The World at Night

“It’s a change, certainly. Very different from France.”

“Yes, here it is, Malaga. My wife and I used to go to Lloret-de-Mar every summer, until they started fighting. Find a pension in a little fishing village. What dinners! Besugo, espadon, delicious. If you can persuade them to hold back a little on the garlic, excellent!” He laughed, showing big white teeth. Looked back down at the dossier. Read for a moment, then a slight discomfort appeared on his face. “Hmm. Here’s a memorandum I’d forgotten all about.”

He read carefully, perhaps for three or four minutes. Shook his head in pique at something small and irritating. “I know you are famous for petty bureaucrats in France, but I tell you, Herr Casson, we Germans don’t do so badly. Look at this nonsense.”

“Sir?”

“I don’t have the faintest recollection of anything, you understand, I see people from dawn to dusk, of course, and I only remember the, well, the bad ones, if you know what I mean.” He raised his eyebrows to see if Casson had understood.

“What’s happened is,” he continued, “you told me, or, I thought you told me, that your army service was back in the 1914 war, but here it says that you-well, the people down at the Vincennes military base sent on to us a record that says you were transferred to a unit that was reactivated in May of 1940. Could that be right?”

“Yes. I was.”

“Well, I apparently got it wrong the last time we talked because now somebody’s gone and written a memorandum in your file saying that you, well, that you didn’t actually tell the truth.”

“I don’t really know what I …” Casson felt something flutter in his stomach.

“Ach,” Guske said, quite annoyed now. He stood up, walked toward the door. “I’m going to go down the hall and have this put right. I’ll be back in a minute.” He opened the door and gestured toward a chair in the hall. “Please,” he said. “I’ll have to ask you to wait in the corridor.”

Guske marched off down the hall. Casson wanted to get up and run out of the building, but he knew he’d never make it, and when they caught him he wouldn’t be able to explain. He wasn’t being threatened, exactly. It was something else-he didn’t know what it was, but he could feel it reaching for him.

Hold on, he told himself.

He very nearly couldn’t. He closed his eyes, heard typewriters, muted conversations, doors opening and closing, telephones. It was just an office.

Forty minutes later, Guske came back down the hall shaking his head. In a bad humor, he waved Casson into his office. “This is extraordinarily irritating, Herr Casson, but this man at the other end of the hall is acting in a very unreasonable fashion. I mean, here we’ve had a simple misunderstanding, you gave me some information and it didn’t happen to hold with some piece of paper that somebody sent here, and now he’s going to be difficult about it.”

Casson started to speak, Guske held up his hand for silence.

“Please, there’s nothing you can say that will help. I am certainly going to take care of this problem-you can have every confidence in me-but it’s going to take a day or two, maybe even a little more. Your trip to Lyons, is it so very urgent?”

“No.”

“Good. Then I’m relieved. And you’ll appreciate I have to work with this fellow, I can’t be getting around him every five minutes. But he’s going to have to learn to separate these things-here is something that must concern us, over there is just a nuisance, a little pebble in the shoe. Eh?”

Guske stood and offered his hand. “Why don’t you call me back a week from today? Yes? I’m sure I’ll be able to give you the answer you want. These telephone numbers in your file, for home and office, they’re correct?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. Then I’ll see you in a week or so. Good day, Herr Casson. Please don’t think too badly of us, it will all be made right in the end.

Two days later, a Friday afternoon, a commotion in the reception of his office. Casson threw open his door, then stared with astonishment. It was a man called Bouffo-a comic actor, he used only that name. A huge man, gloriously fat, with three chins and merry little eyes- “France’s beloved Bouffo,” the publicity people said. Casson’s secretary, Mireille, was standing at her desk, vaguely horrified, uncertain what to do. Bouffo, as always in a white, tentlike suit and a gray fedora, was leaning against the wall, fanning himself with a newspaper, his face the color of chalk. “Please, my friends,” he said. “I beg you. Something to drink.”

“Will you take a glass of water, monsieur?” Mireille asked.

“God no.”

“Mireille,” Casson said. “Please go down to the brasserie and bring back a carafe of wine, tell them it’s an emergency.” He handed her some money.

“Now Bouffo,” he said, “let’s get you sat down.” Casson was terrified the man was going to die in his office.

“Forgive me Casson-I’ve had the most terrible experience.” Casson took his arm-he was trembling-and helped him onto the couch. Up close, the smell of lilac-scented talcum powder and sweat. “Please,” Casson said, “try to calm yourself.”

“What a horror,” Bouffo said.

“What happened?”

“Well. You know Perlemere?”

“Yes. The agent?”

“Yes. Well, some time ago he represented me, and he owed me a little money, and I thought I’d just kind of drop in on him, unannounced, and see if I could collect some of it, you know how things are, lately. So, I went over to his office, which is just the other side of the boulevard. I was in that little lobby there, waiting for the elevator, when there was a commotion on the staircase. It’s Perlemere, and there are three men with him, a short one, very well-dressed, and two tough types. Detectives, is what they were.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. One knows.”

“German?”

“French.”

“And?”

“They’re arresting Perlemere.”

“What?”

“He’s telling them he knows this one and that one and there’ll be hell to pay once his important friends find out how he’s being treated and all this kind of thing. But, clearly, they don’t care. Perlemere tries to stop on the staircase and says ‘Now see here, this has gone far enough’ and they hit him. I mean, they really hit him, it’s not like the movies. And he cried out.”

Bouffo stopped a moment and caught his breath. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “Then, one of them called him a Jew this and a Jew that, and they hit him again. It was sickening. The sound of it. There were tears on Perlemere’s face. Then, they saw me. And one of them says, ‘Hey look, it’s Bouffo!’ “

“What did you do?”

“Casson, I was terrified. I gave a sort of nervous laugh, and I tipped my hat. Then they brushed by me. Perlemere looked in my eyes, he was pleading with me. There was blood on his mouth. I held the door open a crack after they went out-they threw him in a car, then they drove away. I didn’t know what to do. I started to go home, then I remembered your office was over here and I thought I better go someplace where I could sit down for a moment.”

Mireille returned, carrying a carafe of wine. Casson poured some in a water glass and gave it to Bouffo. “No good, Casson.” He wasn’t talking about the wine. Shook his head, tried to take deep breaths. “No good. I mean, who do you go to?”

Sunday night, late-one-thirty in the morning when he looked at his watch. He was reading, wearing an old shirt and slacks. Restless, not ready to sleep. Blackout curtains drawn, light of a single lamp, a very battered Maigret novel, The Nightclub, he’d bought at a stall on the Seine. The buzzer by his door startled him. Now what? He laid the book face down on the chair, turned off the lamp, went out onto the terrace. Down below, a dark shape waited at the door. Then a white face turned up toward him, and a stage whisper: