The World at Night

gone past, one of them ran to catch up with him and banged on his door. “Stop! Is that gasoline in the back?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well then, back the truck up. We need it.”

Casson shifted into reverse, rolled back until he was even with the tank. A commander climbed out of the hatch, then vaulted to the ground. “That’s French fire!” he shouted. “Idiots! Clowns! What are they doing, shooting up here?”

“I assure you that it is not French fire, Lieutenant.” From his insignia, Casson could seee he was a major.

“What, Belgian? English?”

“No.”

Two soldiers wrestled a drum of gasoline to the edge of the truck, then Casson helped them to lower it onto its side. One of them attached a hose to the barrel and ran the other end into the tank’s fuel pipe. Overhead, the sound of fabric ripping and the top of a tree whipped like a rag in a hurricane. Gasoline sloshed on Casson’s shoes. The major had a lit cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “Careful there, you.” An aristocrat, talking to his groom, Casson thought. The major stepped back, his high boots supple and glistening. This was still the cavalry, the hulking tanks were simply machines they were forced to use.

A staff car came speeding through the column and skidded to a stop. A junior officer leaped out, ran up to the major and saluted. “Major Mollet, sir. The general’s compliments. Why are we under fire?”

“It is German artillery.”

“Sir.”

The officer ran back to the car. The gasoline drum was empty, Casson started to screw the cap back on the opening as the soldiers coiled the hose. From the car, an angry shout. Then the back door flew open. The junior officer ran around to that side and was joined by the driver. Casson looked down, afraid to stare. At the car, a polite struggle was under way-a muttered curse, a loud whisper. At last they managed to extricate the general from the backseat. He was enormously fat, his breath sighed in and out as he walked over to the major. The major saluted. “General Lebois, sir.”

“Mollet.” The general touched the brim of his hat with a forefinger. “What’s going on here?”

Two more explosions on the hillside. In the light, Casson could see the general’s skin, a web of broken purple veins on his cheeks.

“The Wehrmacht, sir.”

“They can’t be this far south.”

“Respectfully, sir, I believe they are.”

“No, it’s the damn English. All excited for no reason at all and shooting in the dark.”

“Sir.”

“Send a motorcycle courier over there. Somebody who speaks English.”

“Yes, sir.”

A shell landed on the road, about three hundred yards ahead of them. A truck had been hit. As it started to burn, there were shouts of “get water,” and “push it off the road.” Casson could see dark shapes running back and forth. The general growled, deep in his chest, like a dog that doesn’t want to move from its place on the rug.

The major said, “Perhaps it would be faster if we fired back.”

“No,” the general said. “Save the ammunition. Waste not, want not.”

“Very good, sir,” the major said.

Casson returned to his truck. A glance in the mirror, he could see the two aides, trying to get the general back in his car. Casson moved up the column, working his way around tanks, tapping his horn when people got in the way. It was slow, difficult work, he never stopped shifting gears. He had to wait while one tank attempted to push a second off the road. It had been hit and was on fire, orange flames and boiling black smoke. By the light of the fire Casson could read the name Loulou stenciled on its turret.

Dawn. The sky pale, swept with the wisps of white scud that marked the high wind blowing in from the Channel.

The road to the fort on the heights of Sedan worked its way around the edges of the city, then climbed past plowed fields and old forest. At the gate to the fort, the Peugeot was waved through but Casson was stopped. The sentries were drunk and unshaven. “What brings you here?” one of them said.

“We’re making movies.”

“Movies! You know Hedy Lamarr?”

“Dog dick,” said another. “Not those kinds of movies. War movies.”

“Oh. Then what the hell are you doing up here?”

The second man shook his head, walked over to the truck and offered Casson a bottle through the window. “Don’t let him get to you,” he said. “Have some of this.”

Casson raised the bottle to his lips and drank. Sharp and sour. The man laughed as he took the bottle back. “Come and see us, squire, after this shit’s done with.”

The hard Parisian sneer in the voice made Casson smile. “I will.”

“You can find us up in Belleville, at The Pig’s Ass.”

“See you then,” Casson said, shoving the clutch in.

“Red front!” they called after him.

Fortress at Sedan!

Raising and saluting the flag, morning reveille played on a bugle. Domestic life in the barracks- washing clothes, shining boots. Here are the cooks, preparing breakfast for the hungry poilus. A cannon, the famous French 75, is aimed out over the Meuse valley. A vigilant sentry keeps watch with binoculars-no Germans yet, but we’re ready for them when they come.

Captain Degrave had an old friend serving with an artillery regiment and the gunners fed them breakfast. Casson ached from the driving, he was filthy with oily soot, and he wanted to shave more than anything else in the world, but the food seemed to bring him back to life. The gunners were countrymen from the Limousin. They’d stewed some hens in a huge iron kettle, added spring onions and wild garlic from the pastures outside the fort, found the last of the winter carrots in an “abandoned” root cellar, added Tunisian wine, a lump of fat, and a fistful of salt, then served it smoking hot in a metal soup plate. Afterward he sat back against a stone wall and had a hand- rolled cigarette stuffed with pipe tobacco. Maybe the world wasn’t as bad as it seemed.

It was strange, he thought, to be suddenly pulled from one life and dropped down into another. In Paris it was a May morning, Marie-Claire and Bruno probably making love by the open window that looked out over the Bois de Boulogne. She was, he recalled, at best obliging about it, she really didn’t like to do it in the morning; she had to be courted. And then-a little Marie-Claire punishment-she wouldn’t take off her nightgown. She’d pull it up to her chin, then stick her tongue out, saying that if you insisted on making love like a peasant, well then by God you could just make love like a peasant. That was, at least, how she started out. As always with Marie-Claire, things got better later.

Of course it might be different with Bruno, but he doubted it. My God, he thought, it’s like another world. Another planet. The lawyers, Arnaud and Langlade, would be going off to their offices in an hour or so, smelling like cologne, their ties pulled up just right, flirting with the women they passed in the street.

Casson stood, looked out over the wall at the early sun just lighting up the Meuse, burning off the valley mist. Bibi Lachette would still be asleep, he thought. She seemed like the type who slept late, dead to the world. Would she do it in the morning? Mmm-no, not it-but something. Generous, Bibi. He certainly did like her. Not love exactly, it was more like they were two of a kind, and, he thought, in some parts of the world that might be even better than love.

From the heights the river didn’t look like much of a barrier, it was too pretty. Placid blue water that ran in gentle curves, you’d do better to paint it than to try and fight behind it. What had one of the gunners called it? Just a little pipi du chat-a cat pee. Christ, he thought, what the hell am I doing in a war?

Sunset. They’d filmed the commanding officer reviewing a company of infantry, backs stiff, thumbs on the seams of their trouser legs. Then Degrave had asked him to take the film over to the regimental headquarters building where the courier from Paris was due at seven to pick it up.

The road was made of cut stone and ran along a parade ground lined with cannon from Napoleon’s time. He