The Foundling's War

by Michel Déon

  ‘The Satin Slipper! It’s gorgeous. I’ve read it – it must be at least ten hours long. I love Claudel. I recited his ode to Marshal Pétain for schoolchildren. Everyone cried. And there was a prayer that reminded me I was one of Mary’s children …’

  Suddenly there occurred a miraculous moment, which captivated all the dinner guests as Nelly, whom they hardly knew and whom they looked down on with the bourgeois disdain proper towards actresses and kept women – and Nelly was both – as Nelly lowered her voice and in a tone of unexpected and pure emotion recited Claudel’s very beautiful prayer:

  ‘I see the open church, and must go in. It’s midday.

  Mother of Jesus, I haven’t come to pray.

  I’ve nothing to ask of you, nothing to say.

  I’ve come here, Mother, just to look at you, and not look away …’

  Nelly hiccuped and frowned.

  ‘Shit! I can’t remember the rest, but it’s really lovely. By the end I was crying too. It’s good that I’ve forgotten it, really, isn’t it? What’s this? Roast. Madeleine darling, we do stuff ourselves with you. I adore you, and Julius too. You know, if you and Julius weren’t having this big thing together, I’d be your girlfriend just like that …’

  Émile Duzan was squirming on his chair, pink and embarrassed.

  ‘Listen, Nelly, just stop drinking, will you?’

  ‘Poor love, I’m making him uncomfortable. He’s such a sensitive flower.’

  ‘I like it when people are honest!’ Madame Michette said.

  ‘I’m flattered!’ Julius declared.

  ‘Me too!’ Madeleine added.

  ‘Can I have the mustard?’ the woman with the fish-eyed stare asked.

  They gave her her mustard and she said no more for the rest of the evening, except as she was leaving, when she said goodbye and thank you in a tight-lipped way. The remaining guests wondered why she had been invited, and if she had even been aware of being at dinner with other people, whose wandering conversation never actually appeared to reach her, even when her husband raised his voice to say, ‘My wife and I …’ The rest of the dinner passed off in the same way. Jesús had a spat with the ferret-faced young man when he expressed his scorn for modern painting, and Oscar Dulonjé and Émile Duzan discovered with equal emotion that both had joined the same political party on the same day, the party whose great objective was France’s entry into Hitler’s united Europe.

  In the drawing room, where they returned after dinner, Palfy elaborated an interesting theory concerning the curfew and the rise in the birth rate, despite two million men being confined in stalags and oflags. Julius became embarrassed and attempted to change the subject several times; Palfy took no notice. Jean was probably the only guest to discern, behind his friend’s salacious speculations, the ironic and mischievous sense of humour he had cultivated in England during his brief period of splendour. As the hours went by Madame Michette became redder and redder, victim to the high blood pressure she suffered from every time she mixed white wine, claret, champagne and Alsatian cherry brandy. But that was what people had come for: to drink and eat and turn their back on daily hardships. They had drunk and they had eaten. Now their fear of missing the second-to-last Métro and the last connection was beginning to be all-pervasive; Nelly, who, having sobered up once, was well on the way to getting drunk again, provided the last event of the evening. She snagged her stocking, and it ran. Madeleine immediately brought her a new pair and, beneath the concupiscent gaze of the male guests, she hitched up her skirt and changed them. There was a glimpse of frothy white lace knickers, of the sort worn by French cancan dancers.

  ‘They’re a present from Émile!’ she said. ‘He likes them. It’s a fixation of his. There are worse ones.’

  She had good legs. Oscar Dulonjé, forgetting politics for a moment, confessed that he found them ‘very shapely’.

  ‘Shapely?’ Nelly replied. ‘I trust your willy’s just as shapely, in that case.’

  Émile Duzan coughed until he choked. Dulonjé blushed. Jesús had got to his feet, and people noticed that Fräulein Laura Bruckett, who had stayed in the background for most of the evening, had succeeded in attracting enough of his attention to have a fair chance of spending the night with him. Regulations forbade her gaze to linger on a Frenchman. As a Spaniard, Jesús had neutral status. Julius took Jean aside for a moment in the hall.

  ‘We must meet again. I’m sure you’re getting bored in that gallery of yours. And this La Garenne is a disreputable character. You’re a young man with a future. Europe needs new men. Your friend Palfy interests me a great deal.’

  ‘I’m not bored at the gallery,’ Jean said. ‘It’s a good place while I wait—’

  ‘Ah, you waiters! There’s a choice to be made. The workers who turn up at the eleventh hour won’t be the most welcome.’

  After Julius, it was Madeleine’s turn to pull Jean into her bedroom. She had got a parcel ready for him, wrapped in pretty paper and tied with a gold ribbon.

  ‘You told me she has a little boy, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘They’re still sweet at that age. He must be going without a lot of things. I thought you could put this underneath his Christmas tree.’

  Jean kissed Madeleine, who suddenly had tears in her eyes.

  ‘You can count on me,’ she said. ‘But I understand you’re reluctant … Julius is very good, very generous. He likes the French.’

  Madeleine, once so suspicious, had discovered a world of good intentions.

  ‘I don’t doubt it. How does he know so many things about me, about all of us?’

  ‘Yes, it’s strange. He knows everything.’

  They went back to the others, who were wrapping themselves in furs and scarves to face the freezing December night. A bicycle-taxi was waiting for Nelly and her producer. They separated at the Étoile: Palfy and Madame Michette were staying at a hotel in Avenue Victor-Hugo, Jesús, Jean and Laura got into the second-to-last carriage of the Métro.

  Just before Concorde Jean said, ‘I’ll carry on to Châtelet. See you in the morning.’

  ‘You don’ ’ave to.’

  But Jesús did not protest and got off, holding Laura’s arm.

  The lights were out on Quai Saint-Michel. The concierge let him in after a peremptory ‘Who is it? Where are you going?’ Jean rang Claude’s bell and she opened the door, clutching the collar of a quilted dressing gown to her throat.

  ‘I’d given up waiting for you,’ she said.

  He bent forward and kissed her cheek.

  ‘You’re freezing. I can’t light a fire, I haven’t got any more wood. Cyrille is sleeping with two jumpers. Do you want to sleep here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve only got one spare blanket.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  He sat on the couch that had given him so many sleepless nights, listening to the city’s sounds, peering through the shutters for the dawn that would awaken a slumbering Paris.

  ‘Why didn’t you come?’

  ‘I was invited to dinner. Madeleine gave me this parcel to go under Cyrille’s Christmas tree.’

  Claude sighed.

  ‘I felt so badly about not having anything to give him. Who is this good fairy?’

  ‘She’s not a fairy.’

  Claude sat down next to him. He put his arms around her, squeezing her with a strength that made her anxious.

  ‘We mustn’t leave each other any more,’ he said.

  ‘No. Not even for an evening.’

  ‘Not even for an evening.’

  Claude shivered. Jean picked up the blanket and they wrapped it around themselves, huddled against each other. Just before drowsiness overcame them, Claude murmured, ‘You have nothing to fear from me.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  Cyrille woke them at the crack of dawn.

  ‘Jean, Jean. Don’t you even take your coat off to
sleep with Maman?’

  How we would love to follow Madame Michette on one of her topsecret missions, and see her employing the most varied methods of propulsion to travel the highways and byways of occupied France! Never will she remind us more strongly of Madame Belazor, paramour of Pancrace Eusèbe Zéphyrin Brioché, alias Cosinus the scientist.14 Palfy himself, like the scientist, does not leave Paris. From his hotel room in Avenue Victor-Hugo he directs his agent’s escapades, while she is driven on by the sheer force of her romantic folly. But the pursuit of Madame Michette would soon leave us breathless, and divert us too from our subject: the unconsummated, yet so perfect love that binds Jean Arnaud to Claude Chaminadze. All the reader need know, then, is that Madame Michette’s zeal will not falter and that Julius Kapermeister has promised that, by February or March 1941 at the latest, Sergeant-Major Michette is to be released and leave his camp in a contingent of fathers of large families. Does he not have eight industrious girls waiting at home in Clermont-Ferrand? The alert reader will naturally have asked themselves another question: who does Madame Michette think she is working for? She does not know. A secret within a secret makes an endless hall of mirrors, in which Madame Michette only sees her own face repeated in ever diminishing reflections. When she seeks reassurance, Palfy demurs: the golden rule of counterespionage is that agents are acted on, not acting. He assures her that her missions will remain without risk so long as she speaks to no one about them, and that, at present, it is vital for her to stay in training before more serious operations. Despite the suspicion in which female agents are held – ‘their flesh is weak,’ Palfy notes mirthlessly – she is already held in high regard by his superiors. From books purchased at second-hand hand booksellers’ on the banks of the Seine, she learns the basics of operational work. Hers is an exhilarating adventure. Let us allow it to take its course without exposing Palfy’s intentions too soon. Does he himself know what they are? In all honesty, now he is just having fun, yet with the impressive instinct that has guided him so well in his exploitation of human foolishness he strongly suspects that Madame Michette may one day be genuinely useful to his ambitions. We shall see his suspicion proved right. Meanwhile he has concluded that there is nothing to be gained from a man like La Garenne, a second-division fraud and insatiable overeater, a slob taking advantage of the times but already behind them. True, the gallery’s turnover is continuing to rise, but it is really nothing to do with Louis-Edmond. Let us be honest and admit that Palfy is right: La Garenne has been overtaken, failing to realise that, by dint of his greed and ever-present meanness, he has become dependent on Blanche de Rocroy (whose cousin Rudolf has reappeared, wanting to get hold of some Braques and Derains), and dependent too on Jean, without whom Jesús would refuse to paint either his erotic nudes or the forgeries from which the fat man is piling up a fortune. Ever impatient, from time to time La Garenne buys a fine picture from Jesús at a price that seems madness to him, and one day will turn out to have been absurdly low. The canvas joins the others in a cupboard whose contents no one will think to examine until the war is over and peace has been declared.

  Yet a little light has also been shed on the mystery of La Garenne. Blanche, sweeping up and dusting before the gallery opens, selling unspeakably bad pictures with rare refinement, ironing her employer’s trousers and from time to time providing him with oral relief, also deals with the book-keeping and tax returns. Thanks to a document left lying on the table, Jean has learnt that the gallery in fact belongs to a woman named Mercedes del Loreto, of no known profession, living in Rue de la Gaîté, in Paris’s 16th arrondissement. We should say straight away that at first the name meant nothing to him. He thought it sounded attractive and romantic. But Palfy, whose knowledge, at least in this particular cultural sphere, was vast, was startled by the news.

  ‘What? She’s still alive! She must be a hundred if she’s a day. Everyone thinks she’s dead. She wasn’t exactly a spring chicken when Edward VII had his way with her, just after Félix Faure. Don’t you realise? Mercedes del Loreto is a truly historic figure! Historic!’

  She had modelled for Toulouse-Lautrec (Albi museum still had his portrait of her) and been both high-class courtesan and variously lover and fleeting mistress to a wide circle of rich men. If she owned an art gallery, it raised questions. Palfy set Madame Michette on the trail. Staking out Rue de la Gaîté, she soon discovered La Garenne’s hideout, the den to which he disappeared at night and certain hours of the day: an apartment under the rafters, opposite the Bobino music hall. Allow me to romanticise Madame Michette’s somewhat dry reports a little, while not failing to do justice to their key points.

  A dark and sticky staircase filled with choice odours from the toilets on each floor led to the top landing and a single door fitted with security locks. There was not even a concierge to provide the smallest titbit of gossip! The postman left the mail in zinc letterboxes. One of these bore, handwritten, the grandiose name of Mercedes del Loreto. After two days of watching, Madame Michette had initiated a conversation with a little old lady stepping downstairs with her shopping bag in one hand and a cigarette between her lips, her face whitened with powder and grey hair curled with tongs.

  ‘Ah, Mercedes del Loreto!’ the old lady had said. ‘Of course I know her. It must be fifteen years since I saw her in the building. But she’s still up there, still with us. Only yesterday I heard her shrieking. As if there was a sea lion up there … You know’ – she waved her arms and blew out her cheeks – ‘arrh, arrh … oowowoowow … What would you say to a quick glass of white at the tabac on the corner? You wouldn’t have a cigarette, would you? A proper one! I say, things are looking up. Oh, they’re German. You won’t find the black market flooded with those. The Fritzes keep an eye on things. Plays by the rules, their army.’

  They walked to the nearest bistro and stood at the counter.

  ‘Two medium-dry whites, Amédée. Anjou, please.’

  The barman raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Madame Berthe, I don’t know if you’ve noticed … there’s a war on. Shortages. Anjou is hard to get hold of.’

  ‘Oh, do stop pretending. Get the bottle out. She’s a friend.’

  The Anjou appeared. Madame Berthe sipped and clucked with her tongue.

  ‘She moved in in 1920. I know because I was a diseuse at the Bobino then. Did you see me?’

  ‘No,’ Madame Michette said, ‘I wasn’t living in Paris. You can’t be everywhere.’

  ‘I quit in 1925. Went to Gaston Baty. Do you know him?’

  ‘Gaston who?’

  ‘Baty. Théâtre Montparnasse, you know.’

  ‘And you’re a diseuse?’ Madame Michette repeated worriedly, a provincial who had no idea what a diseuse was.

  ‘No, I’m a dresser now. Marguerite Jamois, I dressed her. I did. Oh, there were plenty of actors who couldn’t do without me: Lucien Nat, Georges Vitray. There wasn’t a button out of place in Maya, in Simoom, in The Shadow of Evil. That was great theatre, Madame. What’s your name?’

  ‘Marceline, Marceline Michette.’

  ‘If you told me you were from the Auvergne it wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Like him. Monsieur Baty’s from Pélussin. Do you know it?’

  ‘No, I’m more from Montaigut-le-Blanc.’

  ‘Don’t know it. Anyway, it can’t be far. What do you want from old Mercedes?’

  ‘It’s for a newspaper.’

  ‘Journalists, I’m used to them. Always hanging round me, waiting for gossip. I suppose everyone’s got to live.’

  Madame Michette ignored the jibe. What would this stupid old woman have said if she had found out she was talking to a secret agent?

  ‘Mercedes has paid the price for her adventures. Hasn’t gone out since 1925. In the beginning you’d hear her walking on her peg leg: knock, knock, knock … Just like Sarah Bernhardt. She was at Saint-Gervais when Bertha sent over one of her big ones.15 Bang … no more leg. A terrible thing for a lady who lik
ed to lead the men a merry dance,’ she giggled, knocking back her white wine, ‘and then she took to her bed. Been there for fifteen years. There’s a chap who lives with her. Some say he’s her last husband, others that he’s her son. As disreputable as they come, I can tell you. One evening I found him pissing on the stairs; it was running all the way down. He looked very sheepish. Don’t say anything, don’t say a word, he begged me. He was afraid I’d tell the old girl, his old girl … I don’t know. He goes up to feed her every night and every lunchtime, and if he’s late she starts shrieking: arrh, arrh … oowowoowow …’

  The barman, washing glasses behind the counter, grinned.

  ‘All right, Madame Berthe, still doing your impressions?’

  ‘My dear Amédée,’ the dresser said, ‘you’re such a peasant. I’m not doing an impression. I am Mercedes del Loreto; I do her better than she does. By the way, your wine is watered down.’

  She had drunk her half-glass in a single gulp. Madame Michette bought her another. At the end of each mission she provided Palfy with a list of her expenses, which he signed and passed on to higher quarters. When peace was declared she would be reimbursed.

  ‘They haven’t got any facilities up there,’ Madame Berthe went on, ‘so he empties the chamber pots. He does it very discreetly, but I’ve seen him. He’s devoted to her. He’s not a bad lad, deep down. People aren’t all good or all bad, generally. There’s degrees. What did you say your paper’s name was?’

  ‘It’s published in the unoccupied zone.’

  ‘Oh, down in the free! Some folk think they’re clever, but it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other wherever you go. We’re free here too. We’re chatting, aren’t we?’

  ‘We are,’ Madame Michette said.

  ‘So that Mercedes del Loreto, she had a fine old time, I’ll say. Bankers and princes. All right, fine … but in the end we’re all the same … same pussy, up and down, not side to side … even the Chinese. Then one day a wooden overcoat … That chap who lives with the old girl, there’s one or two who knew him around here. Before the war – I mean the 14–18, not the last one; that was a joke. Yes, he used to hang around the cafés at Montparnasse. Did caricatures. Went from table to table with a sketch pad and pencil. Portrait? he’d say. People let him get on with it. They called him Léonard Twenty-Sous. That’s all I know.’