Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘Obviously,’ he said to Jean after he put the phone down, ‘you have little idea of the nest of vipers in which we are operating. Julius is officially in charge of overseeing all textile production in France and requisitions everything that appears on the market. Less openly, he is also the boss of the Abwehr’s economic intelligence service and in open warfare with the same department of the SS. Duzan is his key person in the film industry. We therefore have to move carefully in order not to offend him … Listen, go and check your girlfriend hasn’t fainted in the bathroom.’

Nelly’s skirt, shirt and underwear were spread over the bedroom floor. Naked under the sheet she had pulled up to her chin, she was already asleep, her angelic face lying on the pillow, lit by a bedside lamp.

‘A Greuze to the life,’ Palfy murmured. ‘Night, dear boy. What a brilliant return to Paris this is! I’m happy for you. Let me repeat, in case you’ve forgotten, that she’s also talented, immensely talented. Ask her to recite the telephone directory and she’ll move you to tears …’

‘I’m not going to ask her to do that tonight.’

‘No, evidently not.’

‘Where am I going to sleep?’

‘Idiot!’

Shutting the door, he disappeared. Jean bent over Nelly’s face. Her dark eyes gave a bluish tinge to her fragile eyelids. Her face was like that of a child without sin. Only complete candour could have inspired such a pretty nose. He turned away to look out of the open window at the warm, black night swept by the beam of a searchlight. In the East the butchery was continuing, and the rattle of death filled the red sky, while Antoine, at the wheel of his jacked-up Bugatti, drank champagne or grappa and from time to time switched on his headlights to light up the expanse of the Mediterranean. Toinette too was sleeping, another angelic face. He should have stayed with them, jumped at Théo’s invitation to share their life and wait out the end of the war there, as Palfy had predicted it. Claude might perhaps have stayed too. She had adapted painlessly to the Tropezians’ careless, immature existence. But would she have resisted her mother’s imperious demands, resisted what bound her to Paris? There was no convincing that categorical creature once she had said ‘no’. He imagined her, across the rooftops, in her apartment on Quai Saint-Michel, sharing her bed with Cyrille, a woman both weak and strong, suffering a torment she could not overcome and to which she too awaited the end in anguish. If their thoughts, as they stood or lay awake that night, were not alike, then they were no longer of any help to one another in this world.

Nelly turned over in bed, offering her other profile. Jean switched off the light and lay down beside her, not daring to touch her. The hours passed and a greyish gleam rose behind the roofs. A German car engine disturbed the silence in the street, followed by pedestrians talking in loud voices, their footsteps ringing on the pavement. Jean moved his hand to Nelly’s hip and she shivered, sighed and snuggled against him. She stroked him and he buried his face in her neck and hair. She lifted her head and pressed her lips to his cheek, roughened with his beard, in a childish kiss.

Just as they concluded the last of their amorous exercise, Palfy knocked at the door. He was pushing a trolley covered in china and silverware.

‘My butler stayed in London, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I do hope poor Price is saving my honour and paying my debts. I asked him to come, but he refuses. He’s like those island birds that die if you change their climate. He prefers to spend his nights in underground shelters. A man without imagination, a sheep.’

Nelly jumped out of bed stark naked, kissed Palfy, ran to the bathroom and shut the door.

‘I must say,’ Palfy said, ‘she spends a lot of time in that little room. It doesn’t make her any less charming, not at all, and one does prefer the clean sort of person, completely clean. As for you, you look a real sight. About a hundred years old, I’d say …’

‘I am.’

‘You must fight it. Age is a serious handicap. Look at that child; she woke just like a rose. What an exquisite creature! Keep her for a few days. I’ll disconnect the phone and tell the concierge to admit no one.’

‘Thanks, but I’m letting her go.’

‘I despair of you. It’s in infidelity that the strong measure the greatness of their love. I hope you’re thinking of that at this moment.’

‘I wasn’t, actually. Thanks for reminding me.’

Nelly came back, wrapped in a bath towel that left her shoulders and thighs bare. Jean closed his eyes. One morning Claude had sat on the edge of his bed in the same way. Their two bodies had something in common, with something more finished and calm about Claude’s. Nelly lifted the lid of the plate warmer, served herself eggs and bacon, and ate greedily.

‘Émile hasn’t telephoned yet, has he?’ she asked with her mouth full.

‘Last night. I didn’t want to disturb you. You were already asleep.’

‘Was he making a fuss?’

‘It can’t be said that he was happy.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t want to make films any more. I’m going back to the theatre. Oh, not to see his face ever again!’

‘Love doesn’t move you?’

‘Mine does, of course. Not others’.’

She leant towards Jean and kissed him on the forehead.

‘Go and shave,’ she said. ‘We’ll go for a walk. I’m giving myself a holiday.’

‘We have to have lunch at Madeleine’s,’ Jean said timidly.

‘Oh God, eating, always eating! That’s all we’ll remember about this occupation. Why don’t we go into the country instead and see your friend, the great Jesús?’

*

What they did that day is of little importance. Did they go to see Jesús or did they have lunch at Madeleine’s with the aforementioned Pole, who was actually hardly a Pole at all and more a stateless Jew like the already famous Joanovici and, like him, a supplier to the Germans, plundering France in their name and amassing a fabulous fortune? Yes, it hardly matters, because what matters, as the reader will have guessed, is that Jean has tripped up and in doing so renewed, after long abstinence, his acquaintance with the pleasure women offer and begun a period in which the vanity of an affair, even a chaotic one, does not transcend his self-disgust and remorse at being unfaithful to Claude and seeing her suffer. He does not even need to lie. She knows, yet when he misses an evening with her and returns the next day without an excuse, hardly a shadow is visible on her face.

Nelly could be delightfully provocative. That is to say, she possessed many ways to please. Jean discovered her talent, of which he had so far had only glimpses through a fog of alcohol. When she was not swearing at the imbeciles who surrounded and exploited her, she could awaken a lover by reciting softly in his ear:

‘Our weapons are not like enough

For my soul to welcome you in,

All you are is naive male stuff,

But I’m the Eternal Feminine

My object’s lost amid the starry trail!

It’s I who am the Great Isis!

No one has yet peeled back my veil

You should think only of my oasis …

If my song offers you any echoes,

You’d be quite wrong to hesitate

I murmur it to you as no pose

People know me: this is my womanly state’

Jean listened to the voice, which spoke only to him. Nelly, naked, opened the window wide and exclaimed, ‘What are we doing, always fucking when there’s life outside, just waiting for us?’

‘Who’s that by?’

‘By me.’