Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘There’s only Jesús and Cyrille.’

‘No, someone else. Behind my back.’

Later — wrongly, because she was right — Jean remembered that it was this fear of Claude’s that had aroused his first suspicions. Before, she had (he thought) just been talking nonsense, floating in a semi-comatose sea of sedatives.

But Jesús looked up, stared at the window, and leapt to his feet to run to the front door, which he threw open. The fire crackled, spitting a ball of smoke.

‘Maman, it’s snowing!’ Cyrille shouted.

Jesús came back in, holding a whitish form tightly by the arm, a man covered in snowflakes. Claude wailed and threw herself into Jean’s arms.

Jesús closed the door behind the figure, who shook himself and took off his hat, leaving the top of his head and upper part of his face free of snow.

‘Why was you spyin’ on us be ’ind the window?’

‘I am sorry, so sorry. Deeply sorry, Madame.’

There was nothing frightening about him: he was more comic than anything else, twisting in his hands (in white leather gloves) a silk-brimmed hat of the sort known as an Eden. Jean recognised him more from his voice than his dress. The man from the woods had gone to considerable trouble. The melting snow already forming a pool at his feet revealed him dressed for polite society: a soberly elegant pinstriped navy-blue suit, black pointed shoes and in his hand a cane with an ivory knob.

‘Maman, Maman!’

Cyrille was crying, clinging to his mother’s legs as she, shaking convulsively, hid her face on Jean’s shoulder.

‘It’s nothing!’ Jean said. ‘It’s just a visitor.’

‘Yes, I came to wish you a happy Christmas. We’re neighbours, are we not? I had no wish to disturb you. Having lived as a savage for some time, I’ve rather lost the habits of society …’

He must have made an effort to wash himself and to run the scissors over his beard and hair, but the smell of dirt still hung around him, a tenacious tramp’s smell. He was so outlandish and unexpected that Jean would have burst out laughing if it had not been for Claude’s trembling. He gently pushed her down into the armchair so that her back was to the visitor. Cyrille, regaining his courage, peeped at him.

‘Jean, is it the man in the woods?’

‘Ah, so I am known to this young man!’

Blaise Pascal — it was he — coughed to clear his throat, hoarse with emotion. The hand clasping the knob of his cane went to his beard to restrain possible germs.

‘Why was you lookin’ in the window?’

‘Ah, so you’re the Spanish painter? Your friend told me about you. There was a time when I was very interested in painting. Would those two landscapes on the wall be yours?’

‘Oh, the boy could do jus’ as good …’

‘Don’t you believe it, dear Monsieur. I know that modern painting claims to have rediscovered, via a complicated detour, the genius of childhood, since — as they declare — all children possess genius, except for child prodigies. But allow me to tell you that your painting — in so far as I can judge from these two pictures — displays the very opposite of childishness. You know everything and you have had the strength to harness your ability. Trust me, Monsieur, I am happy to inform you, if no one else has already done so, that you are a great, a very great painter.’

Dumbfounded, Jesús stared at him. It occurred to Jean that this pure spirit with the frame of an ox knew nothing of deceit, and he felt greater faith in the bearded stranger’s measured speech than in La Garenne’s self-interested paeans. Jesús would accomplish his work in solitude, far from sycophants and the most articulate of admirers; in truth, all he needed was friends and love … Claude turned to look at the figure whose pleasant voice, with a nuance of vanity in its assured tone, seemed to have calmed her attack of nerves.

‘Come and get warm!’ Jean said.

The snow had all but melted from the visitor, but he stayed standing in his pool of water, embarrassed, trying to please by his refined politeness.

‘I would not wish to frighten you, Madame.’

‘I’m not afraid of you,’ Claude said.

‘You’ll excuse me for having spied on you at the window for just a moment. The truth is that I couldn’t decide whether to knock at the door or not. You made a delightful, delicate picture. The child is very handsome. Is he your boy, Madame?’

‘Yes, he’s my son.’

‘Come and get warm,’ Jean repeated.

The man did nothing, not from discretion but because he had developed a habit of not accepting any invitation.

‘You’re all wet!’ Cyrille said.

‘Very true, my boy, but I had no umbrella. When I left two years ago I took only this cane with me …’

‘You left your house two years ago? What does your maman say?’

‘I haven’t got a maman any more.’

‘Show me your cane. Is it a swordstick? My father gave me one before he went away. If any thieves come, I’ll kill them.’

‘Now that sounds very brave to me!’ Blaise Pascal said.

Leaning his cane against the wall, he placed his Eden hat on the table and pulled off his gloves. He had washed his hands with their caked fingernails, but greyish traces remained in the places where his skin was cracked from chilblains. These details were at odds with his elegant appearance, or nearly elegant, since his wool suit was flapping around his emaciated body and his grey Eden had yellowed considerably. Somehow the man radiated kindness, perhaps because he was secretly revelling in his hosts’ astonishment or, better still, because after months of loneliness he felt a pleasure that amazed him to find himself among human beings again.

‘As you suspected,’ he said to Jean, ‘my name is not Blaise Pascal and I do not share his genius. The name was a homage to a product of the Port-Royal schools. As I told you this morning, I live very much with him inside me. The Pensées is one of the ten books I took with me when I went into my exile. You are familiar with the parlour game of which ten books you would take with you to a desert island? I actually did it. You know one of them. If we get to know one another a little more, I’ll tell you the others … But I have arrived at a bad moment … You were perhaps about to have dinner?’

‘Stay with us!’ Jesús said.

The man made an embarrassed gesture.

‘You know … I’ve lost the habit of eating meals … You can do without them very easily. There are blackberries, mushrooms and sweet chestnuts … and I’m forgetting watercress, watercress all year round. Very healthy, especially with a few potatoes that I grow. The human organism has no need of abundance.’

Claude got up and walked across the room to fetch some potatoes, which she put to bake in the embers. She had regained her calm, but her fine features still bore a trace of the violent emotion that had overtaken her. More and more, Jean thought, she was closing in on herself. She could be brought back to earth by squeezing her hand, or stroking her hair or cheek. Now, having overcome her fear of Blaise Pascal, she did not give him a second look. As she crossed the room, she brushed past him and he had been profuse in his apologies but Jean wondered if she had actually seen him. In any case the man saw her and could hardly take his eyes off her. He spoke for her benefit, caressingly, measuring his words’ pleasure.

‘For a man who lives alone you do a lot of talking,’ Jean said, mildly irritated.

Blaise Pascal’s eyes lit up.

‘You’re so right, Monsieur. I should have unlearnt the power of speech. It might even be fun to see me walking on all fours and barking. That was the pitfall. I foresaw it and I left this world with a mirror. I talk to my mirror and my mirror answers me. Alas, its answers do not satisfy me. As Cocteau puts it so nicely, a mirror should reflect before it offers a reflection.’