Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

In this happy atmosphere, this oasis of luxury and gourmandise, Jean found out what was expected of him, which was simple and required only his discretion, complete discretion. Little by little we shall find out, as he does, exactly what that means, and to be honest it hardly matters: needs must when the devil drives. Each week he has to pay the bill at the clinic, which is predictably exploiting him like a character in a Victor Hugo novel. It is a wretched business, though we can be reassured: Jean will not be forced to sell his teeth and hair, as Cosette’s mother is, to pay for Claude’s keep. Yet again in his short and already colourful life, he is facing temptation. We shan’t claim, hypocritically, that he succumbs to it. He grabs it by the scruff of the neck. Julius is blissful. Madeleine has not understood, or pretends not to understand. She nods, and the sommelier, quick to turn the slightest sign into an order, brings another magnum of champagne. Julius draws attention to the date: 1929. An exceptional year, and a good idea to drink it rapidly, before the army’s technicians get the idea of transforming this sublime liquid into a fuel substitute for their tanks.

‘Talking of the German army,’ Julius adds, immediately regretting his subversive sally, ‘the front has stabilised. All necessary matériel is being delivered to the lines in preparation for the spring offensive …’

Palfy is in a good mood. He does not contradict him. Why should he? The battle grinding on in that icy hell does not concern them. Julius believes himself as safe as he can be, having reconciled politics, the war and his own affairs. Everything is in place … So which was Liane de Pougy’s table? Ah yes, that one opposite. And Boni de Castellane’s? In the room at the end. Julius is not one of those superficial Parisians who don’t know their ‘little history’. He would have liked to live at the time of Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane Avril and Chocolat. He drops their names the way one might drop illustrious titles of the nobility. Madeleine, who has only known the Moulin Rouge as a dance hall where girls found themselves lonely and impecunious lovers, refrains from joining in the conversation. She has discreetly passed Jean a packet of sweets for Cyrille and two pairs of stockings for Claude. She adds in his ear, ‘If you’re going to open that gallery for Palfy, you should see Louis-Edmond. He has contacts, but he’s going through a bad time at the moment. You have to help him.’

‘Was it Blanche who told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does she still see him?’

‘She more or less has to. He pursues her, rings her constantly, weeps down the phone at her, begs her for money, disappears for ten days and then starts all over again. Do something!’

And she slips him a piece of paper with a telephone number at which La Garenne can be reached, at the apartment of a painter he is looking after.

‘La Garenne’s never looked after a painter in his life. He’s always exploited them.’

‘No, I assure you. Blanche is positive that he’s taking care of this Michel Courtot … or du Courtot admirably …’

‘Michel du Courseau.’

Madeleine is briefly embarrassed. Everything would be all right if she didn’t mangle people’s names. With ordinary people it didn’t matter, or was all to the good, but if it was an aristocratic name an error became a faux pas, and a faux pas made her look silly. It would be less embarrassing if she made Madame Michette’s sort of howlers. Everyone expected them and was unspitefully amused. They had become an essential part of the dinners Marceline was invited to, even if she was unaware that she was singing for her supper. Jean perceives Madeleine’s discomfort.

‘Anyone could mix the two up. I just happen to have known Michel since he was a child.’

‘Is he famous?’

‘No, not yet. One day perhaps … When I say I know him, he’s my uncle … I mean he’s my mother’s brother.’

He explains. Madeleine is delighted. Nothing pleases her more than discovering who is related to whom and adding them to her collection.

‘La Garenne sold me one of Michel du Courseau’s paintings. I haven’t put it up yet. I’m waiting to hear what you think.’

Jean reassures her: Michel has talent, a great talent even, though he is prickly and difficult.

‘You should invite him to dinner,’ Julius says.

‘I thought of it, but La Garenne assures me he doesn’t go out.’

‘What does one do with people who refuse to have dinner! They’re savages,’ Palfy says.

Madeleine does not know the answer. By issuing invitations to dinner, she has cultivated a circle of friends. Without these gatherings she would be merely Julius’s mistress. At least Rudolf von Rocroy is a man who dines.

‘I fear he’s doing penance at this moment,’ Julius observes. ‘I doubt Dr Schacht has summoned him to eat foie gras and sip champagne …’

And so Jean learns that Rocroy is involved, and that he has been unwise. The Finance Minister of the Third Reich is not the joking kind, and if he agreed to turn a blind eye to the smuggling of Reichsleiter Reinhard Heydrich, it was strictly on condition that no scandal resulted. Rocroy has made the mistake of drawing attention to himself … General Danke makes his entrance into Maxim’s. He has left his heavy overcoat in the cloakroom and appears squeezed into a uniform designed for officers kept trim by battle. General Danke eats and drinks too much. It is part of his duties. He dazzles and reassures. The prefect whom he has invited today is at Maxim’s for the first time, a special day in his life. By the time dessert is served, he will agree to whatever is asked of him. Danke greets Julius with a discreet hand gesture; Julius, though in mufti, straightens and nods formally. Jean suppresses a surge of hatred, which is unjustified as Danke has no police powers and it would be stupid to hold him responsible for Claude’s torture. He is, Palfy has assured Jean, an enlightened man and a friend of France. The only question to be asked is why all these great friends of France seem incapable of procuring peace for it.

‘Jean,’ Madeleine says in a low voice, ‘you look uneasy. Do you still dislike the Germans?’

He shrugs.

‘Madeleine, that’s not a proper subject of conversation.’

Michel du Courseau was renting an apartment on the floor below Alberto Senzacatso, the photographer fascinated by Mannerism. After a short spell in prison Alberto had regained his freedom, for which he continued to pay with occasional pieces of information to the vice police. In his studio Michel was working on a four-metre by two-metre canvas of Christ surrounded by children. Alberto — whom he had given up the idea of informing on — provided him with models. The canvas, which was to cost him a year of gruelling work, was destroyed on the eve of the Liberation by Michel himself in the course of an acute attack of mysticism. He has spoken so many times in interviews since then about the painting’s destruction that it is unnecessary to revisit it. Spiteful tongues insist that the devastation was an essential sacrifice to a reputation that Michel wanted to be immaculate. Jean followed the work’s evolution without being able to show the enthusiasm Michel sought from his infrequent visitors, but was nevertheless struck by the anxious tone in which the painter said to him one day, ‘I’m worried that I’m taking too much pleasure in it.’

In his mouth the word ‘pleasure’ sounded so obscene that no one could doubt its meaning, and yet Michel merely intended to indicate how much the slightest distraction harmed his sense of himself as a Christian artist. Jean no longer had any illusions as to the state of mystical constipation in which his youthful uncle lived, but his complex personality, afflicted by some internal curse, and his increasing sanctimoniousness, combined with a talent that was going from strength to strength, made this unusual artist a subject for contemplation by Jean in his gradual understanding of his fellow human beings. At heart he felt that the distinction between Palfy’s cynicism and Michel’s unctuousness was minimal, and if he preferred the Palfian outlook by a long way, it was only because of its innate sense of humour. Between Michel and Alberto there orbited, like a Cartesian diver, the figure of La Garenne, whose gallery on Place du Tertre, reopened by an Aryan of impeccable credentials, now sold sunsets over beached fishing boats, cows drinking from a pool, unequivocal subjects that everyone could respond to. La Garenne, half tolerated, lived a marginal existence selling Alberto’s pornographic photographs on the sly, extracting small commissions from the distribution of copies executed by his company of painters down on their luck, fencing the odd picture here and there, keeping for himself a few rare works offloaded by real or phoney policemen who pillaged abandoned Jewish-owned apartments, and amassing, by means of loud lamentation, tears and hands clasped in despair, a fortune that he will never be able to enjoy. A multimillionaire at the Liberation, within a week he will find himself imprisoned at Drancy while the FFI empty his hiding places and distribute among themselves the gold, Picassos and objets d’art piled up in his garret in Rue de la Gaîté. In short, and even though he scarcely counts as a footnote in such a murky era, natural justice will take its course for La Garenne more harshly than he really deserves, making a scapegoat of him, without pity.