Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘How long are they going to be gone?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know. An hour maybe.’

She sat up and pushed her hand across her brow.

‘I’d like to sleep. Come with me.’

He followed her into the bedroom, which was warm from the fire downstairs but dark, illuminated only by the dormer window that looked out onto the birch forest. Claude undressed and lay down.

‘Come,’ she said again.

He lay down beside her. She was burning. As he hugged her to him he realised that this time she was ready, that the cruel refusal imposed on her was crumbling, leaving them, at last, face to face.

‘I love you,’ she said.

Jesús’s return dragged them awake. He was tossing logs onto the fire, stoking the stove. Cyrille’s piercing voice came up through the floor.

‘So are you going to play battleships or not, Jesús?’

They listened, then the Spaniard’s resonant voice was raised.

‘Cyrille, you are cheatin’!’

‘I always cheat with Maman.’

‘If you was my son, I would smack you’ bottom.’

‘Just try it. You’re not strong enough.’

There were shouts, puffing and panting and eventually Cyrille’s victorious voice.

‘Both shoulders! You’re touching, Jesús. You lose.’

‘It’s true, I los’!’

Jean got dressed and went downstairs.

‘Where’s Maman?’ Cyrille asked.

‘She’s resting.’

‘She’s been resting a jolly long time, she must be tired …’

They had collected black chanterelles and a few snails, and some sweet chestnuts that they were roasting in the embers. Jesús was putting up a Christmas tree, a young fir, and making cutouts of gold paper in the shape of shooting stars and figures from the Nativity.

‘That’s the donkey!’ Cyrille said.

‘No, ’e’s no’, silly boy! ’E’s Sain’ Josseph …’

‘Or it could be the Virgin Mary.’

‘If you don’ sink I ’ave any talen’ I’ll go and ’ang myself up by …’

Cyrille stretched his neck and cocked his ear to hear the end of the sentence.

‘By the what?’

‘The ’airs in my nose!’

‘All right … I thought you were going to say something else.’

Jean’s arrival put an end to the argument. Above their heads they heard the floor creak at Claude’s footsteps.

‘So is she coming?’ Cyrille asked. ‘What’s she doing?’

Claude came down as Laura arrived, laden with parcels. Jesús unloaded the car.

‘We’re goin’ to wisstan’ a sieze!’ he said.

She had thought of everything, even the candles for the tree, which was transformed under Jesús’s skilful fingers. On their earlier visit she had seemed to Jean dull and submissive. What revelation had suddenly changed her, so that this young woman, no natural beauty and charmless with it, should, against expectations, reappear as someone so extraordinary that her entrance was stunning, as though a new being had replaced the old? She kissed Cyrille, then Claude and Jean.

‘Tonight,’ she said, ‘we forget everything.’

‘Yes, oh yes … everything!’ Claude replied, taking Jean’s hand and squeezing it, communicating her joy and her serenity. The pressure of her hand brought back the events in the bedroom and the agreement Jean believed had at last been sealed between them. For a second, in the moment of sadness and dejection that follows pleasure, he had been afraid that Claude’s surrender had been a farewell. But she was there, warm, her hip pressing against him, quiet, pacified, finally giving free rein to the tender sensuality she had held back for so long. With a finger he lifted up a stray strand of hair from her beautiful forehead. She caught his hand and kissed it.

‘Maman!’ Cyrille cried. ‘You don’t kiss men’s hands.’

‘Yes, you do, my darling. When it’s Jean’s.’

Next morning Laura did not come down when it was time to open the presents. Cyrille wanted to go upstairs and fetch her. Jesús caught his arm.

‘No, Cyrille. Leave ’er, she’s cryin’.’

‘Why? It’s Christmas!’

‘Yes, and as you are a big boy, I’m goin’ to teach you somethin’ you’ll remember all you’ life. Yes’erday, before she came ’ome to us, she found out that ’er brother ’ad died in Russia. She didn’ say nothin’ because she didn’ wan’ to spoil our party. She’s very brave.’

‘What is “died”?’

Jean felt Jesús’s emotion, his inability to explain.

‘It means,’ he murmured, ‘that she’ll never see ’im again.’

‘Never ever?’

‘Never.’

‘What did he go to do in the war?’

Jesús, his voice breaking, said only, ‘’E was an officer.’

‘German?’

‘Yes.’

‘We have to kill all the Germans, that’s what Uncle Vladi says. And Grandmother wants to see them all dead too.’

‘Be quiet, Cyrille!’ Claude cried, so pale she looked as if she might faint. ‘Be quiet, my darling.’

‘But Uncle Vladi knows those things.’

‘Be quiet.’

‘The Germans are making war on Holy Mother Russia.’

‘There’s no mo’ Holy Mother Russia!’ Jesús said. ‘There’s no’ one country that is holy any mo’.’

‘That’s very sad. So why did he died?’

Jean put his arms around Cyrille and lifted him up the way Albert had once, long ago, lifted him.

‘For nothing, for nobody. And remember something else, Cyrille: the men who’ve died don’t have a country any more. They’re all brothers.’

‘So everything’s all right at the end. Then … can we open the presents?’

For a long time the men of my generation were taught that to obtain too quickly and with too little effort the object of their desire would provide no satisfaction, not even to their self-esteem. Worse, they would find themselves tiring rapidly of the object in question. Subsequent generations have felt an instinctive suspicion for such traditional morality. Instinct — I mean the instinct of the moment, with everything wild and intuitive that that implies — instinct tells them that the desired object or person loses its desirability in the course of waiting, and so becomes devalued or degraded. In us, likewise, spent desire is robbed of its spark of energy. How can it stay alive when it is subject to fragmentation and dilution in a sea of temptation? When women were not easy (I’m talking about yesterday, not the day before yesterday, for, as we are too apt to forget, morals go through fashions of rigour and laxity in a way that ought to make us more modest in our claims about the extent of our victories in the name of liberty), when women were not easy, the gift of one of them inspired in him who possessed her a feeling of satisfaction and pride that contributed greatly to the perfection of pleasure. We speak here of love. We could be talking about houses, cars, horses, books or jewellery. In a society where temptation is all around — not a consumer society — as the overused phrase has it patience is the virtue of fools. To practise such a virtue is to be defeated from the start. Youth swiftly grasps this, by a special grace it is given. War and its repercussions, or rather the miseries of war and their repercussions, have a tendency to break the fragile bonds that linked us to our long-term desires. Tomorrow belongs to no one, and today demands thrilling, fleeting pleasures that rarely touch the heart and never the soul. Every satisfied desire is wreathed in the glories of a farewell. It is a gauntlet thrown down. And as it is bound not to be picked up, the gambler wins or feels he has won. There is no time to reckon gains or losses. Victory is already past, its traces rubbed out. For sensitive hearts, a poignancy and sadness remain. Some detect in all this a proof of the existence of God, arguing that the act of procreation, even without the intention of giving new life, is an act of faith and a gift. But does God not feel a deep and enduring bitterness, after having created us so little and so ill in his image that the best one can say is that He’s no artist? Possession is no longer the highest aspiration of an existence, the affirmation of a personality whose guiding principle we would like to pass on. Possession is merely a fleeting desire that, once satisfied, leaves barely a trace. What? Was that it? Once more, we speak here both of love and of life’s playthings: houses, cars, horses …