“So now they’ll stop him,” Casson said.
Fischfang gave him a look. There was something knowing and serious about it—you’re naive—and it made him uncomfortable. They sat for a time in silence, watched the crowd flowing endlessly down the avenue. Then Casson’s drink came. “Santé,” he said. Fischfang acknowledged the toast with a tilt of the tulip-shaped glass and they drank. Fischfang’s grandfather had crawled out of a shtetl in Lithuania and walked to Paris in the 1850s, Casson’s roots went back into Burgundy, but as they drank their Kir they were simply Parisians.
“Well,” Casson said acidly, “if the world’s going to burn down we should probably make a movie.”
Fischfang hunted through a scuffed leather briefcase at his feet and brought out a sheet of yellow paper crammed with notes and ink splatters. “Fort Sahara,” he said. He took a packet of cheap cigarettes; short, stubby things, from his breast pocket. As the match flared, he screwed up his face, shielding the cigarette with cupped hands as he lit it. “Lisbon,” he said, shaking out the match. “The slums. Down by the docks. Women hanging out washing on a line stretched across the narrow street. They’re dark, heavy, sweating. All in black. The men are coming home, in twos and threes, carrying their oars and their nets. Kids playing soccer in the street—tin can instead of a ball. Now it’s nighttime. Men and women going to the —cantina? Wine’s being poured from a straw-covered jug. There’s a band, people dancing. Here’s a young man, Santo. He’s tough, handsome, sideburns, rolled-up sleeves . . .”
“Michel Ferré.”
“Yes? That’s up to you. For some reason I kept seeing Beneviglia— he speaks French with an Italian accent.”
“Hunh. Not bad. But remember, this is a quota film—life will go smoother if everybody’s French.”
To protect the film industry, the government had decreed that a certain portion of a foreign company’s French earnings be spent on French films—which meant that major studios, in this case Paramount, had frozen francs that had to be used on what had come to be called “quota films.”
“Even so, Michel Ferré is perhaps a little old,” Fischfang said. “Santo is, oh, twenty-five.”
“All right.”
“So he’s taking his girl dancing. There’s a thwarted suitor, a knife fight in the alley. Suitor dies. We hear whistles blowing, the police are on the way. Cut to the train station—Marseilles. All these tough-guy types, Santo looks like an innocent among them, with his cheap little suitcase. But he survives. Among the thieves and the pimps and the deserters, he somehow makes a place for himself. Maybe he works for a carnival.”
“Good.”
“I see him backlit by those strings of little lights, watching the young couples in love—it should be him and his girl, holding hands. But his friend at the carnival is no good. He plans a robbery—asks Santo to keep a revolver for him. So, he’s implicated. They hold up a bank. We see it. The manager runs outside waving his arms, they shoot him—”
“Why not hold up the carnival? The owner’s a cheat with a little mustache . . .”
Fischfang nodded and crossed out a line in his notes. “So they’re not gangsters.”
“No. Men on the run from life. The carnival owner knows that, he thinks he can hold back their wages because they can’t go to the police.”
“So, once again, Santo has to run. We see him staring through the train window, watching the world of everyday life go by. Then he’s someplace, oh, like Béziers. Down to his last sou, he enlists in the Foreign Legion.”
“Then Morocco.” Casson caught the waiter’s eye and raised two fingers.
“Well, the desert anyhow. Last outpost at Sidi-ben-something-or-other. The white buildings, the sun beating down, the tough sergeant with the heart of gold.”
“Camels.”
“Camels.”
A woman in a white cape swept past them, waving at someone, silver bracelets jangling on her wrist. Fischfang said, “Can we do anything about the title, Jean-Claude?”
“It’s from Irving Bressler, at Paramount. It says ‘Foreign Legion,’ it says ‘desert.’ By the way, who are they fighting?”
Fischfang shrugged. “Bandits. Or renegades. Not the good Moroccans.”
“Where’s the girl, Louis?”
“Well, if the fisherman’s daughter goes to Marseilles to be with Santo, she sure as hell can’t go to the desert. Which leaves the slave girl, captured by bandits many years ago . . .”
“Kidnapped heiress. She’s been rescued and is staying at the fort . . .”
“Native girl. ‘I’m glad you liked my dancing, monsieur. Actually, I’m only half-Moroccan, my father was a French officer . . .’ ”
“Merde.”
“This is always hard, Jean-Claude.”
They were silent for a moment, thinking through the possibilities. “Actually,” Casson said, “we’re lucky it’s not worse. Somebody in the meeting mumbled something about the hero singing, but we all pretended not to hear.”
The waiter arrived with the Kirs. “Fort Sahara,” Casson said, and raised his glass in a toast. The sky was darker now, it was almost night. Somewhere down the boulevard a street musician was playing a violin. The crowd at Fouquet’s was several drinks along, the conversation was animated and loud, there were bursts of laughter, a muffled shriek, a gasp of disbelief. The waiters were sweating as they ran between the tables and the bar.
“Ending?” Casson said.
Fischfang sighed. “Well, the big battle. Santo the hero. He lives, he dies . . .”
“Maybe with French financing, he dies. For Paramount, he lives.”
“And he gets the girl.”
“Of course.”
“She’s the colonel’s wife . . .”
“Daughter.”
“Cat.”
“Chicken.”
8:30 P.M.
Casson took the long way on his walk from the rue Chardin to Marie-Claire’s apartment on the rue de l’Assomption. A blackout was in effect, and the velvety darkness of the Passy streets was strange but not unpleasant—as though the neighborhood had gone back a hundred years in time. In some apartments there were candles, but that was typical French confusion at work: a blackout didn’t mean you had to cover the light in your windows, it meant you couldn’t turn on the electricity. If you did, it would somehow—one never quite understood these things—help the Germans.
The walk to Marie-Claire’s took less than fifteen minutes, but Casson saw two moving vans working that night. On the rue des Vignes, three men struggled with a huge painting, something eighteenth century, in a gilded frame. On the next street it was a Vuitton steamer trunk.
Rue de l’Assomption stood high above the Bois de Boulogne, and the views were dramatic. Lovely old trees. Meadows and riding paths. Marie-Claire’s horsey friends had their polo club in the Bois, Bruno served in some vaguely official capacity at Le Racing Club de France, there was a season box at the Auteuil racetrack, and a private room could be rented for late supper parties at Pré Catalan, the fin-de-siècle restaurant hidden at the center of the park.
Casson paused at the entry to the building. This had been his apartment when he’d married, but it belonged to Marie-Claire now. Well, that was the way of the world. The history of ownership of apartments in the 16th Arrondissement, Casson thought, would probably make a more exciting epic of France than the Chanson de Roland.