Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

So there were three dreadful days when, like an automaton, Jean listened to La Garenne shouting for all he was worth and then mysteriously — La Garenne, most sceptical of men — allowing himself to be dazzled by Palfy, who simultaneously conquered Blanche with his extensive knowledge of her family tree and information about several new international branches of the family that she knew nothing about; when he listened to Michel who thought of nothing but his exhibition; and to Jesús who talked non-stop simply to make sure his friend was not left alone with his thoughts. At last, on the fourth day, the telephone rang at the back of the gallery and, picking up the receiver, without even having heard her voice, he knew it was her. And it was all over. She was waiting for him. He would be there as soon as he could after the gallery had closed. And when she opened the door Cyrille ran at him and threw his arms around his neck.

‘Why didn’t you come and see me at Grandma’s?’ he said. ‘I was really bored.’

And so he discovered, for the first time, that he had been deprived of the little boy as much as of his mother, who offered him her cool cheek and whose light eyes were unreadable with some unexpressed emotion. All Jean could take in at that moment was that she had left Cyrille, her little guardian, behind for three days and gone off, alone, heaven knew where. This realisation cast a shadow over the joy of the reunion. They had dinner together without being able to speak, because of Cyrille. Eventually she put him to bed and came back to where Jean was waiting for her. He put his arms around her.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not tonight. You’ll understand when I explain it to you.’

‘Explain it then.’

She sighed.

‘If you love me, just a little, you’ll give me some time. One day it’ll all become clear. For now, I don’t know myself. All right … I wanted to get away, to breathe again, and then for us not to part any more.’

‘It wasn’t me who left you.’

‘No, it wasn’t you. And it wasn’t me who left you either. You have to believe me.’

She smiled through her tears and kissed him on the lips, very quickly. He wanted to take her in his arms again. She stopped him.

‘No. I told you: not today.’

‘Then I’m going.’

He thought: for good, and he honestly believed it. She misunderstood his words.

‘You’re a good man. There aren’t many good men. In fact I think you must be the only one and perhaps that’s the reason I love you.’

‘Do you love me?’

‘And you’re also very silly because you doubt it when I say so.’

‘I don’t know where I stand with you.’

‘Nor me.’

He left her early and climbed back up to Montmartre on foot in the blackout. Figures loomed out of the darkness on the same pavement and stepped aside as he went past. He realised he was walking at an intimidating, brutal pace through the shadowy closed-down city. Opening the studio door, he heard a scuffle and a woman’s cry. A single low lamp lit Jesús’s bed, where he was lying with the girl he had sent away the evening he and Jean had had dinner.

‘Sorry!’ Jean said foolishly.

‘Can’t a man ’ave a fuck now and then!’ Jesús murmured with unexpected shyness.

‘I’ll come back later.’

He returned just before the curfew and found Jesús alone in a dressing gown.

‘I’m getting in your way,’ Jean said. ‘I’d better find myself a room.’

‘Listen, Jean, you gettin’ on my nerve. You is too little to live alone. Now tell me: what is with Claude?’

‘She’s here.’

‘And she explain to you?’

‘No. And it doesn’t matter?’

‘ Aïe! ’

‘What?’

‘You is really en lov’.’

‘Do you think so?’

Jesús held out his arms and swore it was so, on the Madonna of the Begonias.

‘How often does it happen in a lifetime?’ Jean asked anxiously.

Jesús assured him that certain men never experienced what it felt like to be in love, and that others in contrast fell in love with every girl they met. He personally had never been like that. No feverishness or sweaty palms, ever, and as soon as his passion was satisfied, an irresistible desire to chuck the girl out. He could not remember having made love to any girl twice. He tried to remember their names, tried to recall a moment of sweetness or tenderness that they might have spontaneously shown him. He couldn’t. He inspired sweetness and tenderness in them as little as they did in him. Jean commented that in that case, deep down, he was still a virgin. The Spaniard protested. He was not a virgin, he suffered from an ailment. His blood possessed an antibody that destroyed love. Jean, on the other hand, was in the grip of a virus and his love affairs made no sense to him unless they felt as if they were for ever.

‘Is always the lov’ of your life!’ he said with a despairing expression. ‘I canno’ keep up with you.’

‘Claude is the love of my life.’

‘You is twenty years old!’

‘Twenty-one.’

Jesús roared with laughter. The difference was, of course, vast. In fact it demanded celebration. They opened the magnum of champagne that Madeleine had brought. The bottle had been cooling on the window sill and they drank it from tooth mugs. Jesús’s unmade bed gave off the scent of the woman who had been in it an hour before. On the bedside table lay a silk scarf she had left behind. Jean pointed at it.

‘She’ll be back for that tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow? No. I will no’ be ’ere. You too.’

‘Why?’

‘We are ’avin’ dinner with Mad’leine.’

‘I didn’t say yes.’

Jesús had said yes for him. The situation was becoming untenable. Madeleine was deeply offended. One day or another they would need her, or to be more specific her Julius, whom it seemed everyone in Paris had fallen for. Without him, women would go naked, and the theatres and film studios close for lack of costumes. The Germans made Jesús as anxious as Fu Manchu. Yet what real reason did he have to keep out of their way? He was a Spaniard and could not give a damn whether they had won or lost a war, because it was not his war. Julius could not be as bad as all that. He did a thousand small favours, handing out travel permits, clothing coupons, fuel coupons for heating, cigarettes, liquor. At home his door was always open to fashion designers and fashionable young hairdressers, and on certain evenings, mixed up haphazardly with his suppliers, writers, poets, actors, dancers, art critics and film directors. As for Jean, the thought of going without Claude for a whole evening made him more reluctant than the bad memories he had of the Germans from his participation in the brief battle of France. He admitted as much to Jesús, who pretended to tear his hair out and called him a very sublime moron. What was he talking about? Claude disappeared in a puff of smoke for three days, and he hesitated to stand her up for a single night? If he went on that way, she’d start thinking she could behave however she liked! A man who was really and truly in love could not behave more stupidly. Jean did not know what to say.

Madeleine lived on Avenue Foch in an imposing panelled apartment whose owner, a Jew who was also a great art lover, had taken refuge in the United States as soon as the Germans had attacked. Julius kept up the same staff: two hoary manservants, two maids and a butler whom he had had freed from a POW camp to resume his old post. There were rumours that, under the guise of a requisition, the Jewish art lover and Julius had come to a working agreement: a luxury apartment in return for an assurance that the treasures on show would not be subject to any confiscation. Although he had been forewarned at length by Jesús, Jean was nonetheless dumbfounded to find Madeleine in the new role she had created. He tried to remember her the way she had looked two years earlier, standing in a peignoir on the landing of the building in Rue Lepic, taking refuge with him and Chantal one morning when Jesús had nearly set fire to his apartment, and again in 1939 when she had played the ambiguous part of Madame Miranda at Cannes, a little more polished than before but still retaining some of the gestures of the humble streetwalker she had once been. Refusing to colour her hair, she had a fine head of grey hair that softened her tired-looking expression. The make-up artist’s skills had turned a previously vulgar mouth into a worldly pout and smoothed the first signs of crow’s feet. Palfy’s lessons had borne fruit: the suburban accent had gone along with most of her mispronunciations. In short, to all intents and purposes — though she still did not know who was who — she could be mistaken for a woman of the world, even in the rare letters she wrote, in which there were so many spelling mistakes that nobody believed they were not deliberate. As time went on Palfy, who was a bit fogeyish about such things, urged her to give up writing altogether, and she, more than happy, concurred.