The World at Night

allegiance is to yourself.”

“Very well. Expect the envelope, and we’ll be in touch with you soon. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, Herr Millau.”

“And good luck.”

“Yes, always that. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

9 June, 3:20 P.M.

On his way to the Gare de Lyon to catch the 4:33 to Chartres, he stopped at the cafe where he had his morning coffee. The proprietor went back to his office and returned with a postcard. Greetings from Lyons-View of the Fountain, place des Terreaux. “All is well, monsieur?”

“Yes. Thank you, Marcel. For keeping the card for me.”

“It’s my pleasure. Not easy, these times.

“No.”

“It’s not only you, monsieur.”

Casson met his glance and found honest sympathy: liaisons with lovers or with the underground, for Marcel what mattered were liaisons, and he could be counted on. Casson reached across the copper-covered bar and shook his hand. “Thank you again, my friend,” he said.

“De rien.” It’s nothing.

“I’m off to the train.”

“Bon voyage, monsieur.”

He read it on the train, sweaty and breathing hard from having jumped on the last coach as it was moving out of the station. A control on the Metro, a long line, French police inspectors peering at everyone’s identity cards as the minutes marched past and Casson clenched his teeth in rage.

The writing on the card was careful, like a student in lycee. It touched his heart to look at it.

My love, it’s 3:40 in the morning, and it feels and sounds the way it does late at night in these places. My chaos of a life is right here by my side-it likes to stay up late when I do, and it won’t go to bed. You would say not to care, so, maybe, I don’t. I write to say that spring is going by, that nothing changes in this city, and I wonder where you are. I am very alone without you-please try to come. I know you are trying, but please try. I do love you. X

He looked up to find green countryside, late afternoon in spring among the meadows and little aimless roads. Citrine. For just a moment he was nineteen again-to go to Lyons you took the Lyons train. Or you went to a town along the ZNO line and found somebody to take you across. Then you found your lover and together you ran to a place where they would never find you. No. That didn’t work. Life wasn’t like that. And it didn’t matter how much you wanted it to be.

The sun low in the sky, long shadows in a village street, a young woman in a scarf helping an old woman down the steps of a church, Cafe de la Poste, an ancient cemetery-stone walls and cypress trees, then the town ended and the fields began again.

As it turned out, he could have let the express to Chartres leave without him. A long delay, waiting for the 6:28 local that would eventually find its way to Alencon. He used the time to buy paper and an envelope at a stationer’s shop across from the terminal, then wrote, sitting on a bench on the platform as the sun went down behind the spires of the cathedral.

He loved her, he was coming, life in Paris was complicated, he had to extricate himself.

He stopped there, thought for a time, then wrote that if there had to be a line drawn it would be a month from then, no more. Say, July 1. A voice inside him told him not to write that but he didn’t listen to it. He couldn’t just go on and on about soon. She needed more than that, he did the best he could.

The train was two hours late, only three passengers got off at Alencon; a mother and her little boy, and Casson, feeling very much the dark-haired Parisian, lighting a cigarette as he descended to the platform, cupping his hands to shield the match flare from the evening wind.

“You must be Bourdon.” He’d been leaning against a baggage cart, watching to see who got off the train. He was barely thirty, Casson thought. Leather coat, longish-artfully combed hair, the expectantly handsome face of an office lothario.

“That’s right.”

“I’m Eddie Juin.”

They walked into a maze of little lanes, three feet wide, wash hanging out above their heads. Turned left, right, right, left, down a stairway, through a tunnel, then up a long street of stairs to a garage. It was dark inside, fumes of gasoline and oil heavy in the air, cut by the sharp smell of scorched metal. “I wonder if you could let me have a look at your identity card,” Juin said.

“Not a problem.”

Casson handed over the Bourdon card, Juin clicked on a flashlight and had a look. “A salesman?”

“Yes.”

“What is it you sell, if I can ask?”

“Scientific equipment-to laboratories. Test tubes, flasks, Bunsen burners, all that sort of thing.”

“How do you do, with that?”

“Not too badly. It’s up, it’s down-you know how it is.”

Juin handed the card back, went to a stained and battered desk with a telephone on it, dialed a number. “Seems all right,” he said. “We’re leaving now.”

He hung up, opened a drawer, took out several flashlights, put them in a canvas sack and handed it to Casson.

“Is this your place?” Casson asked.

“Mine? No. Belongs to a friend’s father-he lets us use it.” He ran the beam of the flashlight over the steel tracks above the pit used to work under cars, then a stack of old tires, then showed Casson what he meant him to see. “Better button up your jacket,” he said, voice very proud.

It was beautiful. A big motorcycle, front and rear fenders stripped, the paint worn away to a color that was no color at all. “What year?” Casson said.

“1925. It’s English-a Norton ‘Indian.’ “

Juin climbed on, jiggled the fuel feed on the right handlebar, then rose in the air and drove his weight down hard on the kick starter. The engine grumbled once and died. Juin rose again. Nothing on the second try, or the third. It went on, Juin undaunted. At last, a sputtering roar, a volley of small-arms fire and a cloud of smoke from the trembling exhaust pipe. Casson hauled up the metal shutter, then closed it again after Juin was out, and climbed on the flat seat meant for the passenger. “Don’t try to lean on the curves,” Juin shouted over the engine noise.

They flew through the streets, bouncing over the cobbles, bumping down a stairway, the explosive engine thundering off the ancient walls, announcing to every Frenchman and German in the lower Normandy region that that idiot Eddie Juin was out for a ride.

They sped over a bridge that spanned the Sarthe, then they were out in the countryside, Casson imagining that he could actually smell the fragrant night air through the reek of burned oil that traveled with the machine. They left the Route Nationale for a route departmentale, then turned onto a packed dirt road that didn’t have a number but probably had a local name, then to a cowpath, five miles an hour over rocks and roots, across a long hillside on a strip of beaten-down weed and scrub, over the hill to a valley spread out in the moonlight. Juin cut the engine and they rolled silently for a long time, coming to a stop at last on the edge of a flat grassy field.

It seemed very quiet, just a few crickets, once the engine was off. Casson climbed off the motorcycle, half frozen, blowing on his hands. “Where are we?” he asked.

Eddie Juin smiled. “Nowhere,” he said triumphantly. “Absolutely nowhere.”

1:30 A.M. Three-quarter moon. They sat by the motorcycle, smoking, waiting, watching the edge of the woods at the other end of the field.

“Alencon doesn’t seem so bad,” Casson said.

“No, not too bad, and I’m an expert. I grew up in at least six different places, one of those families that never