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.