The World at Night (2 page)

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;
très
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-Elysées on the rue Marbeuf. Like it or not, his usual cabdriver was not at his customary spot on the place Iéna so it was walk or take the Métro, 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 café 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-Elysées, 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 Crédit 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. Françoise 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 Françoise 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, Françoise 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.”