Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘She’s my confidante,’ Nelly said. ‘And he, oh, well, yes, darling, ta-da! This is my lover, Jules-who.’

When the photo duly appeared the next day, Jean Arnaud found out that from now on his name, as far as gossip columnists were concerned, was Joolzoo. Marceline, beside herself with happiness, radiant with wine and a glass of chartreuse, beckoned a short man in a cape who was going from table to table offering to draw caricatures. Looking up, Jean recognised La Garenne at the same time as he recognised Jean. He paled and, spinning round, turned his back on them and dashed for the exit, as if pursued by some terrible danger. Stripped of the treasures he had collected in his garret in Rue de la Gaîté, he had returned to his old trade as Léonard Twenty-Sous. The head waiter, who had seen what had happened, leant towards them.

‘You must tell me what you said to get rid of him so fast, our Léonard Twenty-Sous. He usually sticks like glue, that one. We put up with him out of sheer weakness.’

*

Finally alone in the studio at Saint-Sulpice, Jean and Nelly fell into each other’s arms.

‘It can’t be true!’ she said, stroking his hair.

‘But it is true!’

They opened Marceline’s bottle and lit a fire. At a minute past midnight Maître Deschauzé telephoned.

‘I wanted to be the first to wish you a happy New Year. It’s all over. All that’s left is for you to start again on the right foot. I have a message for you. Monsieur Urbano de Mello hopes very much you’ll visit him in Lisbon. He’ll support your request for a visa at the Portuguese consulate, if you so wish … I’d like to talk to you about it. I’m not far from you. I can pop over.’

Nelly, listening on the second receiver, signalled no.

‘I’d prefer tomorrow or the day after,’ Jean said.

‘The problem is I have to go to the country tomorrow.’

‘Well, I’ll wait for you to come back. There’s no hurry.’

‘I promise it wouldn’t inconvenience me at all to drop in on you and your charming lady friend now.’

‘No, no, you mustn’t put yourself to any trouble. We’ll talk about it later. Good night and thanks.’

Nelly giggled.

‘Talk about obvious! I’ll admit he’s not bad physically.’

Jean looked at her. He was very fond of her. They had had fun together and would never forget each other. But you didn’t keep a girl like Nelly, and besides he had no desire to keep anyone. No one could know just how much he had been freed earlier that day. A few days more and it would all have faded, down to the last traces of prison smell.

‘What are you thinking about?’ Nelly demanded.

‘That you’re going to make a wonderful career in the theatre and cinema, and I’m going to feel a little pang in my heart every time I see your name in lights.’

They were sitting in front of the fire, the champagne bottle between them.

‘Do you remember?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I’ve thought about it often. And then Claude’s arrival.’

‘Have you forgotten her?’

‘I don’t forget anything.’

‘Jules-who, you’ve learnt a lot of things. Now you have to make the most of them.’

‘That’s certainly my intention.’

She smiled sadly and started to undress.

‘When are you leaving?’

‘As soon as I can.’

‘Are you going far?’

‘As far as possible.’

‘Tierra del Fuego?’

‘Perhaps.’

She took his face in her hands and came closer to kiss him on the lips.

‘I just can’t believe I love you as much as I do,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to leave the theatre for you?’

‘In six months you’d be bitterly criticising me for it.’

‘Ohh! You’re right, you’re so right, my scrumptious boy! I’ll never have another lover like you.’

Her eyes glistened with tears. Jean knew he would never have another woman like her either, and that to have known her was an infinite stroke of luck. He was suddenly overwhelmed with cheerfulness.

‘We’re not going to get soppy, are we?’

‘Oh no!’

‘We’re winners.’

‘Yes, both winners.’

‘And we’ll show them we’re better than everyone, and less idiotic.’

‘And less idiotic.’

They stretched out next to each other on the rug, their feet warmed by the fire, holding hands.

He turned his head to look at Nelly’s fine profile, her pretty nose, her red mouth in her pale face. She lay completely still and her bare breasts hardly rose and fell. She looked like a young boy.

‘I don’t know if I dare ask you to promise me something, darling Jules-who.’

‘Say it.’

‘You’ll think I’m ridiculous.’

‘I bet I won’t.’

‘All right. I’m the daughter of terribly bourgeois parents and I still have their values … well, it would just make me awfully sad if I heard you’d turned into a reprobate like your friend Palfy.’

‘I don’t have his skill. Look: he’s sitting tight in Switzerland, having married my mother, who, when they first met, pretended she could never remember his name, while I’ve been spending my time in prison. Logically I should be taking him as my role model, but some tiny thing has always stopped me.’

‘Yes, I know.’

She looked reassured and squeezed his hand.

‘I believe in you,’ she said.

‘That’s the only thing you could say to me that matters, and I shan’t forget it. There’s you and the major, which is extremely strange, because the two of you couldn’t be more different … How serious we’re being!’

‘Once in a while it’s all right.’

‘Not too often.’

‘Oh no, not too often,’ Nelly said. ‘Life would be unbearable.’

‘I’ve learnt that too.’

‘You’re not unhappy?’

‘Not in the slightest, now I know that you believe in me. I don’t think anyone has ever actually said it to me, and it makes me feel … how can I explain? … elated, yes, as though it’s made me forget these four wasted years. I feel as if I’m finally not a little boy any more.’

‘And you don’t feel glum about getting older?’

‘No, at my age it’s marvellous. Later on, well, we’ll see …’

1. The Garde Nationale Mobile was the forerunner of the French territorial infantry, also known as les Territoriaux or les Pépères , a sort of Dad’s Army for those between the ages of 34 and 49, although it also remained a separate auxiliary force for domestic defence, and after the French armistice in 1940 regained some importance.

2. A mich (slang) is a man who pays a prostitute.

3. De l’amour by Stendhal (1822).

4. The line separating French territory into an occupied zone and a free zone in the armistice of 22 June 1940 was referred to as the Demarkationslinie or ‘demarcation line’.

5. Eugène de Rastignac’s words addressed to the city of Paris at the end of Honoré de Balzac’s novel Le Père Goriot .

6. Baron Frédéric de Nucingen is another character in Balzac’s La Comédie humaine , a fabulously wealthy Parisian banker, who first appears in Le Père Goriot and later in other novels in the series, notably La Maison Nucingen .

7. The common name for France’s colonial army, from 1900–60.

8. The FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur or French Forces of the Interior) were the result of the combination in early 1944 of the main military groups of the Resistance in occupied France.

9. An institution created in the First World War and revived in the Second to bring financial and social aid to French soldiers, their families, and civilian casualties.

10. The Police Headquarters’ Literary Review .