Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘Of course, I entirely understand, even though I’m not certain that Madame Chaminadze is in a fit state to answer you. If you telephone me before you come, we shall arrange matters so that there is no disagreeable meeting with the family.’

‘One more thing, Doctor. Up till now I’ve paid the clinic’s monthly bill. I wanted to say that I’ll continue to do so.’

Dr Bertrand took off his glasses, revealing a victorious and amused look.

‘That won’t be necessary. The family has taken the patient into its care. I have been instructed to return your last cheque to you.’

The cheque was ready in an envelope. Jean took it and tore it up. He felt hurt, profoundly hurt, and detested the stranger’s interference in Claude’s ordeal.

‘I’m sorry,’ Dr Bertrand said. ‘Very sorry … I didn’t think you would be so affected. The truth is that I know nothing about you and I’m merely an instrument in a family’s hands. That’s the law.’

He walked round his desk to Jean, taking his arm with sudden affection.

‘You’re young; you’ve yet to discover stupidity and malice. You’ll only really be a man when you have a precise idea of what they are. Meanwhile take care.’

He let go of Jean’s arm and turned his head to add in a lower voice, ‘And fight. I’ll help you if I can, even though you don’t have a very high opinion of me.’

‘Then tell me if you think Claude’s curable.’

The doctor emptied his glass and turned back to sit behind his desk.

‘Sit down. Please. I won’t give you a lecture, but I’d like to give you some insight if I can.’

His tone had changed. It was persuasive, and Jean thought he detected a new sincerity.

‘For several years now, to distract me from the atmosphere in this rather confining place, I’ve been interested in Gérard de Nerval. You’ll tell me that literary critics are studying that writer with more talent than I’ll ever have. The one difference is that I seek to bring a doctor’s diagnosis to bear on Nerval and to imagine how I would have been able to cure him. My thesis is that he was curable, where Maupassant was not. The basis of my research is my reading of that coded document, Aurélia . No one can deny, Monsieur, that here we have the most beautiful, the most lucid testimony of what frenzy is. With this document in my hand I can confidently tell you that Nerval, who was sound in body, was also sound in mind. All that was needed was to persuade him. About Madame Chaminadze I cannot, I’m afraid, say the same thing. A question mark hangs over her case. Volition seems to escape her. She won’t regain it here. We have neither the time nor the means to help her. We can soothe her anxieties, that’s all. And offer her, relatively speaking, a refuge, since the Gestapo are not yet raiding nursing homes. Is a refuge more important than a mental status quo? That is up to her family to decide. I shan’t say what I think. My duty is to keep the maximum number of residents I can, but I’m sure you understand that an empty bed is immediately taken by a new patient. There’s a long waiting list. I’ve told you everything. You must do what you feel you should, and if you try your luck, I shan’t blame you …’

*

On the ground floor Jean met the supervisor, sorting out rags, scraps of sheets, torn clothes.

‘A lady is waiting for you at the door in her car. It has a German registration.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Oh, Monsieur, don’t look at me like that! I’m collecting rags for Mademoiselle Durand. After a week she gets bored with putting the same ones away every time.’

Behind the closed French window the man in the panama stood drumming lightly on the glass with his hand. The supervisor wagged her finger at him.

‘No, Monsieur Carré, it’s not time to come indoors yet. Go for another little walk.’

Monsieur Carré waved and turned away to go round the lawn again.

‘You have to be firm,’ the supervisor said with a smile.

She was not trying to excuse herself, merely displaying her ability to maintain order in the nursing home, to prevent this bunch of lunatics doing as they pleased, and regarded it as proof of the mildness of her system that she was obeyed without question.

‘I’d like to see Madame Chaminadze, just for five minutes.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, I’m afraid that’s impossible. She was very agitated after you left her and we had to give her an injection. She’s sleeping now.’

*

Jean could not summon the will to insist. Outside Laura was waiting in her green car, a book resting on the steering wheel.

‘I’d have walked back,’ he said.

‘I know you would, but I wanted to talk to you.’

They drove through the peaceful village and turned onto the road for Gif, overtaking pedestrians walking to the station, bent double under the weight of suitcases full of food, and cyclists in shorts with haversacks on their back.

‘They’re hungry,’ Laura said. ‘The French are hungry.’

‘Do you understand them?’

‘Yes. The good thing is that they admit it. In Germany no one would dare to … I came to talk to you about Blaise Pascal.’

She was silent. The private unease Jean had felt at his meeting with Dr Bertrand overcame him again.

‘Where does he live?’

‘Here, in this village.’

‘I don’t feel very strong, Laura,’ he said. ‘I really don’t want to talk about another mad person.’

‘We must.’

She was driving her noisy two-stroke car fast. Going downhill, the exhaust pipe popped drily, misfiring. Laura slowed down in the forest to park in the shade of a side road.

‘Jean,’ she said, ‘we have to clear up some misunderstandings. After Christmas, when I came back from Germany, you left Claude with us for a few days …’

‘Yes, I shouldn’t have. She was already going off the rails. I knew she needed to go to a clinic, but I was looking, I didn’t realise …’

He would have liked to see Laura’s expression, but she stared straight ahead as if fascinated by an image emerging from the shadows of the forest, which sloped down gently down towards the Yvette. Golden splashes exposed the undergrowth. He listened to her, wondering why she hadn’t spoken earlier, but it was in the character of this unusual woman to reveal herself only after a long personal struggle. So he learnt that Blaise Pascal — forgive me for not yet revealing his real name and possibly for not revealing it at all — that after the awkward dinner to which he had invited himself, Blaise Pascal, the lice-ridden and apparently mad dandy, had reappeared several times and it required no great perspicacity to realise that it was Claude’s presence that had drawn him out of his retreat. Of course he had acted circumspectly, delousing the ‘man in the woods’, reappearing in much more attractive guise and deploying all his charm before disappearing again. He had even succeeded in making her smile and she had ceased to consider him with dread. Laura was no longer in any doubt that the hermit had re-entered the world as a result of falling for Claude, an emotional change that had fully revealed to him the cowardice and inanity of his withdrawal from the world. He had already decided to give up his hunting lodge before Claude was admitted to the nursing home. Laura surmised that, having assumed his other identity — of a youngish man of independent means, simple, modest and good-natured — he had set himself up in the village next to the nursing home in order to be able to visit her more easily. But things had not stopped there: a fortnight earlier she had seen him with Anna Petrovna and Cyrille.

‘So now we know who the uncle is,’ Jean said.

He did not want to know any more. They drove back to Gif and the farmhouse, where Jesús was working in his studio. Laura vanished as only she knew how, and the two men remained in the room, which was already growing darker in the fading light. Grey shadows filtered through the trees and spread stealthily, murmuring over the house in the calm of the evening. On a long canvas Jesús was painting flashes of light, a luminous composition of muted gold and silver in the green sunlight of Chevreuse.