The World at Night

They walked from room to room, past bridal gowns and evening gowns, floral housedresses and pink bathrobes. “Have you heard about Arnaud and his wife?” she said.

“No. What’s happened?”

“I had lunch with Marie-Claire yesterday, she told me they weren’t living together. He moved out.”

“Why is that? They always seemed to have, a good arrangement.”

Veronique shrugged. “Who knows,” she said gloomily. “I think it’s the Occupation. Lately the smallest thing, and everything comes apart.”

It was busy in the luggage department-fine leather and brass fittings from the ancient saddlery ateliers of Paris. A crowd of German soldiers, businessmen with their wives, a few Japanese naval officers.

“Veronique,” he said. “I need to go south again.”

“Right now the moon is full, Jean-Claude.”

“So it would be, what, fourteen days?”

“Well, yes, at least. Then there are people who have to be talked to, and, all the various complications.”

A woman in traditional Breton costume-black dress, white hat with wings-was demonstrating a waffle iron, pouring yellow batter from a cup into the iron, then heating it over a small gas burner.

“All right,” he said. “There’s a chance I’ll get an Ausweis. In a few weeks. Maybe.”

“Can you wait?”

“I’m not sure. Things, things are going on.”

“What things, Jean-Claude? It’s important to tell me.”

“I’m under pressure to work for them. I mean, really work for them.”

“Can you refuse?”

“Perhaps, I’m not sure. I’ve been over it and over it, probably the best thing for me is to slip quietly into the ZNO, pick up Citrine, then go out-to Spain or Portugal. Once we’re there, we’ll find some country that will take us. I can remember May of last year-then it mattered where you went. Now it doesn’t.”

They stood together at a railing, looking out from the dress department over the center of the store. Two floors below, the crowds shifted slowly through a maze of counters packed with gloves, belts, and handbags. Silk scarves were draped on racks, and womens’ hats, with veils and bows and clusters of cherries or grapes, were hung on the branches of wooden trees. “If you leave before the Ausweis comes,” Veronique said, “and there’s some way you can arrange to have it sent over to your office, it would be very important for us to have it. For somebody, it could mean everything.”

“I will try,” he said.

“About the other, situation, I’ll be in touch with you. Soon as I can.”

They kissed each other good-bye, one cheek then the other, and Casson walked away. Looking back over his shoulder he saw her smile, then she waved to him and mouthed the little phrase that meant have courage.

It rained. Thirty-three Wehrmacht divisions advanced in Yugoslavia. Others crossed the border into Greece. Stuka bombers destroyed the city of Belgrade. An interzonal card from Lyons arrived at a Paris cafe, addressed to J. Casson. “Waiting, waiting and thinking about you. Please come soon.” Signed with the initial X. A dinner party at the house of Philippe and Francoise Pichard. His brother, wounded a year earlier in the fighting in Belgium, had never returned home, but they had word of him, a prisoner of war, doing forced labor in an underground armaments factory in Aachen. Bruno was trying to pull strings in order to get him out.

It cleared. Fine days; windy, cool, sunny. Zagreb taken. The RAF blew up the Berlin opera house. Bulgarian and Italian troops joined the attack on Yugoslavia. Casson had lunch with Hugo Altmann at a black-market restaurant called Chez Nini, in an alley behind a butcher shop out in Auteuil. Fillets of lamb with baby turnips, then a Saint-Marcellin. Now that he was in contact with SD officers, Altmann was afraid of him-that meant money, replacing what he’d given Fischfang, and a meaningful contribution to the escape fund. Altmann gave his tenth hearty laugh of the afternoon. “My secretary will have a check for you tomorrow, it’s no problem, no problem at all. We believe in this picture, that’s what matters.”

It rained. Dripped slowly from the branches of the trees on the boulevards. Casson went to see Marcel Carne’s Le Jour Se Leve at the Madeleine theatre, script by Jacques Prevert, Jean Gabin playing the lead. The Occupation authority announced the opening of the Institute of Jewish Studies. The inaugural exhibition, to be presented by a well-known curator, would show how Jews dominated the world through control of newspapers, films, and financial markets. Marie-Claire telephoned, Bruno was impossible, she didn’t know what to do. “Some afternoon you could come for tea,” she said. “It rains like this and I am so sad. I walk around the apartment in my underwear and look at myself in the mirrors.” Fighting around Mount Olympus in Greece. Bulgarian troops in Macedonia. On a small errand he went out to the Trinite quarter, a street of fortune-tellers and dusty antique shops. He walked head down through the rain, dodging the puddles, staying under awnings when he could. A black Citroen swung sharply to the curb, Franz Millau climbed out of the passenger side and opened the back door. “Come for a ride,” he said with a smile. “It’s no good walking today, too wet.”

They drove to a small villa in the back streets of one of the drearier suburbs, Vernouillet, squat brick houses with little gardens. The driver was introduced as Albert Singer, a blunt-headed, fair-haired man so heavy in the neck and shoulders his shirt collar was pulled out of shape around the button. At the villa, Millau asked him to make a fire. He tried, using wooden crates broken into kindling, newspapers, and two wet birch logs that were never going to burn anything. Stubborn, he squatted in front of the fireplace, lighting match after match to the corner of a damp section of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. For a time, Millau watched him with disbelief. Finally he said, “Singer, isn’t there any dry paper?”

“I’ll look,” Singer said, struggling to his feet.

“What can you do?” said Millau, resigned. “He does what I tell him, so I have to keep him around.”

Casson nodded sympathetically. The room smelled of disuse, of mildew and old rugs; something about it made his heart beat faster. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No. In fact I will join you.” Millau got out a cigar and went to work on it. With the lights off and shutters closed, the parlor was in shadow. “Did you see the papers this morning?” Millau said.

“Yes.”

“Awful, no?”

“What?”

“The bombing. Out at the Citroen plant. Three hundred dead-and to no particular purpose. The assembly line was up and running again by ten in the morning. Casson, no matter your politics, no matter what you think of us, you have a moral obligation to stop such things if it is in your power to do so.”

Casson made a gesture-the world did what it did, it didn’t ask him first.

“I’ll let you in on one secret-we have a special envoy in London now, trying to work out, at least a cease-fire. At least let the horror stop for a moment, so we can think it over, so we can maybe just talk for a time. You can’t find that wrong, can you?”

“No.”

“I mean, we must be honest with each other. We’re fellow human beings, maybe even fellow Europeans- certainly it’s something we could discuss, but I won’t insist on that.”

“Europeans, of course.”

“Now look, Casson, we need your help or this whole thing is going to blow up in our faces. The people I work for in Berlin have taken it into their heads that you’re willing to cooperate with us and they’ve stuck me with the job of making that cooperation a reality. So, I don’t really have a choice.”

Singer returned with some newspaper, crumpled up a few pages and wedged them under the grate. He lit the paper, the room immediately smelled like smoke.

“Flue open?”

“Ja.”

Millau made a face. Reached into an inside pocket, took out an identity card, handed it over. Casson swallowed. It was his passport photograph. Underneath, the name Georges Bourdon. “Now this gentleman was to be used by the English, and I mean used, to assist a terrorist action that is planned to take place in the Paris region. The bombing last night killed three hundred Frenchmen-what these people want to do, and we aren’t sure exactly what that is, will no doubt kill a few hundred more. What we need from you is to play