Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘Steady on, people are going to expect us to start weeping in each other’s arms.’

‘I’ve found you again!’

‘And it’s not over yet.’

‘You’re still my little brother, you know.’

‘Your nephew, you mean.’

‘Ah yes, of course, you know the truth now: Antoinette told you everything.’

‘Antoinette has never kept anything from me.’

He almost added, ‘not even her bottom’, but managed to stop himself, reining in his feelings of aggression in Michel’s presence; his uncle was, after all, his mother’s brother and Antoinette’s.

‘I don’t know that she should have!’ Michel said. ‘I hope you don’t find it painful being Geneviève’s son.’

‘Not a bit. I think she’s wonderful. Oedipus’s dream woman. Every chap would love a mother like her: her beauty, her charm, the pathos of a life threatened by tuberculosis. In short, an awfully modern story, a slightly muddled version of The Lady of the Camellias and The Bread Peddler . It’s a shame that she’s so elusive and maternal feelings aren’t her strong point, but you can’t have everything.’

‘One mustn’t blame her,’ Michel said sententiously. ‘She was left to her own devices. Maman was torn between Geneviève and us. In the end she chose us.’

‘I can’t quite see my mother sitting darning socks by the fire.’

‘Listen,’ Michel said. ‘We’ll talk about it another time. Now’s not the moment. Shall we have dinner this evening?’

‘I can’t. I’m busy.’

‘Tomorrow then?’

‘I’m busy every evening. We can have lunch if you like. The gallery’s closed from midday till two. Will you excuse me for just a moment?’

Two German officers who had just walked in were asking to visit hell. They left swiftly, their choices made, concealing their Alberto Senzacatso prints under their arms. Michel had remained with Blanche de Rocroy, who had naively tried to interest him in a series of horrors: fishing boats against a setting sun, Parisian girls on a swing, flowers in a vase — paintings for innocent tourists.

Seeing her look discouraged, Jean said, ‘There’s no reason you should know, but Michel is a real painter.’

‘Oh … in that case I’ll leave you alone.’

She was not cross; she made mistakes all the time. The name meant nothing to her and all painters were real painters. Some just grabbed their chances better than others.

As might have been imagined, Michel du Courseau’s visit was not without motive. After abandoning a singing career he had returned to Grangeville to devote himself to painting, though without an audience or friendly voice to encourage or guide him.

‘Solitude is very necessary for my work, but I need warmth too, particularly as I’ve started on a risky path: religious inspiration, you see, is the only kind that moves me. Secular subjects leave me cold. Art has lost its faith. I want to give it back …’

‘Listen,’ Jean said, ‘this gallery isn’t really the kind of place you need. I tremble at the thought that you might discover what we have for sale back there …’

‘You mean that old spinster—’

‘She’s not so old … only just forty. And it’s not her who sells the stuff in what we call hell, it’s me. The owner, Louis-Edmond de La Garenne, is a crook. Paris is a cut-throat place. Everyone’s on the fiddle. Only idiots don’t make anything. In this city honesty is an unforgivable sin.’

Michel looked genuinely shocked. He had never come across anything like the situation Jean was describing.

‘I see now the terrible isolation our family has lived in. If I’m honest, all we know is our little Grangeville world, satisfied, happy, hiding its little wounds. If what you tell me is true, and if in coming to Paris I have to fall in with your pessimism, then it’s Maman who is guilty for having made me live too long in a state of innocence. What is so special about this hell of yours?’

Jean supplied a full account, with a vulgarity we shall not venture to repeat. He enjoyed seeing Michel’s reaction.

‘Someone like that Italian,’ Michael said, paling, ‘should be denounced, and arrested instantly. He’s a criminal. He’s contaminating a society that he lives from by perverting it.’

‘This isn’t a time for denunciation.’

What was Jean saying? He was still unaware of what had already started to happen, too rarely among his fellow Frenchmen to grasp the purulent frenzy of denunciation that had erupted in a country still stunned by the blow it had received. It was a shame he had not read Céline, who was hunched over a manuscript that very day, that very moment, writing, all illusions abandoned, with the penetrating acuity of the visionary: ‘Censors and informers are at every corner … France is a pitiful donkey, the Kommandantur stuffed with people who have come to denounce each other.’ He was heedless even of the gnawing unease corrupting a population tempted by an authority known for its prompt reactions; yet Michel’s threatening words chilled him. Denounce? Who to? How?

‘There is no right time for denouncing or not denouncing,’ Michel went on agitatedly. ‘Evil is evil, whether France is occupied or free.’

‘Now you’re annoying me,’ Jean said. ‘Go and enjoy your painting and leave me alone.’

Michel flinched, wounded, cross and surprised. He had arrived with good intentions, wanting to bury an awkward past. Why was Jean unwilling to take the olive branch he was offering?

‘You sound bitter,’ he said.

‘Bitter? Well … now you mention it … I am. And it’s a very mediocre emotion. So forgive me. Did you bring any of your canvases?’

‘Five. Not enough for an exhibition, but I’ve several pictures in progress: a Last Supper that’s nearly finished, a “Suffer the little children …” I’ve just started. Nothing but sacred subjects. A great Christian revival has taken hold in France. Artists cannot stand idly by.’

Jean suppressed a shrug of his shoulders. Generalised ideas like Michel’s bored him to death. He found his pompousness beneath sarcasm.

‘I’ll ask who you should introduce yourself to,’ he said. ‘La Garenne knows all that sort of thing. But don’t say he was the one who sent you. He’s a crook.’

‘In that case I don’t want to have anything to do with him.’

‘Save your fine words for later. At the moment he’s the only possibility I can offer you.’

‘I’ll leave it to you in that case.’

Jean walked a short distance down the street with Michel, and in doing so learnt that Antoinette had been ill with a stubborn bout of influenza that she could not shake off, that Marie-Thérèse du Courseau was astonishing Grangeville with her energy, and that there remained, as expected, no news of Antoine.

‘I suppose he’s in the southern zone,’ Michel said. ‘Antoinette knows his address, but she’d let herself be cut into little pieces before she’d tell Maman or me. Anyway, neither of us is insisting. Papa has gone from our life. Now that he can’t get hold of petrol to keep his Bugatti on the road, he must be a shadow of his old self. He’s one of those men who only have a personality when they’re behind the wheel. If you’d known Gontran Longuet better, you’d understand why I put them both in the same boat, or rather car. Did you know Gontran is currently impressing the Norman coast with a wood-gas car …’

‘You’re unkind and unfair about Antoine. He was my only friend. It makes me happy to know that he got away from you both.’

‘Oh, I know you’ve always had a soft spot for him, and more than ever now you know you’re his grandson.’

Jean thought about this.

‘Actually you’re wrong. It makes me uncomfortable more than anything else. I feel tempted to believe in blood ties now, whereas before it felt like something more noble, an affinity between two men, which is something so rare it doesn’t happen more than once in a lifetime.’