Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘Who is she?’

‘The former sub-mistress of Two Two Four.’

‘I don’t know what a sub-mistress is, and I don’t know Two Two Four.’

‘My dear innocent friend, a sub-mistress is the supervisor of a brothel, and Two Two Four is at 224 Rue Déroulède, the smartest whorehouse in Paris. Has she come to retire here, or to open a country annexe? It would be interesting to know. Meanwhile, we ought to find your parents. Who can put us on the right track?’

‘Monsieur the abbé Le Couec.’

‘A shame I chucked my cassock away.’

‘Don’t be an idiot. The abbé is the best man in the world.’

Monsieur the abbé, seated on a kitchen chair with his cassock hitched up to his knees, was soaking his feet in a bowl of cold water in which a fistful of rock salt was dissolving, after a hard day: mass at six o’clock, mass for the repose of the soul of Mathieu Follain at eight o’clock, baptism of Célestin Servant at ten o’clock, marriage of Clémentine Gentil to Juste Boillé at midday, a wedding feast that had finished at four o’clock, just in time for him to give extreme unction to Joseph Saindou. The wedding feast had been the most exhausting: seven courses, and so large a number of trous normands 12 that the groom had staggered out supported by two of the ushers and Clémentine, a girl who was usually rather reserved, had undone her bodice and let a white breast slip out, goose-pimpled like the skin of a plucked chicken. Monsieur Le Couec was musing about all these people who had been born, got married and died in a single day. He had accompanied them through their lives and to the brink of death, been present at their celebrations and their sorrows, known the fragments of secrets that they gave him during confession, and yet he knew nothing at all of whether they were happy or not. They did not listen to him very much, less and less in fact, and for several years he had been asking himself whether the religion of which he was a minister did not represent a formality for these people, in which God or the sufferings of Christ appeared to them as no more than magic potions. They remained loyal to it in order to guarantee themselves a little good fortune, out of superstition. Had he been right to follow his nature, to be familiar, bon vivant, understanding, sometimes even complicit? His attitude meant that people treated him as an equal, as a good fellow they respected, but knew that a full glass of calvados could make him all-forgiving. Where had they vanished to, those priestly wraths he had been armed with as he emerged from the seminary? Even from the pulpit he thundered no longer, stripped of the illusion that his sermons held the attention of his faithful. And so? He had only ever had a very relative propensity for asceticism, but in his idealistic moments he liked to imagine that his parish’s destiny would have been quite different if he had shown the sublime, intransigent faith of Saint John Vianney — the curé of Ars — if his flock had believed that he was fighting every day against a devil trying desperately to overturn his potato soup or set his cassock on fire. It was true that the war had weighed heavily on him. You couldn’t explain away that gigantic spectacle of filth, heroism and idiocy, and keep your faith intact. Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney had very prudently deserted before becoming a priest. The wise thing would have been to follow his example in 1914 …

The abbé was at this point in his sour reflections when Jean knocked and walked straight in, having glimpsed through the window Monsieur Le Couec with his feet in a bowl.

‘My little Jean! The prodigal son returns! And I know two others, apart from me, who will be happy to see you. Come and let me kiss you.’

Jean kissed the abbé and introduced Palfy.

‘This generous friend drove me here. We’ve just been to La Sauveté. The door was slammed in my face. Where are Papa and Maman?’

The priest’s face darkened.

‘Your mother isn’t well, my boy. The sale, her eviction — I mean what I say, eviction — have deeply affected her. She’s in hospital at Dieppe, where they’re trying to coax her and treat her and bring her back to us. In a month she’ll be bursting with health again, I’m sure. As for your father, he’s living at Monsieur Cliquet’s while he waits for Madame du Courseau to find him a position. He’s bitter, I can tell you. To work all your life and find yourself on the street from one day to the next, without work, without a roof over your head and only the maximum invalid’s pension to live on, it makes you think … Anyway, everything will work out now that you’re here. And you, Monsieur, who are you?’

‘A good-for-nothing, Father.’

Monsieur Le Couec looked disconcerted, more by the tone of the answer than by the evident accuracy of Palfy’s self-judgment. Palfy smiled humbly and looked around him. In a glance he had gauged both the priest’s state of penury and his character.

‘There are no good-for-nothings,’ said the abbé. ‘First of all, you have brought my dear Jean back. Then again, you also exist and one day you will understand why.’

‘I very much hope so. In the meantime there is no proof so far, and I sometimes get tired of waiting for it.’

‘That is because it will take a form you don’t yet know, that you cannot even envisage in the state in which you find yourself. In your place I should be very optimistic, even reassured.’

Jean was astonished to see the priest’s words make an impression on Palfy. He would have thought his friend completely invulnerable to such reflections, much too ironical or cynical to listen to them without mockery. The priest dried his feet with an old towel and eased his socks and heavy boots back on.

‘Let’s go and see your father,’ he said to Jean. ‘He’ll be having his supper with Uncle Cliquet.’

‘What about Maman?’

‘Visiting hours at the hospital are between midday and two o’clock. You can go tomorrow. If you would like me to, I’ll telephone from the grocer’s to ask them to let her know that you’re back. Oh dear Jean, it is a great joy to have you back among us.’

*

We shall not describe in detail the reunions with Albert and Jeanne. Jean was shocked at how much they had aged in two months. He saw instantly that Jeanne remained shattered by events. She rambled sometimes, then realised what she was doing and sank into exhaustion. Albert was as proud as ever, but Jean guessed his distress. He talked about ‘the release of death’ before hostilities broke out again, which in his view was not far off. Monsieur Cliquet was still assuring him that what with the railways nationalised and the strikes and the sabotage, mobilisation was impossible. The government knew it and was playing for time. Captain Duclou was more optimistic: the French navy was ready as it had not been since the days of Louis XVI, its destroyer escorts and fast escorts would eliminate the German submarines within days, while British cruisers ensured the freedom of the seas. We are not going to rehearse in these pages the interminable conversations that took place after supper that evening in Monsieur Cliquet’s modest kitchen. They would testify too well to the blindness of an era. Let us instead return to Jean and Palfy, who spent the night at the rectory. Jean would have liked his friend to stay on for a few days, but Palfy was loath to stay still. He explained very clearly why.

‘You know, dear boy, being on the move is my only security. I have to stay mobile, especially when I sign bad cheques. It’s not hard to understand. A crossed cheque paid in the same day is cashed the following day in the worst case, within two or three days in the best. Without putting my liberty at risk, I can stay in one place for twenty-four hours, forty-eight maximum, three days if I happen to sign a cheque on Friday afternoon. Thanks to the weekend, it will only be paid in on the Monday. That way, at the end of the week I get a well-earned rest before resuming my getaway.’