The World at Night

living? What can I do?”

“What’s wrong with what you’ve always done?”

“Make films?”

“Yes.”

“What-The Lost Rhine Maiden? Hitler Goes to Oxford?”

“Now Jean-Claude …”

“I’m not going to collaborate.”

“Why would you? I’m not. I’m making lightbulbs. Your lights will burn out, you’ll need replacements. But they won’t be Nazi lightbulbs, will they?”

Casson hadn’t thought of it quite that way.

“Look,” Langlade said, “your barber-what’s he going to do under the Occupation? He’s going to cut hair. Is that collaboration?”

“No.”

“Well, then, what’s the difference? The barbers will cut hair, the writers will write, and the producers will make films.”

Casson gave up on the noodles and put his fork down by the plate. “I won’t be able to make what I want,” he said.

“Oh shit, Jean-Claude, when did any of us ever do what we wanted?”

The waiter appeared with two plates of diced vegetables. Langlade rubbed his hands with pleasure. “Now this is what I come here for.”

Casson stared at it. A carrot, a mushroom, a scallion, something, something else. As Langlade refilled their glasses he said, “I’ll tell you a secret. Whoever can discover a wine that goes with Chinese food will be very rich.”

They ate in silence. The Chinese waiter gave up on the racing form, and his newspaper rattled as he turned the page. “What was it like here?” Casson said.

“In May and June? Terrible. At first, a great shock. You know, Jean-Claude, the Gallic genius for evasion-we will not think unpleasant thoughts. Well, that’s fine, until the bill comes. What they believed here I don’t know, perhaps it wouldn’t matter if the Germans won. There were women to be made love to, bottles of wine to be opened, questions of life and the universe to be discussed, important things. If we lost a war, well, too bad, but what would it matter? The politicians would change the color of their ties, possibly one would have to learn a new sort of national anthem. After all, the shits that run the country are the shits that run the country-how bad could it be to have a new set?

“Ah but then. We sat here in Paris the second week in May, reading the departmental numbers on the license plates. It started in the extreme north-one day the streets were full of 10s from the Aube. By midweek we had the 55s from the Meuse and, a day or two later, the 52s from the Haute-Marne. And no matter what the radio said, it began to dawn on us that something was moving south. And so on a Thursday, the first week in June, a great mob-can you guess?”

“Marched on the Elysee Palace.”

“Descended on the luggage department at the Galeries Lafayette.”

Casson shook his head, ate some of the diced vegetables, poured himself some more rose. By the end of the second glass it wasn’t too bad. “Tell me, Bernard, in your opinion, how long is this going to go on?”

“Years.”

“Two years?”

“More like twenty.”

Casson was stunned. If that were true, life could not be suspended, left in limbo until the Germans went home. It would have to be lived, and one would have to decide how. “Twenty years?” he said, as much to himself as Langlade.

“Who is going to defeat them? I mean really defeat them-throw them out. The answer hasn’t changed since 1917-the Americans. Look what happened here, a German army of five hundred thousand attacked a nation with armed forces of five and a half million and beat them in five days. Only the Americans can deal with that, Jean- Claude. But you know, I don’t see it happening. Even if Roosevelt decided tomorrow that America had to be involved, even if the senators saw any point in spilling Texas blood for some froggy with a waxed mustache, even then, it’s years to build the tanks. And get them here-how? Flown by Babar? No, everything has changed, the rules are different. Your life is your country now, my friend. You are a citizen of the nation Jean-Claude, and you will have to learn to live on those terms or you will not survive.”

Langlade had shaken his fork at Casson as he was making his point, now he caught himself doing it and put it down on his plate. Cleared his throat. Took a sip of wine. The waiter turned another page of the newspaper. Casson looked up to see one corner of Langlade’s mouth twist up in a sudden smile. “Hitler Goes to Oxford indeed!” he said under his breath, laughing to himself.

“And there he meets Laurel and Hardy,” Casson said. “The college servants.”

It was not the first time he’d had to glue his life back together.

The banks had resumed operations in July, but there had been problems, confusion, and for some reason the checks to the landlord for the office on the rue Marbeuf had not gone through. The landlord, a fat little creature, shoulders back, tummy sucked in, said “Such difficult times, Monsieur Casson, how was one to know … anything? Perhaps now, life will become, ah, a little more orderly.”

He meant: you attempted to take advantage of war and Occupation by not paying your rent promptly, but I’m smarter than that, monsieur!

And he also meant: Orderly.

Which was to say, Petain and everything he believed in-by September Casson had learned to recognize it from the slightest inflection. France, the theory went, deserved to be conquered by Germany because it was such a corrupt, wicked nation, with a national character so degenerate it had stormed the Bastille in 1789, a national character deformed by alcohol, by promiscuity, by loss of the old moral values.

He’s right, Casson thought, one September evening, gently improving the angle of a pair of legs in silk stockings. The radio was playing dance music, then Petain came on, from Vichy. The usual phrases: “We, Philippe Petain,” and “France, the country of which I am the incarnation.”

“Ah, the old general,” she said.

“Mmm,” Casson answered.

They waited, idling, while Petain spoke. Waiting was a style just then-it will all go away, eventually.

“You have warm hands,” she said.

“Mmm.”

Lazy and slow, just barely touching each other. Could there be a better way, Casson wondered, to get through a speech? When the dance music returned-French dance music, plinky-plinky- plink, none of this depraved “jazz,” but upright, honest music, so Maman and Papa could take a two-step around the parlor after dinner-he was almost sorry.

He missed Gabriella. Once the padlock was removed he’d found the note she’d left for him. It was dated 11 June-the day after Italy had declared war on an already defeated France. “I cannot stay here now,” she’d written. Casson remembered the barracks where he’d heard the news. The soldiers were bitter, enraged-what cowardice! The Germans had brutal souls, they did what they did, but the Italians were a Latin people, like them, and had rushed in to attack a fallen neighbor.

“I will miss you, I will miss everything,” Gabriella wrote. She would always remember him, she would pray for his safety. Now she would go back to Milan. The Paris she had longed for, it was gone forever.

Otherwise there was nothing. Mounds of pointless mail, the rooms dusty and silent. Casson sat at his desk, opened files, read papers. What to do next?

Late September it began to rain, he met a girl called Albertine, the daughter of the concierge of a building on the rue Beethoven. On market day, Thursday in Passy, he’d stood at the vegetable cart, staring balefully at a mound of broad yellow beans-there was nothing else. A conversation started, he wondered what one did to prepare these things, she offered to show him.