The World at Night

bottle down and signaled the patron. “What do you have for us-something good.”

The patron thought a moment. “Cognac de Champagne?”

“Yes,” Altmann said. “Two, then two more.” He turned back to Casson. “They’ll pay,” he said. “Believe me they will.”

Casson wasn’t sure what he meant. Expensive Cognac? Expensive film? Both, very likely, he thought.

This one cried. Nothing dramatic, shining eyes and “Perhaps you have a handkerchief.” He got her one, she leaned on an elbow and dabbed at her face. “Bon Dieu,” she said, more or less to herself.

He reached down and pulled the sheet and blanket up over them, it was cold in November with no heat. “You’re all right?”

“Oh yes.”

He rolled a cigarette from a tin where he kept loose tobacco and burnt shreds. They shared it, the red tip glowing in the darkness.

“Why did you cry?”

“I don’t know. Stupid things. For a moment it was a long time ago, then it wasn’t.”

“Not a girl anymore?”

She laughed. “And worse.”

“You are lovely, of course.”

“La-la-la.”

“It’s true.”

“It was. Maybe ten years ago. Now, well, the old saying goes ‘nothing’s where it used to be.’ “

From Casson, a certain kind of laugh.

After a moment, she joined in. “Well, not that.”

“You’re married?”

“Oh yes.”

“In love?”

“Now and then.”

“Two kids?”

“Three.”

They were quiet for a moment, a siren went by somewhere in the neighborhood. They waited to make sure it kept going.

“In the cafe,” she said, “what did you see?”

“In you?”

“Yes.”

“Truth?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I was, attracted.”

“To what?”

“To what. Something, maybe it doesn’t have a name. You know what goes on with you-deep eyes, and the nice legs. Right? Try to say more than that and you’re chasing desire, and you won’t catch it. ‘Oh, for me it’s a big this and a little that, this high and that low, firm, soft, hello, good-bye.’ All true, only next week you see somebody you have to have and none of it is.”

“That’s what attracted you?”

Casson laughed, his face warm. “You came in to buy cigarettes, you glanced at me. Then you decided to have a coffee. You crossed your legs a certain way. I thought, I’ll ask her to have a coffee with me.”

She didn’t answer. Put the bottom of her foot on top of his.

“You like this, don’t you?” he said softly.

“Yes,” she sighed, bittersweet, “I do like it. I like it more than anything else in the world-I think about it all day long.”

That fall the city seemed to right itself. Casson could feel it in the air, as though they had all looked in the mirror and told themselves: you have to go on with your life now. The song on the radio was from Johnny Hess. “Ca revient,” he sang-it’s all coming back. “La vie recommence, et l’espoir commence a renaitre.” Life starts again, and hope begins to be reborn.

Well, maybe that was true. Maybe that had better be true. Casson went to lunch with an editor from Gallimard, they had a big list that fall, people couldn’t get enough to read. One way to escape, though not the only one. There were long lines at the theatres-for We Are Not Married at the Ambassadeurs, or the Grand Revue at the Folies-Bergere. The Comedie-Francaise was full every night, there was racing at Auteuil, gambling at the Casino de Paris, Mozart at Concert Mayol. The Damnation of Faust at the Opera, Carmen at the Opera-Comique.

“What are you looking for?” the Gallimard editor asked. “Anything in particular?”

Casson talked about Night Run and No Way Out. What the rules were when the hero was a gangster. The editor nodded and said “Mm,” around the stem of his pipe. Then his eyes lit up and he said, “Isn’t it you who made Last Train to Athens?”

That he loved. Well, Casson thought, at least something. “Come to think of it,” the editor said, polishing his glasses with the Deux Magots’ linen napkin, “we may have just the right thing for you. Publication not scheduled until winter ‘42, but you certainly understand that that isn’t far off.”

“Too well.”

“The Stranger, it’s called.”

Casson nodded appreciatively. No problem putting that on a marquee.

“By a writer named Albert Camus, from Algiers. Do you know him?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

The editor talked about the plot and the setting, then went on to other things. Casson wrote the title on a scrap of paper. It wasn’t what he’d made, more like what he’d always wanted to make, maybe would have made if the human-predicament stuff hadn’t been thrown overboard during the hunt for money.

“Now I don’t know if this is for you,” the editor said, “but there’s a writer named Simone de Beauvoir-she has the cultural program on Radio Nationale-and she’s working on a novel …”

Now he had the scent. The next day he spent at the Synops office, where synopses of ideas for films-from novels, short stories, treatments-were kept on file. It was busy; he saw Berthot, hunting eagerly through a stack of folders. “How’s the wedding business?” he asked. Berthot looked sheepish. “I’m out of it,” he said quietly. “For the moment.” What the hell, Casson thought. Was he the last one to catch on? The war was over, it was time to go back to business.

“Hello, Casson!” Now there was a voice that caught your attention-foreign, and, by way of compensation, much too hearty. Casson looked up to see Erno Simic, the Hungarian. Or, if you liked your gossip, the “Hungarian.” A tall man, slightly stooped, a head too large for a pair of narrow shoulders, hooded eyes, a smile, meant to be ingratiating, that wasn’t. A French citizen of complex Balkan origins- no matter how many times he told you the story you could never keep it straight. Simic ran a small distribution company called Agna Film, which operated in Hungary and Romania.

“Simic,” he said. “All going well?”

“Today it is. Tell me please, Jean-Claude, we can eat together sometime soon?”

“Of course. Call me at the office?”

“I will, naturally. There is a Greek place, in the Tenth …”

Better every day, his world coming back to life.

Cold at night. None of that your side/my side diplomacy in the bed. Maybe he didn’t know her name and maybe the name she told him was a lie and maybe he did the same thing, but three in the morning found them curled and twisted and twined together in the chill air, hugging like long-lost lovers, riding each other’s bottoms through the night, arms wrapped around, hanging on to anything they could get hold of.

Cold at night, and cold in the daytime. They had everything rationed now-coal and bread and wine and cigarettes. Only work kept him from thinking about it. Somewhere out in the lawless borderlands of the 19th