Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘Madame del Loreto! Madame del Loreto!’

The policeman felt he should pick up the broken glass but rapidly gave up. Potato peelings, cigarette butts and newspaper cuttings were scattered thickly over the floor. Instead he moved to the bed to touch the scraggy arm that emerged from a lace nightdress that was grey with dirt.

‘She’s cold!’ He nodded. ‘And stiff!’

A doctor was summoned, who confirmed the death and signed the death certificate.

‘It’ll be difficult to straighten her out,’ he said. ‘But that’s the undertaker’s problem.’

Madame Berthe took things in hand.

‘I’m a friend. Her son has been arrested.’

The policeman feigned mild interest.

‘Has he committed a crime?’

‘No. They say he’s a Jew.’

‘Everything’s possible.’

She began searching through the three rooms. A wooden leg fell out of a tottering wardrobe.

‘Just like Sarah Bernhardt!’ Madame Berthe exclaimed. The theatre was in her blood.

A chest of drawers released a cascade of lace underwear.

‘That’s worth something!’ Madame Michette said, acquainted with both the tastes of men and the lace of Le Puy.

The second room was a sort of kitchen with a stone sink overflowing with dirty plates and empty tins. The third was clearly Louis-Edmond’s, if you could call a cupboard lit by a lead skylight a room. The dim light fell on a child’s iron bedstead where he could only have slept curled up. Straw poked out of the torn mattress. La Garenne slept under a horse blanket that was full of holes. On a table there was a spare wig and some sketchbooks filled with pitiful caricatures, relics of the impecunious years of Léonard Twenty-Sous around La Coupole and the other cafés of Montparnasse. His cape hung on a hanger, and in a cardboard suitcase open on the floor there lay black ascots, celluloid collars and long johns of grey jersey.

At the sight Jean felt as if he was intruding so odiously into a man’s privacy that he turned and left, taking Marceline Michette with him.

‘We’ll have seen a few things by the time this war’s over!’ she said. ‘People sitting dead in their beds! Mercedes del Loreto! What a woman she must have been! And him? What a chap! Devoted and all … And that old bag of bones, mustering the energy to insult him one last time before she snuffed it. There’s no thanks for the charitable!’

The rest of the story belongs to the undertaker and to Louis-Edmond, who was released for a reason as obscure as the one that had got him arrested. The only people present at the funeral were him, Jean, Madame Berthe, Marceline and, in the background and so discreet his shyness was almost touching, an old gentleman in a hound’s-tooth suit and white spats, his grey bowler hat at an angle, and in his buttonhole a red carnation that he threw on top of the coffin. Who was he? No one ever knew. He disappeared as he had come, between the graves of Montparnasse Cemetery, on a muggy morning at the end of August beneath a sky heavy with clouds that burst that afternoon, drenching Paris. Only Madame Berthe cried, out of theatrical habit, while Louis-Edmond remained dry-eyed, his face frozen, pasty from the days he had spent in custody, in the shadow of the Dépôt.19 On the same day the Wehrmacht entered Dnepropetrovsk.

Anna Petrovna crammed a sugar cube into her mouth, drank her cup of tea and declared, ‘The Germans will never take St Petersburg. The Russian people will force them back into the sea.’

Jean looked at her uneasily. He had said nothing which could have provoked this declaration of faith. In fact he had said barely a word after having arrived without warning at Quai Saint-Michel and found himself face to face with Claude’s mother. Cyrille had thrown his arms around Jean’s neck.

‘Why don’t you come every night any more? I’ll tell you a secret when we’re on our own, just us.’

Anna Petrovna had pretended not to hear, although her pale-blue eyes were scrutinising Jean with enough intensity to make him feel genuinely embarrassed. Claude had done her best to dispel the awkwardness.

‘Maman has brought us some real tea. Do you want a cup?’

‘Yes, but I shouldn’t, it’s so precious.’

Claude had poured him a cup and Anna Petrovna had launched her attack, as if what Jean had said somehow cast doubt upon the fighting qualities of her Russian compatriots.

‘ Muzhik or tovarishch , it’s one and the same. When he’s roused he’ll defeat the world.’

Thinking of Palfy’s theories, Jean almost smiled. Palfy foresaw a similar outcome, for more Gallic reasons. Deep down Anna Petrovna was suffering at the thought of the Russians’ defeat, Russians she had so hated when they had driven her from her country.

‘They’ll allow them to reach Moscow, and Moscow will burn. They’ll only have ashes left. Stalin doesn’t care. He’s Georgian. To him the Muscovites are yellows.’

‘What’s yellows?’ Cyrille asked.

Anna Petrovna shrugged. She spoke with a strong Russian accent, and even though Claude herself had no accent, their intonations were similar. Like many people at this time she had grown thinner and her face, a year ago still attractive, full and smooth, had sagged suddenly. New lines dragged at the corners of her mouth and eyes, destroying the remains of a beauty that had certainly been great, greater than Claude’s with her regular features, her calm and reflective face. Anna Petrovna stood up.

‘I must go. Good evening, Monsieur.’

Jean hoped that she had guessed everything and loathed him, not because of the way he looked, but because he was upsetting Claude’s life. Cyrille hardly paid attention to his grandmother’s departure and ran to fetch a building set Jean had brought him. Anna Petrovna swung a sealskin coat across her shoulders that looked tired, very tired despite suiting her very well. She drew Claude out onto the landing and Cyrille whispered, ‘Jean, Maman cried when you didn’t come three days in a row.’

‘You mustn’t let her cry. You have to make her laugh.’

‘What were you doing?’

‘I was working.’

The lie instantly weighed on him. You didn’t lie to a child. Claude came back.

‘We missed you,’ she said.

‘Spare me your reproaches.’

‘I have no right to reproach you.’

‘No. None at all.’

‘Are you talking or playing?’ Cyrille asked.

‘I’m playing.’

Claude crossed the room.

‘Are you eating with us?’ she asked. ‘I’m afraid it won’t be much of a dinner.’

‘I’m taking you both out to dinner.’

‘Everything’s so stale in restaurants these days. Let’s stay here.’

‘No, I insist.’

Cyrille clapped his hands.

‘Let’s go to the restaurant, I really want to!’

‘You see!’ Jean said.

Claude stood in front of him. He was tempted to jump up, take her in his arms and wipe everything out in an embrace.

‘Are you playing then?’ Cyrille repeated in an exasperated voice.

They played, then had dinner in an oriental restaurant at La Huchette. Cyrille was asleep in Jean’s arms by the time they climbed the stairs at Quai Saint-Michel and Claude put him straight to bed. Jean tidied the building set away.

‘You’re too nice to him!’ she said. ‘By the time you’ve finished spoiling him there’ll be nothing left for me to do.’

He stopped and took her hands.

‘If we have to talk as if we don’t mean anything to each other, it’s better we never see each other again.’

‘Never?’

‘At least let me cure myself.’

‘Cure’s not the word you’re looking for. Actually it’s a ridiculous word, all right for an injury or for a bout of flu, but not for love. Love’s not a sickness, love’s a very healthy thing, despite what you say in its name or the qualities you give it. It’s our own anaemia that makes it dangerous: I mean that when we feel defenceless or depressed and lonely, we’re more vulnerable. Truly, cure is not a word for a man of twenty-one …’