Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘To do her duty as a patriot she’d happily hand over every franc. I’ll take care of it.’

In barely two months Palfy had gathered together what he continued to call the best capital there was: contacts. Almost nightly his place was laid at Avenue Foch, in an apartment that had become one of the most sought-after destinations in Paris. Soon after midday he was to be found at Maxim’s or Lapérouse’s or in one of those bistros at Les Halles whose doors were only opened to a select few. Paris could no longer do without Julius and Madeleine, and they could no longer do without Palfy. Thanks to Julius, the theatres effortlessly managed to get hold of the cloth and materials they needed for their costumes and sets, which, with unconscious competitiveness, had never seemed quite so sumptuous. Stagehands, judged to be indispensable for the resumption of the economic life of the country, were released from their POW camps. Sergeant-Major Michette was freed as promised. His brief period of captivity had transformed him. Glimpsed as he passed through Paris, he was greatly slimmed down; like Samson losing his hair, in losing his paunch he had lost his authority. Madame Michette was pitiless: she kept him for a few days, then sent him back to Clermont-Ferrand alone to look after the running of the Sirène. She had no use for a clod like her husband in the giddy exhilaration of her Parisian existence and her secret missions. He belonged to another epoch, a bygone era. She explained the situation to Palfy.

‘I can’t concentrate with him here. He’s only interested in himself. He’s like a horse with blinkers on, he only sees what’s in front of him.’

Hadn’t she read in a work describing espionage for the general public that a spy must be asexual? The truth was that, being very used to the sight of human unhappiness and its several forms of relief in her ‘establishment’, she felt repugnance for the practical matters to which Monsieur Michette attempted to draw her back after his extended state of celibacy. She intended to remain chaste, convinced that in ‘high places’ close attention was being paid to her slightest actions prior to her selection for her great mission. The rigorous morals she had imposed on the girls at the Sirène, the attention she paid to their futures when they grew too old, matched a need in her to be respected for the work she did. Hadn’t she dismissed two girls who had confessed to falling in love, one with a soldier, the other — worse still — with a town councillor who was a freemason?

Through the offices of Blanche de Rocroy, Palfy had befriended Colonel von Rocroy in the course of mutually flaunting an exchange of entries from the Almanach de Gotha . In the belief that he had found someone from ‘his own world’ Rudolf had explained his Paris mission: to protect works of art abandoned by their owners when they had fled abroad. A mission to be performed quite disinterestedly by the Great Reich, which desired to maintain order in the new Europe, plus a redistribution of its riches among those who deserved them. Hadn’t Napoleon (who remained one of Hitler’s historical role models) acted very similarly in the creation of his own Europe? Rocroy had been put in charge of a depository at Boulogne-Billancourt where paintings and furniture were stored. He also happened occasionally to buy the odd contemporary master for himself and a few close friends, excellent investments at the exchange rate fixed by the victorious power.

Yet again Jean’s eyes were opened by Palfy. He was gradually becoming less easy to surprise, now seeing La Garenne’s small-scale frauds as amusing trifles in comparison with the rackets of Rocroy and Kapermeister. The difference lay in their manner. Léonard Twenty-Sous would never have their style, despite his mother welcoming princes to her bed. The deep disgust that sometimes overcame Jean might have pushed him to an extreme solution if he had not had Claude and the few hours they spent together at Quai Saint-Michel and occasional nights when he slept on her narrow couch. Since the night they had spent wrapped in each other’s arms, shivering and sad, not daring to take their caresses further, a new intimacy had grown up between them. He had accepted that she could not tell him a secret that was not hers to share, and took what she offered him with a sincerity that was completely genuine. Despite feeling sad, even gloomy sometimes, he asked for nothing more. Jogging back to Montmartre alone at night or daybreak, trying to stay fit, he felt rocks of despair falling on his heart and crushing it. Then, a few hours later, he felt Claude’s hand on his face, stroking his cheek, and heard the voice he loved most in the world say to him with a sweetness that instantly revived him, ‘No other man would put up with what you put up with. I feel ashamed. Will you forgive me?’

‘What for? I come here and I breathe fresh air. I’m not giving up. The truth is, I’ve never been so happy, and I’ve been a lot more unhappy.’

The apartment was no longer heated. Claude had installed a stove in the sitting-room fireplace, and with Cyrille she scoured the banks of the river and the Luxembourg Gardens for kindling. Jean arrived with logs Jesús had given him, himself generously supplied by the daughter of a coal merchant in Rue Caulaincourt. They ate dinner in front of the roaring stove and Cyrille fell asleep between them on the couch. Claude scooped him up in her arms and carried him to the double bed where she covered him up to his chin so that only his blond curls, his eyelids with their long, heavy lashes, and his nose, pink with cold in the morning, were visible.

‘I can never sleep on my own again,’ she said. ‘He’s my little man. Almost not my son. Since he started talking I don’t need to go to the cinema or theatre any more — he acts for me all day long — or open a book, because I feel I’m writing one with him in his head, with the names of the trees, the flowers, lessons about things, stars and fairies. I’m just afraid he likes you too. Too much …’

Jean understood without her spelling it out. When Georges Chaminadze came back Claude would say nothing, erasing Jean from her past, but Cyrille would talk. She hid her face in her hands.

‘It’s terrible not to know what’s going to happen. At this moment, I can tell you, I find it unbearable, absolutely unbearable.’

One evening, when she started to cry, he put his arms around her and kissed her tears away. He had discovered her weakness, so well masked by so much courage and warmth.

‘I want to take you away somewhere else,’ he said.

‘Yes, maybe, somewhere else.’

At the end of May 1941 Cyrille could not shake off a bout of flu. A doctor prescribed a period of convalescence in the Midi. But how could they get out of the occupied zone? Within hours Madeleine had obtained three travel permits. Jean bought their tickets for Saint-aphaël. La Garenne made his displeasure felt.

‘You’re really in tune with the times, aren’t you! Holidays? You think now’s the moment for holidays? With two million prisoners of war and a hundred thousand dead? London and Coventry are ablaze, and Monsieur Arnaud’s going on holiday. I’ll be a laughing stock if I say yes. Look at Blanche! Three years she’s worked for me, and not one day off! People are starving. Hostages are being shot. But Monsieur Arnaud doesn’t care. He’s off to the land where the oranges grow. Dear sir, you would die of hunger if I let you swan off to the Midi. You’re behaving like a silly romantic girl.’

‘Bollocks.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Bollocks.’

La Garenne reddened, then went pale with fury. He had the vicious look weak people have when their anger makes them forget their physical wretchedness and cowardice. Jean thought they might come to blows, which would have been laughable.