The World at Night

by Alan Furst

  The Hotchkiss guns opened up, tracer sailing away into the far bank and the troops boarding the rafts. German machine guns answered— fiery red tracer that seemed slow at first, then fast. Some of it came through the slits, fizzing and hissing in the blockhouse with the smell of burnt steel. The French gunners worked hard, slamming the short clips into the guns and ripping them out when they were done. On the far bank of the river, some soldiers bowed, others sat down, rolling on the ground or curling up.

  Then it stopped. A few rubber boats turned in the current as they floated away, a few gray shapes floated along with them. The silence seemed strange and heavy. Casson let the binoculars hang on their strap and leaned against the lip of the gunport. Just outside, he heard twigs snapping and pounding footsteps on the dirt path. Two French soldiers ran past, then three more. The sergeant swore and hurried outside. Casson heard his voice. “Stop,” he called out. “You cannot do this—go back where you belong.”

  The answering voice was cold. “Get out of the way,” it said.

  At dusk, a message on the field telephone: the unit had been ordered out. Degrave’s allies in Paris, Casson suspected, knew the battlefield situation for what it was and had determined to save a friend’s life. “We’re being sent south,” Degrave explained as they packed up the equipment. “To the reserve divisions behind the Maginot Line.”

  They tried. But in the darkness on the roads leading out of Sedan nobody was going anywhere. Thousands of French troops had deserted, their weapons thrown away. They trudged south, eyes down, among columns of refugees, most of them on foot, some pushing baby carriages piled high with suitcases. Casson saw artillery wagons—the cannon thrown off, soldiers riding in their place—pulled by farm horses; an oxcart carrying a harp, a hearse from Mons, a city bus from Dinant, the fire truck from Namur. Sometimes an army command car forced its way through, packed with senior officers, faces rigid, sitting at attention while the driver pounded on the horn and swore. Let us through, we’re important people, retreating in an important fashion. Or, as a soldier riding on Casson’s running board put it, “Make way, make way, it’s the fucking king.” Then, a little later, as though to himself, he said “Poor France.”

  Casson and the others moved slowly south, at walking speed. Back on the Meuse, the Wehrmacht was attacking again and whatever remained of the Forty-fifth Division was fighting back—floods of orange tracer crisscrossed the night sky above the river.

  It was hard work, coaxing the truck forward among the refugees. They slept for an hour, then started up again. In first light, just after dawn, Casson spotted a road marker and realized they’d traveled less than twenty miles from Sedan. And then, prompt to the minute at 7:00 A.M., the Stukas came to work. They were very diligent, thorough and efficient, taking care to visit each military vehicle. Casson ran for the ditch and up went the truck—gasoline, cameras, film stock, canned lentils. He sat in the dirt and watched it burn, caught up in a fury that amazed him. It made no sense at all—they’d stopped him from making idiotic newsreels that nobody would ever see—but something inside him didn’t like it.

  But, whether he liked it or not, that was the end of the Section Cinématographique of the Forty-fifth Division, decommissioned in a cow pasture near the village of Bouvellement on a fine May morning in 1940. The Peugeot had also been a victim of the Stukas, though it had not burned dramatically like the truck. A heavy-caliber bullet had punched through the engine, which could do no more than cough and dribble oil when Degrave tried the ignition. “Well,” he said with a sigh, “that’s that.”

  He then gave Meneval and Casson permission to go, filling out official little slips of paper that said they’d been granted emergency leave. For himself, he would make his way to the military airfield at Vouziers, not all that far away, and request reassignment.

  Meneval said he would leave immediately for home, just outside Paris. His family needed him, especially his wife, who’d been absolutely certain that he was gone forever.

  “You understand,” Degrave said, “that the fighting is going in that direction.”

  “Yes, probably it’s not for the best,” Meneval said gloomily. “But, even so.” He shook hands and said good-bye and headed for the road.

  Degrave turned to Casson. “And you, Corporal?”

  “I’m not sure,” Casson said.

  “What I would recommend,” Degrave said, “is that you make your way to Mâcon. There’s a small army base north of the city—it’s the Tenth Division of the XIV Corps. Ask for Captain Leduc, mention my name, tell him you are an isolée— a soldier separated from his unit. They’ll give you something to eat and a place to sleep, and you’ll be out of the way of, of whatever’s going to happen next.”

  He paused a moment. “If the Germans ask, Corporal, it might be better not to mention that you were recalled to service. Or what you did. Other than that, I want to thank you, and to wish you luck.”

  Casson saluted. Degrave returned the salute. Then they shook hands. “We did the best we could,” Degrave said.

  “Yes,” Casson said. “Good luck, Captain.”

  Casson headed for Mâcon. Sometimes, in a café, he heard the news on a radio. Nothing, he realized, could save them from losing the war. He left the roads, walked across the springtime fields. He ate bread he found in a bombed bakery in Châlons, tins of sardines a kind woman gave him in Chaumont. He was not always alone. He walked with peasant boys who’d run away from their units. He shared a campfire with an old man with a white beard, a sculptor, he said, from Brittany somewhere, who walked with a stick, and got drunk on some bright yellow stuff he drank from a square bottle, then sang a song about Natalie from Nantes.

  As Casson watched, the country died. He saw a granary looted, a farmhouse burned by men in a truck, a crowd of prisoners in gray behind barbed wire. “We’ll all live deep down, now,” the sculptor said, throwing a stick of wood on the fire. “Twenty ways to prepare a crayfish. Or, you know, chess. Sanskrit poetry. It will hurt like hell, sonny, you’ll see.”

  The villages were quiet, south of Dijon. The spaniel slept in the midday heat, the men were in the cafés at dusk, the breeze was soft in the faded light that led to evening, and the moon rose as it always had.

  THE ADE PAGODA

  20 August, 1940.

  The silence of the empty apartment rang in his ears. The bed had been made—the concierge’s sister coming in to clean as she always did—and the only sign of his long absence was a dead fern. Still, he felt like a ghost returning to a former life. And he had to put the fern outside the door so he wouldn’t see it.

  The heat was almost liquid. He opened the doors to the little balcony but it wasn’t all that much better outside. Hot, and wet. And still—as though all the people had gone away. Which they had, he realized. Either fled before the advancing Wehrmacht in June, or fled to the seashore on the first of August. Or both. Practical people on the rue Chardin.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, let it out slowly. The man who had lived here, the producer Jean Casson, Jean-Claude to his friends, little jokes, small favors, a half-smile, maybe we should make love—what had become of him? The last attempt at communication was propped against the base of a lamp on the bedside table. A message written in eyebrow pencil on the inside cover of a matchbook from the bar at the Plaza-Athenée. 34 56 08 it said, a phone number. Signed Bibi.

  He’d spent a long time walking the roads, a long span of empty days in the barracks of a defeated army, and he’d thought, every day, about what had happened up on the Meuse. The machine-gun duels across the river, the French soldiers running away, the refugees on the roads. It seemed strange to him now, remote, an experience that happened to somebody else, in some other country.

  He shaved, smelled the lotion he used to wear, then put the cap back on the bottle. Went for a walk. Rue des Vignes. Rue Raffet. Paris as it always was—smelly in the heat, deserted in August. He came to the Seine and rested his elbows on the stone wall and stared d
own into the river—Parisians cured themselves of all sorts of maladies this way. The water was low, the leaves on the poplars parched and pale. Here came a German officer. A plain, stiff man in his mid-thirties, his Wehrmacht belt buckle said Gott Mit Uns, God is with us. Strange God if he is, Casson thought.

  The Métro. Five sous. Line One. Châtelet stop, Samaritaine department store, closed and dead on a Sunday. He would survive this, he thought. They all would, the country would. “Peace with honor,” Pétain had called the surrender. Peace with peace, at any rate, and not to be despised. Just another débâcle, the lost war. And French life had plenty of those. There goes the electricity, the Christmas dinner, the love of one’s life. Merde.

  In the back streets of a deserted commercial district he found a little café open and ordered an express. The price had doubled, the coffee was thin, and the proprietor raised a cautionary eyebrow as he put the cup down—this is how things are, I don’t want to hear about it. Casson didn’t complain. He was lucky to be alive, paying double for a bad coffee was a privilege.

  On the flight south from Sedan he’d been lucky twice. The first time, he was with a company of French infantry, half of them still armed, when they were overtaken by a German column. An officer stood on a tank turret, announced the Panzerkorps had no time to deal with prisoners, and directed them to lay their weapons down on the road. When that was done a tank ran over them a few times and the column went on its way. Others had not been so fortunate—they’d heard about whole divisions packed into boxcars and shipped off to camps in Germany.

  The second time, Casson was alone. Came around the curve of a road outside Châlons to find three Wehrmacht officers on horseback. They stared at him as he walked past—a lone, unarmed soldier in a shabby uniform. Then he heard a laugh, glanced up to see a young man with the look of a mischievous elf, or perhaps, if some small thing annoyed him, a murderous elf. “You halt,” he said. He let Casson stand there a moment, then leaned over, worked his mouth, and spit in his face. His friends found that hilarious. Casson walked away, head down, and waited until he was out of sight before wiping the saliva off.

  So what? he told himself. It didn’t mean anything.

  A woman came into the café and caught his eye. She was tall, had a big, soft face, net stockings, short skirt. Casson stood and gestured at an empty chair. “A coffee?” he said.

  “Sure, why not.”

  The proprietor brought it over and Casson paid.

  “Been out in the country?” she said.

  “You can tell?”

  She nodded. “You have the look. Too many healthy Frenchmen around, all of a sudden.” She took a sip of coffee and scowled at the proprietor but he was busy not noticing her. She snapped her purse open, took out a small mirror, poked at a beauty mark pasted on her cheek. “Care for a fuck?” she said.

  “No, thanks.”

  She closed the mirror and put it back in her purse. “Something complicated, it’ll cost you.”

  “What if I just buy you a sandwich?”

  She shrugged. “If you like, but I hate to see this louse have the business.”

  Casson nodded agreement.

  “Oh, it’s going to get real shitty here,” she sighed. “Before, I was just about managing. Day to day, you know. But now . . .”

  Casson took out a packet of cigarettes and they both lit up. The woman blew a long plume of smoke at the café ceiling. “Trick is,” she said, “with these times, is don’t let it ruin your life.”

  “My mother used to say that.”

  “She was right.”

  They smoked. A fat little man, commercial traveler from the suitcase he was carrying, looked into the café and cleared his throat. The woman turned around. “Well hello,” she said.

  “Are you, uh . . .”

  The woman stood up. “I have to go,” she said.

  “Luck to you.”

  “Thanks. And you.”

  Monday morning, 7:00 A.M. The concierge knocked on his door. It took him a long time to unwind himself from sleep, dreams, the safety of his very own bed. He staggered to the door.

  “Welcome home, Monsieur Casson.”

  He stood, swaying slightly, his shirt pulled together in one hand, his pants held up with the other. “Madame Fitou,” he mumbled.

  She was sweating with anxiety.

  “What is it?”

  “The car, monsieur.”

  “Yes?” He rarely drove it—it mostly stayed in the little garage off the courtyard.

  The words came in a rush. “Well, of course we waited until you returned, and we worried about you so, but of course you know the authorities have made a requisition of all private automobiles, so, ah, it must be turned in. Of course there were posters, while you were away, monsieur. My husband made sure to write down the address, out in Levallois, because we thought, you’d have to be informed, you’d want to be, when you came home . . .” She ran down slowly.

  “Oh, yes, of course.”

  Now he understood. The poor woman was afraid he’d refuse, that she would be dragged into disobedience, made to suffer for his casual attitude toward authority. “I’ll take care of it this morning, madame,” he said.

  She thanked him, he could see the relief in her eyes. She’d lain awake all night, he supposed. In her imagination he had scoffed, jeered at her. Then, disaster. Police.

  “I’d better get dressed,” he said brightly, and managed a smile as he closed the door.

  Madame Fitou and her sister held the doors open and Casson backed out carefully into the rue Chardin. No point in scratching the bodywork, he thought. He let the car idle a moment, then shifted into first gear. He didn’t particularly share the national worship of automobiles, but this one had been very hard to get hold of and he was sorry to lose it.

  A Simca 302. A model last manufactured in 1934, so those seen around Paris were all of a certain age. A sedan convertible, built low to the ground, always forest green. Walnut dash, rag top, throaty engine. Just the sort of car the producer Jean Casson might be expected to drive. Actually, just the sort of car the producer Jean Casson might be expected to drive—Jensen, Morgan, Riley—the producer Jean Casson couldn’t afford.

  The 302 was nice enough to look at, but it wasn’t at all nice to its owner. It was a sulky, spoiled car that drank gas, that sputtered and died at traffic lights, that whined if made to go at high speeds, that wanted nothing to do with the weather after October. Still, it was a credible showpiece, and if it misbehaved with an important personage—it knew who was sitting in its passenger seat—Casson would smile and shake his head, helpless. A depraved passion, what could one do.

  Of course it drove like an angel on its way to the garage. Out avenue Malakoff on a cloudy August morning, a few sprinkles of rain. Casson worked his way patiently through swarms of bicyclists; clerks and factory workers, young and old, everyone peddling along together, most of them sour-faced and grim, ringing their bicycle bells when some idiot went too slow or too fast.

  The light was red at the intersection of Malakoff and the busy avenue Foch. A black sedan pulled up next to him and Casson and the passenger glanced at each other. German soldiers. Casson turned away. They were junior officers, probably lieutenants. They had the look of young men going to work at a bank or a law office—perhaps the military version, paymaster or judge advocate. Something administrative, he thought, and probably technical.

  They were staring at him. He glanced back—yes?—but it didn’t make them stop. They both wore glasses, one of them had round, tortoiseshell frames, the other silver rims. Their faces were pink, freshly shaved, their hair cut to military length and combed into place with hair tonic, and the way they were staring at him was rude. The light went green. The bicyclists moved off, Casson resisted an urge to speed ahead, hesitated so the sedan could go first.

  But it didn’t. They were waiting for him. Conards! he thought. Jerks. What’s your problem? He eased the car into gear and inched forward. I’m not supposed to b
e driving, he thought. They can see I’m French, and that means I’m supposed to be pedaling a bicycle while they drive a car. His stomach turned over—he didn’t want a confrontation, he wasn’t sure exactly what that would mean. He let the Simca fade a little, waiting an extra beat between second and third. The sedan’s door moved ahead of his, and he saw the two were talking, urgently, then the passenger looked out the window again. Clearly he was concerned, perhaps slightly annoyed.

  Porte Maillot. A large, busy traffic circle with avenues radiating like spokes in all directions. A horn blasted behind Casson and he swerved over into the right lane as a Wehrmacht truck tore past him, swaying as it lurched around the circle. Then the sedan was back, the passenger not a bit less irritated. Casson began to feel sick. What’s the problem, Fritz? You think somebody peed in your soup? He knew the look on the lieutenant’s face—righteous indignation, a German religion.

  Up ahead, another traffic light at the avenue des Ternes. Now green, but not for long. If they stopped side by side, the Germans were going to get out of their car and make an issue of it. And he wasn’t legal, he wasn’t supposed to be driving this car. He didn’t know exactly what they’d do about it but he didn’t want to find out. You have not behaved correctly, now you must suffer the consequences. A side street came up on his left, he threw the wheel over and stepped on the gas.

  Rue du Midi. He didn’t remember ever being here but he thought he was just at the edge of Neuilly. He stopped in the middle of the block, in front of a villa with an elaborate iron gate in its wall, and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking. He glanced out the window at the view mirror. There they were. Up the street he could just see the black sedan, out on the avenue, backing up slowly in order to turn into the rue du Midi. They were going to come after him.