Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘I can’t help you. I’ve never found out. The abbé would tell you if it weren’t for the seal of the confessional. And it’s likely that Maman knows too.’

‘What about your father?’

Antoinette shrugged her shoulders.

‘He never asked himself the question. You know him well enough. Why are you asking all of a sudden?’

‘Someone said …’

He stopped; the words did not come easily. Would he ever be able to say it?

‘What? Tell me.’

‘It wasn’t by accident that unknown hands placed me at the gates of La Sauveté nineteen years ago.’

Antoinette squeezed his hand.

‘I’ve thought that too, but why?’

‘Because I may be the son of your father or your mother?’

‘Maman an adulteress? Be quiet, don’t make me laugh. You’ve never looked at her properly. Papa? It’s strange, I don’t think so.’

‘Nor me.’

‘But you’d be my half-brother! In that case we’ve been gaily committing incest, just like they do in all the farms around here, with brothers and sisters sleeping in the same bed.’

‘It wouldn’t bother me very much, either,’ he said.

Through the window he caught sight of Albert limping across the garden, a full flowerpot in each hand. Father and son still loved each other deeply, but their separation was almost complete. They could no longer play the same game they had played for so long. It would have been absurd. Albert never lied, never dissembled about anything. Jean felt an urge to be with him, to leave this pretend La Sauveté that possessed none of the charm of the old one.

‘Who’s living at La Sauveté now?’

‘The delightful Longuets.’

‘What about Gontran?’

‘He’s bought himself a Delahaye. Makes him irresistible. Apparently he wants to be a racing driver. All the girls are falling over themselves.’

‘And you?’

‘No, I’m finished with him since you know what. You know I can never have children?’

‘Does it make you sad?’

‘Yes.’

‘What a bastard.’

Jean felt that Antoinette was about to say something, but she was silent and stood up.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘Wait for the abbé. He’s my only hope.’

‘And then?’

‘I haven’t any money. Find a job.’

‘Why don’t you go to Paris?’

‘I don’t have a sou.’

‘I can lend you some. Papa sends me the occasional cheque behind Maman’s back. I don’t spend anything. What for? I’m dead and buried here already.’

He kissed her.

‘It’s not because I’ve just discovered you’re a good person. I’ve always known it. But I need to take care of myself.’

‘Will you tell me what you were doing in London?’

‘Nothing exciting.’

She pouted.

‘Were you being kept by a rich woman?’

He laughed.

‘No. It’s more complicated and simpler than that.’

At the door she kissed him back.

‘Don’t forget my offer of help.’

‘You’re really generous.’

‘And stupid,’ she laughed, with tears in her eyes.

Crouching at the edge of the pond, Michel was again stretching out his hand full of birdseed. Pigeons swirled around him. One pecked a seed from his open palm and another followed suit. He smiled with contentment.

‘Did you see that?’ he said to Antoinette. ‘I’m going to Dieppe this afternoon to buy another pair.’

Jean walked towards his father.

‘Papa, I’d like us to have lunch together. Do you want to go to Chez Émile? But I haven’t got a sou. It’ll be on you.’

‘If you like, my boy, if you like.’

They said nothing to each other about peace. Albert no longer believed in it. He had carried his pacifism like a cross since the socialist Left had moved to warmongering and the Right to attempting to restrain its adventurism. Jean worried him too, reawakening his old anxiety that a man did not leave his class without shedding a few drops of blood along the way. He looked at him with a gruff tenderness that would not be fooled but was disarmed none the less by Jean’s evasive answers to his questions. When the boy announced that he might go to Paris to look for work, Albert raised thick unruly eyebrows. Paris? Why Paris? There was no life better than country life, especially when it was next to the sea. There was nowhere and nothing more healthy. Jean made no attempt to reason with him, for fear of deepening their estrangement. Nor did he dare raise the question of his birth again, and by the time he returned to Malemort that afternoon he knew the answer would not be revealed so quickly. The abbé remained his only hope.

Chantal was at Dieppe with her father. The marquise offered him tea. He declined, saying he had letters to write that claimed his urgent attention. His notebook acquired a new page of reflections.

j) If I don’t find out whose son I am one day, I’ll end up spending my life as an invalid. Or rather — and only to my own eyes — a sort of monster of nature, a twentieth century offspring of the Virgin and the Holy Spirit. Albert is marvellous as Joseph, but who wants Joseph for a father?

k) What happened last night with Chantal is the first poisoned chalice of my life. I loved her face, loved to look at her. Now that image has been torn up and replaced by a body that is a complete lie. I need all my strength to struggle against the obsession that gnaws at me: who came to her before I did? I’ll be the last to know, inevitably. Antoinette knows. She’s dying to tell me, but she’s scared of my reaction. There’s only one way out: to leave. Two possibilities: London or Paris. In London I’ll manage somehow. In Paris it will be harder. That means I’ll be obliged to borrow the money that Antoinette offered me.

He closed the notebook and slipped it into his suitcase. Someone was knocking at the door. Chantal came in dressed in a soft wool skirt and polo-neck sweater. Leaning against the door panel, she refused to come any further.

‘You’ve just hidden something,’ she said.

‘Yes. A notebook where I write down some very personal thoughts.’

‘Do you write about me in it?’

‘Yes. You see how I answer your questions very openly. Answer mine—’

She put out her arm, her hand up.

‘No, don’t ask it. What are we going to do?’

‘Nothing. I intend to go either to Paris or to London.’

‘Take me with you.’

‘You’re mad!’

‘Perhaps.’

She slammed the door as she left. A tractor rumbled beneath the window. Jean saw the marquis at the wheel, wearing a cap and corduroy trousers, his shirt open on his athletic torso. Madame de Malemort was making her way to the kennel. It was time for her to exercise the Brittany spaniel and Braque d’Auvergne that her husband hunted with. Jean took out his notebook again.

l) The question in the last paragraph was badly put: I stand to suffer a lot less if the person who came to Chantal before me is someone I don’t know. If, on the other hand, it’s someone from Grangeville, I won’t be able to bear it. It would send me mad. The wisest thing would be never to ask Chantal directly, but, strange as it may seem after my behaviour of recent months, I love her and only her, and last night has got me even more involved. I can’t see any way out except knowing.

Chantal again spent part of the night with him. They scarcely spoke to each other. At breakfast the marquis suggested to Jean that he might like to accompany him to the market at Dieppe. Chantal stayed behind to help her mother. The two men left in the 301, hauling a small trailer into which the marquis had loaded a couple of calves. While the marquis was in conversation with a livestock dealer, Jean took the opportunity to slip away to the last address he had for Joseph Outen. He found him in his attic, where two fanlights provided all the room’s illumination. Joseph greeted him joyfully.