Good talk, intelligent and cultured. De Groux had spent half a century reading and conversing—born to a rich and idle life, your job was to discover the meaning of existence, then to let your friends know what it was. The discussion of the new film was carried on all over Paris, Casson was even invited to a supper party at de Groux’s hunting lodge in the Sologne. Oh Citrine, I wish you could be here to see this. That’s a real oryx head over the fireplace, that’s a real duke by the fire, he’s carrying a stick with a real ivory horse’s head, and he’s wearing a real leather slipper with the little toe cut away to ease his gout.
A cast of characters well beyond Jean Renoir. Adèle, the niece from Amboise. Real nobility—look at those awful teeth. Washed-out blue eyes gazed into his, a tiny pulse beat sparrowlike at the pale temple. Wasn’t her uncle the dearest man—insisting that poor old Pierrot be stabled in his horse barns? This proud beast, now retired, who had pounded so faithfully down the paths of the Bois de Fontainebleau after the fleeing hart—would Monsieur care to visit him? Citrine, I confess I wanted to. Go to the stable and wrestle in the straw, hoist the silk evening dress and pull down the noble linen. For the son of a grand-bourgeois crook from the 16th, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. One never met such people, they were rumored to exist, mostly they appeared in plays. There really was game for dinner, dark and strong— perhaps the fabled bear paw, Casson couldn’t bring himself to ask—with black-blood gravy. And real watery vegetables. “Film!” said a cousin from Burgundy. “No. Not really.” Casson assured him it was true. And the man drew back his lips and actually brayed.
There they were, and I among them. Sad it couldn’t last—de Groux was a spy, really, what else could he be? It scared Casson because somebody was going to a lot of trouble, and Casson didn’t think he was worth it. Or, worse, he was worth it but he just didn’t realize why.
Back at the rue Chardin, a visit to the cellar with a flashlight. Ancient stone walls, a child’s sled, a forgotten steamer trunk, a bicycle frame with no wheels. On one wall, black metal boxes and telephone lines. What was he looking for? He didn’t know. Whatever made that hissing sound. He peered at the wires, seeking a device he could neither name nor describe. But there was nothing there. Or nothing he could see. Or, maybe, nothing at all, it was all in his mind. French phones made noise—why not this noise?
“Tell me,” de Groux said, “a man in your position. You must have influence somewhere—a sympathetic politician, perhaps. It’s hard to get the permissions, all the fiches one must have to do your job. I tell you I’m worried, my friend. All the money we’re going to spend. It’s not that I don’t have it, I have pots of it. It’s these musty old lawyers, and the family. They see an old man having a fling, and they worry I’ll actually open my fist and a sou will fly out. So you see, I don’t want all this to founder on the whim of some little petit fonctionnaire. I want to assure myself that when the great battle of the clerks is fought, we are the ones left standing when the smoke clears.”
Va te faire foutre, I tell him in my heart, Citrine. Go fuck thyself. But, in the real world: “Well, Gilles, frankly I have stood on the lines myself. I have filled in my share of forms. Sometimes an assistant has been there to help but it’s so difficult, you see, crucial, that one must involve oneself. It’s that kind of commitment you must have. In the film business.”
“No. Really? Well.”
A blind reptile, he thought. But it knows there’s a nest, and young, and it senses warmth.
And then, it happened again—it seemed everybody wanted to be his friend that spring. This time he was at the office. Four o’clock on a long, wet, gray afternoon, the street outside shiny with rain. His secretary knocked, then opened the door. “A Madame Duval to see you,” she said, her voice disapproved of the name—who does she think she is, using an alias?
His heart sank. He’d been happily lost in his work, a thousand miles from reality. “Well, send her in,” he said.
She sat across from him, wearing a dark suit and a hat with a veil, knees primly together and canted slightly to one side. One of those fortyish Frenchwomen with a sour face and beautiful legs. “I am,” she said, “the owner of the Hotel Bretagne. Where your friend, the actress called Citrine, was living.” Her voice was tense—this was not an easy visit.
“Yes?”
“Yes. Last Friday, the night clerk happened to tell me that you had written her a letter. By the time it reached the hotel she had left, so he marked it Gone Away and returned it.” She paused a moment, then said, “He was—was not unpleased at this. A film actress, a producer, star-crossed, an unhappy ending. He was delighted, really, he’s a man who takes pleasure in the misfortunes of others, and has reached an age where he’s not shy about letting the world know it. It’s sad, really.”
“I believe he opened the letter and read it,” Casson said angrily. “Shared it with his friends, perhaps, and they all had a good laugh.”
The woman thought for a moment. “Opened it? No, not him, he doesn’t begin to be that bold, he simply marked the envelope and returned it. And, in the normal course of things, that would be that.”
There was more, Casson waited for it.
“However,” she said, taking a breath, “I had, we had, a certain experience. I knew who she was, although she was using another name— I had seen her in the movies, and nobody else looks like that. Now, I do not live at the hotel, of course, but I happened to be there, late one night, and I went to the second-floor bath to wash out a glass. It was very quiet just then, about two in the morning, and, without thinking, I simply walked in. Well, she was taking a bath. Naturally I excused myself, immediately closed the door. But—”
She hesitated.
“What happened?”
“Nothing actually happened. It took me a minute to realize what I’d seen. There were tears in her eyes, and on her face. And there was a razor blade resting on the soap dish. That’s all I saw, monsieur, yet you could not be mistaken, there was no question about what was going to happen in that room. I said through the door, ‘Madame, is everything all right?’ After a moment she said ‘Yes.’ That was the end of it, but it’s possible that the intrusion saved a life—not for any reason, you understand, reason wasn’t involved.”
“When was this?”
“Sometime in February. Maybe. Really, I don’t remember. About two weeks later we spoke very briefly. I was working on the book-keeping, she’d come in from doing an errand and asked for her key at the desk. We talked for a minute or two, she never referred to what had happened. She told me she would be leaving at the end of the week, had found something to do in Lyons, in the Zone Non-Occupée, and she mentioned the name of a hotel.”
“Was she unhappy?”
“No. Thoughtful, perhaps. But, mostly, determined.”
“She is that.”
“Then, after I talked to the clerk, I decided I ought to come and see you, to tell you where she is. For a time I wasn’t sure, I didn’t know what to do. I argued back and forth with myself. In the end, I’m doing this not because I insinuate myself in the lives of strangers”—the idea was so unappealing she grimaced—“but because I believe, after thinking about it, that she meant for me to do it.”
They were quiet for a moment. Casson was conscious of the sound of tires on the rainy street below his window.