by Alan Furst
In the middle of it, Sleeping Beauty. She was barefoot, wearing a sash improvised from a tablecloth and shaking a tambourine liberated from the drum kit. She also had-a moment before he could believe his eyes-a rose clenched firmly between her teeth. “Hey!” she cried out. “Hey, hey!” She was leading a long line of dancers, first the groom- in his late thirties with a daring set of muttonchop whiskers, next his bride-some few years older, black hair pinned up, a dark mole on her cheek, bright red mouth, and eyes like burning coals.
The line-little kids and grandparents, friends of the groom, the bride’s sisters, assorted hotel guests, at least one waiter-snaked from the dining room through the lobby, around an island of maroon velvet sofas, past the desk and the night manager wearing a wizard hat with a rubber band under his chin, and back to the dining room, hung with yards of pink crepe paper. Casson stood by the door, taking it all in. A fireman performed on the French horn. A man beckoned a woman to sit on his lap and they roared with pleasure as the spindly chair collapsed beneath them. Four feet protruded from the drape of a tablecloth, the people under the table either dead asleep or locked in some static, perhaps oriental, version of coition-it would have been hard to say and nobody cared.
The line reappeared in the lobby, Citrine in the lead, cheeks flushed, long hair flying, a particular expression on her face as she capered- the “savage dancer” of every Gypsy movie MGM had ever made. Then she saw him-“Jean-Claude!”-and ran to hug him. Her small breasts were squashed against his chest, she smelled like wine and chicken and perfume. She pulled back a little, her eyes shone, she was drunk and happy and in love.
Much later, they went up the stairs to her room on the top floor. Very slowly, they went up. On a table in the dining room he had discovered a bowl of red-wine punch, a single lemon slice floating on top, a glass ladle hung on the rim. Therefore, one took this step, then this. Many of these old hotels had been built with a tilting device that operated after midnight, so one had to go upstairs very, very deliberately. It helped to laugh.
The room was small, but very safe-the door secured by what appeared to be a simple lock that took a primitive iron key. But this turned out to be a deeply complicated system, to be used only by cellists or magicians-people with clever fingers. Probably Casson and Citrine could have opened the door themselves, at some future date, but a Good Samaritan happened to walk down the hall in a bathrobe and insisted on coming to their aid.
A small room, dark patterns on the wallpaper and the rug and the bedspread and the chair. Cold; rain a steady patter on the roof, and damp. Casson managed to get his tie off-over his head-threw his shirt and pants at a chair, turned to find Citrine looking sultry, wearing one stocking and an earring. They met somewhere on the bed; stupid, clumsy and hot, bawdy and shameless and prone to laugh. So drunk they weren’t very good at anything, hands and mouths working away, too dizzy with getting what they wanted to be graceful or adept. But, maybe better that way: nothing went right, nothing went wrong, and they were too excited to care.
It was like being a kid again, he wanted her too much to be seductive. Her fault, he thought-the way she was, so many shadows and creases, angles and dark alleys; inside, outside, in between. She crawled around, as hot as he was, knees spread or one foot pointing at the ceiling. They didn’t stay in one place very long, would find some position that made them breathe hard and fast but then, something else, something even better.
On and on it went. He didn’t dare to finish, just fell back now and then to a condition of lazy heat. Not her; from time to time she gasped, shuddered, would stop for a moment and hang on to to him. Just the way, he thought, women were. They could do that. So, she came for both of them. Until, very late at night, she insisted-whispering to him, coaxing-and then he saw stars.
Of course he forgot to give her the letter. Nearly dawn when he remembered; watching her while she slept, in the gray light he could see the color of her hair and her skin, rested a hand on her hip, she woke up and they smoked a cigarette. Out the window, the Lyonnais moon a white quarter-slice from a children’s book-it looked like a cat ought to be sitting on it. He rolled off the bed, dug around in his valise, gave her the letter and lit a candle so she could read it. She kissed him, touched his face, and yawned. Well, he thought, when you’ve been fucking all night it’s not really the best time for a love letter.
Five days, they had.
After that there would be too much moonlight for crossing the line back into occupied France. They walked by the gray river, swollen in the spring flood. Late in the afternoon they had a fire in the little fireplace in Citrine’s room and drank wine and made love. At night she had to go to the theatre. Casson came along, sat in the wings on a folding chair. He liked backstage life, the dusty flats, paint smells, stagehands intent on their business-plays weren’t about life, plays were about curtains going up and down-actresses in their underwear, the director making everybody nervous. Casson enjoyed being the outsider.
It was a romantic comedy, a small sweet French thing. The cousin from the country, the case of mistaken identity, the secret message sent to the wrong person, well, actually the right person but not until the third act. Citrine played the ingenue’s best friend. The ingenue wasn’t bad, a local girl with carefully done-up hair and a rich father and good diction. But, next to Citrine, very plain. That didn’t matter so much- it only made the boyfriend come off a little more of an idiot than the playwright really intended.
The audience was happy enough. Despite rationing they’d eaten fairly well, a version of traditional Lyonnais cooking, rich and heavy, not unlike the audience. They settled comfortably into the seats of the little theatre and dozed like contented angels through the boring parts.
Five days.
Dark, cool, spring days, sometimes it rained-it was always just about to. The skies stayed heavy; big, slow clouds moving south. Casson and Citrine sat on a bench by the river. “I could come to Paris,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “But the life I live now is going bad.”
She didn’t understand.
“My phone’s no good. I’m followed, sometimes.”
“If the Germans are after you, you better go.”
He shrugged. “I know,” he said. “But I had to come here.”
They stared at the river, a long row of barges moving south, the beat of the tugboat’s engine reaching them over the water. Going to places far away.
She recited in terrible English: “The owl and the pussycat, it went to the sea, in the beautiful pea-green boat.”
He laughed, rested the tips of two fingers against her lips.
The tugboat sounded its horn, it echoed off the hillsides above the river, a fisherman in a rowboat struggled against the current to get out of the way.
Citrine looked at her watch and sighed. “We better go back,” she said.
They walked along the quay, people looked at them-at her. Almond eyes, wide, wide mouth, olive-brown hair with gold tints, worn loose, falling over her shoulders. Long brown leather coat with a belt tied at the waist, cream-colored scarf, brown beret. Casson had his hands shoved deep in the pockets of a black overcoat, no tie, no hat, hair ruffled by the wind. He seemed, as always, a little beat-up by life-knowing eyes, half-smile that said it didn’t matter what you knew.
They walked like lovers, shoulders touching, talking only now and then. Sometimes she put her hand in the pocket of his coat. They wore their collars up, looked theatrical, sure of themselves. Some people didn’t care for that, glanced at them a certain way as they passed by.
They turned into a narrow street that wound up the hill toward the hotel. Casson put his arm around her waist, she leaned against him as they walked. They stopped to look in the window of a boulangerie. Between the panniers of baguettes were a few red jam tarts in flaky crust. He went in and bought two of them, in squares of stiff bakery paper, and they ate them as they climbed the hill.
“How did you find the passeur?” she asked. It meant someone
who helped you cross borders.
“Like anything else,” he said. “Like looking for a travel agent or a doctor, you ask friends.”
“Did it take a long time?”
She had crumbs in her hair, he brushed them out. “Yes,” he said. “I was surprised. But then, it turned out my sister-in-law knew somebody. Who knew somebody.”
“Perhaps it’s dangerous now, to ask friends.”
“Yes, it could be,” he said. “But you do what you have to.”
Their last night together he couldn’t sleep.
He lay in the darkness and listened to her breathing. The hotel was quiet, sometimes a cough, now and then footsteps in the hall as somebody walked past their door. Sometimes he could hear a small bird in the park below the window. He smoked a cigarette, went from one part of his life to another, none of it worked, all of it scared him. Careful not to wake her, he got out of bed, went to the window, and stared out into the night. The city was silent and empty, lost in the stars.
He wanted to get dressed and go out, go for a long walk until he got tired. But it wasn’t wise to do that any more, the police would demand to see your papers, would ask too many questions. When he got tired of standing, he sat in a big chair. It was three in the morning before he slid back under the covers. Citrine woke up, made a little noise of surprise, then flowed across the bed and pressed tight against him. At last, he thought, the night visitor.
“I don’t want you to go away,” she said by his ear.
He smoothed her hair. “I have to,” he said.
“Because, if you do, I will never see you again.”
“No. It isn’t true.”
“Yes it is. I knew this would happen. Years ago. Like a fortune-teller knows things-in dreams.”
After a time he said, “Citrine, please.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She took his hand and put it between her legs. “Until we go to sleep,” she said.
29 April, 1941.
She insisted on going to the train with him. A small station to the north of Lyons, they took a cab there. He had to ride local trains all day, to Chassieu and Loyettes and Pont-de-Cheruy, old Roman villages along the Rhone. Then, at dusk, he would join the secret route that ran to a village near the river Allier, where one of the de Malincourts would meet him.
The small engine and four coaches waited on the track. “You have your sandwiches?” she said.
“Yes.”
She looked at her watch. “It’s going to be late.”
“I think it’s usual,” he said.
Passengers waited for the doors to open. Country people-seamed faces, weatherbeaten, closed. The men wore old mufflers stuffed down the fronts of buttoned suit jackets, baggy pants, scuffed boots. The women wore shawls over their heads, carried baskets covered with cloths. Casson stood out-he didn’t belong here, and he wasn’t the only one. He could pick out three others, two men and a woman. They didn’t live in Chassieu either. Taking the little trains was a good idea- until four or five of you tried it at the same time. Well, too bad, he thought, there’s nothing to be done about it now.
“What if you came down here,” she said quietly.
“To live, you mean.”
“Yes.”
He paused a moment. “It isn’t easy,” he said. Clearly he had worked on the idea.
“Maybe you don’t want to,” she said.
“No. I’m going to try.”
She took his arm, there was not much they could say, now. The engine vented steam, a door opened in one of the coaches and a conductor tossed his cigarette away and stationed himself at the bottom of the steps. The people on the platform began to board the train.
“Remember what we talked about last night,” he said, leaning close so she could hear him. “If you have to move, a postcard to Langlade’s office.”
She nodded.
“You’re not to call me, Citrine.”
The conductor climbed to the bottom step and shouted “All aboard for Chassieu.”
He took her in his arms and she held on to him, her head on his chest. “How long?” she said.
“I don’t know. As soon as I can manage it.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” she said.
He kissed her hair. The conductor leaned out of the coach and raised a little red flag that the engineer could see. “All aboard,” he said.
“I love you,” Casson said. “Remember.”
He started to work himself free of her arms, then she let him go. He ran for the train, climbed aboard, looked out the cloudy window. He could see she was searching for him. He rapped on the glass. Then she saw him. She wasn’t crying, her hands were deep in her pockets. She nodded at him, smiled a certain way-I meant everything I said, everything I did. Then she waved. He waved back. A man in a raincoat standing nearby lowered his newspaper to look at her. The train started to pull out, moving very slowly. She couldn’t see the man, he was behind her. She waved again, walked a few paces along with the train. Her face was radiant, strong, she wanted him to know he did not have to worry about her, together they would do what had to be done. The man behind Citrine looked toward the end of the station, Casson followed his eyes and saw another man, with slicked-down hair, who took a pipe out of his mouth, then put it back in.
All day long he rode slow trains that rattled through the countryside and stopped at little stations. Sometimes it rained, droplets running sideways across the window, sometimes a shaft of sunlight broke through a cloud and lit up a hillside, sometimes the cloud blew away and he could see the hard blue spring sky. In the fields the April plowing was over, crumbled black earth ran to the trees in the border groves, oaks and elms, with early leaves that trembled in the wind.
Casson stood in the alcove at the end of the car, staring out the open door, hypnotized by the rhythm of the wheels over the rail points. His mind was already back in Paris, holding imaginary conversations with Hugo Altmann, trying to win him over to some version of Rene Guillot’s strategy. The objective: move Hotel Dorado to the unoccupied zone, under the auspices of the committee in Vichy rather than the German film board. It would have to be done officially, it would take Guske, or somebody like him, to stamp the papers. But, with Altmann’s help, it might be possible.
On the other hand, Altmann liked the film, really liked it, probably he’d want to keep it in Paris. Was there a way to ruin it for him? Not completely-could they just knock off a corner, maybe, so it wasn’t quite so appealing? No, they’d never get away with it. Then too, what about Fischfang? As a Jew, nobody was going to give him the papers to do anything. But that, at least, could be overcome-he’d have to enter the Zone Non-Occupee, the ZNO, just as Casson had, then slip into a false identity, down in Marseilles perhaps.
No, that wouldn’t work. Fischfang couldn’t just abandon his assorted women and children to the mercies of the Paris Gestapo, they’d have to come along. But not across the river, it probably couldn’t be done that way. New papers. That might work-start the false identity on the German side of the line. How to manage that? Not so difficult- Fischfang was a communist, he must be in contact with Comintern operatives, people experienced in clandestine operations-forging identity papers an everyday affair for them.
Or, the hell with Hotel Dorado. He’d let Altmann have it, in effect would trade it for Citrine. Of course he’d have to find some way to live, to earn a living in the ZNO, but that wouldn’t be impossible. He could, could, do any number of things.
The train slowed, a long curve in the track, then clattered over a road crossing. An old farmer waited on a horse cart, the reins held loosely in his hand, watching the train go past. The tiny road wound off behind him, to nowhere, losing itself in the woods and fields. In some part of Casson’s mind the French countryside went on forever, from little village to little village, as long as you stayed on the train.
Back in Paris, he telephoned Altmann.
“Casson! Where the hell have you been? Everybody’s been looking for you.”
“I just went off to the seashore, to Normandy, for a couple of days.”
“Your secretary didn’t know where you were.”
“That’s impossible! I told her-if Altmann calls, give him the number of my hotel.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
“Hugo, I’m sorry, you’ll have to forgive me. You know what it’s like, these days-she does the best she can.”
“Well …”
“Anyhow, here I am.”
“Casson, there are people who want to meet you. Important people.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I have organized a dinner for us. Friday night.”
“All right.”
“Do you know the Brasserie Heininger?”
“In the Seventh?”
“Yes.”
“I know it.”
“Eight-thirty, then. Casson?”
“Yes?”
“Important people.”
“I understand. That’s this Friday, the fourth of May.”
“Yes. Any problem, let me know immediately.”
“I’ll be there,” Casson said.
He hung up, wrote down the time and place in his appointment book.
The Brasserie Heininger-of all places! What had gotten into Altmann? He knew better than that. The Heininger was a garish nightmare of gold mirrors and red plush-packed with Americans and nouveaux riches of every description before the war, now much frequented by German officers and their French “friends.” Long ago, when he was twelve, his aunt-his father’s charmingly demented sister-would take him to the Heininger, confiding in a whisper that one came “only for the creme anglaise, my precious, please remember that.” Then, in the late thirties, there’d been some sort of wretched murder there, a Balkan folly that spread itself across the newspapers for a day or two. His one visit in adult life had been a disaster-a dinner for an RKO executive, his wife, her mother, and Marie-Claire. A platter of Heininger’s best oysters, the evil Belons, had proved too much for the Americans, and it was downhill from there.
