Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘They’re a present from Émile!’ she said. ‘He likes them. It’s a fixation of his. There are worse ones.’

She had good legs. Oscar Dulonjé, forgetting politics for a moment, confessed that he found them ‘very shapely’.

‘Shapely?’ Nelly replied. ‘I trust your willy’s just as shapely, in that case.’

Émile Duzan coughed until he choked. Dulonjé blushed. Jesús had got to his feet, and people noticed that Fräulein Laura Bruckett, who had stayed in the background for most of the evening, had succeeded in attracting enough of his attention to have a fair chance of spending the night with him. Regulations forbade her gaze to linger on a Frenchman. As a Spaniard, Jesús had neutral status. Julius took Jean aside for a moment in the hall.

‘We must meet again. I’m sure you’re getting bored in that gallery of yours. And this La Garenne is a disreputable character. You’re a young man with a future. Europe needs new men. Your friend Palfy interests me a great deal.’

‘I’m not bored at the gallery,’ Jean said. ‘It’s a good place while I wait—’

‘Ah, you waiters! There’s a choice to be made. The workers who turn up at the eleventh hour won’t be the most welcome.’

After Julius, it was Madeleine’s turn to pull Jean into her bedroom. She had got a parcel ready for him, wrapped in pretty paper and tied with a gold ribbon.

‘You told me she has a little boy, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘How old is he?’

‘Four.’

‘They’re still sweet at that age. He must be going without a lot of things. I thought you could put this underneath his Christmas tree.’

Jean kissed Madeleine, who suddenly had tears in her eyes.

‘You can count on me,’ she said. ‘But I understand you’re reluctant … Julius is very good, very generous. He likes the French.’

Madeleine, once so suspicious, had discovered a world of good intentions.

‘I don’t doubt it. How does he know so many things about me, about all of us?’

‘Yes, it’s strange. He knows everything.’

They went back to the others, who were wrapping themselves in furs and scarves to face the freezing December night. A bicycle-taxi was waiting for Nelly and her producer. They separated at the Étoile: Palfy and Madame Michette were staying at a hotel in Avenue Victor-Hugo, Jesús, Jean and Laura got into the second-to-last carriage of the Métro.

Just before Concorde Jean said, ‘I’ll carry on to Châtelet. See you in the morning.’

‘You don’ ’ave to.’

But Jesús did not protest and got off, holding Laura’s arm.

The lights were out on Quai Saint-Michel. The concierge let him in after a peremptory ‘Who is it? Where are you going?’ Jean rang Claude’s bell and she opened the door, clutching the collar of a quilted dressing gown to her throat.

‘I’d given up waiting for you,’ she said.

He bent forward and kissed her cheek.

‘You’re freezing. I can’t light a fire, I haven’t got any more wood. Cyrille is sleeping with two jumpers. Do you want to sleep here?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve only got one spare blanket.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

He sat on the couch that had given him so many sleepless nights, listening to the city’s sounds, peering through the shutters for the dawn that would awaken a slumbering Paris.

‘Why didn’t you come?’

‘I was invited to dinner. Madeleine gave me this parcel to go under Cyrille’s Christmas tree.’

Claude sighed.

‘I felt so badly about not having anything to give him. Who is this good fairy?’

‘She’s not a fairy.’

Claude sat down next to him. He put his arms around her, squeezing her with a strength that made her anxious.

‘We mustn’t leave each other any more,’ he said.

‘No. Not even for an evening.’

‘Not even for an evening.’

Claude shivered. Jean picked up the blanket and they wrapped it around themselves, huddled against each other. Just before drowsiness overcame them, Claude murmured, ‘You have nothing to fear from me.’

‘I hope so.’

Cyrille woke them at the crack of dawn.

‘Jean, Jean. Don’t you even take your coat off to sleep with Maman?’

How we would love to follow Madame Michette on one of her topsecret missions, and see her employing the most varied methods of propulsion to travel the highways and byways of occupied France! Never will she remind us more strongly of Madame Belazor, paramour of Pancrace Eusèbe Zéphyrin Brioché, alias Cosinus the scientist.14 Palfy himself, like the scientist, does not leave Paris. From his hotel room in Avenue Victor-Hugo he directs his agent’s escapades, while she is driven on by the sheer force of her romantic folly. But the pursuit of Madame Michette would soon leave us breathless, and divert us too from our subject: the unconsummated, yet so perfect love that binds Jean Arnaud to Claude Chaminadze. All the reader need know, then, is that Madame Michette’s zeal will not falter and that Julius Kapermeister has promised that, by February or March 1941 at the latest, Sergeant-Major Michette is to be released and leave his camp in a contingent of fathers of large families. Does he not have eight industrious girls waiting at home in Clermont-Ferrand? The alert reader will naturally have asked themselves another question: who does Madame Michette think she is working for? She does not know. A secret within a secret makes an endless hall of mirrors, in which Madame Michette only sees her own face repeated in ever diminishing reflections. When she seeks reassurance, Palfy demurs: the golden rule of counterespionage is that agents are acted on, not acting. He assures her that her missions will remain without risk so long as she speaks to no one about them, and that, at present, it is vital for her to stay in training before more serious operations. Despite the suspicion in which female agents are held — ‘their flesh is weak,’ Palfy notes mirthlessly — she is already held in high regard by his superiors. From books purchased at second-hand hand booksellers’ on the banks of the Seine, she learns the basics of operational work. Hers is an exhilarating adventure. Let us allow it to take its course without exposing Palfy’s intentions too soon. Does he himself know what they are? In all honesty, now he is just having fun, yet with the impressive instinct that has guided him so well in his exploitation of human foolishness he strongly suspects that Madame Michette may one day be genuinely useful to his ambitions. We shall see his suspicion proved right. Meanwhile he has concluded that there is nothing to be gained from a man like La Garenne, a second-division fraud and insatiable overeater, a slob taking advantage of the times but already behind them. True, the gallery’s turnover is continuing to rise, but it is really nothing to do with Louis-Edmond. Let us be honest and admit that Palfy is right: La Garenne has been overtaken, failing to realise that, by dint of his greed and ever-present meanness, he has become dependent on Blanche de Rocroy (whose cousin Rudolf has reappeared, wanting to get hold of some Braques and Derains), and dependent too on Jean, without whom Jesús would refuse to paint either his erotic nudes or the forgeries from which the fat man is piling up a fortune. Ever impatient, from time to time La Garenne buys a fine picture from Jesús at a price that seems madness to him, and one day will turn out to have been absurdly low. The canvas joins the others in a cupboard whose contents no one will think to examine until the war is over and peace has been declared.

Yet a little light has also been shed on the mystery of La Garenne. Blanche, sweeping up and dusting before the gallery opens, selling unspeakably bad pictures with rare refinement, ironing her employer’s trousers and from time to time providing him with oral relief, also deals with the book-keeping and tax returns. Thanks to a document left lying on the table, Jean has learnt that the gallery in fact belongs to a woman named Mercedes del Loreto, of no known profession, living in Rue de la Gaîté, in Paris’s 16th arrondissement. We should say straight away that at first the name meant nothing to him. He thought it sounded attractive and romantic. But Palfy, whose knowledge, at least in this particular cultural sphere, was vast, was startled by the news.