Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘That’s the first time I’ve seen your lyrical side!’

Palfy looked embarrassed.

‘Listen, my dear boy, I can only say this to you …’

‘Are you telling me you’re in love with Geneviève? Don’t make me laugh. You’ll never love a woman …’

Jean was mistaken. If Palfy was not yet in love he was soon going to be, and at the age of thirty-five, just when he thought he was safe, his whole life, his unusual sense of right and wrong and his cynicism and scorn were about to be changed for ever. We can sense just how incredible this transformation is. Palfy himself cannot foresee its repercussions. He imagines one can let oneself be attracted to a woman like Geneviève while remaining as one was, and will find out — with a mounting sense of wonder — that, on the contrary, to love and be loved by her one must become more like her. That is how one deserves her. It is no longer a matter of surveying life with a cold and sarcastic eye, with the gaze that has so long served him as judge and defence; it is a matter of being worthy of Geneviève. Palfy cannot yet see where this metamorphosis demanded of him will take him. He will not be a second prince, for his contempt for humanity is of a lower quality, and in particular more greedy and opportunistic. The prince never experienced the vulgar temptation to become rich, for the simple reason that he always was rich. On the other hand, despite his generosity, he did not throw away his fortune and, however wise and unusual he was, it is doubtful whether he would have accepted his ruin with the elegance Palfy has displayed on several such occasions.

Palfy is still looking for that pedestal from which he can defy his critics. He knows that once a certain level of success is achieved, impunity follows. Doors open wide, respect is blind. He has been admitted to this privileged circle two or three times. Without his appetite for risk, he might have stayed there. Deep down he loves starting again from nothing, disconcerting those who have believed in him. As we now see him on this January morning in 1942, in Allée des Acacias in the Bois de Boulogne, walking briskly, his arm in Jean’s as if the better to persuade him of his sincerity, Palfy knows nothing of what awaits him. An inexpressible joy that he finds hard to contain, indeed is allowing to brim over, has taken possession of him. We have already guessed that he — the Palfy who has never felt a single moment’s tenderness — will shortly reproach Jean for not devoting his life to the delights of love. He believes his task is to be intelligent and insensitive. Geneviève will convince him that he is not as intelligent as he thinks he is and that he is almost bursting with sensitivity.

Such a revelation, naturally, is not the work of a day. It will need many journeys to Switzerland, many sleigh rides and, that summer, a visit to Lake Lugano during which they will witness from a balcony Italy falling apart on the far bank. Geneviève will not tell him her life story; she has no need to. It will be his job to tell her his, and entertain her. Revealed, stripped naked, he will be in her power. He will be jubilant as he relinquishes his old self. For a moment he will lose his poise, that marvellous passport that has helped him so much in his life. Geneviève will smile. She will have won, and as the price of her victory she will give him back — albeit attenuated and civilised — the confidence in himself that he lost in an upsurge of passion.

I’ll say it again: nothing can astonish us more than this metamorphosis. It is so unexpected that it surprises us as much as its victim, whose destiny seemed preordained. We had already interned him when France was liberated, ruined him, thrown him out on the street and, since his boats had been burnt all over Europe, watched him leaving to attempt some fabulous new fraud in South America. Indeed, that was certainly what awaited him, and in a sense Palfy’s good luck had always been his bad too, compelling him to resort to his genius for mystification. We are delighted to announce instead that this time, at last, Fortune is on his side, and not, as one might crudely think, Geneviève’s fortune of which he has no need, but that ravishing figure, her form barely veiled beneath a transparent tunic, who awakens those infants slumbering incautiously on the coping of a well. The tiny wings on her back do not allow her to fly to the aid of everyone. She must choose her targets. Seductive and seduced, she attaches herself to those who will not let her go. Why should it surprise us, then, that in her generosity to a few, she is cruel to the greater number? She will desert Salah and only much later pay any attention to Jean Arnaud, after he has endured those tests inflicted by Sarastro on Tamino in The Magic Flute .

For the moment we are still on Allée des Acacias, where it is necessary to walk briskly to keep out the dry cold of the winter of ’41–’42, which marks the decisive turning point of a war we have spoken little about, since it is happening far away and its impact on the majority of the French population is mainly the problem of finding enough to eat.

‘By the way,’ Palfy said, ‘how is your beloved?’

‘Not well.’

‘A cold?’

‘No. A breakdown. I’ve managed to get her admitted to a psychiatric clinic in the Chevreuse valley.’

Palfy stopped and gripped Jean by the shoulders.

‘Good heavens! Do you think …?’

‘I’m sure of it. Those twenty-four hours were too much for her. She cracked. It has all gone downhill very fast in the last few days.’

‘My dear, that is what is called a trial.’

He resumed walking, still holding Jean’s arm tightly.

‘How did you notice?’

‘There were certain warning signs I should have paid attention to sooner.’

‘What signs?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

They walked as far as the Cascade without speaking. Jean’s memory filled with episodes from Claude’s illness, whose progression had remained confused to him until the final crisis. Episodes that had in an obscure way heralded Claude’s gradual deterioration: the awful emptiness of her gaze, her indifference towards Cyrille, her periods of silence, as though she was speaking privately to someone not there, the rapidity with which she moved from formality to informality, her sudden shedding of her defences and the fevered pleasure she took in lovemaking — lyrical, elated, carried away by frenzy — followed by a deep torpor, as if only sex gave her burning body the fathomless rest she craved. That she had not been stupidly, fussily modest during their long period of unconsummated love had pleased Jean. Unable to reveal everything, she had offered her only truth, a physical one. It has not gone unnoticed — and perhaps been exasperating — that she let Jean come close to her on so many occasions without letting go. Let us say again that she loved him, and probably loved him more than he loved her. Jean was sowing wild oats and slow to mature, though several women had already been clear about their wish to hurry him. Claude had been ahead of all of them by a long way, with her seriousness, her thoughtfulness, the understanding she had had, even in their passion, of the consequences of her acts. We might possibly have wanted her to be less thoughtful, more susceptible to passion, but we cannot remake her. That is how she is. Or more precisely, how she was, for now, abruptly, she is quite different, no longer on her pedestal, transformed in a sense as radically as Palfy, in reverse. And so Jean must learn through her, as through his friend, that there are no beings who stand still and that it needs only a meeting or an upheaval for a secret truth to be born. Claude had broken down. If Jean had resisted — but heroism has its limits after such a long wait — she would perhaps not have given way as she had. He could not reproach himself. It was too late. Since their first afternoon she had thought of nothing else but making love, casting aside all modesty, disregarding Cyrille’s presence asleep in the bedroom, murmuring streams of obscenities that froze Jean’s desire instead of fuelling it. That these words had come out of Claude’s mouth seemed monstrous. Jean had felt he was back with Mireille Cece, the sex-mad bistro keeper of Roquebrune. He felt a deep revulsion, not for Claude but for himself. A great hatred rose in him at the same time: monsters of cruelty and dishonour had destroyed the woman he loved. They were all-powerful. There was no defence against them. Jean reflected on his earlier indifference to war. It had, at last, dealt him a blow, sweeping away an image of beauty that, however pointless it seemed in the prevailing horror, mattered more to him than anything else. He had been superficial, careless, preoccupied with his own life, and now Claude lay in a clinic, stupefied by sedatives that smothered her obsessions.