The World at Night

eleven. Your Ausweis will be waiting for you at the downstairs reception.”

“Thank you,” Casson said.

“You’re welcome,” Guske said. “By the way, what did you do during the May campaign? Were you recalled to military service?”

“No,” Casson said. “I started out to go south, then I gave it up and stayed in Paris. The roads …”

“Yes. Too bad, really, this kind of thing has to happen. We’re neighbors, after all, I’m sure we can do better than this.” He stood, offered a hand, he had a warm, powerful grip. “Forgive me, Herr Casson, I must tell you-we do expect you to return, so, please, no wanderlust. Some people here are not so understanding as I am, and they’ll haul you back by your ears.”

He winked at Casson, gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder as he ushered him out of the office.

Casson couldn’t reach Citrine by telephone. A clerk answered at the hotel desk, told him that guests at that establishment did not receive phone calls-maybe he should try the Ritz, and banged the receiver down. So Casson took the Metro, out past the Pere-Lachaise cemetery, walked for what seemed like miles through a neighborhood of deserted factories, finally found the place, then read a newspaper in the dark lobby until Citrine came sweeping through the door.

When he suggested they go to his apartment she gave him a look. “It’s work,” he said. “I’m going to Spain tomorrow, and you know what an office is like at night.”

They took a bicycle taxi up to the Passy shopping district, by the La Muette Metro and the Ranelagh gardens. It was just getting dark. “We’ll want something to eat, later on,” he explained.

Her eyes opened wide with feigned innocence. “And look! A bottle of wine. Someone must have left it here.”

“Work and supper, my love. Home before curfew.”

Truce. She walked with him in the way he’d always liked, hand curled around his arm, pressed tight to his side, yet gliding along the street like a dancer. That was good, but not best. Best was how she used to slip her hand in his coat pocket as they walked together. That would make him so happy he would forget to talk, and she would say, innocent as dawn, “Yes? And?”

For a winter evening La Muette wasn’t so bad. The little merry-go-round wouldn’t be back until the spring, but there was an organ-grinder, a blind man who smiled up at the sky as he turned the handle. Casson gave him all his change. The snow drifted down, a flake at a time, through the blue lamplight.

He’d stored up a hoard of ration coupons, even buying some on the black-market bourse that now functioned at a local cafe. So, for a half-hour, he could once again be the provident man-about-town. “The smoked salmon looks good, doesn’t it.” They decided on a galantine of vegetables. “A little more, please,” he said as the clerk rested her knife on the loaf and raised an eyebrow. For dessert, two beautiful oranges, chosen after long deliberation and a frank exchange between Citrine and the fruit man. Also, a very small, very expensive piece of chocolate.

There was a long line in front of the boulangerie. The smell of the fresh bread hung in the cold air, people stamped their feet to keep the circulation going. This line was always the slowest-portions had to be weighed, ration coupons cut out with a scissors-and sometimes a discussion started up. “Has anybody heard about North Africa?” Casson looked around to see who was speaking. A small, attractive woman wearing a coat with a Persian- lamb collar. “They say,” she continued, “an important city has been captured by the English.” She sounded hopeful- there’d been no good news for a long time. “Perhaps it’s just a rumor.”

It was not a rumor. Casson had heard the report on the French service of the BBC. The city was Tobruk, in Libya. Twenty-five thousand Italian troops taken prisoner, eighty-seven tanks captured by Australian and British soldiers. He started to answer, Citrine gave him a sharp tug on the arm and hissed in his ear, “Tais- toi!” Shut up.

Nobody on the line spoke, they waited, in their own worlds. On the way home to the rue Chardin, Citrine said, “You must be born yesterday. Don’t you know there are informers on the food lines? They get money for each radio the Germans find, they have only to persuade some fool to say he heard the news on the BBC. Jean-Claude, please, come down from the clouds.”

“I didn’t realize,” he said.

He had almost spoken, he had actually started to speak when Citrine stopped him. They would have searched the apartment. Looked in the closet.

“You must be careful,” she said gently.

On the rue Chardin, a gleaming black Mercedes was idling at the curb. The radio! No, he told himself. Then the door opened and out came the baroness, smothered in furs, who lived in the apartment below him. “Oh, monsieur, good evening,” she said, startled into courtesy.

The man who’d held the door for her, a German naval officer, stepped to her side and made a certain motion, a slight stiffening of the posture, a barely perceptible inclination of the head; a bow due the very tiniest of the petit bourgeois. He was pale and featureless, one of those aristocrats, Casson thought, so refined by ages of breeding they are invisible in front of a white wall. There was an awkward moment- introduction was both unavoidable and unthinkable. The baroness solved the problem with a small, meaningless sound, the officer with a second stiffening, then both rushed toward the Mercedes.

“What was that?” Citrine asked, once they were in the apartment.

“The baroness. She lives down below.”

“Well, well. She’s rather pretty. Do you-?”

“Are you crazy?”

They took off their coats. Citrine walked around the small living room, moved the drape aside and stared out over the rooftops. The Eiffel Tower was a dim shape in the darkness on the other side of the river. “It’s all the same,” she said. “Except for the lights.”

“Oh look,” he said. “A bottle of wine. Someone must have left it here.”

For the occasion, a pack of Gauloises. They smoked, drank wine, played the radio at its lowest volume. Citrine paged through the script, following the trail of SYLVIE as it wound from scene to scene. Casson watched her face carefully-this was Fischfang’s first real test. Altmann could be fooled, not Citrine. She scowled, sighed, flipped pages when she grew impatient. “How old is this Sylvie, do you think?”

“Young, but experienced. In the important moments, much older than her years. She wants very much to be frivolous-her life carried her past those times too quickly-but she can’t forget what she’s seen, and what she knows.”

Citrine concentrated on a certain passage, then closed the script, keeping the place with her index finger. She met Casson’s eyes, became another person. ” ‘My dreams? No, I don’t remember them. Oh, sometimes I’m running. But we all run away at night, don’t we.’ “

Casson opened his copy. “Where are you?”

“Page fifty-five, in the attic. With Paul, we’re …” She hunted for a moment. “We’re … we’ve opened a trunk full of old costumes.”

“For the carnival, at Lent.”

“Oh.” She turned to the wall, crossed her arms. ” ‘My dreams.’ ” She shook her head. ” ‘No. I don’t remember them.’ ” I don’t want to remember them. And somehow she bent the word dreams back toward its other meaning. She relaxed, dropped out of character. “Too much?”

“I wish Louis were here. He’d like it that way.”

“You?”

“Maybe.”

“You want to direct this, don’t you.”

“I always want to, Citrine. But I know not to.”

8:30. A second bottle of wine. Scarlatti from the BBC. The room smelled like smoke, wine, and perfume. “Did you know,” she said, “I made a movie in Finland?”

“In Finnish?”

“No. They dubbed it later. I just went ba-ba-ba with whatever feeling they told me to have and the other actors spoke Finnish.”

“That doesn’t work,” Casson said. “We did a German version that way, for The Devil’s