by Alan Furst
She opened the door, Casson stepped inside. His old apartment—producer’s fees from Paramount for Night Run, development money from Pathé for The Man from Cairo, which was never made. That, and some very dire months when the bills sat in a desk drawer and steamed. But, back then, a love nest, so it didn’t matter. The dinner parties came later. And all the rest of it.
Casson took off his coat. Marie-Claire never faltered, hung the awful thing in the hall closet. “What about Bruno?” he said.
“In Rome. He’s getting the dealership for the Alfa Romeo. The 2500, I think. Is there an SS model?”
“Yes.”
“So there he is, wining and dining Mussolini’s nephew—somebody like that—to get an export permit. Anyhow, he’s not here.”
She shrugged off her coat, revealing cherry-red lounging pajamas, stepped out of her shoes, and put on matching slippers. “Jean-Claude,” she said, shaking her head in mock exasperation. “What time is it?”
“A little after six.”
She fell back on the sofa, covered her eyes with her hands. She was the same, he thought. Maybe a little blonder than usual, but the same. Not beautiful. Narrow eyes, thin lips—spite and meanness promised, though not all that often delivered. Then what, he’d always wondered, made her so deeply appetizing? She lived in clouds of perfume, sat close to you, touched you. But that was simply parisienne. There was more to her, and here he didn’t have the word. Indomitable? Strong, anyhow. And driven by grandes ardeurs—if she wanted something, she was on fire to have it.
“A shower?” he said. “Any warm water?”
“All you want. We have to pay the black-market prices, but Monsieur Krajec—you remember, the coalman—has been a magician.”
“I would like a shower,” he said.
“I’ll tell you what, just leave everything in the bathroom, and when Rosine comes in, we’ll try to do something with it. Jean-Claude?”
“Yes?”
“Why do you wear that little mustache? I had to look twice to make sure it was you.”
“It’s me.”
“It’s horrible.”
“I know.” He went into the bathroom and undressed. There was a full-length mirror on the inside of the bathroom door. He shuddered at the sight of himself, thinner than he realized.
Marie-Claire was standing on the other side of the door. “Jean-Claude, when you disappeared, last June—what happened to you?”
“A long story.”
He turned on the taps in the shower, let the water run down his head, his arms and back and chest. The soap was scented. The glow inside him swelled until he burst into a helpless laugh.
The bathroom door opened a crack. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
He forced himself to step out of the shower, and dried off with a large white towel. On the knob of the door, Marie-Claire had hung a pair of slacks and a shirt. “Thank you,” he called out.
He put on the clean shirt, big and soft. Then the slacks—Bruno, he thought, was fatter than he’d realized. He held them up and stepped into the bedroom. Marie-Claire was lying on a chaise longue. She moved her legs to make room for him. “Come and sit,” she said.
“What time does the maid get in?”
“Eight. Should I send her away?”
“It might be better if she didn’t know I was here.”
This was, he could see, slightly annoying.
“She doesn’t gossip.”
“Even so.”
She nodded. “A day off then,” she said. “Did you know that your actress got married?”
“Yes, I read about it.”
“Local opinion had it that you had some sort of crise, a breakdown. Over her. But then, we had Germans in suits coming around and asking about you. They were nice enough—they’re very tender where their French friends are concerned, and they consider Bruno a friend. Still, I didn’t think unrequited love was the sort of thing they investigated.”
It wasn’t unrequited. Casson smiled and shrugged.
“Your lawyer friend Arnaud thought you’d jumped in the river. Of course, I know you too well for that. You might have jumped in the river—but then you would have swum to the other side.”
“And you?”
“What did I think?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, I don’t know. That you’d found a way to get involved in the war. Possibly gotten yourself shot.”
“The first part is true.”
“I thought it might be. One of the resistance groups?”
“Yes.”
“I kept telling myself, he’d never do that, but I knew you would.”
“Did you tell anyone?”
She shook her head. “No, my love. Not me.”
“You liked the idea.”
Her expression said she did.
“Then how—forgive me for asking, Marie-Claire, but how can you live with somebody like Bruno?”
She laughed. “He’s not so bad. Just ambitious. And greedy. He wants to climb, Jean-Claude, and he was busy doing just that when this very inconvenient war broke out. Now he’s determined that it mustn’t spoil everything. What he’s doing is collaboration, of course, but he doesn’t want to hurt anybody, he just means to hang on to all he’s worked for.”
“And you?”
“I don’t like the Germans. I never did like them and I like them even less since they took the country. There was a time when Bruno was bringing them here, for cocktails and dinner parties. Well, I put a stop to that. Maybe it doesn’t get me a statue in the park when the war ends, but it’s better than nothing.” She paused for a moment. “And, truth be told, there might even be a little more than that.”
“Really?”
“Nothing much. A favor for an old friend. The use of the guest room for a few days.”
“Who was the guest?”
“No idea. A woman, on her way someplace.”
“And the old friend?”
“He’s with de Gaulle. Rather high up, I would guess. When I discovered what he was doing, I told him to ask if he ever needed a favor.”
“You discovered what he was doing?”
She smiled—she’d shocked him and she was enjoying it. “Jean-Claude, my dear long-lost husband, if it goes on in this city, in this arrondissement, among people I’ve grown up with, had dinner with, gone to bed with, and will lie next to in the cemetery, I know about it.”
That was true. She came from a prominent family in the 16th, old and mean and reclusive. With staggering hauteur. They’d certainly never approved of him, in fact they’d never approved of each other. But people on that level knew what went on. And, whether she liked it or not, Marie-Claire was one of them. He stood up, wandered over to the window, and stared out at the Bois de Boulogne; bare trees in the gray morning drizzle. He looked over at Marie-Claire, now lying curled up, her head propped on her hand, watching him with cat’s eyes. “And, once you found out what he was doing, he admitted it?”
“He did.”
“Why?”
“Courtship. He wanted to go to bed with me, so he puffed himself up like a pigeon, told me how terrifically important he was, that he lived in constant danger.”
“And, did you do it?”
“No. Ech.”
“Do I know him?”
“Mm, maybe.”
“Is it somebody I . . .”
She cut him off. “Jean-Claude, you are very tired. I think you ought to sleep, we can talk later. When Rosine comes, I’ll give her money for a taxi and tell her to go home. For now, we won’t worry about clothes or anything else.”
She was right. He went over to the bed and lay down on the tumbled quilts and sheets.
“Under the covers.”
He pulled a quilt over him.
“Now, Jean-Claude,” she said, a laugh in her voice. “ Nu comme un ver.” Naked as a worm. He took off the shirt and pants, dropped them on the carpet by the bed. The room swam around him, he could smell soap and M
arie-Claire’s perfume and all the nice things in life that went on in that apartment. He turned on his side, the quilt cool and light against his skin. Heard a click— opened his eyes. Marie-Claire had turned off the lamp, leaving the room in twilight. He drifted off, heard footsteps coming toward him. He felt her lips on his forehead for just a moment, then slept.
He woke up to a series of refined, rather contented little snores from the woman next to him. Well, what had he thought would happen? Strange experience, dimly remembered. Somewhere, in the middle of a dream, he was no longer alone under the quilt. Marie-Claire had crept into the bed, then her bare bottom came looking for him. He’d never really woken up, not at the beginning anyhow. A luxurious twenty minutes, sliding around on the exquisite sheets. Like making love to the life he’d once lived, he thought, smooth and soft.
Very slowly, he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. Walked to the bathroom, got back in the shower. Today was apparently his day to have everything, he’d better take advantage of it while he could. He stared absentmindedly at the water beading up, then running down the tiles. He was going to have to do something with his life—what? Maybe this.
The bathroom door opened. “Like the old days,” she said, pink and white and smiling.
She stepped under the water, handed him the soap.
At the kitchen table, an omelet, real coffee, bread. Butter. Marie-Claire, back in her red pajamas, was pensive. “Jean-Claude, why did you telephone?”
“When you live day-to-day, sooner or later you run out of luck. I got myself arrested—was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They let me go, but I knew it couldn’t go on like that.”
She thought for a moment. “So, you came to me for money.”
“Yes.”
She smiled, bittersweet—at least you’re honest. “About two years ago, when Bruno moved in here, he said this would happen, that you’d come around looking for money.”
“Bruno was right,” Casson said. “I am looking for it. But then, the fact is, you don’t have any money. At least you never had any when we were together.”
“True.” She drifted for a moment. “There was a ghastly scene, back then. I never told you about it. We were trying to buy this apartment. I went to my father.”
“Marie-Claire,” he said. They’d agreed not to do that.
“I know, I know what we said. But I thought, well, why not? They had plenty. We were having a hard time—they knew it, they’d had the pleasure of knowing it.”
Casson sighed. “I only thought, perhaps Bruno gave you money to run the household, maybe he wouldn’t miss a few hundred francs.”
“Ha!”
“No?”
“No.”
“Well then, just the, the respite. More than enough, believe me.” She was silent for a time, off in her own world. “All right,” she said, resigned. “Tell me what you need.”
“Two or three months. To find a place to stay. To find work, some kind of life that can be lived in wartime. What I was doing before, it’s over. Now, I have to figure out a way to exist on my own. I can do it, but I need a few weeks.”
She nodded, resigned to some private decision. “I suppose the time has come,” she said. “I knew it would.”
She threw on a sweater and a skirt, left the apartment for a few minutes. Perhaps went down to the cellar, he thought, to the land of steamer trunks and broken chairs. God only knew what was hidden down there, in the spiderwebs and coal dust.
She came back, face flushed, a small cotton bag in her hand. She moved the omelet plate to one side, untied the strings of the bag, turned it upside down. A necklace fell out on the tablecloth. “Tiens,” Casson said. Was it real? He picked it up, felt the weight of it in his hand. For the opera, or some grand celebration in a ball-room. Tiny diamonds, small emeralds.
“Bruno?” he said.
She shook her head. “He has no idea.”
“How’d you get it?”
“It came to me.”
“Came to you?”
“So to speak.”
“Do you wear it?”
“Oh no, there’s no way I could do that.”
Casson smiled. During the time they’d lived together, the world had thought he was the rogue, and she was long-suffering.
She took the necklace from him, turning it so it caught the light. “When my grandmother died—I was sixteen—we all went immediately to the apartment, on the avenue Ranelagh, over the gardens. Vast confusion, my father giving orders, lawyers appearing from nowhere, weeping maids, my mother shouting at the doctor. Poor Nana, the only one of the whole crew with a good heart. She once told me to look in her bureau if she died, in the corsets. I looked, and this is what I found. It was meant for me, but I knew if I took one step into the parlor it would be snatched away from me and I’d never see it again. So, down the front of my underpants it went. And not a moment too soon. One of the maids showed up just after I did it, looked at me, looked at the bureau. Said something, ‘how we shall all miss her,’ something like that, and gave me a look of pure hatred. By then I was sorry I’d done it, because I was going to get caught, when they read the will, and there was going to be hell to pay.
“Only, there wasn’t. Nobody knew about it. Nothing in the will—oh, the jewelry went to various people, but everything else she owned was terribly simple and discreet. And nobody mentioned it—and I began to understand that she’d never worn it. This thing was, I realized, a lover’s gift. If my grandfather had given it to her she would have worn it, but she didn’t. Can you imagine? A married woman, well off, from a stuffy old family. Sometime in the 1890s, probably. And, you know, she had that figure, buxom and rosy, all hips, like a Renoir lady getting in the tub. She must have done something—quite wonderful. This is gratitude, Jean-Claude. A night a man would remember all his life. That’s what I like to believe, anyhow. Do you think it’s possible?”
“What else?”
Slowly, she put it back in the bag. “I never really knew what to do with it. Of course there were moments, when you and I were starting out, when we couldn’t pay the bills, and I would say to myself: very well, Marie-Claire, it’s time for Nana’s necklace, but then, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t, and a day would go by, then a week, the huissiers about to take the furniture, and then, all of a sudden, from the sky, money. You would come home, with perfume or flowers, and I’d leave the necklace where it was.”
She handed him the bag. “Do you know how to sell such a thing?”
“This is worth tens of thousands of francs,” Casson said. “I can’t take this.”
She shrugged. “It’s the war.”
“What if,” Casson said, “what if I sold it, took, say, five thousand francs for myself, I can live on that for three months, and gave you back the rest?”
“You can live for three months on five thousand francs?”
“Of course.”
She was heartbroken, he saw. He started to give it back—they could find something else in the apartment, there had to be something.
She read his mind. “No, no. It’s done,” she said. “Just take it up to Vendôme and get the best price you can.”
“Where on Vendôme? Karabeghian?”
“Of course. Where else?” It was where the Parisian upper classes had always taken their business in troubled gems.
“I mean still, after all these years?”
“Yes, still. Nothing ever changes here, Jean-Claude.”
“All right. I’ll go this morning.”
“Jean-Claude?”
“Yes?”
“If you can get Swiss francs . . .”
He didn’t do as well as he’d hoped—everybody selling, nobody buying. The jeweler was apologetic; his eyes were, at least. After all, there wasn’t much to say: old wealth was heavy on the market, from Jews, from fugitives of all kinds, trying to find a way out of the country. And then, there were others; a senior German officer, coming out the door as Casson entered, gave hi
m an extremely polite little bow.
In the event, the jeweler agreed to pay in Swiss francs. Casson took some of them to the back room of an umbrella shop on the rue de la Paix—used traditionally by barmen and waiters at the hotels frequented by tourists—and converted them into French Occupation francs. The rate was so good it surprised him. “Market’s going up,” the woman said. “We’ll take all you have.”
He returned to Marie-Claire’s, where they spent the day together, and, also, the night, why not. Old love, as good as it ever was, maybe a little better. “I love doing this with you,” she said, lying next to him. “I always did.” They smoked together in the dawn, really not much to say, odd how happy some things in life made you.
He left the apartment at midmorning. Fine weather—a springtime wind, brilliant, sunny light—a good day to start a new life. He would find a better hotel, move his few things. He stopped for a newspaper, found a café, and ordered coffee. “Real, if you have it.”
Then he looked at the news. ITALIAN FREIGHTER SABOTAGED. SAN LORENZO EXPLODES AT THE DOCK IN NICE HARBOR. RESISTANCE TERRORISTS SUSPECTED IN DAWN ATTACK. EIGHT DEAD, MANY INJURED.
He went first to the Benoit, but there was no postcard. Next he headed for de la Barre’s apartment, then changed his mind and walked down the Champs-Elysées to the travel agency. “I’m here to see Natalie,” he told the woman at the réception. She showed him to a desk in a small room, and Natalie appeared a moment later. “I’m Hélène’s friend,” he explained.
“Oh,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine who Monsieur Duval was.”
“Is she alive?”
For a moment, she hesitated.
“I know where she was going,” he said. “She told me she would send you a postcard when she got to Algiers.”
“She was on the ship that burned,” Natalie said.
“Is she all right?”
“Yes. She telephoned, from Nice. She was afraid to speak openly, but she let me know she’d survived—‘a bad accident.’ ”
“Did she say anything about trying again?”
“Yes, in a way. She said she’d be staying in Nice for another two or three days. Then she told me I mustn’t worry, that she would see me soon and tell me the whole story.”
