The World at Night ns-4 Read online

“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 hangin
g 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.”