Altmann was looking at him a certain way: here was Jean Casson, CasFilm, No Way Out and Night Run and all that sort of thing. Nothing wrong with it. It put people in the seats. Everybody made a little money—if they were careful. He was easy to work with, not a prima donna. On time, pretty much, on budget, pretty much. Not unsuccessful. But now, Hotel Dorado. This was different.
20 March, 21 March, 22 March.
Maybe, this morning, the window could be opened. Not too much, just a little. After all, this wasn’t exactly a wind, more like a breeze. Somehow, against all odds, spring was coming. One could get used to the rationing, to the Germans, to the way things were, and then one simply did what had to be done. And, if you managed to avoid a trap or two, and kept your wits about you, there were rewards: a draft of Hotel Dorado went into Altmann’s office, money came out. That allowed Casson to eat in black-market restaurants twice a week. His apartment felt comfortable—the warming of the season replacing the heating of the baroness. In general, life seemed to be working better. For example his telephone line had been repaired—Madame Fitou told him the crew had been there—even before he realized it was out of order.
At night, he slept alone.
His friends had always claimed that Parisian women knew when a man was in love. Which meant? He wasn’t sure, but something had changed. He didn’t want the women in the cafés, and, when he decided he did, they didn’t want him. He stared at himself in the mirror, but he looked the same as he had for a long time. So, he thought, it must be happening on the subconscious level—mysterious biology. He was, for the moment, the wrong ant on the wrong leaf.
He didn’t dream about Citrine—he didn’t dream. But he thought about her before he went to sleep. How she looked, certain angles, certain poses, his own private selection. Accidental moments, often—she would as likely be putting on a stocking as taking it off. She ran past a doorway because there was no towel in the bath. Or she made a certain request and there was a tremor in her voice. For him, those nights in early spring, she would do some of the things she’d done when they’d been together, then some things he had always imagined her doing, then some things she’d probably never done and never would. He wondered what she would have felt had she seen the movies he made of her. Of course, she made her own movies, so it wouldn’t be a great shock. Would he like to see those? Yes. He would like to.
Thought about her. And talked to her. Shared the tour of daily existence. She actually missed quite a bit here—maybe she would have gotten hot over Casson’s images of lovemaking, maybe, but she certainly would have laughed at the comedies he found for her.
At last, in the middle of February, he’d given in and written a love letter. Based on the ones he’d composed in Spain—on the beach and in the railway cars. Wrote it down and put it in an envelope. Citrine, I love you. It wasn’t very long, but it was very honest. Even then, there was a lot he didn’t say—who wants a blue movie in their love letter? Still, the idea came across. He read it over, it was the best he could do. Somewhere between walks-on-the-beach and sixty-nine, a few sentences about life being short, a few more on mystery, mostly just Jean-Claude, wide open, on paper.
Casson went out to Billancourt studios, where René Guillot was directing a pirate film.
Seize hommes sur
le coffre d’un mort,
yo ho ho
la bouteille de rhum!
Boisson et diable
ont tués les autres,
yo ho ho
buvons le rhum!
“Michel?”
“Yes, Monsieur Guillot?”
“Could you move up the mast a little higher?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And, everybody, we need it deeper, more baritone, stronger. Yo ho ho! Let’s run through it once, like that, and Etienne? Hold the bottle of rum up so we can see it—maybe give it a shake, like this. Yes. All right, ‘Seize hommes sur . . .’ ”
Casson stood near Guillot’s canvas chair—Guillot smiled and beckoned him over.
Casson spoke in an undertone. “Jean Lafitte?”
“Blackbeard.”
“Mmm.”
Casson recognized the wooden boat, supported beneath the keel by scaffolding. It had been featured in scores of pirate and adventure films; a Spanish galleon, a British frigate, a seventy-four-gun ship-of-the-line in the Napoleonic navy. It was manned, that afternoon, by singing pirates. Some clung to the mast, there were several at the helmsman’s wheel, one straddling the bowsprit and a score of others, in eyepatch and cutlass, headscarf and earring and striped jersey. Only luck, Casson felt, had so far saved him from working in the genre. Guillot, he’d been told, was there as a favor, to finish a job left undone by a journeyman director who had disappeared.
Later they sat in the canteen, amid electricians and carpenters, and ate sausage sandwiches washed down with thin beer. “It’s a very good screenplay,” Guillot said. “What’s this nonsense about a recluse in the countryside?”
“It’s Louis Fischfang.”
“Oh. Of course. He’s still here?”
“Yes.”
Guillot’s expression said not good. He smoothed back his fine white hair. He’d been famously handsome when he was young. He remained famously arrogant—egotistical, selfish, brilliant. An homme de la gauche consumed with leftist causes, he’d made a passionate speech at the World Congress Against War in Amsterdam in 1933, then denounced Soviet communism after the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939.
“You think Altmann’s a Nazi?” he said quietly.
Casson shrugged.
Guillot thought about it for a moment, then he said, “I should’ve left.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I’m French. Where the hell am I going to go?”
They drank some beer. Guillot spooned mustard onto his sausage. “I wonder about the title,” he said. “Hotel Dorado. What about something like Nights of Autumn? That’s not it, but I’m feeling for loss, a little melancholy, something bittersweet. You know me, I like to go right at things. Then also, it struck me, why is the stranger a woman? Better a man, no?”
“We talked about it,” Casson said. “We like the idea of a woman. Traveling alone, vulnerable, a small part saint but she doesn’t know it. The way the Americans use an angel—always clumsy, or absent-minded. The idea is that strong and good are two different things.”
Guillot stopped chewing—jowls and pouchy eyes immobile—and stared at him for a moment. Then nodded once, all right—I accept that, and went back to his food.
“You know,” Guillot said, “the last time I heard your name was from Raoul Mies. You’d just signed with Continental, in October I think, and Mies decided that maybe he would too.”
“You’re serious?”
Guillot spread his hands, meaning of course.
“Altmann told me that Mies and, ah, Jean Leveque had signed. So, I decided it would be all right for me.”
The electricians at the next table laughed at something. Guillot gave Casson a sour smile. “An old trick,” he said.
Casson pushed his food aside and lit a cigarette.
“I don’t blame you,” Guillot said. “But there’s nothing you can do about it now.”
“I should’ve known better.”