The World at Night (29 page)

“Right now the moon is full, Jean-Claude.”

“So it would be, what, fourteen days?”

“Well, yes, at least. Then there are people who have to be talked to, and, all the various complications.”

A woman in traditional Breton costume—black dress, white hat with wings—was demonstrating a waffle iron, pouring yellow batter from a cup into the iron, then heating it over a small gas burner.

“All right,” he said. “There’s a chance I’ll get an
Ausweis.
In a few weeks. Maybe.”

“Can you wait?”

“I’m not sure. Things, things are going on.”

“What things, Jean-Claude? It’s important to tell me.”

“I’m under pressure to work for them. I mean, really work for them.”

“Can you refuse?”

“Perhaps, I’m not sure. I’ve been over it and over it, probably the best thing for me is to slip quietly into the ZNO, pick up Citrine, then go out—to Spain or Portugal. Once we’re there, we’ll find some country that will take us. I can remember May of last year—then it mattered where you went. Now it doesn’t.”

They stood together at a railing, looking out from the dress department over the center of the store. Two floors below, the crowds shifted slowly through a maze of counters packed with gloves, belts, and handbags. Silk scarves were draped on racks, and womens’ hats, with veils and bows and clusters of cherries or grapes, were hung on the branches of wooden trees. “If you leave before the
Ausweis
comes,” Véronique said, “and there’s some way you can arrange to have it sent over to your office, it would be very important for us to have it. For somebody, it could mean everything.”

“I will try,” he said.

“About the other, situation, I’ll be in touch with you. Soon as I can.”

They kissed each other good-bye, one cheek then the other, and Casson walked away. Looking back over his shoulder he saw her smile, then she waved to him and mouthed the little phrase that meant
have
courage.

It rained. Thirty-three Wehrmacht divisions advanced in Yugoslavia. Others crossed the border into Greece. Stuka bombers destroyed the city of Belgrade. An interzonal card from Lyons arrived at a Paris café, addressed to J. Casson. “Waiting, waiting and thinking about you. Please come soon.” Signed with the initial X. A dinner party at the house of Philippe and Françoise Pichard. His brother, wounded a year earlier in the fighting in Belgium, had never returned home, but they had word of him, a prisoner of war, doing forced labor in an underground armaments factory in Aachen. Bruno was trying to pull strings in order to get him out.

It cleared. Fine days; windy, cool, sunny. Zagreb taken. The RAF blew up the Berlin opera house. Bulgarian and Italian troops joined the attack on Yugoslavia. Casson had lunch with Hugo Altmann at a black-market restaurant called Chez Nini, in an alley behind a butcher shop out in Auteuil. Fillets of lamb with baby turnips, then a Saint-Marcellin. Now that he was in contact with SD officers, Altmann was afraid of him—that meant money, replacing what he’d given Fischfang, and a meaningful contribution to the escape fund. Altmann gave his tenth hearty laugh of the afternoon. “My secretary will have a check for you tomorrow, it’s no problem, no problem at all. We
believe
in this picture, that’s what matters.”

It rained. Dripped slowly from the branches of the trees on the boulevards. Casson went to see Marcel Carné’s
Le Jour Se Lève
at the Madeleine theatre, script by Jacques Prévert, Jean Gabin playing the lead. The Occupation authority announced the opening of the Institute of Jewish Studies. The inaugural exhibition, to be presented by a well-known curator, would show how Jews dominated the world through control of newspapers, films, and financial markets. Marie-Claire telephoned, Bruno was impossible, she didn’t know what to do. “Some afternoon you could come for tea,” she said. “It rains like this and I am so sad. I walk around the apartment in my underwear and look at myself in the mirrors.” Fighting around Mount Olympus in Greece. Bulgarian troops in Macedonia. On a small errand he went out to the Trinité quarter, a street of fortune-tellers and dusty antique shops. He walked head down through the rain, dodging the puddles, staying under awnings when he could. A black Citroën swung sharply to the curb, Franz Millau climbed out of the passenger side and opened the back door. “Come for a ride,” he said with a smile. “It’s no good walking today, too wet.”

They drove to a small villa in the back streets of one of the drearier suburbs, Vernouillet, squat brick houses with little gardens. The driver was introduced as Albert Singer, a blunt-headed, fair-haired man so heavy in the neck and shoulders his shirt collar was pulled out of shape around the button. At the villa, Millau asked him to make a fire. He tried, using wooden crates broken into kindling, newspapers, and two wet birch logs that were never going to burn anything. Stubborn, he squatted in front of the fireplace, lighting match after match to the corner of a damp section of the
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung.
For a time, Millau watched him with disbelief. Finally he said, “Singer, isn’t there any dry paper?”

“I’ll look,” Singer said, struggling to his feet.

“What can you do?” said Millau, resigned. “He does what I tell him, so I have to keep him around.”

Casson nodded sympathetically. The room smelled of disuse, of mildew and old rugs; something about it made his heart beat faster. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No. In fact I will join you.” Millau got out a cigar and went to work on it. With the lights off and shutters closed, the parlor was in shadow. “Did you see the papers this morning?” Millau said.

“Yes.”

“Awful, no?”

“What?”

“The bombing. Out at the Citroën plant. Three hundred dead—and to no particular purpose. The assembly line was up and running again by ten in the morning. Casson, no matter your politics, no matter what you think of us, you have a moral obligation to stop such things if it is in your power to do so.”

Casson made a gesture—the world did what it did, it didn’t ask him first.

“I’ll let you in on one secret—we have a special envoy in London now, trying to work out, at least a cease-fire. At least let the horror stop for a moment, so we can think it over, so we can maybe just talk for a time. You can’t find
that
wrong, can you?”

“No.”

“I mean, we must be honest with each other. We’re fellow human beings, maybe even fellow Europeans—certainly it’s something we could discuss, but I won’t insist on that.”

“Europeans, of course.”

“Now look, Casson, we need your help or this whole thing is going to blow up in our faces. The people I work for in Berlin have taken it into their heads that you’re willing to cooperate with us and they’ve stuck me with the job of making that cooperation a reality. So, I don’t really have a choice.”

Singer returned with some newspaper, crumpled up a few pages and wedged them under the grate. He lit the paper, the room immediately smelled like smoke.

“Flue open?”

“Ja.”

Millau made a face. Reached into an inside pocket, took out an identity card, handed it over. Casson swallowed. It was his passport photograph. Underneath, the name Georges Bourdon. “Now this gentleman was to be used by the English, and I mean
used,
to assist a terrorist action that is planned to take place in the Paris region. The bombing last night killed three hundred Frenchmen—what these people want to do, and we aren’t sure exactly what that is, will no doubt kill a few hundred more. What we need from you is to play the part of this Bourdon person for a single night, then we’re quits. You will spend a few hours in a field, is all that is required, then I can report back to Berlin that all went well, that you tried but didn’t do much of a job, and in future we’re going to work with somebody else.

“I’m an honorable man, Monsieur Casson, I don’t care if you want to sit out this war and make movies—after all, I go to the movies—as long as you don’t do anything to hurt us. Meanwhile, if things turn out as I believe they will, Europe is going to be a certain way for the foreseeable future, and those people who have helped us out when we asked for their help are going to be able to ask for a favor some day if they need to. We have long memories, and we appreciate civilized behavior. Now, I’ve said everything I can say—”

There was a wisp of white smoke floating along the ceiling. Singer gazed upward from where he was squatting in front of the fire.

“You stupid ass,” Millau said.

“I’m sorry,” Singer said, standing and rubbing his hands. “It’s too wet to burn, sir.”

Millau put a hand against the side of his head as though he were getting a headache. “Now look,” he said to Casson. “In a few days we’ll be in contact with you, we’ll tell you where and when and all the rest of it. Keep the card, you’ll need it. Somebody will ask you if you’re Georges Bourdon, and you’ll say that you are, and show them your identity card. So, now, you know most of what I can tell you. Don’t say yes, don’t say no, just go home and think it over. What’s best for you, what’s best for the French people. But I would not be wholly honest if I didn’t tell you that we need a French person, somebody approximately of your age and circumstance, to be at a certain place on a certain date in the very near future.”

He paused a moment, trying to decide exactly how to say what came next. “You have us in a somewhat difficult position, Monsieur Casson, I hope you understand that.”

He took a train back to Paris, got off at the Gare St.-Lazare at twenty minutes after six. For a time he was not clear about what to do next, in fact stood on the platform between tracks as the crowds flowed around him. Finally there was a man’s voice—Casson never saw him— saying quietly, “Don’t stand here like this, they’ll run you in. Understand?”

Casson moved off. To a rank of telephone booths by the entry to the station. Outside, people were hurrying through the rain in the gathering dusk. Casson stepped into a phone booth, put the receiver to his ear and listened to the thin whine of the dial tone. Then he began to thumb through the Paris telephone book on a shelf below the telephone. Turned to the
B
section.
Bois. Bonneval. Bosquet. Botine.
Boulanger. Bourdon.

Albert, André, Bernard, Claudine, Daniel—Médecin, Georges.

18, rue Malher.
42 30 89.

Seeing it in the little black letters and numbers, Casson felt a chill inside him. As though hypnotized, he put a
jeton
in the slot and dialed the number. It rang. And again. A third time. Once more. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Casson put the receiver back on its hook. Outside, a woman in a green hat tapped on the door of the booth with a coin. “Monsieur?” she said when he looked at her.

He left. Walked east on the rue de Rome. The street was crowded, people shopping, or going home from work, faces closed and private, eyes on the pavement, trying to get through one more day. Casson came to a decision, turned abruptly, hurried back to the telephones at the Gare St.-Lazare.
Véronique.
He didn’t remember exactly where she lived—he’d dropped her off the night of Marie-Claire’s dinner party a year ago—but it was in the Fifth somewhere, the student quarter. He remembered Marie-Claire telling him, eyes cast to heaven in gentle despair at the curious life her little sister had chosen to live.
Yes, well,
Casson thought.

It took more than the polite number of rings for Véronique to answer.

“Yes?”

“It’s Jean-Claude.”

Guarded. “How nice to hear from you.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Very well.”

“Where should we meet?”

“There’s a café at the Maubert market. Le Relais. In a half-hour, say.”

“See you then.”

“Good-bye.”

She wore a trenchcoat and a beret, a tiny gold cross on a chain at the base of her throat. She was cold in the rain, sat hunched over the edge of a table at the rear of the workers’ café. Casson told her what had happened, starting with Altmann’s dinner at the Heininger. He handed her the Georges Bourdon identity card.

She studied it a moment. “Rue Malher,” she said.

“Just another street. He could be rich, poor, in between.”

“Yes. And for profession,
salesman.
Also, anything.”

Véronique handed the card back.

“What do you think Millau meant when he said I’d put them in a difficult position?”

She thought a moment. “Perhaps—you have to remember these people work for organizations, and these places have a life of their own. Department stores, symphony orchestras, spy services—at heart the same. So, perhaps, this man told a little fib. Claimed he had somebody who could be used a certain way. Thinking, maybe, that such a situation could be developed, in the future, so he’d just take credit for it a little early. On a certain day, perhaps, when he needed a success. Then, suddenly, they’re yelling
produce the goods!
Well, now what?”

Casson stubbed out a cigarette. The café smelled like sour wine and wet dogs, a quiet place, people spoke in low voices.
“Merde,”
he said.