As it turned out, once the film was flickering Osip was rapt. After all, there was the murder of two German couriers in the desert, then the rounding up of suspects in the marketplace, the shooting of a fugitive, the pickpocketing of a Brit, the arrival by plane of the Gestapo, music and gambling at Rick’s Café Américain, as well as the stashing of two letters of transit in a piano—and that was in the first ten minutes!
In minute twenty, when Captain Renault instructed his officer to take Ugarte quietly and the officer saluted, Osip saluted too. When Ugarte cashed in his winnings, Osip cashed in his. And when Ugarte dashed between the guards, slammed the door, drew his pistol, and fired four shots, Osip dashed, slammed, drew, and fired.
[With nowhere to hide, Ugarte runs madly down the hallway. Seeing Rick appear from the opposite direction, he grabs him.]
UGARTE: Rick! Rick, help me!
RICK: Don’t be a fool. You can’t get away.
UGARTE: Rick, hide me. Do something! You must help me, Rick. Do something! Rick! Rick!
[Rick stands impassively as guards and gendarmes drag Ugarte off.]
CUSTOMER: When they come to get me, Rick, I hope you’ll be more of a help.
RICK: I stick my neck out for nobody.
[Moving casually among the tables and disconcerted customers, some of whom are on the point of leaving, Rick speaks to the room in a calm voice.]
RICK: I’m sorry there was a disturbance, folks, but it’s all over now. Everything’s all right. Just sit down and have a good time. Enjoy yourself. . . . All right, Sam.
As Sam and his orchestra began to play, restoring something of a carefree mood to the saloon, Osip leaned toward the Count.
“You may have been right, Alexander. This may be Bogart at his best. Did you see the indifference he expressed as Ugarte was practically pulled from his lapels? And when that superior American makes his smug remark, Bogart doesn’t even deign to look at him when he replies. Then after instructing the piano player to play, he goes about his business as if nothing has happened.”
Listening to Osip with a frown, the Count suddenly stood and switched off the projector.
“Are we going to watch the movie, or talk about it?”
Taken aback, Osip assured his friend: “We’re going to watch.”
“Until the end?”
“Until the credits roll.”
Thus, the Count switched the projector back on while Osip paid his utmost attention to the screen.
If the truth be told, having made such a fuss about attentiveness, the Count did not pay his utmost attention to the progress of the movie. Yes, he was watching closely enough when at minute thirty-eight Sam finds Rick drinking whiskey alone in the saloon. But when the smoke from Rick’s cigarette dissolves into a montage of his days in Paris with Ilsa, the Count’s thoughts dissolved into a Parisian montage of his own.
Unlike Rick’s, however, the Count’s montage did not draw on his memories; it drew instead on his imaginings. It began with Sofia disembarking in the Gare du Nord as steam from the locomotive billowed across the platform. Moments later, she was outside the station with her bags in hand, preparing to board the bus with her fellow musicians. Then she was looking out the window at the sights of the city as they drove to the hotel, where the young musicians would remain until their concert—under the watchful gaze of two members of the Conservatory staff, two representatives from VOKS, a cultural attaché, and three “chaperones” in the employ of the KGB. . . .
When the movie returned from Paris to Casablanca, so did the Count. Setting aside thoughts of his daughter, he followed the action while noting through the corner of his eye Osip’s complete submission to the plights of the principals.
But the Count took particular pleasure in his friend’s engagement during the final minutes of the film. For with the plane to Lisbon in the air and Major Strasser dead on the ground, when Captain Renault frowned at the bottle of Vichy water, dropped it in a wastebasket, and kicked it across the floor, Osip Glebnikov, the former Red Army colonel and high official of the Party, who was sitting on the edge of his seat, poured, frowned, dropped, and kicked.
Antagonists at Arms (And an Absolution)
Good evening and welcome to the Boyarsky,” began the Count in Russian, as the middle-aged couple with blond hair and blue eyes looked up from their menus.
“Do you speak English?” the husband asked in English, though with a decidedly Scandinavian cadence.
“Good evening and welcome to the Boyarsky,” the Count translated accordingly. “My name is Alexander and I will be your waiter tonight. But before describing our specials, may I offer you an aperitif?”
“I think we are ready to order,” said the husband.
“We have just arrived in the hotel after a long day of travel,” explained the wife with a weary smile.
The Count hesitated.
“And where, if I may ask, have you been traveling from . . . ?”
“Helsinki,” said the husband with a hint of impatience.
“Well then, tervetuloa Moskova,” said the Count.
“Kiitos,” replied the wife with a smile.
“Given your long journey, I will see to it that you are served a delightful meal without delay. But before I take your order, would you be so kind as to give me your room number . . . ?”
From the beginning, the Count had determined that he would need to filch a few things from a Norwegian, a Dane, a Swede, or a Finn. On the face of it, this task should not have posed a significant challenge, as Scandinavian visitors were reasonably common at the Metropol. The problem was that the visitor in question was sure to notify the hotel’s manager as soon as he discovered that his pocket had been picked, which in turn might lead to the notification of authorities, the official interviewing of hotel staff, perhaps even the searching of rooms and the posting of guards at railway stations. So, the pocket picking would have to take place at the very last minute. In the meantime, the Count could only cross his fingers that a Scandinavian man would be residing in the hotel at the critical juncture.
With grim attention, he had watched as a salesman from Stockholm checked out of the hotel on the thirteenth of June. Then on the seventeenth, a journalist from Oslo had been recalled by his paper. In no small terms, the Count berated himself for not acting sooner. When, lo and behold, with only twenty-four hours to spare, a pair of beleaguered Finns came into the Boyarsky and sat right at his table.
But there remained one small complication: The primary item that the Count hoped to secure was the gentleman’s passport. And as most foreigners in Russia carried their passports about on their person, the Count would not be able to pay a visit to the Finns’ suite on the following morning when they were touring about the city; he would need to visit the suite tonight—while they were in it.
As much as we hate to admit the fact, Fate does not take sides. It is fair-minded and generally prefers to maintain some balance between the likelihood of success and failure in all our endeavors. Thus, having put the Count in the challenging position of having to lift a passport at the very last minute, Fate offered the Count a small consolation: for at 9:30, when he asked the Finns if they would like to see the dessert cart, they declined on the grounds that they were exhausted and ready for bed.