“How did you find the passeur?” she asked. It meant someone who helped you cross borders.
“Like anything else,” he said. “Like looking for a travel agent or a doctor, you ask friends.”
“Did it take a long time?”
She had crumbs in her hair, he brushed them out. “Yes,” he said. “I was surprised. But then, it turned out my sister-in-law knew somebody. Who knew somebody.”
“Perhaps it’s dangerous now, to ask friends.”
“Yes, it could be,” he said. “But you do what you have to.”
Their last night together he couldn’t sleep.
He lay in the darkness and listened to her breathing. The hotel was quiet, sometimes a cough, now and then footsteps in the hall as somebody walked past their door. Sometimes he could hear a small bird in the park below the window. He smoked a cigarette, went from one part of his life to another, none of it worked, all of it scared him. Careful not to wake her, he got out of bed, went to the window, and stared out into the night. The city was silent and empty, lost in the stars.
He wanted to get dressed and go out, go for a long walk until he got tired. But it wasn’t wise to do that any more, the police would demand to see your papers, would ask too many questions. When he got tired of standing, he sat in a big chair. It was three in the morning before he slid back under the covers. Citrine woke up, made a little noise of surprise, then flowed across the bed and pressed tight against him. At last, he thought, the night visitor.
“I don’t want you to go away,” she said by his ear.
He smoothed her hair. “I have to,” he said.
“Because, if you do, I will never see you again.”
“No. It isn’t true.”
“Yes it is. I knew this would happen. Years ago. Like a fortune-teller knows things—in dreams.”
After a time he said, “Citrine, please.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. She took his hand and put it between her legs. “Until we go to sleep,” she said.
29 April, 1941.
She insisted on going to the train with him. A small station to the north of Lyons, they took a cab there. He had to ride local trains all day, to Chassieu and Loyettes and Pont-de-Chéruy, old Roman villages along the Rhône. Then, at dusk, he would join the secret route that ran to a village near the river Allier, where one of the de Malincourts would meet him.
The small engine and four coaches waited on the track. “You have your sandwiches?” she said.
“Yes.”
She looked at her watch. “It’s going to be late.”
“I think it’s usual,” he said.
Passengers waited for the doors to open. Country people—seamed faces, weatherbeaten, closed. The men wore old mufflers stuffed down the fronts of buttoned suit jackets, baggy pants, scuffed boots. The women wore shawls over their heads, carried baskets covered with cloths. Casson stood out—he didn’t belong here, and he wasn’t the only one. He could pick out three others, two men and a woman. They didn’t live in Chassieu either. Taking the little trains was a good idea— until four or five of you tried it at the same time. Well, too bad, he thought, there’s nothing to be done about it now.
“What if you came down here,” she said quietly.
“To live, you mean.”
“Yes.”
He paused a moment. “It isn’t easy,” he said. Clearly he had worked on the idea.
“Maybe you don’t want to,” she said.
“No. I’m going to try.”
She took his arm, there was not much they could say, now. The engine vented steam, a door opened in one of the coaches and a conductor tossed his cigarette away and stationed himself at the bottom of the steps. The people on the platform began to board the train.
“Remember what we talked about last night,” he said, leaning close so she could hear him. “If you have to move, a postcard to Langlade’s office.”
She nodded.
“You’re not to call me, Citrine.”
The conductor climbed to the bottom step and shouted “All aboard for Chassieu.”
He took her in his arms and she held on to him, her head on his chest. “How long?” she said.
“I don’t know. As soon as I can manage it.”
“I don’t want to lose you,” she said.
He kissed her hair. The conductor leaned out of the coach and raised a little red flag that the engineer could see. “All aboard,” he said.
“I love you,” Casson said. “Remember.”
He started to work himself free of her arms, then she let him go. He ran for the train, climbed aboard, looked out the cloudy window. He could see she was searching for him. He rapped on the glass. Then she saw him. She wasn’t crying, her hands were deep in her pockets. She nodded at him, smiled a certain way—I meant everything I said, everything I did. Then she waved. He waved back. A man in a raincoat standing nearby lowered his newspaper to look at her. The train started to pull out, moving very slowly. She couldn’t see the man, he was behind her. She waved again, walked a few paces along with the train. Her face was radiant, strong, she wanted him to know he did not have to worry about her, together they would do what had to be done. The man behind Citrine looked toward the end of the station, Casson followed his eyes and saw another man, with slicked-down hair, who took a pipe out of his mouth, then put it back in.
All day long he rode slow trains that rattled through the countryside and stopped at little stations. Sometimes it rained, droplets running sideways across the window, sometimes a shaft of sunlight broke through a cloud and lit up a hillside, sometimes the cloud blew away and he could see the hard blue spring sky. In the fields the April plowing was over, crumbled black earth ran to the trees in the border groves, oaks and elms, with early leaves that trembled in the wind.
Casson stood in the alcove at the end of the car, staring out the open door, hypnotized by the rhythm of the wheels over the rail points. His mind was already back in Paris, holding imaginary conversations with Hugo Altmann, trying to win him over to some version of René Guillot’s strategy. The objective: move Hotel Dorado to the unoccupied zone, under the auspices of the committee in Vichy rather than the German film board. It would have to be done officially, it would take Guske, or somebody like him, to stamp the papers. But, with Altmann’s help, it might be possible.
On the other hand, Altmann liked the film, really liked it, probably he’d want to keep it in Paris. Was there a way to ruin it for him? Not completely—could they just knock off a corner, maybe, so it wasn’t quite so appealing? No, they’d never get away with it. Then too, what about Fischfang? As a Jew, nobody was going to give him the papers to do anything. But that, at least, could be overcome—he’d have to enter the Zone Non-Occupée, the ZNO, just as Casson had, then slip into a false identity, down in Marseilles perhaps.
No, that wouldn’t work. Fischfang couldn’t just abandon his assorted women and children to the mercies of the Paris Gestapo, they’d have to come along. But not across the river, it probably couldn’t be done that way. New papers. That might work—start the false identity on the German side of the line. How to manage that? Not so difficult— Fischfang was a communist, he must be in contact with Comintern operatives, people experienced in clandestine operations—forging identity papers an everyday affair for them.
Or, the hell with Hotel Dorado. He’d let Altmann have it, in effect would trade it for Citrine. Of course he’d have to find some way to live, to earn a living in the ZNO, but that wouldn’t be impossible. He could, could, do any number of things.