Michel Déon - The Foundling Boy

‘I must go back,’ Salah said. ‘We shall meet tomorrow.’

‘Won’t you stay and have a glass of something?’ Palfy asked.

‘I don’t drink alcohol. Two orangeades is one too many.’

Alone with Jean, Palfy rubbed his hands.

‘A quite remarkable fellow!’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘His instinctive wariness. I much prefer that to the dupes who say yes immediately. This one is no dupe, I guarantee. Nor his prince … Nothing could be more promising for what I have in mind.’

‘Constantin, I’ve had enough of your mysteries.’

‘Never mind! Mysteries they must remain a little longer, then you’ll understand. But do me a favour this minute, will you? Write to your friend Madeleine, ask her to join us. I’ll write her a little cheque so that she can buy herself some respectable clothes and book a sleeper.’

‘You must be mad! You saw her for all of five minutes. Don’t try to tell me you’ve fallen in love!’

‘Me in love? I should not dream of being so vulgar, dear boy. No. But I think she may be just the woman I need to manage my business.’

‘Listen, Madeleine earns her living by turning tricks. That’s bad enough for her. Do not get her involved in one of your rackets. She was kind to Chantal and me. I like her. Leave her out of it.’

‘Fool! These are her last years. In a year or two she’ll be picking up Arab labourers at the factory gates. So let us rescue her.’

‘I didn’t know you belonged to the Salvation Army.’

‘A brand-new side to me, eh? Just do as I ask. You have no right to spoil her chance of a lifetime.’

Jean wrote to Madeleine, enclosing Palfy’s cheque. Three days later they waited at the station for her to step off the train. Her transformation into a respectable woman had not been entirely successful. Palfy took her in hand, booked her into a modest hotel and reassured her that he would soon find her an apartment worthy of her. With a telephone.

‘A telephone? What for?’ she asked, suddenly anxious. ‘I don’t know anyone here who will call me.’

‘But I know plenty.’

She confided her anxiety to Jean.

‘Your chap is strange. He’s got to be a pimp. And if he thinks he’s going to drop in and read my meter for me, he’s wrong. I work for myself.’

‘I don’t think he is a pimp. If he turns into one, you can drop him like a shot.’

Jean met Salah again, to ask if he would help him find a job. He waited less than a week before a travel agency engaged him to organise the leisure activities of groups of English tourists who had come to the Riviera to rest. How was he to organise leisure activities for English people on holiday? He had no idea at all. He moved out of the Carlton and took a room in the same hotel as Madeleine. The agency’s office looked out onto the Croisette. Several times a day he saw through the window the garnet-red Austro-Daimler driving past with Madeleine at Palfy’s side. He had persuaded her to dye her hair black. She wore very little make-up and smoked with a tortoiseshell cigarette-holder. From time to time the Hispano-Suiza also stopped outside the office, and Salah came in to talk to Jean.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, it’s not boring, and I’m earning my keep; I’m not dependent on Palfy. How is the prince?’

‘No better nor worse. He’s still in his room. I talked to him about you. He would like to see you as soon as he is better. Madame spoke very highly of you to him. Although she also spoke highly of your unusual friend …’

Jean did not dare ask if she was going to come to Cannes. He dreaded her coming, and longed for it. Dreaded because of the unspeakable confusion she had thrown him into, longed for her to come because she had been a revelation, a dazzling revelation, to him. Alone again, he found it hard to bear the lack of a woman’s company that left him facing the first genuine failure of his life so far. From the nights spent in anguish and distress he assessed the appetite and needs created in him by Chantal. He went to see Madeleine, in her room above his, and unburdened himself to her.

‘I’ve picked up a really bad habit, a very lazy streak. I need to be with a good woman. Do you think I’ll get over it?’

She kissed his forehead.

‘You’re a very nice boy. For a little while you two made me believe in love. But there’s always disappointment waiting. I need to thank Chantal for reminding me. Don’t fall in love any more, sweetheart. It hurts, and it’s stupid.’

He realised quickly that Madeleine was changing from one day to the next. Supposing Palfy was Pygmalion? Madeleine was working on her English, which she had spoken fairly fluently when she lived in London, and he found out she was also taking elocution lessons. Her Parisian drawl was fading. She started expressing herself more clearly, in a calm voice.

‘Your friend will end up making me sit my school certificate. He’s a strange chap all right. He ain’t even — I mean he has not even asked to sleep with me. You see how I use negatives now? I didn’t think about it before. Apparently it’s very fashionable.’

Palfy’s ultimate goal still remained a mystery. With his aplomb, psychological acuity and, even more, his phoney barony, address at the Carlton and Austro-Daimler, he had not dragged his heels about meeting Cannes high society. The Éclaireur de Nice et du Sud-Est published a picture of Baron Palfy dining at the same table as the Aga Khan and the Begum, hugely distinguished company in the eyes of idiots. Like Salah he frequently paused at the agency to talk to Jean.

‘You’re looking well! Makes me feel good! What about your work?’

‘It’s very interesting.’

‘I’ll end up thinking that work is what makes all of us healthy. You see what kind of an influence you have on me.’

He would take Jean for dinner at a restaurant at the old port, and sometimes even seemed to want to be sincere.

‘I don’t know why I like you, but I do like you, Jean, for sure. If I think about it, I could have been a boy like you ten years ago. But I got thrown in at the deep end. I kept my head above water, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. And then I suffer from this curious absence of scruples, almost an illness. Everything is too slow for me; the result is that I push things, events, people. I liked the way you didn’t come back to London, where life was easy. I was disappointed, but I felt it was the right thing. It’s the same here. You’ve got yourself a job. Fine by me. You’re not an easy boy to ruin. I sometimes think I’ve cracked it, and then you rebel, you’re off. That’s good. You’re a decent fellow, someone who won’t ever betray me. Am I right?’

‘Yes, you are. I wouldn’t. But why don’t you give up this life, Palfy? How can you live constantly with the prospect of being arrested or going to prison? It would drive me mad.’

‘They haven’t caught me yet. My star is still protecting me. Luck is the only bitch. She puts all the trumps in my hand and at the last minute she folds, and I fall from a great height. Which is not to say that I don’t love the fall. It’s intoxicating. Every time I tell myself: perhaps there is some great innate Justice, some playful God who’s protecting me from myself. Obviously one shouldn’t examine one’s surroundings too much at a moment like that, it’s too depressing, that meanness triumphing over the world. But I drool over it. Anyway, even so Justice moves me, as she did when I was a little boy and I thought she was very beautiful, despite her big tits.’

‘You won’t hurt Madeleine, will you? She’s a really kind woman.’

‘Don’t worry. She has nothing to worry about, except earning her living without using her body to pay for it.’