Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

The patronne is a very strange woman. A real volcano. Not my type at all. I like them slender and distinguished for affairs of the heart, or nice and plump for a fling.

I read in L’Auto that our eight got thrashed at Mâcon: fourth out of five. What ignominy! As soon as I go away it’s a catastrophe. Wait for me to get back, if you want to avoid making yourselves a laughing stock. Every morning when I wake up I treat myself to 200 press-ups. What could be better?

Your friend,

Jean

The second letter to Joseph Outen, ten days later, shows the subsequent course of events.

Dear Joseph, thank you for the books. Such a sarcastic parcel is just what I’d expect from you. The Physiology of Taste and the recipes of Alexandre Dumas! But I’ve had it up to here with kitchens and their smells. My hair and skin are slowly becoming impregnated with garlic and tomatoes. When I get out of here I’m going to need a lavender bath to get rid of them. The worst of it is that I haven’t even been allowed to pick up a spoon and stir a sauce. I scour pans, and that’s it. About that I know a lot. In any container used for braising, for example, you end up with a crust that’s unbelievably hard to get off. Wire-wool pads won’t touch it. You have to use your nails. When mine are worn out, they’ll just get rid of me. Unless … too bad, you’ll have to hear everything: the patronne sees me. Until now I was only ever on the sharp end of remarks about my work. Yesterday our eyes met. She looked away. But then Stefano came for two days, and she disappeared with him. The bedroom where they frolic is underneath the pantry. At night I don’t miss a moment of what goes on there. It makes me a bit melancholy. I dream about someone else. Look, it’s fairly excusable, I’m only seventeen, after all. Anyway, to summarise in a word: yes, the patronne sees me. It’s making me shiver already …

Jeanne did not answer her son’s letter. As she said, ‘I’m not very good at writing.’ Albert only wrote to newspapers to insult their leader writers. The abbé Le Couec answered for them. He envied Jean his papal blessing and was not at all surprised to hear his bicycle had been stolen. Hadn’t something very similar happened to him with the theft of two pairs of underpants and a missal? Jean’s parents were well, but they were preparing to leave La Sauveté. The Longuets had entrusted the park to another gardener, a supercilious Parisian who was living with them and waiting for the Arnauds to leave so that he could move into the lodge with his wife, a lady of severe aspect who dressed in black and wore costume ruby earrings. There was no call for Jean to hurry back. His parents expected to find shelter temporarily at Madame du Courseau’s. Jean should work and amass the money for his return journey. Then, at the beginning of November, he could enrol at the law faculty in Rouen or at a technical school. They would discuss it. The abbé Le Couec sent Jean his warmest wishes and advised him not to drink, a vice that could be picked up very easily in a kitchen, where you were always hot.

A week later, Jean wrote to Joseph again.

Dear old thing, I’m afraid from now on you’re going to have to speak to me like royalty, in the third person. I am sleeping with the patronne. To tell you the truth, it’s more the other way around. She is sleeping with me. And to be even more precise, she ravished me. I didn’t fancy her at all in the beginning … No, it’s too bad, you’ll have to hear the whole story. A couple of days ago, having scrubbed my last pan of the evening and steered the chef to his bedroom where, as usual, he flopped onto his bed without getting undressed (or even taking off his toque), I went out to the terrace to get some fresh air. The view was magnificent: the lights of Menton and Monaco, the dark mass of Cap Martin. Moonlight to boot. Leaning on the balustrade, I was musing on the idea of one day bringing here someone I like very much, a creature so perfect I just want to go on keeping the secret I’ve been keeping for the last seventeen years. Anyhow, there I am dreaming, when suddenly the patronne comes up. I thought she was going to tick me off for some pan or the state of the sink, but it was nothing like that! Wrapped in a black wool shawl, she leant her elbows on the rail next to me and said in a voice that I didn’t recognise at all:

‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’

What would you have said if you’d been me? ‘Yes, Madame.’ Obviously. Well, it didn’t put her off a bit. She heaved a sigh that didn’t exactly pierce my soul, but it did put me on my guard. She was wearing perfume and didn’t smell too badly of garlic. Anyhow, I mean: she didn’t even smell of garlic at all, although there must have been a strong whiff of it coming off me.

‘You’re not feeling too lonely?’ she added.

‘Lonely? Oh no. I’m thinking about other things besides work. I’m dreaming.’

She must have seen in me some sort of high-flown creature, a poet lost among the pans, one of those social injustices the Front Populaire has forgotten to put right. She ruffled my hair with her hand and she said, as enthusiastically as if she’d stroked my flies: ‘There’s a lot going on in there!’

Enough! I’ll keep it brief. She talked about herself: her hard life, her depressed father, horribly disfigured by his injuries, the restaurant going downhill, her useless mother, how she’d brought it back from the brink by sheer hard work, alone, admirable, one of those orphans you see crowned with a garland of roses for her virtue. Stefano? A friend. Just a friend. He looks after her, her, the weak woman. Nothing like what mean and vulgar gossips might make it out to be (or hear from the bedroom above). Was I likely to be able to do better? I asked myself that question.

‘How hot it is!’ she said.

And she opened her black shawl a little to fan herself. She was naked underneath. Dear old thing, there’s no scene of that sort in Stendhal, nothing in Byron, nothing in Maeterlinck. Where is its equivalent in literature? To cut a long story short … We go to her bedroom. The bed was ready. She makes me have a shower. Did I shine afterwards? She’ll tell you better than I can if you happen to be passing this way. In a word: I didn’t close my eyes all night. At eight in the morning she sent me to the kitchen. All day she cold-shouldered me, ignoring me. In the evening it starts all over again. Fitness comes with training. Sadly, with one dreadful consequence: when I woke up, I couldn’t manage more than 150 press-ups. Yet I can swear to our dear coach, hand on heart: there’s no emotion lurking down there …

That’s about where I am. Your absence weighs on me. I’m badly in need of help. In a fortnight I’ll have earned the money I need to go home. But will I go home?

The same evening Stefano’s truck stopped outside the restaurant door. The Italian jumped down, grinning, unshaven, exhausted. He had come from Venice non-stop with a load for Marseille. He swept his Mireille off her feet; she must have weighed as much as a wisp of straw in his arms. He asked for news of Jean and came to find him in the kitchen.

‘Hey, my frienda, you are still scrubbin’ de pans. Leave it! Eeza time to enjoy ou’selves!’

Mireille frowned.

‘There’s work to do!’ she said.

‘No’ for friends! Andiamo, Gino!’

Jean sat at their table, on Mireille’s left. They had dinner in the main restaurant, which was already full. Jean admired Stefano’s poise, so superior to his own, an adult and an Italian poise that did not feel out of place anywhere. This warm, powerful man longed to share his happiness. He drove like a bull for whole days and nights to be able to allow himself his stops at Roquebrune, where he opened his arms and his heart to friendship, to love. What beast would he have been transformed into if anyone had revealed to him that Jean and Mireille … But graces of state exist, if not states of grace. What was so obvious to the eyes of everyone, what made the waitresses almost unable to conceal their giggles, passed him by. He ate, drank and slid his hand under the tablecloth to stroke Mireille’s skinny thigh; she shivered as nervously as if he had crept much higher. Jean was astonished to find that he was not jealous and could quite calmly face the noisy night in his narrow bed in the pantry while Mireille and Stefano made love on the floor below. It even occurred to him, not without pleasure, that he would get a night of rest and the opportunity to resume the rhythm of his 200 press-ups, without which he could not hope to be worthy of taking up his old place at Dieppe Rowing Club. Stefano was picking his teeth with wholly Italian assiduity, leaning back in his chair and flexing his powerful wrestler’s torso. At this time of night he was friends with all the world. Mireille was still trembling. Something awaited her that she had sampled before with savage joy, but which had changed its taste over time and with Jean’s appearance. She enjoyed fresh meat, and at the same time felt panic-stricken at abandoning Jean for more violent pleasures. She laughed, embarrassed, stood up to give instructions, telephoned to make sure that the prefect would not be passing this evening, ticked off a waitress and went down to her bedroom where, tearing off her dress, she threw herself naked onto the bed to wait for her man.