The World at Night Read online

  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.”

  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 Perlemère—and asked Gabriella to telephone, cautiously, to see if Monsieur Perlemère is able to keep his lunch appointment.

  Oh yes. A little thing like war did not deter Perlemère. So the good soldier Casson marched off to Alexandre to eat warm potato-and-beef salad and hear about Perlemère’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.

  Perlemère ordered two dozen Belons, the strongest of the oysters, now at the very end of the
ir 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.

  Perlemère was fat, with a small but prominent black mustache—a sort of Jewish Oliver Hardy. Perlemère, 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.”

  Perlemère 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?” Perlemère demolished an oyster.

  “I graduated lycée in 1916, headed for the Normale.” The Ecole Normale Supérieure 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,” Perlemère 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, Maître 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 Pathé 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 Pathé 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. Pathé 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 très 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 Maître 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? Très 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 Régime, 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, Françoise, 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 Crémerie 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 Françoise 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-Elysées. 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 cafés 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 lo
ve 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.