In the days that followed, Stahl found himself thinking about the meeting at the embassy more than he wanted to. He felt foolish to have been naive about the political realities in France, after all he was European, off in California for eight years but still, shouldn’t he have known? Perhaps not. For one thing, this level of corruption was new, at least new to him. When he’d lived in Paris, the talk in the cafes took corruption as a regrettable but natural human undertaking — a means to weasel one’s way to wealth and power, merely one of the darker traditions of Old Europe. There followed, in the cafes, a shrug. But that corruption was never thought to be at the tips of foreign tentacles. It was, back then, French, like good wine and good lovemaking.
Meanwhile, in the US, it wasn’t much discussed. Americans were tired of the antics of slippery European politicians — a plague on all their houses! Europe was, as the woman on the Ile de France had put it when they shared a deck chair, a place where the bickering and squabbling never ended: sometimes they even shot each other, but they would shoot no more American boys. Thinking about the deck-chair conversation, Stahl recalled a scene in a 1936 MGM film called Libeled Lady, with Jean Harlow, and Spencer Tracy as a newspaper editor. At one point, Tracy is in a newsroom and a reporter asks him, ‘What’ll we use for a headline?’ Tracy says, ‘I don’t care. Anything. “War Threatens Europe.”’ The reporter asks, ‘Which country?’ and Tracy responds, ‘Flip a nickel!’
In Stahl’s Hollywood world, only the emigres — the studio violinist from Germany, the make-up woman from Roumania, the scene painter from Hungary — followed European politics and the miseries of European Jews and communists and intellectuals. But the talk at a Warner commissary table, much of it heatedly leftist, quieted down when a ‘real American’ came by. Americans didn’t want to worry about foreign troubles, they had plenty of their own.
Thus it fell to somebody like Wilkinson to worry, because ‘the people in the White House’ needed information. That was slightly odd, once Stahl had a chance to think about it. Wouldn’t it be the Department of State — what Stahl thought of as the Foreign Ministry — that needed to know what was going on? Well, he was a foreigner, an emigre, and there were a lot of things he didn’t understand. Still, he was grateful that Wilkinson had told him what was going on, it meant he could protect himself. So when a note from the Baroness von Reschke reached him at the Claridge — ‘my friends were absolutely delighted to meet you, and I hope you will join us…’ — Stahl tore it up. The note went on to say that the exquisite Josephine Baker would be giving a private performance. Likely in her skirt made of bananas, Stahl thought, but she won’t be wearing it for me. He found great satisfaction in letting the note go unanswered — take that, you Nazi witch, I’m being rude! Maybe not a blow for democracy, but at least something.
And then, when he was handed a telephone message from Herr Moppel, he tore that up as well. Dear old Moppi was the very last person he wished to see. But Moppi didn’t give up so easily, and called again the following day. This time Stahl was in his suite and answered the phone. ‘Franz! Hello! It’s me, Moppi!’ Stahl was brusque and cold. He was at work on a film, he really had no time for social engagements. Goodbye. Bang went the phone, fuck you. This felt even better than ignoring the baroness, and Stahl sensed he’d avoided trouble, real trouble.
20 October.
The director of Apres la Guerre, Jean Avila, had finally made his way to Paris and telephoned the principal actors, asking them to come out to Joinville for a preliminary read-through of the script. They gathered at ten in the morning, on a set that was available until 2.00 p.m., a set for a romantic farce, Cinema de Boulevard, in fin de siecle Paris. The actors settled on fringed velvet sofas and chatted until Jean Avila came hurrying through the door. ‘Here at last,’ he said. ‘They held me up for three days at the border.’ Avila seemed well beyond his twenty-five years. He had long, black, wiry hair, a lean body, and a face marked by the character lines of an older man, which gave him the sort of brooding good looks that women fell for. Starting with Stahl — ‘pleased to have you here,’ he said, ‘very pleased’ — he introduced himself to each member of the cast.
At first, the reading went well. ‘Let’s begin on page thirty-six,’ Avila said. ‘The top of the page, where Colonel Vadic and the others are trying to get food from the Turkish farm woman.’ That line, ‘There she is, looking out the window,’ belonged to Gilles Brecker, who had a faint Alsatian accent and, with blond hair and steel-framed glasses, looked like a cinematic German. He would play the war-loving lieutenant, eager to fight again after getting out of the prison camp.
‘Justine, would you read the farm woman?’ Avila said.
Justine Piro, wearing slacks and a sweater, her hair swept up in a kerchief, said, ‘Go away, or I’ll set the dogs on you.’
‘We hear the dogs barking.’ Avila said, reading the stage direction.
The fat, burly Pasquin lit a cigarette and planted a thick forefinger on the page. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘It’s the uniforms,’ Stahl said.
‘Dear madam,’ Pasquin crooned. ‘A little something to eat?’ He mimed bringing food to his mouth and twice smacked his lips. Avila looked up and smiled.
‘Let’s just kick down the door and take whatever she has,’ Brecker said, the impatience in his voice nudging anger.
‘Hasn’t there been enough of that?’ Stahl said, sounding tired of the world. ‘And what if she resists? What then? Will you beat her?’
‘We must eat,’ Brecker said. ‘We need our strength.’
‘We will eat, lieutenant, we will find something, somewhere. Maybe at the next farm,’ Stahl said.
Pasquin cupped a hand to his ear. ‘What’s that? Did I hear a chicken?’
Avila read the stage direction: ‘An old man wearing a tweed cap and an ancient suit jacket and holding a shotgun is seen stage left. We see his face, then he gestures them away with the shotgun.’
From Stahl: ‘As I said, the next farm.’
From Avila: ‘The three legionnaires trudging along a dirt path, the wind is blowing, the sun beats…’ Avila stopped dead.
The door had flown open, every one of them stared. In the doorway stood Moppi, bright red in the face, breathing hard as though he’d been running, wearing a green loden jacket and an alpine hat with a feather. ‘Franz!’ he called out. ‘Oh no, I’m so sorry, I’ve interrupted your work. But I couldn’t reach you on the phone, so I thought I’d come out to the studio…’
‘Herr Moppel,’ Stahl said, his voice quiet but ice-cold. ‘Would you kindly get out of here? Can’t you see we’re working?’
A woman appeared at the doorway, also breathing hard, apparently Moppi had outdistanced her in a race to the studio building. ‘Pardon, pardon,’ she said. ‘This man insisted, at the reception. I told him he couldn’t come here but he wouldn’t listen. Shall I get the guard?’
‘No, you needn’t, I know when I’m not wanted,’ Moppi said, sounding sullen and hurt. ‘Goodbye, Franz, all I wanted to do was make a time for lunch.’
‘Go away,’ Stahl said. ‘Don’t ever come back.’
Moppi left, the woman glared at him, then again apologized and closed the door behind her. All the others turned and looked at Stahl. ‘Who’s Franz?’ Pasquin said, honestly confused.
‘My name before I was an actor,’ Stahl said. ‘I was born in Austria.’
This was met with silence. Then Avila said, his voice incredulous, ‘That man is a friend of yours?’
Stahl thought quickly and said, ‘A friend of my family, long ago. He knew me as a child, now he’s discovered I’m a movie actor.’
The silence continued. Then it was Justine Piro who saved the day. ‘My God,’ she said, ‘I was afraid he was going to yodel.’
Laughter broke the tension. Avila said, ‘Where were we?’ But then looked up from his script and said to Stahl, ‘How on earth did he know where you were?’ It was the question of a man who’d grown up in a family that spent its life dodging the secret police of many countries.
Stahl shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Did he call Deschelles’s office?’
‘He didn’t follow you, did he?’
‘Oh Jean,’ Piro said. ‘Don’t say such things. Please.’
‘He might have,’ Stahl said. ‘I think he’s maybe a little…’ He circled a finger at his temple.
‘No, he’s just a German,’ Pasquin said. ‘They always find a way.’
Avila lit a cigarette, so did Stahl. ‘Well, to hell with him,’ Avila said. He looked down at his script and said, ‘The three legionnaires trudging along a dirt path…’
