The World at Night

sorrowfully.

Guillot smiled, leaned toward Casson, spoke in a conspirator’s undertone. “Yo ho ho,” he said.

That night when he got home Casson discovered that his letter to Citrine had been returned. He held it in his hands. Somebody had obviously read it, possibly the censors, but, more likely, those bastards at the hotel. He had put the letter in the envelope as he’d been taught in lycee, so that the greeting was the first thing the reader saw when the letter was unfolded. Somebody had put it back in the wrong way. Written across the front of the envelope Gone Away. Left No Address.

He didn’t read it.

He sat on the couch, still wearing his raincoat, the apartment dark and lifeless. Forty-one-year-old producers. Twenty-nine-year-old actresses with a certain smoky look. What, pray tell, had he thought would happen? He leaned his head back against the cushion. She had left, all right. And one reason was to make certain he was locked out of her life. She knew herself, she knew him, she knew better.

Once again he’d been stupid: had decided that what he wanted to be true, was. And it wasn’t. Thus Altmann had deceived him, then Simic, then with Citrine, he’d deceived himself. This couldn’t go on. He heard his father saying “Jean-Claude, Jean-Claude.”

By force of will, he turned himself back toward commerce. Survival, he thought, that’s what matters now. It wasn’t a time for love affairs-maybe that was what Citrine understood better than he ever could, survival was more important than anything. The city had no difficulty with that, at the end of winter it discovered it was somehow still alive, then went back to business with a vengeance. It wasn’t very appealing, some of it, but then it never had been. You work in a whorehouse, Balzac told them. Don’t let anybody see how much you enjoy it and get your money up front.

Casson, that first week in April, had a new friend. An admirer. Perhaps, even, an investor. A certain Monsieur Gilles de Groux. Nobility, the real thing, in fact de Groux de Musigny, Casson checked the listing in Bottin Mondain and the Annuaire des Chateaux. He had a huge, drafty house out in the forest of St.-Germain-en-Laye, just outside Paris, where his family had moved in 1688 in order to commiserate with the Catholic pretender James II, who’d slipped into France earlier that year. William of Orange got the English throne, as it happened, but the de Groux family remained, walking on the miles-long Grande Terrasse that looked out over the city of Paris, breeding Vendeean basset hounds, reading books in leather covers.

It was Arnaud who had suggested his name to de Groux. Casson called him after their first meeting. “He wants to make films, he says.”

“Yes,” Arnaud said. “That’s what he told me.”

“Where did you say you met?”

“Rennaisance Club.”

“How rich is he?”

Arnaud had to take a moment to think about this. All around them, in the 16th Arrondissement, were the world’s great masters of the art of pretending to be rich. “The money, I believe, is from Limoges. China. Since the eighteen-hundreds. Does he live well?”

“Big house in St.-Germain. Creaky floors. Gothic maids.”

“Sounds right.”

“You think he really wants to make films?”

“Perhaps. I can’t say. Maybe he wants to meet film stars. He certainly wanted to meet you. Hello? Jean- Claude?”

“Yes, I’m still on.”

“You ought to get that repaired.”

“Are you going to the Pichards on Friday?”

“I’d planned to.”

“See you there.”

“Yes. Keep me posted on what happens, will you?”

“I will.”

There were film producers who made a living by knowing how to meet rich people and what to say to them, but for Casson it somehow never worked out. Some stubborn dignity always asserted itself, they sensed that, the grand schemes came to nothing. But de Groux was, in Casson’s experience, something completely new. A tall, thin, shambling fellow, no family close by, a shaggy white mustache stained by tobacco, hair that needed cutting, old wool sweaters that smelled like dogs, and a yellow corduroy jacket with buttoned pockets, a survival of the artists- and-models Montparnasse of 1910. No less an aristocrat, of course, for a little eccentricity. A certain drape hung between him and the world; installed at birth, removed with death, never to be shifted in between.

He was, however, very intent on making a film. And it was the apparatus of the business that seemed to fascinate him. He wanted to visit the office on the rue Marbeuf, he insisted they have lunch at the Alsatian brasserie on the corner-assuming that Casson often ate there. He wanted to have a drink at Fouquet-or Rudi’s, or Ubu Roi- wanted to go out to Billancourt, wanted to visit the nightclubs around Bastille. In the process they would talk about very nearly everything before returning, rather dutifully it seemed to Casson, to the business at hand.

“I always come back to The Devil’s Bridge,” he would say. “That same kind of, feeling, the mood of, what would you say?”

“I don’t know. Escape?”

“Yes, well, perhaps. But maybe more. We should be ambitious, I think. That’s what’s wrong with people, these days.”

They talked a great deal, and over time it crossed Casson’s mind that this man had never actually seen a film.

“Tell me, Gilles,” he would say. “What’s your favorite?”

“Oh, I can never keep the titles straight.”

Vague, perhaps, but very accomodating. Any time or place was good for him, and he never missed an appointment. He traveled in a chauffeured Citroen, seemed to have all the gasoline he needed, had lots of money and ration stamps, and an insatiable curiosity. What did Casson think about the Catholic church? What about Petain? De Gaulle? The Popular Front? England, Churchill, the French Communist Party.

Good talk, intelligent and cultured. De Groux had spent half a century reading and conversing-born to a rich and idle life, your job was to discover the meaning of existence, then to let your friends know what it was. The discussion of the new film was carried on all over Paris, Casson was even invited to a supper party at de Groux’s hunting lodge in the Sologne. Oh Citrine, I wish you could be here to see this. That’s a real oryx head over the fireplace, that’s a real duke by the fire, he’s carrying a stick with a real ivory horse’s head, and he’s wearing a real leather slipper with the little toe cut away to ease his gout.

A cast of characters well beyond Jean Renoir. Adele, the niece from Amboise. Real nobility-look at those awful teeth. Washed-out blue eyes gazed into his, a tiny pulse beat sparrowlike at the pale temple. Wasn’t her uncle the dearest man-insisting that poor old Pierrot be stabled in his horse barns? This proud beast, now retired, who had pounded so faithfully down the paths of the Bois de Fontainebleau after the fleeing hart-would Monsieur care to visit him? Citrine, I confess I wanted to. Go to the stable and wrestle in the straw, hoist the silk evening dress and pull down the noble linen. For the son of a grand-bourgeois crook from the 16th, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. One never met such people, they were rumored to exist, mostly they appeared in plays. There really was game for dinner, dark and strong- perhaps the fabled bear paw, Casson couldn’t bring himself to ask-with black-blood gravy. And real watery vegetables. “Film!” said a cousin from Burgundy. “No. Not really.” Casson assured him it was true. And the man drew back his lips and actually brayed.

There they were, and I among them. Sad it couldn’t last-de Groux was a spy, really, what else could he be? It scared Casson because somebody was going to a lot of trouble, and Casson didn’t think he was worth it. Or, worse, he was worth it but he just didn’t realize why.

Back at the rue Chardin, a visit to the cellar with a flashlight. Ancient stone walls, a child’s sled, a forgotten steamer trunk, a bicycle frame with no wheels. On one wall, black metal boxes and telephone lines. What was he looking for? He didn’t know. Whatever made that hissing sound. He peered at the wires, seeking a device he could neither name nor describe. But there was nothing there. Or nothing he could see. Or, maybe, nothing at all, it was