gave her the bad news. She came to my apartment that afternoon, we told each other it didn’t matter, made love, went out and ate at Fouquet.”
“But later, it didn’t work out.”
“It was good for a few years, then we separated. With the way life went on in the sixteenth, maybe it was inevitable. We started seeing other people-everybody we knew did that so we did it too. Drifted apart, fought too often, decided we’d both be happier if we didn’t live together.”
He reached over to the night table, lit a cigarette and shared it with her. “Looking back now, of course, those days seem like paradise. Even the bad times.”
She nodded. “Yes, for me too. Now I’ll be happy if I can hang on to what I have.”
“The job?”
“Yes. It isn’t so bad, it makes the day pass. What’s extraordinary is that there is an entire class of people who don’t seem to be affected by the war. Some of them French, a few Americans, Argentines, Syrians. They book staterooms; mostly to resorts, in sunny countries. They know about the submarines, but they don’t seem to care.”
“Have you thought about getting out yourself?”
“Yes.” She paused. “Laurette came to me one day, after the registration of Jews last October, and said that Degrave would help me get out. I could go to Algiers.”
“And you didn’t go?”
Slowly, she shook her head. “I thought about it for days, but I was afraid. What could I do? How would I survive? Also, I felt I was abandoning my parents. I’d been able to talk to them once, the day after the invasion. They actually had visas to go to Canada, my brother managed to get them, and space on a steamship-on May tenth. But Rotterdam was being bombed, the city was in a panic, and the dock area was mobbed. They could see the steamship, but they couldn’t get on it. I tried again, two days later, but by then the telephone lines had been cut. Still, I felt that if I stayed in Paris, somehow they would contact me, but they never did.”
“Helene, what if I asked Degrave again, would you go?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Now I would.”
Casson woke for a moment-had he heard voices in the hall? No, it was silent. God he was cold, the window was white with frost flowers. He pulled Helene tighter against him. Crazy to take off all our clothes-to make love like aristocrats. Sirens in the distance, south of them somewhere. It didn’t mean anything. He drifted back toward sleep.
Suddenly, a door opened, another slammed, somebody called out “Odette!” in a shouted stage whisper, and footsteps pounded down the hall.
Helene sat bolt upright, a hand pressed against her heart. “What time is it?”
Casson rolled out of bed, put on pants and shirt, opened the door a crack, and peered down the corridor. At the end of the hall, the woman who worked nights at the desk was talking to a heavy woman in a nightdress, her hair gathered up into blond tufts and tied with ribbons. When Casson appeared they turned and glared at him for a moment, then went back to whispering.
“Madame, s’il vous plait, what’s going on?”
“The Japanese, monsieur.”
“The Japanese? Here?”
“No-not here! Over there somewhere. They have sunk the American navy.”
They all stared at one another for a moment, the clerk in a smock and two sweaters, the blond woman barefoot, toenails painted pink, Casson in his shirt and pants, hair still rumpled with sleep.
“It is the end, monsieur,” the blond woman said dramatically. Her eyes were shining with tears.
“What is it?” Helene called softly.
Casson went back to the room, got undressed, and burrowed under the covers.
“The Japanese have attacked America,” he said. “Defeated their navy.”
“Oh no.”
“It’s for the best. Now they will come into the war.”
“How will they get here?”
“They will build another navy.”
“A long time, then.”
He had no idea. “A year,” he said, in order to say something.
She held on to him, he could tell she was crying. “It’s too long,” she said.
How long, Casson wondered, would it really take? The Americans would have to land somewhere in Europe. He had no idea what it would take to do that-a million men? Hundreds of ships? What he did know, as a film producer, was what it took to assemble a fifty-guest wedding party. So, the Americans weren’t coming anytime soon.
They lay awake in the darkness. Casson imagined he could almost sense the news as it made its way through the hotel. He had experienced a surge of hope, now he felt it drain away. In the morning, he would have to be Jean Marin again, and for many mornings after that.
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “What time is it?”
“Two-thirty.”
She moved closer, rested her head on his shoulder. He whispered to her, she laughed. Suddenly, a drunk started singing in the hall, somebody opened a door and yelled at him to shut up.
Weiss got off the Metro a stop short of his destination, then walked around for a time, making sure he hadn’t been followed. Soon he’d have to get somebody to watch his back. Now that they’d started to kill Germans, the security noose around Paris was being drawn tight. A new permit needed here, a new rule there, a form in the mail that directed you, in ten days, to call at an office you’d never heard of. It was the same technique the Germans had used against the Jews in the 1930s. But, he thought, not the worst thing that could happen, at least it would drive the sheep his way.
He turned down a tiny passage, stepped over a dead cat-they weren’t eating them yet, but they would-and out onto the fashionable rue Guynemer that bordered the Jardins du Luxembourg. Home and office to one Dr. Vadine, a dentist of genteel Bolshevik sympathies who had, from time to time, assisted Comintern operatives. I hope he’s still in business, Weiss thought. And doing well.
Money. He needed money.
Before the war, moving secret funds from Moscow to Paris was easy, using couriers or borrowed bank accounts or phantom companies. In fact, the party had been notorious for its money. On a trip to London during the spy panics of the 1930s, he’d seen tabloid headlines plastered all over the kiosks-HE BETRAYED HIS COUNTRY FOR RED GOLD. Weiss smiled at the recollection. He supposed that calling money gold made it more sinister.
He entered the dentist’s building and climbed the stairs. The receptionist, an attractive woman in her forties, said, “Do you have an appointment, monsieur?”
He waited a moment in silence. The woman was Vadine’s longtime mistress, she’d last seen Weiss in 1939. “No,” he said, “I don’t.” Again he waited. She was pretending she didn’t know him.
“Doctor is very busy today, monsieur.”
“Tell him it’s Monsieur Berg.” Weiss paused a moment. “I’m an old friend. He’ll remember me.”
They stared at each other, she lowered her eyes. “Very well,” she said.
He stood by the desk and waited. Why did he have to spend time on these errands? He needed help, somebody smart who could take orders and get things done. A door opened at the end of the hallway, he heard the whine of a drill, then an urgent, whispered conversation. Vadine came toward him, wiping his hands on a towel. The receptionist was right behind him.
“What do you want?” Vadine said. He was a thin, nervous man, perpetually irritated, and now he was frightened.
“Your help,” Weiss said.
“Can’t we talk about this later?”
Weiss shook his head slowly. “It won’t wait. We’re having difficulty moving funds into the Occupied Zone.”
“Oh,” Vadine said, “money.” He was clearly relieved. Apparently he’d feared they would ask him for more than that.
