Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘She’s impossible. Yesterday evening, at the end of shooting, she was drunk, completely drunk—’

‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

‘When you’re there she doesn’t drink.’

‘I can’t be there all the time.’

Jean felt contempt for Duzan. How could a crook such as he was be so feeble and snivelling as soon as a fragile woman came on the scene? Not for a second did he imagine that Duzan was in love and that, however embarrassing his love for Nelly might be, it was nevertheless an emotion that deserved sympathy. He thought Duzan old — over forty! — mean and stupid. The only things that mattered to him were a passion for money rapidly earned and the misplaced pride of being a producer. And what was he looking for when he came to Jean, if not the trace of Nelly’s perfume and the magic formula of the man to whom she gave herself for nothing?

‘Yes,’ Duzan said, ‘I know everything. I forgive her. She had an unhappy childhood. She tries to forget …’

Jean, unkindly, decided to give him something to think about.

‘You forgive her because she’s the devil.’

‘The devil?’

Visibly more anxious than privileged to have been sought out by the devil, Duzan left his office and did not return for three days. Nelly considered Jean’s idea excellent. Wasn’t everything permitted to the devil?

‘Now and then, Jules-who, you’re a genius. Here I am, cleared of guilt, forgiven, and seduction itself. And somehow you’ve flattered that idiot. The devil doesn’t go out of his way for just anyone.’

She lived near Place Saint-Sulpice in a studio apartment filled with books, set models and signed photographs from her friends in the theatre. That was how he learnt she had won first prize for comedy from the Conservatoire for a scene from The Widow .

‘The Widow? Who?’

‘I love it when you say “who”, you scrumptious little Jules-who. Whose widow? Pierre Corneille’s. Listen to Clarice:

‘Dear confidant of all of my desires

Beautiful place, secret witness to my disquietude,

No longer is it with my sighing fires

That I come to abuse your solitude;

Past are my sufferings

Granted are my longings

Words to joy give way!

My fate has changed its law from harsh to fine

And the object I possess in a word to say,

My Philiste is all mine … ’

Jean was discovering that this careless and chaotic woman possessed a feeling for poetry that was genuinely harmonious. She truly loved the music of words, and Palfy had not been exaggerating when he declared that she could have made an entire auditorium weep by reciting the telephone directory. She was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde rolled into one, or at least with such a brief interlude between the two that it was frightening. Absorbed in La Jeune Parque while the lighting was being readied on set, she would awake from her reverie and, seeing Duzan hiding behind a camera, yell, ‘Get him out of here!’

‘Nelly, he’s the boss!’ the studio manager would implore her.

‘The boss is an arse … Everyone repeat after me: The boss is an arse… the boss is an arse …’

Duzan left, pursued from the studio by the shouts of the technicians and the actors. When the scene had been shot, was in the can, and on its way to the lab, Nelly called him.

‘I’m waiting for you! You and your bicycle-taxi bum! You surely don’t think I’m going home by Métro?’

Duzan ran to her. He felt like weeping, but instead took her out to dinner in a restaurant where he hoped everyone would recognise her.

‘It’s Nelly Tristan!’

And his assurance would return as she recounted her day to him, her tiffs with the other actors, or complained at length about the screenplay’s excessive vulgarity. Then, if he was too high-handed with the waiters, she would summon the head waiter or the restaurant’s owner.

‘Pay no attention. He’s very spoilt. He’s just playing at the producer-taking-his-star-out-to-dinner.’

To Jean, when she saw him the next day, she admitted, ‘He’s never loved me as much as he has since I’ve been cheating on him with you. I need to cheat on him much more. What a bore! Because then you’ll start getting jealous.’

‘No. Not a chance!’

‘Oh well …’

She was not at all put out. She knew Jean had another love.

‘Is she kind to you?’ she asked.

‘Very.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Claude.’

‘Is that a woman or a man?’

‘A woman.’

‘Are you sure she’s not a transvestite?’

‘Absolutely sure.’

‘Phew!’

If Claude had dinner at her mother’s — which seemed to be happening more frequently, as though Anna Petrovna, apprised of the danger her daughter was running, was doing her best to take her in hand — he stayed the night at Nelly’s. Sitting on a deep-pile carpet in front of the fireplace where a wood fire crackled, she would question him.

‘What have you read, then?’

‘ The Thibaults .’20

She shrugged.

‘Average. What else?’

‘ Remembrance of Things Past .’

‘Better. Who’s your favourite poet?’

‘Before I met you, I didn’t know anyone who knew how to recite poetry.’

‘What do you want to hear?’

‘Whatever you like.’

She closed her eyes, suddenly absent again, and her voice rose, so poignantly that it enveloped Jean.

‘My heart beats only with its wings

I can follow no further than my prison wall

Oh my friends, lost beyond all recall

It is but your hidden lives I’m listening to … ’

‘Who’s that by?’ he asked.

‘Reverdy.’

‘I don’t know him.’

‘You scrumptious boy.’

When they were alone together, she did not drink.

‘With you,’ she said, ‘I don’t need to be unbearable in order to exist. You’re kind. You’re actually extraordinarily normal. Not machosistic , as old Madame Michette would say, not machosistic for a second. I might be unhappy for a few minutes the day you leave me.’

‘Who says I’m going to leave you?’

‘Me. I know you are. And deep down I don’t care, just like I don’t care about you. You’re not irreplaceable.’

‘I know. What about Duzan?’

‘Dudu? Oh, he’s for life. I’m his Omphale.’

‘He’s not Hercules.’

‘No, he’s not … but I’ve told him he’s an arse so often that he believes it.’

‘He told me you had an unhappy childhood.’

‘Me? Not for a second. I love my papa and maman. He works on the railways, she’s at home. Stationmaster at a little village in the south-west. He’ll never get another promotion and he doesn’t mind a bit. Ever since he was a child he’s written poetry, and all his poems are as bad as each other, but he doesn’t know that. He’s a member of the Société des Gens de Lettres and he thinks it’s something very similar to the Académie Française. He’s kind and generous and has always got his head in the clouds. A poet, you see. He’s had several near-misses changing the points. Otherwise he’s a very good stationmaster. One day we’ll go and see my parents. You’ll see my mother look at me wide-eyed. She says I’m like my father, artistic. He adores me because I’m his revenge on the people who don’t understand him. When a magazine rejects his poems he’s unhappy and shouts at everyone at the station. Otherwise he’s awfully nice. One in a million. I tell myself it’s from him that I have inherited the little light burning in me, that makes me not like the other actors around me, and him not like the other railway workers around him.’