Alan Furst - Mission to Paris

In Apres la Guerre, Pasquin would play the earthy sergeant to Stahl’s melancholy warrior Colonel Vadic, and Stahl liked the casting well enough, though how the sergeant retained his girth in a Turkish prison camp might require some ingenuity by the screenplay writers. When Pasquin arrived at the bistro — late, his breath reeking of wine — he squeezed Stahl’s hand in a vicelike grip and muttered, ‘So now Hollywood comes to France.’ Stahl just smiled — I hope you don’t expect me to answer that. Pasquin was trouble, but he was exceptionally popular. With a strong director… Stahl told himself hopefully, then turned away to talk to the set-lighting man.

And there would in fact be a strong director. As the cheese plate went around the table, Deschelles announced, like the cat that got the cream, that he had signed Jean Avila to direct the film. Stahl’s outward response was properly impressed and appreciative but he immediately understood this was either a brilliant choice or a catastrophe. Everybody knew the name Jean Avila: twenty-five years old, with two masterpieces to his credit, the first suppressed by the French government, the second recut, and ruined, by film distributors. He came from a violently political family, his father, a famous Spanish anarchist, strangled in a French prison in 1917. Avila himself followed his father’s politics, but his genius was, for anyone who’d contrived to see either of the films, beyond question. In Stahl’s view, Deschelles had shown himself, and surely Paramount, to have serious ambitions for this movie.

Stahl left the restaurant — after yet one more delicious lunch barely tasted, a professional commonplace — with Justine Piro, and they walked for a time in the early-autumn afternoon and talked amiably. She said she liked his work, and he sensed she might actually mean it. He enquired about her life, she told him she was married to a physician and had two girls, eight and eleven. They got on well together — at least in the daily world, what might happen on a movie set God only knew — and in time she took the Metro back to the Sixteenth Arrondissement. As Stahl crossed the Seine, he was happier and more excited with every step. Maybe Apres la Guerre had a chance to be a good film, maybe even very good. So the message waiting for him at the Claridge didn’t bother him all that much. Not at first, anyhow.

Stahl read the message in the lobby. 12.25. Mme Brun at the American embassy telephoned, please call her back at Concorde 92 47. His reaction developed slowly, so he was still a film star as he got on the elevator, but by the time he reached his rooms he was an emigre, and called immediately. ‘Ah yes, Monsieur Stahl,’ Mme Brun said. There was a pause, as though she had to consult a list to see what they might want with this Monsieur Stahl. Apparently, she found it. Could he be so kind as to visit the embassy, when convenient? Mr J. J. Wilkinson, the Second Secretary, wished to speak with him. Stahl said that he could. And would it, she wondered, a note of oh dear in her voice, possibly be convenient tomorrow morning, at 11.15? It would. Mr Wilkinson’s office was in the chancery building, by the Hotel Crillon — he knew where that was? Yes, he did. Mme Brun’s version of thank you and goodbye, now that she had what she wanted, was effusive, and genteel.

Stahl, moments earlier, had been his most optimistic and confident self, but the prospect of the meeting made fast work of that. What could they want? Was there some sort of problem? Sternly, he told himself to cut it out. This was most likely no more than a courtesy call. But it didn’t feel like a courtesy call, it was as though he’d been summoned. No, no, he was Fredric Stahl, a well-known and respected performer, and need have no fear of any government. But another instinct, an older, deeper instinct, told him just how wrong he was about that.

In a quiet grey suit and the plainest tie he owned, he took a taxi to the Avenue Gabriel, just off the Place de la Concorde, and arrived well before the time of the meeting. He was expected — an official escorted him to the top floor of the chancery, where he waited in a chair outside J. J. Wilkinson’s office. A minute before noon, the door opened and the Second Secretary waved him inside.

It was a large, comfortable office with a window on the courtyard, a bookcase with numbered volumes on one wall, an official portrait — an oil painting — of President Roosevelt on the wall above the leather desk chair, the desk bearing stacks of paper, reports, memoranda, correspondence. J. J. Wilkinson, in shirtsleeves and loosened tie, his jacket over the back of the chair, was all smiles and affability. He was about fifty, Stahl guessed, with the thickening body of a former athlete and a heavy, boyish face. He might be cast as a guest at one of Jay Gatsby’s parties, scotch in hand, flirting with a debutante. Was he, perhaps, an Ivy League alumnus, making his way easily through a familiar world? Maybe. In the corner, a squash racquet leaned against the wall. Wilkinson indicated the chair across from his desk and said, ‘Thanks for dropping by, Mr Stahl, sorry about the short notice but this wretched business with the Czechs has kept us from our normal routine.’ He glanced at a page of handwritten notes and said, ‘Anyhow, as a resident alien of the US you’re supposed to check in with us when you arrive in Paris. Not everybody does that, of course, and we don’t really mind, but this visit will take care of it.’

‘Thank you,’ Stahl said.

‘So, yes, ah, you’ve been a resident alien for eight years. Any thought of taking US citizenship?’

‘I intend to. I’ve been meaning to go to the class, fill out the forms… but I’ve been in one movie, then right away another…’

‘You surely have, and very successfully. I’ve seen you, of course, but I never remember movie names.’ His tone was apologetic. ‘Only that I enjoyed them. And with American movies you see in Paris, it’s always someone else’s voice, speaking French, which, frankly, bothers the hell out of me. The last time I saw John Wayne, and he said, “ Maintenant regardez, Slim”, it tickled me so bad my wife poked me in the ribs.’ He grinned at the memory. ‘Anyway, what do you think of Paris, these days?’

‘Not the same as it was, back in the twenties, but not so different. It’s still the city you fall in love with, despite the politics.’

‘Pretty grim, all this hostility, no?’

‘It is. The French didn’t used to be so, um, concentrated on it. Before, it was more like a game, but now it’s a war.’

Wilkinson nodded, I’m glad you agree with me. ‘I’ll tell you something, by trade I’m a lawyer in a Wall Street firm, but I worked for the Roosevelt campaigns in ’32 and ’36 and, believe me, there was plenty of rough stuff going on. But, compared to France, in the last few years, it was child’s play. And now, with war coming…’ He paused, then said, ‘I saw an announcement of your arrival in the Paris Herald and I admit I wondered, I mean, what the hell made you come here now?’

‘Jack Warner,’ Stahl said.

Wilkinson laughed, a bass rumble, and his eyes lit up. ‘I should’ve figured that out,’ he said. ‘But there’s a story about Jack Warner which might explain it. A few years ago, the Warner Bros. representative in Berlin, a man named Joe Kaufmann, was beaten to death by Nazi Brown Shirts — they didn’t like it that he was a Jew — and Warner closed the Berlin office. Then he started to make anti-fascist movies, and he got letters threatening to burn his house down. The other moguls, Goldwyn and Harry Cohn and the rest, don’t want to get involved, but Jack Warner decided to fight, bless his heart.’

‘Well, the decision to have one of his actors do a movie in Paris came from the top, from Jack Warner, personally.’