Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

The lifted lace curtain revealed a corner of the park where, at that moment, Albert was watering with an apron around his waist and a straw hat on his head. Sitting in a garden chair a few steps behind him, Adèle Louverture was dozing, her chin tipped forward. Behind her, Michel du Courseau (six years old) was carefully cutting with a pair of scissors the knot of the cotton scarf that held back the girl’s thick hair. When she woke up, her scarf would fall, and her hair would tumble free. From behind the du Courseau boy, Jean Arnaud (four years old) watched him with his hands behind his back and his head on one side. After he had finished cutting the knot, Michel moved over to Albert’s hosepipe. Still armed with his scissors, he stabbed quickly, several times, into the rubber of the hose and ran off, handing the scissors to Jean as he did so. Albert’s flow of water dwindled to a trickle. Turning round, he saw jets of water spraying from the punctured hose and his son holding the scissors. Jean made no attempt even to draw back, taking the two slaps without complaint and running away to cry, pursued by Albert’s curses. Adèle, awakened, raised her head and her scarf fell off.

She saw at once that it had been cut with scissors.

Antoine rang a bell that had been placed there for the purpose. Marie-Thérèse came in. Ever since her husband’s accident, she had lived in a state of devotion and goodness. The tenderness with which she spoke to her friends about ‘poor Antoine’ had left many thinking that he was dying. The more anxious of them came to visit and were reassured: the dying man was doing well, in spite of his immobility. He kept a box of cigars and a bottle of calvados next to his armchair. He still looked fresh. After a period of eating very little, before the accident, he had regained his appetite, although it was an appetite that baffled the Normans who knew him: he ate bread rubbed with garlic, requested bouillabaisses, demanded aïoli with his cod, and chewed olives while drinking a yellow liquid which a few drops of water transformed into a whitish solution with a flavour of aniseed. In short, he was not in Normandy but elsewhere, living in an unknown world of lovers of spicy food. Marie-Thérèse understood perfectly well that he was being unfaithful to her. Her pride would have suffered if she had not been able to console herself that she was hardly the only victim of his infidelity: Joséphine Roudou, Victoire Sanpeur, and now Adèle Louverture had all found themselves in a similar position.

‘Are you feeling unwell?’ she asked, without much hope that he would say yes.

‘No, my dear. Unfortunately I’m not feeling unwell, but I should like to say something to my son.’

‘Michel?’

‘Do I have another?’

She acknowledged that, at La Sauveté at least, he could only mean Michel.

‘I’ll send him to you, but …’

‘But what?’

‘You’re always so hard on him.’

‘Have you ever seen me hit him?’

‘No. You’re worse. Either you don’t speak to him, or you look at him with astonishment, as if he were a stranger.’

‘He is a stranger. He’s the only person in the world who looks at me with terror in his eyes, and occasionally even something close to hate.’

‘He’s a wild boy. You need to make a bond with him.’

‘I’ll try.’

He turned his head impassively and lifted the curtain again. Albert was repairing his hosepipe with some rags and string. A few steps away, Jean was watching with his hand on his cheek. The slight movement of his shoulders gave away his stifled sobbing. Antoine’s silence conveyed to Marie-Thérèse that she should now do as he had asked.

He waited calmly, followed with an attentive ear the discussion between mother and son at the bottom of the stairs and their slow approach to the first floor, then listened, without attempting to work out their sense, to the excited whisperings on the other side of the door. Finally Marie-Thérèse must have managed to convince him, for Michel entered alone into the room with his father. He stood with his back against the closed door, his legs together, his head high. They exchanged a look and Antoine was glad to see that his son did not lower his eyes. They sized each other up for a moment in silence, the father almost startled to find his son good-looking — this boy he knew so little of — the son surprised that his father did not vent his anger straight away.

‘You’re really quite a handsome little chap!’ Antoine said.

It was true. At six years old Michel, slim and with long, well-muscled legs, square shoulders, a long neck, a well-defined profile and pale blond hair, was a beautiful child. Antoine felt he was seeing him for the first time. What sort of incomprehension had kept them apart for so long? He mused on this for a moment, distracted at first, then suddenly conscious of what was happening on the other side of the door, of a mute and fearful presence. He waited; there was plenty of time. It was Marie-Thérèse who, unable to bear the silence any longer, knocked, tentatively opened the door and put her head around it. Antoine smiled.

‘Don’t worry. I haven’t eaten him.’

‘But you’re not talking.’

‘We are communicating to each other matters that cannot be spoken aloud.’

Barely reassured, Marie-Thérèse retreated. Antoine listened to the sound of her feet going away downstairs and, without allowing vexation or irritation into his voice, said, ‘Aren’t we, Michel?’

‘What?’

‘I think you know what I’d like to talk to you about.’

‘No.’

‘Something about a headscarf and a hosepipe punctured with scissors.’

Michel breathed deeply, like a diver about to disappear underwater.

‘Don’t punish Jean,’ he said. ‘He’s only four.’

‘Because he did it.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s very precocious, isn’t he? But I appreciate you taking his side. You’re a good-hearted boy.’

‘He’s a servant’s son.’

‘Jeanne is not a servant. I don’t like to hear you say that word. Jeanne is our caretaker and her husband is my friend.’

‘How can he be your friend? He’s a gardener.’

‘I prefer a gardener to many of the people your mother makes me entertain in this house.’

‘Anyway, Jean doesn’t know what he’s doing.’

‘Are you sure he did it?’

‘Yes.’

Antoine remained silent. He was discovering who his son was, and the discovery interested him. In one sense he was proud that the boy was sticking to his lie, knowing that his father knew. He allowed that he had courage, and a deep scorn for the truth.

‘I want to be sure that Jean won’t be punished, so I would like Albert to come up and see me. Would you be very kind and tell him?’

Michel’s hand was already on the doorknob.

‘Wait. Don’t be in such a hurry. Give me a kiss.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it will give me pleasure.’

Michel let go of the knob, walked over to his father, and gave him a cold kiss on the cheek.

‘Thank you,’ Antoine said. ‘Now you can go.’

He watched Michel run out and go to the gardener. Albert put down the nozzle of his hose, dried his hands on his thick blue canvas apron and limped up the avenue, trousers flapping around his wooden leg. He kept his back straight, and no one watching him would have felt under any obligation to show him charity or pity. He was a deeply accepting man, who offered his suffering to the cause of peace about which he spoke so often, with the fervour of a visionary. Antoine was very fond of him and discreetly let him know that he was, as is proper between men.

‘I’m interrupting your work,’ he said when Albert entered.

‘I’d finished, Captain.’

‘Captain’ had replaced the ‘sir’ of before the war. They had met in uniform, on leave, and from that moment on, master-servant relations had become impossible. Better to substitute their military ranks, which at least reminded them in a soulless peacetime that men might come together in a brotherhood of respect, without servility.