Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘It’s a shame you can’t beg in this country any more,’ Jean said.

‘It’s not that you can’t,’ Ernst corrected him. ‘It’s that there’s no need to any more. In Fascist Italy there’s work for everybody. You’ll see the same thing when you come and visit me in Cologne.’

‘Right at this moment, Fascist Italy has not seen fit to serve us lunch and I’m ravenous.’

They bought bread, ham and two apples, which they ate sitting on the edge of the fountain of Neptune in Piazza Navona. Rome was gently dozing. The street vendors, sitting in the shade, daydreamed behind their stalls of watermelons, filled rolls and ice cream. Two girls, so alike that they must be sisters, came and sat on the lip of the fountain, laughing and dangling their dusty feet in the cold water. They were not particularly pretty, and had that yellowish complexion that was common among the city’s workers, but they were happy and when they laughed they showed teeth as fine and healthy as their free, young figures under their loose cotton smocks. The friends gave them their apples, which they accepted straight away and bit into, still laughing. After a superficial exchange, the girls jumped down with a cheerful ‘ Arrivederci ’ that ruled out any idea of following them. In any case Jean was no longer able to walk, for his feet had been burnt by the asphalt of the streets and the pavements’ flagstones. He needed to find a pair of sandals at all costs. When sandals had been bought, the friends counted the money they had left: enough to feed themselves with bread and salami for a week and sleep under the stars.

‘You ought to ask your consulate for help,’ Ernst said. ‘And some papers to get yourself out of Italy.’

At the consulate Jean was only able to speak to a thin-lipped young official who looked him up and down with an expression of profound contempt. How dare he present himself in such a holy place with bare legs and his shirt undone to the waist?

‘Papers? Who says your name is really Jean Arnaud? Do you have any witnesses?’

‘I only have my friend Ernst, a German.’

‘A German! Are you making fun of me?’

‘What can I do then?’

‘I shall write to Paris and ask them to make enquiries at your town hall at …’

‘Grangeville, Seine-Maritime.’

‘As soon as I have an answer, I’ll draw up a provisional paper for you.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘Now you really are joking. A week’s time, at the very least. Allow ten days to avoid disappointment.’

‘In ten days I’ll have died of hunger.’

The young man raised his arms to the heavens. Consulates were not charitable institutions. Jean studied him without rancour, with iron in his soul. His last hope had faded. This testy, disdainful consular official symbolised the first of his encounters with the world of administration. He looked more closely at him: flabby around the neck, a shiny nose on which sat horn-rimmed spectacles, a suit of beige tussore set off by a loud tie, a podgy hand wearing a signet ring with two intertwined initials. The initials restored some of Jean’s composure. He remembered a sarcastic remark of Monsieur de Malemort’s once about a bourgeois who, lacking a coat of arms, had sported similar initials on his signet ring.

‘You heard what I said,’ the young man said. ‘Come back in ten days’ time.’

‘Has no one ever told you that it’s bad taste to wear a signet ring engraved with initials?’ Jean asked, in such a faraway tone of voice that he was surprised himself, as though the remark came from someone else.

‘What? What are you talking about?’

‘You heard very well what I said. Goodbye, Monsieur.’

‘Get out of here, you cheeky wretch!’

‘No one can tell me to get out of a place where I have a perfect right to be.’

‘You don’t have the right to insult me.’

He had stood up, scarlet with fury, strangled by his starched collar. Another mistake, Jean thought, noticing that he was barely more than five foot tall. Behind a desk he could maintain the illusion; upright, he was to be pitied.

‘I ask you kindly to get out!’ he yelled.

A secretary opened the door, alerted by the raised voices.

‘What’s happening, Monsieur?’

‘Nothing. In ten days’ time this man will return to see if we have received an answer about his papers. Now leave me, I need to work.’

The secretary kept the door open for Jean, who walked from the room, smiling at the woman. She looked at him with anxiety. Her hair was grey but fine and soft, and she had gentle eyes.

‘You’ve had your money and your papers stolen, haven’t you?’ she said, in a pretty singsong accent.

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Poor boy! How could someone do that to you? People truly are too bad. In Rome?’

‘No, at Ostia.’

‘It makes me feel ashamed. I’m Italian, married to a Frenchman. Will you let me help you?’

She picked up her bag from the table and took out a fifty-lire note. Tears had welled in her eyes.

‘I can’t say anything, I’m his secretary … but I’d feel I was helping to right a wrong if you would accept. I have a son like you. He travels too, and I would be awfully sad if something like this happened to him …’

‘I’ll send you the money as soon as I get back to France, if you’ll give me your name and address.’

She gave them to him, and he went out into the street to find Ernst, who was waiting with his bicycle.

‘No papers,’ Jean said. ‘Just fifty lire that the secretary lent me because she took pity on me. I was treated like a dog.’

He recounted the consular official’s welcome.

‘You see,’ Ernst said, ‘if something like that happened to me at a German consulate I would immediately denounce the man to the party.’

‘Denounce? No, that’s too disgusting. You don’t do that!’

‘Why not? He’s a saboteur. You would be doing your country and your party a service.’

‘There isn’t one party in France, there are thirty-six … Listen, Ernst, we don’t think the same things, and even so we’re great, and true, friends. Right now I only have one thing I want to do: to get to the border. After that I’ll manage on my own …’

‘Then you need to find a car or a truck to take you to Ventimiglia. Let’s get out of Rome.’

They walked to the edge of the city, and at the Florence road stopped next to a petrol pump. They waited two hours before a truck stopped. The driver poked a superb head, shaved like a Roman gladiator’s, out of the window.

‘Dove vai?’ he asked.

‘Francia.’

‘Anche io. Francese?’

‘Sì, sì, Francese.’

‘Allora, monta!’

Jean only had time to say his goodbyes to Ernst and promise to write to him.

‘I thought of a present for you to remember me by,’ Ernst said. ‘You’ve got nothing left, so take my Italienische Reise . One day perhaps Goethe will be your companion, as he is my father’s. You’re more like my father than you are like me, and Goethe could have been a French writer if he hadn’t chosen, when he was twenty, to write in German.’

‘Thank you, Ernst. I’ll take it, and when I get home I’ll send you a Stendhal.’

‘Goodbye, old Hans.’

‘Goodbye, old Ernst.’

They shook hands vigorously, and Jean climbed up to sit next to the driver, who spoke a little French.

‘Anda de baggages?’

‘No baggage. Everything was stolen.’

‘Porca Madonna! All righta, tomorrow nighta you will be in your country. Ligha me a cigaretta. My name eez Stefano. Yours?’

‘Jean.’

‘Jean, Gino! Bravo. Andiamo.’

Stefano let the clutch in and Jean watched his friend’s sorrowful face. But at seventeen there are no adieus. Life’s road is long, and you believe it will be paved with reunions.