Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘It’s a secret,’ she said. ‘I understand. One you don’t even want to tell me, who will not give it away. But I demand that you promise—’

‘You don’t need to demand.’

‘You’ll write to me.’

‘At the château?’

‘Why not? We’re not doing anything wrong.’

He agreed that she was right, they weren’t doing anything wrong, and he did not dare say how sorry he was that they weren’t. Everything remained innocent and vague between them. Their growing friendship would perhaps never go further than that. Jean would have loved to perform some distinguished task for her, the kind of thing he had read in the novels of Alexandre Dumas: to chastise a ruffian, stop her runaway horse, save the marquis from a fire. He had only had one opportunity he could really boast about. Chantal had complained to him that Gontran Longuet was pursuing her in his absurd Georges Irat convertible. The brothel-keeper’s son seemed to like overtaking her, calling out unfunny remarks and hooting madly, making her horse shy and bolt. One Sunday morning Jean was lucky enough to come across him on the track that ran past La Sauveté. Up till now I have hardly described Gontran, a character devoid of interest in any case, and yet impressive to some young provincial ladies merely by virtue of coming from Paris, driving a sports car, and spending money in bars. In 1937 he was a tall beanpole with slicked-back hair, on which there usually sat an English cap. He liked posing as a cad. Jean stopped him at the side of the track. Gontran demanded to know what he wanted with such contemptuous rudeness that Jean squeezed his fists in his pockets.

‘Just to tell you to keep away from Chantal de Malemort.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

‘I’m telling you to see about it, you prick.’

‘No one’s ever called me a prick.’

‘Yes they have. Me. Just now.’

Jean was counting on his strength, but had not fought much in his life, just two or three times at the most at his lycée, and never with great conviction. He judged Gontran to be of about equal strength. He slapped him, knocking off his arrogant English cap. They exchanged a few almost cautious blows. Gontran was not jeering any more and his face was livid. Jean punched him in the eye and split his cheek. Blood ran. Unfortunately the brawls he had taken part in while working for his father had taught Gontran a vicious defence: twisting on his left leg, he smashed his right foot into his opponent’s pelvis. Jean doubled up.

‘And I suggest you don’t start that again,’ he said, retrieving his cap from the dirt.

Jean got off with a bruised lower stomach for the next fortnight. It might have been worse. But Gontran, with a split cheek and black eye, was the laughing stock of Grangeville. He no longer hung around Mademoiselle de Malemort. Joseph Outen, hearing what had happened, drew a moral from it.

‘The truth is, you don’t know how to fight. It’s a gap in your education. I know a Japanese man here who gives judo lessons. Go and enrol—’

‘No money.’

‘He’s a saint. He teaches for the greater love of Buddha.’

Jean attended the classes a dozen times and gave up. It was asking too much of his strength, when training was intensifying at Dieppe Rowing Club. In June he competed with Joseph in a coxed pair for the club heats and won. Two weeks later they faced the Rouen club. Fifty metres before the finish, they were leading and on the point of winning when Joseph drove his blade in too deeply. The scull nearly capsized and they came third. Joseph refused to accept the defeat and, blaming the equipment, gave up rowing. He was in any case at a period of great decisions in his life, and at the same time quit his job as sports editor at La Vigie , wound up the film club, sold his books and furniture, keeping only his Littré,14 a bed, and a table and chair that he set up in a servant’s room in an attic overlooking the port. He had wasted too much time. He was going to write a book, something completely new, in which he would make clear, by means of fiction, that humanity lives in a prison so long it refuses to divest itself of its need for love and money. He intended to finish by September, just in time for the NRF15 to publish it before the prize season. A representative of that house had confirmed to him that they were urgently looking for new manuscripts. If the NRF could not promise him their full support for the Goncourt,16 he would give his novel to Grasset.

‘I’m taking holy orders,’ he said to Jean. ‘You understand what that means: blinkers on. Don’t disturb me for anything. Find yourself another crew member at the Club. It wasn’t the equipment that let me down at Rouen, it was me who let the equipment down. I wasn’t where I should have been. I was already in my book …’

A few days later, when he visited the hospital to see his mother, Jean was surprised to see a screen around her bed. She had died half an hour earlier. Marie-Thérèse du Courseau arrived from Grangeville with Albert who, numb and with trembling lips, repeated several times in a hoarse voice, ‘It’s happened to others besides me … it’s happened to others besides me …’

The abbé Le Couec delivered a funeral oration so affecting and so simple that Albert suddenly understood the extent of his misfortune and the solitude to which he had been condemned. Jean had made confession the night before and this time took communion, kneeling at the altar next to Michel du Courseau, who stealthily squeezed his hand and murmured, ‘I am your brother.’

At the cemetery, through tears that he kept in check with the greatest difficulty, Jean saw the Malemorts and their daughter crossing themselves as the coffin was lowered into the small vault. The marquis and marquise shook his hand, Chantal kissed him on both cheeks, and the intense happiness of her kissing him lightened the sad day. The next day he resumed work at La Vigie, where Grosjean behaved less odiously than usual. Pedalling back to the rectory that evening, he found Antoinette waiting at the top of the hill.

‘I couldn’t speak to you yesterday,’ she said. ‘There were too many people. You must be very sad.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you going to go away?’

‘How do you know?’

‘Chantal told us. She knows more of your secrets than I do. What are you hoping for?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Don’t leave me without saying goodbye.’

They walked together down a path that cut across the fields, where they kissed for a long time. Antoinette had lost weight after her terrible experience. She was no longer the deliciously ripe fragrant fruit he had stroked in the hay, but a nervous and desperate woman, who reminded him more of Mireille than anyone else.

‘Before you leave,’ Antoinette said, ‘we’ll go and spend the night in a hotel in Dieppe. I want to sleep in your arms and wake up next to you.’

How lonely she must be! Marie-Thérèse du Courseau’s excessive love for her son had taken an aggressive form towards everything that upset him, even if it was no more than another presence. And how could she hope to marry Antoinette off after what had happened? Everyone knew. The only way out would have been to set her free, send her to Paris, but the idea of setting foot outside Normandy never occurred to Madame du Courseau. One married among one’s own, in one’s own milieu, never outside.

Jean promised. Weeks passed. He wrote to Palfy and by return received a long telegram.

Marvellous! I’m expecting you. Come, and we shall invent the future. I’m putting the caviar on ice. Bring a baguette and a ripe Camembert. Business is going well. The world is our oyster. Constantin

Jean had his eighteenth birthday, and the only thoughtful present he received was an album bound in black leather of twenty drawings by Michel. They were all of him. He felt a sense of embarrassment and thanked Michel flatly, in a quiet moment, Michel having explained that his mother was to know nothing. Why such a mystery?