The World at Night

The affair floated in the broad gray area between commerce and appetite. Albertine was not beautiful, quite the opposite. Some day, perhaps, she would glow with motherhood, but not now. At nineteen she was pinched and red, with hen-strangler’s hands and the squint of an angry farmwife. That was, Casson thought, the root of the problem: there was a good deal of Norman peasant blood in the population of Paris and in big Albertine it ran true to type. She came to his apartment, revealed the mystery of the yellow beans-one boiled them, voila! — took off her dress, sat on the edge of the bed, folded her arms, and glared at him.

The time with Albertine was late afternoon, usually Thursday. Then, before she went home, she would make them something to eat. In the old days his dinners had drifted down from heaven, like manna. Life was easy, attractive men were fed. There were dinner parties, or a woman to take to a restaurant, or he’d go to a bistro, Chez Louis or Mere Louise, where they knew him and made a fuss when he came in the door.

That was over. Now the Germans ate the chickens and the cream, and food was rationed for the French. The coupons Casson was issued would buy 3 1/2 ounces of rice a month, 7 ounces of margarine, 8 ounces of pasta, and a pound of sugar. The sugar he divided-most to Albertine, the remainder for coffee. One had to take the ration stamps to the cafe in the morning.

So mostly it was vegetables-potatoes, onions, beets, cabbages. No butter, and only a little salt, but one survived. Of course there was butter, what the Germans didn’t want-one sometimes saw a soldier eating a stick of it, like an ice-cream cone, while walking down the street-could be bought on the black market. He would give Albertine some money and she would return with cheese, or a piece of ham, or a small square of chocolate. He never asked for an accounting and she never offered. What she kept for herself she earned, he felt, by thrift and ingenuity.

The women he usually made love to were sophisticated, adept. Not Albertine. A virgin, she demanded to be taught “all these things” and other than an occasional What?!! turned out to be an exceptionally diligent student. She had rough skin and smelled like laundry soap, but she held nothing back, gasped with pleasure, was irresistibly shameless, and hugged him savagely so that he wouldn’t drift up through the ceiling and out into the night. “Only in war,” she said, “does this happen between people like us.”

Casson went to the office but the phone didn’t ring.

It didn’t ring, and it didn’t ring, and it didn’t ring. The big studios were gone, there was no money, nobody knew what to do next. Weddings? The director Berthot claimed to have filmed three since July. Rich provincials, he claimed, that was the secret. Watch the engagement announcements in places like Lyons. The couple arrive separately. The nervous papa looks at his watch. The flowers are delivered. The priest, humble and serious, greets the grandmother. Then, the kiss. Then, the restaurant. A toast!

Casson glued two papers together by licking the edges and rolling tobacco into a cigarette. Working carefully, he managed to get it lit with a single match. “Can you make me one of those?” Berthot asked hungrily.

Casson, that devil-may-care man-about-town, did it. When it took two tries to light the ragged thing, Casson smiled bravely-matches were no problem for him. “I had an uncle,” Berthot said, “up in Caen. Wanted to turn me into a shoemaker when I was a kid.” He didn’t have to go on, Casson understood, the shoemakers had plenty of work now.

The October rains sluiced down, there was no heat on the rue Marbeuf. He had enough in the bank to last through November’s rent, then, that was that. What was what? Christ, he didn’t know. Sit behind his desk and hold his breath until someone ran in shaking a fistful of money or he died of failure. He went to the movies in the afternoon, the German newsreels were ghastly. A London street on fire, the German narrator’s voice arrogant and cocksure: “Look at the destruction, the houses going up in flames! This is what happens to those who oppose Germany’s might.” Going back out into the gray street in mid-afternoon, the Parisians were morose. The narrator of the newsreel had told the truth.

He answered an advertisement in Le Matin. “Distribute copies of a daily bulletin to newsstands.” It was called Aujourd’hui a Paris and listed all the movies and plays and nightclubs and musical performances. The editor was a Russian out in Neuilly who called himself Bob. “You’ll need a bicycle,” he said. Casson said, “It’s not a problem,” remembering his conversation with Langlade. But he never went back-inevitably he would encounter people he knew, they would turn away, pretend they hadn’t seen him.

Langlade. Of course that was always the answer, one’s friends. He’d heard that Bruno and Marie-Claire were doing very well, that Bruno had in fact received delivery of the MGs left on the Antwerp docks, that he now supplied French and Italian cars to German officers serving in Paris. But something kept him from going to his friends-not least that they were the sort of friends who really wouldn’t have any idea how to help him. They’d always looked up to him. They did the most conventional things: manufactured lightbulbs, imported cars, wrote contracts, bought costume jewelry, while he made movies. No, that just wouldn’t work. They would offer him money-how much? they’d wonder. And, after it was gone, what then?

28 October, 1940.

He’d brought his copy of Bel Ami to the rue Marbeuf as office reading-he’d always wanted to make a film of de Maupassant, everyone did. Then too, he simply had to accept the fact that one didn’t find abandoned newspapers in the cafes until after three.

11:35. He could now leave the office, headed for a cafe he’d discovered back in the Eighth near the St.- Augustin Metro, where they had decent coffee and particularly good bread. Where he could pretend-until noon but not a minute later-that he was taking a late casse-croute, midmorning snack, when in fact it was lunch. And the waiter was an old man who remembered Night Run and The Devil’s Bridge. “Ah, now those,” he’d say, “were movies. Perhaps a little more of the bread, Monsieur Casson.”

Casson’s hand was on the doorknob when the telephone rang.

He ran to the desk, then forced himself to wait for the end of the second ring before he picked it up and said “Hello?” Not disturbed, exactly, simply unable to hide the fact that his concentration had been elsewhere, that he’d been busy-perhaps in a meeting, perhaps in mid-sentence as he reached back for the receiver.

“Jean Casson?”

“Yes.”

“Hugo Altmann.” The line hummed for a moment. “Yes? Hello?”

“Altmann, well, of course.”

“Perhaps you don’t-remember me.”

“No, no. I was just …”

“Tell me, Casson, can you possibly cancel your lunch today?”

“Well. Yes, I could. It’s not anything I can’t reschedule.”

“Perfect! You’re still on the rue Marbeuf?”

“Yes. Twenty-six, just off the boulevard.”

“Save me parking, will you? And wait for me downstairs?”

“All right.”

“Good. Ten minutes, no more.”

“See you then.”

He ran into the bathroom down the hall and stared into the mirror above the sink. Shit! Well, not much he could do about it now-his shirt was tired, his jacket unpressed. But he’d shaved carefully that morning-he always did-his hair simply looked vaguely arty when he avoided the barber, and his shoes had been good long ago and still were. It was, he thought, his good fortune to be one of those men who couldn’t look seedy if he tried.

Altmann he remembered well. He worked for Continental, the largest of the German production companies, with offices out by Paramount in Billancourt. A film executive, typical of the breed. The practical, plodding French of the long-term expatriate-nothing fancy but nothing really wrong. Smooth manners, smooth exterior, but not sly. He was, one felt, constitutionally neat, and courtly by upbringing. Well-dressed, favoring muted tweed suits and very good ties in rich colors. The kind of hair that faded from blond to no color at all in the mid-forties, combed back at the age of seven and still in place. Scandinavian complexion, blue eyes-like a frozen lake-and a smile. Always a second drink, always enthusiastic-even about the most godawful trash because you just never knew what people were going to like-always at work. Casson had been at several meetings with him out at Continental, a lunch or two a few years ago, it was all a little hazy.