Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

Ernst appeared sincerely devastated, and Jean regretted having gone as far as he had. He consoled his companion.

‘I should never have read you those pages. They’re a bit too French.’

‘Why not? It’s not me you disappoint, it’s my father. He swears by Goethe, and I can promise you he means it. He would have done better to leave my Mein Kampf in my satchel. I’m going to burn Goethe. Stendhal’s right.’

They rode through Civitavecchia, which seemed to them to correspond entirely to the boredom Stendhal had felt there when he served as consul. Joseph Outen received another postcard. ‘This city can only have known one moment of glory in its long history, when our dear friend livened up a bourgeois society that was dying of depression. Tomorrow, I enter Rome. Greetings and brotherhood!’

As they arrived, Rome appeared so majestic to them that they both instantly dug into their luggage to find a clean shirt and long trousers. Since they had met on the road to Parma, they had been riding in shorts, shirtless. Ernst, having narrowly avoided turning the colour of a lobster, had developed a warm tan colour that ennobled his handsome blond barbarian’s head. Jean had turned a bolder brown. Neither of them passed unnoticed, but their youth preserved them from self-consciousness and vanity. Their eyes were so wide open, all they could see were the ruins of the Forum and the Colosseum. Nothing distracted them from their rigorous sightseeing. Ernst was better informed than his companion. Since childhood he had heard talk of Rome from his father, a gentle man who had brought him up to respect Roman virtues and intellectual recreation. Ernst could, without fuss, quote Seneca, Livy and Tacitus. At home they had practically spoken only of them, at mealtimes or when they were out walking. Jean realised the full extent of his ignorance. At La Sauveté such names were unknown. He knew them only through extracts set at school, and the stale tedium that hung over his Latin compositions, but Ernst treated these authors as living writers who had vanished too soon, young men full of ardour, burning for pleasure like Virgil, or adults whose stern maturity was masked by irony, like Seneca. Ernst no longer opened his Goethe. Jean read, in secret, a few lines of Stendhal on the character of the Romans. He would have liked to meet them, but the girls he encountered were reticent and well-behaved, and at the youth hostel where they slept the old woman who polished the stair-rail said nothing when he spoke to her. Other young men of their age, from Finland, England and America, stayed the night and moved on, more intoxicated by the sun and beaches than ruins. On Sunday Jean went alone to Saint Peter’s Square to receive the blessing of Pope Pius XI. All he could make out was a little man in a white skullcap, whose arm rose to make the sign of the cross over a crowd of inquisitive and not very contemplative faithful. But Jean would be able to tell Jeanne that he had attended, and Monsieur Le Couec would draw a deep satisfaction from his pilgrimage. Ernst had refused to accompany him.

‘To mingle with the congregation? No thanks. I don’t care for that sort of crowd. Masses fed on homilies aren’t going anywhere. I’ll invite you to Nuremberg for next year’s First of May. You’ll see the difference.’

When they were not visiting museums, churches and palaces they would stop at a Roman piazza, and for the price of a drink on a café terrace observe for hours on end the procession of tourists photographing fountains and girls in pairs talking with a delightful vivacity and hand gestures that seemed to harmonise with their musical accent, that Roman sound that was so lovely, serious and light at the same time. Despite their best efforts, the two friends had not managed to meet a single one. As soon as they ventured a word, the girls turned away, giggling, and quickened their step. The only women who would have listened to them were the tarts they saw in their greatest numbers one evening when they deserted their favourite haunts — Piazza Navona and around the Pantheon — for Via Veneto. Dazzled for a moment, Jean and Ernst were rapidly disgusted. This was not their Rome, among these tourists, among the pretentious spoilt youth and girls with aggressive smiles, whose breasts made their satin blouses gape. They felt themselves more strangers there than in the city’s poorer districts, where a constant flow of shabby Romans tried to sell them all sorts of things, unable to distinguish them from the thousands of other visiting punters. Their lean look of nondescript youngsters gorged on sunshine but ill-nourished held no interest for the society of the Via Veneto. Both were so disappointed by this aspect of Rome that they fled to the Trinità dei Monti. From there and the Pincio, at least, the city welcomed everyone who came: red and ochre at sunset and dawn, veiled in bluish smoke that wafted between domes and steeples, enlivened by a continual murmur, as though a single confused being, the people of the streets, adjusted its quarrels and shouts to the time of day.

As they walked past the Adler Hotel, Jean suddenly caught sight of a Hispano-Suiza whose yellow coachwork and chrome gleamed mockingly at them in the light from the streetlamps. A black chauffeur in a white uniform was reading a book balanced on his steering wheel.

‘I can’t believe it! It’s Salah!’ Jean said.

‘Who?’

‘A friend.’

‘Do you mean to say that that Negro is your friend?’

‘He is a great person. He knows everything and understands everything.’

Ernst gaped. He looked from Jean to the chauffeur, absorbed in his reading, and back again, and failed to discern why there should be a friendship between the two.

‘Listen, dear Hans,’ he said, ‘that man is a Negro, a servant. I’d also like to point out that, according to the car’s Arabic registration plates, he is an Arab’s chauffeur, that is to say a Semite. You must explain to me how you could make such a mistake about this individual. Up till now I liked you. Of course you’ve mocked Goethe, but it was because of your Stendhal: it’s a French quirk, as my father says. I forgive you much because I myself don’t terribly like Goethe and because you’ve opened my eyes, in a sense. However, I must warn you that if you come over all chummy with that Negro, you will no longer be my friend.’

‘Ernst, you’re a perfect fool! That man is as good as we are, a hundred times over. In London he was my mentor.’

‘Ach, obviously in London … London is a very special sort of decadent place, a cesspit that Europe sensibly wants nothing to do with. The white race has given everything to the world. The world owes it everything. But it can only take on that mission if it defends itself against racial pollution. I am warning you: I’ll agree to laugh with you at my enthusiasms, but I refuse to go along with your weaknesses.’

Jean was not listening. With Salah’s presence on the other side of the road, memories he had nursed fondly since his last journey came crowding back: the London light, the mystery of Soho, Hampton Court and the revelation of the glories of rowing, his beautiful bike sacrificed on the altar of modern art by an unknown sculptor.

‘Wait here for me!’ he said.

‘No. If you speak to that Negro I shall leave.’

Jean crossed the road and approached the chauffeur.

‘Salah!’

Salah did not recognise him immediately.

‘You don’t remember me? In London, my red bicycle, Madame Germaine, the Maries of Chelsea?’

‘Jean Arnaud! A man now. You’ve grown into a fine, healthy-looking lad. Well, well … I was not expecting to see you here.’

He put down his book and got out of the car to take Jean by the arm.

‘It was written … we were meant to see each other again. But why in Rome? Only God knows the answer. Ah, my dear Jean, I didn’t forget you. At least you won’t find any lecherous vicars here. But I know two people who will be happy to see you …’