The World at Night ns-4

by Alan Furst

  Casson started to speak, Guske held up his hand for silence.

  “Please, there’s nothing you can say that will help. I am certainly going to take care of this problem-you can have every confidence in me-but it’s going to take a day or two, maybe even a little more. Your trip to Lyons, is it so very urgent?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then I’m relieved. And you’ll appreciate I have to work with this fellow, I can’t be getting around him every five minutes. But he’s going to have to learn to separate these things-here is something that must concern us, over there is just a nuisance, a little pebble in the shoe. Eh?”

  Guske stood and offered his hand. “Why don’t you call me back a week from today? Yes? I’m sure I’ll be able to give you the answer you want. These telephone numbers in your file, for home and office, they’re correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very good. Then I’ll see you in a week or so. Good day, Herr Casson. Please don’t think too badly of us, it will all be made right in the end.

  Two days later, a Friday afternoon, a commotion in the reception of his office. Casson threw open his door, then stared with astonishment. It was a man called Bouffo-a comic actor, he used only that name. A huge man, gloriously fat, with three chins and merry little eyes- “France’s beloved Bouffo,” the publicity people said. Casson’s secretary, Mireille, was standing at her desk, vaguely horrified, uncertain what to do. Bouffo, as always in a white, tentlike suit and a gray fedora, was leaning against the wall, fanning himself with a newspaper, his face the color of chalk. “Please, my friends,” he said. “I beg you. Something to drink.”

  “Will you take a glass of water, monsieur?” Mireille asked.

  “God no.”

  “Mireille,” Casson said. “Please go down to the brasserie and bring back a carafe of wine, tell them it’s an emergency.” He handed her some money.

  “Now Bouffo,” he said, “let’s get you sat down.” Casson was terrified the man was going to die in his office.

  “Forgive me Casson-I’ve had the most terrible experience.” Casson took his arm-he was trembling-and helped him onto the couch. Up close, the smell of lilac-scented talcum powder and sweat. “Please,” Casson said, “try to calm yourself.”

  “What a horror,” Bouffo said.

  “What happened?”

  “Well. You know Perlemere?”

  “Yes. The agent?”

  “Yes. Well, some time ago he represented me, and he owed me a little money, and I thought I’d just kind of drop in on him, unannounced, and see if I could collect some of it, you know how things are, lately. So, I went over to his office, which is just the other side of the boulevard. I was in that little lobby there, waiting for the elevator, when there was a commotion on the staircase. It’s Perlemere, and there are three men with him, a short one, very well-dressed, and two tough types. Detectives, is what they were.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. One knows.”

  “German?”

  “French.”

  “And?”

  “They’re arresting Perlemere.”

  “What?”

  “He’s telling them he knows this one and that one and there’ll be hell to pay once his important friends find out how he’s being treated and all this kind of thing. But, clearly, they don’t care. Perlemere tries to stop on the staircase and says ‘Now see here, this has gone far enough’ and they hit him. I mean, they really hit him, it’s not like the movies. And he cried out.”

  Bouffo stopped a moment and caught his breath. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “Then, one of them called him a Jew this and a Jew that, and they hit him again. It was sickening. The sound of it. There were tears on Perlemere’s face. Then, they saw me. And one of them says, ‘Hey look, it’s Bouffo!’ “

  “What did you do?”

  “Casson, I was terrified. I gave a sort of nervous laugh, and I tipped my hat. Then they brushed by me. Perlemere looked in my eyes, he was pleading with me. There was blood on his mouth. I held the door open a crack after they went out-they threw him in a car, then they drove away. I didn’t know what to do. I started to go home, then I remembered your office was over here and I thought I better go someplace where I could sit down for a moment.”

  Mireille returned, carrying a carafe of wine. Casson poured some in a water glass and gave it to Bouffo. “No good, Casson.” He wasn’t talking about the wine. Shook his head, tried to take deep breaths. “No good. I mean, who do you go to?”

  Sunday night, late-one-thirty in the morning when he looked at his watch. He was reading, wearing an old shirt and slacks. Restless, not ready to sleep. Blackout curtains drawn, light of a single lamp, a very battered Maigret novel, The Nightclub, he’d bought at a stall on the Seine. The buzzer by his door startled him. Now what? He laid the book face down on the chair, turned off the lamp, went out onto the terrace. Down below, a dark shape waited at the door. Then a white face turned up toward him, and a stage whisper: “Jean-Claude, let me in.” Gabriella, with a small suitcase.

  He hurried down the stairs, the marble steps cold on his feet because he was wearing only socks. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. He heard a stirring from the concierge apartment, called out, “It’s just a friend, Madame Fitou.”

  Back in the apartment he poured a glass of red wine and set out some bread and blackcurrant jam. Gabriella was exhausted and pale, a smudge on the elbow of her coat. “It happened on one of the trains,” she told him. “Really I can’t remember which one it was. I had a first-class compartment, Milan to Turin, then I took the night train to Geneva, eventually the Dijon/Paris express. Then I just barely managed to catch the last Metro from the Gare de Lyon.”

  “Gabriella, why?”

  “I told my husband I was coming up here to see an old girlfriend- as far as anybody knows I arrive tomorrow morning, eight-thirty, on the train from Milan. Do you see what I did?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jean-Claude, could I have a cigarette?”

  He lit it for her. She took a deep breath and sat back in the chair. “I had to see you,” she said.

  This was not the same Gabriella. She’d changed the way she looked-had her hair cut short, then set. She wore three rings: a diamond, a wide gold wedding band with filigree, and an antique, a dull green stone in a worn silver setting, ancient, a family treasure. Clearly she had a new life.

  Their eyes met, a look only possible between people who’ve made love, then she looked away. No, he thought, it isn’t that. They’d had one night together, it had been intimate, very intimate. He had wanted her-long legs, pure face-for months, but she turned out not to be someone who lost herself, or maybe just not his to excite. As for her, he’d realized later that she’d been in love with him, the real thing. So, in the end, neither one got what they wanted.

  She sighed, met his eyes again, ran a hand through her hair. “I’m married now,” she said softly.

  “Gabriella, are you in trouble?”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said, “it’s you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. One morning last week, after my husband left for work, two men came to the house. One was from the security service, in Rome, and the other was German. Educated, soft-spoken, reasonably good Italian. The German asked the questions-first about my time in Paris, then about you. ‘Please, do not worry yourself, signora, this is simply routine, just a few things we need to know.’ He asked about your politics, how did you vote, did you belong to a political party. It was very thorough, carefully done. They knew a great deal about your business, about the films you’d made, about Marie-Claire and your friends. He asked what sorts of foreigners did you know. Did you travel abroad? Often? Where to?

  “I made a great show of trying to be helpful, but I tried to persuade them that most of my work was typing letters and filing and answering the telephone. I just didn’t know much about your personal life. They seemed to accept that. ‘And signora, please, if it’s a
ll the same to you, we’d rather he didn’t know we’d been around asking questions.’ That was a threat. The Italian looked at me a certain way. Not brutal, but it could not be misunderstood.”

  “But you came here anyhow.”

  She shrugged. “Well, that was the only way. You can’t say anything on the phone, they read your mail. We’ve had Mussolini and the fascisti since 1922, so we do what we have to do.”

  “Not everybody,” he said.

  “Well, no, there are always-you learn who they are.”

  They talked for a long time, closer than they’d ever been. Trains and borders, special permits, passports. It wasn’t about resistance, it was about secret police and day-to-day life. What had it been, he thought, since the May night they’d spent together-ten months? Back then, this gossip would have been about books, or vacations. “At the line for the railroad controls,” she said, “they always have somebody watching to see who decides to turn back.”

  She yawned, he took her by the hand into the bedroom. She washed up, changed into silk pajamas, slid under the blankets. “Talk to me a minute more,” she said. He turned the lights off, sat on the floor and leaned back against the bed. They kept their voices low in the darkness. “It is very strange at home now,” she told him. “The Milanese don’t believe they live in Italy. You mention Mussolini and they look to heaven-yet one more of life’s afflictions that has to be tolerated. If you say ‘what if we are bombed?’ they become indignant. What, here, in Milan? Are you crazy?”

  It felt good to talk to a friend, he thought, never better than when your enemies are gathering. It felt good to conspire. “It’s hard to imagine-” he said, then stopped. Above him, a gentle snore. Good night, Gabriella. Ration coupons-did he have enough to take her for coffee in the morning? Yes, he would have a demitasse, it would just work out.

  Really, he thought, who was this Guske to tell him what to do with his life? How did it happen that some German sat in an office and told Jean Casson whether or not he could have a love affair with a woman who lived in Lyons?

  THE NIGHT VISITOR

  24 April, 1941.

  4:20 A.M., the wind sighing across the fields, the river white where it shoaled over the gravel islands. Jean Casson lay on his stomach at the top of a low hill, wrapped up in overcoat and muffler, dark hat worn at an angle, a small valise by his side. The damp from the wet earth chilled him to the bone but there was nothing he could do about it. At the foot of the hill, standing at the edge of the river, two border guards, the last of the waning moonlight a pale glow on their helmets, rifles slung over their shoulders. They were sharing a cigarette and talking in low voices, the rough German sounds, the sch and kuh, drifting up the hillside.

  The boy lying next to him, called Andre, was fifteen, and it was his job to guide Casson across a branch of the river Allier into the Zone Non-Occupee. Andre stared intensely, angrily, at the sales Boches below him. These were his hills, this was his stream, these teenagers below him-nineteen or so-were intruders, and he would, in time, settle with them. By his side, his brown-and-white Tervueren shepherd waited patiently-Tempete he called her, Storm-her breath steaming as she panted in the icy morning air.

  These were in fact his hills-or would be. They belonged to his family, the de Malincourts, resident since the fifteenth century in a rundown chateau just outside the village of Lancy. He raised his hand a few inches, a signal to Casson: be patient, I know these two, they chatter like market ladies but they will, eventually, resume their rounds. Casson gritted his teeth as the wet grass crushed beneath him slowly soaked his clothing. Had they left the chateau as planned, at two in the morning, this would not have happened.

  But it was the same old story. He was scheduled to go across with another man, a cattle-dealer from Nevers who couldn’t or wouldn’t get a permit to enter the Vichy zone. The cattle-dealer arrived forty minutes late, carrying a bottle of cognac that he insisted on opening and sharing with various de Malincourts who had chosen to remain awake in honor of the evening crossing-the father, an aunt, a cousin and the local doctor, if Casson remembered correctly. Everybody had some cognac, the fire burned low, then, at 3:20, a telephone call. It was the cattle-dealer’s wife, he’d received a message at his house in Nevers and he didn’t have to go across the line after all. That left Casson and Andre to make the crossing later than they should have, almost dawn, and that invited tragedy.

  The sentries had themselves a final laugh, then parted, heading east and west along the stream. The dog made a faint sound, deep in her throat-sentries leaving. No, Casson told himself, it wasn’t possible. But then, he thought, dogs understand war, its memory lived in them, and this one’s traditional business was herding stock to safety. A small cold wind, just enough to lift the soft hair on the dog’s neck, made Casson shiver. He’d been offered an oilskin, hanging amid shotguns and fishing baskets and rubber boots in the gunroom of the chateau, but he had declined. Well, next time he’d know better.

  Andre, in short pants and sweater, seemed not to notice. “Please, sir,” he whispered, “we will go down the hill now. We will stay low to the ground, and we will run. Now I count one, and two, and three.”

  He rose and scrambled down the hill in the classic infantry crouch, the Tervueren in a fast trot just behind his left heel-dogs were always trained left, thus the right side, the gun side, remained unhampered. Casson did the best he could, shocked at how stiff he’d gotten just lying on the damp earth for thirty minutes.

  At the foot of the hill, Andre took his shoes off, tied them at the laces, hung them around his neck, then stuffed his socks in his pockets. Casson followed his example, turning up his trouser cuffs as far as the knee. Andre stepped into the stream, Casson was right behind him. The water was so close to ice that it was barely liquid. “My God,” he said. Andre shushed him. Casson couldn’t move, the water washed over his shins. Andre grabbed his elbow with a bony hand and shoved him forward. The dog turned to make sure of him, soft eyes anxious-did this recalcitrant beast require a nip to get it moving? No, there it went, swearing beneath its breath with every step. Relieved, the Tervueren followed, close by Andre. For Casson, the sharp gravel of the midstream island was a relief for a few yards, then the water was even deeper and the dog had to swim, her brown ruff floating on the surface. At last, the far bank. The Tervueren shook off a great cloud of icy spray-just in case some part of Casson’s clothing had accidentally remained dry. “Ah, Tempete,” Andre said in mock disappointment, and the dog smiled at the compliment.

  Andre sat in the grass to put his shoes and socks back on, Casson did the same. Then they ran up the side of a low hill until they reached a grove of poplar trees on the skyline. Andre stopped to catch his breath. “Ca va, monsieur?”

  “Ca va, Andre.”

  He was a wiry kid with black hair that fell over his forehead, the latest in a long line of pages and squires that had been going off on one mission or another since the crusades. This was, after all, not really knight’s business, conduction of a fugitive. The knight, red-faced, ham-fisted de Malincourt, was back at the chateau, where he’d settled in to wait for his son with a night-long discussion on the advantages of Charolais over Limousin steers, the price of rye seed, and the national disposition of Americans, who would, he thought, take their time before they got around to deciding they needed to come back over the sea and kill some more Germans.

  Casson stayed quiet for a moment, hands on knees. Then a whip cracked the air in the poplar grove. Instinctively, Andre and Casson flinched. Then two more cracks, close together, this time a spring twig clipped from a branch. The dog-fear had been bred out of her many generations earlier-gave them an inquiring look: Is this something you’d like me to see about? Andre raised the bottom of his sweater, revealing the cross-hatched wooden grip of a huge, ancient revolver, but it was Casson’s turn to take somebody by the elbow and before this particular war could get fairly underway they were galloping down the reverse slope of the hillside. They took cover for a momen
t, then headed south, toward a little road that would, eventually, take Casson to Lyons. At the next hilltop there was a view back to the river, a dull silver in the first light of dawn, and very beautiful.

  He had a fantasy about how it would be in Lyons-the lover as night visitor. Long ago, when he’d been sixteen and in his next-to-last year at lycee, he’d had his first real love affair. In a world run by parents and teachers and maids it wasn’t easy to find privacy, but the girl, Jeanette-eyes and hair a caramel shade of gold, dusting of pale freckles across the bridge of the nose-was patient and cunning and one day saw an opportunity for them to be alone. It could happen, thanks to a complicated fugue of family arrangements, very early one Sunday morning at the apartment of her grandmere in the 7th Arrondissement. Casson found the door open at dawn, went to a room where a slim shape lay buried beneath heavy comforters. Perhaps asleep, or just pretending-on this point he’d never been certain. He undressed quietly, stealthily, and slid in next to her. Then, just at that moment, she woke up, her smooth body warm and naked next to his, and breathed “mon amour” as she took him in her arms.

  So he calculated his arrival at the Hotel du Parc for just after midnight. But no sleeping maiden awaited his caress. The hotel, high on the bank of the promontory formed by the Saone and the Rhone, was a Victorian horror of chocolate-colored brick, turrets and gables, off by itself in a small park behind a fence of rusted iron palings, with a view over a dark bridge and a dark church. Brooding, somber, just the place for consumptive poets or retired generals. Just the place for the night visitor.

  However.

  When Casson climbed the stone stairway that went from the street to the little park, he discovered every light in the hotel ablaze and the evening air heavy with the scent of roasting chickens. A trio-bass, drums, accordion-was pounding away at the Latin rhythm of the dance called the Java. There were shouts of encouragement, and shrieks of laughter-in short, the noisy symphony that can be performed only on the instrument of a hundred drunken wedding guests.