I could tell I perplexed him. His thumbs were digging so deeply into my arms that they would make great ripe blackberry marks on my skin the next day, but I did not show any sign of it. Instead I just looked at him steadily and tried to stare him out.
“We’ve got friends, Reine and me,” he said in a lower voice, almost reasonable now, his thumbs still gouging into my arms. “Powerful friends. Where do you think she got that stupid lipstick? Or the perfume? Or that stuff she puts on her face at night? Where d’you think we got all that from? And how d’you think we earned it?”
He let go of my arms then with an expression of mingled pride and consternation, and I realized that he was slick with fear.
I don’t remember very much about the film. Circonstances Atténuantes, with Arletty and Michel Simon, an old film that Cassis and Reine had already seen. Reine at least was untroubled by the fact; she stared at the screen the whole time, rapt. I found the story unlikely, too removed from my realities. Besides, my mind was on other things. Twice the film in the projector broke; the second time the houselights went on and the audience roared disapproval. A harassed-looking man in a dinner jacket shouted for silence. A group of Germans in a corner, feet resting on the seats in front of them, began slow-clapping. Suddenly Reine, who had come out of her trance to complain irritably about the interruption, gave a squeak of excitement.
“Cassis!” She leaned over me and I could smell a sweetish chemical scent in her hair. “Cassis, he’s here!”
“Shh!” hissed Cassis furiously. “Don’t look back!”
Reine and Cassis sat facing the front of the auditorium for a moment, expressionless as dummies. Then he spoke, from the corner of his mouth, like someone whispering in church.
“Who?”
Reinette flicked a glance at the Germans from the corner of her eye.
“Back there,” she replied in the same fashion. “Some others I don’t know.”
Around us the crowd stamped and yelled. Cassis ventured a quick look.
“I’ll wait till the lights go down,” he said.
Ten minutes later the lights dimmed and the film continued. Cassis wriggled from his seat toward the back of the auditorium. I followed him. On the screen Arletty pranced and eye-fluttered in a tight low-cut dress. The mercury reflection lit our low-bent, running figures, making Cassis’s face a livid mask.
“Go back, you little idiot,” he hissed at me. “I don’t want you with me, getting in the way!”
I shook my head.
“I won’t get in the way,” I told him. “Not unless you try to stop me coming with you.”
Cassis made an impatient gesture. He knew I meant what I said. In the dark I could feel him trembling, with excitement or nerves.
“Keep down,” he told me at last. “And let me do the talking.”
We finally squatted down at the back of the auditorium, close to where the group of German soldiers made an island among the regular crowd. Several of the men were smoking; we could see dimps of red fire on their flickering faces.
“See him there, at the end?” whispered Cassis. “That’s Hauer. I want to talk to him. You just stay with me and don’t say a word, all right?”
I did not reply. I wasn’t going to promise anything.
Cassis slid into the aisle next to the soldier called Hauer. Looking around curiously I could see that no one was paying us the slightest attention except the German standing behind us, a slight, sharp-faced young man with his uniform cap tilted back at a rakish angle and a cigarette in one hand. Beside me I heard Cassis whispering urgently to Hauer, then the crackle of papers. The sharp-faced German grinned at me and gestured with the cigarette.
