The World at Night (34 page)

“Yes.”

The telephone rang. It startled him—nobody called at night. It rang again.

“They’ll go away,” she said.

“Yes,” he said, but he sat upright on the couch.
Answer the phone.
On the third ring he stood up.

She didn’t like it.

“I have to,” he said.

He walked into his bedroom and picked up the receiver.
“Casson!”

Mathieu screamed.
“Get out! Get out!”
The connection was broken.

“Citrine.”

She ran into the bedroom.

“We have to leave.”

She disappeared into the living room, swept up coat, valise, handbag. Stockings in hand, she forced her feet into her shoes. Casson went to the balcony, opened the doors, looked out. Two black Citroëns were just turning into the rue Chardin. He slammed the doors, ran back into the living room. “Right now,” he said.

They ran out the door, then down the stairs, sliding on the marble steps. Citrine slipped, cried out, almost fell as they flew around the mid-floor landing, but Casson managed to pull her upright.
What were they
doing?
They had no chance, none at all, of beating the Citroëns to the street door. They reached the fourth floor, he pulled Citrine after him, down to the end of the hallway, a pair of massive doors. There was a buzzer in a little brass plate, but Casson swung his arm back and pounded his fist against the wood. Eight, nine, ten times. The door was thrown open, the baroness stood there, wide-eyed with fright, hand pressed between her breasts. “Monsieur!” she said.

Casson was out of breath. “Please,” he said. “Will you hide her?”

The baroness stared at him, then at Citrine. Slowly, the surprise and shock on her face turned to indignation. “Yes,” she said, her elegant voice cold with anger. “Yes, of course. How could you think I would not?” She took Citrine by the hand and gently drew her into the apartment.

As the door swung closed, Citrine stepped toward him, their eyes met. She had time to say “Jean-Claude?” That was all.

Casson did try, tried as hard as he could. Raced down four flights of stairs, footsteps echoing off the walls. When he reached the street, the men in raincoats were just climbing out of their cars. They shouted as he started to run, were on him almost immediately. The first one grabbed the back of his shirt, which ripped as he fought to pull free. He punched the man in the forehead and hurt his hand. Then somebody leaped on top of him and, with a yell of triumph, barred a thick forearm across his throat. Casson started to choke. Then, a cautionary bark in harsh German, and the arm relaxed. The man who seemed to be in charge was apparently irritated by public brawling. A word from him, they let Casson go. He stood there, rubbing his throat, trying to swallow. The man in charge never took his hands out of the pockets of his belted raincoat. A sudden kick swept Casson’s feet from under him and he fell on his back in the street. From there, he could see people looking out their windows.

24 June, midnight.

Midnight, more or less—they’d taken his watch. But from the cell in the basement of the rue des Saussaies he could hear the trains in the Métro, and he knew the last one ran around one in the morning.

He was in the basement of the old Interior Ministry—he’d had no idea they had cells down here, but this one had been in use for a long time. It was hard to read the graffiti on the walls, the only light came from a bulb in a wire cage on the ceiling of the corridor, but much of it was carved or scratched into the plaster, and by tracing with his finger he could read it—the earliest entry
16 October, 1902, Tassot.
And who was Tassot, and what had he done, in the autumn of 1902? Well, who was Casson, and what had he done, in the spring of 1941?

The wall was covered with it. Phrases in cyrillic Russian, in Polish, what might have been Armenian. There was Annamese, and Arabic. Faces front and profile. Crosses. Hearts—with initials and arrows. Cocks and cunts, with curly hairs. Somebody loved Marguerite—in 1921, somebody else Martine. This one wrote
Au revoir, Maman.
And that one—a tall one, Casson had to stand on his toes—was going to die in the morning for freedom.

When he heard a deep rumbling sound, he thought for a moment that the RAF was attacking the factory districts at the edge of the city.
And under cover of the bombing, said Wing Commander Smith-Wilson, our commando team will attack the Gestapo office on the rue
des Saussaies and rescue our valiant agent from his basement prison.
But it wasn’t bombing, it was thunder. Rain pattering down in a courtyard above him somewhere. A spring rainstorm, nothing more.

“One thing I will tell you.” A deep voice, from a cell some way up the corridor. Good, educated French, the melancholy tone of the intellectual. Not exactly a whisper, but the voice low and private, confidential. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you injured?”

“No.”

“Then I will tell you one thing: sooner or later, everyone talks. And it’s easier on you if it’s sooner.”

He waited, heart pounding, but that was all.

There was no bed, he sat on the stone floor, back against the damp wall. The last Métro train faded away, the hours passed. Perhaps he could have hidden with the baroness, but then, not finding him, they would have searched the building. They had, no doubt, searched his apartment, but there was nothing for them to find there. Now, what remained was a final scene, he’d manage it as well as he could. The post in the courtyard, the blindfold. Farewell, my love.

What worried him came before that—“sooner or later everyone talks.”
I don’t want to tell them,
he thought. But he had no choice, and he knew it.

They came for him an hour later.

A functionary, and his helper, an SS corporal in a black uniform. The functionary was a small man in his twenties, wearing a mole-colored suit with broad lapels. Hair parted in the middle; weak, sulky mouth. He said to the corporal, “Unlock this door.” Disdainful, chin in the air
—you
see, I run things around here.
Casson stood, they walked on either side of him, down the corridor, then up long flights of stairs.

Somebody’s son, Casson thought. A high official in the Nazi party— what shall we do with poor X? Well, this is what they’d done with him. They reached the top floor, Casson had been here before, for his meetings with Guske. All around him, office life: people talking and laughing and rushing about with papers in their hands. Typewriters racketing, telephones ringing. Of course, he thought, the Gestapo worked a night shift just like the police. A clock on the wall said 3:20. They took him to Guske’s office, made him stand against a wall at attention. “Could I have some water?” he said. He had a terrible, burning thirst—was that something they were doing to him on purpose?

“Nothing for you,” said the functionary. He picked up the phone, dialed two digits. A moment later: “We have him ready for you now, Herr
Obersturmbannführer
.”

Guske arrived a few minutes later, all business and very angry. He gave Casson a savage glare—very much the honest fellow betrayed by his own good nature. Well, they’d see about
that.
He was dressed for an important evening; dark suit and tie, cologne, sparse hair carefully arranged for maximum effect. On his pocket, a decoration—swastika and ribbon. To Casson’s guards he said “Get out,” in a voice only just under control. Then paced the office until a heavy woman in SS uniform rushed in with a file. Guske took it from her and slammed it on his desk, and she ran out of the office.

Guske walked slowly over to him and stood there. Casson looked away. Guske drew his hand back and slapped him in the face as hard as he could, the sound was a crack like a pistol shot. Casson’s face was hot, and tears stood in the corners of his eyes.

“It’s nothing,” Guske said. “Just so we understand each other.” He went back to his desk and settled in, still breathing hard. He thumbed through the file for a moment but he really didn’t have his concentration back. He looked up at Casson.
“I’m
the stupid one. I gave you my hand in friendship, and you turned around and gave me the
Dolchstoss—
the stab in the back. So, good, now it’s clear between us and we’ll go on from there. And, when I’m finished with you, Millau gets what’s left.” He sniffed, turned one page, then another. “The trouble is, we have not come to a true understanding of this country. The Mediterranean type is unfamiliar to us—it does not hesitate to lie, because, the way it sees the world, honor means nothing. But then, when it thinks nobody is looking, it runs out of its burrow, where it hides, and gives somebody a vicious little bite.”

Guske read a note pinned to the inside cover of the dossier. “What is HERON? Code for what?”

“I don’t know.”

Guske’s face was mottled with anger. “And who is Laurent?”

Casson shook his head.

Guske stared at him. Casson heard the typewriters and the telephones, voices and footsteps. The rain outside the window. It seemed very normal. “I need,” Casson said, “to use the bathroom.”

Guske thought about it for a moment, then opened the door and called out, “Werner, come and take him down the hall.”

The functionary came on the run. Took him past offices, a long way it seemed. Around a corner. Then to an unmarked door, which he opened, saying “Be quick about it.” He closed the door. Casson stood in front of a urinal.

On the wall above the sink, a window. Gray, frosted glass. Probably barred, but not so Casson could see. But then, he thought, why would they have bars? This is the Interior Ministry. The top floor. For the French, the most important people would be housed on the second floor. In former times, the top floor would have served the Ministry’s minor bureaucrats—what would they want with bars in a bathroom? Casson walked to the sink and turned it on, drank some water, put his hand on the glass of the window. Top floor, he thought, six stories down to a courtyard.

You’ll die.

But then, what did that matter? Better now, he thought, before they go to work on me.

“Just a minute.”

He put his index fingers under the two handles and very gently pushed up. Nothing. Locked. He could back up to the door, take a run, and jump through it, smashing the glass, tumbling six stories to the courtyard below. He pushed harder, the window moved. Opened an inch. The night air rushed in, it was black outside, and pouring rain.

Lower the window. Go back to Guske’s office. Explain everything
to him. Try to talk your way out of it—crawl, do whatever you have
to do.

He listened, held his breath. Against the background hum of office business he could just make out Werner’s voice. It spoke German, but Casson could easily understand the tone of it. He was explaining something—he was being important. Casson raised the window, perhaps a foot. A damp, sweet wind blew in on him and he could hear distant thunder, a storm up the Seine somewhere, the sound rolling down across the wheatfields into Paris.

He put one knee on the edge of the sink, pulled himself through the window, then froze, terrified, unable to move. The night swirled around him, the courtyard a thousand feet below, the wet cobblestone gleaming in the faint spill of light from blacked-out windows. He forced himself to look around: the window was set out a little from the slanted plane of the roof, slate tile angled sharply up to the peak— copper sheathing turned green with age. To the left: a cascade of white, foamy water. He followed it, found an ancient lead gutter, eaten through by time and corrosion, water pouring through the hole, spilling off the edge of the roof and splashing into the courtyard below.

If he stood on the window
ledge
. . .

He had to force his body to move—he was trembling with fear. He got himself turned around, feet dangling into space, pulled himself to his knees by using the inside handles of the window, then stood up, back to the courtyard. The rain was cold on his face, he took a deep breath. The gutter ran to a perpendicular roof. He could inch over—feet on the gutter, body pressed flat against the slate—and climb the angle. He would then be—he would then be somewhere else.

He heard the bathroom door open, heard Werner cry out. He let go of the window handles, lifted his right foot from the ledge and placed it on the gutter. Werner ran toward the window, Casson left the ledge and let his weight shift to the gutter. It rolled over, dumping its water, then dropped three inches. Casson bit down against a scream and clawed at the wet slate for traction.

Werner’s head appeared through the window. He was pale with terror, his carefully combed hair hanging lank from its center parting. Suddenly he leaned out, took a swipe at Casson’s ankle. Casson crabbed sideways along the gutter.

From Werner, a taut little laugh—just kidding. “Tell me, what on earth do you think you’re doing out there?”

Casson didn’t answer.

“Mm?”

Silence.

“Perhaps you will end it all, eh?” His voice was low, and edged with panic. It was, at the same time, hopeful. To allow an escape was unthinkable, but suicide—maybe they wouldn’t be quite so angry with him.

Casson couldn’t speak. He closed his eyes, felt the rain on his hair and skin, heard the storm in the distance. From the darkness, from the very root of his soul, he said slowly, “Leave me alone.”

A minute passed, frozen time. Then Werner gave an order, his voice a shrill whisper. “You come back in here!” Casson could hear a life in the words—all the failures, all the excuses.

Casson moved another step, the gutter sagged. He stretched his arms as high as they would go, discovered a mossy crack between the slate tiles. He tried it—it was possible, just barely and not for long.

Now Werner saw everything he’d worked for about to fall apart. “One more step,” he said, “and I call the guards.”

Casson counted to twenty. “All right,” he said. “I’m coming back.” But he didn’t move. He could imagine Guske in his office, looking at his watch.