Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

Yes, Marie-Dévote was married. I have not had time to say so until now, or perhaps it was so obvious I did not take the trouble to make it clear. In any case, no marriage was more natural than hers, for she had been sleeping with Théo since she was fifteen and he was handsome and lazy, which makes it much easier to keep a man at home, have him all to yourself, not share him with his work, and keep him fresh for bed at night. There is an interesting philosophy at work here, which I have no leisure to develop because time presses, but which deserves some reflection by the reader. It will have its defenders and its critics. Some will judge it impracticable, others will point out that it can only thrive in sunny places, where a man can live on very little: an olive, a chunk of bread, figs off the tree, and bunches of grapes hanging from the arbour. The admirable thing is that this philosophy was an instinctive reflex for the happy young couple, who did not go round in circles analysing the situation. They simply lived the way their feelings took them, and, young but already wise, congratulated themselves on such a perfect success.

Théo helped by possessing great understanding. He had no better friend than Antoine, and on the days Antoine was there he went fishing at dawn and returned, noisily, in the small hours. The little hotel adjoining the beach café, and a fine new boat that was soon to be equipped with an outboard motor, justified this sacrifice. And when their benefactor had gone Marie-Dévote came back to him more tender than ever, and as though her appetite had merely been whetted.

*

Théo appeared first at the sound of the Bugatti’s engine revving for the last time before Antoine switched off. Antoine pulled off his helmet and goggles. The sight of his face reddened by the air, with a white line across his forehead and pale circles around his eyes, made Théo buckle with laughter.

‘Saints! You should see your face, old friend. You look like a watermelon. Come on, get out if you can. If not I’ll fetch the corkscrew.’

Antoine, ordinarily rather thin-skinned, put up with Théo’s jokes. He felt he owed it to the man whose wife he was sleeping with so openly. At least that was how he saw it, although from his point of view Théo was convinced that it was he, the husband, who was cuckolding the lover. As a result they were both full of sympathy for one another, and incapable of hurting each other.

Marie-Dévote was on the beach, at the water’s edge, her skirt hitched up to her thighs, showing off her beautiful long brown legs as she washed the catch she had just gutted.

‘Really, Antoine, it looks like you smelt there was going to be bouillabaisse today.’

‘My sense of smell is acute.’

He kissed her on both cheeks. She smelt of fish, and as he closed his eyes for an instant she changed in his imagination into a sea creature, a siren come to warm herself in the sun. He would happily have laid her down on the beach and wriggled beneath her skirt there and then, but Théo was standing a few steps away, his hands on his hips and his brown face lit by a wide smile.

‘I’m hungry!’ Antoine said to conceal his agitation.

And he was hungry for Marie-Dévote. She was one of those women that one wants to bite and eat, whose skin tastes of herbs and conjures up the pleasures of food as much as those between the sheets. He kissed her again on the neck and she squealed, ‘Hey! I’m not a radish, just because I’ve got a sprinkling of salt on me. Leave a bit of me for Théo. He needs feeding too.’

*

Unluckily, the sea’s blue suddenly darkened, violent gusts whipped across its surface, and a warm drizzle stained the sand. Eating under the arbour was out of the question. Marie-Dévote laid the tables in the dining room, one for Antoine, Théo and herself, another for the two painters living on the first floor, who came down soon afterwards.

Antoine regarded them with suspicion. He distrusted artists, though he had never seen any at close quarters and all his knowledge of them was from books. These two looked reasonable, however. Properly dressed in corduroy and suntanned, they conversed normally without raising their voices, ate with knives and forks, and drank in moderation. One was well-built and had a thick neck, the other was slim and distinguished-looking. Marie-Dévote served them but so gracefully, unobtrusively and rapidly that she never seemed to leave her place at the table between her two men, both in a cheerful mood after drinking several glasses of pastis. Antoine watched her from the corner of his eye as she crossed the room, flitting from one table to the other. Then he saw one of the painters studying her, and his heart sank.

‘Come on, Papa, don’t be jealous!’ Théo, leaning over, muttered to him. ‘They’re not going to steal her from under your nose.’

Of all Théo’s jokes ‘Papa’ was the only one that irritated Antoine, especially in front of Marie-Dévote.

‘If you call me “Papa” again, I’ll break a bottle over your head.’

‘Keep calm, Antoine, I didn’t mean to upset you. You’re “Papa” because I think of you as part of the family.’

Turning to the two painters, who had stopped talking at the commotion, he added, ‘Antoine is a friend. Our great, great friend. He’s not from round here. He comes from the north where it’s cold and it rains a lot.’

‘I should like to point out,’ Antoine said, ‘that it is likewise raining here.’

The deluge was streaming noisily down the windows and obscuring the view of the beach. The sea was only thirty metres away, but it was impossible even to make it out.

‘We need the weather,’ Théo said. ‘Without it the plants, they all die, and it’s a desert. Even the cold. It kills the germs, otherwise you walk round knee-deep in them and pretty soon you die.’

His self-assurance had grown since his marriage, and Antoine suspected that he might even be reading the odd newspaper and picking up some basic facts there that he then passed off as his own knowledge. But Antoine’s problem was rather more pressing than the irritation he felt towards Théo. Inactive since his accident on the Tôtes road, reduced to the furtive kindnesses requested and received from Adèle Louverture in his room, where there was always the danger of being disturbed, and with his blood now warmed by pastis, rosé wine and Bénédictine, Antoine battled against the arousing effect of Marie-Dévote’s skipping around the room. From the corner of his eye he followed her bottom and legs as she moved rapidly between the kitchen and tables; he miserably failed to resist the temptation offered by the neckline of her blouse, and would have given anything to be the little gold crucifix that swung between her breasts on a black velvet ribbon and caressed each of them with every movement. Théo was not so accommodating as all that, and would certainly not have given up his siesta with his wife without a number of expansionary projects that had been evolving over recent months, all of them requiring Antoine’s patronage. Having left his friend in lengthy nail-biting anticipation, Théo suddenly announced that he was summoned to Saint-Raphaël and stepped outside to catch the bus that stopped in front of the hotel. The two painters, giving up hope of a break in the clouds, started a game of jacquet , and Antoine, successfully trapping Marie-Dévote in the hallway behind the door, at last placed her hand where she could measure the length of his admiration.

‘And who’ll do the dishes?’ she asked, in entirely token resistance.

‘Bugger the dishes.’

It is true that there are moments when the dishes are no longer of the slightest importance. Marie-Dévote did not need a great deal of persuading. And so they spent the afternoon together in bed, and I shall stop there, because this story already has many longueurs, and note merely that it was highly successful.