The World at Night

the chateau, but he had declined. Well, next time he’d know better.

Andre, in short pants and sweater, seemed not to notice. “Please, sir,” he whispered, “we will go down the hill now. We will stay low to the ground, and we will run. Now I count one, and two, and three.”

He rose and scrambled down the hill in the classic infantry crouch, the Tervueren in a fast trot just behind his left heel-dogs were always trained left, thus the right side, the gun side, remained unhampered. Casson did the best he could, shocked at how stiff he’d gotten just lying on the damp earth for thirty minutes.

At the foot of the hill, Andre took his shoes off, tied them at the laces, hung them around his neck, then stuffed his socks in his pockets. Casson followed his example, turning up his trouser cuffs as far as the knee. Andre stepped into the stream, Casson was right behind him. The water was so close to ice that it was barely liquid. “My God,” he said. Andre shushed him. Casson couldn’t move, the water washed over his shins. Andre grabbed his elbow with a bony hand and shoved him forward. The dog turned to make sure of him, soft eyes anxious-did this recalcitrant beast require a nip to get it moving? No, there it went, swearing beneath its breath with every step. Relieved, the Tervueren followed, close by Andre. For Casson, the sharp gravel of the midstream island was a relief for a few yards, then the water was even deeper and the dog had to swim, her brown ruff floating on the surface. At last, the far bank. The Tervueren shook off a great cloud of icy spray-just in case some part of Casson’s clothing had accidentally remained dry. “Ah, Tempete,” Andre said in mock disappointment, and the dog smiled at the compliment.

Andre sat in the grass to put his shoes and socks back on, Casson did the same. Then they ran up the side of a low hill until they reached a grove of poplar trees on the skyline. Andre stopped to catch his breath. “Ca va, monsieur?”

“Ca va, Andre.”

He was a wiry kid with black hair that fell over his forehead, the latest in a long line of pages and squires that had been going off on one mission or another since the crusades. This was, after all, not really knight’s business, conduction of a fugitive. The knight, red-faced, ham-fisted de Malincourt, was back at the chateau, where he’d settled in to wait for his son with a night-long discussion on the advantages of Charolais over Limousin steers, the price of rye seed, and the national disposition of Americans, who would, he thought, take their time before they got around to deciding they needed to come back over the sea and kill some more Germans.

Casson stayed quiet for a moment, hands on knees. Then a whip cracked the air in the poplar grove. Instinctively, Andre and Casson flinched. Then two more cracks, close together, this time a spring twig clipped from a branch. The dog-fear had been bred out of her many generations earlier-gave them an inquiring look: Is this something you’d like me to see about? Andre raised the bottom of his sweater, revealing the cross-hatched wooden grip of a huge, ancient revolver, but it was Casson’s turn to take somebody by the elbow and before this particular war could get fairly underway they were galloping down the reverse slope of the hillside. They took cover for a moment, then headed south, toward a little road that would, eventually, take Casson to Lyons. At the next hilltop there was a view back to the river, a dull silver in the first light of dawn, and very beautiful.

He had a fantasy about how it would be in Lyons-the lover as night visitor. Long ago, when he’d been sixteen and in his next-to-last year at lycee, he’d had his first real love affair. In a world run by parents and teachers and maids it wasn’t easy to find privacy, but the girl, Jeanette-eyes and hair a caramel shade of gold, dusting of pale freckles across the bridge of the nose-was patient and cunning and one day saw an opportunity for them to be alone. It could happen, thanks to a complicated fugue of family arrangements, very early one Sunday morning at the apartment of her grandmere in the 7th Arrondissement. Casson found the door open at dawn, went to a room where a slim shape lay buried beneath heavy comforters. Perhaps asleep, or just pretending-on this point he’d never been certain. He undressed quietly, stealthily, and slid in next to her. Then, just at that moment, she woke up, her smooth body warm and naked next to his, and breathed “mon amour” as she took him in her arms.

So he calculated his arrival at the Hotel du Parc for just after midnight. But no sleeping maiden awaited his caress. The hotel, high on the bank of the promontory formed by the Saone and the Rhone, was a Victorian horror of chocolate-colored brick, turrets and gables, off by itself in a small park behind a fence of rusted iron palings, with a view over a dark bridge and a dark church. Brooding, somber, just the place for consumptive poets or retired generals. Just the place for the night visitor.

However.

When Casson climbed the stone stairway that went from the street to the little park, he discovered every light in the hotel ablaze and the evening air heavy with the scent of roasting chickens. A trio-bass, drums, accordion-was pounding away at the Latin rhythm of the dance called the Java. There were shouts of encouragement, and shrieks of laughter-in short, the noisy symphony that can be performed only on the instrument of a hundred drunken wedding guests.

In the middle of it, Sleeping Beauty. She was barefoot, wearing a sash improvised from a tablecloth and shaking a tambourine liberated from the drum kit. She also had-a moment before he could believe his eyes-a rose clenched firmly between her teeth. “Hey!” she cried out. “Hey, hey!” She was leading a long line of dancers, first the groom- in his late thirties with a daring set of muttonchop whiskers, next his bride-some few years older, black hair pinned up, a dark mole on her cheek, bright red mouth, and eyes like burning coals.

The line-little kids and grandparents, friends of the groom, the bride’s sisters, assorted hotel guests, at least one waiter-snaked from the dining room through the lobby, around an island of maroon velvet sofas, past the desk and the night manager wearing a wizard hat with a rubber band under his chin, and back to the dining room, hung with yards of pink crepe paper. Casson stood by the door, taking it all in. A fireman performed on the French horn. A man beckoned a woman to sit on his lap and they roared with pleasure as the spindly chair collapsed beneath them. Four feet protruded from the drape of a tablecloth, the people under the table either dead asleep or locked in some static, perhaps oriental, version of coition-it would have been hard to say and nobody cared.

The line reappeared in the lobby, Citrine in the lead, cheeks flushed, long hair flying, a particular expression on her face as she capered- the “savage dancer” of every Gypsy movie MGM had ever made. Then she saw him-“Jean-Claude!”-and ran to hug him. Her small breasts were squashed against his chest, she smelled like wine and chicken and perfume. She pulled back a little, her eyes shone, she was drunk and happy and in love.

Much later, they went up the stairs to her room on the top floor. Very slowly, they went up. On a table in the dining room he had discovered a bowl of red-wine punch, a single lemon slice floating on top, a glass ladle hung on the rim. Therefore, one took this step, then this. Many of these old hotels had been built with a tilting device that operated after midnight, so one had to go upstairs very, very deliberately. It helped to laugh.

The room was small, but very safe-the door secured by what appeared to be a simple lock that took a primitive iron key. But this turned out to be a deeply complicated system, to be used only by cellists or magicians- people with clever fingers. Probably Casson and Citrine could have opened the door themselves, at some future date, but a Good Samaritan happened to walk down the hall in a bathrobe and insisted on coming to their aid.

A small room, dark patterns on the wallpaper and the rug and the bedspread and the chair. Cold; rain a steady patter on the roof, and damp. Casson managed to get his tie off-over his head-threw his shirt and pants at a chair, turned to find Citrine looking sultry, wearing one stocking and an earring. They met somewhere on the bed; stupid, clumsy and hot, bawdy and shameless and prone to laugh. So drunk they weren’t very good at anything, hands and mouths working away, too dizzy with getting what they wanted to be graceful or adept. But, maybe better that way: nothing went right, nothing went wrong, and they were too excited to care.

It was like being a kid again, he wanted her too much to be seductive. Her fault, he thought-the way she was, so many shadows and creases, angles and dark alleys; inside, outside, in between. She crawled around, as hot as he was, knees spread or one foot pointing at the ceiling. They didn’t stay in one place very long, would find some position that made them breathe hard and fast but then, something else, something even better.

On and on it went. He didn’t dare to finish, just fell back now and then to a condition of lazy heat. Not her; from time to time she gasped, shuddered, would stop for a moment and hang on to to him. Just the way, he thought, women were. They could do that. So, she came for both of them. Until, very late at night, she insisted- whispering to him, coaxing-and then he saw stars.

Of course he forgot to give her the letter. Nearly dawn when he remembered; watching her while she slept, in the gray light he could see the color of her hair and her skin, rested a hand on her hip, she woke up and they smoked a cigarette. Out the window, the Lyonnais moon a white quarter-slice from a children’s book-it looked like a cat ought to be sitting on it. He rolled off the bed, dug around in his valise, gave her the letter and lit a candle so