The train slowed, a long curve in the track, then clattered over a road crossing. An old farmer waited on a horse cart, the reins held loosely in his hand, watching the train go past. The tiny road wound off behind him, to nowhere, losing itself in the woods and fields. In some part of Casson’s mind the French countryside went on forever, from little village to little village, as long as you stayed on the train.
Back in Paris, he telephoned Altmann.
“Casson! Where the hell have you been? Everybody’s been looking for you.”
“I just went off to the seashore, to Normandy, for a couple of days.”
“Your secretary didn’t know where you were.”
“That’s impossible! I told her—if Altmann calls, give him the number of my hotel.”
“Well, she didn’t.”
“Hugo, I’m sorry, you’ll have to forgive me. You know what it’s like, these days—she does the best she can.”
“Well . . .”
“Anyhow, here I am.”
“Casson, there are people who want to meet you. Important people.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I have organized a dinner for us. Friday night.”
“All right.”
“Do you know the Brasserie Heininger?”
“In the Seventh?”
“Yes.”
“I know it.”
“Eight-thirty, then. Casson?”
“Yes?”
“Important people.”
“I understand. That’s this Friday, the fourth of May.”
“Yes. Any problem, let me know immediately.”
“I’ll be there,” Casson said.
He hung up, wrote down the time and place in his appointment book.
The Brasserie Heininger—of all places! What had gotten into Altmann? He knew better than that. The Heininger was a garish nightmare of gold mirrors and red plush—packed with Americans and nouveaux riches of every description before the war, now much frequented by German officers and their French “friends.” Long ago, when he was twelve, his aunt—his father’s charmingly demented sister—would take him to the Heininger, confiding in a whisper that one came “only for the crème anglaise, my precious, please remember that.” Then, in the late thirties, there’d been some sort of wretched murder there, a Balkan folly that spread itself across the newspapers for a day or two. His one visit in adult life had been a disaster—a dinner for an RKO executive, his wife, her mother, and Marie-Claire. A platter of Heininger’s best oysters, the evil Belons, had proved too much for the Americans, and it was downhill from there.
Well, he supposed it didn’t matter. Likely it was the “important people” who had chosen the restaurant. Whoever they were. Altmann hadn’t been his usual self on the telephone. Upset about Casson’s absence—and something else. Casson drummed his fingers on the desk, stared out the window at the rue Marbeuf. What?
Frightened, he thought.
A bad week.
Spring in the river valleys—tumbled skies and painters’ clouds— seemed like a dream to him now. In Paris, the grisaille, gray light, had descended over the city and it was dusk from morning till night.
He went out to the Montrouge district, beyond the porte de Châtillon and the old cemetery, to the little factory streets around the rue Gabriel, where Bernard Langlade had the workshop that made lightbulbs. The nineteenth century; tiny cobbled streets shadowed by brick factory walls, huge rusted stacks with towers of brown smoke curling slowly into a dead sky.
He trudged past foundries that seemed to go on for miles; the thudding of machines that hammered metal—he could feel each stroke in his heart—the smell, no, he thought, the taste, of nitric acid on brass, showers of orange sparks seen through wire mesh, a man with a mask of soot around his eyes, hauling on a long wrench, sensing Casson’s stare and giving it back to him. Casson looked away. His films had danced on the edges of this world but it was a real place and nobody made movies about these lives.
He got lost in a maze of smoked brick and burnt iron and asked directions of two workmen who answered in a Slavic language he couldn’t understand. He walked for a long time, more than an hour, where oil slicks floated on a canal, then, at last, a narrow opening in a stone wall and a small street sign, raised letters chiseled into the wall in the old Paris style, IMPASSE SAVIER. At the end of the alley, a green metal door—Compagnie Luminex.
Inside it was a beehive, workers sitting at long assembly tables, the line served by a young boy in a cap who, using every ounce of his weight, threw himself against the handle of an industrial cart piled high with metal fittings of various shapes and sizes. In one corner, a milling machine in operation, its motor whining from overuse. It was hot in the workroom—the roar of a kiln on the floor below explained why— and there were huge noisy blowers that vibrated in their mounts.
“Jean-Claude!”
It was Langlade, standing at the door of a factory office and beckoning to him. He wore a gray smock, which made him look like a workshop foreman. In the office, three women clerks, keeping books and typing letters. They were heavily built and dark, wearing old cardigan sweaters against the damp factory air, and had cigarettes burning in ashtrays made from clamshells. Langlade closed the half-glass door to the workshop floor, which reduced the flywheel and grinding noises to whispered versions of themselves. They shook hands, Langlade showed him into a small, private office and closed the door.
“Jean-Claude,” he said fondly, opening the bottom drawer of his desk, taking out a bottle of brandy. “I can only imagine what would get you all the way out here.” He gave Casson a conspiratorial smile— clearly an affair of the heart was to be discussed. “Business?” he said innocently.
“A little talk, Bernard.”
“Ahh, I thought—maybe you just happened to be in the neighborhood.” They both laughed at this. Langlade began working on the cork.
“Well, in fact I called your office, three or four times, and they told me, Monsieur is out at Montrouge, so I figured out this is where I’d have to come. But, Bernard, look at all this.”
Langlade smiled triumphantly, a man who particularly wanted to be admired by his friends. “What did you think?”
“Well, I didn’t know. What I imagined—three or four workmen, maybe. To me, a lightbulb. I never would have guessed it took so much to make a thing like that. But, really, Bernard, the sad fact is I’m an idiot.”
“No, Jean-Claude. You’re just like everybody else—me included. When Yvette’s Papa died, and she told me we had this odd little business, I hadn’t the faintest idea what to do about it. Sell it, I supposed. And we tried, but the country had nothing but labor trouble and inflation that year, and nobody in France would buy any kind of industrial anything. So, we ran it. We made Christmas-tree lights and we had small contracts with Citroën and Renault for the miniature bulbs that light up gas gauges and so forth on automobile dashboards. Actually, Jean-Claude, to make a lightbulb, you have to be able to do all sorts of things. It’s like a simple kitchen match, you never think about it but it takes a lot of different processes, all of them technical, to produce some stupid little nothing.” He grunted, twisted the cork, managed to get it free of the bottle.
“Bernard,” Casson said, gesturing toward the work area, “Christmas-tree lights? Joyeux Noël!”
Langlade laughed. He searched the bottom drawer, found two good crystal glasses. He held one up to the light and scowled. “Fussy?”