Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

Jesús did not understand. Jean had to explain the play on words to him. Blaise Pascal was delighted.

‘Monsieur—’ he began.

‘My name is Rhésus Infante!’

‘Monsieur Jesús—’

‘There is no Monsieur Rhésus. The French, they say little Rhésus, I am the other, not the big, the Rhésus and that’s it …’

‘Shall I make an omelette?’ Claude asked.

‘Yes, Maman! Can I break the eggs?’

She let him break them into a bowl. He only missed two of them, which broke on the tiles in front of the oven.

‘What I wanted to say is that your time has come!’ the man said to Jesús, finally moving closer to the fire.

His clothes steamed, and a smell of disinfectant pervaded the room.

‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘This suit was going to lie in mothballs until peace was declared.’

‘Who says it wasn’t declared long ago?’ Jean said.

Blaise Pascal smiled.

‘Monsieur—’

‘My name’s Jean Arnaud.’

‘Yes, without an “l”. Am I to call you “Jean”?’

‘It would be simpler, Blaise.’

‘Well, Jean, I’ve been drawing my own conclusions. I go as far as the road and I hide there. There are no cars, apart from one driven by a nice-looking woman, which has a German registration.’

‘That’s Laura,’ Jesús said.

‘Her brother was killed by the Russians,’ Cyrille said. ‘She’s gone to bury him. The Russians are killing lots of Germans.’

‘Be quiet,’ Claude said. ‘Go and wash your hands.’

She laid four places at the table. Jesús opened a bottle of wine, poured a glass and offered it to Blaise.

‘Thank you, no,’ Blaise said. ‘I don’t drink. Loneliness and alcohol don’t go together. There are no half-measures. Either you don’t drink or you drink like a fish. I chose abstinence, although, believe me, I wasn’t always that way disposed.’

Claude served the omelette.

‘Does your diet exclude eggs?’ Jean asked.

‘No. I even owned two hens and a cock. Two months ago they disappeared. I suspect a fox had them. You will object that eggs are not vegetable. You would be right.’

He raised his finger to ensure their attention.

‘But by eating an egg I am fighting in my own way against overpopulation. By the year 2000 there will be four billion earthlings. Malthus was right. Limit the number of births and you’ll have no more need of wars to mop up the consequences of an ocean of sperm.’

‘Of what?’ Cyrille said.

‘Forgive me, my boy, I forgot you. It’s a scientific word.’

‘Sit down,’ Claude said, seeming to pay no attention to the man or his chatter.

She served them in silence and sat with her own empty plate in front of her. For three weeks she had eaten almost nothing at all, making do with a glass of water here, a piece of bread there. Trousers and sweaters concealed her new slimness, but when Jean had hugged her to him in the bedroom that afternoon he had been surprised by how thin her body, once so moving in its shapeliness, its secret harmony between flesh and frame, had become. Her failure to eat had already blighted her face, making her eyes more protuberant and her cheekbones more prominent, the avatar of a beauty that had once been placid and simple and was now impenetrable. Her looks were changing as much as if she had put a mask over her face, and her fixed expression concealed, from anyone who did not know her, a sadly etched image of fear …

Jesús, whom the visitor had so surprised as to leave him speechless, regained his composure at dinner. He had been so carried away by the compliments about the only two canvases hanging on the wall that for a moment he had been unable to assert himself. But one did not condemn a man of Jaén to silence as easily as that. Nor, at Jaén, was there any shortage of hermits. His uncle, Antonio Infante, had shut himself up in a Saracen tower on the edge of the town, on the Bailén road, at the beginning of the civil war. It was an old tower with solid walls, but its upper platform had collapsed. Antonio had walled up the outer door and moved in with a guitar. Every morning he tossed a rope over the wall to which a box was tied, full of bread, water and some fruit. He sent the box back with some trifling ill-smelling objects that were buried elsewhere. Except at midday precisely, he was always in the shade. When it rained he opened his umbrella, and on icy winter nights he wrapped himself in a quilt. One day Jesús brought a ladder that reached the battlements. His uncle was dozing, his guitar beside him. He had grown a long black beard, like Tolstoy’s. He had become much thinner in his dust-covered clothes. Sometimes he was heard singing, accompanying himself on the guitar. At the end of the war he had emerged from his retreat to shave and get married. He had two children already, had announced his intention to have another one every year until 1950, and led a modest life running a haberdashery.

‘Human foolishness knows no limits,’ Blaise Pascal said, put out that Jesús dared to steal his thunder with such a picturesque anecdote.

‘That’s exactly wha’ I sink of you!’ Jesús answered calmly. ‘You don’ do anythin’. You are simply afraid. And fear is no’ pretty.’

‘But you also—’

‘Me, señor, I don’ make somebody else’s war …’

‘What do you mean? It’s always somebody else’s war! I’ve only ever understood one war, and that’s civil war. At least one knows why one’s beating and killing one’s brother. But the Germans? Why? I don’t know them. I wouldn’t go and live with them for anything in the world. Their philosophy bores me. Musicians? Well, yes, certainly. Alas, I’m not fond of music. Their women? I’m sorry, I like — or rather I used to like — petite women with brown hair. You see, I’ve no reason to be angry with them. They leave me cold. That’s all!’

Jean tried to catch Claude’s eye. He sensed that she was not listening and was overcome by tiredness. Her eyelids were heavy and her head kept slowly sinking then starting up suddenly. He leant towards her.

‘Do you want to go to sleep?’

She answered so quietly that he could hardly hear her.

‘Yes … but you will fuck me, won’t you?’

Neither Jesús nor Blaise Pascal seemed to have heard. He took her arm and went upstairs with her, followed by Cyrille, who got undressed on his own and snuggled into his sleeping bag.

‘Will you both kiss me, please?’

Claude, sitting on the edge of the bed, smiled and blew him a kiss.

‘Go to sleep, darling.’

Jean kissed him. The boy was dog-tired.

‘He’s funny, the man in the woods, don’t you think, Jean?’

‘Yes, he is pretty funny.’

‘Will he come back tomorrow?’

‘I suspect he probably will.’

Rising from the ground floor, the muffled voices of Jesús and Blaise Pascal were still audible.

‘Jean, undress me,’ Claude said.

‘All right.’

He laid her down on the bed. Cyrille turned over.

‘Good night.’

Claude did not even appear to hear him. She raised herself fractionally to let Jean take off her trousers and sweater, then murmured something so indistinctly that at first he hardly heard her and was then shocked as he understood.

‘Be quiet,’ he said.

The Light 11 stopped at the entrance to Allée des Acacias. Palfy got out before the chauffeur had a chance to open his door. He spread his arms wide, inhaled a lungful of cold air and, catching sight of Jean waiting for him, turned to the chauffeur.

‘Émile …’

Jean hated him calling a man Émile whose real name was Jean (‘You understand,’ Palfy had said, ‘that I had to unbaptise him, because of you ’).

‘Émile, no need to stay with us. I’m just going to the Cascade and I’ll be back. You can switch off the engine …’