Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘What does it mean for us in Europe?’

‘The USA is at war with the Axis powers.’

‘So there’s a hope it might all be over quickly?’

‘Maybe.’

Claude grasped Jean’s arm and was silent. Cyrille held her hand, dragging his feet, exhausted by his day in the open air that had so disoriented them all that they felt like foreigners in a Paris both dark and hectic. At Rue de la Huchette four German soldiers occupied the width of the pavement. Other pedestrians were stepping into the road to avoid bumping into them. They were young and neither hateful nor arrogant, weighed down by their green uniforms and probably dumbfounded by the city’s peacetime Sunday air. Jean sensed that Claude was about to refuse to step off the pavement. He squeezed her arm.

‘Don’t waste your energy on pointless protests.’

She followed him, her head down, and they skirted round the soldiers.

‘I don’t like them,’ she said.

‘No one likes them.’

‘You have dinner with them.’

‘Not many. What else can I do? They’re everywhere.’

‘Yes, I know. Laura’s kind and yet I felt uncomfortable being with her … I can’t explain it, it’s as if she were hiding the truth from me.’

‘It wasn’t her we went to see, it was Jesús.’

‘That’s true.’

She said nothing more until they reached the door of her building, where she hesitated.

‘Do you want to come up? I haven’t got anything I can offer you for dinner. I think I’ve got one egg left for Cyrille.’

‘Come on,’ Cyrille said. ‘Come, and carry me. My legs feel all wobbly. You can kiss me good night.’

He lifted Cyrille onto his shoulders and climbed the four flights. As she opened her door Claude snatched up a square of white paper with ‘G’ written on it, poking from under the doormat, and slipped it into her bag. Jean realised that he was not to notice anything. Cyrille ate his supper. He looked worn out, his cheeks still pink and his eyes already dreamily unfocused. Claude put him to bed and he instantly fell asleep.

‘You need to go,’ she said to Jean as she came back.

‘I suppose I do. Who are you afraid of?’

‘No one.’

‘It’s not true.’

She begged him.

‘Jean!’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll tell you everything.’

‘When?’

‘Soon. Let me be on my own tonight.’

She kissed him on the lips and pushed him towards the door. He felt as though his strength had deserted him, that he was helpless before her anxious and beseeching face. She merely added, ‘Don’t forget that I love you.’

‘No. I won’t forget.’

It was all too rapid, too brutal. He went down the four flights of stairs, oblivious, and out past the door of the concierge who spied on him, noting his comings and goings. For a moment he thought he would stay on the quai and, from the shadows, keep watch on the building. It would have been a betrayal of Claude, of the trust she had placed in him. He set out along the empty quais , seized by the sadness that Paris reserves for lonely souls.

At Rue de Presbourg he found Palfy sitting over a radio set. An intermittent crackling masked a distant voice whose affected English accent could just be made out. The interference rose in volume and the voice disappeared. Palfy fiddled with the knob.

‘This is exciting. What do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘Pearl Harbor. Don’t pretend you haven’t heard.’

‘I read a bulletin.’

‘It’s world war now. Don’t you find that much more interesting?’

‘To be honest I find it vile, and I’m beginning to understand my father. We live in a shell here.’

‘The Japanese have just shattered the Americans’ shell. The Pacific will be Japanese within two or three years. It’s the end of the white man in Asia …’

But Jean could only think of one thing, of a G on a slip of paper hastily torn from a notebook. There was no longer any doubt. Another war was beginning this evening, a war that interested him far more than the war in the Pacific, an ocean apparently of infinite expanses of blue water sprinkled with ravishing atolls encircled by coral reefs that was really not like that at all.

Palfy handed him the telephone. He had his cup of coffee in the other hand and Le Matin open on his lap, screaming in banner headlines the destruction of the US Pacific fleet. The Japanese were landing in Malaysia and the Gulf of Siam.

‘Someone is asking for you. A charming Russian accent. Perhaps it’s Moscow. Stalin’s private secretary.’

Jean took the receiver and immediately recognised Anna Petrovna. Her voice was strained.

‘Hello? I need to see you. At once.’

‘Is there something wrong?’

‘I can’t tell you.’

‘Where do you live?’

‘I’m not at home. I’ll be at your office at ten o’clock.’

She hung up and he heard the click of a public call box. She was probably phoning from the post office.

‘How is Uncle Joe?’ Palfy asked.

‘Don’t joke. Something’s happened. It’s Claude’s mother.’

Palfy stopped smiling.

‘Is it serious?’

‘It must be serious for her to call me. I’ve only met her once and she made it very clear that I’m not her favourite person.’

‘What do you think’s happened?’

Jean thought again of the square of paper with a G on it that Claude had found under the mat the previous evening and of the way she had asked him to leave after putting Cyrille to bed.

‘I’ll come with you,’ Palfy said. ‘You know nothing. I can help you. We’re going into a stage of this war where those who are on their own will be defenceless. Appalling things will happen. They are already …’

Anna Petrovna had arrived early and was waiting in the secretaries’ office. Her pallor and the sharp, almost hateful look she gave him struck Jean.

‘I’m with Duzan. Call me when you’ve finished,’ Palfy said.

Anna Petrovna’s gaze followed Palfy with a suspicion she made no attempt to hide.

‘Would you like to come into my office?’ Jean said.

She stood up. Her lips were trembling. He took her elbow and guided her.

As soon as they were alone she said, ‘Claude was arrested last night.’

Two tears trickled down her face, which was puffy with fatigue and which, for the first time in many years, she had not bothered to make up. Jean, unable to say a word, seized her hand and squeezed it hard. He had hoped it would be something else, perhaps the threats of a mother who no longer wanted him to see her daughter.

‘Where is Cyrille?’ he said.

‘With my son … He’s asking for you. It was him who gave me your telephone number. You’re stealing my daughter, and now you’re taking my grandson from me too. I would like you to know straight away that I hate you, but I have nowhere else to turn. I know you have … powerful friends in Paris.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘On Saturday you took my daughter to see a German!’

‘No, to see a Spanish painter. He has a mistress who’s German. He’s within his rights. His country’s not at war.’

She looked disconcerted for a second and wiped away the traces of her two tears.

‘When was she arrested?’ Jean asked.

‘Yesterday evening at eleven o’clock.’

‘Who by?’

‘Plainclothes inspectors.’

‘French?’

‘It seems so. But they’ll hand her over to the Gestapo. You don’t know them!’

It was true, he didn’t know them. Until that day he had managed to avoid the drama that was endlessly being played out. Now the noose was tightening. To begin with it was insignificant characters like Alberto Senzacatso, then La Garenne. Today it was Claude’s turn. The words ‘arrest’, ‘police’, ‘interrogation’ suddenly had a meaning. Laura Bruckett, Rudolf von Rocroy, Julius Kapermeister — even if they had nothing to do with Claude’s arrest — were on the side of this invisible authority that claimed the right to put an end to the freedom and even the life of beings he loved.