bed and went into the living room. Merde, Casson said to himself. War was the last thing he needed. Hitler had taken Austria, Czechoslovakia, then Poland. France had declared war, but it meant nothing. Germany and France couldn’t fight again, they’d just done that-ten million dead, not much else accomplished. It was simply not, everybody agreed, logique.

Gabriella returned, lit a cigarette and handed it to him. “May I take a bath?” she asked.

“Of course. There are towels-”

“I know.”

Casson found his watch on the night table. 5:22. Water splashed into the bathtub. The tenant on the floor below was a baroness-she didn’t like noise. Well, too bad. She already hated him anyhow.

He got out of bed, walked to the glass door that opened on the little balcony. He pushed the drape aside; you could see the Eiffel Tower across the river. The rue Chardin was quiet-the 16th Arrondissement was always quiet, and Passy, its heart and soul, quieter still. One or two lights on, people didn’t know yet. So beautiful, his street. Trees in clouds of white blossom, dawn shadow playing on the stone buildings, a lovely gloom. He’d shot a scene from No Way Out here. The hero knows the cops are onto him, but he leaves his hideout anyhow, to see his rich girlfriend one last time.

The telephone rang; two brief whirring jingles. Paused a few seconds. Rang again. Jesus, the baroness. Gingerly, Casson picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”

“Have you heard?”

It was his wife. They had been separated for years, living their own lives in their own apartments. But they remained married, and shared a set of old friends.

“Yes,” he said.

“I’m not disturbing you, am I?”

“No, Marie-Claire. I was up.”

“Well, what shall we do?”

Fight, he thought. Support the troops, hold rallies, you had to-

“About tonight, I mean.”

Now he understood. They were giving a dinner party at her apartment. “Well, I don’t see how, I mean, it’s war.”

“Bruno says we must go on. We must not give in to Hitler.”

Bruno was Marie-Claire’s boyfriend. He owned an agency that sold British motorcars, had his hair cut twice a week, and spent a fortune on silk dressing gowns.

“He’s not wrong,” Casson said.

“And the cake has been ordered.” The twentieth wedding anniversary of the Langlades-a cake from Ponthieu.

“All right. Let’s go ahead. Really, what else is there to do?”

“Are you going to the office?”

“Of course.”

“Can you telephone later on?”

“I will.”

He hung up. The door to the bathroom was half-open, the water had stopped. Casson paused at the threshold.

“You can come in,” Gabriella said.

Her skin was flushed from the heat of the bath, wet strands of hair curled at the back of her neck, her breasts and shoulders were shiny with soapsuds. “They are going to arrest me,” she said, as though it were hard for her to believe.

“Why would they do that?”

She shrugged. “I am Italian. An Italian citizen.”

Enemy alien. It was absurd, he wanted to laugh, but then he didn’t. Mussolini was Hitler’s ally, a treaty had been signed in 1939. The Pact of Steel, no less. But it was only ridiculous until police came to the door. Gabriella looked up at him, biting her lip. “Now look,” he said. “It’s too early for tears. This is Paris-there’s always somebody you can talk to, always special arrangements. Nothing’s final here.”

Gabriella nodded gratefully, she wanted to believe he was right.

Casson caught a glimpse of himself in the steamy mirror. Dark-like a suntan that never really went away-naked, lean, with a line of hair up the center and shoulders a little heavier than his suits suggested. Not so bad-for forty-two. Still, if he were going to be authoritative, he’d better get dressed.

He stood in front of his closet, gazed pensively at a row of suits. In the distance, a two-note siren, high/low. Police or ambulance, and coming nearer. Casson went to the balcony and looked out. An ambulance, rolling to a stop just up the block. Two women ran into the street, one clutching a robe against her chest, the other in the black dress of a concierge. Frantically, they urged the men from the ambulance into the building.

Casson went back to the closet. On the radio, the premier of France, Paul Reynaud, was reading a statement: “The French army has drawn its sword; France is gathering herself.”

A little after ten, Casson left for the office. In the streets of Passy, the war had not yet been acknowledged-life went on as always; tres snob, the women in gloves, the men’s chins held at a certain angle. Casson wore a dark suit, sober and strong, and a red-and-blue tie with a white shirt-the colors of France. But the blue was teal, the red faded, and the shirt a color the clerk had called “linen”. He stopped at a newspaper kiosk for Le Temps, but it was not to be. A huge crowd was clamoring for papers, he would have to wait.

The day was fine, cool and sunny, and he liked to walk to his office, just off the Champs-Elysees on the rue Marbeuf. Like it or not, his usual cabdriver was not at his customary spot on the place Iena so it was walk or take the Metro, and this was no morning to be underground. Somewhere along the way, he would stop for a coffee.

He was, to all appearances, a typical Parisian male on his way to the office. Dark hair, dark eyes-France a Latin country after all-some concealed softness in the face, but then, before you could think about that, a small scar beneath one eye, the proud battle trophy of soccer played with working-class kids when he was young, in fact the most violent moment he’d ever experienced.

In real life, anyhow. Last Train to Athens had a murder in an alley in the Balkans, pretty nasty by the time they’d got it cut. Emil Cravec! What a ferocious mug on him-where the hell was he, anyhow? No Way Out was tame by comparison, except for the ending. Michel Faynberg had directed for him, and Michel had never really left the Sorbonne. He’d had the hero clubbed to death at the base of a statue of Blind Justice-what a load of horseshit! No Way to Make Money the exhibitor Benouchian called it. Yet, in all fairness, that hadn’t really turned out to be true. The students went.

He liked Night Run best of all, he loved that movie. It was better than The Devil’s Bridge, which had got him the little house in Deauville. He’d almost directed Night Run, stood with old Marchand all day long, watched rushes with him every night. Marchand was a legend in the industry, and the great thing about stature, Casson had discovered, was that egoism was no longer the issue-now and then, anyhow. Even a producer, despised moneyman, might have an idea that was worth something. Marchand had been in his seventies by then, was never going to get the acclaim he deserved. White hair, white beard, eyes like a falcon. “Tiens, Casson,” he’d said. “You really want it right.”

It was, too. The smoke that billowed from the locomotive, the little cello figure, the village scenes they shot around Auxerre-every frame was right. A small story: beginning, middle, end. And Marchand had found him Citrine. She’d had other names then, what she’d come north with, from Marseilles. But that was eleven years ago, 1929, and she’d been eighteen. Or so she said.

Casson strode along, through the open-air market on the place Rochambeau. The fish stall had a neat pile of fresh-caught rouget on chipped ice. Gray and red, with the eye still clear. A goat was tied to the back of a wagon and a young girl was milking it into a customer’s pail. The market cafe had tables and chairs out on the sidewalk, the smell of coffee drawing Casson to the zinc bar. He stood between a secretary and a man with red hands and a white apron. Unwrapped the sugar cube and set it on the spoon and watched the walls crystalize and tumble slowly down as the coffee rose up through it. He brought the cup to his lips: hot, black, strong, burnt. Casson allowed himself a very private little sigh of gratitude. To be alive was enough.

Ah, a band.

Casson stopped to watch. A unit of mounted Gardes Republicains in hussars’ uniforms, chin straps tight beneath the lower lip. On command they rode into formation, three lines of ten, horses’ hooves clopping on the cobbled street. Then played, with cornets and drums, a spirited march. In the crowd, a veteran of the 1914 war, the tiny band of the Croix de Guerre in his lapel, stood at rigid attention, white hair blowing in the breeze from the river, left sleeve pinned to the shoulder of his jacket.

Now the band played the “Marseillaise,” and Casson held his hand over his heart. War with Germany, he thought, it doesn’t stop. They’d lost in 1870, won-barely-in 1918, and now they had to do it again. A nightmare: an enemy attacks, you beat him, still he attacks. You surrender, still he attacks. Casson’s stomach twisted, he wanted to cry, or to fight, it was the same feeling.

28, rue Marbeuf.

Turn-of-the-century building, slate gray, its entry flanked by a wholesale butcher shop and a men’s haberdashery. Marbeuf was an ancient street, crowded and commercial, and it was perfect for Casson. While the big production studios were out at Joinville and Billancourt, the offices of the film industry were sprinkled through the neighborhood in just such buildings. Not on the Champs-Elysees, but not far from it either. Honking trucks and taxis, men carrying bloody beef haunches on their shoulders, fashion models in pillbox hats.

To get to Casson’s office you went to the second courtyard and took the east entry. Then climbed a marble staircase or rode a groaning cage elevator an inch at a time to the fourth floor. At the end of a long hall of black-and-white tile: a sugar importer, a press agent, and a pebbled glass door that said Productions Casson.

He was also PJC, CasFilm, and assorted others his diabolical lawyers thought up on occasions when they felt the need to send him a bill. Nonetheless, the world believed, at least some of the time. Witness: when he opened the door, eight heads turned on swivels. It brought to mind the favorite saying of an old friend: “One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.”

As he went from appointment to appointment that morning, he began to get an idea of what the war might mean to him personally. For one thing, everybody wanted to be paid. Now. Not that he blamed them, but by 11:30 he had to duck out to Credit Lyonnais to restock the checking account from reserves.

When he returned, the scenic designer Harry Fleischer sat across the desk and bit his nails while Gabriella prepared a check: 20,000 francs he was owed, and 20,000 more he was borrowing. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said gloomily. “My wife is home, selling the furniture.”

“I wish I knew what to say.”

Fleischer made a gesture with his hand that meant just because I am this person. He was heavy, face all jowls and cheeks, with a hook nose, and gray hair spreading back in waves from a receding hairline. “I ran from Berlin in 1933, but I thought: so, I have to live in Paris, the whole world should be tortured like this.”

“Where are you going?”

“Hollywood.” Fleischer shook his head in disbelief at what life did. “Of course I could say ‘Hollywood!’ I know plenty of people who’d see it that way. But I’m fifty-six years old, and what I’ll be is one more refugee. Arthur Brenner has been trying to get me to come to MGM for years. Well, now he’ll get. I don’t want to leave, we made a life here. But if these momsers do here what they did in Poland …”

There was a big, dirty window behind Casson’s chair, open a few inches. Outside was the sound of life in the Paris streets. Casson and Fleischer looked at each other-that couldn’t end, could it?

“What about you?” Fleischer said.

“I don’t know. Like last time-the thing will settle into a deadlock, the Americans will show up.” He shrugged.

Gabriella knocked twice, then brought in Fleischer’s check. Casson signed it. “I appreciate the loan,” Fleischer said, “It’s just to get settled in California. What is it in dollars, four thousand?”

“About that.” Casson blew on the ink. “I don’t want you to think about it. I’m not in a hurry. The best would be: we give Adolf a boot in the ass, you come back here, and we’ll call this the first payment on a new project.”

Casson handed the check to Fleischer, who looked at it, then put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He stood and extended a hand. “Jean-Claude,” he said. That was Casson’s affectionate nickname, in fact his first and middle names.

“Send a postcard.”

Fleischer was suddenly close to tears-didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded, tight-lipped, and left the office.

“Good luck, Harry,” Casson said.

Gabriella stuck her head around the doorway. “James Templeton is calling from London.”

Casson grabbed the phone with one hand while the other dug through a pile of dossiers on his desk, eventually coming up with one tied in red ribbon. Mysterious Island was printed across the cover. The movie wouldn’t be called that-somebody else had the rights to the Jules Verne novel-but that was the idea. When their yacht sinks in a tropical storm, three men and two women find themselves … In one corner of the folder, Casson had written Jean Gabin?

“Hello?” Casson said.

“Casson, good morning, James Templeton.” Templeton was a merchant banker. He pronounced Casson’s name English-style; accent on the first syllable, the final “n” loud and clear.

“How’s the weather in London?”

“Pouring rain.”

“Sorry. Here the weather is good, at least.”

“Yes, and damn it all to hell anyhow.”

“That’s what we think.”

“Look, Casson, I want to be straight with you.”

“All right.”

“The committee met this morning, in emergency session. Sir Charles is, well, you’ve met him. Hard as nails and fears no man. But we’re going to wait a bit on Mysterious Island. It’s not that we don’t like the idea. Especially if Jean Gabin comes on board, we feel it may be exactly right for us. But now is not the moment.”

“I understand perfectly, and, I am afraid you are right. We are at a time when it doesn’t hurt to, uh, not continue.”

“We were hoping you’d see it that way.”

“Without confidence, one cannot move ahead, Monsieur Templeton.”

“Do you hear anything, on the situation?”

“Not really. The radio. Reynaud is strong, and we know the Belgians will fight like hell once they organize themselves.”

“Well, over here Chamberlain has resigned, and Churchill has taken over.”

“It’s for the best?”

“Certainly in this office, that’s the feeling.”

Casson sighed. “Well, thumbs-up.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Mysterious Island will wait.”

“This doesn’t leave you-I mean …”

“No, no! Not at all. Don’t think it.”

“Good, then. I’ll tell Sir Charles. In a year we’ll all be at the screening, drinking champagne.”

“The best!”

“Our treat!”

“Just you try it!”

“Good-bye, Casson. We’ll send along a letter.”

“Yes. Good-bye.”

Merde. Double merde.

Gabriella knocked and opened the door. “Your wife on the line,” she said.

He always had a mental picture of Marie-Claire when he talked to her on the phone. She had tiny eyes and a hard little mouth, which made her seem spiteful and mean. Not a fair portrait, in fact, because there were moments when she wasn’t that way at all.

Of course-Parisienne to the depths of her soul-she made herself beautiful. She smelled delicious, and touched you accidentally. Had you in bed before you knew it, had life her way after that. Knowing Marie-Claire as he did, Casson had always assumed that Bruno, a pompous ass at the dinner table, was a maestro in the bedroom.

“The Pichards cannot come,” Marie-Claire said. “Yet Bruno insists we have this dinner. Francoise called and said that Philippe’s younger brother, an officer, had been wounded, near the town of Namur. A sergeant had actually telephoned, from somewhere in Belgium. It must have been, I don’t know, dreadful. Poor Francoise was in tears, not brave at all. I thought well, that’s that. Cancel the cake, call the domestic agency. But Bruno insisted we go on.”

Casson made a certain Gallic sound-it meant refined horror at a world gone wrong. Again.

Marie-Claire continued, “So, I rationalize. You know me, Jean-Claude. There’s an elephant in the hall closet, I think, oh some circus performer’s been here and forgotten his elephant. Now Yvette Langlade calls, Francoise has just called her-to explain why she and Philippe won’t be there. And Yvette says we are going to cancel, aren’t we? And I say no, life must go on, and she’s horrified, I can tell, but of course she won’t come out and say it.”

Casson stared out the window. He really didn’t know what to do. Marie-Claire had a problem with her lover and her circle of friends- it didn’t have much to do with him. “The important thing is to get through today,” he said, then paused for a moment. The telephone line hissed gently. “Whatever you decide to do, Marie-Claire, I will go along with that.”

“All right.” She took a breath, then sighed. “Will you call me in an hour, Jean-Claude? Please?”

He said yes, they hung up, he held his head in his hands.

He thought about canceling his lunch-with the agent Perlemere-and asked Gabriella to telephone, cautiously, to see if Monsieur Perlemere is able to keep his lunch appointment.

Oh yes. A little thing like war did not deter Perlemere. So the good soldier Casson marched off to Alexandre to eat warm potato-and-beef salad and hear about Perlemere’s stable of lame horses-aging ingenues, actors who drank too much, the Rin-Tin-Tin look-alike, Paco, who had already bitten two directors, and an endless list beyond that. A volume business.

Perlemere ordered two dozen Belons, the strongest of the oysters, now at the very end of their season. He rubbed his hands and attacked with relish, making a thrup sound as he inhaled each oyster, closing his eyes with pleasure, then drinking the juice from the shell, a second thrup, followed by a brief grunt that meant arguments about the meaning of life were irrelevant once you could afford to eat oysters.

Perlemere was fat, with a small but prominent black mustache-a sort of Jewish Oliver Hardy. Perlemere, Perlmutter, mother-of-pearl, Casson thought. Curious names the Jews had. “I saw Harry Fleischer this morning,” he said. “Off to MGM.”

“Mm. Time to run, eh?”

“Maybe for the best.”

Perlemere shrugged. “The Germans hit first. Now we’ll settle with them once and for all.”

Casson nodded polite agreement.

“What’d you do last time?” Perlemere demolished an oyster.

“I graduated lycee in 1916, headed for the Normale.” The Ecole Normale Superieure the most exclusive college in the Sorbonne, was France’s Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all rolled into one. “My eighteenth birthday, I went down to the recruiters. They asked me a few questions, then sent me off to install cameras on Spads flying reconnaissance over German lines. I changed film, developed it-really the war started me in this business.”

“Normalien, eh?” He meant Casson was well-connected; a member, by university affiliation, of the aristocracy.

Casson shrugged. “I guess it meant something, once upon a time.”

“School of life, over here.” Thrup. “But I haven’t done too badly.”

Casson laughed-as though such a thing could be in question!

“I expect this war business will go on for a while,” Perlemere said. “Your German’s stubborn, I’ll admit that. He doesn’t know when he’s beaten. But we’ll give them a whipping, just watch.”

Casson took a bite of the potato-and-beef salad, which would have been delicious if he’d had an appetite, and a sip of the Graves, which he didn’t care for. “You represent Citrine, Jacques?”

“Not any more. Besides, what do you want with her?”

“Nothing special in mind. I just remembered she used to be with you.”

“Suzy Balcon, Jean-Claude. Remember where you heard that.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll send a photo over. She’s tall and sophisticated-but she puts your mind in the gutter. Mm. Never mind Citrine.”

Two businessmen maneuvered down the packed aisle and managed to squeeze themselves around the tiny table next to Casson. “Two hundred German tanks on fire,” one of them said. “Just imagine that.”

Back at the office, Gabriella: “Your wife called, Monsieur Casson. She said to tell you that the dinner has been canceled, and would you please telephone her when you have a moment. She’s at the beauty parlor until three-thirty, home any time after that.”

“Gabriella, do you think you could find me Le Temps?” For Casson, a day without a newspaper was agony.

“I can go to the tabac.”

“I would really appreciate it.”

“I’ll go, then. Oh, Maitre Versol asks that you call him.”

“No.”

“Yes, monsieur. I am afraid so.”

Back in his office, Casson retrieved the swollen dossier from the bottom drawer where he’d hidden it from himself. In 1938, someone at Pathe had woken up one morning with a vision: the world could simply not go on without another remake of Samson and Delilah. And Jean Casson had to produce. Costume epics were not at all his specialty, but Pathe was huge and powerful and deaf-the only word they could hear was yes.

He got a script. Something close to it, anyhow. Signed a Samson who, from medium range in twilight, looked strong, and a reasonable Delilah-overpriced but adequately sultry. Pathe then canceled the project, paid him based on the escape clauses, and went on to new visions. Casson tied up the project, or thought he did.

One small problem: his production manager had ordered four hundred beards. These were for the extras, and were composed of human hair, prepared by the estimable theatrical makeup house LeBeau et cie. Cost: 5,000 francs. Somewhere just about here the problems began. The beards were, or were not, delivered to a warehouse Productions Casson rented in Levallois. Subsequently, they were returned to LeBeau. Or perhaps they weren’t. LeBeau certainly didn’t have the beards-or thought he didn’t. Casson didn’t have them either-as far as he knew. It was all tres difficile.

Casson made the telephone call, writhing in silent discomfort. LeBeau couldn’t actually sue him-the money was too little, the loss of business too great. And Casson couldn’t tell LeBeau to take his beards and the rest of it-films could not be made without a theatrical makeup supplier. Still, this was an affair of honor, so Casson had to endure Maitre Versol’s endless drivel as a weekly punishment. The lawyer didn’t attack or threaten him; the world-a murky, obscure entity-was the villain here, see how it took men of exquisite integrity and set them wandering in a forest of lost beards. Where were they? Who had them? What was to be done? Tres difficile.

When he got off the phone, Gabriella came in with a copy of Le Temps. It had a certain puffy quality to it-obviously it had been read, and more than once-but a look in Gabriella’s eye told him to be thankful he had a newspaper and not to raise questions about its history.

There wasn’t all that much to read: Germany had attacked Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the French army had advanced to engage the Wehrmacht on Belgian territory, a stunning assortment of world leaders were infuriated, and:

The characteristics of the French soldier are well-known, and he can be followed across the ages, from the heroic fighters of the feudal armies to the companies of the Ancien Regime, and on to the contemporary era. Are they not the characteristics of the French people? Love of glory, bravery, vivacity?

5:20 P.M.

Headed for the one appointment he’d looked forward to all afternoon-drinks at a sidewalk table at Fouquet-Casson left the office ten minutes before he really had to, and told Gabriella he wouldn’t be back.

Marie-Claire had called at four; the dinner was now definitely on for tonight. They had, in a series of telephone calls, talked it out- Yvette Langlade, Francoise, Bruno, and the others-and reached agreement: in her hour of crisis, France must remain France. Here Marie-Claire echoed that season’s popular song, Chevalier’s “Paris Reste Paris.” It was, Casson suspected, the best you could do with a day when your country went to war. Children would be born, bakers would bake bread, lovers would make love, dinner parties would be given, and, in that way, France would go on being France.

And would he, she would be so grateful, stop at Cremerie Boursault on the way home from the office and buy the cheese? “A good vacherin, Jean-Claude. Take a moment to choose-ripe, runny in the middle, French not Swiss. Please don’t let her sell you one that isn’t perfect.”

“And we’re how many?”

“Ten, as planned. Of course Francoise and Philippe will not be there, but she telephoned, very firm and composed, and said it was imperative we go ahead. We must. So I called Bibi Lachette and explained and she agreed to come.”

“All right, then, I’ll see you at eight-thirty.”

For the best, he thought. He walked down Marbeuf and turned onto the Champs-Elysees. At twilight the city throbbed with life, crowds moving along the avenue, the smells of garlic and frying oil and cologne and Gauloises and the chestnut blossom on the spring breeze all blended together. The cafes glowed with golden light, people at the outdoor tables gazing hypnotized at the passing parade. To Casson, every face-beautiful, ruined, venal, innocent-had to be watched until it disappeared from sight. It was his life, the best part of his life; the night, the street, the crowd. There would always be wars, but the people around him had a strength, an indomitable spirit. They cannot be conquered, he thought. His heart swelled. He’d made love all his life-his father had taken him to a brothel at the age of twelve-but this, a Paris evening, the fading light, was his love affair with the world.

He reached in his pocket, made sure he had money. Fouquet wasn’t cheap-but, an aperitif or two, not so bad. Then the vacherin, but that was all. Marie-Claire’s apartment was a ten-minute walk from the rue Chardin, he wouldn’t need a taxi.

Money was always the issue. His little house in Deauville was rented. Not that he told the world that, but it was. He did fairly well with his gangsters and doomed lovers-they paid his bills-but never very well. That was, he told himself, just up ahead, around the next bend in life. For the moment, it was enough to pay the bills. Almost all of them, anyhow, and only a month or two after they were due.

But in Paris that was typical, life had to be lived at a certain pitch. His father used to say, “The real artists in Paris are the spenders of money.” He’d laugh and go on, “And their palette is-the shops!” Here he would pause and nod his head wisely, in tune with the philosopher-knave side of his nature. But then, suddenly, the real ending: “And their canvas is life!”

Casson could see the performance in detail-it had been staged often enough-and smiled to himself as he walked down the crowded avenue. Casson wondered why, on the night his country went to war, he was thinking about his father. The father he remembered was old and corrupt, a rogue and a liar, but he’d loved him anyhow.

Casson needed only a moment to search the crowded tables-what he was looking for was easy to find. Amid the elegant patrons of Fouquet, the women with every inch of fabric resting exactly where they wished, the men with each hair exactly where they’d put it that morning, sat a ferocious, Bolshevik spider. Skinny, glaring, with unruly black hair and beard, a worker’s blue suit, an open-collar shirt, and bent wire-frame Trotsky eyeglasses. But this one was no artsy intellectual Trotskyite- you could see that. This one was a Stalinist to his bloody toenails and, momentarily, would produce a sharpened scythe and proceed to dismember half the patronage of Fouquet’s, while the waiters ran about hysterically, trying to present their bills to a dying clientele.

Ah, Fischfang, Casson thought. You are my revenge.

Louis Fischfang was Casson’s writer. Every producer had one. Casson told the agents and screenwriters that he spread the work around, and he did-different people were right for different projects. But in the end, when the chips were down, when somebody had to somehow make it all come out right for the people who handed over their hard-earned francs for a seat in a movie theatre, then it was Fischfang and no other.

Though he quivered with political rage, spat and swore like a proletarian, marched and signed and chanted and agitated, none of it mattered, because that fucking Fischfang could write a movie script that would make a banker weep. God-given talent, is what it was. Just the line, just the gesture, just the shot. There could be no Jean Cassons- no Alexander Kordas, no Louis Mayers, no Jean Renoirs or Rene Clairs-without the Louis Fischfangs of this world.

Fischfang looked up as Casson approached the table. Offered his usual greeting: a few grim nods and a twisted smile. Yes, here he was, the devil’s first mate on the ship of corruption. Here was money, nice suits, ties, and the haughty 16th Arrondissement, all in one bon bourgeois package called Casson.

“Did you order?” Casson asked as he sat down.

“Kir.” White wine with blackcurrent liqueur.

“Good idea.”

“Royale.” Not white wine, champagne.

“Even better.”

The waiter arrived with Fischfang’s drink and Casson ordered the same. “It’s a strange day to work,” he said, “but I really don’t know what else to do.”

“I can’t believe it’s come to this,” Fischfang said angrily. “They”- in Fischfangese this always meant the government and the rich and the powerful- “they grew Hitler. Watered him and weeded him and pitch-forked manure all around him. They gave him what he wanted in Czechoslovakia and Poland-now he wants the rest, now he wants what they have. Hah!”

“So now they’ll stop him,” Casson said.

Fischfang gave him a look. There was something knowing and serious about it-you’re naive-and it made him uncomfortable. They sat for a time in silence, watched the crowd flowing endlessly down the avenue. Then Casson’s drink came. “Sante,” he said. Fischfang acknowledged the toast with a tilt of the tulip-shaped glass and they drank. Fischfang’s grandfather had crawled out of a shtetl in Lithuania and walked to Paris in the 1850s, Casson’s roots went back into Burgundy, but as they drank their Kir they were simply Parisians.

“Well,” Casson said acidly, “if the world’s going to burn down we should probably make a movie.”

Fischfang hunted through a scuffed leather briefcase at his feet and brought out a sheet of yellow paper crammed with notes and ink splatters. “Fort Sahara,” he said. He took a packet of cheap cigarettes; short, stubby things, from his breast pocket. As the match flared, he screwed up his face, shielding the cigarette with cupped hands as he lit it. “Lisbon,” he said, shaking out the match. “The slums. Down by the docks. Women hanging out washing on a line stretched across the narrow street. They’re dark, heavy, sweating. All in black. The men are coming home, in twos and threes, carrying their oars and their nets. Kids playing soccer in the street-tin can instead of a ball. Now it’s nighttime. Men and women going to the — cantina? Wine’s being poured from a straw-covered jug. There’s a band, people dancing. Here’s a young man, Santo. He’s tough, handsome, sideburns, rolled-up sleeves …”

“Michel Ferre.”

“Yes? That’s up to you. For some reason I kept seeing Beneviglia- he speaks French with an Italian accent.”

“Hunh. Not bad. But remember, this is a quota film-life will go smoother if everybody’s French.”

To protect the film industry, the government had decreed that a certain portion of a foreign company’s French earnings be spent on French films-which meant that major studios, in this case Paramount, had frozen francs that had to be used on what had come to be called “quota films.”

“Even so, Michel Ferre is perhaps a little old,” Fischfang said. “Santo is, oh, twenty-five.”

“All right.”

“So he’s taking his girl dancing. There’s a thwarted suitor, a knife fight in the alley. Suitor dies. We hear whistles blowing, the police are on the way. Cut to the train station-Marseilles. All these tough-guy types, Santo looks like an innocent among them, with his cheap little suitcase. But he survives. Among the thieves and the pimps and the deserters, he somehow makes a place for himself. Maybe he works for a carnival.”

“Good.”

“I see him backlit by those strings of little lights, watching the young couples in love-it should be him and his girl, holding hands. But his friend at the carnival is no good. He plans a robbery-asks Santo to keep a revolver for him. So, he’s implicated. They hold up a bank. We see it. The manager runs outside waving his arms, they shoot him-”

“Why not hold up the carnival? The owner’s a cheat with a little mustache …”

Fischfang nodded and crossed out a line in his notes. “So they’re not gangsters.”

“No. Men on the run from life. The carnival owner knows that, he thinks he can hold back their wages because they can’t go to the police.”

“So, once again, Santo has to run. We see him staring through the train window, watching the world of everyday life go by. Then he’s someplace, oh, like Beziers. Down to his last sou, he enlists in the Foreign Legion.”

“Then Morocco.” Casson caught the waiter’s eye and raised two fingers.

“Well, the desert anyhow. Last outpost at Sidi-ben-something-or-other. The white buildings, the sun beating down, the tough sergeant with the heart of gold.”

“Camels.”

“Camels.”

A woman in a white cape swept past them, waving at someone, silver bracelets jangling on her wrist. Fischfang said, “Can we do anything about the title, Jean-Claude?”

“It’s from Irving Bressler, at Paramount. It says ‘Foreign Legion,’ it says ‘desert.’ By the way, who are they fighting?”

Fischfang shrugged. “Bandits. Or renegades. Not the good Moroccans.”

“Where’s the girl, Louis?”

“Well, if the fisherman’s daughter goes to Marseilles to be with Santo, she sure as hell can’t go to the desert. Which leaves the slave girl, captured by bandits many years ago …”

“Kidnapped heiress. She’s been rescued and is staying at the fort …”

“Native girl. ‘I’m glad you liked my dancing, monsieur. Actually, I’m only half-Moroccan, my father was a French officer …’ “

“Merde.”

“This is always hard, Jean-Claude.”

They were silent for a moment, thinking through the possibilities. “Actually,” Casson said, “we’re lucky it’s not worse. Somebody in the meeting mumbled something about the hero singing, but we all pretended not to hear.”

The waiter arrived with the Kirs. “Fort Sahara,” Casson said, and raised his glass in a toast. The sky was darker now, it was almost night. Somewhere down the boulevard a street musician was playing a violin. The crowd at Fouquet’s was several drinks along, the conversation was animated and loud, there were bursts of laughter, a muffled shriek, a gasp of disbelief. The waiters were sweating as they ran between the tables and the bar.

“Ending?” Casson said.

Fischfang sighed. “Well, the big battle. Santo the hero. He lives, he dies …”

“Maybe with French financing, he dies. For Paramount, he lives.”

“And he gets the girl.”

“Of course.”

“She’s the colonel’s wife …”

“Daughter.”

“Cat.”

“Chicken.”

8:30 P.M.

Casson took the long way on his walk from the rue Chardin to Marie-Claire’s apartment on the rue de l’Assomption. A blackout was in effect, and the velvety darkness of the Passy streets was strange but not unpleasant-as though the neighborhood had gone back a hundred years in time. In some apartments there were candles, but that was typical French confusion at work: a blackout didn’t mean you had to cover the light in your windows, it meant you couldn’t turn on the electricity. If you did, it would somehow-one never quite understood these things-help the Germans.

The walk to Marie-Claire’s took less than fifteen minutes, but Casson saw two moving vans working that night. On the rue des Vignes, three men struggled with a huge painting, something eighteenth century, in a gilded frame. On the next street it was a Vuitton steamer trunk.

Rue de l’Assomption stood high above the Bois de Boulogne, and the views were dramatic. Lovely old trees. Meadows and riding paths. Marie-Claire’s horsey friends had their polo club in the Bois, Bruno served in some vaguely official capacity at Le Racing Club de France, there was a season box at the Auteuil racetrack, and a private room could be rented for late supper parties at Pre Catalan, the fin-de-siecle restaurant hidden at the center of the park.

Casson paused at the entry to the building. This had been his apartment when he’d married, but it belonged to Marie-Claire now. Well, that was the way of the world. The history of ownership of apartments in the 16th Arrondissement, Casson thought, would probably make a more exciting epic of France than the Chanson de Roland.

The concierge of the building had always loved him:

“Ah, Monsieur Casson. It’s good to see a friendly face. What a day, eh? What a horror. Oh the vile Boche, why can’t they leave us alone? I’m getting too old for war, monsieur, even to read it in the papers. Let alone the poor souls who have to go and fight, may God protect them. What’s that you have there? A vacherin! For the dinner tonight? How Madame trusts you, monsieur, if I sent my poor-ah, here’s the old elevator; hasn’t killed us yet but there’s still time. A good evening to you, monsieur, we all would love to see more of you, we all would.”

The elevator opened into the foyer of Marie-Claire’s apartment. He had a blurred impression-men in suits, women in bright silk, the aromas of dinner. Marie-Claire hurried to the door and embraced him, grosses bisoux, kisses left and right, left and right, then stepped back so he could see her. Emerald earrings, lime-colored evening gown, hair a richer blonde than usual, tiny eyes scheming away, clouds of perfume rolling over him like fog at the seaside. “Jean-Claude,” she said. “I am glad you’re here.” Something to say to a guest, but Casson could hear that she meant it.

And if any doubt lingered, she took him gently by the arm and drew him into the kitchen, where the maid and the woman hired for the evening were fussing with the pots. “Let’s have a look,” she said. Lifted the lid from a stewpot, shoved tiny potatos and onions aside with an iron ladle and let some of the thick brown sauce flow into it. She blew on it a few times, took a taste, then offered it to Casson. Who made a kind of bear noise, a rumble of pleasure from deep within.

“Ach, you peasant,” she said.

“Navarin of lamb,” Casson said.

Marie-Claire jiggled the top off the vacherin‘s wooden box, placed her thumb precisely in the imprint made by the woman in the cremerie, and pressed down. For his effort, Casson was rewarded with a look that said well, at least something went right in the world today.

“Jean-Claude!” It was Bruno, of course, who’d snuck up behind him and brayed in his ear. Casson turned to see the strands of silver hair at the temples, the lemon silk ascot, the Swiss watch, the black onyx ring, the you-old-fox! smile, and a glass full of le scotch whiskey.

Suddenly, the sly smile evaporated. The new look was stern: the hard glare of the warrior. “Vive la France,” Bruno said.

They toasted the Langlades with champagne. Twenty years of marriage, of that-which-makes-the-world-go-round. Twenty years of skirmishes and cease-fires, children raised, gifts the wrong size, birthdays and family dinners survived, and all of it somehow paid for without going to jail.

Another glass, really.

With the exception of Bruno, they had all known each other forever, were all from old 16th-Arrondissement families. Marie-Claire’s grandfather had carried on a famous, virtually lifelong lawsuit against Yvette Langlade’s great-aunt. In their common history all the sins had been sinned, all the alliances broken and eventually mended. Now they were simply old friends. To Casson’s left was Marie-Claire’s younger sister, Veronique, always his partner at these affairs. She was a buyer of costume jewelry for the Galeries Lafayette, had married and separated very young, was known to be a serious practicing Catholic, and kept her private life resolutely sealed from view. She saw the plays and read the books, she loved to laugh, was always a charming dinner companion, and Casson was grateful for her presence. To his right was Bibi Lachette-the Lachettes had been summer friends of the Cassons in Deauville-the last-minute stand-in for Francoise and Philippe Pichard. Her last-minute escort was a cousin (nephew?), in Paris on business from Lyons (Macon?), who held a minor position in the postal administration, or perhaps he had to do with bridges. Bibi had been a great beauty in her twenties, a dark and mysterious heartbreaker, like a Spanish dancer. The cousin, however, turned out to be pale and reticent, apparently cultivated on a rather remote branch of the family tree.

With the warm leeks in vinaigrette came a powerful Latour Pomerol-Bruno on the attack. Casson would have preferred something simple with the navarin, which was one of those Parisian dishes that really did have a farmhouse ancestry. But he made the proper appreciative noise when Bruno showed the label around, and for his politeness was rewarded with a covert grin from Bibi, who knew Casson didn’t do that sort of thing.

They tried not to let the Germans join them at dinner. They talked about the fine spring, some nonsense to do with a balloon race in Switzerland that had gone wrong in amusing ways. But it was not easy. Somebody had a story about Reynaud’s mistress, one of those what does he see in her women, ungainly and homely and absurdly powerful. That led back to the government, and that led back to the Germans. “Perhaps it’s just a social problem,” Bernard Langlade said gloomily. “We never invited them to dinner. Now they’re going to insist.”

“They insisted in 1914, and they were sorry they did.” That was Veronique.

“I don’t think they’ve ever been sorry,” said Arnaud, a lawyer for shipping companies. “They bleed and they die and they sign a paper. Then they start all over again.”

“I have three MGs on the Antwerp docks,” Bruno said. “Paid for. Then today, no answer on the telephone.”

This stopped the conversation dead while everybody tried to figure out just exactly how much money had been lost. When the silence had gone on too long, Casson said, “I have a friend in Antwerp, Bruno. He owns movie theatres, and seems to know everybody. With your permission, I’ll just give him a call tomorrow morning.”

It helped. Madame Arnaud began a story, Bernard Langlade asked Veronique if he could pour her some more wine. Bibi Lachette leaned toward him and said confidentially, “You know, Jean-Claude, everybody loves you.”

Casson laughed it off, but the way Bibi moved her breast against his arm clearly suggested that somebody loved him.

“Well,” Marie-Claire said, “one can only hope it doesn’t go on too long. The British are here, thank heaven, and the Belgians are giving the Germans a very bad time of it, according to the radio this evening.”

Murmurs of agreement around the table, but they knew their history all too well. Paris was occupied in 1814, after the loss at Waterloo. The Germans had built themselves an encampment in the Tuileries, and when they left it had taken two years to clean up after them. Then they’d occupied a second time, in 1870, after that idiot Napoleon III lost an entire army at Sedan. In 1914 it had been a close thing-you could drive to the battlefields of the Marne from Paris in less than an hour.

“What are the Americans saying?” asked Madame Arnaud. But nobody seemed to know, and Marie-Claire shooed the conversation over into sunnier climes.

They laughed and smoked and drank enough so that, by midnight, they really didn’t care what the Germans did. Bibi rested two fingers on Casson’s thigh when he filled her glass. The vacherin was spooned out onto glass plates-a smelly, runny, delicious success. Made by a natural fermentation process from cow’s milk, it killed a few gourmets every year and greatly delighted everyone else. Some sort of a lesson there, Casson thought. At midnight, time for cake and coffee, the maid appeared in consternation and Marie-Claire hurried off to the kitchen.

“Well,” she sighed when she reappeared, “life apparently will go on its own particular way.”

A grand production from Ponthieu; feathery light, moist white cake, apricot-and-hazlenut filling, curlicues of pastry cream on top, and the message in blue icing: “Happy Birthday Little Gerard.”

A moment of shock, then Yvette Langlade started to laugh. Bernard was next, and the couple embraced as everyone else joined in. Madame Arnaud laughed so hard she actually had tears running down her cheeks. “I can’t help thinking of poor ‘Little Gerard,’ ” she gasped.

“Having his twentieth wedding anniversary!”

“And so young!”

“Can you imagine the parents?”

“Dreadful!”

“Truly-to call a child that on his very own birthday cake!”

“He’ll never recover-scarred for life.”

“My God it’s perfect,” Yvette Langlade panted. “The day of our twentieth anniversary; Germany invades the country and Ponthieu sends the wrong cake.”

Everything was arranged during the taxi ballet in front of the building at 2:30 in the morning. Bibi Lachette’s cousin was put in a cab and sent off to an obscure hotel near the Sorbonne. Then Casson took Bibi and Veronique home-Veronique first because she lived down in the 5th Arrondissement. Casson walked her to the door and they said good night. Back in the cab, it was kissing in the backseat and, at Bibi’s direction, off to the rue Chardin. “Mmm,” she said.

“It’s been a long time,” Casson said.

Bibi broke away in order to laugh. “Oh you are terrible, Jean-Claude.”

“What were we, twelve?”

“Yes.”

Tenderly, he pressed his lips against hers, dry and soft. “God, how I came.”

“You rubbed it.”

“You helped.”

“Mmm. Tell me, are you still a voyeur?”

“Oh yes. Did you mind?”

“Me? Jean-Claude, I strutted and danced and did the fucking cancan, how can you ask that?”

“I don’t know. I worried later.”

“That I’d tell?”

“Tell the details, yes.”

“I never told. I lay in the dark in the room with my sister and listened to her breathe. And when she was asleep, I put my hand down there and relived every moment of it.”

The cab turned the corner into the rue Chardin, the driver said “Monsieur?”

“On the right. The fourth house, just after the tree.”

Casson paid, the cab disappeared into the darkness. Casson and Bibi kissed once more, then, wound around each other like vines, they climbed the stairs together.

Suddenly, he was awake.

“Oh God, Bibi, forgive me. That damn Bruno and his damn Pomerol-”

“It was only a minute,” she said. “One snore.”

She lay on her side at the other end of the bed, her head propped on her hand, her feet by his ear-her toenails were painted red. Once in the apartment, they’d kissed and undressed, kissed and undressed, until they found themselves naked on the bed. Then she’d gone to use the bathroom and that was the last he remembered.

“What are you doing down there?”

She shrugged. Ran a lazy finger up and down his shinbone. “I don’t know. I got up this morning, alone in my big bed, and I thought …” Casually, she swung a knee across him, then sat up, straddling his chest, her bottom shining white in the dark bedroom, the rest of her perfectly tanned. She looked over her shoulder at him and bobbed up and down. “Don’t mind a fat girl sitting on you?”

“You’re not.” He stroked her skin. “Where did you find the sun?”

“Havana.” She clasped her hands behind her head and arched her back. “I always have my bathing suit on, no matter where I go.”

He raised his head, kissed her bottom; one side, the other side, the middle.

“You are a bad boy, Jean-Claude. It’s what everyone says.” She wriggled backward until she got comfortable, then bent over him, her head moving slowly up and down. He sighed. She touched him, her hands delicate and warm. At this rate, he thought, nothing’s going to last very long.

Worse yet, their childhood afternoons came tumbling back through his memory; skinny little dirty-minded Bibi, been at the picture books her parents hid on the top shelf. What an idiot he’d been, to believe the boys in the street: girls don’t like it but if you touch them in a certain place they go crazy-but it’s hard to find so probably you have to tie them up.

But then, what an earthquake in his tiny brain. She wants you to feel like this, she likes it when your thing sticks up in the air and quivers. Well. Life could never be the same after that. “Thursday we all go to the Lachettes,” his mother would say in Deauville. His father would groan, the Lachettes bored him. It was a big house, on the outskirts of the seaside town, away from the noisy crowds. A Norman house with a view of the sea from an attic window. With a laundry room that reeked of boiled linen. With a wine cellar ruled by a big spider. With a music room where a huge couch stood a foot from the wall and one could play behind it. “Pom, pom, pom, I have shot Geronimeau.”

“Ah, Monsieur le Colonel, I am dying. Tell my people-Jean-Claude!”

From the front hall: “Play nicely, les enfants. We are all going to the cafe for an hour.”

“Au revoir, Maman.”

“Au revoir, Madame Lachette.”

There were maids in the house, the floors creaked as they went about. Otherwise, a summer afternoon, cicadas whirred in the garden, the distant sea heard only if you held your breath.

“You mustn’t put your finger there.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to.”

“Oh.”

A maid approached, the Indian scout put his ear to the waxed parquet. “Pom, pom!”

“I die. Aarrghh.”

Aarrghh.

Bibi’s head moving up and down, a slow rhythm in the darkness. She was coaxing him-knew he was resisting, was about to prove that she could not be resisted. Only attack, he realized, could save him now. He circled her waist with his arms, worked himself a little further beneath her, put his mouth between her thighs. Women have taught me kindness, and this. She made a sound, he could feel it and hear it at once, like the motor in a cat. Now we’ll see, he thought, triumphant. Now we’ll just see who does what to who. Her hips began to move, rising, a moment’s pause, then down, and harder every time. At the other end of the bed, concentration wavered-he could feel it-then began to wane.

But she was proud, a fighter. Yes, he’d set her in motion, riding up and down on the swell of the wave, but he would not escape, no matter what happened to her. It was happening; she too remembered the afternoons at the house in Deauville, remembered the things that happened, remembered some things that could have happened but didn’t. She tensed, twisted, almost broke free, then shuddered, and shuddered again. Now, the conqueror thought, let’s roll you over, with your red toenails and your white ass and-

No. That wouldn’t happen.

The world floated away. She crawled back to meet him by the pillows, they kissed a few times as they fell asleep, warm on a spring night, a little drunk still, intending to do it again, this time in an even better way, then darkness.

A loud knock on the door, the voice of the concierge: “Monsieur Casson, s’il vous plait.”

Half asleep, he pulled on his pants and an undershirt. It was just barely dawn, the first gray light touching the curtain. He unbolted the door and opened it. “Yes?”

Poor Madame Fitou, who worshiped propriety in every corner of the world. Clutching a robe at her throat, hair in a net, her old face baggy and creased with sleep. The man by her side wore a postal uniform. “A telegram, monsieur,” she said.

The man handed it over.

Who was it for? The address made no sense. CASSON, Corporal Jean C. 3rd Regiment, 45th Division, XI Corps. Ordered to report to his unit at the regimental armory, Chateau de Vincennes, by 0600 hours, 11 May, 1940.

“You must sign, monsieur,” said the man from the post office.