Arrondissement. A bright day, the little ghost of a chill still hung in the morning air. Early autumn this year, he thought. Which meant: early winter. Well, good. Maybe he’d get a few francs more for the overcoat.
He took backstreets, crossing into the 10th Arrondissement. Turgot, Condorcet, d’Abbeville. Then the rue des Petits-Hotels-yes, there were some. On rue Paradis, too many Germans, milling around the Baccarat salesroom. Then, a choice: to cross the boulevard you could take either the rue de la Fidelite or the passage du Desir-street of fidelity or alley of desire. Which? He took the alley, but noted that it ran downhill. Next, he hurried across the broad boulevard Magenta. Too wide, too open. That fucking Haussmann, he thought, rebuilding Paris a hundred years earlier, designing open boulevards to facilitate field-of-fire, cannon shot, against the revolutionary mobs of days to come. A visionary, in his way. He had destroyed the medieval rat’s nest of Paris streets, anybody, even a lumbering German, could find his way around. Real Parisians, even those, like Casson, who’d spent their lives in the Passy district of the snob 16th, knew the value of a good maze, rank with crumbling drains and metal pissotieres on the corners.
Head down on the narrow streets. Baggy flannel pants, suit jacket with the collar up, three days’ growth of beard, workman’s peaked cap tilted to one side, shadowing the face. Someone who belonged in the quarter if you didn’t look too hard, if you missed the melancholy intelligence in the eyes. He was dark; dark hair, coloring like a suntan that never really went away. A small scar on the cheekbone. Lean body, forty or so. Something about Casson had always made him seem a little beat up by life, even in the old days, on the terrasses of the good cafes- knowing eyes, a half-smile that said it didn’t matter what you knew. He liked women, women liked him.
Two flics pedaled by on their bicycles, one of the wheels squeaked each time it went around. Casson watched them. Sooner or later, he thought. He would be taken. Sad, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, life just went that way. He knew too many people in Paris, at least a few of them on the wrong side. Or maybe it would be some German version of Simenon’s Maigret: self-effacing, unprepossessing, looking forward a little too eagerly to lunch. Taking his pipe from clenched teeth and pointing it at his assistant. “Mark my words, Heinrich, he will return to his old haunts, to the city he knows. Of this you may be certain.” And, in fact, when all was said and done, that was the way it turned out. He’d gone home-the romans policiers had it just right. Why? He didn’t know. Everywhere else felt wrong, was all he knew. Maybe to live the fugitive life you had to start young, for him it was too late. Still, he didn’t want to make it easy for them. Sooner or later, went that week’s motto on the Casson family crest, but not today.
3rd Arrondissement-the old Jewish quarter. Cobbled lanes and alleys, silence, deep shadow, Hebrew slogans chalked on the walls. Rue du Marche des Blancs-Manteaux, the smell of onions frying in chicken fat made Casson weak in the knees. He’d been living on bread and margarine, and miniature packets of Bouillon Zip when he could afford the fifty centimes.
Between two leaning tenements, the municipal pawnshop. Massive stone portals; Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite carved solemnly into the granite cap above the doors. Inside, a municipal room: flaking gray paint, the fume of disinfectant rising from the wood floor. A few people scattered about, looking like dark bundles forgotten on the high-backed benches. At the front of the room, a counter topped with frosted-glass panels. Casson could see the shadows of clerks, walking back and forth. He took a brass token from a gardien at the door and found an empty bench in the back of the room. An official appeared at the wire grille that covered the cashier’s window. He cleared his throat and called out, “Number eighty-one.”
A woman stood up.
“Yes, sir.”
“Will you take thirty francs?”
“Monsieur! Thirty francs-?”
This was as much argument as he cared to listen to. He waved a dismissive hand and pushed a crystal serving dish out onto the counter.
“Well,” the woman said. A change of heart, she would take whatever they offered.
“Too late, madame.” The voice polite but firm. Really, he would not be subjected to the whims of these people. “So then, eighty-two? Eighty-two.” A bearded man carrying a copper saucepot shuffled toward the counter.
Casson began to worry about the overcoat-unrolled it, tried, surreptitiously, to fluff it up a little so it didn’t look so much like a bundle of dirty rags. Remember, he told himself, it’s important to make a good impression, confidence is everything. A fine coat! Cosy for winter. God he was hungry. He had to have fifty francs from this coat. He stared up at the lights, yellow globes with shimmering halos, it hurt to look at them. He closed his eyes for a moment, the back of the wooden bench in front of him banged him in the forehead.
A hand gripped his elbow. “Unless you want to see the cops, you better wake up.”
Casson shook his head. Apparently he’d fainted. “I’m all right,” he said.
“No sleeping allowed.”
A hard voice, Casson turned to see who it was. A man perhaps in middle age, not so easy to say because one side of his face had been burned, skin dead white in some places, shiny pink in others. In an attempt to hide the damage he’d let his hair grow long and it hung lank just above a knob of remaining ear. “Ca va?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Done this before?”
“No.”
“Well, if you don’t mind advice, you’ll get more out of them if you wait until the afternoon. After they’ve had their lunch and their little glass of wine. That’s the only time to do business with the government.”
Casson nodded.
“I’m Lazenac.”
“Marin.”
Lazenac put out a hand and Casson shook it. It was like gripping a rough-finish board.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Lazenac said. “This place…”
Deeper into the Marais. Paper-white men in black coats, women who kept their eyes lowered. To a tiny cafe in what had been a store. Lazenac ordered a flask of Malaga, cheap red wine, and black bread. “It’s good strength,” he told Casson.
Whatever that meant it was true. The sour wine jolted him back to life. Chased down with a chunk of the mealy bread it made him feel warm.
“Don’t mind the neighborhood, do you?”
“No.”
“Funny thing, since I had my face blown up I like the Jews.”
“What happened?”
“Just the war. Chemin des Dames at Verdun-the second time we tried it, November of ’16. My corporal got hit, I turned to see if I could do anything and one of those fucking Nebelwerfers-mine-throwers-got me. But, turning like that saved my eyes, so I suppose I should be grateful.” He paused for a sip of wine. “Were you in that?”
“With a film unit,” Casson said. “Air reconnaissance.”
From Lazenac, a certain kind of smile-the fix is in. “Sweet job,” he said.
Casson shrugged. “It wasn’t my idea. I just signed up, they told me where to go.”
“Way of the world, if you don’t mind my saying that.”
“No, I don’t mind.”
Lazenac stared out the window. “I’m not so bad off. With the girls, it’s okay as long as you don’t ask them to touch it. And I have to keep the conversation on my good side. But then, my grampa did that for twenty years.” They both laughed.
Lazenac poured some more wine in Casson’s glass. “Go ahead, it’s the only way to deal with those assholes on Blancs-Manteaux.”
Casson raised his glass. “Thank you,” he said.
Lazenac shrugged it off. “Don’t bother. I’m rich today, tomorrow it’s your turn.” He looked around the little room. A very old man in a yarmulke turned the page of his newspaper, squinting to see the print at the top of the column. “The worst of it is,” Lazenac said. He paused, shook his head. “Well, what happened to me really didn’t matter, if you see what I mean.”
“Because, in June of ’40, they got what they came for the first time.”
“Yes.”
