Michel Déon - The Foundling's War

‘I’m expressing myself badly,’ he said. ‘I need to think, that’s all. I have an idea to put to you. I need twenty-four hours to see if it’s workable.’

Julius was not easily deceived. There was too much at stake financially for him to allow Jean any leeway.

‘What is it, this idea?’

‘Give me till tomorrow and I’ll give you not just an idea but a plan.’

‘I can’t run that risk.’

‘In that case I’ll leave you.’

Julius got to his feet, his face relaxed. The justice he had meted out satisfied him entirely. He stifled a surge of pride, came to Jean and put his hand on his shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘So am I. Will you do me a favour?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘If your guests haven’t cleaned out the buffet, I’d like to try your foie gras .’

‘With the greatest of pleasure!’

They returned to the drawing room. Madeleine had been keeping an eye out for them. When she saw Julius smiling and holding Jean’s arm, her anxieties vanished.

‘Jean, I’ve kept you a cold plate and a bottle of champagne.’

‘I’m leaving you in good hands,’ Julius said as he walked away.

Jean tried to see who he was making for, who in this varied and chattering throng, released after the concert like a flock of birds, would detain him at the exit, but Madeleine was urging him towards the buffet, where several guests were still lingering. At a sign from her a butler bent down and extracted from beneath the table a plate attractively heaped with foie gras and cold veal.

‘Madeleine,’ Jean said after his first mouthful, ‘your Julius has just warned me I’m in danger. I need to leave here without being seen. He assured me you’d help.’

She opened her eyes wide in astonishment. Her lover had never involved her in his affairs, and if a word out of place was ever uttered in her presence she pretended not to have heard.

‘What? You want to leave without anyone seeing you?’

‘Exactly.’

Madeleine’s face tensed. She did not understand. Colour flooded her throat. Suddenly she was afraid, a defenceless woman in a world where, until now, her safety had always been guaranteed. Was it about to start all over again, the way it had been before, a life of obscure threats like those that had oppressed her during her hard life as a woman of the street? Moved by her disarray, Jean tried to calm her. ‘It’s nothing, absolutely nothing!’ What good did it do to alarm her, to tell her the truth about the milieu in which she had blossomed so innocently, believing herself, in good faith, saved? The mirror over the buffet reflected a part of the drawing room in which the guests, glass in hand, spoke in small, languid groups, still slightly listless after the concert which, the Germans excepted, had rather bored them. In the centre of the mirror was Julius. He had taken Palfy by the arm and was speaking in his ear. When he looked up and caught sight of Jean and Madeleine together, acute annoyance appeared on his face. His expression hardened. Palfy seemed not to have noticed and had his head half turned, observing another part of the drawing room. Doubtless Julius had told Palfy what was going on. But what could he expect from Palfy? His friend’s present course of action allowed no room for error. He was accumulating a fortune and would not sacrifice his ambitions for anything.

‘What are you looking at?’ Madeleine asked, curious at his sudden silence.

‘Julius, in a mirror.’

She clasped her hands.

‘I daren’t do anything without him,’ she said, sighing.

Her immaculately made-up face betrayed a moment’s weariness. Her easy, sheltered life had relaxed her. The resurgence of problems hollowed her features, emphasising a dark shadow under her eyes.

‘Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I tell myself it’s not real and that if I pinch myself the dream will evaporate,’ she added.

With a gesture she took in her thirty or so guests, who in truth cared little for their hostess and spoke a language that was still largely foreign to her, though she tried valiantly to understand them. Yet she clung to them, for they symbolised her social rise. The dry pop of a champagne cork, eased out by the butler’s fingers, attracted attention. Two couples rushed to the buffet, jostling Madeleine, as indifferent to the mistress of the house as if she had been the lavatory attendant.

‘Nelly didn’t come,’ Madeleine said awkwardly.

Generously he lied.

‘She’s working tonight.’

‘Well, of course, that’s more important than anything … What’s she performing?’

‘Musset.’

Madeleine was not very sure whether Musset was a play or an author. She made a note to ask Blanche next day and assumed a knowing and admiring expression.

‘Are you and she still getting on?’

‘Yes, very well.’

He pictured Nelly in a restaurant on Rue de Beaujolais, for that was where she was, opposite Jérôme Callot who had managed to get away to see her for an evening. It was good that she had found an opportunity to be alone with her ham of a co-star and to see him in real life, away from the theatre, in his tight-fitting suburban clothes. She needed to be disappointed. She would be. Afterwards everything would be better.

‘I invited her,’ Madeleine went on. ‘Despite Blanche. Blanche thinks I mix anybody and everybody. It’s true that Nelly’s not always easy. She says quite impossible things. People get very annoyed. A month ago she took out General Köschel’s monocle and pretended to try it out, you know …’

‘In front or behind?’ Jean asked mechanically.

‘In front. She claimed her “brown eye” was short-sighted.’

Jean laughed. General Köschel was considered an utter fool, and an unpleasant fool to boot. Nelly’s aim was good. Nothing scared her.

‘It’s like Marceline,’ Madeleine added, enjoying a chance to confide. ‘I like her. She always amuses people, and Julius and Rudolf both say they never get bored when she’s here. For me it’s different: I don’t laugh at the strange things she says. I’d still be saying those things myself if I hadn’t been lucky enough to meet Julius. The truth is, I know all that too well … Oh, I don’t mean I worked like that … far from it … Anyway, you know all that … you! It’s impossible to imagine her as anything other than a madam. It’s written all over her red face. But she’s good-hearted and innocent, so innocent she’s like putty in Constantin’s hands.’

Julius released Palfy, who was left alone in the middle of the drawing room. He turned round, caught sight of Jean and Madeleine, and winked at Jean. Polo came up to him, frowning.

‘That Polo person is vile,’ Jean said.

‘Yes, that’s what I think, and I don’t know why.’

‘He’d sell his mother.’

‘Julius says he’s very intelligent.’

‘Success can turn the lowest of the low into a superior being.’

‘Do you think so?’

Jean sensed that these people intimidated Madeleine and that she would have given anything to send her guests away and stay on her own with Julius that evening, by their radio, listening to music. Julius genuinely loved music. As a young man he had played the organ. What had life made of this enthusiastic player of Bach? A conqueror, a businessman, and the beloved lover of a woman who had led the hard life of the street. Madeleine made Jean’s heart ache when he glimpsed her fear that she was not what Julius dreamt of. She had by no means forgotten the past and quaked at the thought of her salvation being taken away from her. It was a terror and it paralysed her. Her second destiny was imperfect, for it was always overshadowed by her first. She could not get used to it. Yet no one had had the nerve to remind her of it. Besides, who, apart from Jean and Palfy, knew? No one here, not this evening.