Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

It was not the dawn that woke him, but the sound of a pair of shutters opening on the balcony above his head. Geneviève appeared in a white nightdress with a ribbon in her hair. She seemed terribly thin to him, and pale, but more beautiful than before, a creature so fragile that the morning breeze or a shaft of sunlight might kill her.

‘It’s you, Papa!’ she said. ‘I thought it was. I was sure I heard the sound of a Bugatti last night. Is it the new one?’

‘Well, it’s the new one for now, the Type 22, four cylinders. Bugatti’s planning to replace it soon with the 28, which is apparently a marvel.’

‘I already like that one!’

Antoine puffed himself up. ‘Do you want to go for a spin?’

‘It’s difficult so early. The door’s still locked. A bit later, if you like.’

‘I’ll go and have a coffee. Look, I’ve brought you some nougat.’

He tossed two boxes up to the balcony, and Geneviève retrieved them.

‘Thank you! It’s so sweet of you to think of spoiling me. I adore nougat. When you come back, could you be really kind and bring me cigarettes and matches?’

‘You smoke? That’s not good.’

‘Nothing is good from where I’m standing.’

‘Really? I thought you felt better. You’re worrying me.’

From her pout he recognised his daughter from several years before, his little girl whom he had kissed on the doorstep of La Sauveté on the morning in August 1914 when he had left to join his unit. She had changed quite suddenly: now she was this frail young woman with an oval face and loose blond hair, who made him feel shy and intimidated.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said.

‘But you won’t get better!’

‘Do we get better?’

He realised that he wasn’t sure enough of the answer to be able to convince her. He could only think of distractions.

‘Do you need perfume?’

‘Well, if you can find something fairly modern …’

‘I’ll try.’

A figure in pyjamas appeared on the next balcony, a dishevelled man who began to gesticulate, showering them with insults.

‘What the hell is going on? Are you mad? There are people asleep here, sick people, and you don’t give a damn!’

‘Calm down, Piquemal,’ Geneviève said in a gentle voice. ‘It’s my father. We haven’t seen each other for five years. Anyway, he’s going. He’ll come back later.’

‘Your father, your father!’ Piquemal shouted, but said no more as he was choked by a fit of coughing.

‘You know you mustn’t get angry. It’s very bad for you.’

Piquemal, doubled up with coughing, retreated into his room.

Geneviève leant down to her father.

‘Don’t be offended. He’s half mad. In any case he hasn’t got much longer.’

‘I’ll be back soon,’ Antoine said.

‘See you very soon, Papa.’

The sloping drive allowed him to roll the Bugatti back to the gate, where he dropped the clutch and had the satisfaction of hearing the engine fire immediately. Menton was waking up in a golden dawn, an oblique light that slid across the oily sea and stroked the trees in the gardens. On the quay fishermen in straw hats were untangling their nets. He eventually found a barber, who shaved him and let him wash. He bought a new shirt and discarded the one he was wearing. Throughout his journey he had not burdened himself with anything: shirts, socks, undershorts, toothbrushes marked his route, tossed in ditches or available rubbish bins. It was harder to find somewhere to buy perfume at this early hour, but he came across a shop that advertised ‘goods from Paris’. Lacking in expertise, he relied on the saleswoman’s advice, then looked for a florist’s and ordered an enormous bouquet of white roses. The thought of burdening his Bugatti with roses threw him for a moment.

‘Would you like me to have them delivered?’ asked the florist, a small brown-haired woman with a downy upper lip.

‘That’s not a bad idea. With this package, if you don’t mind. Be careful, it’s perfume.’

‘Do you have a card?’

He found one in his wallet and wrote carefully and legibly,

My little Geneviève, these flowers will express all my affection much better than I could do it myself. Here also is the perfume you asked for. If you don’t care for it you can exchange it; I’ve left the name of the shop on the packet. Your papa, who kisses you.

Feeling much calmer, he headed west once more and drove as far as the outskirts of Roquebrune, to the restaurant where he had stopped the previous evening. On a chair outside, still dressed in his grubby singlet, the patron was plucking a chicken.

‘Hello!’ Antoine said, without getting out of the car.

‘All right? So, your daughter is well?’

‘Much better, thanks.’

‘Are you eating with us?’

‘It’s a bit early and I’ve a long way to go. Another time. I’ll be back.’

‘Always in a hurry. Like a fart in a fan factory, you are.’

‘That’s life!’ said Antoine, who would never have thought he could slip so easily into this sort of badinage.

‘With a puss like mine, I don’t know that there’s any more life to be had. But you’re right to make the most of it. On your way … see you again, and try not to have to scrape yourself off the road in that thing!’

‘Don’t worry, I’m a careful driver.’

He let in the clutch and the Bugatti leapt westwards down the coast, only stopping when it reached the outskirts of Saint-Tropez and the open-air café. Lounging in a wicker armchair, Marie-Dévote was reading a magazine with a cat on her lap. She turned her head and smiled.

‘Back already? Did you get bored?’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘It’s not really lunchtime yet. Will you be happy with a bowl of bouillabaisse?’

‘I’m sure I will.’

He sat down under the arbour, facing the beach, while she disappeared into the kitchen. A light breeze was blowing, raising ripples that expired on the white sand. He would happily have gone for a swim but the memory of his white, unappealing body disgusted him. Marie-Dévote put a steaming bowl and a carafe of Var wine in front of him.

‘It’s quiet here,’ he said.

‘On Sundays it gets busy.’

‘What day is it today?’

‘Friday. What are you doing that’s so interesting you can’t remember what day it is?’

‘Nothing,’ Antoine admitted.

‘Doesn’t your wife say anything?’

‘No.’

He wanted to ask her to sit on the corner of the table the way she had the day before, and swing her leg and show him her knee, but standing in front of him, hands on hips and feet apart, she seemed much stronger and more solid than he remembered her. Good health, sunshine, the men she had to serve and whose jokes she tolerated, had made her grown-up at twenty. But it was more than that: she had ripened, she was ripe like a luscious Provençal fruit, with that directness of expression and rough candour that women from the Midi have. When she laughed she revealed strong teeth solidly planted in a hungry mouth. Marie-Dévote was as far away as it was possible to be from those girls of good Norman families to whom he had been introduced and from whom, out of boredom and lack of critical sense, he had chosen Marie-Thérèse Mangepain.

‘Are you always on your own here?’ he asked.

‘Cheeky! I can’t half see you coming! No, I’m not on my own. Maman’s here. She never leaves the kitchen.’

‘And your father?’

‘My father’s dead. In the war. Like everybody.’

‘Not me.’

‘I saw you on the beach yesterday. Your shoulder’s all kersnaffled.’

Antoine didn’t know the expression, but there was no need. Marie-Dévote’s speech communicated above all by its musicality, her sentences that began sharply and finished smoothly, with an internal sensuous and lush music that he could have listened to for hours without trying to untangle its sense. But her attention had shifted from Antoine. A fishing boat was being rowed onto the sand. A tall tanned boy leapt out of it, his trousers rolled up to his knees, a bucket in his hand.