All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream
—Edgar Allan Poe
“We’ll Always Have Paris” is a piece of fiction about a piece of fiction.
Casablanca is one of the most popular films of all time: romantic, suspenseful, filed with fascinating characters and memorable lines.
I’ve seen the movie dozens of times, and I’ve always wondered what happened to Rick and Ilsa and Capt. Reynaud after that unforgettable final scene at the airport.
“We’ll Always Have Paris” is my stab at answering my own question. A good story always leaves you asking yourself, What happened afterward?
Here is a possible answer.
He had changed from the old days, but of course going through the war had changed us all.
We French had just liberated Paris from the Nazis, with a bit of help (I must admit) from General Patton’s troops. The tumultuous outpouring of relief and gratitude that night was the wildest celebration any of us had ever witnessed.
I hadn’t seen Rick during that frantically joyful night, but I knew exactly where to find him. La Belle Aurore had hardly changed. I recognized it from his vivid, pained description: the low ceiling, the checkered tablecloths—frayed now after four years of German occupation. The model of the Eiffel Tower on the bar had been taken away, but the spinet piano still stood in the middle of the floor.
There he was, sitting on the cushioned bench by the window, drinking champagne again. Somewhere he had found a blue pinstripe double-breasted suit. He looked good in it; trim and debonair. I was still in uniform and felt distinctly shabby.
In the old days Rick had always seemed older, more knowing than he really was. Now the years of war had made an honest face for him: world-weary, totally aware of human folly, wise with the experience that comes from sorrow.
“Well, well,” he said, grinning at me. “Look what the cat dragged in.”
“I knew I’d find you here,” I said as I strode across the bare wooden floor toward him. Limped, actually; I still had a bit of shrapnel in my left leg.
As I pulled up a chair and sat in it, Rick called to the proprietor, behind the bar, for another bottle.
“You look like hell,” he said.
“It was an eventful night. Liberation. Grateful Parisians. Adoring women.”
With a nod, Rick muttered, “Any guy in uniform who didn’t get laid last night must be a real loser.”
I laughed, but then pointed out, “You’re not in uniform.”
“Very perceptive.”
“It’s my old police training.”
“I’m expecting someone,” he said.
“A lady?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can’t imagine that she’ll be here to—”
“She’ll be here,” Rick snapped.
Henri put another bottle of champagne on the table, and a fresh glass for me. Rick opened it with a loud pop of the cork and poured for us both.
“I would have thought the Germans had looted all the good wine,” I said between sips.
“They left in a hurry,” Rick said, without taking his eyes from the doorway.
He was expecting a ghost, I thought. She’d been haunting him all these years and now he expected her to come through that dooiway and smile at him and take up life with him just where they’d left it the day the Germans marched into Paris.
Four years. We had both intended to join de Gaulle’s forces when we’d left Gasablanca, but once the Americans got into the war Rick disappeared like a puff of smoke. I ran into him again by sheer chance in London, shortly before D-Day. He was in the uniform of the U.S. Army, a major in their intelligence service, no less.
“I’ll buy you a drink in La Belle Aurore,” he told me when we’d parted, after a long night of brandy and reminiscences at the Savoy bar. Two weeks later I was back on the soil of France at last, with the Free French army. Now, in August, we were both in Paris once again.
Through the open windows behind him I could hear music from the street; not martial brass bands, but the whining, wheezing melodies of a concertina. Paris was becoming Paris again.
Abruptly, Rick got to his feet, an expression on his face that I’d never seen before. He looked . . . surprised, almost.
