The World at Night (25 page)

He had a fantasy about how it would be in Lyons—the lover as night visitor. Long ago, when he’d been sixteen and in his next-to-last year at lycée, he’d had his first real love affair. In a world run by parents and teachers and maids it wasn’t easy to find privacy, but the girl, Jeanette—eyes and hair a caramel shade of gold, dusting of pale freckles across the bridge of the nose—was patient and cunning and one day saw an opportunity for them to be alone. It could happen, thanks to a complicated fugue of family arrangements, very early one Sunday morning at the apartment of her grandmère in the 7th Arrondissement. Casson found the door open at dawn, went to a room where a slim shape lay buried beneath heavy comforters. Perhaps asleep, or just pretending—on this point he’d never been certain. He undressed quietly, stealthily, and slid in next to her. Then, just at that moment, she woke up, her smooth body warm and naked next to his, and breathed
“mon
amour”
as she took him in her arms.

So he calculated his arrival at the Hotel du Parc for just after midnight. But no sleeping maiden awaited his caress. The hotel, high on the bank of the promontory formed by the Saône and the Rhône, was a Victorian horror of chocolate-colored brick, turrets and gables, off by itself in a small park behind a fence of rusted iron palings, with a view over a dark bridge and a dark church. Brooding, somber, just the place for consumptive poets or retired generals. Just the place for the night visitor.

However.

When Casson climbed the stone stairway that went from the street to the little park, he discovered every light in the hotel ablaze and the evening air heavy with the scent of roasting chickens. A trio—bass, drums, accordion—was pounding away at the Latin rhythm of the dance called the Java. There were shouts of encouragement, and shrieks of laughter—in short, the noisy symphony that can be performed only on the instrument of a hundred drunken wedding guests.

In the middle of it, Sleeping Beauty. She was barefoot, wearing a sash improvised from a tablecloth and shaking a tambourine liberated from the drum kit. She also had—a moment before he could believe his eyes—a rose clenched firmly between her teeth. “Hey!” she cried out. “Hey, hey!” She was leading a long line of dancers, first the groom— in his late thirties with a daring set of muttonchop whiskers, next his bride—some few years older, black hair pinned up, a dark mole on her cheek, bright red mouth, and eyes like burning coals.

The line—little kids and grandparents, friends of the groom, the bride’s sisters, assorted hotel guests, at least one waiter—snaked from the dining room through the lobby, around an island of maroon velvet sofas, past the desk and the night manager wearing a wizard hat with a rubber band under his chin, and back to the dining room, hung with yards of pink crepe paper. Casson stood by the door, taking it all in. A fireman performed on the French horn. A man beckoned a woman to sit on his lap and they roared with pleasure as the spindly chair collapsed beneath them. Four feet protruded from the drape of a tablecloth, the people under the table either dead asleep or locked in some static, perhaps oriental, version of coition—it would have been hard to say and nobody cared.

The line reappeared in the lobby, Citrine in the lead, cheeks flushed, long hair flying, a particular expression on her face as she capered— the “savage dancer” of every Gypsy movie MGM had ever made. Then she saw him—“Jean-Claude!”—and ran to hug him. Her small breasts were squashed against his chest, she smelled like wine and chicken and perfume. She pulled back a little, her eyes shone, she was drunk and happy and in love.

Much later, they went up the stairs to her room on the top floor. Very slowly, they went up. On a table in the dining room he had discovered a bowl of red-wine punch, a single lemon slice floating on top, a glass ladle hung on the rim. Therefore, one took this step, then this. Many of these old hotels had been built with a tilting device that operated after midnight, so one had to go upstairs very, very deliberately. It helped to laugh.

The room was small, but very safe—the door secured by what appeared to be a simple lock that took a primitive iron key. But this turned out to be a deeply complicated system, to be used only by cellists or magicians—people with clever fingers. Probably Casson and Citrine could have opened the door themselves, at some future date, but a Good Samaritan happened to walk down the hall in a bathrobe and insisted on coming to their aid.

A small room, dark patterns on the wallpaper and the rug and the bedspread and the chair. Cold; rain a steady patter on the roof, and damp. Casson managed to get his tie off—over his head—threw his shirt and pants at a chair, turned to find Citrine looking sultry, wearing one stocking and an earring. They met somewhere on the bed; stupid, clumsy and hot, bawdy and shameless and prone to laugh. So drunk they weren’t very good at anything, hands and mouths working away, too dizzy with getting what they wanted to be graceful or adept. But, maybe better that way: nothing went right, nothing went wrong, and they were too excited to care.

It was like being a kid again, he wanted her too much to be seductive. Her fault, he thought—the way she was, so many shadows and creases, angles and dark alleys; inside, outside, in between. She crawled around, as hot as he was, knees spread or one foot pointing at the ceiling. They didn’t stay in one place very long, would find some position that made them breathe hard and fast but then, something else, something even better.

On and on it went. He didn’t dare to finish, just fell back now and then to a condition of lazy heat. Not her; from time to time she gasped, shuddered, would stop for a moment and hang on to to him. Just the way, he thought, women were. They could do that. So, she came for both of them. Until, very late at night, she insisted—whispering to him, coaxing—and then he saw stars.

Of course he forgot to give her the letter. Nearly dawn when he remembered; watching her while she slept, in the gray light he could see the color of her hair and her skin, rested a hand on her hip, she woke up and they smoked a cigarette. Out the window, the Lyonnais moon a white quarter-slice from a children’s book—it looked like a cat ought to be sitting on it. He rolled off the bed, dug around in his valise, gave her the letter and lit a candle so she could read it. She kissed him, touched his face, and yawned. Well, he thought, when you’ve been fucking all night it’s not really the best time for a love letter.

Five days, they had.

After that there would be too much moonlight for crossing the line back into occupied France. They walked by the gray river, swollen in the spring flood. Late in the afternoon they had a fire in the little fireplace in Citrine’s room and drank wine and made love. At night she had to go to the theatre. Casson came along, sat in the wings on a folding chair. He liked backstage life, the dusty flats, paint smells, stagehands intent on their business—plays weren’t about life, plays were about curtains going up and down—actresses in their underwear, the director making everybody nervous. Casson enjoyed being the outsider.

It was a romantic comedy, a small sweet French thing. The cousin from the country, the case of mistaken identity, the secret message sent to the wrong person, well, actually the right person but not until the third act. Citrine played the ingenue’s best friend. The ingenue wasn’t bad, a local girl with carefully done-up hair and a rich father and good diction. But, next to Citrine, very plain. That didn’t matter so much— it only made the boyfriend come off a little more of an idiot than the playwright really intended.

The audience was happy enough. Despite rationing they’d eaten fairly well, a version of traditional Lyonnais cooking, rich and heavy, not unlike the audience. They settled comfortably into the seats of the little theatre and dozed like contented angels through the boring parts.

Five days.

Dark, cool, spring days, sometimes it rained—it was always just about to. The skies stayed heavy; big, slow clouds moving south. Casson and Citrine sat on a bench by the river. “I could come to Paris,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “But the life I live now is going bad.”

She didn’t understand.

“My phone’s no good. I’m followed, sometimes.”

“If the Germans are after you, you better go.”

He shrugged. “I know,” he said. “But I had to come here.”

They stared at the river, a long row of barges moving south, the beat of the tugboat’s engine reaching them over the water. Going to places far away.

She recited in terrible English: “The owl and the pussycat, it went to the sea, in the beautiful pea-green boat.”

He laughed, rested the tips of two fingers against her lips.

The tugboat sounded its horn, it echoed off the hillsides above the river, a fisherman in a rowboat struggled against the current to get out of the way.

Citrine looked at her watch and sighed. “We better go back,” she said.

They walked along the quay, people looked at them—at her. Almond eyes, wide, wide mouth, olive-brown hair with gold tints, worn loose, falling over her shoulders. Long brown leather coat with a belt tied at the waist, cream-colored scarf, brown beret. Casson had his hands shoved deep in the pockets of a black overcoat, no tie, no hat, hair ruffled by the wind. He seemed, as always, a little beat-up by life—knowing eyes, half-smile that said it didn’t matter what you knew.

They walked like lovers, shoulders touching, talking only now and then. Sometimes she put her hand in the pocket of his coat. They wore their collars up, looked theatrical, sure of themselves. Some people didn’t care for that, glanced at them a certain way as they passed by.

They turned into a narrow street that wound up the hill toward the hotel. Casson put his arm around her waist, she leaned against him as they walked. They stopped to look in the window of a boulangerie. Between the panniers of baguettes were a few red jam tarts in flaky crust. He went in and bought two of them, in squares of stiff bakery paper, and they ate them as they climbed the hill.

“How did you find the
passeur
?” she asked. It meant someone who helped you cross borders.

“Like anything else,” he said. “Like looking for a travel agent or a doctor, you ask friends.”

“Did it take a long time?”

She had crumbs in her hair, he brushed them out. “Yes,” he said. “I was surprised. But then, it turned out my sister-in-law knew somebody. Who knew somebody.”

“Perhaps it’s dangerous now, to ask friends.”

“Yes, it could be,” he said. “But you do what you have to.”

Their last night together he couldn’t sleep.

He lay in the darkness and listened to her breathing. The hotel was quiet, sometimes a cough, now and then footsteps in the hall as somebody walked past their door. Sometimes he could hear a small bird in the park below the window. He smoked a cigarette, went from one part of his life to another, none of it worked, all of it scared him. Careful not to wake her, he got out of bed, went to the window, and stared out into the night. The city was silent and empty, lost in the stars.

He wanted to get dressed and go out, go for a long walk until he got tired. But it wasn’t wise to do that any more, the police would demand to see your papers, would ask too many questions. When he got tired of standing, he sat in a big chair. It was three in the morning before he slid back under the covers. Citrine woke up, made a little noise of surprise, then flowed across the bed and pressed tight against him. At last, he thought, the night visitor.

“I don’t want you to go away,” she said by his ear.

He smoothed her hair. “I have to,” he said.

“Because, if you do, I will never see you again.”

“No. It isn’t true.”

“Yes it is. I knew this would happen. Years ago. Like a fortune-teller knows things—in dreams.”

After a time he said, “Citrine, please.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She took his hand and put it between her legs. “Until we go to sleep,” she said.

29 April, 1941.

She insisted on going to the train with him. A small station to the north of Lyons, they took a cab there. He had to ride local trains all day, to Chassieu and Loyettes and Pont-de-Chéruy, old Roman villages along the Rhône. Then, at dusk, he would join the secret route that ran to a village near the river Allier, where one of the de Malincourts would meet him.

The small engine and four coaches waited on the track. “You have your sandwiches?” she said.

“Yes.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s going to be late.”

“I think it’s usual,” he said.

Passengers waited for the doors to open. Country people—seamed faces, weatherbeaten, closed. The men wore old mufflers stuffed down the fronts of buttoned suit jackets, baggy pants, scuffed boots. The women wore shawls over their heads, carried baskets covered with cloths. Casson stood out—he didn’t belong here, and he wasn’t the only one. He could pick out three others, two men and a woman. They didn’t live in Chassieu either. Taking the little trains was a good idea— until four or five of you tried it at the same time. Well, too bad, he thought, there’s nothing to be done about it now.

“What if you came down here,” she said quietly.

“To live, you mean.”

“Yes.”

He paused a moment. “It isn’t easy,” he said. Clearly he had worked on the idea.

“Maybe you don’t want to,” she said.

“No. I’m going to try.”

She took his arm, there was not much they could say, now. The engine vented steam, a door opened in one of the coaches and a conductor tossed his cigarette away and stationed himself at the bottom of the steps. The people on the platform began to board the train.

“Remember what we talked about last night,” he said, leaning close so she could hear him. “If you have to move, a postcard to Langlade’s office.”

She nodded.

“You’re not to call me, Citrine.”

The conductor climbed to the bottom step and shouted “All aboard for Chassieu.”

He took her in his arms and she held on to him, her head on his chest. “How long?” she said.