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Casson nodded. He saw. The thirty-nine theatres came in large part from the confiscation of property belonging to Siritsky and Haik, Jewish film exhibitors.

“So when I say,” Altmann continued, “that the Nazis have to deal with Continental, I mean it. It’s felt in Berlin that if French culture is destroyed then we’ve failed to resolve the difficulties between us. This is
not
Poland, this is one of the greatest cultures the world has ever produced—Hitler himself dares not claim otherwise.” He drank a sip of coffee, then another.

“Now look,” he said, voice lower. “We’re not sure ourselves exactly what they’re going to let us do. Obviously a celebration of the French victory in 1918 won’t work at the Control Board, but a hymn to Teutonic motherhood won’t work at Continental. Between those extremes, if you and I are going to work together, is where we’ll work.”

“I won’t make Nazi propaganda,” Casson said.

“Don’t. See if I care.” Altmann shrugged. “Casson, you couldn’t if you wanted to, all right? Only a certain breed of swine can do that—German swine or French swine. Perhaps you know that a German film, The Jew Süss, has broken box-office records for the year in Lyons, Toulouse, and, of course, Vichy.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s true. But, thank God, Paris isn’t Lyons or Toulouse.”

“No.”

“Well?”

“It’s a lot to think about,” Casson said.

“You know Leveque?”

“Of course.
The Emissary.
”

“Raoul Mies?”

“Yes.”

“They’ve both signed to do projects—no details, but we’re working on it.”

Casson looked out the window. The Seine was high in its banks, as it always was in autumn, and gray. It was going to rain, the weeds on the river bank bent over in the wind.
Life goes on,
he thought. “I don’t know,” he said quietly.

“Good,” Altmann said. “An honest answer.” He leaned closer to Casson. “I have to get up every morning and go to an office, like everybody else. And I don’t want to work with every greasy little pimp who wants to be in movies. I want my day to be as good as it can—but I’m flesh and blood, Casson, just like you, and I’ll do what I have to do. Just like you.”

Casson nodded. Now they’d both been honest. Altmann started to pour the last of the wine, then put the bottle down and signaled the
patron.
“What do you have for us—something good.”

The patron thought a moment. “Cognac de Champagne?”

“Yes,” Altmann said. “Two, then two more.” He turned back to Casson. “They’ll pay,” he said. “Believe me they will.”

Casson wasn’t sure what he meant. Expensive Cognac? Expensive film? Both, very likely, he thought.

This one cried. Nothing dramatic, shining eyes and “Perhaps you have a handkerchief.” He got her one, she leaned on an elbow and dabbed at her face.
“Bon Dieu,”
she said, more or less to herself.

He reached down and pulled the sheet and blanket up over them, it was cold in November with no heat. “You’re all right?”

“Oh yes.”

He rolled a cigarette from a tin where he kept loose tobacco and burnt shreds. They shared it, the red tip glowing in the darkness.

“Why did you cry?”

“I don’t know. Stupid things. For a moment it was a long time ago, then it wasn’t.”

“Not a girl anymore?”

She laughed. “And worse.”

“You are lovely, of course.”

“La-la-la.”

“It’s true.”

“It was. Maybe ten years ago. Now, well, the old saying goes ‘nothing’s where it used to be.’ ”

From Casson, a certain kind of laugh.

After a moment, she joined in. “Well, not
that.
”

“You’re married?”

“Oh yes.”

“In love?”

“Now and then.”

“Two kids?”

“Three.”

They were quiet for a moment, a siren went by somewhere in the neighborhood. They waited to make sure it kept going.

“In the café,” she said, “what did you see?”

“In you?”

“Yes.”

“Truth?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. I was, attracted.”

“To what?”

“To what. Something, maybe it doesn’t have a name. You know what goes on with you—deep eyes, and the nice legs. Right? Try to say more than that and you’re chasing desire, and you won’t catch it. ‘Oh, for me it’s a big this and a little that, this high and that low, firm, soft, hello, good-bye.’ All true, only next week you see somebody you have to have and none of it is.”

“That’s what attracted you?”

Casson laughed, his face warm. “You came in to buy cigarettes, you glanced at me. Then you decided to have a coffee. You crossed your legs a certain way. I thought, I’ll ask her to have a coffee with me.”

She didn’t answer. Put the bottom of her foot on top of his.

“You like this, don’t you?” he said softly.

“Yes,” she sighed, bittersweet, “I do like it. I like it more than anything else in the world—I think about it all day long.”

That fall the city seemed to right itself. Casson could feel it in the air, as though they had all looked in the mirror and told themselves: you have to go on with your life now. The song on the radio was from Johnny Hess.
“Ça revient,”
he sang—it’s all coming back.
“La vie
recommence, et l’espoir commence à renaître.”
Life starts again, and hope begins to be reborn.

Well, maybe that was true. Maybe that had better be true. Casson went to lunch with an editor from Gallimard, they had a big list that fall, people couldn’t get enough to read. One way to escape, though not the only one. There were long lines at the theatres—for
We Are
Not Married
at the Ambassadeurs, or the
Grand Revue
at the Folies-Bergère. The Comédie-Française was full every night, there was racing at Auteuil, gambling at the Casino de Paris, Mozart at Concert Mayol.
The Damnation of Faust
at the Opéra,
Carmen
at the Opéra-Comique.

“What are you looking for?” the Gallimard editor asked. “Anything in particular?”

Casson talked about
Night Run
and
No Way Out.
What the rules were when the hero was a gangster. The editor nodded and said “Mm,” around the stem of his pipe. Then his eyes lit up and he said, “Isn’t it you who made
Last Train to Athens
?”

That he loved. Well, Casson thought, at least something. “Come to think of it,” the editor said, polishing his glasses with the Deux Magots’ linen napkin, “we may have just the right thing for you. Publication not scheduled until winter ’42, but you certainly understand that that isn’t far off.”

“Too well.”

“
The
Stranger,
it’s called.”

Casson nodded appreciatively. No problem putting that on a marquee.

“By a writer named Albert Camus, from Algiers. Do you know him?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

The editor talked about the plot and the setting, then went on to other things. Casson wrote the title on a scrap of paper. It wasn’t what he’d made, more like what he’d always wanted to make, maybe would have made if the human-predicament stuff hadn’t been thrown overboard during the hunt for money.

“Now I don’t know if this is for you,” the editor said, “but there’s a writer named Simone de Beauvoir—she has the cultural program on Radio Nationale—and she’s working on a novel . . .”

Now he had the scent. The next day he spent at the Synops office, where synopses of ideas for films—from novels, short stories, treatments—were kept on file. It was busy; he saw Berthot, hunting eagerly through a stack of folders. “How’s the wedding business?” he asked. Berthot looked sheepish. “I’m out of it,” he said quietly. “For the moment.” What the hell, Casson thought. Was he the last one to catch on? The war was over, it was time to go back to business.

“Hello, Casson!” Now there was a voice that caught your attention—foreign, and, by way of compensation, much too hearty. Casson looked up to see Erno Simic, the Hungarian. Or, if you liked your gossip, the “Hungarian.” A tall man, slightly stooped, a head too large for a pair of narrow shoulders, hooded eyes, a smile, meant to be ingratiating, that wasn’t. A French citizen of complex Balkan origins—no matter how many times he told you the story you could never keep it straight. Simic ran a small distribution company called Agna Film, which operated in Hungary and Romania.

“Simic,” he said. “All going well?”

“Today it is. Tell me please, Jean-Claude, we can eat together sometime soon?”

“Of course. Call me at the office?”

“I will, naturally. There is a Greek place, in the Tenth . . .”

Better every day, his world coming back to life.

Cold at night. None of that your side/my side diplomacy in the bed. Maybe he didn’t know her name and maybe the name she told him was a lie and maybe he did the same thing, but three in the morning found them curled and twisted and twined together in the chill air, hugging like long-lost lovers, riding each other’s bottoms through the night, arms wrapped around, hanging on to anything they could get hold of.

Cold at night, and cold in the daytime. They had everything rationed now—coal and bread and wine and cigarettes. Only work kept him from thinking about it. Somewhere out in the lawless borderlands of the 19th Arrondissement he found Fischfang, as always at the center of incredibly complicated domestic arrangements. There were children, there were wives, there were apartments—mistresses, comrades, fugitives. Fischfang was never in one place for very long. Late one afternoon he sat with Casson in a tiny kitchen where a young woman was boiling diapers in a kettle. The coal stove smoked, mildew blackened the walls.

Casson explained that he was back in business, that he was looking for a project, and how the rules had changed.

Fischfang nodded. “Not too much reality—is that it?”

“Yes. That’s how it has to be.”

Fischfang stared out the window, the sky gray with winter coming. “Then what you might be able to do,” he said, “is a Summer Night movie. You know what I mean—the perfect night of summer in the full moon. A certain group of people have gathered in a castle, a country house, a liner on the high seas. A night of love,
the
night of love. Just once, dreams come true. By the end, one couple has parted, but we see that, ah, Paul has always loved Marie, no matter how life has tried to drive them apart. The crickets chirp, the moon rises, the music of the night is sublime. Hurry—life will soon be over, time is short, we have only this night, we must live out our loveliest dream, and it’s only a few hours until dawn.”

He wound down. They were both silent. At last Fischfang cleared his throat, lit a cigarette. “Something like that,” he said. “It might work.”

On the way back to his office, Casson saw a girl, maybe sixteen or so, wearing a school uniform, arms wrapped around her books. It was dusk. She looked directly into his eyes, an intimate look, as they moved toward each other on the crowded boulevard. “Monsieur,” she said. Her voice was urgent, emotional.

He stopped. Yes? What? The usual Jean-Claude, the usual half-smile, whatever you want, I’m here. She thrust a folded paper into his hand, then was off down the street, disappearing into the shadows. He stepped into a doorway, unfolded the paper. It was a broadsheet, a one-page newspaper.
Résistance,
it was called. WE MUST FIGHT BACK, the headline said.

On 17 December, Jean Casson signed with Continental.

HOTEL DORADO

9 December, 1940.

Jean Casson sat at his desk at four in the afternoon. He wore an overcoat, a muffler, and gloves. Outside, a winter dusk—thick, gray sky, the lines of the rooftops softened and faded. Looking out his window he could see a corner where the rue Marbeuf met the boulevard. People in dark coats on the stone-colored pavement, like a black-and-white movie. Once upon a time they’d loved this hour in Paris; gold light spilling out on the cobbled streets, people laughing at nothing, whatever you meant to do in the gathering dark, you’d be doing it soon enough. On these boulevards night had never followed day—in between was
evening,
which began at the first fading of the light and went on as long as it could be made to last.
Sometimes until
dawn,
he thought.

He went back to his book,
Neptune’s Daughter,
turning the pages awkwardly with his glove, making notes in soft pencil. Work,
work.
The telephone rang, it was Marie-Claire, organizing a dinner. They were trying hard, his little group of friends, he was proud of them. Rolling the holiday boulder up a long and difficult slope—but at least working together. Christmas in France was not the ritual it was in England, but the New Year
réveillon
was important, and you were supposed to eat fine things and feel hopeful.

They talked for a time, the same conversation they’d had for years—they must, he thought, somehow or other like having it. And it ended as it always did, with another telephone call planned—a Marie-Claire crisis could not, by definition, be resolved with a single telephone call.