Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘No. Not really. Wait …’

He turned to Nelly.

‘It’s better if Claude doesn’t go back to her apartment this evening.’

‘Tell her to come here.’

‘Here?’

‘Why not?’

It seemed perfectly natural when Nelly said it. There was a silence, then he heard Claude’s voice.

‘Anywhere, Jean. Anywhere. I just need to sleep. I can’t go on. They questioned me all night and all day. But I’d like Cyrille with me …’

Everything was settled. The chauffeur would drive Claude to Nelly’s. Madame Michette would accompany her. Then the car would take Jean to fetch Cyrille. Things happened so quickly that there was no opportunity to reflect or find Nelly’s hospitality unusual. She wanted Cyrille to stay too.

Claude appeared, supported by Marceline Michette and the chauffeur. She could hardly place one foot in front of the other and her face was waxy and she was shivering in her wet dress, her fine ash-blond hair hanging in rat’s tails. Nelly hugged her. Madame Michette took matters in hand: a bath, warm towel, rub down with eau de Cologne, and electric hairdryer.

‘I’ve brought some woollens. Now go and get Cyrille!’

She pushed Jean and the chauffeur out of the door. Anna Petrovna lived in Passy, where the White Russians had gathered in exile, in a detached house down a private path overgrown with ivy. She opened the door and started when she saw Jean.

‘Well?’

‘She’s been released.’

‘Why hasn’t she come?’

‘She’s exhausted.’

‘I’ll go to her.’

‘No. You won’t find her at her apartment.’

She did not invite him in and despite the cold she left the door open. Behind her Jean could see a hall wallpapered in a hideous design.

‘I’ve come for Cyrille,’ he said.

‘He’s with my son.’

She pointed to the side of the building where there was a single room, probably an old garage, with a light in the window.

‘But you’ll only have him if Claude asks me herself.’

He gave her Nelly’s number.

‘Come in!’ she said finally.

Jean placed his hand on the receiver as Anna Petrovna seized it.

‘Wait!’

He lifted the receiver and listened for the telltale click of a listening device. There was no sound.

‘You can dial the number.’

Claude was very brief. Anna Petrovna burst into tears. There was no one at the other end when Jean took back the receiver.

‘You’ve taken my daughter from me!’

‘I doubt it.’

‘When will I see her?’

‘Soon.’

She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and stepped across the little garden to knock on the door of the garage.

‘Vladi! It’s me!’

The door was unlocked and opened onto a magnificent disorder in the middle of which Cyrille, sitting on the floor, was busy tossing a ball onto a roulette wheel. As soon as he saw Jean he scrambled to his feet and threw himself into his arms.

‘Jean, Jean, you came. Where’s Maman?’

‘She’s waiting for you.’

Vladimir looked like Claude, but he had in his expressions something so inconclusive and soft that the second time one looked at him one discovered an entirely different person, a thin and spineless-looking giant, whose hair was too long and whose hands trembled. As for the chaos he lived in, we would need pages and pages to describe it, with the risk of the reader dying of boredom before the end. Let us simply say that Vladimir, who had never managed to pass his baccalauréat, considered himself to be a great inventor, specifically of a rotary engine that could fit in the palm of a person’s hand and produce the power of a 200-horsepower diesel engine. The one-time garage had become his workshop and bedroom. Not his bathroom, as he rarely washed, except on the days when he went out to win a little money at a bridge club. In fact it had been a long time since he himself had actually believed in his invention but he continued to maintain its fiction because it concealed his laziness and inaction. The money he and his mother lived on he owed to his card-playing skills, particularly bridge, at which he was first-rate. The war had interrupted a career that had reaped rich rewards on cruise ships, where for the price of a ticket to the Caribbean he had learnt how to clean out all the wide-eyed amateurs in the space of a fortnight. Despite a few unpleasant aftermaths — two shipping lines had blacklisted him — he had been planning to leave for Japan, changing ships several times en route. Now, forced to stay in Paris, he made do with fleecing the amateur clubs of the 16th arrondissement and waited for better days. Jean understood in a flash what Claude had wanted to keep hidden from him and would be angry with him for having discovered.

In his arms, Cyrille hugged him tight.

‘Take me to see Maman now, Jean. Good night, Uncle Vladi. Good night, Grandmother.’

Nelly had given Claude her bed and she was resting with two pillows under her head. In the narrow kitchen Madame Michette was fussing and complaining at the lack of room. Organised as always, she had brought food borrowed from Palfy’s refrigerator.

‘A boiled egg, some York ham, a slice of Gruyère and some stewed apples, that’s all a tired tummy needs. And where’s the egg cup?’

No, Nelly never ate boiled eggs. All she needed was coffee. Ingeniously Madame Michette decided to serve the egg mashed with bread soldiers. She had everything under control and reigned, maternal and full of authority, treating Cyrille to a tap on his fingers when she caught him picking his nose. Claude lay back with an expression of profound sadness on her face, as if the world from which she had returned by an accident of extraordinary good luck had opened up an abyss underneath her, to which a kind of vertigo kept trying to drag her down, despite her efforts to resist. She smiled at her son, ate because Madame Michette insisted, and wrapped herself back up in her torpor. Nelly kissed her on her forehead and eased a pillow from under her head. Cyrille, already naked, slipped under the covers and pressed himself up against his mother.

‘Off you go, the pair of you,’ Marceline said to Jean and Nelly. ‘I’ll stay and keep an eye on them, keep the fire going so they don’t catch cold. I’ve brought my coffee. Count on me, I won’t drop off. And there’s lots to read anyway …’

She had put on her glasses and was scanning the bookshelves.

‘Michaux? Is that it? He didn’t go overboard, did he? Just little pieces. I knew a Monsieur Michaux. He was a council worker. Can’t be him. Max Jacob? Wouldn’t be Jewish, would he? Mind you, I’ve got nothing against Jews. On the contrary. Now they’re persecuting them, I think that’s disgusting. Anyhow, not all Jacobs are Jews. I knew one of them too, a Protestant, a real one. He’d never come to the Sirène on a Sunday. Very devout. Oh, but this Max Jacob only writes little pieces too. You do like your writers to leave half the page empty, don’t you, Madame Nelly? Oh, look, Corneille! The Complete Works. Le Cid must be in there somewhere. Dialogue’s so much more fun. Don’t you worry about me. I’ve got lots to read. The night will go very quickly. That little lady will be much better after a good sleep. And if she wakes up, I’ll give her another pill. Go on, leave us alone. Go and have some fun, now that the worst’s over.’

Nelly offered her some champagne. After studying the label Madame Michette shook her head.

‘It’s brut . I only like semi-sweet. Don’t worry. I’ve brought my little bottle of burgundy. A glass now and then and the night will be over in a flash. Go on, my dears, off you go, off you go …’

Cyrille sang to her, ‘There was a lady called Madame Michette, and Madame Michette, she lost her pet …’ She wagged her finger at him, pretending to frown but in reality delighted and enchanted by this little boy who ran, whooping like a Sioux, along the paths of the Luxembourg Gardens where the piled-up dead and frozen leaves crunched underfoot. The stone urns on their pedestals looked whiter than usual, as if turned to ice by the cold, and the statues shivered in the frosty air. Like mummies in their sarcophagi the German sentries guarding the Senate in their concrete pillboxes observed the children clustered around the big pond through their aiming slits. The layer of ice on the pond, broken up by stones, allowed the model boats to sail among the yellowish icebergs, shadowed by goldfish in search of bread. The rigid lines of barbed wire did not cut Paris off from a victorious Germany, but cut Germany off from a childish, joyful world immersed in imaginary battles with pocket submarines and sailing boats. The uncertainty of combat remained a mystery for these men who had also once played with model boats or whose children, far away, were doing the same thing in a public garden. Marceline was carrying Cyrille’s boat — a Breton fishing boat with red sails, a gift from Jean — while Cyrille collected chestnuts in a paper bag. He already had a bagful in the studio, and in the afternoon she prised the chestnuts from their spiky sheaths and helped him use them to make fantastic characters: beggars, kings, fairies, bulls and ants. Their big project was to make a Nativity scene for Christmas. There was no hessian, paints or gold paper in the apartment, but Marceline had managed to find some at a hardware shop on Rue des Canettes. In one of Nelly’s drawers she had found a tube of glue. Clumsily she had sculpted the ox and the ass out of peeled chestnuts, and she was anxious now that her efforts at the baby Jesus and Virgin Mary would be even clumsier.