Alan Furst - Red Gold

“Sometimes. I miss living in a home, just the small things that go on all day. And I miss the flowers.”

“In December?”

“Always. Vases everywhere, mostly red gladioli in December. My father was a florist. Actually, my father was the florist. Les Trois Rosiers-his great-grandfather started it, a long time ago.”

“What happened to it?”

“It went, everything went. I miss that too, working in the shop. We did weddings and funerals, banquets, anything important in the city. My uncle had greenhouses in Italy, in San Remo, a little way down the coast from Menton. It’s all gone, now.”

“What made you leave?”

“By the time I was thirty, it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to get married. Not a conventional marriage, anyhow-within the Jewish community in Alsace. I had my chances: a pharmacist, a teacher, but I wasn’t in love. I had affairs, quiet as could be, but people find out. So, I did what all the unmarried girls in France do-or would if they could. I went to Paris.”

“And fell in love.”

“Yes, a real folie, but it didn’t stop there. I was in love with the city, with everything. Of course for you, born here, it would be different.”

“No, the same.”

“Were you rich?”

Casson laughed. “I never could figure that out. We lived among the rich, in Passy, but we never had any money. Somehow, we survived. When I left the Sorbonne I decided to go into the movie business so, once again, I was living without money, or at least living well beyond what I had. But I was young and I didn’t especially care. I was happy to be alive, and I expected I’d get rich someday. And, like you I suspect, I was always in love. First one, then another. Eventually, I got married. She was from a wealthy family, but she didn’t have anything either. We both thought that was funny. After we got engaged, she was summoned to a lunch with her grandparents and they gave her the bad news. She came to my apartment that afternoon, we told each other it didn’t matter, made love, went out and ate at Fouquet.”

“But later, it didn’t work out.”

“It was good for a few years, then we separated. With the way life went on in the sixteenth, maybe it was inevitable. We started seeing other people-everybody we knew did that so we did it too. Drifted apart, fought too often, decided we’d both be happier if we didn’t live together.”

He reached over to the night table, lit a cigarette and shared it with her. “Looking back now, of course, those days seem like paradise. Even the bad times.”

She nodded. “Yes, for me too. Now I’ll be happy if I can hang on to what I have.”

“The job?”

“Yes. It isn’t so bad, it makes the day pass. What’s extraordinary is that there is an entire class of people who don’t seem to be affected by the war. Some of them French, a few Americans, Argentines, Syrians. They book staterooms; mostly to resorts, in sunny countries. They know about the submarines, but they don’t seem to care.”

“Have you thought about getting out yourself?”

“Yes.” She paused. “Laurette came to me one day, after the registration of Jews last October, and said that Degrave would help me get out. I could go to Algiers.”

“And you didn’t go?”

Slowly, she shook her head. “I thought about it for days, but I was afraid. What could I do? How would I survive? Also, I felt I was abandoning my parents. I’d been able to talk to them once, the day after the invasion. They actually had visas to go to Canada, my brother managed to get them, and space on a steamship-on May tenth. But Rotterdam was being bombed, the city was in a panic, and the dock area was mobbed. They could see the steamship, but they couldn’t get on it. I tried again, two days later, but by then the telephone lines had been cut. Still, I felt that if I stayed in Paris, somehow they would contact me, but they never did.”

“Helene, what if I asked Degrave again, would you go?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Now I would.”

Casson woke for a moment-had he heard voices in the hall? No, it was silent. God he was cold, the window was white with frost flowers. He pulled Helene tighter against him. Crazy to take off all our clothes-to make love like aristocrats. Sirens in the distance, south of them somewhere. It didn’t mean anything. He drifted back toward sleep.

Suddenly, a door opened, another slammed, somebody called out “Odette!” in a shouted stage whisper, and footsteps pounded down the hall.

Helene sat bolt upright, a hand pressed against her heart. “What time is it?”

Casson rolled out of bed, put on pants and shirt, opened the door a crack, and peered down the corridor. At the end of the hall, the woman who worked nights at the desk was talking to a heavy woman in a nightdress, her hair gathered up into blond tufts and tied with ribbons. When Casson appeared they turned and glared at him for a moment, then went back to whispering.

“Madame, s’il vous plait, what’s going on?”

“The Japanese, monsieur.”

“The Japanese? Here?”

“No-not here! Over there somewhere. They have sunk the American navy.”

They all stared at one another for a moment, the clerk in a smock and two sweaters, the blond woman barefoot, toenails painted pink, Casson in his shirt and pants, hair still rumpled with sleep.

“It is the end, monsieur,” the blond woman said dramatically. Her eyes were shining with tears.

“What is it?” Helene called softly.

Casson went back to the room, got undressed, and burrowed under the covers.

“The Japanese have attacked America,” he said. “Defeated their navy.”

“Oh no.”

“It’s for the best. Now they will come into the war.”

“How will they get here?”

“They will build another navy.”

“A long time, then.”

He had no idea. “A year,” he said, in order to say something.

She held on to him, he could tell she was crying. “It’s too long,” she said.

How long, Casson wondered, would it really take? The Americans would have to land somewhere in Europe. He had no idea what it would take to do that-a million men? Hundreds of ships? What he did know, as a film producer, was what it took to assemble a fifty-guest wedding party. So, the Americans weren’t coming anytime soon.

They lay awake in the darkness. Casson imagined he could almost sense the news as it made its way through the hotel. He had experienced a surge of hope, now he felt it drain away. In the morning, he would have to be Jean Marin again, and for many mornings after that.

“I can’t sleep,” she said. “What time is it?”

“Two-thirty.”

She moved closer, rested her head on his shoulder. He whispered to her, she laughed. Suddenly, a drunk started singing in the hall, somebody opened a door and yelled at him to shut up.

Weiss got off the Metro a stop short of his destination, then walked around for a time, making sure he hadn’t been followed. Soon he’d have to get somebody to watch his back. Now that they’d started to kill Germans, the security noose around Paris was being drawn tight. A new permit needed here, a new rule there, a form in the mail that directed you, in ten days, to call at an office you’d never heard of. It was the same technique the Germans had used against the Jews in the 1930s. But, he thought, not the worst thing that could happen, at least it would drive the sheep his way.

He turned down a tiny passage, stepped over a dead cat-they weren’t eating them yet, but they would-and out onto the fashionable rue Guynemer that bordered the Jardins du Luxembourg. Home and office to one Dr. Vadine, a dentist of genteel Bolshevik sympathies who had, from time to time, assisted Comintern operatives. I hope he’s still in business, Weiss thought. And doing well.