The Foundling's War

by Michel Déon

  Divine? Jean found it hard to see her in that light. The summer had brought no change to Nelly’s almost sickly pallor, her black, glistening eyes and mouth of an exquisite natural pink that opened to reveal perfect teeth. Innocence was the only possible word to characterise her features, framed in her medallion-like face. But then the face spoke and became animated, and her lips, designed to eat cherries or nibble shyly at a shoulder, poured out a string of obscenities. It was a gripping performance, and one could understand why Émile Duzan waited anxiously each time to see what she would come up with. Despite her producer’s mute pleadings, she laid down her knife and fork, clasped her pretty hands under her chin, and said to Rudolf with an angelic smile, ‘Let’s play the truth game. Do you know it?’

  ‘Yes! Viss great pleasure.’

  ‘All right. I would like to know whether all of you Teutonic warriors, Prussian squires, Baltic barons and Austrian bastards aren’t really, I mean deep down, secretly poofs.’

  The German would rather have been cut into little pieces than admit that he did not understand a word in French. What should he make of ‘poof’? Should he not be reassured by Nelly’s smile that it could only be a very positive epithet?

  ‘Ach, let us not exacherate. There are some who are, more or less.’

  ‘I think, dear Rudolf,’ Nelly said, leaning her head on Jean’s shoulder despite the furious stare of Émile Duzan, ‘I think, dear, handsome Rudolf, that it’s all a question of stoicism. The first time one is sodomised, it is really very painful.’

  ‘Fery painful,’ he agreed.

  ‘Afterwards it becomes quite pleasant.’

  ‘Fery pleasant!’

  Madeleine interrupted.

  ‘Nelly darling, I’m not sure this is a terribly nice conversation. I much prefer it when you recite something. You’re so different … so … how shall I put it … possessed by what you’re saying, you make me shiver.’

  ‘What do you want? Some Valéry?’

  ‘I don’t know. Everything you do is so lovely.’

  Nelly put her hands up to her face and, in a transformed voice that was hardly audible, recited ‘The Steps’.

  ‘Your steps, offspring of my quietness.

  Placed so slowly, and so saintly,

  Towards the bed of my sleeplessness

  Proceed, stonily and faintly.

  Purest one, shadow divine

  With what restrained, soft footfalls you with me meet

  Gods! … all the gifts you have made mine

  Come towards me on those bare feet …’

  Nelly stopped, took her hands away from her face, and poured herself a glass of wine.

  ‘The rest next time,’ she said. ‘So, handsome Rudolf, do we like French poetry?’

  Jean observed with pleasure that the young woman’s poise and versatility had such an impact on the German that they robbed him of his facility and his fatuous air of a man of the world. Rudolf assured her that he adored Paul Valéry and read him every day. But it turned out that Nelly had not done with her previous subject, and she began to go into detail. Madame Michette frowned and interrupted.

  ‘At my establishment such matters are never spoken of,’ she said with barely controlled indignation. ‘If a customer wants that sort of thing, we make him pay extra!’

  Palfy puffed on his cigar and blew smoke rings. Jean understood that he was at his absolute happiest, savouring with profound relish the disarray being produced in the wake of this euphoric dinner. Louis brought out a bottle of Armagnac, as a welcome diversion. Nelly’s leg was pressed against Jean’s, and he thought about Claude: she was having dinner at her mother’s with Cyrille tonight. She would be coming back to Quai Saint-Michel by the last Métro. They had parted that morning, unhappy, indecisive, hesitant about seeing each other again, yet certain that they could not avoid doing so. He liked Nelly’s perfume and he liked the refinement and grace of her profile and her shirt open to reveal her braless breasts. She was a devil, and he had made no sacrifices to the devil for too long.

  When Émile Duzan told her the bicycle-taxi was waiting, Nelly refused to go with him.

  ‘I really can’t bear to see another single one of those tandemists with his fat bum aimed at me. Who’ll see me home?’

  Rudolf, Palfy and Madeleine all offered. Each of them had a car. She chose Palfy indirectly, taking Jean’s arm. Duzan tried to display his authority.

  ‘I’ll wait for you to ring the bell. You don’t have a key.’

  In the commotion it was difficult to hear her ungracious response, inviting Émile to stick the key in an unnameable place. The reader will be aware that he was not about to comply and he took such offence that he declared it was all over between them. Nelly gave a deep sigh.

  ‘At last!’

  Rudolf kissed her hand and promised to telephone her.

  ‘But please do, dear Rudolf.’

  Sitting between Palfy and Jean in the back of the Light 11 as they drove down Rue de Rivoli, she yawned.

  ‘Where shall we have our last drink?’

  ‘At my place,’ Palfy said.

  ‘What about my little Jean?’

  ‘He lives with me. From now on we shall never be parted.’

  ‘You’re not poofs by any chance, are you?’

  ‘Nelly darling, it’s becoming an obsession with you.’

  Since the beginning of June Palfy had been living in Rue de Presbourg, in a superb apartment furnished with as much taste as Julius’s. The owner was in Spain, awaiting better times. He was fortunate that his objets d’art would not find their way into the public domain. As for Jean living there, it was true. He had wanted to go back to Rue Lepic, but the key was no longer under the doormat, where it had always been. Palfy claimed to know what had happened: slowly but surely, Fräulein Laura Bruckett had got her claws into Jean’s friend Jesús. He had softened and, now sharing the rations of his rapt German admirer, was currently thought to be in the Chevreuse valley, where he and Laura had been on a honeymoon for the past fortnight in a small farm filled with butter, cream and smoked hams. She was stuffing him with cakes. His waistline was expanding. How fast everything changed! In two months at most. At the Galerie du Tertre, La Garenne did not know what to do: no more paintings, no more drawings. Fortunately Alberto had been freed and resumed his photographic business. Blanche had gone to find Palfy to beg him to bring Jean back …

  Nelly took her shoes and stockings off before having her last drink.

  ‘You mustn’t think I’m drunk,’ she said. ‘I’m just so bored stiff. Life is no fun. I’ve got to get rid of Duzan. He’s hopeless. He promises me Hollywood when the war’s over but he’s never set foot there. And he’s never got any money; he borrows, gets into debt, doesn’t pay me – he’s so mean I could scream – and as for The Girl and the She-wolf, what a dud! For that I’ll never forgive him. You know … I feel crushed by something as bad as that. But people will watch anything, and everyone knows there’s a sweet little scene with me in the bath. Duzan lives off my tits …’

  She pulled open her shirt and offered them to the two men’s gaze.

  ‘I quite agree, they’re very pretty indeed,’ Palfy said politely, pouring himself another drink. ‘I find it reprehensible that Émile Duzan makes his living by showing them to the general public.’

  ‘Find me another sugar daddy then! A real one. And I’ll stop drinking! Where’s the toilet?’

  Jean showed her to the bathroom adjoining his bedroom. She shut the door as the telephone rang. Palfy told Duzan that Nelly was already asleep and that it would be best to leave her where she was. Were there not two of them there to look after her? No, no, she hadn’t drunk anything since they left the restaurant. All Jean could hear was a distant gurgling: the producer’s furious, desperate voice demanding and then imploring Nelly’s return. All day long this man terrorised his employees, and in the evening snivelled over a girl abandoning him for a night. He hung up eventually, half convinced by Palfy, but he must have
called Madeleine to complain to her because shortly afterwards she telephoned in turn, anxious about the consequences and begging them to drive Nelly back to Duzan’s. The best jokes were the ones where you knew when to stop, she said. Julius liked the producer and would take his side. Palfy reassured her: nothing bad would happen to Nelly and they would take her back if she showed the slightest inclination to go. At present she was locked in the bathroom, standing in front of the mirror and thinking about the ravages that alcohol would soon wreak on the smooth skin of her lovely face. Madeleine agreed that was a good thing. Yet Nelly was not an alcoholic. While she was filming, not a glass of wine passed her lips. Alcohol was simply a means of forgetting her boredom when she was not working and her panic when she found herself in a room with more than two people. Palfy convinced Madeleine that they would take care of her. She sent her love and begged them to have lunch with her tomorrow at Avenue Foch. Julius would be back and there would be a very interesting Pole whom they really ought to meet. Palfy promised.

  ‘Obviously,’ he said to Jean after he put the phone down, ‘you have little idea of the nest of vipers in which we are operating. Julius is officially in charge of overseeing all textile production in France and requisitions everything that appears on the market. Less openly, he is also the boss of the Abwehr’s economic intelligence service and in open warfare with the same department of the SS. Duzan is his key person in the film industry. We therefore have to move carefully in order not to offend him … Listen, go and check your girlfriend hasn’t fainted in the bathroom.’

  Nelly’s skirt, shirt and underwear were spread over the bedroom floor. Naked under the sheet she had pulled up to her chin, she was already asleep, her angelic face lying on the pillow, lit by a bedside lamp.

  ‘A Greuze to the life,’ Palfy murmured. ‘Night, dear boy. What a brilliant return to Paris this is! I’m happy for you. Let me repeat, in case you’ve forgotten, that she’s also talented, immensely talented. Ask her to recite the telephone directory and she’ll move you to tears …’

  ‘I’m not going to ask her to do that tonight.’

  ‘No, evidently not.’

  ‘Where am I going to sleep?’

  ‘Idiot!’

  Shutting the door, he disappeared. Jean bent over Nelly’s face. Her dark eyes gave a bluish tinge to her fragile eyelids. Her face was like that of a child without sin. Only complete candour could have inspired such a pretty nose. He turned away to look out of the open window at the warm, black night swept by the beam of a searchlight. In the East the butchery was continuing, and the rattle of death filled the red sky, while Antoine, at the wheel of his jacked-up Bugatti, drank champagne or grappa and from time to time switched on his headlights to light up the expanse of the Mediterranean. Toinette too was sleeping, another angelic face. He should have stayed with them, jumped at Théo’s invitation to share their life and wait out the end of the war there, as Palfy had predicted it. Claude might perhaps have stayed too. She had adapted painlessly to the Tropezians’ careless, immature existence. But would she have resisted her mother’s imperious demands, resisted what bound her to Paris? There was no convincing that categorical creature once she had said ‘no’. He imagined her, across the rooftops, in her apartment on Quai Saint-Michel, sharing her bed with Cyrille, a woman both weak and strong, suffering a torment she could not overcome and to which she too awaited the end in anguish. If their thoughts, as they stood or lay awake that night, were not alike, then they were no longer of any help to one another in this world.

  Nelly turned over in bed, offering her other profile. Jean switched off the light and lay down beside her, not daring to touch her. The hours passed and a greyish gleam rose behind the roofs. A German car engine disturbed the silence in the street, followed by pedestrians talking in loud voices, their footsteps ringing on the pavement. Jean moved his hand to Nelly’s hip and she shivered, sighed and snuggled against him. She stroked him and he buried his face in her neck and hair. She lifted her head and pressed her lips to his cheek, roughened with his beard, in a childish kiss.

  Just as they concluded the last of their amorous exercise, Palfy knocked at the door. He was pushing a trolley covered in china and silverware.

  ‘My butler stayed in London, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I do hope poor Price is saving my honour and paying my debts. I asked him to come, but he refuses. He’s like those island birds that die if you change their climate. He prefers to spend his nights in underground shelters. A man without imagination, a sheep.’

  Nelly jumped out of bed stark naked, kissed Palfy, ran to the bathroom and shut the door.

  ‘I must say,’ Palfy said, ‘she spends a lot of time in that little room. It doesn’t make her any less charming, not at all, and one does prefer the clean sort of person, completely clean. As for you, you look a real sight. About a hundred years old, I’d say …’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You must fight it. Age is a serious handicap. Look at that child; she woke just like a rose. What an exquisite creature! Keep her for a few days. I’ll disconnect the phone and tell the concierge to admit no one.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’m letting her go.’

  ‘I despair of you. It’s in infidelity that the strong measure the greatness of their love. I hope you’re thinking of that at this moment.’

  ‘I wasn’t, actually. Thanks for reminding me.’

  Nelly came back, wrapped in a bath towel that left her shoulders and thighs bare. Jean closed his eyes. One morning Claude had sat on the edge of his bed in the same way. Their two bodies had something in common, with something more finished and calm about Claude’s. Nelly lifted the lid of the plate warmer, served herself eggs and bacon, and ate greedily.

  ‘Émile hasn’t telephoned yet, has he?’ she asked with her mouth full.

  ‘Last night. I didn’t want to disturb you. You were already asleep.’

  ‘Was he making a fuss?’

  ‘It can’t be said that he was happy.’

  ‘I don’t care. I don’t want to make films any more. I’m going back to the theatre. Oh, not to see his face ever again!’

  ‘Love doesn’t move you?’

  ‘Mine does, of course. Not others’.’

  She leant towards Jean and kissed him on the forehead.

  ‘Go and shave,’ she said. ‘We’ll go for a walk. I’m giving myself a holiday.’

  ‘We have to have lunch at Madeleine’s,’ Jean said timidly.

  ‘Oh God, eating, always eating! That’s all we’ll remember about this occupation. Why don’t we go into the country instead and see your friend, the great Jesús?’

  *

  What they did that day is of little importance. Did they go to see Jesús or did they have lunch at Madeleine’s with the aforementioned Pole, who was actually hardly a Pole at all and more a stateless Jew like the already famous Joanovici and, like him, a supplier to the Germans, plundering France in their name and amassing a fabulous fortune? Yes, it hardly matters, because what matters, as the reader will have guessed, is that Jean has tripped up and in doing so renewed, after long abstinence, his acquaintance with the pleasure women offer and begun a period in which the vanity of an affair, even a chaotic one, does not transcend his self-disgust and remorse at being unfaithful to Claude and seeing her suffer. He does not even need to lie. She knows, yet when he misses an evening with her and returns the next day without an excuse, hardly a shadow is visible on her face.

  Nelly could be delightfully provocative. That is to say, she possessed many ways to please. Jean discovered her talent, of which he had so far had only glimpses through a fog of alcohol. When she was not swearing at the imbeciles who surrounded and exploited her, she could awaken a lover by reciting softly in his ear:

  ‘Our weapons are not like enough

  For my soul to welcome you in,

  All you are is naive male stuff,

  But I’m the Eternal Feminine

  My object’s lost amid the starry trail!

 
; It’s I who am the Great Isis!

  No one has yet peeled back my veil

  You should think only of my oasis …

  If my song offers you any echoes,

  You’d be quite wrong to hesitate

  I murmur it to you as no pose

  People know me: this is my womanly state’

  Jean listened to the voice, which spoke only to him. Nelly, naked, opened the window wide and exclaimed, ‘What are we doing, always fucking when there’s life outside, just waiting for us?’

  ‘Who’s that by?’

  ‘By me.’

  ‘No. Before.’

  ‘By Jules.’

  ‘Jules who?’

  She shrugged her shoulders and skipped into her bathroom, where he followed to see her covered in soapy foam.

  ‘You don’t know anything. You make me feel like an old woman who’s teaching a schoolboy a thing or two.’

  ‘Jules who?’

  ‘Jules Laforgue.’

  She splashed him with foam. Ten minutes later, fully dressed, she left for the studio where Émile Duzan was waiting for her, having rapidly abandoned her vague resolutions to quit the cinema. Between scenes she telephoned Jean, whom she now called Jules-who, and if she reached him it was always to beg him, ‘Please come, Jules-who. I really cannot cope with these pricks any more. I love only you.’

  He did not believe a word of it. She still occasionally slept with Duzan, who endured torments, hated Jean, and offered him a job in his studio, in public relations. Palfy urged Jean to accept.

  ‘It’s an ideal job for you. You get out. No being stuck in an office. In six months you’ll know everybody.’

  ‘And every morning I’ll see Duzan’s ugly mug! No thanks!’

  ‘He’s not a bad person. His being in love and being bashful about it proves it. Anyhow, he likes to suffer; it gives him the feeling he exists. He just wants to keep his executioner close.’