Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

Michel suggested they might agree to differ on the subject of Antoine, without coming to blows. Like a coward, Jean accepted the offered platitude, which got them both out of a situation that left them feeling awkward. They stopped on the forecourt of the Sacré-Cœur, turning their backs on the hideous basilica, looking out over an impassive Paris, a sea of roofs glittering in the cold winter sun. Children were playing on Square Willette and soldiers in green uniforms seated on the steps contemplated the El Dorado of a city below them, which in truth looked from this height like almost any other city, as long as they could not put names to the church steeples, domes and palaces. The absurd Eiffel Tower was the only landmark that wholly reassured them, and perhaps the wavering line of the Seine. Jean pointed, lower down, to Rue Steinkerque and a small bistro there.

‘Second on the left as you go down. I’ll meet you there tomorrow at one. It’s Wednesday. There’ll be black pudding. I hope you like black pudding?’

‘I’ll make do.’

‘See you tomorrow.’

Jean watched him go down Rue Foyatier and disappear, swallowed up by this Paris that succeeded, in so many different ways, in cloaking the most singular individuals in anonymity. He did not hate Michel, he had never hated him despite his deviously spiteful behaviour that had dogged his, Jean’s, childhood, despite all the scorn Michel had poured on him because he had thought, in those days, that he was the gardener’s son. The emotion he felt was simpler than hate: he did not understand him and would never understand such gratuitous and spontaneous spite. Michel had arrived in Paris like a provincial youth greedy for conquests. Perhaps it had not even entered his head that the city might not recognise his talent any more than it had the first time at the Salle Pleyel, on the occasion of his recital accompanied by Francis Poulenc. The audience then had not been able to appreciate his quality. Or had he sensed, from a lack of warmth and despite having a fine baritone voice, that he would never, in that sphere anyway, be in the first division? Painting offered him a second chance in a confused era. He was no less talented an artist than he had been as a singer, but would he again have to be satisfied with a succès d’estime ? With music lovers thinking of him as a gifted amateur, and art critics as a talented dilettante?

Jean returned to the gallery. Blanche, sitting on a stool by the door, was observing the comings and goings of the passers-by through the window. Her chapped, reddened hands lay on the shiny cloth of her skirt, stretched tight by her bony knees. Rudolf von Rocroy had not appeared at the gallery for a week. The elation of their first meeting and the success of the first sale had begun to evaporate. That same morning La Garenne had reproached Blanche for not looking after her cousin.

‘The idiot’s buggered off! You didn’t know how to keep hold of him. He’s running around the other galleries now, where they’re robbing him and cheating him. And you, Mademoiselle de Rocroy, don’t care. Quite cynically, you do not give a tinker’s cuss. Telephone him.’

‘I have. He’s never there.’

‘Not there for you, perhaps. Because you’re always talking to him about family: Papa Adhémar, Cousin Godefroy, Aunt Aurore and Grandfather Gonzague. He doesn’t care a fig about your family, you goose. He came to Paris on his own, to enjoy himself. Take him to the Folies-Bergère, find him a girl, go to the Bois de Boulogne at night. Show the old aristo a thing or two …’

‘Me?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, don’t be such a bloody goody-goody.’

Powerless, Blanche suddenly came face to face with her failure to help Louis-Edmond. Instead of taking a lunch break, she walked all the way to the Hôtel Continental to deliver a letter. Would he answer? Jean’s return produced a timid smile.

‘Your visitor is absolutely charming!’ she said. ‘Is he a relation of yours?’

‘My uncle.’

‘So young and already an uncle! Your mother must be very young, then?’

‘Yes, very young.’

‘I’d so like to meet her.’

‘Not much chance of that, at this precise moment. She’s in Lebanon.’

‘In Lebanon? How extraordinary! I’ve got a second cousin there. She must know him. Colonel Pontalet. A colonel in the Foreign Legion. Quite an old scrapper.’

‘Perhaps they’ll meet!’ Jean said kindly, doubtful whether the prince and Geneviève spent any time at all socialising with army officers.

At seven that evening Jean walked into the apartment building on Quai Saint-Michel. The concierge appeared from her stew-ridden lair.

‘You’re Monsieur Arnaud?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Madame Chaminadze has gone away. She left a letter for you.’

‘Gone away?’

‘Yes, gone away. Don’t you understand French?’

‘Yes.’

He took the letter. The concierge did not move, perhaps in the hope that he would open the envelope in front of her and tell her what was in it. She had tried hard to steam it open and had not succeeded. But Jean put the letter in his pocket and went out without hearing her affronted mutter. ‘And not so much as a thank you for it.’

He walked a hundred paces before stopping at an illuminated shop window. His hand was shaking. He felt sick and afraid.

Jean, I have to go away for a few days. Shut your eyes. Don’t try to find me. As soon as I get back I’ll let you know. Loving and kissing you, Claude

‘Already?’ Jesús said when he reappeared at the studio. ‘ Hombre! You look like you ’as jus’ been to a funeral. Is you angry?’

‘She’s gone.’

‘Ah the bitch!’

‘Just for a few days.’

He held out the letter to Jesús, who held up his arms to heaven.

‘My friend, ’e’s a crazy. Your Claude ’e’s comin’ back. I tell you is true. Is family business.’

‘Do you believe in those sorts of excuses?’

‘Yes, idiot, I do b’lieve. An’ tonight you is dinin’ with me at old Coco’s. She ’as got leg of lamb for us, real lamb.’

‘There’s no such thing as mock lamb.’

‘Shu’ your mouth, you argumentin’ boy.’

The door bell rang. A pretty, slightly over-made-up young woman stood in the doorway. Jesús kissed her and said to Jean, ‘This is Irma.’

He led the woman onto the landing and Jean saw him press a note into her hand. Irma frowned, sulking, but turned away.

‘Why don’t you have dinner with her?’ Jean asked.

‘’Cause I am ’avin’ dinner with my frien’ Jean.’

So Jean learnt that evening that Jesús was his friend.

So many loose ends need to be tied up, the reader will say, if only from time to time. It’s not fair to introduce new characters into a story when the old ones are still alive and kicking. The author feels the same, and he begs forgiveness for this unavoidable chain of events that leaves Jean no time to meet again those who knew him, helped him and loved him in the early part of his life. All we can do is try to keep up with him, hero that he is of this incredible adventure that we call the birth of a man. An adventure that begins all over again when a woman arrives and blots out her predecessors, when all of a sudden events overtake you that before seemed so distant, of concern only to others … those who don’t suffer in their own lives suffer from the infinite, vertigo-inducing distraction of being in love. So no, we shan’t slide into a pointless universalism but will regret and carry on regretting the fading into the background of so many characters whom Jean, in his discovery of life, is leaving behind, leaving to their emotional (or physical) unhappiness — or even their modest happiness — and will not see again.