Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘No, I don’t.’

Michel did not look disappointed. In fact he was not listening, as Jean noticed very quickly. He was only thinking about his recital, in which he had been encouraged by a music critic named Jean Vuillermoz. Vuillermoz was one of the two or three critics who understood modern music. The rest? Old buffoons and failures from the Conservatoire who understood nothing about anything, unless you slipped them an envelope … Albert had moved away, and Jean was Michel’s captive audience as Michel stood at the edge of the pond, looking taller than usual, dressed in beige corduroy trousers and a blue turtleneck sweater. The pair of pigeons flew upwards, circling high above them.

‘They’re lovely, aren’t they?’

‘Yes. I didn’t know you were a pigeon fancier.’

‘I’m learning. Have you ever dreamt you were flying?’

‘Sometimes I do.’

‘Do you know the psychoanalytic explanation of that dream?’

‘No.’

Jean was inordinately relieved to be rescued from a long disquisition on pigeons and dreams by Antoinette’s arrival. She was thinner, and from a distance her silhouette recalled Geneviève’s, with a little less grace and lightness, her very short hair shaping a boy’s face.

‘You pig!’ She ran towards him. ‘You pig, you didn’t tell me you were coming.’

She threw herself at his neck and kissed him on the cheeks with a vehemence that shocked Michel.

‘What’s got into you, Antoinette?’

‘Nothing. I’m just happy to see him.’

‘Me too. We’re all happy …’

Crossly he turned his back on them and went into the house.

‘Come inside. Maman would like to talk to you. I hear you’ve seen Geneviève. How is she? Tell me. Terrific, apparently. Do you know the man who keeps her?’

‘Is that what your mother wants to know?’

‘You idiot! Can you see her asking that question? Come on.’

Albert walked past, ignoring them, pushing a wheelbarrow with a box of petunias in it.

‘I came to help my father.’

‘He can spare you for a minute, and anyway you’re not wearing gardening clothes. What beautiful tweed! Are you rich?’

‘No, utterly broke.’

‘Good. I like you better that way.’

Jean turned away, preferring not to see the lopsided figure of

Albert pushing his wheelbarrow, and let himself be dragged towards the house.

‘Where did you sleep?’ Antoinette asked.

‘At Malemort.’

‘Ah!’

She squeezed his arm violently and was silent. Pigeons flew over their heads and landed at the edge of the pond.

‘Filthy birds,’ Antoinette said. ‘Inedible too. I don’t understand Michel. He spends hours every day taming them. Did you see Chantal?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Did you sleep with her?’

‘Why are you asking me?’

‘No reason.’

Six months ago Antoinette would never have asked such a question. It made Jean feel uneasy. Piece by piece the edifice was crumbling. Inside the villa several pieces of furniture furtively bought back from the La Sauveté auction reminded him of the old house.

‘Do you remember that chest?’ Antoinette asked.

‘It was in the hall.’

‘I kept the chest of drawers from my bedroom and that low armchair. The rest is new. We had to make a very public show that we were changing our life, that Papa was never coming back.’

‘Where is he?’

‘We don’t know.’

Alerted by the sound of a stranger’s voice, Marie-Thérèse du Courseau was coming downstairs. Like the Marquise de Malemort, her face was unchanged. The absence of grace can work miracles. In a flash she assessed Jean’s transformation, the new maturity of his features, the cut of his jacket and flannel trousers. Instinct warned her that he could no longer be spoken to as he once had been. She kissed him nevertheless, with dry, trembling lips.

‘I’m so glad to see you again.’

Doubtless she genuinely was. Jean did not flinch at the sharp gaze that examined him.

‘Did you see Geneviève in London?’

‘Several times.’

‘She wrote to Michel. She’s terribly keen on his drawings and talked about organising a show for him. All thanks to you.’

Oh, I didn’t do anything, apart from show her the album Michel gave me.’

He had, without being aware of it, touched a sensitive nerve. In return for his supposed admiration for Michel, Marie-Thérèse forgave Jean everything.

‘It’s a pity,’ he said, ‘that he’s more interested in singing than engraving.’

‘He’s so good at both, he’ll do both. Do you want to see his studio? Antoinette, will you take him? I must leave you, I have to go into Dieppe. You’ll stay for lunch, won’t you?’

‘No, I’ll have lunch with my father. But thank you.’

He was well aware that his father had lunch in Marie-Thérèse’s kitchen, and in the evening made do with what Uncle Cliquet cooked up on his cheap portable gas stove while he leafed through that year’s railways almanac.

They found Michel in his studio, with its glass walls that faced the soft north light. An unfinished canvas stood on the easel. Michel smiled in embarrassment.

‘You’ve discovered a secret of mine. I’ve started doing oils. Nobody has seen it yet. It’s The Pilgrims at Emmaus . What do you think of my head of Christ?’

‘Very accomplished.’

The face was fine, that of a young man whose deep, calm blue eyes gazed out at them.

‘It’s the butcher’s son from Grangeville,’ Antoinette said.

‘You can’t imagine how serene he is. He can keep still without moving for hours on end in the studio. When I tell him he can stop, he stays here and asks me questions: his mind is still a tabula rasa , a fantastic uncultivated territory. He asks me how destiny chose him to be the very image of Christ. I say the same thing to him every time: it was an intuition, a voice that told me to stop one day as I saw him leaving the boys’ lycée in Dieppe. It could only be him.’

Outside in the corridor Antoinette winked at Jean.

‘Do you know what’s going on?’

‘I think so.’

‘So does Maman. A big shock to begin with. Then she accepted it, and now she prays for him, repeating that the ways of the Lord are not for us to know. You see … religion everywhere.’

‘What about the abbé Le Couec?’

‘He sees absolutely zero. Michel takes communion two or three times a week. Even more elevated souls — and they do exist, forgive me, dear old Father,’ she said, comically pressing her hands together, ‘even more elevated souls would be taken in. Do you remember this bedroom?’

She opened the door into a small room that looked out over the garden.

‘I only came here once.’

‘We made love on the bare mattress.’

‘Yes we did.’

She took him into the sitting room, patted the place beside her on the sofa, and took his hand.

‘Is it really true that you haven’t slept with Chantal?’

‘Why are you asking me again? Chantal isn’t the sort of girl you go to bed with just like that.’

‘The way you can with me, for example.’

‘I never said that.’

He did not recognise her completely any more. She had used make-up to give herself back some of the bloom she had lost so quickly. She was no longer the delicious ripe fruit from years gone by, the Antoinette of the barn, the Antoinette of the night he had passed his baccalauréat. Then he remembered another night, the night of his departure, at Dieppe, and her feverish and weary face touched him again.

‘What have you come back for?’

‘An idea that will seem stupid and and pointless to you. I’d like to know whose son I am.’

She looked down.