The concierge of the building had always loved him:
“Ah, Monsieur Casson. It’s good to see a friendly face. What a day, eh? What a horror. Oh the vile Boche, why can’t they leave us alone? I’m getting too old for war, monsieur, even to read it in the papers. Let alone the poor souls who have to go and fight, may God protect them. What’s that you have there? A vacherin! For the dinner tonight? How Madame trusts you, monsieur, if I sent my poor—ah, here’s the old elevator; hasn’t killed us yet but there’s still time. A good evening to you, monsieur, we all would love to see more of you, we all would.”
The elevator opened into the foyer of Marie-Claire’s apartment. He had a blurred impression—men in suits, women in bright silk, the aromas of dinner. Marie-Claire hurried to the door and embraced him, grosses bisoux, kisses left and right, left and right, then stepped back so he could see her. Emerald earrings, lime-colored evening gown, hair a richer blonde than usual, tiny eyes scheming away, clouds of perfume rolling over him like fog at the seaside. “Jean-Claude,” she said. “I am glad you’re here.” Something to say to a guest, but Casson could hear that she meant it.
And if any doubt lingered, she took him gently by the arm and drew him into the kitchen, where the maid and the woman hired for the evening were fussing with the pots. “Let’s have a look,” she said. Lifted the lid from a stewpot, shoved tiny potatos and onions aside with an iron ladle and let some of the thick brown sauce flow into it. She blew on it a few times, took a taste, then offered it to Casson. Who made a kind of bear noise, a rumble of pleasure from deep within.
“Ach, you peasant,” she said.
“Navarin of lamb,” Casson said.
Marie-Claire jiggled the top off the vacherin’s wooden box, placed her thumb precisely in the imprint made by the woman in the crémerie, and pressed down. For his effort, Casson was rewarded with a look that said well, at least something went right in the world today.
“Jean-Claude!” It was Bruno, of course, who’d snuck up behind him and brayed in his ear. Casson turned to see the strands of silver hair at the temples, the lemon silk ascot, the Swiss watch, the black onyx ring, the you-old-fox! smile, and a glass full of le scotch whiskey.
Suddenly, the sly smile evaporated. The new look was stern: the hard glare of the warrior. “Vive la France,” Bruno said.
They toasted the Langlades with champagne. Twenty years of marriage, of that-which-makes-the-world-go-round. Twenty years of skirmishes and cease-fires, children raised, gifts the wrong size, birthdays and family dinners survived, and all of it somehow paid for without going to jail.
Another glass, really.
With the exception of Bruno, they had all known each other forever, were all from old 16th-Arrondissement families. Marie-Claire’s grandfather had carried on a famous, virtually lifelong lawsuit against Yvette Langlade’s great-aunt. In their common history all the sins had been sinned, all the alliances broken and eventually mended. Now they were simply old friends. To Casson’s left was Marie-Claire’s younger sister, Véronique, always his partner at these affairs. She was a buyer of costume jewelry for the Galéries Lafayette, had married and separated very young, was known to be a serious practicing Catholic, and kept her private life resolutely sealed from view. She saw the plays and read the books, she loved to laugh, was always a charming dinner companion, and Casson was grateful for her presence. To his right was Bibi Lachette—the Lachettes had been summer friends of the Cassons in Deauville—the last-minute stand-in for Françoise and Philippe Pichard. Her last-minute escort was a cousin (nephew?), in Paris on business from Lyons (Mâcon?), who held a minor position in the postal administration, or perhaps he had to do with bridges. Bibi had been a great beauty in her twenties, a dark and mysterious heartbreaker, like a Spanish dancer. The cousin, however, turned out to be pale and reticent, apparently cultivated on a rather remote branch of the family tree.
With the warm leeks in vinaigrette came a powerful Latour Pomerol—Bruno on the attack. Casson would have preferred something simple with the navarin, which was one of those Parisian dishes that really did have a farmhouse ancestry. But he made the proper appreciative noise when Bruno showed the label around, and for his politeness was rewarded with a covert grin from Bibi, who knew Casson didn’t do that sort of thing.
They tried not to let the Germans join them at dinner. They talked about the fine spring, some nonsense to do with a balloon race in Switzerland that had gone wrong in amusing ways. But it was not easy. Somebody had a story about Reynaud’s mistress, one of those what does he see in her women, ungainly and homely and absurdly powerful. That led back to the government, and that led back to the Germans. “Perhaps it’s just a social problem,” Bernard Langlade said gloomily. “We never invited them to dinner. Now they’re going to insist.”
“They insisted in 1914, and they were sorry they did.” That was Véronique.
“I don’t think they’ve ever been sorry,” said Arnaud, a lawyer for shipping companies. “They bleed and they die and they sign a paper. Then they start all over again.”
“I have three MGs on the Antwerp docks,” Bruno said. “Paid for. Then today, no answer on the telephone.”
This stopped the conversation dead while everybody tried to figure out just exactly how much money had been lost. When the silence had gone on too long, Casson said, “I have a friend in Antwerp, Bruno. He owns movie theatres, and seems to know everybody. With your permission, I’ll just give him a call tomorrow morning.”
It helped. Madame Arnaud began a story, Bernard Langlade asked Véronique if he could pour her some more wine. Bibi Lachette leaned toward him and said confidentially, “You know, Jean-Claude, everybody loves you.”
Casson laughed it off, but the way Bibi moved her breast against his arm clearly suggested that somebody loved him.
“Well,” Marie-Claire said, “one can only hope it doesn’t go on too long. The British are here, thank heaven, and the Belgians are giving the Germans a very bad time of it, according to the radio this evening.”
Murmurs of agreement around the table, but they knew their history all too well. Paris was occupied in 1814, after the loss at Waterloo. The Germans had built themselves an encampment in the Tuileries, and when they left it had taken two years to clean up after them. Then they’d occupied a second time, in 1870, after that idiot Napoleon III lost an entire army at Sedan. In 1914 it had been a close thing—you could drive to the battlefields of the Marne from Paris in less than an hour.
“What are the Americans saying?” asked Madame Arnaud. But nobody seemed to know, and Marie-Claire shooed the conversation over into sunnier climes.
They laughed and smoked and drank enough so that, by midnight, they really didn’t care what the Germans did. Bibi rested two fingers on Casson’s thigh when he filled her glass. The vacherin was spooned out onto glass plates—a smelly, runny, delicious success. Made by a natural fermentation process from cow’s milk, it killed a few gourmets every year and greatly delighted everyone else. Some sort of a lesson there, Casson thought. At midnight, time for cake and coffee, the maid appeared in consternation and Marie-Claire hurried off to the kitchen.
“Well,” she sighed when she reappeared, “life apparently will go on its own particular way.”