Mission to Paris (12 page)

From Stahl: ‘As I said, the next farm.’

From Avila: ‘The three legionnaires trudging along a dirt path, the wind is blowing, the sun beats …’ Avila stopped dead.

The door had flown open, every one of them stared. In the doorway stood Moppi, bright red in the face, breathing hard as though he’d been running, wearing a green loden jacket and an alpine hat with a feather. ‘Franz!’ he called out. ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry, I’ve interrupted your work. But I couldn’t reach you on the phone, so I thought I’d come out to the studio …’

‘Herr Moppel,’ Stahl said, his voice quiet but ice-cold. ‘Would you kindly get out of here? Can’t you see we’re working?’

A woman appeared at the doorway, also breathing hard, apparently Moppi had outdistanced her in a race to the studio building. ‘Pardon, pardon,’ she said. ‘This man insisted, at the reception. I
told
him he couldn’t come here but he wouldn’t listen. Shall I get the guard?’

‘No, you needn’t, I know when I’m not wanted,’ Moppi said, sounding sullen and hurt. ‘Goodbye, Franz, all I wanted to do was make a time for lunch.’

‘Go away,’ Stahl said. ‘Don’t ever come back.’

Moppi left, the woman glared at him, then again apologized and closed the door behind her. All the others turned and looked at Stahl. ‘Who’s Franz?’ Pasquin said, honestly confused.

‘My name before I was an actor,’ Stahl said. ‘I was born in Austria.’

This was met with silence. Then Avila said, his voice incredulous, ‘That man is a
friend
of yours?’

Stahl thought quickly and said, ‘A friend of my family, long ago. He knew me as a child, now he’s discovered I’m a
movie actor
.’

The silence continued. Then it was Justine Piro who saved the day. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘I was afraid he was going to yodel.’

Laughter broke the tension. Avila said, ‘Where were we?’ But then looked up from his script and said to Stahl, ‘How on earth did he know where you were?’ It was the question of a man who’d grown up in a family that spent its life dodging the secret police of many countries.

Stahl shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Did he call Deschelles’s office?’

‘He didn’t
follow
you, did he?’

‘Oh Jean,’ Piro said. ‘Don’t say such things. Please.’

‘He might have,’ Stahl said. ‘I think he’s maybe a little …’ He circled a finger at his temple.

‘No, he’s just a German,’ Pasquin said. ‘They always find a way.’

Avila lit a cigarette, so did Stahl. ‘Well, to hell with him,’ Avila said. He looked down at his script and said, ‘The three legionnaires trudging along a dirt path …’

Stahl was back at the Claridge by three. He took off his jacket and sat down hard on the edge of the bed. A few minutes later, he called the desk and asked for a glass of Pepto-Bismol to be brought up to his suite. This would settle his stomach and calm his nerves and Stahl needed all of that. When the Pepto-Bismol arrived – on a silver tray, with a linen napkin – Stahl drank the chalky stuff and waited for it to take effect. Then, still shaken, he went to the window and, for the first time in his life, peered down at the street below and tried to see if someone was watching him.

There was a letter for him the following morning, a letter from America, the name on the return address was Betsy Belle. He sat on a couch in the lobby and opened the envelope, reluctantly, because he had a strong premonition about what was in there, and this turned out to be the case. In the careful script of an Iowa schoolgirl, Betsy was telling him goodbye. She knew he would understand, she was sorry, they’d had such good times together and she had, always would have, loving feelings for him. But she’d met a man, older than her, but kind and considerate, who worked in the accounting office at MGM. He had proposed marriage, after they’d seen each other a few times, and she had accepted. ‘My life was just going on, going noplace in particular, and I had to do something. Maybe I’ll get a part in a movie sometime, but maybe I never will. That’s cruel, but it might happen. I always leveled with you Fredric and truth is I feel like I’ve been saved. I took my things from the house, so what’s done is done.’ She signed the letter ‘Love, Betsy.’

He’d suspected something like this was coming but still it hurt him. They’d been closer than he’d realized, but a future together hadn’t been part of the bargain and women didn’t work like that forever, so now she’d been ‘saved’. He hoped that was true, he didn’t want bad things to happen to her. Deeply, he didn’t.

23 October. ‘Hello, Kiki, it’s Fredric Stahl. Would you like to go to a movie?’

‘Oh yes, I
would
like to. When?’

‘How about tonight?’

‘Tonight?’

‘If you can, or maybe Friday if you can’t.’

‘Well, I’d like to do
something
.’

‘Tonight is possible?’

‘What time?’

‘I’ll come and get you at eight – it’s an eight-thirty show.’

The line buzzed. ‘Eight will be fine.’

‘I’ll be there then.’

Maybe he was taking a chance, he thought – Kiki had some connection to the baroness and her crowd – but not much of a chance, and he was terribly lonely. According to Kiki, it was her parents who’d been invited to the von Reschke cocktail party, she had stood in for them, and she’d had no good words for the baroness’s friends, preferring the company of the Bohemian crowd on the artist’s barge. So he hoped. And then, after all, if she were part of some sinister plot against him, what could she do? Anyhow, he didn’t think she was manipulating him, he just didn’t.

It had rained, and it would rain again, on that chilly October evening. And as Fredric Stahl made his way through the Seventh Arrondissement, the city once again captured his heart: bittersweet autumn air, fallen leaves plastered to the cobblestones, lamplit rooms seen from the street – a night that sent his spirit aloft in a kind of melancholy elation. When he turned a corner, he discovered a woman wearing a raincoat over lounging pyjamas, waiting in a doorway while her spaniel visited the base of a streetlamp. Passing by, Stahl wished her a good evening. ‘It is that, monsieur,’ she said, with a conspirator’s smile. ‘And a good evening to you.’

Stahl had chosen a movie theatre near Kiki’s apartment so they could walk. It wasn’t that he wanted to see a particular movie, he wanted to go to the movies, and walking there was part of it. The theatre was showing
Algiers
, a Hollywood remake of
Pépé le Moko
, with the French Charles Boyer and Stahl’s fellow Austrian Hedy Lamarr. As they left Kiki’s building he told her what was playing. ‘You haven’t seen it, have you?’

‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘But I wanted to.’ As the first few drops of rain fell and the wind rattled the leaves left on the trees, she took his arm.

In the darkened theatre, an usherette with a torch led them down the aisle to, at Kiki’s direction, an empty row. Almost immediately, a Pathé newsreel began. Stern music accompanied the narrator’s voice for a marrying-and-murdering insurance salesman who’d been arrested in Toulon. Excited strings as bicyclists raced through a village street in the mountains. A few bars of triumphant brass – a perfume heiress in goggles and leather headgear rode on the wing of a monoplane. Then the drums and trumpets of war as Franco’s Moorish soldiers charged across a dry riverbed. Finally a Wagnerian march, the volume much louder now. ‘In Berlin, Adolf Hitler takes the salute …,’ said the narrator as German soldiers, tall and fiercely serious, goose-stepped past a reviewing stand draped with swastikas. ‘Fucking
Boche
,’ said a voice in the theatre. ‘Shhh!’ said another. Then it was time for Charles Boyer.

As the famous jewel thief Pépé le Moko, and a fugitive from French justice, Charles Boyer is trapped in the Casbah, the ‘native quarter’ of Algiers. ‘A melting pot for all the sins of the earth,’ said the voice-over. As the credits ran, Kiki took Stahl’s hand and held it on top of the raincoat folded on her lap. Stahl moved closer so that their shoulders were touching. When Hedy Lamarr came on the screen, Kiki, her mouth by Stahl’s ear, whispered, ‘Do you think she is very beautiful?’ Her breath smelled of licorice, with just a bare hint of wine.

‘Everyone says she is,’ Stahl said.

‘Does she always wear so much make-up?’

‘We all do.’

A tough police inspector arrives from Paris. He’s come to arrest the wily jewel thief. Kiki moved Stahl’s hand from the folded raincoat to the top of her wool skirt and the soft thigh beneath it. He was stirred by this and wanted to respond, but Kiki had hold of his left hand and his right was too far away. It occurred to him that he might say something, then it occurred to him that there was nothing to say, and a turn of the head to look at her wasn’t the right thing either. So he watched the movie.

Where the French inspector leads a search through the narrow streets of the Casbah. As they approach one of Pépé’s many hideouts, three beggars in three adjacent doorways rap their staves on the street doors, warning Pépé and his gang. It was getting very warm where Kiki’s hand held his. She changed positions and gave him a delicate squeeze, which he returned. Now Inspector Slimane, an Algerian detective in a tarboosh, and Pépé’s amiable opponent, is telling the jewel thief that the date of his future arrest is written on the wall of his office. Stahl was absorbed in the clever dialogue so it surprised him when Kiki, with a decorous parting of her legs, moved his hand beneath her skirt, where it rested partly on the hem of her silk panties, on her garter belt, and on the smooth skin of her inner thigh. Now Stahl had to turn and look at her. But Kiki’s profile showed nothing, her eyes were fixed on the screen, she was watching
Algiers
, whatever might be going on elsewhere had nothing to do with her.

Meanwhile, Hedy Lamarr dines with her awful husband and his awful friends in a little restaurant. The shafts of light from the projector shifted as the images changed, the sound track crackled beneath the voices of the actors, and Kiki moved Stahl’s hand to the very centre of her damp panties, and then beneath. Making sure he stayed where he was, she changed hands, her left hand set on top of his, while her right hand crept under his raincoat, nudged his legs apart, and, slowly and with one or two hesitations as she struggled with the buttons, undid his fly. From Stahl, a kind of pleasurable sigh, very brief and completely spontaneous. Surprise. Nice surprise. And then, raising her panties with the back of her hand, she began to move his fingers.

Again he looked at her. At first her face was without expression but then, slowly, her eyelids lowered and her lips parted as her fingers rode on top of his. Her other hand tightened where she held him, her chin lifted and her mouth opened, a little, a little more, and then completely as she exhaled and a soft, breathy
ah
escaped her.

Now the hand that had gripped him hard relaxed, as Kiki rested the back of her head against the theatre seat. That grip, he realized, had not been meant for his pleasure – she’d simply held on to something that excited her while she watched whatever movie played behind her closed eyes. The jewel thief Pépé le Moko is led into a police trap – tempted by his passion for Hedy Lamarr, and for Paris, which he longs to see once more. The ship that will sail for France pulls away from the pier, Pépé runs from the police and is shot. As he lies dying in Slimane’s arms, the detective says, ‘We thought you were going to escape.’ Then, Pépé’s last words: ‘I have.’ Kiki took a handkerchief from the pocket of her raincoat and wiped her eyes.

26 October. Jules Deschelles telephoned and told Stahl that it would be three weeks before Joinville had space available for them. He’d tried to argue but Paramount wouldn’t budge. So Stahl and the others would learn their lines, continue the read-throughs, then start to rehearse. Deschelles regretted the delay, but maybe all for the best as Jean Avila and his cameraman would be going off to Syria and the Lebanon to scout locations. In fact, Deschelles might join them. Of course, if those countries didn’t work out, they could always go to Morocco.

An hour later, as Stahl was about to leave for Joinville, a call from Mme Boulanger at the Warner publicity office. After a few opening pleasantries she said, ‘I have an interview for you. It’s tomorrow – whenever you can be available.’

‘Who’s doing the interview?’

‘I doubt you know him. His name is Loubec, he writes sports and entertainment features for
Le Matin
.’

Again
, Le Matin. ‘I wonder if that’s a good idea,’ Stahl said, treading carefully. ‘What with all the politics.’

‘You’ll manage,’ Mme Boulanger said firmly. ‘It’s my job to get press coverage, Monsieur Stahl – you aren’t going to turn me down, are you?’

‘What’s he like, this Loubec?’

From Mme Boulanger, a theatrical sigh that meant,
Oh no, he’s being a prima donna
. ‘I’ve run into him before, he’s rather workmanlike, gets the information, writes it down. Just another journalist, dear. I’ll hold your hand if you like.’

Stahl hesitated, then said, ‘I guess I should do it. Where do we meet?’

‘In your hotel, he’s bringing a photographer.’

‘All right. I’ll likely be back from Joinville around five and I’ll see him at – six?’

‘I’ll let him know. If you don’t hear from me it’ll be at six. How’s everything else going? How’s
Avant la Guerre
?’

‘It’s
Après la Guerre
, and the omens aren’t so bad.’

‘Superstitious, love? Don’t dare to say it’s good? Oh you actors! You’re probably excited.’

‘Too soon, too soon for that. Thanks for getting me the interview, Madame Boulanger.’

‘You’re welcome, but the truth is, he came to me.’

27 October. Loubec was prompt. They called up from the desk and Stahl said he would be right down – the idea of being interviewed ‘in his suite at the Claridge’ somehow felt wrong to him. He wore slacks and a dark-blue sweater – after twenty minutes of trial and error with his wardrobe – and had ordered up a good stiff whisky and soda. He was tense about this interview, apprehensive, and the drink helped.

They met at the desk and Stahl led the way to a table in the nearly deserted hotel bar. The photographer, bearded, bored, and rumpled, sat at the neighbouring table and fiddled with his camera. ‘Would you care to have something?’ Stahl said, looking from one to the other.