Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘Twenty-two!’

She smiled, losing her seriousness.

‘I do beg your pardon … yes, you’re very young, you’ve got luck on your side, and Paris is a city where you can happily lose yourself. Where I can change my address tonight and you won’t ever find me again.’

‘I’ll post Madame Michette’s girls at every crossroads. They’ll track you down.’

‘At Clermont-Ferrand, perhaps, not here …’

He took her in his arms and kissed her without letting her finish. Was that Nelly’s fault? Was it she who had got him used to such an easy manner so quickly? He was being more direct than he had ever been. Claude gave a little moan and slipped to the floor.

‘No,’ she said, ‘no. You promised me.’

‘I didn’t promise anything.’

‘You know that I promised.’

‘Who to?’

She shook her head and he took it between his hands to draw towards him her open, confused, almost innocent face … almost, because if Nelly’s innocence was powerful in its attraction, he found Claude’s paralysing.

‘You’re my only friend,’ she murmured.

He crouched next to her and they sank to the carpet together, hand in hand, mute, so filled by a desire that was rising in both of them in waves that they found themselves in each other’s arms, their faces damp with tears.

‘I love you,’ he said.

‘I love you too. I’d like you so much to take me far away from here, with Cyrille, the way you did to Saint-Tropez.’

‘Let’s go back there.’

‘No. Marie-Dévote and Toinette don’t like me.’

‘You’re talking nonsense.’

‘It’s something men don’t see. They think I make you unhappy.’

‘It’s true.’

Claude sighed.

‘It’s true and it’s false. They want you for themselves.’

‘I’ve never been as happy as I was there. You used to walk round our bedroom with no clothes on.’

‘I shouldn’t have.’

‘When we came back I was unkind. I lost interest for a while. I was annoyed.’

‘I know …’

Jean would have liked to admit everything, but could not find the words. If he had been able to, perhaps he could have freed himself from Nelly that evening. Concealed, she continued to exist, and her power was great. Named, she would have been diminished, reduced to what she was: someone who had seduced a still weak young man who does not know how to say no. But the happiness that Claude represented had returned, with her anxiety, her demands, her moments of euphoria and the immense burning unhappiness he felt at not possessing this beautiful, luscious body that had no secrets for him. He spent the night at Quai Saint-Michel and returned to Rue de Presbourg at dawn. Palfy was furious.

‘Your bitch of a girlfriend phoned ten times in the night to check whether you’d come home. Call her.’

Jean did not have to dial the number. Nelly rang for the eleventh time.

‘Is that you, Jules-who? Where were you, you pig? I was worried sick. I phoned all the hospitals to find out if you’d been run over. I even called the Gestapo. They weren’t very nice … Where were you?’

‘With some friends.’

‘Listen, Jules-who … You’re a sweet boy and I like you a lot, but you’re not allowed not to be there when I need you …’

‘And when you don’t need me?’

‘You can do what you like. Come now.’

‘I can’t, I have meetings at the office.’

‘Then when you’ve finished, come and pick me up at the studio. Tonight you’re mine. Big kiss.’

She hung up. Palfy was drinking tea in his dressing gown.

‘Jean, three-quarters of your life is taken up with women.’

‘Once, at least, that suited you.’

‘When?’

‘In London.’

‘That’s true; I’d forgotten. What a terrific scheme that was! Do you remember?’

‘It was a complete cock-up.’

‘The best-laid plans of mice and men … This time I’ve got it all worked out.’

‘Like you did at Cannes?’

‘No, you fond foolish boy. At Cannes I was just playing games.’

‘You lost everything.’

‘I picked up a barony.’

‘Yet another theft.’

‘You steal what belongs to someone else. Not what belongs to everybody. In any case you can’t overlook the way your friend the prince and his faithful chauffeur ruined my plans … Speaking of which, now would be a good moment to open the famous letter.’

‘I promised not to use it unless I absolutely needed to.’

Palfy made a careless gesture.

‘Oh, let’s not wait for absolute need. We’ll call it a random act. Anyhow, it’s a little late for that.’

‘Why?’

Palfy pulled the letter from his dressing-gown pocket. The envelope was open.

‘You really are a bugger!’ Jean said.

‘Yes, and your life’s too much of a mess. You should be admiring my tact. I’m saving you from any remorse.’

Jean had little choice but to hear him out.

‘It’s fairly childish, and to be honest I doubted if it would contain anything valuable anyway, but I wanted to know the final recipient: an interesting character, rarely discussed, except by the brothel owners whose names were on the list in the first envelope.’

‘So who is it?’ Jean asked impatiently.

‘You know him.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. It’s Longuet, whose charming son Gontran you had a fight with and who took Chantal de Malemort from you. Yesterday in the Journal Officiel I saw that henceforth he has the right to call himself Longuet de La Sauveté. Soon it will be just Monsieur de La Sauveté, which will be a fine monicker for his little Gontran. I rather foresee another baron in the French peerage. What’s most interesting is discovering how powerful this person is. Yet again we find the mafia of the white slave trade deeply mixed up with politics and the police. Here, take your letter, dear boy. It could be useful to you one day. And go and shave. You’ve spent the night with your Claude and it does you no good, ever.’

We shall not linger on Jean’s life in his new capacity. It would be pointless to be any more interested in it than he is himself. There is too much passing trade, faces coming and going whose outlines and voices are immediately forgotten, so that Jean numbers them to remember them more easily. Paris at the close of 1941 is far more captivating. After months of despondency, courage has returned, though events are scarcely conducive to optimism. Who is lying, who telling the truth? No one knows that the Wehrmacht, having become bogged down in the autumn mud, is now freezing at the gates of Moscow. Paris has resumed its role as the fun-loving and intellectual capital of Europe. The theatres have never been fuller, there have never been so many books read, and the film industry, so in the doldrums before the war, is basking in a new golden era. No thanks to Duzan specifically: he is content to follow in others’ footsteps, to jump on bandwagons and benefit from the gap in the market left by the dearth of Anglo-Saxon films. Nelly Tristan’s star is rising, she has been signed for three films that she will eventually not make. She will make others later, when the war is over, all equally bad until the day she finally meets a proper director.

But Duzan was vain enough to like having her under contract and, from time to time, to warm his bed. It was a vanity that came at a price: Nelly had a gift for exposing it in public by treating him like a doormat. Humiliated, he complained to Jean, who wondered whether the producer wasn’t employing him to be sure of keeping Nelly. He would storm unannounced into Jean’s office.

‘Do you know what she’s just done to me?’

‘No.’

There followed a tale of some joyful prank of which he had been the wretched victim.