. 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 Métro back to the Sixteenth Arrondissement. As Stahl crossed the Seine, he was happier and more excited with every step. Maybe Après 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 émigré, 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
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 Métro back to the Sixteenth Arrondissement. As Stahl crossed the Seine, he was happier and more excited with every step. Maybe Après 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 émigré, 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
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