by Alan Furst
Casson, that devil-may-care man-about-town, did it. When it took two tries to light the ragged thing, Casson smiled bravely—matches were no problem for him. “I had an uncle,” Berthot said, “up in Caen. Wanted to turn me into a shoemaker when I was a kid.” He didn’t have to go on, Casson understood, the shoemakers had plenty of work now.
The October rains sluiced down, there was no heat on the rue Marbeuf. He had enough in the bank to last through November’s rent, then, that was that. What was what? Christ, he didn’t know. Sit behind his desk and hold his breath until someone ran in shaking a fistful of money or he died of failure. He went to the movies in the afternoon, the German newsreels were ghastly. A London street on fire, the German narrator’s voice arrogant and cocksure: “Look at the destruction, the houses going up in flames! This is what happens to those who oppose Germany’s might.” Going back out into the gray street in mid-afternoon, the Parisians were morose. The narrator of the newsreel had told the truth.
He answered an advertisement in Le Matin. “Distribute copies of a daily bulletin to newsstands.” It was called Aujourd’hui à Paris and listed all the movies and plays and nightclubs and musical performances. The editor was a Russian out in Neuilly who called himself Bob. “You’ll need a bicycle,” he said. Casson said, “It’s not a problem,” remembering his conversation with Langlade. But he never went back—inevitably he would encounter people he knew, they would turn away, pretend they hadn’t seen him.
Langlade. Of course that was always the answer, one’s friends. He’d heard that Bruno and Marie-Claire were doing very well, that Bruno had in fact received delivery of the MGs left on the Antwerp docks, that he now supplied French and Italian cars to German officers serving in Paris. But something kept him from going to his friends—not least that they were the sort of friends who really wouldn’t have any idea how to help him. They’d always looked up to him. They did the most conventional things: manufactured lightbulbs, imported cars, wrote contracts, bought costume jewelry, while he made movies. No, that just wouldn’t work. They would offer him money—how much? they’d wonder. And, after it was gone, what then?
28 October, 1940.
He’d brought his copy of Bel Ami to the rue Marbeuf as office reading—he’d always wanted to make a film of de Maupassant, everyone did. Then too, he simply had to accept the fact that one didn’t find abandoned newspapers in the cafés until after three.
11:35. He could now leave the office, headed for a café he’d discovered back in the Eighth near the St.-Augustin Métro, where they had decent coffee and particularly good bread. Where he could pretend—until noon but not a minute later—that he was taking a late casse-crôute, midmorning snack, when in fact it was lunch. And the waiter was an old man who remembered Night Run and The Devil’s Bridge. “Ah, now those,” he’d say, “were movies. Perhaps a little more of the bread, Monsieur Casson.”
Casson’s hand was on the doorknob when the telephone rang.
He ran to the desk, then forced himself to wait for the end of the second ring before he picked it up and said “Hello?” Not disturbed, exactly, simply unable to hide the fact that his concentration had been elsewhere, that he’d been busy—perhaps in a meeting, perhaps in mid-sentence as he reached back for the receiver.
“Jean Casson?”
“Yes.”
“Hugo Altmann.” The line hummed for a moment. “Yes? Hello?”
“Altmann, well, of course.”
“Perhaps you don’t—remember me.”
“No, no. I was just . . .”
“Tell me, Casson, can you possibly cancel your lunch today?”
“Well. Yes, I could. It’s not anything I can’t reschedule.”
“Perfect! You’re still on the rue Marbeuf?”
“Yes. Twenty-six, just off the boulevard.”
“Save me parking, will you? And wait for me downstairs?”
“All right.”
“Good. Ten minutes, no more.”
“See you then.”
He ran into the bathroom down the hall and stared into the mirror above the sink. Shit! Well, not much he could do about it now—his shirt was tired, his jacket unpressed. But he’d shaved carefully that morning—he always did—his hair simply looked vaguely arty when he avoided the barber, and his shoes had been good long ago and still were. It was, he thought, his good fortune to be one of those men who couldn’t look seedy if he tried.
Altmann he remembered well. He worked for Continental, the largest of the German production companies, with offices out by Paramount in Billancourt. A film executive, typical of the breed. The practical, plodding French of the long-term expatriate—nothing fancy but nothing really wrong. Smooth manners, smooth exterior, but not sly. He was, one felt, constitutionally neat, and courtly by upbringing. Well-dressed, favoring muted tweed suits and very good ties in rich colors. The kind of hair that faded from blond to no color at all in the mid-forties, combed back at the age of seven and still in place. Scandinavian complexion, blue eyes—like a frozen lake—and a smile. Always a second drink, always enthusiastic—even about the most godawful trash because you just never knew what people were going to like—always at work. Casson had been at several meetings with him out at Continental, a lunch or two a few years ago, it was all a little hazy.
A last look in the mirror; he ran his fingers through his hair, splashed water on his face, that was the best he could do. Glancing at his watch he hurried out of the bathroom and down the stairs.
Outside, the sun was just fighting its way out of the clouds. Omen? An exquisite Horch 853 swept to the curb, Altmann waved from behind the wheel. Casson wasn’t impressed by cars, but still . . . Silvery-green coachmaker’s body, graceful lines, spare tire—silvery-green metal center—snugged into the curve of the running board just forward of the driver’s door. Casson slid into the leather seat, they shook hands, said hello.
They sped up the rue Marbeuf, then out onto the Champs-Elysées. The Horch had twelve cylinders, five forward gears, and the voice of a sports car, muttering with suspended power every time the clutch was depressed. “We’ll go eat somewhere in the country,” Altmann said. “Some days I just can’t stand the city, even Paris.”
Out through Neuilly in light traffic; a few military vehicles, a few bicycles, the occasional horse and cart. Next came Courbevoie; empty, winding streets. Then left, following the Seine: Malmaison, Bougival, Louveciennes. The little restaurants facing the water had been for painters and dancers, once upon a time, but the money had always followed the kings, west from Paris and along the river, and eventually the cooks followed the money—the lobsters came and the artists went.
“So,” Altmann said, “are you doing anything special?”
“Not much. You’re still with Continental?”
“Oh yes. Just the same as always. Everything changes, you know, except that it all stays the same.”
Casson laughed. Altmann took a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, shook it adeptly so that several popped up, and held it across the seat. Casson took one, Altmann lit it, then his own, with a polished lighter.
“We’re bigger now,” Altmann continued. “There’s that difference. A good deal bigger, in fact.” A town fell away and they were in the countryside. Corot, Pissarro, they’d all painted up here. Autumn valleys, soft light, white clouds that rolled down from Normandy and lit up the sky. The most beautiful place on earth, perhaps. It struck Casson in the heart, as it always did, and he opened the window to get the glass out of his way. The car drifted to a stop as Altmann prepared to turn. There were yellow leaves on the road, little swirls of them when the wind blew, Casson could hear them scratching along over the rumble of the engine.
They turned right, came back out on the river and headed west. Altmann drew on his cigarette, the exhaled smoke punctuated his words as he talked.
“I hope you’re not waiting for me to discuss politics, Casson, because frankly it’s all gotten beyond me.” There was a man carrying a basket
on a wooden footbridge that crossed the river. He turned to look at the glorious car, shifting the weight of the basket on his shoulder. “The things I’ve seen,” Altmann continued, “in Germany and France, the last five years, I really don’t know what to say about it.” He paused, then said, “It didn’t even occur to me that my phone call might offend you—but it does now, and if you like I’ll turn around and take you back to Paris. It’s just that I came back from Berlin and thanked God that Paris was as it always was, that nothing was burned or blown up, that I was going to be able to live here, on some kind of terms anyhow, and to make films. The truth is, you and I are lucky—we can simply get out of the world’s way while it destroys itself, we don’t have to be crushed by it. Or, maybe, I should turn around. It’s up to you, I’ll understand one way or the other.”
“It’s too nice a day to go back to the city,” Casson said.
“There’s bad blood between our countries, it’s no good, but it doesn’t have to be between us, does it?”
“No, no, not at all.”
Altmann nodded, relieved. On the left a cluster of houses, almost a village. Just on the other side, where the fields began, a restaurant, Le Relais. “Why not?” Altmann said. The tires crunched over the gravel by the entry as the Horch rolled to a stop.
Inside it was quiet and it smelled good. A few local people were having lunch, they glanced up as Casson and Altmann came in, then looked away. The patron seated them in the bay by the front window, looking out over the flowers in the windowbox. Casson studied the handwritten menu, but there wasn’t much choice—basically the plat they’d cooked that day and a few substitutes, like an omelet that the kitchen could produce if you just had to have something else. So they ordered what there was—Altmann had a fistful of ration coupons—a platter of warm langouste, crayfish, not long out of the river, followed by an andouille, the Norman sausage the butchers made from the very bottom of the tub of leftovers, cooked in cider vinegar. All of it so good, in an off-hand way, that it made Casson lightheaded. For wine, what Le Relais offered was the color of raspberry jam, dry as a bone and sharp as a tack, in liter bottles without label or cork; and when the first was gone a second appeared. All this accompanied by small talk— business was never discussed with food—until the coffee arrived. Then Altmann said “Let me lay the situation out for you as it stands today.”
“Good,” Casson said, taking yet another of Altmann’s cigarettes.
“The major difference is, they’re going to set up a committee called a Filmprüfstelle, Film Control Board, that will answer to Goebbels’s people in the Propagandastaffel up in the Hotel Majestic. Now UFA-CONTINENTAL is going to have to deal with them, I would not try to tell you otherwise, and they are who they are, enough said. On the other hand, they have to deal with Continental, and it’s not at all clear who’s the bigger dog in this yard. Our capitalization has increased to ten million reichsmarks—two hundred million francs. With the cost of making a film in France averaging out to about three and a half million francs, you can see what’s going to happen. Certainly there will be quite a lot of waltzing—powdered boobs in ball gowns and all the rest of it, there’s always that, but they can’t have ten million reichsmarks’ worth even if that’s what they think they want. We’ve acquired thirty-nine movie theatres, and we have the laboratories and the processing—once you get to that stage there must be more than Old Vienna, and that’s going to come from independent producers and directors. Do you see?”
Casson nodded. He saw. The thirty-nine theatres came in large part from the confiscation of property belonging to Siritsky and Haik, Jewish film exhibitors.
“So when I say,” Altmann continued, “that the Nazis have to deal with Continental, I mean it. It’s felt in Berlin that if French culture is destroyed then we’ve failed to resolve the difficulties between us. This is not Poland, this is one of the greatest cultures the world has ever produced—Hitler himself dares not claim otherwise.” He drank a sip of coffee, then another.
“Now look,” he said, voice lower. “We’re not sure ourselves exactly what they’re going to let us do. Obviously a celebration of the French victory in 1918 won’t work at the Control Board, but a hymn to Teutonic motherhood won’t work at Continental. Between those extremes, if you and I are going to work together, is where we’ll work.”
“I won’t make Nazi propaganda,” Casson said.
“Don’t. See if I care.” Altmann shrugged. “Casson, you couldn’t if you wanted to, all right? Only a certain breed of swine can do that— German swine or French swine. Perhaps you know that a German film, The Jew Süss, has broken box-office records for the year in Lyons, Toulouse, and, of course, Vichy.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s true. But, thank God, Paris isn’t Lyons or Toulouse.”
“No.”
“Well?”
“It’s a lot to think about,” Casson said.
“You know Leveque?”
“Of course. The Emissary.”
“Raoul Mies?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve both signed to do projects—no details, but we’re working on it.”
Casson looked out the window. The Seine was high in its banks, as it always was in autumn, and gray. It was going to rain, the weeds on the river bank bent over in the wind. Life goes on, he thought. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.
“Good,” Altmann said. “An honest answer.” He leaned closer to Casson. “I have to get up every morning and go to an office, like everybody else. And I don’t want to work with every greasy little pimp who wants to be in movies. I want my day to be as good as it can—but I’m flesh and blood, Casson, just like you, and I’ll do what I have to do. Just like you.”
Casson nodded. Now they’d both been honest. Altmann started to pour the last of the wine, then put the bottle down and signaled the patron. “What do you have for us—something good.”
The patron thought a moment. “Cognac de Champagne?”
“Yes,” Altmann said. “Two, then two more.” He turned back to Casson. “They’ll pay,” he said. “Believe me they will.”
Casson wasn’t sure what he meant. Expensive Cognac? Expensive film? Both, very likely, he thought.
This one cried. Nothing dramatic, shining eyes and “Perhaps you have a handkerchief.” He got her one, she leaned on an elbow and dabbed at her face. “Bon Dieu,” she said, more or less to herself.
He reached down and pulled the sheet and blanket up over them, it was cold in November with no heat. “You’re all right?”
“Oh yes.”
He rolled a cigarette from a tin where he kept loose tobacco and burnt shreds. They shared it, the red tip glowing in the darkness.
“Why did you cry?”
“I don’t know. Stupid things. For a moment it was a long time ago, then it wasn’t.”
“Not a girl anymore?”
She laughed. “And worse.”
“You are lovely, of course.”
“La-la-la.”
“It’s true.”
“It was. Maybe ten years ago. Now, well, the old saying goes ‘nothing’s where it used to be.’ ”
From Casson, a certain kind of laugh.
After a moment, she joined in. “Well, not that.”
“You’re married?”
“Oh yes.”
“In love?”
“Now and then.”
“Two kids?”
“Three.”
They were quiet for a moment, a siren went by somewhere in the neighborhood. They waited to make sure it kept going.
“In the café,” she said, “what did you see?”
“In you?”
“Yes.”
“Truth?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I was, attracted.”
“To what?”
“To what. Something, maybe it doesn’t have a name. You know what goes on with you—deep eyes, and the nice legs. Right? Try to say more t
han that and you’re chasing desire, and you won’t catch it. ‘Oh, for me it’s a big this and a little that, this high and that low, firm, soft, hello, good-bye.’ All true, only next week you see somebody you have to have and none of it is.”
“That’s what attracted you?”
Casson laughed, his face warm. “You came in to buy cigarettes, you glanced at me. Then you decided to have a coffee. You crossed your legs a certain way. I thought, I’ll ask her to have a coffee with me.”
She didn’t answer. Put the bottom of her foot on top of his.
“You like this, don’t you?” he said softly.
“Yes,” she sighed, bittersweet, “I do like it. I like it more than anything else in the world—I think about it all day long.”
That fall the city seemed to right itself. Casson could feel it in the air, as though they had all looked in the mirror and told themselves: you have to go on with your life now. The song on the radio was from Johnny Hess. “Ça revient,” he sang—it’s all coming back. “La vie recommence, et l’espoir commence à renaître.” Life starts again, and hope begins to be reborn.
Well, maybe that was true. Maybe that had better be true. Casson went to lunch with an editor from Gallimard, they had a big list that fall, people couldn’t get enough to read. One way to escape, though not the only one. There were long lines at the theatres—for We Are Not Married at the Ambassadeurs, or the Grand Revue at the Folies-Bergère. The Comédie-Française was full every night, there was racing at Auteuil, gambling at the Casino de Paris, Mozart at Concert Mayol. The Damnation of Faust at the Opéra, Carmen at the Opéra-Comique.
“What are you looking for?” the Gallimard editor asked. “Anything in particular?”
Casson talked about Night Run and No Way Out. What the rules were when the hero was a gangster. The editor nodded and said “Mm,” around the stem of his pipe. Then his eyes lit up and he said, “Isn’t it you who made Last Train to Athens?”
That he loved. Well, Casson thought, at least something. “Come to think of it,” the editor said, polishing his glasses with the Deux Magots’ linen napkin, “we may have just the right thing for you. Publication not scheduled until winter ’42, but you certainly understand that that isn’t far off.”
