me I had to find someplace else-his sister wanted the apartment. I don’t think he has a sister, but at least he was polite about it. I went to see my mother’s old friend, a widow for many years. She was lonely, she said, would I come and stay with her?
“For a few months, everything went well. This woman-who is not Jewish, by the way-had been a teacher in a lycee. We talked about books and music, we were good company for each other. But then, she changed. She was ill in the winter of ’41, and she became obsessed with the Germans. She made it clear that she’d like me to leave. The problem is, when they said Jews had to register, I didn’t-something told me not to. Now I can’t get a change of residence permit from the prefecture-if she throws me out I have nowhere to go. So, I stay. I’m very quiet. I don’t cause trouble. She has made a point of telling me not to bring strangers there. She’s afraid of being robbed, or murdered, I don’t know exactly what.”
“Why not move to a hotel?”
“Can’t afford it. I work in a travel agency, a good one, on the Champs-Elysees. The offices are splendid, but the pay is low.”
“Can your family help?”
“I don’t think so. The family’s been in Strasbourg since the Middle Ages, but when my parents heard the stories of the refugees coming from Germany, they became frightened. The Germans have always claimed that Alsace rightfully belongs to them. My parents feared, after Chamberlain gave away the Sudetenland in ’38, that France might use it to buy off Hitler. So they sold everything and went to live in Amsterdam. My brother and his family had emigrated just after the first war-he went into business with his in-laws in Montreal. My mother pleaded with me to come to Holland with them, but I wouldn’t. I liked the life in Paris, I was seeing someone, and nothing was going to happen to France and its glorious army.”
It had been a long time, Casson thought, back at the Benoit. For her too, apparently-trembling as he undid her bra and her breasts tumbled out. He almost fell asleep afterward, warm in a way he barely remembered. He propped himself up on one elbow and smoothed the damp hair back off her forehead.
“It’s funny,” she said, “how things happen. Laurette asked me to come along. I said no, she insisted. She’s been kind to me, more than kind, so finally I had to come. I’m going to hate it, I thought. But then…” Idly, she ran a fingernail up and down the inside of his thigh. “See?” she said. “I’m flirting with you.”
“Mm.”
“Is your name really Jean?”
“I’m called Jean-Claude.”
“A film producer.”
“Yes, before the war. But I shouldn’t talk about the past.”
“It doesn’t matter. Laurette told me all this has to be kept quiet.” She laid her head on his chest, heavy and warm. “Poor Laurette,” she said. “Degrave’s wife is rich. And mean as a snake. Laurette used to dream of marriage, but it’s not to be.”
Casson put a hand on her hip, smooth down there. “I shouldn’t talk about these things,” she said. “But it all seems like nothing now, with the world the way it is. I never imagined what it would all come to. Never imagined.”
His fingers traced idly along the curve, up and back. “Yes,” she said, “I like that.”
They stopped Weiss at a Kontrol, the early evening of 15 November, in the Saint-Michel Metro station. Pulled him out of line and made him open his briefcase. “What’s all this?” the German sergeant said, holding a sheaf of blank paper. “For leaflets, maybe, huh?”
Weiss studied the hands; thick fingers, with cracked nails and callus. “I’m a printing salesman,” he explained. “See, it’s the same name and address on each piece of paper, but the lettering is different. Personal stationery. Maybe, ah, maybe you’d like to have something like this for yourself?”
“Me?” the sergeant said. This was something that had never occurred to him. “Well, I don’t know. I mean- what could I have? I stay at a barracks.” He paged through the sheets. “But my wife, in Germany, she would be thrilled to have such a thing.”
Weiss took a pen from his pocket. “Here, just write down your name and address, and I’ll get it made up for you.”
“French stationery?”
“Yes.”
The sergeant began writing, slow but determined, carving the letters onto the paper, then handed it over to Weiss. “Jurgenstrasse,” Weiss said.
“Yes. And it must look exactly that way. Can you print the German alphabet?”
“Oh yes. We have all the German fonts.”
“Well.” He was very pleased. “Could I have it by the twentieth, to send to her?”
“Of course. I’ll see to it.”
“It’s her birthday.”
“You may count on it, sir.”
“It must be quite costly, this kind of thing.”
“With my compliments.”
“Ah, all right then.”
“If you write down your name and address in Paris, I’ll have it sent over in a day or two.”
“Yes, of course.” He started writing. “Meanwhile, maybe I’d better have a look at your work permit.”
Weiss thumbed through the papers in his wallet, took out his work permit, and showed it to the sergeant.
“Good,” the sergeant said. Then, in a stern voice, “Alles in Ordnung.” He gave Weiss a friendly wink and a smile, then whispered “She will be so happy.”
Paris. 16 November.
He had a second meeting with Kovar, this time in response to a note slipped under his door at the Benoit. Late at night he thought he heard something, then decided he didn’t and went back to sleep. They met in the same office, in the early evening. The weather had turned cold, he could see his breath when he talked. This time the shade was up and the moon, in the upper corner of the tall window, cast silver shadows on the walls.
“I found a way to talk to some friends,” Kovar said.
“Good.”
“Old friends. We were in the streets together, marching, fighting, and we were in the jails together. One doesn’t toss that away so easily. They follow the line, of course, they are good communists. But then, they are also Frenchmen, some of them anyhow, and for the French, having one’s own opinion is a kind of religion.”
Casson smiled.
“There’s one in particular-he made no promises, simply said he’d see what he could do. I hope you understand that he’s putting himself in danger. The Paris apparat is under intense pressure right now, because the Germans are about to take Moscow, they’re close enough to see the last stop on the tram line.”
“Will Stalin fight in the city?”
“To the end. Then he’ll burn it to the ground. But, so what? The reality is, all they have now is the weather. The rasputitsa, the autumn rains. The earth turns to mud-some days they have to maneuver their tanks with shovels and logs. And, soon enough, it will snow. Not German snow. Russian snow.”
“General Winter.”
Kovar shrugged. “So-called. But the signs are all bad. The Moscow factories have been moved to the Urals, and the NKVD has packed up and left town. Sometime last week, wireless transmissions broken off in midsentence. What does that say to you?”
“Nothing good.”
Kovar thought for a moment. “Of course, Russian wars always seem to go like this. Chaos and defeat and slaughter. Followed by the execution of those who tried to sound the warning. It’s just the way they are. But then something happens. In Napoleon’s campaign it was winter, and some kind of tick that killed thousands. In 1917 it was revolution. The Russian land defends itself-that’s the mystics’ version.”
“I’ve read it can be sixty below zero in December.”
“And colder. The Wehrmacht will have to heat their machine-gun barrels over a fire before they can use
