Alan Furst - Red Gold

Degrave took him to dinner, brought along his mistress, Laurette, and her friend, Helene. Laurette blonde and soft, Helene the prettier one, dark, with a lot of mascara, glossy black hair cut stylishly-expensively-short, wearing bijoux fantasie, gold-painted wooden bracelets, that clacked as she ate. Fortyish, Casson thought. She was tense at first, then talkative and bright. Casson liked her. While Degrave and Laurette were busy with each other, he told her how he’d once been hounded by lawyers when his production company had misplaced four hundred false beards meant for a musical version of Samson and Delilah. She hooted, covered her mouth, then put a hand on his arm and said, “Forgive me, I haven’t done that for a long time.”

Generous of Degrave to take them out, Casson thought. A black-market restaurant, one the Germans hadn’t yet discovered. Roast chicken: months since Casson had tasted anything like that. He wanted to tear it apart and eat it with his fingers, maybe rolling around with it under the table. And a ’27 Meursault. From beneath the table, excited growling and snarling, then silence, then a hand appears, holding an empty glass.

“Je vous remercie,” Casson said, the nicest way to say thank you. Degrave shrugged and smiled. “Why not,” he said.

When the chicken bones were taken away, the owner came to the table. “Mes enfants,” she said.

They looked up expectantly.

“I can make an egg custard for you.”

“Yes, of course,” Degrave said.

“Twenty minutes.”

“All right.”

“Are you going back tonight?” Helene said to Degrave.

“I’m staying over,” he said. “If I can get a train reservation for Friday.”

“He can,” Laurette said. She had moved her chair so she could be close to him. “If he likes.”

Degrave’s smile was tart. “I can do anything.” He rested a hand on Laurette’s shoulder and kissed her on the forehead.

“Salaud,” she said.

Degrave and Laurette went off in a bicycle taxi, Casson and Helene stood in the drizzle. “Can I take you home?” Casson said.

She hesitated.

“See you to the door, then.”

“Could we go to your room?”

Tiens. “Of course.”

The hotel was not far from the restaurant, so they walked. She lived, she explained, in a maid’s room in an apartment owned by an old woman, a family friend. “I am an Alsatian Jew,” she said, “from Strasbourg. Ten years ago I moved to Paris and rented a small apartment. Then, a few weeks after the Germans came, the landlord told me I had to find someplace else-his sister wanted the apartment. I don’t think he has a sister, but at least he was polite about it. I went to see my mother’s old friend, a widow for many years. She was lonely, she said, would I come and stay with her?

“For a few months, everything went well. This woman-who is not Jewish, by the way-had been a teacher in a lycee. We talked about books and music, we were good company for each other. But then, she changed. She was ill in the winter of ’41, and she became obsessed with the Germans. She made it clear that she’d like me to leave. The problem is, when they said Jews had to register, I didn’t-something told me not to. Now I can’t get a change of residence permit from the prefecture-if she throws me out I have nowhere to go. So, I stay. I’m very quiet. I don’t cause trouble. She has made a point of telling me not to bring strangers there. She’s afraid of being robbed, or murdered, I don’t know exactly what.”

“Why not move to a hotel?”

“Can’t afford it. I work in a travel agency, a good one, on the Champs-Elysees. The offices are splendid, but the pay is low.”

“Can your family help?”

“I don’t think so. The family’s been in Strasbourg since the Middle Ages, but when my parents heard the stories of the refugees coming from Germany, they became frightened. The Germans have always claimed that Alsace rightfully belongs to them. My parents feared, after Chamberlain gave away the Sudetenland in ’38, that France might use it to buy off Hitler. So they sold everything and went to live in Amsterdam. My brother and his family had emigrated just after the first war-he went into business with his in-laws in Montreal. My mother pleaded with me to come to Holland with them, but I wouldn’t. I liked the life in Paris, I was seeing someone, and nothing was going to happen to France and its glorious army.”

It had been a long time, Casson thought, back at the Benoit. For her too, apparently-trembling as he undid her bra and her breasts tumbled out. He almost fell asleep afterward, warm in a way he barely remembered. He propped himself up on one elbow and smoothed the damp hair back off her forehead.

“It’s funny,” she said, “how things happen. Laurette asked me to come along. I said no, she insisted. She’s been kind to me, more than kind, so finally I had to come. I’m going to hate it, I thought. But then…” Idly, she ran a fingernail up and down the inside of his thigh. “See?” she said. “I’m flirting with you.”

“Mm.”

“Is your name really Jean?”

“I’m called Jean-Claude.”

“A film producer.”

“Yes, before the war. But I shouldn’t talk about the past.”

“It doesn’t matter. Laurette told me all this has to be kept quiet.” She laid her head on his chest, heavy and warm. “Poor Laurette,” she said. “Degrave’s wife is rich. And mean as a snake. Laurette used to dream of marriage, but it’s not to be.”

Casson put a hand on her hip, smooth down there. “I shouldn’t talk about these things,” she said. “But it all seems like nothing now, with the world the way it is. I never imagined what it would all come to. Never imagined.”

His fingers traced idly along the curve, up and back. “Yes,” she said, “I like that.”

They stopped Weiss at a Kontrol, the early evening of 15 November, in the Saint-Michel Metro station. Pulled him out of line and made him open his briefcase. “What’s all this?” the German sergeant said, holding a sheaf of blank paper. “For leaflets, maybe, huh?”

Weiss studied the hands; thick fingers, with cracked nails and callus. “I’m a printing salesman,” he explained. “See, it’s the same name and address on each piece of paper, but the lettering is different. Personal stationery. Maybe, ah, maybe you’d like to have something like this for yourself?”

“Me?” the sergeant said. This was something that had never occurred to him. “Well, I don’t know. I mean-what could I have? I stay at a barracks.” He paged through the sheets. “But my wife, in Germany, she would be thrilled to have such a thing.”

Weiss took a pen from his pocket. “Here, just write down your name and address, and I’ll get it made up for you.”

“French stationery?”

“Yes.”

The sergeant began writing, slow but determined, carving the letters onto the paper, then handed it over to Weiss. “Jurgenstrasse,” Weiss said.

“Yes. And it must look exactly that way. Can you print the German alphabet?”

“Oh yes. We have all the German fonts.”

“Well.” He was very pleased. “Could I have it by the twentieth, to send to her?”

“Of course. I’ll see to it.”

“It’s her birthday.”

“You may count on it, sir.”

“It must be quite costly, this kind of thing.”

“With my compliments.”

“Ah, all right then.”

“If you write down your name and address in Paris, I’ll have it sent over in a day or two.”

“Yes, of course.” He started writing. “Meanwhile, maybe I’d better have a look at your work permit.”

Weiss thumbed through the papers in his wallet, took out his work permit, and showed it to the sergeant.