Casson made the telephone call, writhing in silent discomfort. LeBeau couldn’t actually sue him—the money was too little, the loss of business too great. And Casson couldn’t tell LeBeau to take his beards and the rest of it—films could not be made without a theatrical makeup supplier. Still, this was an affair of honor, so Casson had to endure Maître Versol’s endless drivel as a weekly punishment. The lawyer didn’t attack or threaten him; the world—a murky, obscure entity—was the villain here, see how it took men of exquisite integrity and set them wandering in a forest of lost beards. Where were they? Who had them? What was to be done? Très difficile.
When he got off the phone, Gabriella came in with a copy of Le Temps. It had a certain puffy quality to it—obviously it had been read, and more than once—but a look in Gabriella’s eye told him to be thankful he had a newspaper and not to raise questions about its history.
There wasn’t all that much to read: Germany had attacked Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the French army had advanced to engage the Wehrmacht on Belgian territory, a stunning assortment of world leaders were infuriated, and:
The characteristics of the French soldier are well-known, and he can be followed across the ages, from the heroic fighters of the feudal armies to the companies of the Ancien Régime, and on to the contemporary era. Are they not the characteristics of the French people? Love of glory, bravery, vivacity?
5:20 P.M.
Headed for the one appointment he’d looked forward to all afternoon—drinks at a sidewalk table at Fouquet—Casson left the office ten minutes before he really had to, and told Gabriella he wouldn’t be back.
Marie-Claire had called at four; the dinner was now definitely on for tonight. They had, in a series of telephone calls, talked it out— Yvette Langlade, Françoise, Bruno, and the others—and reached agreement: in her hour of crisis, France must remain France. Here Marie-Claire echoed that season’s popular song, Chevalier’s “Paris Reste Paris.” It was, Casson suspected, the best you could do with a day when your country went to war. Children would be born, bakers would bake bread, lovers would make love, dinner parties would be given, and, in that way, France would go on being France.
And would he, she would be so grateful, stop at Crémerie Boursault on the way home from the office and buy the cheese? “A good vacherin, Jean-Claude. Take a moment to choose—ripe, runny in the middle, French not Swiss. Please don’t let her sell you one that isn’t perfect.”
“And we’re how many?”
“Ten, as planned. Of course Françoise and Philippe will not be there, but she telephoned, very firm and composed, and said it was imperative we go ahead. We must. So I called Bibi Lachette and explained and she agreed to come.”
“All right, then, I’ll see you at eight-thirty.”
For the best, he thought. He walked down Marbeuf and turned onto the Champs-Elysées. At twilight the city throbbed with life, crowds moving along the avenue, the smells of garlic and frying oil and cologne and Gauloises and the chestnut blossom on the spring breeze all blended together. The cafés glowed with golden light, people at the outdoor tables gazing hypnotized at the passing parade. To Casson, every face—beautiful, ruined, venal, innocent—had to be watched until it disappeared from sight. It was his life, the best part of his life; the night, the street, the crowd. There would always be wars, but the people around him had a strength, an indomitable spirit. They cannot be conquered, he thought. His heart swelled. He’d made love all his life—his father had taken him to a brothel at the age of twelve—but this, a Paris evening, the fading light, was his love affair with the world.
He reached in his pocket, made sure he had money. Fouquet wasn’t cheap—but, an aperitif or two, not so bad. Then the vacherin, but that was all. Marie-Claire’s apartment was a ten-minute walk from the rue Chardin, he wouldn’t need a taxi.
Money was always the issue. His little house in Deauville was rented. Not that he told the world that, but it was. He did fairly well with his gangsters and doomed lovers—they paid his bills—but never very well. That was, he told himself, just up ahead, around the next bend in life. For the moment, it was enough to pay the bills. Almost all of them, anyhow, and only a month or two after they were due.
But in Paris that was typical, life had to be lived at a certain pitch. His father used to say, “The real artists in Paris are the spenders of money.” He’d laugh and go on, “And their palette is—the shops!” Here he would pause and nod his head wisely, in tune with the philosopher-knave side of his nature. But then, suddenly, the real ending: “And their canvas is life!”
Casson could see the performance in detail—it had been staged often enough—and smiled to himself as he walked down the crowded avenue. Casson wondered why, on the night his country went to war, he was thinking about his father. The father he remembered was old and corrupt, a rogue and a liar, but he’d loved him anyhow.
Casson needed only a moment to search the crowded tables—what he was looking for was easy to find. Amid the elegant patrons of Fouquet, the women with every inch of fabric resting exactly where they wished, the men with each hair exactly where they’d put it that morning, sat a ferocious, Bolshevik spider. Skinny, glaring, with unruly black hair and beard, a worker’s blue suit, an open-collar shirt, and bent wire-frame Trotsky eyeglasses. But this one was no artsy intellectual Trotskyite— you could see that. This one was a Stalinist to his bloody toenails and, momentarily, would produce a sharpened scythe and proceed to dismember half the patronage of Fouquet’s, while the waiters ran about hysterically, trying to present their bills to a dying clientele.
Ah, Fischfang, Casson thought. You are my revenge.
Louis Fischfang was Casson’s writer. Every producer had one. Casson told the agents and screenwriters that he spread the work around, and he did—different people were right for different projects. But in the end, when the chips were down, when somebody had to somehow make it all come out right for the people who handed over their hard-earned francs for a seat in a movie theatre, then it was Fischfang and no other.
Though he quivered with political rage, spat and swore like a proletarian, marched and signed and chanted and agitated, none of it mattered, because that fucking Fischfang could write a movie script that would make a banker weep. God-given talent, is what it was. Just the line, just the gesture, just the shot. There could be no Jean Cassons— no Alexander Kordas, no Louis Mayers, no Jean Renoirs or René Clairs—without the Louis Fischfangs of this world.
Fischfang looked up as Casson approached the table. Offered his usual greeting: a few grim nods and a twisted smile. Yes, here he was, the devil’s first mate on the ship of corruption. Here was money, nice suits, ties, and the haughty 16th Arrondissement, all in one bon bourgeois package called Casson.
“Did you order?” Casson asked as he sat down.
“Kir.” White wine with blackcurrent liqueur.
“Good idea.”
“Royale.” Not white wine, champagne.
“Even better.”
The waiter arrived with Fischfang’s drink and Casson ordered the same. “It’s a strange day to work,” he said, “but I really don’t know what else to do.”
“I can’t believe it’s come to this,” Fischfang said angrily. “They”— in Fischfangese this always meant the government and the rich and the powerful— “they grew Hitler. Watered him and weeded him and pitch-forked manure all around him. They gave him what he wanted in Czechoslovakia and Poland—now he wants the rest, now he wants what they have. Hah!”