Casson strode along, through the open-air market on the place Rochambeau. The fish stall had a neat pile of fresh-caught rouget on chipped ice. Gray and red, with the eye still clear. A goat was tied to the back of a wagon and a young girl was milking it into a customer’s pail. The market café had tables and chairs out on the sidewalk, the smell of coffee drawing Casson to the zinc bar. He stood between a secretary and a man with red hands and a white apron. Unwrapped the sugar cube and set it on the spoon and watched the walls crystalize and tumble slowly down as the coffee rose up through it. He brought the cup to his lips: hot, black, strong, burnt. Casson allowed himself a very private little sigh of gratitude. To be alive was enough.
Ah, a band.
Casson stopped to watch. A unit of mounted Gardes Republicains in hussars’ uniforms, chin straps tight beneath the lower lip. On command they rode into formation, three lines of ten, horses’ hooves clopping on the cobbled street. Then played, with cornets and drums, a spirited march. In the crowd, a veteran of the 1914 war, the tiny band of the Croix de Guerre in his lapel, stood at rigid attention, white hair blowing in the breeze from the river, left sleeve pinned to the shoulder of his jacket.
Now the band played the “Marseillaise,” and Casson held his hand over his heart. War with Germany, he thought, it doesn’t stop. They’d lost in 1870, won—barely—in 1918, and now they had to do it again. A nightmare: an enemy attacks, you beat him, still he attacks. You surrender, still he attacks. Casson’s stomach twisted, he wanted to cry, or to fight, it was the same feeling.
28, rue Marbeuf.
Turn-of-the-century building, slate gray, its entry flanked by a wholesale butcher shop and a men’s haberdashery. Marbeuf was an ancient street, crowded and commercial, and it was perfect for Casson. While the big production studios were out at Joinville and Billancourt, the offices of the film industry were sprinkled through the neighborhood in just such buildings. Not on the Champs-Elysées, but not far from it either. Honking trucks and taxis, men carrying bloody beef haunches on their shoulders, fashion models in pillbox hats.
To get to Casson’s office you went to the second courtyard and took the east entry. Then climbed a marble staircase or rode a groaning cage elevator an inch at a time to the fourth floor. At the end of a long hall of black-and-white tile: a sugar importer, a press agent, and a pebbled glass door that said Productions Casson.
He was also PJC, CasFilm, and assorted others his diabolical lawyers thought up on occasions when they felt the need to send him a bill. Nonetheless, the world believed, at least some of the time. Witness: when he opened the door, eight heads turned on swivels. It brought to mind the favorite saying of an old friend: “One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.”
As he went from appointment to appointment that morning, he began to get an idea of what the war might mean to him personally. For one thing, everybody wanted to be paid. Now. Not that he blamed them, but by 11:30 he had to duck out to Crédit Lyonnais to restock the checking account from reserves.
When he returned, the scenic designer Harry Fleischer sat across the desk and bit his nails while Gabriella prepared a check: 20,000 francs he was owed, and 20,000 more he was borrowing. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he said gloomily. “My wife is home, selling the furniture.”
“I wish I knew what to say.”
Fleischer made a gesture with his hand that meant just because I am this person. He was heavy, face all jowls and cheeks, with a hook nose, and gray hair spreading back in waves from a receding hairline. “I ran from Berlin in 1933, but I thought: so, I have to live in Paris, the whole world should be tortured like this.”
“Where are you going?”
“Hollywood.” Fleischer shook his head in disbelief at what life did. “Of course I could say ‘Hollywood!’ I know plenty of people who’d see it that way. But I’m fifty-six years old, and what I’ll be is one more refugee. Arthur Brenner has been trying to get me to come to MGM for years. Well, now he’ll get. I don’t want to leave, we made a life here. But if these momsers do here what they did in Poland . . .”
There was a big, dirty window behind Casson’s chair, open a few inches. Outside was the sound of life in the Paris streets. Casson and Fleischer looked at each other—that couldn’t end, could it?
“What about you?” Fleischer said.
“I don’t know. Like last time—the thing will settle into a deadlock, the Americans will show up.” He shrugged.
Gabriella knocked twice, then brought in Fleischer’s check. Casson signed it. “I appreciate the loan,” Fleischer said, “It’s just to get settled in California. What is it in dollars, four thousand?”
“About that.” Casson blew on the ink. “I don’t want you to think about it. I’m not in a hurry. The best would be: we give Adolf a boot in the ass, you come back here, and we’ll call this the first payment on a new project.”
Casson handed the check to Fleischer, who looked at it, then put it in the inside pocket of his jacket. He stood and extended a hand. “Jean-Claude,” he said. That was Casson’s affectionate nickname, in fact his first and middle names.
“Send a postcard.”
Fleischer was suddenly close to tears—didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded, tight-lipped, and left the office.
“Good luck, Harry,” Casson said.
Gabriella stuck her head around the doorway. “James Templeton is calling from London.”
Casson grabbed the phone with one hand while the other dug through a pile of dossiers on his desk, eventually coming up with one tied in red ribbon. Mysterious Island was printed across the cover. The movie wouldn’t be called that—somebody else had the rights to the Jules Verne novel—but that was the idea. When their yacht sinks in a tropical storm, three men and two women find themselves . . . In one corner of the folder, Casson had written Jean Gabin?
“Hello?” Casson said.
“Casson, good morning, James Templeton.” Templeton was a merchant banker. He pronounced Casson’s name English-style; accent on the first syllable, the final “n” loud and clear.
“How’s the weather in London?”
“Pouring rain.”
“Sorry. Here the weather is good, at least.”
“Yes, and damn it all to hell anyhow.”
“That’s what we think.”
“Look, Casson, I want to be straight with you.”
“All right.”
“The committee met this morning, in emergency session. Sir Charles is, well, you’ve met him. Hard as nails and fears no man. But we’re going to wait a bit on Mysterious Island. It’s not that we don’t like the idea. Especially if Jean Gabin comes on board, we feel it may be exactly right for us. But now is not the moment.”
“I understand perfectly, and, I am afraid you are right. We are at a time when it doesn’t hurt to, uh, not continue.”
“We were hoping you’d see it that way.”
“Without confidence, one cannot move ahead, Monsieur Templeton.”
“Do you hear anything, on the situation?”
“Not really. The radio. Reynaud is strong, and we know the Belgians will fight like hell once they organize themselves.”
“Well, over here Chamberlain has resigned, and Churchill has taken over.”
“It’s for the best?”
“Certainly in this office, that’s the feeling.”
Casson sighed. “Well, thumbs-up.”
“That’s the spirit.”
“Mysterious Island will wait.”